Conservatism is Not About Principle

Limbaugh put Republicans who work "around the edges" of the president's policies under his heel

Yesterday I wrote that conservatism "is not about principle; it is about "preserving" the status quo from the liberals attempts to rip apart conservative values any further than they already have. Conservative values are not based on objectivity, but rather on the subjectivity that the free market is the best, not that it is right."

This is the reason Rush Limbaugh is said to be driving a wedge in the Republican Party, with about twenty-five percent of Republicans--according to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel--rooting for Limbaugh, and leaders like Mitt Romney distancing themselves from him by not mentioning his name in their own comments of caution.

"'He is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party. And he has been up front about what he views, and hasn't stepped back from that, which is he hopes for failure. He said it. And I compliment him for his honesty, but that's their philosophy that is enunciated by Rush Limbaugh. And I think that's the wrong philosophy for America,' Emanuel said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.'

"I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed?" [Limabugh] asked. Fox News Politics

Listen to the conservatives and the Republican leaders. Unfortunately, they don't want President Obama to fail, because if he fails, the nation fails, and if the nation fails, the world-wide depression would be politically disastrous--for anyone who thinks his mission is to "restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation."

It would be disastrous politically for people like Romney and Huckabee and any other politician who says he or she does not want this un-Constitutional theft of free enterprise to fail. They are giving the Libertarian Party a big boost as the only free-market party. But that is good, if the Republicans don't think capitalism is morally right.

This is what I mean when I say is not about principle; it is about "preserving" the status quo from the liberals attempts to rip apart conservative values any further than they already have. Conservative values are not based on objectivity, but rather on the subjectivity that the free market is the best, not that it is right.

Limbaugh put Republicans who work "around the edges" of the president's policies under his heel, grinding on them for trying to make those policies work because in doing so they are giving up their beliefs--beliefs which unfortunately are not principles.

If they thought capitalism was right--morally, politically, and economically--they would have seen the warning signs when President Bush told them about it in 2003, and when Congressman Barney Frank said Bush was wrong.

"According to an article by Kathleen Day in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that 'could pose risk to the taxpayers.' He told the Post he worried the Treasury Department 'would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks.'

"Just a month before, Frank had aggressively thwarted reform efforts by the Bush administration. He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s problems were 'exaggerated,' a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs estimated to be in the hundreds of billions.

“'These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis,' Frank said to the Times." Business and Media Institute

Not acknowledging that capitalism is morally the only economic system that allows investors the freedom to create wealth will be a disaster for Republicans, if they manage to regain power. They will only seek their own forms and programs of "stimulating" the economy. Most Republicans said over and over that "something has to be done" to save the economy. All but one or two failed to mention free enterprise as the solution. The rest were on board with bail-outs and loans and stimulus packages.

But if the Republican return to power and play the same game as Obama and the Democrats, but with different bail-out/loan programs that eliminate what they called "pork", their programs will only contain what the Dems will then call pork.

The government needs to back off, let businesses fail because that is what businesses are supposed to do when times are bad, and everything will work its self out. That is what capitalism does. It is a self-regulating, self-correcting market, as we found out after President Reagan sat back and watched as:

"an economic tidal wave was moving in on the US Monday morning, October 19, 1987. The Tokyo exchange had experienced a record collapse in prices and panic selling. The Hong Kong exchange was wiped out. The European exchanges experienced the worst single day in their history.

"In the US panic first hit in the Chicago commodities exchange and within five minutes of the opening the markets went into free-fall. It then spread to Wall Street and the NY exchange.

"The Dow-Jones averages fell 508 points. By the time the NY exchange closed up stock market prices had dropped 22.6%, almost double the record losses of the crash of 1929. An astonishing 604.5 million shares had been traded that day more than double that of the crash of 1929. It was the greatest crash in US economic history.

"Black Monday was followed by Terrible Tuesday which was never reported by the US press. On the following Tuesday the world’s financial system came to within one hair’s breadth of extinction. It appeared that by noon that the market had in fact died. All trading in stocks, options, and futures shuddered to halt. For almost one hour the world’s capitalist system had completely collapsed. There were no buyers at any price.

"At this point of maximum crisis the Federal Reserve Board stepped in and flooded the banks with cheap credit. At 12:38 that afternoon the stack market rose from the dead. The resurrection of the market was the result of the deliberate manipulation by a few major firms to save the markets.

"Essentially leading corporations were entering the market after 1pm to buy back their own stocks which they had dumped that morning in order to stabilize the situation. Buying resumed on the market." [condensed from] The Reagan Revolution

The Fed did what it was supposed to do, and within hours the market was correcting itself. There was no rush to "nationalize" banks or insurance companies or mortgage lenders or the stock markets themselves.

There was no appeal to Congress to help with financial aid. It was not necessary then, and it was not necessary last fall when Bernanke and Paulson presented Congress with a three-page spending proposal for $800B.

"The Bush/Paulson/Bernanke 'panic' and 'plan' to hand unlimited funds and power without judicial or congressional oversight was ripped straight from the 'Chicago School's' playbook of inducing a financial panic in developing nations and then moving in to 'reform' the system... As noted here before: [the nation was] told we had only hours til the Apocalypse on Thursday, Sept. 18, [yet] we find the world still working 12 days later."

Before $1 of any of that money had been paid as bail-out, the market was beginning to correct itself. Only after spending the money did the economic system start tanking because "capitalism and individual liberty [were] not its foundation" any longer.

So I want Obama to fail too. Maybe then the capitalists will be allowed to step in repair the damage, and I hope that if that day comes the socialist pigs will be charged with crimes, maybe under the RICO laws for collaborating in dirty business.

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Pragmatic Politics vs. Originalism

Originalism Protects Individual Sovereignty

Last Saturday I wrote that the politics of Original Intent that were practiced by Senator Barry Goldwater in his race for the Republican nomination of 1964, are not the politics of Washington as we know it today. Originalism is not respected by those who see necessity in specific government programs which defy strict Constitutionalism.

The politics of pragmatism has become the standard, practiced by both Republicans and Democrats. Pragmatic politics sees necessity as the trump card, whether or not American supreme law supports it. I do not deny that many things are "necessary," and can be implemented by governments without reverting to any form of collectivism.

But in order to implement necessary policies and programs that are pragmatic rather than Constitutional, the Constitution must be changed. That is what the Founders said. That is the mechanism the Founders gave us in the Law. What is so hard for pragmatists to understand about that mechanism?

Bush the Pragmatic decided an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would be better than a Middle East that remained inclusive of him. He started an unnecessary war, a divisive war, a war based on perfectly incompetent intelligence reports.

Bush the Pragmatic decided that limiting the individual sovereignty of Americans through the coercive, and therefor mis-named "Patriot Act", was a better means of advancing the "common" good rather than the Constitutionally provided-for "individual" good.

("We, the People," meant specifically "We, the Individuals collectively called 'the People.'" Among others of the Founders who wrote or spoke of such individual sovereignty, we have these words of Jefferson:

("We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society [i.e., all the individuals collectively] to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named and removable for unfaithful conduct by themselves immediately." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816.)

Bush the Pragmatic decided it was better to save the "Barney Frank Democrats" who led us down this thorn-and-shard-laden housing financing debacle. That debacle led to the "me too" attitude of banks that had been allowed to become "too big to allow to fail"; the hands-out attitude of the Motor City who couldn't keep up with the smarter looking and better selling cars made by the Asians and Europeans. There is a one year waiting list in the U.S. for the Nano Car manufactured by the Indian company the Tata Group.

And of course, there are the "me too hands" held out for Federal funding by the states and cities across America.

Bush the Pragmatic, who never opted for the "redistribution of wealth", opened the door for the wealth redistributing Obama the Pragmatic.

It appears that many local governments are going to get their palms greased.

It is, of course, pragmatic to destroy the capital value upon which this nation was built, and to destroy that very wealth by taking from those who have it and giving it to those who do not--so that those who do not get some of it whether or not they know how to create more wealth with it so it can be redistributed again; or whether they merely know how to spend it before coming looking for more to be redistributed in their direction.

Either way, pragmatic redistribution "stimulates" the economy, like a cattle prod "stimulates" a cow, with a sting worse than Muhammad Ali's fist to your face. The purpose of the sub-prime lending was to make the Democrats look good through the stimulation of the economy by lending. The "sting" was that those to whom sub-prime loans were given could not afford them or they would not have needed sub-prime rates.

Though Obama stated that his team members share his "'pragmatism about the use of power' in foreign policy," Dr. Tara Smith, speaking for the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, said Democratics and Republican presidents disagree vehemently about foreign policy and "all manner of moral and political issues, [and] that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise. [But] pragmatism, from either the Left or the Right, is inherently self-destructive and a threat to Americans." [emphasis added] CapMag.Com

What makes for pragmatic politics? In these times when non-Originalism is the order of the day, "anything that goes" and which seems to fill a need is pragmatic. Non-Originalism is the idea that no written Constitution can anticipate all the methods by which government could use--after the law was written--to oppress people, so it is sometimes necessary for judges to make decisions based on other laws with similar intents, and the precedents set by interpretation of those laws.

Judge Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. Bork is a an Originalist. His nomination was scuttled by Democrats who didn't like his former involvement in Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre," nor by some of his controversial opinons.

(Neither do I. But, putting that aside,) his case, in part, for Originalism is solid as rock: "If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: Law....

"This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones." [citation]

"Pragmatism is about how well things work in practice, not how they should work in theory. [But] we present evidence that non-originalist judicial decision making has, in fact, done a good job of enhancing social welfare, as measured by popular ap-proval of the Court’s decisions. " [emphais added] THERE IS NOTHING PRAGMATIC ABOUT ORIGINALISM David S. Law & David McGowan

This "good job" measurement is pragmatism defined. But Goldwater, the Conservative's hero of Heros said this in the long, honorable tradition of Originalism:

"I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible." [emphasis added] Barry Goldwater Quotes

This policy is the measurement of someone who believes in a nation of laws, as Bork spoke about, not of a nation of men who proceed to find things that are necessary--as the bailouts may have been, but which are un-Constitutional.

Respecting the Constitutional individual sovereignty of each member of "We, the People" would preclude taking from he who has in order to give to he who has not. Such redistribution is neither in the letter of the law, nor in the spirit of the law. Pragmatism is not about law; it about results irrespective of law.

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Conservative Society for Action

Conservatives Uphold the Constitution

No Better Than Liberals

I just joined--with a donation--a new organization called the Conservative Society for Action. There is only one reason I did this. The site's sidebar contains quotes from none other than, and no one but, Senator Barry Goldwater.

The conservative lineage CSA claims to follow--as demonstrated by the pictures at the top of the page--are Thomas Paine; Thomas Jefferson; Robert Taft, "the first to fight 'New Deal' Socialism"; Goldwater; and Ronald Reagan, the friend and so-called heir of Goldwater's modern ideology of conservativism.

As the CSA's website makes clear, Goldwater was out to protect the Constitition, quoting him with statements such as:
"I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible"; and:
"It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden."

This is clearly not the conservatism of Washington in the Twenty-First Century. In fact, in was only by the barest standards that Reagan, the "hero" of modern conservativism, can be said to have furthered Goldwater's Originalist politics. He was the best President of the Twentieth Century, but Goldwater had the potential to be a game changer, taking the Constitution back to its originalist roots.

Stephen Flanagan of the National Defense University, founder of the CSA, has it right when he states, "Obama's win means nothing! Capital Hill is the enemy! [ ] As I said before the election, Obama won't really come through on his campaign promises because that would end up hurting HIM. [ ] But here's the REAL danger... The Liberals in this country now control 4 out of the 5 centers of political power. [ ] There's one more item on their checklist and that is the Supreme Court. By the time Obama's presidency is over, they likely will have that too. Five out of Five for the first time in American history."

But as modern conservativism goes, Nixon, not Goldwater, was the next Republican President. Leaving all Nixon's scandals aside, his disastrous (and traitorous) act of taking America off the gold standard eliminates him from rationally conservative status. He unilaterally cancelled the Breton Woods Agreements signed by 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations, which adopted the gold standard as the only objective measurement of a nation's wealth. A nation's wealth is now tied only to its "good name," its economic strength, in world market comparisons.

Gerald Ford was a popular centrist in the House of Representatives, but after becoming President when Nixon resigned, he showed none of the strength of that Goldwater lineage. Had he shown any such strengths, he probably still would have lost to Jimmy Carter. Goldwater's radical defense of liberty frightened many Americans who saw him as a hawk who would take us to war against the Communist enemy.

More than likely Goldwater's international policies of strength, and his domestic policies making each American more economically wealthy and thus independent of government charity, thereby enriching the Treasury, would have broken the economic back of the Soviets two decades before Reagan was able to accomplish the same thing when he challenged the Soviets to keep up with our military spending.

Goldwater had objective standards. Reagan had objective goals, but his policies were strictly pragmatic, lowering taxes for the purpose of reaping higher levels of revenue from smaller percentages; America grows wealthy and even lower taxes will have the effect of providing a larger budget. But Reagan also blew the budget, and he left America deeply in debt. Pragmatism is not conservatism, but when used for the purposes of strengthening both our economy and our national defenses, pragmatic Presidents become heroic.

What Ayn Rand wrote about Barry Goldwater could have been written about Reagan, (although she was angered by Reagan's religious conservatism, especially his opposition to abortion based on the idea that the separation of church and state did not apply when in reference to a fertilized egg, a zygote, or a fetus undeveloped enough to live on its own.) She wrote:

"Barry Goldwater is singularly devoid of power lust. Even his antagonists admit it with grudging respect. He is seeking, not to rule, but to liberate a country."

The CSA says its first priorities are these:
ACT to Repeal the Community Reinvestment Act!
ACT to Impeach Barney Frank!
ACT to Defeat Card Check Legislation
ACT to Stop the Flow of U.S. Oil Dollars Going to Hostile Countries
ACT to Stop Congressional Censorship of the Broadcast Media.

To read the reasons behind each of the ACT links is to understand something of the nature of Goldwater's goals. Unfortunately I see no overall philosophical basis for each ACTion that CSA seeks to perform. They are worthy actions, necessary actions, and yes, conservative actions.

But the problem with conservativism is that it does not lay out a black-and-white philosophical strategy, as Goldwater did. Goldwater frightened many Americans because unlike any other candidate since Abraham Lincoln he had an unwavering plan.

The conservatives cannot allow themselves to appear to have the luxury of a black-and-white, unwavering plan. That it is not a luxury but absolutely necessary to break the back of the growing menace of the overpowering, power-hungry federal machine and its leaders is a fact.

"If a [politician] evades, equivocates and hides his stand under a junk-heap of random concretes, we must add up those concretes and judge him accordingly," Rand wrote. "If his stand is mixed, we must evaluate it by asking: Will he protect freedom or destroy the last of it? Will he accelerate, delay or stop the march toward statism?"

Whether or not Flanagan and his staff and the general membership of CSA can ACT with Goldwater-like reserve, and with Jefferson and Paine's committment to individual sovereignty, remains to be seen. Flanagan has the background. Now let's see if he has the vision and the rationality to take on Capital Hill with the balls that are necessary to make him an enemy of the state.

"I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom," Flanagan quotes Goldwater. But Goldwater also said, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Extremism of any sort is frowned upon now, because the Religious Right is extreme but so are the Islamicists. Goldwater's extremism was his downfall even in 1964.

Flanagan has the credentials to be an extremist. Let's see if he has the credentials to sell the extreme position that the Constitution must be adhered to, and sees to it, with membership help, to destroy Goldwater's idea of "necessary but un-Constitutional" legislation.








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Sharia-; Hoover-Bush; Church and State

Chairman of Sharia Lawyers Brands Christmas "Evil"

As you read the short article, ask yourself what the “establishment media” would be saying today if the “Chairman of the Society of Christian Lawyers” had publicly proclaimed that Ramadan is “evil,” and a “pathway to hellfire.” Remember, the Muslim lawyer [Choudary] who branded Christmas “evil” is not just any Muslim, but the Chairman of the Society of Muslim lawyers. Note also that he is the Principal Lecturer at the London School of Shariah and “a follower of the Islamist militant leader Omar Bakri Mohammed.”

These are the kinds of people American financial institutions are affiliating with when they offer shariah-compliant financial products. [emphasis added]

George ‘Herbert Hoover’ Bush
by Daniel J. Mitchell

According to Politico.com, Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied Republican senators to support the bailout of auto companies, arguing that it would be “Herbert Hoover time” in the absence of government intervention.

Cheney is right, but for the wrong reasons. To the extent that it is “Herbert Hoover time,” it is because the current administration has repeated many of the mistakes that were made by President Hoover. There was a huge expansion in the burden of government spending under Hoover, up 47 percent in just four years. There’s been an equally huge increase in government spending under Bush. Hoover dramatically increased government intervention with everything from schemes to prop up wages to protectionism. Bush’s intervention takes a different form, with mistakes such as steel tariffs, Sarbanes-Oxley, and bailouts.

Hoover’s legacy is statism. Bush’s legacy is statism. The only unanswered question is whether Obama will be the new Roosevelt — i.e., someone who compounds the damage caused by his predecessor with further expansions in the burden of government. from Cato At Liberty

The LAST Thing We Need

According to the American Policy Center, the United States is only

two states short

of obliterating what is left of our government's policy of protecting individual rights:

A public policy organization has issued an urgent alert stating affirmative votes are needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which "today's corrupt politicians and judges" could formally change the U.S. Constitution's "'problematic' provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society." [bold added, link dropped by Gus Van Horn]

The message is, unfortunately, made to look ridiculous by its messenger, which warns not only of the legitimate threats to freedom of speech this could unleash, but also pretends that we do not (and should not) have separation of church and state. I would not want conservative theocrats holding such a convention any more than I would the socialists now in power.

Alan Sullivan, who notes that the left is suddenly talking about pushing for this in Ohio,

comments that -- surprise! -- certain elements of the conservative movement helped push us to this brink some time ago: "[T]he Reagan-era drive to launch a new constitutional convention ... began with a revolt by disgruntled deficit hawks, who were horrified by Cold War deficits, and failed to get a balanced-budget amendment through Congress."

Let us hope that this does not occur, so that we can profit by this object lesson in substituting the point of a government gun for rational persuasion. The ultimate problem lies not with Congress, but with a public that is all too happy to accept trinkets in the form of welfare state programs from the government in exchange for little pieces of its freedom.What were those fools thinking? That Congress would fail to find a way around their amendment if it was passed? Or that a nation that elected such a Congress in the first place would outdo the Founding Fathers as authors of a constitution?-- CAV from Gus Van Horn

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Yaron Brook on Newsweek.com

Various Subjects Worthy of Noting

An interview with Dr. Yaron Brook titled "Who Is To Blame?" has been published on Newsweek's Web site. Newsweek accepts comments from readers. It ends with this classic Rand-fan fantasy exchange:

Newsweek: With free markets now in disrepute, what's going to happen to the popularity of Ayn Rand's most famous book, "Atlas Shrugged"?

Brook: I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape? Unfortunately, there is no escape. Businessmen are panicking, and I think they should be panicking. Many of them understand that this was not a crisis of free markets. There was no free market to fail. What we have is a regulated market, and the regulated market has failed.

Brook also takes down Greenspan! I love it!

Then, Brook and Don Watkins talk about The High Cost of Washington's Price Manipulation Policy. "Want to eliminate the glut of homes? Don't give the government more power--open the borders to immigration."

On To Other Subjects

On Wednesday, December 10, Rev. Robert Sirico posted, in part, this entry on the Acton Institute Power Blog:

"It is with a sense of great pride and joy that I join with thousands around the nation in congratulating Chuck Colson on his reception of the Presidential Citizen’s Medal presented to Chuck at the Oval Office today by President Bush.

"It is important to remember that the ministry that Chuck founded some 35 years ago is noteworthy not only because it has assisted in countless men and women to transform their lives through the power of a right relationship with Christ, or that this ministry is staff by a veritable army of volunteers who visit prisons and in other ways help to mend broken families with God’s love.What is most noteworthy is that all of this came from one man’s surrender to the call of Christ to turn from his sins and accept the Gospel of redemption.

"Here’s some of what Chuck had to say on the Prison Fellowship site:
'Whatever good I may have done is because God saw fit to reach into the depths of Watergate and convert a broken sinner,” said Colson. “Everything that has been accomplished these past 35 years has been by God’s grace and sovereign design.'"

This is the same Chuck Colson who, it was reported just yesterday, said of Mormons: "Mormonism either affirms historic Christianity, or it doesn't. Since it doesn't, it can't call itself Christianity -- a fact that all the good will and public relations in Utah can't change."

Remember, President George H. Bush is the first Moral Majority President* to be elected, and I thank his God that he will probably be the last. It is deplorable that such an honor should be bestowed--by a President, no less--upon a man with such a distorted view of another religion. The Coptic sect of Christianity does not affirm the historic Christianity, either, since from its inception it was not part of the Holy Roman Church. Would Colson say the same about the Coptics?

Wikipedia has this to say about the Coptic Church: "The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox family of churches, which has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when it took a different position over Christological theology from that of the Eastern Orthodox and Western churches, then still in union. The precise differences in theology that caused the split are still disputed, highly technical and mainly concerned with the Nature of Christ. The foundational roots of the Church are based in Egypt but it has a worldwide following."

*The Moral Majority rose to power on the coat tails of Ronald Reagan; Reagan was not connected to the MM in any way other than that of having its support. But for a different--and opposing--view of the strength and power of evangelical American, see this article in "Mother Jones".

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Sharia Law in Britannia; Bigger Penises; HRW Denounces Hugo Chavez

Dreaming of a Bigger Penis, Little Boy?

What kind of messages are we sending to our children when online and TV ads bearing these types of headlines are available at all hours for the kids to see?

Online, the headline "Dreaming of a Bigger Penis?" comes with a good looking young man lying on his bed, looking up at you. It does not have the addition of "Little Boy." But you and I know the elementary boys will be giggling about it and showing it to each other. Middle and junior high school girls will be giggling about "penises" at the their lockers, while looking at their favorite boys' crotches trying to figure out which one's have the biggest. Some of those girls will find out, if they have not already. The boys will be laughing about penis size in the locker rooms and pointing at each other's dicks in the shower to prove they themselves don't need any "pills," and inadvertently shaming the innocent, closeted gay boys who get a hard-on, while bravely encouraging the straight boys to jerk it and prove they are men before emerging from the showers.

Creation of a web "dotsex" just for sex ads and porn is not against the first amendment or free speech; it is against the mulitculturist left [see article below] who want freedom of the press, even when the press is read by minors. You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater? Certainly; and just as certainly this is not a case of that; but there is an audience for everything, and for everything there is a audience that should not be involved. It is why we make age-related laws about so many subjects, from movies to alcohol, from video games to driver's licenses, to which crimes can cause teens to be tried as adults.

We adults in civilization ought not be able to titillate the horny teens who already have their pants full of throbbing meat, wondering where to put it. They are not being taught not to put it anywhere, because statistics prove that abstinence programs alone are not as effective as mixed education where the proper use of condoms and safer sex are also taught.

Chastity rings are a cool thing, and I hope they work for those teens who want them to work. But 8 year olds who innocently surf the web and find these ads on their favorite general information pages don't need to be thinking about their penises--or anyone else's. If this continues, we will eventually see "clitoral stimulus pills" advertised. Can you imagine what the boys in the locker rooms will do that with that information? A social society does not need to publicly discuss penises in general, not in front of our toddlers and teens. CEC

Did Western Civilization Survive the 20th Century?

"Imagine the question of the end of something akin to Western civilization being posed when Athens fell; or when Christian Rome was sacked by barbarians; or when the Norsemen ravaged settled Europe; or when feudal warlords reigned unchecked; or when the Black Death left soul and society without mooring. Imagine the question posed by critics of the papacy, when visiting the decadence and bad faith of fourteenth-century Rome, or by Catholic apologists when they saw Western Christendom rent first in two and then into a multitude of competing sects.[ ] The West is resilient beyond all seeming possibility, and something gives it that resiliency. The West has survived its barbarians without and, more dreadful yet, its own barbaric offspring within. If it could outlast Attila the Hun, Julius Streicher and Michael Suslov, it surely can outlast Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish and the Friends of Bill.

"What, after all, do the multiculturalists mean by the hegemony of the West? [ ] There are profound ironies about the multiculturalist Leftists, many of which testify precisely to the dynamism and inescapable appeal of that Western civilization to whose dismemberment they are in theory committed. If we take them at their word, multiculturalists hold the view that there is no fixed point from which to value or analyze cultures objectively. They believe, in theory, that all cultures are inherently equal, rightfully judging themselves from perspectives relative to themselves. If this were true, of course, their judgments of the injustice, inequity and malevolence of Western culture compared to the rest of the world would be self-contradictory of their theory. [ ]

"Let the inhabitants of the world take or leave that offering--we have come, by our own dynamic and experience, to treasure voluntary, not coerced, exchange--but to the extent that Western civilization survives, and only to that extent, the hope of the world survives: the hope to eradicate unnecessary suffering; to speak a language of human dignity, responsibility and rights linked to a common reality; to minimize the depredations of the irrational, the unexamined, the merely prejudicial in our lives; to understand--with the possibility that both interest and charity will apply that understanding for good--the world in which we find ourselves."

[Note: This "condensation" of the original article is only the beginning and the ending of a very long but very worthwhile philosophical article from] "The National Interest"; Alan Charles Kors

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_1999_Winter/ai_58381627/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

If you are a student who

promotes the values

of classical liberty on campus and would like to supplement your educational subsidies, check this out: Ronald Reagan College Leaders Scholarship Program

http://www.libertyguide.com/opps/id.1479/opp_detail.asp

HRW’s Deafening Denunciation of Hugo Chávez

"Human Rights Watch cannot be accused of being a right-wing organization fostering Washington’s imperialist agenda. Thus, its recent report bluntly condemning Hugo Chávez for the erosion of democracy and the gross violation of civil liberties in Venezuela is creating shockwaves. The first reaction from the government in Caracas has been to expel HRW director José Miguel Vivanco.

"In 236 pages, the report, titled “A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela,” details Chávez’s abuses against opposition groups, the media, organized labor, civil society, and his assault on the Courts. It’s a worthwhile read." [from the blog of the Cato Institute.]

Criminal Charges for Insulting Muhammad,

Offending "Honor" of Pope?

"In Italy, a prosecutor wanted to bring criminal charges against Sabina Guzzanti for making a joke about Pope Benedict XVI. In Lebanon, a prosecutor is trying to bring criminal charges against Danish citizens for "insulting" Muhammad. In both cases, religious believers are trying to bully outsiders into being too afraid to say the "wrong" thing about revered religious leaders lest this lead to jail, fines, and of course threats from other private citizens.

"[M]aybe this isn't so much about 'insulting' the pope as it is about 'insulting' power — i.e., making open, deliberate, and mocking challenges to the people in power. Dante doesn't do that anymore because his popes are all dead..." Austin's Atheism Blog

http://atheism.about.com/b/2008/09/19/criminal-charges-for-insulting-muhammad-offending-honor-of-pope-benedict-xvi.htm

The End of the Secularity of Western Law:

Brief Introductions to Sharia in England, followed by an analysis by CEC

Sharia courts operating in Britain
"Five sharia courts have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester and Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The government has quietly sanctioned that their rulings are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court. Previously, the rulings were not binding and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims."
The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2957428/Sharia-law-courts-operating-in-Britain.html

Anarchy in the U.K.?
"The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence. Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through county courts or the country’s High Court, a part of its Supreme Court system. Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims." The New York Times

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/anarchy-in-the-uk/?ref=opinion

Revealed: UK’s first official sharia courts
"Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996." [from Little Green Footballs; click on headline for original]

Britons Will Have A Religious War

At Their Front Doors--Commentary

Britain is a separate nation from all other nations, including the United States. This needs to be said, because the rights of other nations are sovereign laws unto those nations, where such sovereignty does not violate basic human rights. Even then, in places like Ghana, China, North Korea, Iran, and others, violations are often brutal and inhuman and must be stopped by the international community when it can do so.

Sometimes even here in the U.S., laws are often anti-individualistic, and we have a system of rule-by-law that can be checked, by the independence of the third branch of our government, the courts, when anti-libertarian laws are passed and an attempt is made to enforce those anti-individualistic laws.

(This is the case, notwithstanding the truth that the laws of the U.S. are no longer based on the sovereignty of the individual to be protected by the government, to whom the individual grants away certain of his rights to the common sovereignty. "Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Joseph J. Ellis http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

(Since the inception of the "citizen of the United States" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, individual sovereignty has been virtually wiped out, to be replaced by creeping nationalism of the sort fought against by the Federalists. And as many libertarian thinkers have elaborated upon, the American public has come to see this nationalism as natural and as what the Founders had planned all along. This public has gotten the idea of "common sovereignty" whereby the government rules from the consent of the governed, mixed up with modern social liberalism whereby the governments' sole purposes are to literally provide for the common good.)

But in very-liberal Britain's attempt at being "multiculturalists [seeking] the hegemony of the West" [see "20th Century" article above] the mis-guided allowance of sharia law courts to be held and upheld under English law is a breach of the idea of "common sovereignty" given to us by Locke, Hobbes, and others. It is a breach of the abstraction made by America's Founders from that concept of "common" into "individual" sovereignty.

"Lawyers have issued grave warnings about the dangers of a dual legal system," states one of the articles on sharia law, above. It was not intentional that England allow this dual system. A sheik found a hole in English law big enough to drive his truck full of society-destroying ideas, and Parliament has yet to fill the hole and destroy sharia courts within the jurisdiction of the English Common Constitution.

Not to mention that if this is allowed to continue, radical (and I don't mean terroristic) Muslims in the United States will someday attempt the same; but it means the destruction of the secularity of America's closest political ally. What will become of that alliance if such dualism is allowed to continue? Will the U.S. be able to count on England if it comes time to go to war against another terrorist nation that happens to be Muslim?

It cannot be said for certain that such a day will never come in the life of American jurisprudence. Liberals here are more radically bent on multiculturalism because they are thwarted at their efforts of introducing it lawfully. They are, however, very capable of introducing it into the minds of Americans through the liberal educational process, where individualism is not politically correct unless the purpose of allowing it is to allow multiculturalism to destroy the authority of the political body that is trying to allow individualism (to whatever degree it sees fit or is able to appropriately manage.)

School boards all across the nation are bombarded by suits brought by individuals and organizations, suits which are intended only to prove that the "rights" of the student are violated when he/she cannot wear a shirt that says "God Is Dead" as a response to a shirt worn earlier by someone else that said "God Rules!" Or, rightfully, when a school board prevents the association on compas of a gay organization when other organizations including religious-based groups are allowed.

Secular tolerance demands that both shirts, or neither, are to be allowed into the school, that no extra-curricular groups are allowed, or all groups are allowed that fit within the context of civil associations. But multiculturalism's claims that "diversity" demands one side be allowed to speak without being argued with by the other side is contrary to civil association and speech, and therfore to individual sovereignty. Besides, there is no "rule of multiculturalism" ensconced in the history of our laws in the way that such things as "the wall of separation of church and state" are ensconsed. School boards are allowed to make policy that says all students must dress alike to prevent taking attention from education where attention is allowed, so it is not focused instead on the poorly dressed v. the richly dressed; the hippie from the preppie; the religious students from the atheists; the skin heads from the Jewish students; and to cell phone or iPod use--just to name a few examples.

Dualism in American regulations are un-American, which has the proud distinction of meaning "anti-individualistic." We don't allow it where we find it; we could not allow it in our own court system.

England must take action to deny the dualism of having two separate-but-equal systems of jurisprudence within its jurisdiction, before the secular Muslim community there is unjustly involved; before this dualism rallies the radical Muslims into an unstoppable cohesion; and before that unstoppable cohesion becomes an anti-social force against the secular common sovereignty of the British people who are themselves being unfairly blind-sided by a Euro-multiculturalism that will eventually bring a religious war right their literal doorsteps and in their streets.

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