Nothing More Racist (Or Regressive) Than A "Progressive"

Pat Condell hits the nail on the head in his discussion of those who style themselves "progressives," from their complete lack of intellectual honesty to their regressive politics to their racism of low expectations:



Pat's take misses on one point and only alludes to another worthy of more specific citation. Condell describes the world view of "progressives" correctly, even down to their view of the West as imperialists with the stain of original sin (while ignoring that the most imperialist force in world history has been Islam). It is worth noting that this view comes directly from Karl Marx and his theory that all history is a struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. In the progressive world view, we are the oppressors while anyone who can be shoehorned into a victim group are the oppressed entitled to permanent special treatment.

What Condell misses in his analysis is the animus of progressives towards Christianity. To understand fully the motivation of progressives, one must note their abhorrence of Christianity. Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization; progressive are warring against it. Christianity must be removed from the public square for "progressives" to achieve their goal of remaking society with themselves as the sole arbiters of morality. Thus the "progressive" treatment of Islam is more nuanced than simply that "brown skinned" people are not to be held to the same standards. Muslims also seek to displace Christianity, and thus they are, in many ways, allied with progressives.

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Left & Right Agree - Obama's Economic Policy Has Been "An Astonishing, Horrifying Failure"

Another month into the Obama presidency, another horrid economic report. This from Hot Air:

The August jobs report from BLS offers yet another installment on the four-year stagnation period after the Great Recession. The US economy added 169,000 jobs, just above the 150,000 needed to keep pace with population growth. The U-3 jobless rate edged downward to 7.3%, but that’s because the labor force participation rate hit another 35-year low. . . . [A]lmost twice as many people [312,000] left the work force as found new jobs.

Obama, and indeed, the entire left, are simply economically incompetent. They shouldn't be allowed to run a lemonade stand. They see businesses as, at once, an enemy to be regulated and punished and as a cow to be milked for all they want.

The only thing keeping this economy afloat, even in this sad state, has been the Federal Reserve's "quantitative easing" - running the printing presses overtime, printing money to buy up government bonds in something akin to the world's biggest ponzi scheme. The danger of that is run away inflation, and indeed, the Fed has indicated that it intends to start unwinding this massive accumulation of debt at some point here in the near future as unemployment numbers fall.

The only part of the U.S. economy that is doing well is the stock market - and that is a bubble derived by Quantitative Easing (QE) that will burst the moment QE and the Fed's easy money policy stops. There is a reason today that Wall St. is celebrating the horrid economic numbers from the August BLS report - it means that QE will continue. This via Bizzy Blog:



Speaking today, at least one very famous economist says that we have suffered through five "years of tragic waste" under Obama:

[B]y any objective standard, U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure.

I couldn't agree more. That is indeed a damning indictment, but who is the economist that said this? Thomas Sowell? Art Laffer?

No. It is former Enron Advisor, Obama cheerleader and far left economist Paul Krugman writing in the NYT. As Krugman points out:

[T]he failure of policy these past five years has, in fact, been immense.

Some of that immensity can be measured in dollars and cents. Reasonable measures of the “output gap” over the past five years — the difference between the value of goods and services America could and should have produced and what it actually produced — run well over $2 trillion. That’s trillions of dollars of pure waste, which we will never get back.

Behind that financial waste lies an even more tragic waste of human potential. Before the financial crisis, 63 percent of adult Americans were employed; that number quickly plunged to less than 59 percent, and there it remains.

Do remember that Krugman blessed off on Obama's "stimulus" plan several years ago, both in design and size. Now he claims that the real problem is that the stimulus was three times too small. As Powerline describes it:

Of course, Krugman thinks the problem with Obama’s policies is that the stimulus was too small, the United States isn’t far enough in debt, and we don’t have a big enough public sector. More cowbell! The salient point, I think, is that we can say it is now unanimous: Left and Right agree that Obamanomics has been an utter failure. The only question at this point is whether to go even farther left–to, what, the policies of Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-un?–or return to the principles of limited government and a free market that produced our prosperity in the first place. Seems like an easy choice.

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The Left's Problem With Truth & Honesty

One line that I wished Romney had used during the 2012 election was to explain that while Obama refused to waterboard our enemies, he had no problem whatsoever with waterboarding facts and statistics to make them claim whatever he wanted. And of course it is not just Obama - the entire far left has virtually no relationship whatsoever with objective truth or intellectual honesty.

Today's case in point, the scum that is Steve Benen, a blogger for "Maddow blog" at MSNBC. This from Bennen:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appeared on Fox News on Sunday, and when the discussion turned to a possible self-imposed budget crisis, the Virginia Republican said lawmakers should be "focused on trying to deal with the ultimate problem, which is this growing deficit."

What Cantor said was the opposite of the truth -- he said the nation has a "growing deficit," when in reality, we have a shrinking deficit. We can have a discussion about whether the House Majority Leader was deliberately trying to deceive the public -- Republicans have an incentive to convince the public that U.S. finances are in worse shape than they really are -- or whether Cantor simply doesn't know the basics of current events. But I'm afraid it's either one or the other.

"Opposite of the truth?" When I woke up this morning, the total U.S. debt stood just shy of $16.9 trillion. That total debt is right now on pace to have increased by $642 billion by the end of this year. The objective truth is that we have a "growing deficit." Of all the things Obama is doing to our nation - and he is doing a lot, good and hard - the one thing he is most decidedly not doing is shrinking our budget deficit.

But here is how the leftie scum like Benen waterboard the numbers. The annual budget deficit this year is "shrinking," but only in relation to the annual trillion dollar budget deficits that Obama ran in his first term. Thus according to Benen, anyone who points out any other reality than the meaningless one that he wants to highlight is a "LIAR!!!!" Here is Benen's intellectually dishonest analogy:

Imagine your home town has experienced a heat wave, which then faded, and I told you, "You know, it's actually getting hotter," despite the fact that it's getting cooler.

The problem of course is that, unlike yesterday's weather relative to today's, the deficit is cumulative. That is what this dishonest worthless piece of pond scum is studiously ignoring, as if doing so somehow makes it go away. Honestly, if we are ever to right this nation, people like Benen need to be ridiculed and driven completely from the public square.

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The Far Left & The Disconnect Between Reality & Promises

Several conclusions that I came to a few years ago are that far left always claims the moral high ground for their programs and policies, they always claim to be helping some victimized or powerless group, and nine times out of ten, they are actually putting the screws to the group for their own benefit. The only winners are the far left and a few cronies who play their game.

The penultimate example of this is that of the racial grievance industry and the black community - a community beset by horrendous problems of broken families, violent crime, poverty, and substandard education. The far left does not do a single thing towards addressing these problems. Worse, it is a cause when it comes to education. The far left perpetuates the substandard education of blacks by brazenly placing the interests of moneyed unions over those of inner city blacks. And yet, the far left claims to be the sole guardian of blacks in our nation. Blacks are but one example of this dynamic. Virtually everything the left touches runs on the same dynamic. What led me to revisit these conclusions was an article in the WSJ by Arthur Brooks on how Obama claims to champion the middle class while pursuing policy after policy that accretes power to the government while screwing the middle class and the ever increasing number of poor in this country:

. . . Census Bureau data show that in 2006-11, real annual income for the top 20% (quintile) of Americans fell by about 5% but rose almost 2% in 2010-11—and shows signs of continuing an upswing. For the bottom quintile, income fell by over 11%, and there was no upswing.

In 2011, workers in households earning between $40,000 and $60,000 had a 7.8% unemployment rate. In households earning under $20,000, unemployment was 24.4%. The unemployment for households earning more than $150,000 was 3.2%

In other words, high-income households were at or above full employment. Meanwhile, the lowest-income households looked at an employment landscape resembling the worst years of the Great Depression.

"Growing inequality isn't just morally wrong," Mr. Obama said on July 24 in Illinois. "It's bad economics." That is abundantly true, but not in the way he intended. He meant income inequality. But the real problem—and crisis—is declining opportunity. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has shown that in 1980, 21% of Americans in the bottom income quintile rose to the middle quintile or higher by 1990. Those who started off in the bottom quintile in 1995 had only a 15% chance of becoming middle class in 2005. That is a one-third decline in mobility in under a generation.

The key to increasing opportunity is simple: real jobs for adults and good education for children. The president's speeches disappointed on both counts.

In Tennessee on Tuesday, Mr. Obama said: "A job is a source of pride and dignity—the way you support your family, the proof that you're doing the right thing." Exactly—which is why it is so distressing that work has been collapsing in the past five years, with the poor hardest hit.

In 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that total nonfarm seasonally adjusted employment was 138 million workers. Today, it is fewer than 136 million. Meanwhile, the number of Americans has grown by 12.8 million. In many areas of the country, more than one in five adults who want full-time employment can't find it.

Where are the policies that will actually help Americans at the bottom regain the dignity of real, value-creating jobs? I don't mean the high-skill workers who would benefit from high-tech innovation, biofuels, electric vehicles and other favored industries of the administration, but rather the people left behind.

Again and again, the president offers a higher minimum wage as a solution. Yet as the overwhelming majority of economists have argued for decades, the minimum wage actually harms the poorest and most marginalized workers—those with the most tenuous grip on their jobs. In January, a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed the most recent studies and concluded: "The evidence still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others."

The story for strivers and entrepreneurs is no better. Scott Shane of Case Western Reserve University has shown that business formation fell by 17.3% between 2007 and 2009. Launching a business is never a walk in the park, especially given the explosion of red tape at all levels of government. While it is still possible for the educated and comfortable, government bureaucracy can crush entrepreneurship entirely for those at the bottom of the income scale. As a pro-poor rule of thumb, I suggest this: If you want to start a landscaping business, all you should need is a lawn mower, not an accountant and a lawyer to help you hack through all the red tape before setting up shop. Imagine if President Obama fought for such business-friendly simplification.

Perhaps the president's proposals on education are better for the poor. Sadly, no. Mr. Obama, on his speaking tour, talked about subsidizing college loans—a policy that largely does relatively little for those at the bottom. . . .

What I find both inexplicable and depressing is the seeming complete inability of conservatives to articulate these realities in an effective manner to the vast majority in our nation who are not of the far left.

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The Academic Concept Of Pathological Altruism & Explaining The Left

At the WSJ, James Taranto is effuse in his praise for Barbara Oakley:

We don't think we'd ever heard of Oakland University, a second-tier institution in suburban Rochester, Mich., but Barbara Oakley, an associate professor in engineering, may help put the place on the map. Earlier this week Oakland's Oakley published a fascinating paper, "Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper is a concise summary of an innovative idea that informed Oakley's two recent books . . .

The PNAS paper has the virtue of brevity, running only eight pages despite including 110 footnotes. Yet it's remarkable for its breadth and depth. It introduces a simple yet versatile idea that could revolutionize scientific and social thought.

Oakley defines pathological altruism as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm." A crucial qualification is that while the altruistic actor fails to anticipate the harm, "an external observer would conclude [that it] was reasonably foreseeable." Thus, she explains, if you offer to help a friend move, then accidentally break an expensive item, your altruism probably isn't pathological; whereas if your brother is addicted to painkillers and you help him obtain them, it is.

So, I clicked over to read the paper - and now agree with Mr. Taranto. What Oakley has posited is not new. Indeed, it has been perhaps the primary complaint as regards the acts of the left for decades, if not centuries. But what Ms. Oakley does is raise that complaint to academic acceptability. She puts it in the language of academia, explains it with clarity, and provides thorough documentation. This from Ms. Oakley:

The bottom line is that the heartfelt, emotional basis of our good intentions can mislead us about what is truly helpful for others. Altruistic intentions must be run through the sieve of rational analysis; all too often, the best long-term action to help others, at both personal and public scales, is not immediately or intuitively obvious, not what temporarily makes us feel good, and not what is being promoted by other individuals, with their own potentially self-serving interests. Indeed, truly altruistic actions may sometimes appear cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher grade or to the addict who needs another hit. However, the social consequences of appearing cruel in a culture that places high value on kindness, empathy, and altruism can lead us to misplaced “helpful” behavior and result in self-deception regarding the consequences of our actions.

Pathological altruism can operate not only at the individual level but in many different aspects and levels of society, and between societies. Recognizing that feelings of altruism do not necessarily constitute objective altruism provides a new way of framing and understanding altruism. This previously unrecognized perspective in turn may open many new, potentially useful lines of inquiry and provide a framework to begin moving toward a more mature, scientifically informed understanding of altruism and cooperative behavior. The thesis of pathological altruism emphasizes the value of true altruism, self-sacrifice, and other forms of prosociality in human life. At the same time, it acknowledges the potential harm from cognitive blindness that arises whenever groups treat a concept as sacred.

Think about virtually all of the legislation that has come from the left over the past half century or more that has proven to be disastrous in the long run. Take for but one example the creation of the housing bubble, caused by social engineering and from which we have still not recovered. And indeed, Ms. Oakley does in fact address precisely that:

Ostensibly well-meaning governmental policy promoted home ownership, a beneficial goal that stabilizes families and communities. The government-sponsored enterprises Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae allowed less-than-qualified individuals to receive housing loans and encouraged more-qualified borrowers to overextend themselves. Typical risk–reward considerations were marginalized because of implicit government support. The government used these agencies to promote social goals without acknowledging the risk or cost. When economic conditions faltered, many lost their homes or found themselves with properties worth far less than they originally had paid. Government policy then shifted . . . the cost of this "altruism" to the public, to pay off the too-big-to-fail banks then holding securitized subprime loans. . . . Altruistic intentions played a critical role in the development and unfolding of the housing bubble in the United States.

The implications of "pathological altruism" as an academic theory and area of research are far reaching indeed. It is a concept that would require a level of rational analysis now routinely shouted down by the left. In a larger context, it would provide a challenge on every level to the left's post modernism. It would elevate objective facts as a counter point to pure emotionalism.

Taranto ends his column with this thought:

Oakley concludes by noting that "during the twentieth century, tens of millions [of] individuals were killed under despotic regimes that rose to power through appeals to altruism." An understanding that altruism can produce great evil as well as good is crucial to the defense of human freedom and dignity.

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Approved Thoughts For Small Children

From the People's Cube via Maggie's Farm. And lest you think that this clever photo lacks any sort of basis in reality, this from Maggie's Farm:

Researcher Says that Berenstein Bears, Franklin the Friendly Turtle Perpetuate "Racist," "Socially Dominant Norms" to Children:

Parents who read their kids stories about happy, human-like animals like Franklin the Turtle or Arthur at bedtime are exposing their kids to racism, materialism, homophobia and patriarchal norms, according to a paper presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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Kirsten Powers & The Left's War On Truth

For the past six years, the right has been railing against the mainstream media for wholly ignoring all stories that would be problematic for Obama and the left. The worm has finally turned with Benghazi, the IRS scandals (targeting conservative 501(c)4's and targeted auditing), and the DOJ's investigations into Fox News and the AP over national security leaks.

And yet, the efforts of the most vile on the left is not to seek the truth, but to try and spin this all either as mere Republican partisan spin, Republican hatred of Obama, or Republican overreaching - or indeed, in the innocuous case of wording difference in some of the Benghazi e-mails, as pure right wing fabrication. It is so far beyond the pale as to cross a real boundary line where any thought of fair and open debate with these people is simply no longer an option. That said, certainly not all on the left fit this mold - Kirsten Powers being perhaps the most shining example of an intellectually honest left of center reporter. And today, she took the Obama administration and her fellow journalists on the left to task for their scurrilous acts in an exceptional column:

It’s instructive to go back to the dawn of Hope and Change. It was 2009, and the new administration decided it was appropriate to use the prestige of the White House to viciously attack a news organization—Fox News—and the journalists who work there. Remember, President Obama had barely been in office and had enjoyed the most laudatory press of any new president in modern history. Yet even one outlet that allowed dissent or criticism of the president was one too many. This should have been a red flag to everyone, regardless of what they thought of Fox News. The math was simple: if the administration would abuse its power to try and intimidate one media outlet, what made anyone think they weren’t next?

These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.

"What I think is fair to say about Fox … is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party," said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “[L]et's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is." On ABC’s “This Week” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Fox is "not really a news station." It wasn’t just that Fox News was “not a news organization,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel told CNN’s John King, but, “more [important], is [to] not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization …”

These series of “warnings” to the Fourth Estate were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.

Yet only one mainstream media reporter—Jake Tapper, then of ABC News—ever raised a serious objection to the White House’s egregious and chilling behavior. Tapper asked future MSNBC commentator and then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “[W]hy is [it] appropriate for the White House to say” that “thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a ‘news organization’?” The spokesman for the president of the United States was unrepentant, saying: “That's our opinion.”

Trashing reporters comes easy in Obama-land. Behind the scenes, Obama-centric Democratic operatives brand any reporter who questions the administration as a closet conservative, because what other explanation could there be for a reporter critically reporting on the government?

Now, the Democratic advocacy group Media Matters—which is always mysteriously in sync with the administration despite ostensibly operating independently—has launched a smear campaign against ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl for his reporting on Benghazi. It’s the kind of character assassination that would make Joseph McCarthy blush. The main page of the Media Matters website has six stories attacking Karl for a single mistake in an otherwise correct report about the State Department's myriad changes to talking points they previously claimed to have barely touched. See, the problem isn’t the repeated obfuscating from the administration about the Benghazi attack; the problem is Jonathan Karl. Hence, the now-familiar campaign of de-legitimization. This gross media intimidation is courtesy of tax-deductable donations from the Democratic Party’s liberal donor base, which provides a whopping $20 million a year for Media Matters to harass reporters who won’t fall in line.

In what is surely just a huge coincidence, the liberal media monitoring organization Fairness and Accuracy in the Media (FAIR) is also on a quest to delegitimize Karl. It dug through his past and discovered that in college he allegedly—horrors!—associated with conservatives. Because of this, FAIR declared Karl “a right wing mole at ABC News.” Setting aside the veracity of FAIR’s crazy claim, isn’t the fact that it was made in the first place vindication for those who assert a liberal media bias in the mainstream media? If the existence of a person who allegedly associates with conservatives is a “mole,” then what does that tell us about the rest of the media?

What all of us in the media need to remember—whatever our politics—is that we need to hold government actions to the same standard, whether they’re aimed at friends or foes. If not, there’s no one but ourselves to blame when the administration takes aim at us.

In the video below, Ms. Powers points out not only the outrageousness of the DOJ's investigation of Fox News' James Rosen, but also the Obama administration practice of punishing and prosecuting whistleblowers while letting pass all leaks of national security information which paintw the Obama administration in a favorable light.



My respect for Ms. Powers has long been full and complete. Meanwhile, three of the most vile left wing journalists, Jonathan Capehart, Josh Marshall, and Ezra Klein, were yesterday seen filing into the West Wing, no doubt for a journolist meeting with Carney, if not Obama.

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The Left In Loco Parentis & The Plan B Abortion Pill

. . . The defining issue for me — the one that launched me on a personal trajectory of confrontation with the Left and with my colleagues and friends — was the persistent undermining of the family as an institution. . . .
There were whole communities where committed fathers were almost totally unknown. Children as young as five were becoming highly sexualised from the example of their promiscuous mothers. Family breakdown was dissolving the bonds of society and civilisation itself. . . .

Melanie Phillips, Why The Left Hates Families, Daily Mail, 3 May 2013

In order to remake society, the left wars on the foundations of society, including the family. Since time immemorial, children have learned their values, their work ethic, their religion and their skills at the elbows of their parents. The left, however, wants the state to take over the role of the parents - to act in loco parentis - when it comes to inculcating modern left wing values. Sexualizing our children is perhaps the left's primary focus within this rubric.

The most recent example was the law suit brought by the Center For Reproductive Rights, a far left organization, seeking to make the Plan B abortion pill openly available to children - or as the Center worded this in their law suit, to "women of all ages." Prior to this lawsuit, under the Bush administration, the Plan B abortion pill was available without a prescription only to women age 18 and older. Not surprisingly, the Center was able to find a federal judge willing to impose their corrupt social policy on our nation. This is stomach churning.

Kathleen Parker, writing at the Washington Post, itemizes the litany of problems with this federal decision, rightly concluding that "public policy should be aimed at involving, rather than marginalizing, parents."

To say that this controversy is strictly political is no argument against debate. Politics is the debate about the role of government in our lives. And the debate about Plan B is fundamentally about whether government or parents have ultimate authority over their children’s well-being.

Kathleen Geir, writing in response to Ms. Parker at the far left Washington Monthly, makes it abundantly clear that this case is nothing more or less than the state being used to displace parental influence on their children in matters of sex. It really must be read to be believed. Her arguments can be summed up as that sex at any age should be free of any ethical or moral consideration, free of any physical consequence, and that parents should have no say in their child's sex life. She dismisses contrary argument on the rights of parents as "mere emotionalism":

Oh, I see! We’re just having a high-minded debate about the “proper role of government” here. Except that we aren’t: the conflict here isn’t parents vs. the government, it’s parents vs. the reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy of their daughters. Be that as it may, Parker is trying to make this about “the big bad government” vs. the rights of individual parents — who always, of course, have their daughter’s best interests at heart, and would never, ever physically or emotionally abuse her if she asked her parents’ permission to go on birth control. Forget about the specter of a terrified 12-year old girl who’s faced with the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy, who fears that her life may be ruined, and who then must grapple with the full array of health complications that pregnancy and birth entails.

It’s well worth mentioning here that many young girls become pregnant from sexual relationships that are not exactly what most of us would consider to be consensual. Studies show that teens are far more likely to become pregnant if their sex partner is older. For example, the pregnancy rate for girls age 15 to 17 is 3.7 times greater if their partner is six or more years older than they are, vs. two years older. Many teen pregnancies result from statutory rape, incest, or other abusive relationships. But hey, let’s just compound the trauma by denying these little sluts birth control and forcing them to deal with an unwanted pregnancy!

Another problem with Parker’s argument her blanket refusal to look at the alternative — i.e., what will happen if young girls are denied access to birth control. The debate here is not whether, or at what age, it’s okay for young girls to become sexually active. We’re talking about their right to prevent pregnancy once they do start having sex. Parker blithely assumes that, while young teens are not mature enough to pop a single pill within 72 hours of intercourse, they are mature enough to experience a full-term pregnancy, with all the life-changing, potentially traumatic physical and mental health consequences that entails. Excuse me, but WTF? Even if we restrict ourselves to the woman’s physical health alone, the risks of pregnancy and giving birth are far more serious than any of the very mild risks associated with Plan B.

But Parker’s piece relies on emotionalism rather than science. She resolutely refuses to trouble her beautiful mind with the facts.

5. And speaking of emotionalism: finally, there’s this — Parker pulls out her ace in the hole, and plays the parent card:

Question 2: Do you think that girls as young as 11 or 12 should be able to buy the morning-after pill without any adult supervision? Didn’t think so.

Question 3: If you answered yes to Question 2, are you a parent? Didn’t think so.

Sorry, I call BS on this. First of all, having a pregnant, underaged daughter on their hands is among many parents’ worst nightmares. Many would vastly prefer that their daughter had ready access to birth control, as opposed to the alternatives of supporting her decision to get an abortion, or the decision to carry a pregnancy to term, and (as usually happens in such cases) keep the baby. With birth control, there are far fewer agonizing decisions and is far less pain all around — let alone the fact that much of the responsibility for raising a baby born to a very young girl would inevitably fall on the shoulders of her parents.

Secondly, if parents really would prefer that their daughter be denied birth control, so what? Sorry mates, but it’s not your body and it’s not your decision. Legally mandated forced pregnancy — which is basically what you get when birth control options are shut down — is incompatible with human liberty and respect for the individual. Even children have some basic rights, and the right to refuse the physical and emotional burdens of pregnancy damn well ought to be one of them.

Finally, the other huge problem of playing the parent card is the dubious assumption that mommy and daddy can always see things more clearly and that they inevitably know what’s best for their little darling. But again, this is bogus. For one thing, daddy dearest or some other beloved male relative or stepfather may be the party guilty of raping and knocking up the daughter in the first place.

Beyond that, there’s the problem that many parents have bizarre, antiquated patriarchal notions about their daughters’ sexuality. You’d think that in 2013, parents would be less irrational and hysterically overprotective about these things than they were in the past, but in many ways they’re actually worse. The Christian right, with their chastity balls and virginity pledges, is one version of it; endlessly anxious, over-controlling helicopter parents are the bourgeois secular equivalent.

So no, I don’t think that father — or mother — necessarily knows best. Even if they’re not abusive, mom and dad may still have some pretty deranged notions about their daughter’s sexuality and some pretty serious control issues. . . .

There is no middle ground with the left. The classical liberalism of our forefathers that has brought us freedom, democracy, and material wealth will either triumph over these insane people or be destroyed by them.

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Juan Williams & Canards Of The Left

Juan Williams comments on the fact that our modern left does not believe in a free and fair airing of opinions; rather, they attempt to punish any who dares articulate a position with which they disagree. This from Williams during an interview with the Daily Caller:

I always thought it was the Archie Bunkers of the world, the right-wingers of world, who were more resistant and more closed-minded about hearing the other side,” he said. “In fact, what I have learned is, in a very painful way — and I can open this shirt and show you the scars and the knife wounds — is that it is big media institutions who are identifiably more liberal to left-leaning who will shut you down, stab you and kill you, fire you, if they perceive that you are not telling the story in the way that they want it told.

Juan Williams is a smart man. Thus I find it telling that Williams wasn't able to see this reality until he was raped by the left in 2010 for daring to say that he got nervous when getting on a plane with men dressed in Muslim garb. The left's preference for demonizing over debate and their intolerance of dissenting opinions has been blatant and obvious for decades. That our left are "liberal" is one of the great canards of the left - but it is only one of many.

The other great canards are that the left champions the middle class and minorities. Nothing could be further from the truth. The left champions these groups only to the extent that they are, at any given moment, pathways to power and money. For instance, blacks are to be protected - but when it comes to a point where blacks and the teachers unions interests diverge, the moneyed teachers unions win. The left speaks of protecting the middle class - but when it comes to things such as cheap energy, the green special interests win out.

If you want to understand the left's actions, look at what they do, now what they say. Rarely do their actions match their rhetoric - and indeed, often that are complete odds. That is one of the reasons the left are so intolerant of dissenting opinion. That is a level of reality that hasn't dawned on Juan Williams yet, but give him time.

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What Happens With Guns & Self Defense When The Left Rules Unconstrained? Look To The UK

Britain is a country to watch very closely to see what awaits the U.S. Britain embraced socialism in the immediate aftermath of WWII. And while Britain has dispensed with much of socialism's economic policy, it is still firmly embracing far left social policy - some aspects of which are Britain's policies towards guns, self defense and criminal justice.

I pointed out below that Britain, a country where both the law abiding and the police are near wholly disarmed, is suffering from a rate of violent crime over five times that of the U.S. The British are left with no means of making themselves equal in force to potential criminals at the point of a crime, and as one British Police Inspector wrote the other day, the "thieves rule this country at night, not us." The left in Britain look askance at anyone who might try to defend themselves, and this is coupled with a far left leaning judiciary that is more protective of the criminal than the law abiding.

Britain still allows individuals to own shotguns for hunting purposes under very strictly controlled conditions. Self defense is not considered a legitimate reason. Thus, when, horror of horrors, a Brit with a shotgun uses it to defend the lives of himself or others, he becomes the criminal.

Case in point, Mr. Bill Edwards owns a farm in Yorkshire - one that has been repeatedly raided by thieves. He also owns a shotgun for hunting and pest control on his farm. Several months ago, he and his mother were out walking on the farm when they came upon a thief who was stealing various items. When they confronted the thief, he jumped in his van and accelerated towards them, putting them in fear for their lives. Edwards fired the shotgun at the thief to get him to turn away - which he did, unharmed. The Daily Mail explains the rest:

A farmer accused of attempted murder after catching an intruder red-handed spoke of his outrage last night after the thief walked free with a £100 fine.

Unemployed criminal David Taylor was captured when Bill Edwards confronted him on his isolated woodland property.

Mr Edwards, 21, fired his shotgun at a van driven by Taylor as the thief accelerated towards his mother, Louisa Smith, 50.

Taylor was caught after a high-speed chase but it was the farmer who endured a horrendous ordeal at the hands of police who arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder.

Last night Mr Edwards labelled the experience ‘four months of hell’ and attacked the ‘pathetic’ punishment handed out to the intruder.

The former public schoolboy said: ‘It’s completely changed my view of the police. They treated me like a criminal. The police have acted like bullies who have turned someone who was very supportive of their work into someone who wants nothing more to do with them. They can’t protect the public but don’t allow the public to protect themselves.’

Speaking about the sentence, he added: ‘It is hard to find words to describe how ridiculous the sentence is. I’m absolutely disgusted.

‘We have had four months of being treated like criminals only to see the real criminal let off with a measly fine which will be paid for by the taxpayer since he is on state benefits.’

Mr Edwards and his mother feared for their lives during the confrontation on their land on the outskirts of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, last August. . . .

Mr Edwards said his family has lost thousands of pounds through theft and damage caused in a number of raids on their land.

They caught Taylor and an accomplice loading stolen metal cables into the back of his Ford Transit after spotting that outbuildings had been tampered with. The thieves jumped into the van and drove it towards the pair as they desperately dialled 999 for help.

Mr Edwards fired his shotgun, which was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot, several times, hitting the van’s windscreen and bodywork. No one was hurt. Police eventually caught Taylor when Mr Edwards gave chase and gave a running commentary on his mobile phone. But the crook was only charged with metal theft.

Mr Edwards' shotgun was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot when he fired it at the van.

He was accused of attempted murder after firing his shotgun at a van driven by thief David Taylor as he and his mother feared for their lives.

Meanwhile Mr Edwards and his mother were arrested, held overnight in cells and left on bail for four months. Mrs Smith was arrested on suspicion of possessing a firearm with intent.

It is believed police have a recording of the 999 call in which the shots can be heard as Mrs Smith shouts: ‘He is trying to kill us, shoot his tyres.’

But even now the farmer has not had his shotgun and other weapons returned to him which he uses to control pests on his land and as a hobby. Scarborough magistrate Mike Dineen fined Taylor £100 and ordered him to pay £34.99 for damage caused to the farm gate and padlock when he rammed through it to escape.

Taylor left court grinning and sneered ‘lucky you’ at Mr Edwards after finding out the attempted murder allegation had been dropped. [emphasis added]

Moments earlier his solicitor Ian Brickman said the thief ‘is in many ways the victim in this’ and was left so ‘traumatised’ he cannot work. . . . [emphasis added]

If the left in the U.S. had their way, I have little doubt that we would resemble the U.K. today, both in gun control policy and self defense laws. The question to my mind is, when does something like this become so intolerable that the people revolt? When are judges and prosecuting attorneys going to be held liable for caring more about the welfare of the criminal than the law abiding.

At the core of the social compact between the people and its government is that the government will administer justice fairly so that the injured do not have to resort to vigilante justice. When the government systemically fails in their duty, when thieves rule the night and the criminals go unpunished, how long will it be before the law abiding have had enough, and take justice into their own hands as to the criminals, and aim violent retribution at Judges and prosecuting attorneys for their utter disdain of the law abiding.

At any rate, the UK is very much a cautionary tale for us as to the wages of left wing control and what that means for crime and self defense. I await the day when the law abiding among the UK revolt against this insanity, and the UK becomes an object lesson for the left of the bankruptcy and immorality of their ideology.

Related Posts:

- Guns, Equality, The UK - Where "The Thieves Rule This Country At Night," & An Insane NTY News Analysis - Boy Uses AR15 To Stop A Home Invasion

- Larry Correia's Brilliant Essay On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

- Thoughts On Gun Control From The Late Paul Harvey

- The Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban As An Answer To Sandy Hook

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

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VDH: "These are the most foreboding times in my 59 years"

Victor Davis Hanson captures perfectly the angst that every conservative should be feeling today:

The New Hubris

These are the most foreboding times in my 59 years. The reelection of Barack Obama has released a surge of rare honesty among the Left about its intentions, coupled with a sense of triumphalism that the country is now on board for still greater redistributionist change.

There is no historical appreciation among the new progressive technocracy that central state planning, whether the toxic communist brand or supposedly benevolent socialism, has only left millions of corpses in its wake, or abject poverty and misery. Add up the Soviet Union and Mao’s China and the sum is 80 million murdered or starved to death. Add up North Korea, Cuba, and the former Eastern Europe, and the tally is egalitarian poverty and hopelessness. The EU sacrificed democratic institutions for coerced utopianism and still failed, leaving its Mediterranean shore bankrupt and despondent.

Nor is there much philosophical worry that giving people massive subsidies destroys individualism, the work ethic, and the personal sense of accomplishment. There is rarely worry expressed that a profligate nation that borrows from others abroad and those not born has no moral compass. There is scant political appreciation that the materialist Marxist argument — that justice is found only through making sure that everyone has the same slice of stuff from the zero-sum pie — was supposed to end up on the ash heap of history.

Do read the entire column at PJM.

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Demonization Camouflaged As Humor

There was a time when I would have laughed at the incredibly over-the-top, disparaging and anti-religious humor shown below. I would have seen it for the b.s. that it was, but, having a live and let live philosophy back then, I would have focused on the humorous aspects.

(H/T Bookwormroom)

I don't today because, being older and far wiser (in comparison to my youth, at least) I can see insidious penumbras around such far left humor. One, there is the choice of going after Romney on the basis of religion. The left is an implacable enemy of religion. They want no higher power than a left wing government remaking society with the police power of the state. It is impossible to overestimate how critical the resolution of this fight is to the future of civilization.

Two, this is not just humor for the left, it is a teaching tool to impact on the young and the ignorant. This is a substitute for argument. It has all the depth of most of the arguments posited by the left, where there is no attempt at rationality, only demonization, ridicule, and an attempt to shut down competing arguments.

I have zero patience today for such vile humor, nor any who promote it. Indeed, it is far past time that the majority of Americans dispensed with a live and let live philosophy and start pushing back against the far left at every level. Whoever drew up this tripe should be named and pressure brought to bear against them.

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The Wages Of Straying Off The Liberal Plantation

Buzz Bissinger, the lifelong Democrat and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who recently came out for Romney, discovers that the left is surprisingly intolerant. Heh.



The most interesting part of the interview above was when the CNN's Howard Kurtz takes offense at Bissinger's quite accurate claim that left wing ideology pervades mainstream journalism and reporting. Kurtz defended CNN's stable of reporters. That would be the same CNN that gave rise to the "tea-bagger" joke and led the sliming of the Tea Party movement? That would be the same CNN whose last "town hall" debate had more plants than a florist shop. Kurtz is living in a bubble. CNN hasn't yet gone full frontal MSNBC or NYT, but they are not all that far away.

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Why We Will Never Have An Honest Debate With The Left

Maureen Dowd is the poster girl for why its impossible to have an honest debate with the left.

I am not a big reader of the New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd. I was reminded of why when I clicked onto her column today, Men In Black. According to Ms. Dowd, the right side of the Court, whom she describes as "hacks dressed up in black robes," are wholly partisan. Thus she not merely excuses Obama for his repugnant attack on the Court yesterday, but eggs him on.

Her column is one long ad hominem attack after another. But its the few arguments she makes that are what have me frosted. Her arguments are at best intellectually dishonest. The other options are that she is either intellectually lazy or, worse, not too intelligent. You can decide for yourself.

For instance, at one point, she takes Justice Scalia to task:

If he’s so brilliant, why is he drawing a risible parallel between buying health care and buying broccoli?

Now, she's not a lawyer, so she can be forgiven for not understanding the nuances of the law. But this is not nuance. The basic argument against the Obamacare mandate is so simple anyone can grasp it. It is that our government is one of enumerated powers, it does not have the power to force someone to buy something, and if it does, then there is no limit to government power. I hope for her sake that she is not so dumb that she is incapable of understanding why Scalia's question goes to the heart of the whole case against Obamacare. She is either being deliberately disingenuous or she is too lazy to bother making the tiniest effort to understand the arguments in the case.

But she doesn't end there. She later adds:

Just as Scalia voted to bypass that little thing called democracy and crown W. president, so he expressed ennui at the idea that, even if parts of the health care law are struck down, some provisions could be saved: “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” he asked, adding: “Is this not totally unrealistic?”

Poor girl, she still hasn't gotten over Bush v. Gore. That aside, I don't expect her to understand the legal nuances of severability and why the Supreme Court has no business trying to rewrite a law where Congress itself included no severability provision. That said, she should at least acknowledge that if the Court opts to only throw out the mandate to buy insurance, this bill will have no funding provision, and that would drive health insurance costs rocketing skyward. Is she so dumb that she is unable to fathom the consequences of what she is asking for?

And lastly, Dowd concludes:

But it isn’t conservative to overturn a major law passed by Congress in the middle of an election. The majority’s political motives are as naked as a strip-search.

Whoa. That is her closing argument for why Obamacare should be found constitutional? That constitutionality should turn on election year politics? What sheer idiocy. There can be no common ground with people this dumb, lazy, or dishonest. And Dowd is at least one of those, if not all three.

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Victor Davis Hanson Makes An Excellent Point

This from Victor Davis Hanson writing at PJM:

Conservatives are put into awkward positions of critiquing liberal ideas on grounds that they are impractical, unworkable, or counterproductive. Yet rarely, at least outside the religious sphere, do they identify the progressive as often immoral. And the unfortunate result is that they have often ceded moral claims to supposedly dreamy, utopian, and well-meaning progressives, when in fact the latter increasingly have little moral ground to stand upon.

Having pondered that for a bit, its clear that VDS has articulated an insightful and important point. VDS goes into detail, explaining how radical environmentalism, multiculturalism, illegal immigration, and affirmative action make his point. Do read his entire article. This is a suggestion that all on the right should take to heart. It is decades beyond time for the right to stop ceding the moral high ground to those on the left who are merely posing atop it.

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The "Turbulent Priest" To Leave Office

The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican Church, Rowan Williams, has announced that he will step down from the post in December. Williams has held the post of Archbishop of Canterbury for almost a decade. Whatever else he was in office, Williams was clearly one of a deeply misguided breed - a left wing Christian. He did nothing to protect and defend the Church, let alone further its interests. In my last post about him, I wrote:

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Cantebury, [is doing] to Christianity what Labour is doing to Britain. He is the man who prior to this day had praised Islam, damned America as an imperialist nation to a crowd of Muslims, blamed America for Muslim violence against Christians in the Middle East, refused to proselytize for Christianity among Muslims, and advocated implementing at least parts of Sharia law in Britain. The Archbishop's latest assault on the Christian faith has come in an apologia to Muslims for the violent history of Christianity and what seems an apology for one of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith - the Trinity. This from the Daily Mail:

Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.  Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity's history for its violence, its use of harsh punishments and its betrayal of its peaceful principles.  His comments came in a highly conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders calling for an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'.

But it risked fresh controversy for the Archbishop in the wake of his pronouncement earlier this year that a place should be found for Islamic sharia law in the British legal system.

. . . The Archbishop's letter is a reply to feelers to Christians put out by Islamic leaders from 43 countries last autumn.  In it, Dr Williams said violence is incompatible with the beliefs of either faith and that, once that principle is accepted, both can work together against poverty and prejudice and to help the environment.  He also said the Christian belief in the Trinity - that God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the same time - 'is difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims'.  Trinitarian doctrine conflicts with the Islamic view that there is just one all-powerful God. . . .

Read the entire article.

Rowan Williams has been a disgrace to his position and a disaster for Christianity in Britain. In addition to his unforgivable sins above, he has been fully in step with the secular left of Labour - a group virtually dedicated to removing Christianity and Christian influence from the public square in Britain. This deeply misguided man will not be missed when he steps down from office in December, 2012.

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Cambodia & The Socialist Ethic

One of my constant themes on this blog concerns the decades long effort of the left to drive Judaism and Christianity from the public square, thus allowing government to become the sole moral arbiter, unmoored from the Judeo Christian ethic.  In the Judeo-Christian world, human life is sacrosanct, and thus the government is limited as to when it subjects may be imprisoned, executed or otherwise subject to coercion.  The secular left devalues human life, elevating in its stead the power of government and the principle of "equality." Where that leads is discussed by Prof. Douglas Levene in Reflections on Cambodia, an essay at NRO:

Cambodia suffered deeply under the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps as much as 20 percent of its people were murdered in killing fields like Choeung Ek or died as a result of starvation or disease following the expulsion of the urban populations to the countryside and the forced collectivization of agriculture. But calling these murders “genocide” troubles me.

Cambodia is now and was then one of the most ethnically unitary countries in the world: 95 percent of all Cambodians are ethnically Khmer; the remaining 5 percent include Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Hmong, Cham, and others. And 95 percent of all Cambodians, of whatever ethnicity, are Buddhist. Most of the killings were Khmer on Khmer, although the Khmer Rouge did also target Cambodia’s very small Cham Muslim minority.

The term “genocide” historically refers to the mass extermination of a race or ethnicity, as with the Turks and the Armenians, or the Germans and the Jews, or the Serbs and the Bosnians. It doesn’t seem to fit what happened in Cambodia, except for the scale of the slaughter.

Rather, what happened in Cambodia is what happened in the French Revolution, and in Stalin’s purges and mass collectivization campaigns, and in Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, only on a proportionately larger scale. It was mass murder in the name of equality. It wasn’t “genocide”; it was Communist utopianism carried to its logical extreme. The Khmer Rouge, who called themselves Maoists, believed that the most important social and political value was equality and that in order to create their new, classless society in which everyone was equal, it was necessary to exterminate anyone who might be smarter, or better educated, or wealthier, or more talented than anyone else. Thus, they killed the educated, the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, and the rich; movie stars, pop singers, authors, urban residents, and workers for the former government; and anyone who protested — as well as the families of all the above. Towards the end, they also killed cadres who were thought to be a political threat. Whatever their crimes were, the Khmer Rouge do not seem to have been motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious hatred.

Why then do Cambodians and the world call the mass murders by the Khmer Rouge “genocide”? I can think of several possible reasons. One is the superficial similarity to other mass slaughters — as noted earlier, the pictures of the Cambodian killing fields look very much like the pictures from the German concentration camps. Surely many people who are largely ignorant of history know only that similarity. Another reason is the fact that the victims of genocide are sympathetic. The U.N. creates commissions, and wealthy countries send money. Cambodia today is filled with NGOs bringing aid of various kinds. The desire for international sympathy might explain why Cambodians use the genocide label.

However, I suspect that the most important reason for the usage worldwide is that many people in the international media, international agencies, and international NGOs (not to mention academia) are reluctant to face up to the crimes committed by Communism in the name of equality. To do so might call into question the weight attached by them to equality as the most important social value and undermine the multicultural faith that evil is predominantly the product of inequality, racism, ethnic hatred, or religious fanaticism. That cannot be permitted, so such crimes must be either ignored or mislabeled. . . .

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The High Cost Of Free Wind

Late blogging on this. The biggest single problem with alternative energy is that it is grossly cost inefficient. A recent study of the cost of wind power in the UK, where they are going wild putting up windmills, found that:

Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 13 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity at a cost of about £120 billion.

The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a cost of £13 billion, i.e. an order of magnitude cheaper than the wind scenario.

The greens will destroy our economies if allowed to continue - and not just with windmills, but with algae, ethanol, electric cars, to name but a few, and all of which are driving up the cost of living on both sides of the pond. The left claims to stand for the unwashed masses, but the truth is that the left's obsession with alternative energy is perhaps the singularly most harmful policy for the poor and lower classes that could be devised. On the flip side, it does provide the left with great opportunities for crony capitalism.

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Lefties Don't Argue, They Throw A Tantrum

This is not news anywhere near as much as it is verification:

Not exactly shocking news for those exposed to them for years, but the respected Pew Research Center has determined that political liberals are far less tolerant of opposing views than regular Americans.

No kidding? Do read the column for the full explanation.

Bookworm Room has as the catchphrase on her site, "conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts." It is tough indeed to be tolerant of opposing opinions in that instance. My own take on the left is that they seem to have precious little intellectual honesty and their method of rhetoric is invariably to demonize and delegitimize their opponents rather than engage in debate of the relevant issues.

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The Catholic Church & The Left

(Photoshop H/T American Digest)

I have long been intending to post on why the modern left and many in the Catholic Church have made common cause, at least over the past eight decades. The base of the left has been defined since the inception of socialism by their antipathy towards Christianity, thus making the voluntary union of the Church with the left a dichotomy. On a related note, it is capitalism that has brought the greatest benefits to all people, from the poorest on up, in our nation and the world. Yet many in religious orders seem to agree with the left that capitalism, operating from enlightened self interest, is less desirable than the left's model of forced redistribution.

I have long suspected that the answers to both of the above issue has much to do with the lifestyle of clergy and monks of the Catholic Church. It is the closest thing to a successful experiment in the Marxist model as likely ever to be found on this earth. Thus it becomes understandable that many in the Church, not seeing the larger reality, would in fact feel an affinity for their would-be executioners. Many in the Church do not seem to distinguish between voluntary acts of charity and expropriation of property by the police power of the state. They do not recognize that capitalism creates far more wealth to the benefit of all - thus making charity possible - while socialism produces much less wealth and results in far less charity, with the State assuming the role of charitable institutions. But on top of all of this, most importantly, many in the Church have been willfully blind about the ultimate goal of the socialist left - to remove religion from society in order to make the state the ultimate arbiter of morality. The left has not exactly been hiding the ball on this one.

While I intended to pontificate on this at some length, I see that a Catholic Priest, Father Zhuhisdorf, has already addressed many of these issues in his blog. I defer to Father Z:

Ask everybody and they’ll all agree it’s a good thing priests don’t run the world.

I agree with this view.

I also believe it’s even better that members of religious orders don’t run the world, whether they are Sisters of Mercy or, lemme think, Jesuits … or some other kind of religious.

Why?

Religious don’t live in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe firmly that many religious do alot of good for the world, but they don’t live in it. . . .

For example, unlike diocesan priests, individual religious don’t pay income taxes. Religious don’t worry about unemployment, health care, food, housing and nursing care when they are aged, or the cost of their funerals. Their religious communities take care of all that. Religious contribute all of what little (or in some cases much) money they earn from their apostolates into a common fund that is administered by their superiors. That common fund takes care of the needs of all community members.

That’s why I get a little edgy hearing religious talking about social justice, universal health care and other federal mandates and entitlements.

The idea that religious have of the state is far too analogous to that of a religious community.

Time and time again religious who pronounce themselves on social issues demonstrate that they think of nation-states, such as the USA, in religious terms. Nation-states are their communities writ large, in which everybody helps everybody else, and in which goods are distributed not on the basis of property rights, but instead, as in the Acts of the Apostles, “distribution is made to each according to his need” (Acts 4:35).

According to this model, wealthy Americans should “pay their fair share” in federal and state income taxes in order to help those who are poor.

I happen to agree with that sentiment.

The wealthy should help the poor. Jesus taught that. The Church Fathers taught that long before modern popes wrote encyclicals (just read St. John Chrysostom or St. Augustine of Hippo).

But what Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles and the Church Fathers all had in common in this regard is that they were talking about voluntary charity. They were not talking about the state.

The state is a modern institution and it is based upon coercion.

If you don’t believe that, go and break a law and see what happens to you.

The power of the state may in some places derive from the consent of the governed, but in no place do individual members or even the majority, consent to each and every act of the state.

If you don’t believe that, try stopping an abortion and see what happens to you.

When the government collects income taxes, it is not passing the basket at church, asking you to perform a voluntary act of charity (pace William Buffett): it is seizing your property. If you don’t hand over your property, the state will garnish your wages and/or confiscate and sell your house and goods. It may also put you in prison.

Where’s the voluntary in that?

In the national conversation Americans are currently having over the federal government takeover of health care, what gets obscured is the distinction between the public sector and the voluntary sector, that is, between the state and the Church.

It’s the role of members of any church to practice charity. The state’s role in our lives is, with our consent, coercive. But its coercive power should be limited.

If you allow the distinction between the political and religious spheres to be blurred, and if you begin romantically to think of the state as a kind of big religious community, you will end up thinking just like Mussolini: the state should own everything and provide you with all your needs.

When religious behave like this we call them a community.

When states behave like this we call them fascist.

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