SHORT RETORTS TO RHETORIC
2013 December 2, Monday

     Liberalism boils down to the belief that the ends justify the means. Liberalism is the moral low road.

     Have you noticed there's a lot more hostility in politics these days? What we're finding out in these terrible times in America is just how divided our society is, the makers and the takers, how much the takers are willing to hurt others, and how bad things can get without the takers recognizing their part in the decline.

     It's faith not science. You can believe in Jesus Christ, global warming, and the ability of our political system to help poor people, but none of these are borne out by science or even anecdote. Your faith may be strong, but it's faith rather than fact.

     Global warming is a test. There was a small (0.6°C) rise in a century followed by a fantastic fury predicting a future of fast and steep temperature rise starting around 1998. (This sounds like the famous "hockey-stick" curves we see in business sales pitches. "It's not doing that well now, but it's going to soar.") Fifteen years later there have been record-cold winters and none of the predicted temperature rise. The science is gone. Of those who formerly embraced global warming, those who now reject it are the scientists while those who still accept global warming are the faithful. In the midst of failed attempts to deal with it, and almost a hundred million people in Latin America losing their dinner corn to ethanol programs, I wish the global-warming activists doing all this harm didn't feel the urgency to be so damned snooty about it.

     The American left wing in this (21st) century is also a test. Without any pretense of helping anybody in need, the help-the-poor policy became eat-the-rich instead. They promoted a presidential candidate whose only known attributes are his skin color, recent corrupt history, and golf scores. Neither a name or background is known, even five years later. The Occupy movement is nothing more than naked jealousy and envy against those who have been successful. As anecdote and economic science make clear, Detroit is the future of the rest of us if we follow their path. Of those who formerly embraced left-wing politics, those who now reject it are the scientists while those who still support left-wing policies are the faithful. In the midst of failed economics, and tens of millions of Americans newly unemployed, I wish they didn't feel the urgency to be so damned snooty about it.

     One of the implied legitimizations of global warming is the complexity of the calculations supporting it. I would remind such proponents of climate change that their calculations are almost as sophisticated as the astrological charts used to generate our horoscopes.

     Here's one for you: A shoplifter caught at CVS pharmacy says he and his friends have been paying extra at Walgreens for years because of shoplifting, and he is therefore entitled so take stuff at CVS. Does this argument make sense? It's the same argument that we're entitled to Social Security because we involuntarily paid for someone else's old-age pension when we were young. That money is gone and spent.

     When confronted with the economic, polical, racial, and diplomatic horrors of their policies, Democrats are quick to retreat to pride in their history. Since they were the party of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the Ku Klux Klan, is that really such a good idea?

     The evil face of racism: "I rejoice again that we have re-elected a black president, and that our next president will be a woman," from a liberal friend's FaceBook page.

     When a community of people, well meaning or not, decides it's okay to tell other people how to live their lives, for their own good or not, bad things will happen. When a community of people, again for whatever motivation, takes the next step and decides other people's wealth is theirs to spend as they please, terrible things will happen to a lot of people. If the horrors of the past century haven't made that clear, then we're going to have more of the same, or even worse.

     2013 January 21 was Martin Luther King Day. On that day, a black man was sworn in as president of the United States of America. We don't know his name, he has no superior intelligence or insight, his early background is mysterious and tainted, his recent history is shamefully corrupt, and his family exhibits just about every African-American negative stereotype I can think of, and quite a few African negative stereotypes as well. What should we think of that on Martin Luther King Day?

     This 2012 election was about jobs. Mitt Romney offered jobs to a country that didn't want to work when they could vote themselves a living mooching off the rest.

     Canadians used to make fun of us because we didn't know the name of their prime minister. Now they make fun of us because we don't know the name of our own president.

     If the picture posted on Facebook is from somebody else, then the opinion probably is as well.

     Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas hurt people.

     Mitt Romney was born in 1947 and Roswell happened in 1947. They're not connected.

     Mars isn't going to be as big as a full moon in the sky, not now, not later, not ever.

     George W. Bush didn't start his administration with a five trillion dollar ($5T) surplus in the treasury.

     Mitt Romney paid more than his share in taxes, created enough jobs, and revealed enough of his background. His opponent didn't.

     Mitt Romney has signed the front of a paycheque, the source of somebody's livelihood. His opponent hasn't.

     Mitt Romney started businesses that created hundreds of thousands of jobs stateside, and some overseas. His opponent didn't.

     Sending back what a person wrote on Facebook verbatim, in context, is not misquoting anybody.

     Believing in something and believing taxpayers should pay for it are different things.

     The federal government should pay more for defense than for education or art. It's their constitutionally-mandated job to defend the country and they are constitutionally prohibited from the other stuff.

     People who have time to make elaborate, cute political pictures have too much time on their hands. They should get jobs. If they have jobs, then they should spend time doing them.

     God isn't Christian, Muslim, or anti-abortion. (While many religious people believe in the sanctity of fetal life, the biblical notion of humanity begins at our first breath, from the book of Genesis.)

     Showing respect for a nation's core values when you're there is basic courtesy. America's core values are personal responsibility and free enterprise.

     You're not entitled to anything from government, not even Social Security. The tax you paid was for somebody else's benefit at the time you paid it.

     Religion is the right side of the monster whose left side is politics.

     People who have time to whine about who should marry whom need to find something else to do with their time. It's wrong to use the political process to control marriage, at least in the United States. (Call it "civil union" if you want to avoid religious overtones.)

     You don't want America to be like Europe.

     You really don't want America to be like Indonesia or sub-Saharan Africa.

     I'm not frightened for my country because of my opinions. I'm frightened because I have my eyes open and see what's happening.

     The stock market is not doing better than it was when the Obama president took office. It may look only about 20% down in the S&P and Dow Jones, but those were dollars that bought half a gallon of petrol at the pump.

     And the unemployment rate didn't go down either. They just don't count people who give up, immigrants who go back home in disgrace, and people whose unemployment benefits run out.

     I'm not a Mitt Romney fan, but I see the alternative in this election. We all should.

     I have become more afraid of politics than religion recently: A religious person following his faith with pure heart is a good person not hurting anybody. A political liberal following his beliefs with good intention does bad things to other people.

     The years Clinton is credited for a surplus in the federal budget he had two republican houses in congress and the years Bush is blamed for his worst deficits he had two democrat houses in congress.

     George McGovern recanted his liberal position in 1992 when he tried to run a business (a hotel) and found out what it was like with all the regulations and taxes. I wish he figured that out in 1972 using his brain rather than whining when his feeble business skills hit regulatory barriers, but at least he figured it out eventually.

     Many liberals comfort themselves by telling themselves that conservatives are "mean." Most of the conservatives I know are that way because they see relationships, cause and effect, actions and consequences, that my left-wing friends don't see.

     Free enterprise gave us pet rocks. Modern business got us Donald Trump's hair. Still, aren't both better than what the government got for us?

     Buying out General Motors is not saving the auto industry. Giving Ford a five-year moratorium on corporate tax is much better.

     There are still many otherwise-educated people who see an educated, articulate, erudite Obama when all that's really there is a mediocre puppet pandering to enormous political forces.

     Now everybody's moaning that Romney is against government disaster payouts (FEMA). Of course, they don't think about who's paying for it. So the people who buy insurance pay for those who don't.

     2012 November 4, Sunday, I was back in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the weekend. Now I know where all the Obama voters are! A Pennsylvanian Facebooker posted the image on the right and this in his exhortation to join him at the polls to encourage "fair" voting. Of course fair voting is Obama voting, right? Every lamppost I drove by on Broad Street had an Obama sticker on it. These people don't get it, that's their right, but the ones I talk to don't get that there's something to get, and I'm not going to get them to get there's something to get.

     "Obama's black and Romney's mean, what else is there to know?"

     Hearing global warming presented as science is appalling as calling anti-evolution as science. Just as neither Jell-O nor chocolate pudding are vegetables, neither global warming nor anti-evolution creationism are science. They are both conclusions decided and support gathered later.

    

    

    

     I've thought about my opinions and reasoned them through. I've fought the left on the left, the right on the right, Objectivists on Ayn Rand, libertarians on Murray Rothbard, and the right on the religious foundations of their opinions. That deserves a lot more respect than cute rhetoric images and videos.

     The political-economic change from our nation's politics from 2001-2006 to 2007-2012 works out to a net present value of about one million dollars ($1M) per Obama vote in 2008. (That's at six-percent rate of return, more at today's interest rates.) Those not comfortable being held accountable for that amount shouldn't preach about lost jobs, homelessness, or poverty, and they certainly shouldn't feel good voting for those things.

If you want the longer explanations then here are my American-issues essays.

Today is 2024 December 21, Saturday,
7:37:54 Mountain Standard Time (MST).
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