Our National DNA

Everyone is born with good DNA and bad DNA ... and we unfortunately cannot change the poorly-coded ones ... autoimmune diseases, mental illness, breast cancer, alcoholism, dementia, cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anemia, flat feet, etc. All curse us ... counterbalancing our genetic gifts ... good looks, creativity, robust health, athletic prowess. Some day we might be able to order up the good genes and fix our bad ones ... but, for the nonce, we must live with what we are given in the lottery of life. As Trump would say, “it is what it is.”

Such it is with nations ... all have good history and bad history ... the equivalent of their DNA. And to emphasize our nation’s bad history ... slavery, the trail of tears, Japanese internment camps, segregation ... and down-play our good history ...World War II, our Bill of Rights, emancipation, civil rights ... is as silly as trying to sue your parents for your bad genes. Those that want to remake the United States into a different nation by erasing or rewriting our good history and accenting our errors are either naive or have something more sinister in mind.


STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Turnip Truck

In his prepared remarks today about the terrorist's shootings in Orlando, President Obummer said that the reason that the patrons were dancing and drinking at the site of this slaughter, the Pulse gay nightclub, was because they had "come together to advocate for civil rights." What? Had his Teleprompter just had a politically-correct short circuit? Or he, a brain freeze?

Pleeease ... Barack baby ... there isn't a turnip truck still around for us folks to have just fallen off of ...

The Bear Trap

Let me start by saying that I am not a Libertarian. Libertarians too often take stands that are so pure and theoretical that they appear loopy ... and thus fall into rhetorical traps. But, without agreeing, I do think I halfway understand Libertarians. Yesterday Rand Paul, the newly selected Republican candidate for the Senate from Kentucky, fell into one of these bear traps set by Rachel Maddow from MSNBC. Ms. Maddow asked Rand Paul whether the civil-rights decisions of the 1960's were right in removing the then-prevalent Southern exclusion of blacks from sitting at lunch counters (a clever semantic twist recalling Selma, Alabama sit-ins ... can we call this Rachel-profiling?). Mr. Paul, with typical Libertarian naïveté did not directly answer this question by first vigorously decrying such segregation (as do I) but, instead, replied with some twisted logic about whether restaurant owners had the right to exclude gun-toting patrons from their "private" premises.

I think I know what Rand Paul meant to be saying (but didn't). To whit: although it was proper for the federal government to force the integration of public accommodations, now governments of all ilks have taken this prerogative to increasing anti-Libertarian extremes ... first smoking was banned in restaurants, then trans-fats, now some localities are even trying to exclude the use of salt. Even the EPA has recently decreed that carbon dioxide, which all of us exhale and which is essential for plant survival, is an air pollutant ... of all things. I do think Libertarians justly rankle at such extreme governmental intrusion into our private lives and thus lumber into such semantic pitfalls as Rachael Maddow set for Rand Paul yesterday. Unfortunately, our knee-jerk video media does not allow for explanations that take more than two sentences ... and thus, politicians, who take principled positions, are continually snared.

It will be interesting to see whether Rand Paul today is given the time and leeway to better make his Libertarian case by the media talking heads, particularly those on MSNBC.