Today’s Poser

Why do many things seem to move from conservatives toward the wrong-headed liberals ... FoxNews, Supreme Court justices, the Drudge Report, etc. ... how come so seldom does it go the other way?


STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Liberal Logical Leap

Conservative = Nationalist = White Separatist = Racist =  Anti-Semite = neo-Nazi

Bile Green

Can Dartmouth sink any lower? For a rarity at the college on the hill, a conservative was invited to speak to the undergraduates. Apparently the college Republicans had invited Rick Perry, outgoing governor of Texas, to speak at an open event and he drew a number of anal-sex questions from the audience ... some of which were printed on a flyer that was passed out by a sophomoric sophomore, Ben Packer. A typical example was, "Do you [Rick Perry] dislike bootysex because the peeny goes in where the poopy comes out?"

Another green weenie in the audience, senior Emily Sellers, asked the governor if he might engage in anal sex for a large campaign contribution. Wow … such disrespect from seemingly liberal artists! And freshman, Timothy Messen, snidely queried if Rick Perry thought that homosexuals were equivalent to alcoholics. Obviously not everyone in the audience was so crass, but to read more of the details of this sour event see: Breitbart Story.

Because of a recent similarly scatological story coming out of Harvard ... see: UK Daily Mail Story, and an overwhelming vote of the Dartmouth faculty to abolish fraternities and sororities, I was commenting to my wife that college professors must live in a parallel universe ... and she agreed. They must have dispatched pedagogical space ships to bring some of their more naively insipid students along with them.

Obviously, the Dartmouth administration cannot and should not punish these miscreant students like it once attempted to stifle campus conservatives for "vexatious" speech. But it surely would be appropriate to embarrass them (and a few of the more notorious faculty members) in some public way.

Afterward: Here is a link to a related article: Powerline Piece.

Snake Eating Its Own Tail

Bill Maher is sounding more and more like a right-winger with every of his passing HBO shows ... see: Breitbart Video. This is a video of another of his monologues with which I can mostly agree. Can somebody ... like a snake eating its own tail ... become so liberal that one ends up being a conservative?

Post Trauma

Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, recently personally bought the Washington Post newspaper.  The expectation was that he would continue or expand its liberal editorial positions. Surprise! Surprise!  His newspaper has just created a partnership with the Volokh Conspiracy … a popular conservative blog that deals primarily in legal and public policy issues … see: Tumblr Story.  And he also has given the thumbs down to financing that uber-liberal, Ezra Klein for his independent website … and thus severed a longstanding relationship with him … see: Politico Story.

In times past I had a very loose interest in the Volokh Conspiracy (see: Volokh Conspiracy Blog) in that one of its contributors, Todd Zywicki, had good things to say about one of my blog sites, Dartmouth Traditions.  Todd Zywicki is a Dartmouth graduate, a famous lawyer, and a former trustee of the college on the hill.  A number of years ago, I occasionally visited his blog .,. but have gotten out of the habit.  I intend to remedy this lapse and will now regularly view it … and I recommend it to you.

The Difference

Delta -- the Mathematical Symbol for Difference

Because of the tremendous polarity that is now prevalent in Washington, I’ve lately got to thinking about what are the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans … some are quite obvious and some are a little less blatant.  Here are my assessments:

Republicans                                          Democrats                      

Guided by their heads                      Guided by their hearts

Put their country first                      Put their party first

Clustered in the heartland              Clustered on both coasts

Are for less regulation                     Are for more regulation

Male dominated                                  Female dominated

Driven by policy                                 Driven by politics

Support Israel                                      Support the Arab world

Wish a strong military (hawks)     Wish a weak military (doves)

Want less social welfare                   Want more social welfare

Anti-federalists                                    Federalists

Driven by morality                            Driven by mammon

Realistic foreign policy                     Naive foreign policy

Regulate for less taxes                      Regulate for more taxes

Pro life                                                      Pro abortion

Listen to talk radio                              Listed to network news

Very much non-ethnic                      Very much ethnic

Are mostly conservative                 Are mostly liberal

More humble                                         More hubristic

Effective administrators                   Sloppy administrators

Middle class                                           Upper and lower class

Respect religion                                   Disrespect religion

Patriotic                                                   Often unpatriotic

More passive                                          More active

Believe in the Constitution               Suspect the Constitution
Don't use Botox/plastic surgery    Use Botox/plastic surgery

And so kind reader, if you want to decide with which party you should identify, print out this list and put a check mark next to your prime tenets.  Then count up the marks and see in what party you may really belong.

Goldwater Redux

"Let me remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me also remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Barry Goldwater, in his acceptance speech as Republican candidate for President, 1964

Barry Goldwater, with the above words, attempted to move the Republican Party back to the right after 35 years of "moderation" (read ideological coziness with the Democrats).  Unfortunately, it also cost him the 1964 Presidential election.  But, he did manage to re-plant the flag of conservatism that was then carried forward by the likes of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan.  Now, Jeb Bush, has managed to throw Barack Obama a lifeline (after The Barry's few disastrous weeks in his quest for re-election.)  His poorly-timed comments in New York City at the Bloomberg LP were:

“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad, they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party, and I don’t, as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,”

In response, the keeper of the conservative flame, Grover Norquist, riposted in the following quote from the Washington Post:: 

Grover Norquist is lashing out at former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R) for his comments critical of Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. Bush has said in recent days that Republicans should accept a deal that includes $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases. “There’s a guy who watched his father throw away his presidency on a 2:1 [ratio of spending cuts to tax increases] promise,” Norquist told Talking Points Memo . “And he thinks he’s sophisticated by saying that he’d take a 10:1 promise. ... You walk down that alley, you don’t come out. You certainly don’t come out with 2:1 or 10:1.”

Who is right in this internecine squabble?  Even though I kinda cringe at a lot of what Grover Norquist says, I do believe that the "radicalism" that is being exhibited by him and many many others in the Republican party is nothing more than a recognition of the squishiness that has seeped into the Republican ideology since Ronald Reagan's Presidency ... and the continued drift leftwards in our political ethos as a result of the ideological resolve of the radical left.  Let me offer three examples:

- President Richard Nixon in some ways was even more liberal than LBJ.  He called his approach "New Federalism" which included expansion of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the government's first affirmative action programs, and a proposal for comprehensive national health care (with an employer mandate!)

- President George W. Bush "43" prided himself as being a "compassionate conservative."  Yet, to some, he was in fact more of a "slow-walking liberal."  Witness his $4.8 trillion expansion in our national debt, his extreme ballooning of our federally-funded entitlement programs -- the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit of 2003, his huge increase in government regulations, and, with Ted Kennedy, the "No Child Left Behind" program.

- We now have the most radically-left President in our history.  Recent revelations of Barack Obama's membership in the socialist New Party (see: Breitbart Story) is just one indication of the hidden agenda that he brought with him into the White House.  Obama has been resolute in not compromising with the Republicans during his term in office.  Even when he got Speaker of the House John Boehner to agree to a $800 billion revenue (tax) increase, he reversed himself the next day and demanded $1.2 trillion.  Isn't this the kind of lack of finding a "common ground" that Jeb Bush might have highlighted?

Yes, I think we all agree that compromise should be part of politics.  But when one party is constantly and perniciously loath to move to the middle (read the Democrats) ... and this rigidity is lauded by many in the media ... this gives rise to the kind of radical mimicry that Grover Norquist represents.  The persistent and consistent take-no-prisoners attitude on the radical left is now being matched on the radical right ... and, in a way, I can't blame them.  And until there is a relenting on the left, I don't believe that there will be any relaxing on the right.  If compromise is always painted as being willing to move left, then, eventually, the body politic revolts and gives rise to the Tea Party and the kind of reaction we just witnessed in uber-liberal Wisconsin ... in its failure to recall its conservative Governor, Scott Walker.

This is why Grover Norquist, the modern-day Barry Goldwater, might indeed be a good thing for our nation in the long run ... even though he is a bit of an anathema currently.

Judas Goat

When processing plants want to slaughter sheep, they use a goat ... a "Judas goat" ... to lead them into the killing chamber.  They then let the goat escape but not the sheep.  Let me now draw my analogy.  MSNBC has a program starting at 6 AM called Morning Joe staring Joe Scarborough (and Mika Brzezinski) which has gotten quite popular.  Joe Scarborough is a former conservative Congressman from the panhandle region of Florida and has very often been an effective foil for the litany of lefties who are the mainstay of this show.

When Joe is away, the show is virtually unwatchable with its liberal demagoguery.  (Guests like Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Howard Dean and Charles Schumer make my skin crawl ... and recently, when Joe returned from a week off, he jokingly ask a smirking Mika what did they do with all the hammer and sickle banners.)  However, slowly, ever so slowly, Joe is being pulled away from his rock-ribbed conservative stances and too often now will start spouting off like James Carville.  He even recently has, without knowing enough of the evidence, accused and convicted George Zimmerman of manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin.  Tsk, tsk. Joe, you really know better than this.

But what has upset me even more is that Joe did not defend Pat Buchanan when he was booted off the show last fall.  I don't think Scarborough necessarily had to resign over this black-listing of Buchanan, but he clearly turned his back on his compatriot -- one of the few intelligent conservative voices on his show.  Now, in order to hear a few of Joe's right-leaning repartees, viewers are now given quadruple doses of left-wing pap.  I'm beginning to get the feeling that we, as conservative sheep, are being led into that slaughter house called MSNBC by a Judas goat whose name is on the marquee.

Canard Test

There is a somewhat suspicious old saying that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.  We now have a true-to-life test of this canard in that our uber-liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and his guests were recently robbed by a machete-wielding intruder in his Nevis vacation home (see: Fox News Story).

Side Bar: Does anyone believe that any vacation home on Nevis is only worth between $100,000 and $250,000 ... as reported by Breyer in his latest financial disclosure statement?  Or is this the real canard?