An Unfinished Work

The other day I had a brief exchange with a high school classmate.  He observed we were probably on different sides of the political spectrum.  As is almost always the case this gave me something to consider both about myself and the political spectrum.

Let’s start with the political spectrum.

When I was young there were two dominant parties in the American political system.  Today there are still two dominant parties, but things have changed dramatically in the form those two parties take.  When I first became aware of the two-party system, I found the following truths.  Each party had a mixture of beliefs. There were socially liberal Republicans and socially conservative Democrats.  There were financially responsible liberals and financially responsible conservatives.  Racism existed in both parties, although the racism of the northeast was better masked than the racism of the south.  At the time members of both parties could find common ground to work with like-minded individuals on the other side.  Democrats made up the majority parties in the Southern states and Republicans were the clear minority.  Cities around the country were run by “political machines” where the Democrats excelled at getting out the vote for their candidates.  Republicans have always been the minority party and would only win by capturing the “swing” or independent vote.

Over the years, and I blame the media for this, the parties changed.  As each party moved to occupy spaces the other party abandoned, we’ve become a two-party system of the extremes.  Perhaps it is unfair to blame just the media because in my opinion the primary system should also be held responsible. With the adoption of the primaries the people nominated are the most politically vocal and play to the activists on the fringe.  Is this better than the party bosses getting together in the smoke-filled back rooms and finding the best compromise candidate?  Although if the DNC process in 2016 and 2020 is any indication the primaries are really just a sham as the power brokers really do still decide who their candidate for President will be.

Today, as I look at the two parties’ somethings become crystal clear for me.  The first is classic liberalism no longer exists in either party.  In the Republican party, it was pushed out by a shift to political activists from the southern religious groups abandoned by the Democrats.  For the Democrats, although they still use the term liberal it no longer means liberal in the classic sense of tolerance for opposing views.  It is self-righteous liberalism where only progressives know what is right for the nation as a whole.

The idea of fiscal responsibility with our federal spending has also gone the way of gas-guzzling muscle cars of the 1960s.  It is claimed Senator Everett Dirksen, the late Senator from Illinois, once said, “A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”  Today Congress has no problem spending trillions of dollars without blinking an eye.  Unfortunately, for the nation, a very large percentage of the money they are happy to spend is money we have to borrow from someone.  We never seem to worry anymore about how we will pay that back.  We have Democrats talking about universal health care, expanding welfare, eliminating our use of fossil fuels, and forgiving college debt, while the Republicans complain about it but then when given an opportunity do little to balance our needs and moderate the cost of defense spending.  From 2010 to 2021 our excess spending averaged a little over $641 billion a year and now stands at over $30 trillion for the national debt.  The interest payments alone are eating significantly into our ability to provide the fundamental services Americans expect and need: things like infrastructure with safe water, clean air, and good roads. 

I grew up near the home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  In and near Hyde Park, New York we have the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge across the Hudson River, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Home and Library, Val Kill (where Eleanor lived after Franklin passed), and of course, I went to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, home of “The Presidents.”  Our discussions of history were filled with how FDR had saved the nation during the great depression.  How his fireside chats calmed and inspired the nation, and how he was the first to recognize the need for a social safety net for the elderly while employing out-of-work artists and entertainers to help with the building of monumental works like the Hoover Damn.  That last thing is something all Democrats continually bring up to show how they care for the poor and elderly.  What doesn’t get discussed too much is how at the end of the day both parties came together to create a plan to sustain this act and voted overwhelmingly to approve.  In the house, the vote was 372 yeas, 33 nays, 2 present, and 25 not voting.  Of the dissenting votes the Democrats had 15 nays, and 20 "not voting," while the Republicans had 15 nays, 4 "not voting", and 2 voting as "present."  The farm labor and progressive parties made up the difference.  In the Senate, there was a similar result with 77 yeas, 6 nays, and 12 "not voting."  That is truly bi-partisan support.

The basic premise for Social Security to work and be sustainable is just like any insurance.  There must be more money coming in than going out.  For over 70-years that has been the case.  The problem we are now facing is a shrinking workforce, paying fewer dollars into the fund than the elderly are drawing out.  In this bipolar world of soundbites and talking points, we seem unable to come to grips with this reality and everyone wants to talk about how they’ve earned their payments and it's now the Republicans' fault some are beginning to point out the fund is running out of money.  Some will talk about how the social security “lockbox” has been raided to pay other bills, but if you think about it this is nonsensical since all the money comes from one source and is backed only by the faith in the nation to pay its bills.  If we were actually backed by some physical standard, you could make that case, but you either have faith the government can pay its bills or you don’t.  That is where I begin to differ from my Democratic friends.

As I pointed out earlier, I grew up in the heartland of the Democratic ideals, but those ideals have changed, and so have I.  I’ve been to or lived in, a fair bit of the world, I’ve seen the richness of western Europe, rebuilt after the last World War by American dollars spent under the Marshall Plan, while also seeing eastern Europe suffer under the disregard and oppression of the Soviet Union.  I’ve seen the far east, rebuilt after the war by American dollars in investments as well as the industry of the people to make their lives and families better.  I’ve been to several islands throughout the Pacific where they have found tourism as an industry, or American bases create a cash income for the citizens.  I’ve seen the middle east where distrust of the Judeo-Christian faith has driven the religious leaders to a more extreme form of Islam than had been previously allowed.  I’ve driven down the streets of Karachi Pakistan where I’ve seen white-clad boys playing cricket behind walls topped with glass shards to keep out the homeless boys and girls standing just outside the gates of the school.  I’ve been north of the Arctic Circle where the only thing there was a radar site to watch for a Soviet attack of the homeland, and south as far as Brazil where I saw a remarkable city cut out of the middle of a rain forest where people lived in gorgeous homes or ramshackle boxes (with nothing in between).  What has amazed me the most in all these travels is the human spirit and a desire to be free from the oppression of government, but at the same time needing the protections of a government just to live the best lives they can.

When I graduated from college I began to think as a fiscal conservative, but I retained a true appreciation of the social programs this country could, and perhaps should provide.  Social Security had, by then, become the accepted standard of how a program should be set up.  The larger working population would take a percentage of their paycheck and give it to the government to care for the elderly.  The only real problem I saw was the idea held by too many that social security wasn’t a “safety net” it was a retirement plan.  This, in my opinion, led them to not save for their future but spend on the things they wanted today.  This was akin to Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper.  Those fables were all supposed to teach us some underlying life lesson, learned from experience.  How many of us actually pay attention to these things, but when given an excuse believe it is someone else’s job to take care of the future.

Our founding fathers, having fought a war to achieve freedom from the English King and having learned the hard lessons of a weak confederation of the separate states determined to write a constitution forming a new government.  Even then some feared a too-powerful government, while others fought to establish the supremacy of such a government. Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist Paper 84 argued the Constitution alone was sufficient to protect the nation and the desire for a “Bill of Rights” detailing the specific freedoms of the citizens was unnecessary.  Time has proven the wisdom of those who argued for the necessity of detailing those rights. 

In reflection, does the government taking on more responsibility for our personal welfare improve society, or simply make the government more powerful? We’ve chosen to expand the role of government beyond what even a staunch Federalist such as Hamilton believed was essential. In so doing we must realize that every government decision comes with a cost.  Sometimes those costs are financial, other times those costs are a loss of individual freedoms.  This pandemic has brought into sharp focus the debate of individual freedom versus social responsibility.  At the heart of my concern is the question:  does the expanding government actually enable the mechanisms to teach a shared social responsibility or does it destroy them?

As I’ve aged, some would say I’ve become less compassionate for the poor because I don’t believe the government has actually done a good job caring for them.  The money spent does not, on the whole, seem to have made their lives better.  If we look at the results of government in our Democratic-controlled states and cities, do we find the poor better off today than they were before the creation of the Great Society?  Naturally, those who favor the programs are unwilling to admit the inherent failures.  They can shift the blame of failure to those “other uncompassionate politicians in the GOP” who have the gall to question the cost-benefit of throwing money at the poor to improve their lives.  Do those social safety net programs work, or are they simply another way to make one class of people a slave to the state?

I hear a lot about the disparity between the richest of the rich and the poor in America.  The simple question I ask is has any or all of the government welfare programs closed that gap over the past 55-years?  We routinely hear from the left a complaint about the wealth gap, where statistics like how rich the three richest men in America are compared to the bottom half of the population as if this is something new and disreputable.  They almost always point to the years of Reagan as the point where wealth disparity started.  Since Reagan, we’ve had how many Democratic-controlled Congresses, and how many Democratic Presidents.  Each and every one of those individuals or groups had an opportunity to alter the path of divergence of wealth but chose not to.  We complain about Reagan, yet no one questions the wealth acquisition of our politicians who enter government with little and leave as multi-millionaires (e.g., Biden, Pelosi, Obama, and pick as many offsetting Republicans as you need). 

I’ve written about this in the past, here is what drives me to my conservative views and how I find the liberal/progressive movement out of touch with what I think is critical to the survival of our nation.

I believe a social safety net is a grand idea, I believe universal health care is good, and I believe universal employment is a wonderful goal.  Where I begin to diverge from historically liberal thought is who is best served by a safety net, how its benefits are measured.  What does universal health care get us and is it affordable?  Finally, how do you achieve universal employment when people don't want to work?  

Unfortunately, as I look at the history of the past 70 years, our government is incapable of creating all these things without destroying families, moral values, and creating a debt load that will destroy the nation.  The welfare state actually destroys the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because it places the burden of achievement on individuals who really don’t care about humanity, they are only doing their job spending someone else’s money.

As I noted earlier how do individuals deal with welfare and other safety concerns?  The programs of the Great Society seem, upon reflection, to have destroyed the very fabric of the African-American society.  We have more single-mother families whose children grow, not to great success, but to greater crime and poverty.  We no longer expect our poorest to pay income taxes, but we steal their wealth with sales taxes and poor education so they are unable to break the chains the government and society, in general, have placed around them.  What government program will change this reality?  I believe change can only come from within and unfortunately, we are teaching our young to be victims, not champions.  To have ever greater expectations of government and fewer expectations of themselves?

Has affirmative action actually improved the lives of those it was supposed to help with a step up or has it lowered the credibility of the education system by lowering the expectations of those who compete within it? I don’t know but in looking at the racism of the colleges I’m not sure it has helped achieve the equality it was supposed to.  If it had, would we still be hearing about how systemically racist America is?  Having been to parts of the world where racism is alive and well, I find these claims of Americans being horridly racist uninformed about the world we are a part of.  Go to Japan if you want to see racism.  Go to China, India, or South Africa.

Universal health care is a wonderful idea, but if we implemented it how would it be administered?  Would we expect the government to have an over-abundance of capability, or would we see the empty shelves of medical supplies we see today in our retail markets?  When the Affordable Care Act was passed the government promised it would be wonderful for all.  Its opponents questioned the costs and we’ve seen those costs actually occur.  The supporters said there would not be government panels that would question the decisions of the doctors, but the Pandemic has shown us that government experts only look at a limited data set in making their choices.  Will our care be the envy of the world, or would it be akin to the United Kingdom where the rich can travel to the U.S. for the care, they desire versus the care the government provides, or as we sink into pure socialism will we become like Venezuela or Cuba?  This is the question I have for those who wish to spend dollars we don’t have.  Do the people who believe in the inequality of wealth believe taking 100% of that wealth from them would actually create a viable and sustainable health care plan?  Wasn’t Medicare and Medicaid supposed to do that when they were created?  What have they achieved besides increasing health care costs at a rate above annual inflation?

The thing about the progressive mindset is the belief they know what utopia is, and how to reach it.  I question that “one size fits all” utopian belief, and I believe history has shown us the zealots of progressivism have actually done more harm than good in their pursuit of the perfect world.  We make a big deal about the Nazis, but at the time they were a progressive movement.  We talk about Margaret Sanger as if she was the ultimate feminist, but so easily dismiss her racism and her desire to eliminate the unacceptable from society with universal abortion.

That said, if we were only to concern ourselves with tradition, we would still be driving horse-drawn carriages.  There must be a balance, unfortunately, we seem to have lost that ability to compromise for the common good.  They say the pendulum swings both ways, and perhaps it is beginning to swing back towards a more common view on what is good for America, but unless we find a way to talk, understand and accept opposing views, and work toward compromise we will remain a nation in turmoil  Both the nation and I are certainly an unfinished work.

The Corruption of Science.

As a kid, I remember being taught some basic science and led to believe science was the pursuit of truth and understanding.  Like most children, I accepted this as a reality in itself, but times have changed.  We see in today’s world that science and politics have blended together and if you disagree with the politics, you are called names.  They can be simple names like “science denier”/ “climate fanatic,” or rude names like “deplorable”/ “Karen,” or vicious names like “homophobe” and “racist.”  Once the name-calling begins all reasonable conversation ends.

As I look at people who call themselves scientists, I realize they can only exist if someone is paying for the science.  I think that has almost always been the case.  It was no different when I was a young boy, it was just the teachers never wanted to point this reality out.  Leonardo DaVinci was a brilliant man, but without sponsors, he would have ended up an unknown beggar.  If we look at the scope of his work we can see the brilliance of his mind, but every once in a while, he had to do something to make a living.  That could have been painting the Mona Lisa, or designing a battle tank.

Galileo and Copernicus studied the stars, and taught at universities, but without sponsorship would we know of their work?  What happened when the Catholic Church, took issue with their findings? It took a generation of more discovery before the Church was willing to alter their position, during that time they were both condemned as heretics, although Copernicus had died before the Church could hold him accountable for his sin. In 15^th Century Europe who had the power to tell the Church, they were wrong?

The same thing holds true today.  Who has the power to tell the government they are wrong about the science they’ve paid so much for, or more importantly what scientist is willing to question the science and risk their future research because of the people who pay for that research question his loyalty?  Are the inquisitions of today any different than the inquisitions of the 15^th century?

For the past 50 years, the world’s scientists have been warning us of the devastation of Climate Change.  Anyone who questioned those predictions was condemned for denying science.  First, we were to enter an ice age, then we discovered global warming.  The oceans would rise as the ice caps melted, the polar bears would die, the coastal cities would flood, there would be world famine and nuclear war.  Over ten years ago Psychologists were predicting everyone would become so depressed by the crisis that mass suicides were likely.  Al Gore gave us until 2010 before the end of the age of man, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is planning on 2030, unless of course, we change our path and abandon fossil fuels and spend a lot more money on something painted green.  NASA, NOAA, and even the DOD have jumped on the bandwagon telling us the end of the world is near.  So, it must be true.  I kind of miss the days when you got these kinds of warnings from some long-haired, wild-eyed dude on the corner.

Now we have the science of the Wuhan Virus, which for political purposes can’t be called by where it originated, so it is COVID-19.  We were told the world population would be devastated if we didn’t listen to all the policies all the politicians put into place at the recommendation of all the government experts who know exactly how this virus will perform.  We’ve gone through lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, vaccines, boosters, and huge economic impacts yet still the virus continues to kill thousands despite all the assurances that if we only do all the things “some” of the experts say we will be okay.  Unfortunately, those experts don’t take kindly to other “experts” suggesting alternative strategies.  So once again the political opinion media gets called in to assure those who listen to only one side that the other side is responsible for all the bad stuff happening.  

As far as I can tell neither side is really willing to look at the data to see what strategies are effective, and which ones only give the illusion of help.  We have people who wear masks 24/7 to protect themselves and we have those who refuse to be vaccinated because they fear their DNA will be altered and they will wake in the morning with a strong desire for a banana and a branch to hang on.  Of course, our political elites and their media friends all have their opinions, which as far as I can tell are based solely on which government official they like.

Then again we have the fringe “social scientists” who believe basic biology is passe and that a six-year-old should be able to decide what gender they should be, based I assume, on its lifetime of experience.

Finally, just before the age of Trump, we developed “internet fact-checkers” who were supposed to research all the internet rumors and tell us what was real and what was false.  Unfortunately, those same “fact-checkers” have been proven themselves to be political town criers who offer little more than the approved government taking points/opinions, as long as the government is controlled by those they agree with.

I guess it is safe to say I will never view science and those who claim to be scientists with the same idealist view my 10th-grade chemistry teacher tried to instill in me. 

 

Living in the Age of Ultimatums

I am not sure when this age began but it must have been a long time ago.  The thing is it has become a lot more popular this century.  It used to be nations issued ultimatums, then it filtered down to parents, then celebrities, and now former celebrities.  The only problem is what does one do when their ultimatum falls on deaf ears?  Do they believe enough in their position to actually move forward with the threat?

From my chair, it appears most don’t, unless they put the ball in someone else’s hand.  For example, how many of our privileged elite threatened to move to Canada if Donald Trump were elected President?  Once elected, exactly how many fled Southern California, their Chicago/New York penthouses, or their properties in the Hamptons and the Cape?  For all the vilification and threats, I can’t recall a single famous person making the trek north to seek sanctuary from the Donald.

Fortunately for most of them, the organizations who call themselves news outlets are more interested in polling and their own ratings than actually holding people accountable for their words.  Shows like “The View” still exist, Barbara Streisand is still holed up in your palace in Southern California, and Oprah is still interviewing former princes and their mates from the comfort of her stateside estates.

We are living is a world of “Cancel Culture” but this is really just an outcome of the whole idea we get to make ultimatums and everyone must listen to us, because the progressive movement has told us we all have value, unless it is an opinion they don’t like.

This latest spat of ultimatums falls into two groups.  The first is pure silliness, the second may have greater ramifications.  Let’s deal with the silliness first.

Spotify is one of those music streaming services that has become so popular.  From what I understand it’s like those old time AM/FM radio stations, although you can choose your own music to listen to and as long as you are connected to the internet of all things you can hear them through your earbuds.  Obviously, Spotify exists to make money, just like those old time AM/FM stations did.  The question will always be, what makes them the most money?  Radio stations used to play Glenn Miller, then they moved to Rock and Roll, then Country, and then talk/news, all in the hopes of a larger audience share.  I can assume Spotify keeps track of who listens to what on their service.

So, when a 76-year-old hippy got upset with one of the talk radio shows on Spotify he did what all celebrities do these days.  He issued an ultimatum!  It is him or me! Spotify, to their credit looked at the financial implications and told the hippy, it was nice, but don’t let the door hit you on the way out. This created a fervor among other aging hippies who’ve chosen to follow their friend out the door.  Since most of them are millionaires, I don’t expect any of them will suffer real financial discomfort, but ask yourself, when was the last time you actually had to listen to Neil Young, Peter Frampton, or Joni Mitchell or your day wasn’t complete? 

Now we come to the second set of ultimatums!  The one with greater implications.

President Biden, I assume at the urgings of his son’s financial interests in the Ukraine, has told Russian President Putin, there would be serious actions if Russia was to invade the Ukraine.  To back up that ultimatum he has alerted troops to prepare to deploy, and is busy sending a lot of military equipment to the Ukraine to help them prepare for the invasion.  Of course, along the way he has said he wouldn’t be sending troops to the Ukraine, just military hardware.  The question is what will happen if this threat of action is viewed as the same empty threats Biden has made in the past, and our actions are viewed with the incompetence we showed as we bungled our way out of Afghanistan?

Now putting ourselves into the shoes of Putin, and I don’t do this lightly.  From his perspective the expansion of NATO into the former Warsaw Pact countries can certainly be viewed as a threat, especially if you consider the historical view of Russians in authoritarian regimes where anything that threatens their absolute authority is a concern. The question then is for Europe, more than the United States.  How do you expand the European Union to offer the economic and defense advantages of western Europe without threatening Russia?

For the United States, with our history of involvement in the internal affairs of other nations, how do we make a convincing argument we are not interested in the overthrow of yet another regime?  Or are we? If so, why?  At this point, do we even know what is in our national interest?

A Year in Review

I’ve not done this before, but this past Christmas season has become a time of reflection for me and as I watch the nation deal with a new crisis each day, I’ve decided to put my thoughts into some kind of synopsis.

In the beginning, the year began with the explosion of political ideologies. After a summer of violence in Democratic-run cities, a growing loss of confidence in the resolution of COVID, and the struggle for the votes of the nation we approached the transition of one administration to another.  Of course, no one was really ready to give up on the animosity of the past four years, nor was the President willing to concede he was beaten by a Democratic slate, which had done next to no live campaigning during an election that saw about 67% of all registered voters turn out[1] (compared to a historical average of 56.5% since 1980[2])).

On January 6^th, when Congress was to certify the vote of the Electoral College, the Trump campaign had scheduled a political rally in the mall to support the President, and show their dissatisfaction with the incongruity of the election and the results.  After the rally groups of the participants trooped up to the Capital to voice their disbelief in the legitimacy of the election.  In the process, they stormed into the Capital and disrupted the process of government.  Of course, this was immediately called an insurrection by the politicians and the media, and the President was accused of igniting this rebellion.  As far as actual violence the riot of January 6^th was a relatedly minor affair when compared to the outrages of the anti-police riots of the past summer and the Antifa violence of Seattle and Portland.  Yet since it actually scared the politicians who were happy to take a knee when Minneapolis was burning this became a traumatic event of such magnitude the House immediately set out to impeach the President once again and establish a select committee to determine how best to expand government to intimidate its citizens and keep such insurrections away from the house of the people.

Next, we come to January 20^th, when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn into the office of the President.  His inaugural speech covers all the main points of most inaugural speeches, but as with grand worlds, we really should see if actions support those ideals.  It was John F. Kennedy who inspired a generation with “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”  From those words came the Peace Corp where Americans, young and old, reached out to help those in developing countries.  In his speech, President Biden sought to unify a nation clearly divided.  He talked of truth and lies but in this age of information who decides what is true and what is a lie?  As we routinely see in the public broadcasts the experts of government will condemn information they dislike as false, only to be proven later they were wrong.

President Biden spoke of coming together, of unifying a nation broken by racial injustice, extremism, lawlessness, violence.  Unfortunately for the nation, he and his party remain blind to equality of action.  It seems for this administration extremism, lawlessness, and violence is only a quality of the right, and not of the left.  The protections of the Constitution, the document he swore to defend are only relevant if the administration agrees with the politics of the political or financial views of the individual.  If its defense is useful in the continuation of “the narrative.”

The “Biden-Harris” administration has set its agenda, and it can be found at https://www.whitehouse.gov/priorities/  According to the White House containing the COVID-19 crisis is the government's number one priority.  A review of the past year suggests their plans have been far less than successful.  They were to expand testing, take science-driven steps to address community needs – especially communities of color, and launch a national vaccination program.  The media certainly did its part, condemning any option that did not originate with the CDC, or posting the approved solutions on social media anytime someone mentioned the term COVID.  But here we are at the beginning of the new year with a recent mutation and testing lags, community support lags, and the plan for a national vaccination program amounts to threats of punishment if you don’t comply with the mandates of the government dictates.  On that last point, it seems to be more akin to a fascist approach than the ideal of democracy he spoke about in his inauguration speech.  

What seems to go unaddressed is the intent of vaccination and its effectiveness.  What does fully vaccinated (now a primary dosage and a booster) actually accomplish?  Does it prevent the acquisition of the virus? Does it prevent the spread of the virus?  Does it reduce the effects of the virus and prevent the need for hospitalization?  As with all vaccines, there is no 100% correct answer to any of these questions, but the “science-driven” approach the administration has taken seems to assume there is and if you don’t do what they want you must be punished in some way.  Perhaps this is democratic.  In a true democracy, the majority in power can override the desires of the minority.  Our founders recognized this potential and tried to avoid it with the establishment of a Republic where power was shared and the Constitution specifically addressed the rights of the individual by limiting the power of government.

The administration's second priority is, of course, climate change.  Their strategy to abandon fossil fuels and create “good-paying union jobs” to build an equitable clean energy future was funded to the tune of $1.5 trillion this past year.  It will be interesting to see how much of the aging infrastructure is modernized during this administration, but we do know the free flow of dollars into the economy is having a truly negative effect on the poorest of the nation.  On December 21, 2020, the median price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.19 after bottoming out earlier in the year at #1.77[3]. At the close of 2021, the price was about $3.37[4], a 53% increase in one year.  While some of this can be justified by an increase in demand as the nation resumes travel, a significant portion is directly attributable to the administration’s decisions regarding supply-side control and the inflation caused by all the “free money” floating around. Again, what seems to go unchallenged by the media is who suffers the most from these price increases?  Is it the government officials who drive their official vehicles, the President who flies in a Boeing 747, or in a 20-car motorcade, the rich who take their private jets to climate change conferences, or the lower-income family struggling to make ends meet?

The list of priorities goes on, but I’m not sure where we look to see any remarkable successes in this past year.  We’ve had administration officials say the number one threat to our nation is climate change, white extremism, police brutality, systemic racism, gender discrimination, or a lack of diversity.  All threats that demand more government control over the individual, and less respect for the individual. The question that goes unanswered, at least for me, is who really gets to decide what our greatest threat to national survival is and how is that threat addressed?  Does making a trans-gender pediatrician/politician an Admiral in the public health service really address the diversity challenges?  Does looking at military members' social media posts eliminate extremism, or does it shift the focus of the DOD from a defense of the nation into an administration police force? Do more taxes, greater inflation, and greater government control actually protect this nation, or does it weaken it? 

Well, that’s enough for now.  Have a great 2022.

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[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/record-high-turnout-in-2020-general-election.html

[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections

[3] https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/gas-price-report-december-21-2020

[4] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price

When Reality Strikes Too Close to Home

As we approach Christmas, a time when Christians are supposed to remember the salvation of their souls by a merciful God who sent his Son to earth to atone for our sins it seems kind of ironic the most progressive and liberal among us are now being confronted by their own choices.

Recently, a killer broke into the home of Clarence Avant and killed his wife, Jacqueline Avant.  Ms. Avant, who at 81 was a long-time Philanthropist and supporter of liberal causes.  Also attacked were Droit Kemsley, a star from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and Terrance J, a host from BET were both targeted by “flash mob” robbers.  It seems crime is beginning to affect even the rich and isolated of Beverly Hills, or as Oprah Winfrey, also known as a progressive who likes to give things away, says: "it has “shaken the laws of the universe.”

Crime and violence are not supposed to directly affect those who can afford their own security, who support the release of violent felons back into their neighborhoods, or who fund causes, where felons are the good guys and cops, are the enemy.  Those "good guys and gals" are supposed to stay where they belong and prey on those who also live in those areas, leaving the rich to feel good about helping society.

As Ann Althouse^[1] points out radical leadership is concerned enough to say “They're trying to move us backward,' said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. 'We don't want to move backward; we want to move forward... We need to think about what kind of economic desperation actually creates property crime and how do we get people out of that state... How do we create livable wage jobs? How do we create affordable housing?'"  All great ideas until those rich liberals are actually expected to make choices that may affect their own standards of living.

The problem with all these movements is no one is really willing or able to address how dependence on the government is destroying the essential building blocks of society.  When these building blocks are gone, society will fail and we will have to start over.  The first block is a family.  Not a family unit, but a real family where there is a mother, a father, children who are taught common values by their parents and aren’t just turned into wards of the state.  The second block is a community where all the members share common values of hope (for a future better than today), respect (for the rights of others), and value for themselves and those around them.  The final building block is a trust for a standard of laws that are blind to the color of skin, gender, and the wealth or power (or lack) of the accused.

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[1] https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/12/crews-of-burglars-publicly-smashing.html

Civility in an Age of Uncivil Society

It has become an almost nightly fixture on the news these days.  Some news channels reporting of an unruly passenger on an airline assaulting either the flight crews or other passengers.  It appears most of these events involve the millennial generation.  Passengers ranging from their twenties to early forties.  If true, it suggests to me just one more manifestation of a generation created with a sense of entitlement and self-importance that leads to outrage anytime they are forced to comply with some social norm.

These are the people who now control social media and who seem to believe being an “influencer” is actually a profit-making occupation.  I’ve been criticized by progressives for believing there is such a thing as a “slippery slope” where bad behavior, once tolerated, will lead to increasingly bad behavior. 

But I see in the Millennials a generation that has little respect for the history and culture of the nation and has been told their behavior will be tolerated.  We have legal and legislative systems around the country now committed to releasing violent individuals in the name of social justice.  We have judges who place their political beliefs before their role in the law.  In the eyes of Beryl Howell[1], an appointee by the Obama Administration, she is outraged the DOJ is allowing the January 6^th rioters plea deals that tie her hands in handing down serious prison time.  I don’t recall those same complaints with rioters in Minneapolis or New York as they protested the George Floyd death.  It seems in the eyes of liberal judges not all riots are created equally.  Those that pass their social muster are okay, those that don’t are a serious threat to democracy.

It will be interesting to see how the airlines and the government now deal with the increasing violence in the skies.  Whatever the course of action airlines will need to rethink their advertisements and perhaps even the "woke" political choices they support?  Since the "woke" tend to eat their own and if you get even a little out of step you will be condemned anyway.  

Can we really say “Fly the friendly skies” anymore?  Perhaps, “Fly with us, we are only mildly passive-aggressive” would be more accurate.  Remember, we are all in this together, unless your entitlements are more than my entitlements.

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[1] https://news.yahoo.com/federal-judge-criticizes-dojs-plea-204112591.html

Choices

We live in a remarkable time.  We now have access to all the information known to mankind.  We have so much access it is overwhelming for most of us, and we choose to live on the soundbites of information provided by our media.  These tidbits of information are sanitized, formatted, and cherry-picked to present to us the reality those pushing want us to believe in.  Of course, there is always a mirror image of that reality so that we can never be too sure that what we are seeing is really the original, or a reflection of the original changed just enough to present an alternative reality.

In 1984, Apple Inc. had a Super Bowl commercial that played on George Orwell’s novel of the same name.  In that commercial Apple^®, introduced the original Macintosh computer with the promise we would see why “1984 won’t be like 1984.”  Yet here we are almost 30-years later with the images of Orwell’s frightening vision playing out precisely because of the information age unlocked by the personal computer and the domination and control of that information by mega-corporations with global impact who can now reach into our homes and extract whatever data they desire.

We see our society fracturing now, more than our history teaches us we did in the past.  Rather than moving toward a renaissance of new ideas and thoughts, we seem to be moving to an age where the smallest voices in society dominate the conversations through the loudest megaphones.  A time where the age of reason is replaced by the age of outrage. Everywhere we look we see the condemnation of our historical values by groups who have rejected them and now demand their personal values be used as the new civil standard.  As soon as that happens a new group of outraged minorities rise up and demand those standards are obsolete and new ones must be accepted.

Meanwhile, the political and financial elite, speaking from behind their walls spur on the discontent so we won’t notice their acquisition of wealth and the creation of a two-class economy where there are only rich and poor.  The poor, of course, will live off the scraps of the rich, just as they do in other two-class societies.

We’ve seen over these past dozen years the choices made by our increasingly dominant younger generations, and it seems they are willing participants in the evolution of society to that envisioned by George Orwell.  A society where independent thought is vilified and approved behaviors are demanded.  I guess this is what happens when we create an educational industry where conformity is demanded and standards are lowered so no one is left behind.