Faults With False Hero Worship

A former community organizer from Chicago, the president entered the Oval Office five-plus years ago, amid high hopes and promises of transparency. Critics warned not to expect anything of the kind, and to expect a velvet glove treatment if you were not counted among Obama’s close friends. Named the “Chicago Way” for a reason, operating only in a city, there is a reason it is not called, the “Way of the World”.

Where Obama and others erred, was that they thought themselves to be above the fray.

Read the entire article at Conservative Daily News.

Boston Take Aways

Boston was a city that had artificially seized up – made motionless and frozen in fear by 24 hour coverage. That same 24 hour news coverage, with its instantaneous updates, and conjecture-as-news, as exhausting as it was, provided us with a few valuable insights. The media and the government both showed themselves as highly amateurish at times, but perhaps most instructive, the resilience and ability of Americans to stand together in dire times was also shown. We saw both the best, and at times, the worst of humanity.

Find my complete post here: Conservative Daily News

Carlos Arredondo holds Old Glory

Faith In…Nothing?

As it has become well-known in the past 20 or better years, there are certain groups who take it upon themselves to “protect” our rights. It sounds like a noble cause – a brave group of lawyers, preventing things like civil rights violations and ensuring alleged criminals receive counsel. However, that is the assumption of those groups, but not necessarily their actions.

In Jackson, Ohio, a portrait that had hung in a school since 1947 was recently removed, after the (Freedom From Religion Foundation) FFRF and (American Civil Liberties Union) ACLU filed lawsuits. The groups would have us believe that the portrait was heinous, and portrayed the sort of thing that should never be seen in schools. The expected backlash was so bad, the people who were supposed to have reported the portrait are still referred to as John Doe-plaintiffs by the groups. Nothing like invoking your rights while you cower, eh?

Just what was this awful, heinous, picture? What could cause so much outrage and belly aching? What could possibly be so inflammatory? Why this bust of Jesus Christ, which hung so long in the school:

The Head of Christ, by Warner Sallman

Created in 1941 by a Chicago painter named Warner Sallman, the painting grew in popularity to become one of the most popular depictions of Christ of all time. The calming gaze was apparently too much for some though.

The painting was removed, even though the school was not ordered to take the work down, because the school’s insurance company refused to cover legal costs to argue the case in the courts. The superintendent then said the school could not afford the costs on their own, and ordered the picture to be taken down.

The painting actually was not owned by the school district itself. The painting belonged to a group who attended the high school, and was a Christian service group, the Hi-Y Club. The ACLU and FFRF claim the club gave the picture to the school district, but the district denied any such arrangement was ever made, and said that the painting still belonged to the group.

The main issue seems to be another attack on religion in general (Christ was a Jew, he was the basis for Catholicism and Christianity, and he is considered a prophet in Islam). There is no one religion being targeted. So, under the guise of protecting civil rights, and ensuring the continued separation of church and state (which is always a specious claim at best), the ACLU and FFRF have forced, through legal intimidation, the painting’s removal. To preserve free speech, they must quash…free speech.

Read more on the case via the Montreal Gazette.

Moving Left Isn’t Right

Written in a time filled with the gasps and death of the Soviet Union, and its satellites’ declarations of their independence, I found Alvin Rabushka’s “The Failure of Socialism in China” capturing my attention. In it, the author mentions the method that Mao Zedong attempted to use to incite the communist Chinese economy to grow – namely central planning. The author also illustrates why the planning did little to anything at all on its own in the way of economy-building or growth.

As many economists critical of socialist governments point out, central planning heavily relies on a number of measures, so that it can claim to function better than alternative forms of economies.

Find the complete post here: Conservative Daily News

Those who ignore history…

Russell’s Rules vs. Today’s Government Rule

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

This week, on Openculture.com, I stumbled onto a reference of a Bertrand Russell column from 1951. In the New York Times Magazine article, Russell shared his “10 Commandments for a Healthy Democracy”. Now, dismissing for a moment whether he was a classical liberal, a neo-liberal, an English liberal, or American liberal, I would like to allow the commandments to stand on their own.

I propose to take Russell’s rules, and use them to give a simple zero to two grading scale for each of the majorities in the houses of Congress, and for the President and his administration. Along with the grades, I will also list the most significant reasons for assigning the grades that I have. At the end, I will tally the scores, and reveal who has been the most misguided, and most ignorant when it came to Russell’s advice. So, here is Russell’s commandments vs. the United States government’s behavior.

Read the entire piece here, on Conservative Daily News:
“Russell’s Rules vs. Today’s Government Rule“

“I Am Not A Dictator!”

“O Duck Luck, ” says Hen Pen, “the sky is falling!”
“Why, how do you know it?” says Duck Luck.
“Obama Chicken Little told me.”

And so goes the story of another famous alarmist, Chicken Little. President Obama has attempted for the past few weeks to raise alarm about the awful “cuts” that would affect everything. The economy will be hurt and crippled for years, other results include millions of furloughed federal employees, and a non-functioning military. All because those darned Republicans would not agree with him to further increase spending.

 The rights so valued and inherent in each of us has slowly continued to erode away, and with a president such as Obama, it will be a long four years.

Read the whole article at Conservative Daily News, here: http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2013/03/i-am-not-a-dictator/

“I am not a dictator!”

Hold Your Horses, Hutton

They did WHAT!?

In his February 16, 2013 column in the Guardian, columnist Will Hutton lays out the numerous failings of the British Food Standards Agency (FSA), which led to horse meat entering the human food chain. The horse-meat scandal may actually turn out to be two parallel mislabeling scams. Whatever the case, and as strange as mislabeled horse-meat is – it is not my primary issue.

My issue is with Hutton’s disgusting use of the scandal. Mirroring the penchant for American “journalists” who turn their columns and shows into personal soap boxes, Hutton takes swipes at right wingers in the United States, and he espouses the supposed ability of large government to function better than a slim and efficient one. Hutton especially takes to task a British politician who supported cuts in the funding of the FSA.

Hutton would have us believe a fully funded FSA would not have allowed this fiasco to occur. Indeed, an FSA, or any other governmental agency that does not receive adequate funding, is the cause for any accidents and other unfortunate mistakes that then occur. Hutton thinks that because the politicians, often times responding to their voters’ concerns, reduce funding to a bloated agency, they should receive the anger and onus of the press and people too.

Hutton so seems to dislike politician Owen Patterson, he goes so far as to make a personal attack of the man, referring to him as “one of the less sharp knives in the political drawer”. Hutton’s anger seethes against anyone he deems “connected” to the scandal. He attacks the large supermarket chains who seek to price food where the consumer can afford it, he attacks the stock holders of the supermarkets, he attacks right-wing think tanks in the U.S., and he eventually goes so far as attacking capitalism itself, saying it does not deliver the best outcomes.

Within those barbs fed by misunderstanding and assumption, Hutton joins so many of the American left, who hear the word, “capitalism”, and either rage or cringe. The cause of so much damage to people, the cause of so much environmental damage – is the dreaded capitalism. Never mind that it is also the reason there are 90 different types of bread on the supermarket shelves or that it is the reason that clothing is still relatively inexpensive and easily replaced — we must see like Mr. Hutton, that capitalism is inherently evil. Everything it touches, businesses, politicians, and workers are worse off, Hutton would have us believe.

Oddly though – the tax revenue that the capitalism structure generates that allows the left’s dream of bloated and inefficient government programs – well, that is the only good thing that comes from capitalism. Somehow, running the funds through the filter of government who then divvy them out, changes the funds from merely evil capital, based on worker exploitation, to a wonderful means to a social end. Again, in a parallel with the left in the United States, Will Hutton seeks to use a crisis to further the false cause of enlarging the government’s reach and its strength.

I find it interesting that while the right, conservatives especially, often find themselves fitted with the mantle of being a backward-looking anachronism, the left on both sides of the pond, seem constantly to recycle their failed policies of Keynesian spending and bloated government structures. A strength of conservatives is to not only look to history for measures that work, but to look back, and abandon and prevent measures that have failed. Perhaps the left should  finally abandon the continuous failure that is Keynesian economics – but with as rabidly as some support left-wing politics, you have a better chance of having lunch with a Kentucky Derby winner…