Americans

My earlier post on “The Way We Were” took issue with Dorothy Rabinowitz’s characterization of president Obama as “The Alien in the White House.” She described a gulf between his actions and what she sees as the sensibilities of Americans.

My point is that Americans defy categorization: Each of us is different. Characterizing us in some way – see My Profile – can be offensive. When a person attempts to classify Americans by their feelings, that person typically exposes his or her own values and biases, not those of “Americans.”

De Tocqueville probably got it right a couple of centuries ago, but imagine what he would think now? Maybe he could take some lessons from a Canadian…

Mark Steyn, the embodiment of the description “brilliant satirist,” captures the essence of the issue. He views America from that time-honored vantage point of a person born on foreign shores, and provides perfect insight into the issues raised by Ms. Rabinowitz.

John Hinderaker from Power Line highlights the key points from Mr. Steyn’s article:

Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that for Barack Obama, governing America is "an interesting sociological experiment", too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is "the place on Earth that, if I needed one, I would call home." But he doesn't, not really: It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to. That's not to say he's un-American or anti-American, but merely that he's beyond all that. Way beyond. He's the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he's condescending to the job - that it's really too small for him, and he's just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.

And so the Gulf spill was an irritation, but he dutifully went through the motions of flying in to be photographed looking presidentially concerned. As he wearily explained to Matt Lauer, "I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain, talking..." Good grief, what more do you people want? Alas, he's not a good enough actor to fake it.

Contrast the Republican concept of a special place called America (with The Constitution as its defining document) against the idea of America as an abstraction; a transient anomaly in a world destined for some type of elite centralization.

It’s sad to see the idea of world domination never losing its luster. It is a recurring theme in political movements, where a greater “good” always allows the current transgressions to be accommodated.

In the last ten years, our attention has been drawn to affairs of the Middle East. We have seen the power of combining politics with religious zeal, and observe the daily evidence of death being legitimized. We watch a political/religious movement (the “Religion of Peace”) maintain its power by teaching people to hate, and see vestiges of that sentiment in our anti-Republican culture.

Americans no longer have the luxury of holding complacency as a proper course of action. Life is complicated, but we have to make choices. Here is the first one:

Where does your allegiance lie?

UPDATE 6/13/2010:
Linked by The Other McCain.  Thanks, Stacy!
Also linked by Irish Cicero in Washington Rebel.  "Retrosexual Sunday"?
And now bestowed the prestigious "Quote of the Weekend" by Left Coast Rebel!  I appreciate the kind thoughts, Tim.

The Way We Were

Courtesy of Getty Images via The Wall Street Journal

Dorothy Rabinowitz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. Her 6/9/2010 WSJ article, The Alien in the White House, is worth reading.

Ms. Rabinowitz describes a gulf that exists between the ideology of our current president and the sensibilities of the American people. She argues that, “A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs.”

While the analysis is excellent, I was distracted by the vantage point of Ms. Rabinowitz. She speaks as though she is an authority on the American psyche. She cites the qualities that make a president the leader of Americans, “… a man of them, for them, the nation’s voice and champion…” and she recounts the feelings that are held “… deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.”

She notes reactions to Mr. Obama’s apologies for American guilt: “Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president.”

While Ms. Rabinowitz uses the present tense in her analysis, she is relating to a romanticized America that is in our past.

America has never been monolithic, other than in the context of political characterizations. It is a diverse republic, and is particularly so with the representations brought about by our anti-Republican culture. When a politician speaks of “America”, it is a decidedly different entity depending upon the political party of the speaker.

Mr. Obama might be characterized as an “Alien in the White House”, but he is also the recipient of a Nobel Prize. He might have a sense of identification that is unfamiliar to Americans, but he was taught that identity in our school system. He makes political appointments that might seem out of touch to the Americans described by Ms. Rabinowitz, but those appointments fit quite nicely with the sensibilities of our Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury.

It is hard for me to feel comforted by Ms. Rabinowitz’s column when I know that majorities within our branches of government, federal agencies, entertainment industry, and school system do not support her viewpoint.

In fact, there is cultural acclamation for just the opposite point of view. The thesis for Ms. Rabinowitz’s column is based on a perception of an American spirit that is held by very few Americans!

And that’s unfortunate.

The Indictment

David Sirota has an opinion piece – The myth of “the left” - in the Denver Post this morning.

He wishes to set the record straight: characterizations of the American “left” as being all-powerful are a myth. His argument is that many “progressive” institutions are “just propagandists for Democrats, regardless of what Democrats do.”

Mr. Sirota cites the BP oil spill as an example where a Democrat (Interior Secretary Ken Salazar) compromises his environmental principles in favor of keeping “categorical exclusions” for drilling in the Gulf. He also cites the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination as an example where a Democrat serves as Dean of the Harvard Law School, but “did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian” in a group of 29 tenure-track faculty (according to Guy-Uriel Charles of Duke University).

Mr. Sirota ends his article by noting that the Democratic Party's decision to elevate politics over principle is “why – regrettably – a powerful left does not exist in America.”

Here are some thoughts...

What Mr. Sirota misses is an understanding of the word “principle.”

The dictionary.com definition has descriptors such as “rule”, “law”, “truth” and “obligation”. The impression is that you stand by principles; you keep your principles.

Mr. Sirota shows us that allegiance to the Democratic Party is actually the governing principle, while progressive ideology is a prop. The ideology can be picked up or discarded, depending on whether or not it brings more power and authority to the Democratic Party. He tells us that environmentalism and affirmative action are “principles” but shows that they are cast aside when they conflict with the objectives of the Democratic Party. One has to wonder, are "principles" meant to be cast aside?

That probably sounds harsh, especially to a person such as David Sirota, who regrets that the American left is not more powerful. He rallies to a cause based upon his principles, and doesn’t like the feeling of being used as a prop.

That feeling is powerful, and appears to be awakening some introspection on the progressive side of our political spectrum. It prompts Mr. Sirota, in his third paragraph, to disclose a political secret:

“Everyone in professional ‘left’ politics knows this reality.”

That’s an indictment.

Why The Numbers Are So Big

R. David Ranson, President and Director of Research for H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc. recently (May 17, 2010) had a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Hauser’s Law.

It’s a graph showing that federal revenue from taxes in the United States (vertical axis) has never exceeded 20% of GDP (horizontal axis) since World War II. It dramatically points out that there is an upper limit to the amount a government can tax its people.

Consider the impact: Ever since the Federal Reserve has been managing the money supply, there has never been an instance when our government was able to extract more than 20% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) from taxpayers. That’s almost 100 years, in periods of inflation/deflation, high/low marginal tax rates, peacetime and war. It is an “Economic Law.”

I thought of this in the context of a presentation last night (May 19, 2010) by Jack Arrowsmith, the Clerk and Recorder for Douglas County here in Colorado. Mr. Arrowsmith held a town meeting, and went over the performance of his department for the last few years.

One thing that stood out was that he sets a budget and then meets that budget, year after year.

While his budget varies from $4,000,000.00 to $6,000,000.00 per year (depending on election costs), he watches over that budget and uses it as a management tool. He is a good steward of taxpayer funds.

Americans can relate to a million dollars. We see it in the context of lottery payouts and game show winnings. It is a large number, but has meaning (particularly to our local governments).

Our federal government deals in trillions of dollars. That is a million times a million dollars. If you think of a million dollars as one millionth of a trillion, you see how $1,000,000.00 gets lost in the rounding. It becomes insignificant.

And that’s the power of the “Big Numbers.” They are so big that we don’t want to deal with them; we make them an abstraction. We rely instead on our emotions to guide us, and on what our leaders teach us to believe.

While our political leaders depend on our trust, they often use the Big Numbers to deflect our attention. Political favoritism then gets lost in the overall package.  Earmarks become “insignificant.” Political dreams are used to conceal fiscal reality.

Hauser’s Law is like Jack Arrowsmith’s budget. It must be dealt with and is “real.” When we are told to expect the future to take care of us, we accept this belief at our own personal risk.

As we attempt to tax our way out of these difficult times, it will be fun to see how much room there is in Hauser’s Law.

Then again, it might not be “fun” at all.

UPDATE 5/23/10:
Linked by Left Coast Rebel.  Thanks, Tim!

UPDATE 11/26/2010:
Mr. Hauser himself weighs in to let everyone know that his law is still intact!

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The Quiz

The Quiz stirs up controversy. It poses the themes of the Democratic Party in the form of a questionnaire, and makes people uncomfortable. People are forced to momentarily dwell outside their comfort zone.

(For your convenience, The Quiz is available here as a .PDF document.)

The reason for the discomfort associated with this piece of paper is that our anti-Republican culture considers it unacceptable to place a mark in the column labeled “Democrats.” The characterizations that are listed should only apply to Republicans and need not be challenged.

Who should take The Quiz? This is where the fun begins.

Suppose The Quiz is administered to a gathering of behavioral scientists, and they agree that Republicans are associated with the characterization of “homophobic.” Given this outcome, is it possible that a Republican can be cured of “homophobia” by simply going down to the local County Clerk’s office and changing political registration? What if this finding is published as a part of “homophobia research”?

Hopefully, our hypothetical scientists will be intrigued by our American culture and its tenet that only Republicans are guilty of homophobia. Maybe they would consider addressing the issue of gay Republicans having to brand themselves as “Log Cabin Republicans.” While they are at it, they could even examine if any political influences are coloring their work.

Taking the cultural issue a step further, can it be “right and natural” that in America it is humorous to joke about lynching a white woman?

And here’s one more…

Just over a month ago (March 24, 2010), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out a donation request with a letter from Vice President Joe Biden. The graphic in the letter is a call to arms:

Vice President Biden writes:

Republicans want to exact a political price for our success. Their plan is this: Use the midterm elections to strengthen their numbers, weaken Democrats, repeal health care reform and destroy President Obama. And they are more than willing to lie to do it.

On top of everything else, the Vice President of the United States thinks it is right to characterize Republicans as liars.

Don’t wait for anyone to challenge his legitimacy. Our anti-Republican culture approves.

UPDATE 7/28/2011:
Lisa Gartner at The Examiner writes about a survey given to students in Virginia.  It shows the progression of student attitudes about honesty and cheating from grades 6 through 12.

It would be interesting to see a similar study associated with "The Quiz."  My sense is that with grade progression, our culture instills ever-stronger anti-Republican sentiment in public school students.  It would be interesting to see if a survey bears that out.

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A Tale of Two Speakers

Photo by Jeff Sciortino in Chicago Magazine

The Denver Post ran a story two days ago about a speech given by former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

NC protesters walk out of speech by Tancredo

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—At least 100 protesters walked out on former congressman Tom Tancredo as he spoke on a North Carolina university campus, one year after he was shouted down at a similar appearance.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that the group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stood in unison Monday night, yelling, "No human is illegal." After that, the students moved outside the Student Union and into the Pit, a traditional campus gathering spot.

Tancredo continued with his speech.

When the Colorado Republican visited UNC last April, Students for a Democratic Society shouted him down, held banners in front of him and marched through the hallway outside the overcrowded classroom where he spoke. Criminal charges were filed against one student, but were later dropped.

The Denver Post has a story today (April 28, 2010) about another speech:

Judge won't let university cancel Ayers' speech in Wyoming

CASPER — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the University of Wyoming must allow 1960s radical William Ayers to speak on the Laramie campus.

The university had cited threats of violence in not allowing Ayers to speak at an event planned for today.

Ayers, a University of Illinois-Chicago professor, was co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical 1960s anti-war group that claimed to be responsible for a series of bombings. Charges against him were later dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.

In one case, the speaker’s First Amendment rights are upheld. In the other, the speaker’s First Amendment rights are abused.

The Denver Post helps our understanding of this cultural double standard by noting that the speaker suffering the abuse is - wait for it - a Republican.

UPDATE 4/29/2010:
The Denver Post gives us a summary of reaction to Mr. Ayers' speech last night.  About 10 people carrying flags gathered outside the auditorium to protest the speech.  That circumstance will support a claim that "both Democrats and Republicans have the same problem" but will miss the distinction that the anti-Republican activities were conducted inside the auditorium, involved ten times the number of people, and disrupted the speaker.

Just another day in the life of a public speaker who happens to be a Republican...


UPDATE 4/30/2010:
Michelle Malkin has a link to a New York Times op-ed written by Kris Kobach that addresses some of the issues being talked about by congressman Tancredo.  Left Coast Rebel links to us.  Thanks, Tim.

The essential point is that Americans must carry identification documents with them when in foreign countries, yet our culture deems it "unfair" when we try to enforce such a provision on foreign visitors to America.

Isn't the abstraction of politics fascinating?  With passion and conviction, we mentally separate decisions about our personal security from those decisions we make about national security.  It is wholly understandable that I as an individual should carry ID, yet our culture finds it totally unreasonable to expect the same accommodation from a large demographic group.

And what makes this logic legitimate?  Politics!

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Killing Me Softly

The title of this post comes with apologies to lyricist Norman Gimbel and composer Charles Fox. It is not about a song made popular by Roberta Flack.



Rather, this post relates to a strange new theme being advanced by our anti-Republican culture: Republicans as killers.

I know. It’s probably going to take some background information to understand this one...

Do you remember Cindy Sheehan? Her son Casey was one of eight service members killed on Palm Sunday (April 4, 2004) during a battle in Sadr City, Iraq.

Mrs. Sheehan could have blamed the insurgents who killed her son. She could have blamed Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the militants. She could have blamed the abstraction of war.

Mrs. Sheehan didn’t choose any of these.

She chose to blame Republicans, and directed her hatred specifically toward President George W. Bush.

A photo of the memorial service for Casey Sheehan and his comrades

by Michael Abrams of Stars and Stripes.

Fast-forward to the present. You are watching last month’s House floor debate on the health care bill.

Representative John Dingell, D-MI, uses his moral authority to cast Republicans as killers. He lectures us on Republicans causing the deaths of people with medical ailments, and chastises his Republican colleagues, saying “Eighteen thousand Americans every day die - uh every year – die for want of health care.” (24:46 in the C-SPAN video)

If 50 Americans are dying from lack of health care every day, Representative Dingell tells us it is because of Republicans. There is no sense of shared responsibility. Republicans are to blame.

This month, we see the “Republicans as killers” theme applied in very specific instances. Sarah Palin finds herself accused of having a violent page in Facebook!

The Huffington Post headlines its report:

“Sarah Palin’s PAC Puts Gun Sights on Democrats She’s Targeting in 2010.”

The article posts a picture of the Arctic Fox using her index fingers as six-shooters, and characterizes her language as “decidedly militant.”

For proof, it quotes the former governor of Alaska as saying “We’ll aim for these races…” and “This is just the first salvo…” and “join me in the fight.”

It might seem lighthearted, but there is an unmistakably dark background message: Sarah Palin wants to kill off Democratic Party congressional candidates.

Combine that with a recent report by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post that characterizes the American Tea Party Movement as filled with violent racists, and you get a sense of the anti-Republican rhetoric that is being ramped up for this year’s elections.

Is characterizing Republicans as “racists” or “homophobes” or “bigots” hate speech? The task of our anti-Republican culture is to acclimatize us to that type of speech so that it seems “right and natural.” However, routinely being labeled a “killer” is going to require a bigger mental adjustment, and brings up a couple of questions:

Why, in America, has it become a kind of national sport to hate Republicans?

When did hatred become “cool”?

UPDATE 12/1/2010:
Power Line has a critique of a post from The Democratic Strategist that characterizes Republicans as being prone to violence and engaging in "Politics as Warfare."  Power Line downplays it, but the rhetoric of the piece is a "call to arms" that should not be dismissed lightly.

UPDATE 8/22/2013:
Thom Hartmann characterizes Republicans as "stone-cold killers."

UPDATE 12/14/2013:
The Denver Post follows up on yesterday's Arapahoe High School shooting incident here in Colorado, providing background on the possible motivation of the student gunman. The "Republicans as killers" theme is apparently taking root:

Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing "you republicans are so cute" and posting an image that reads: "The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?"

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