One of the most decent and downright honorable men I have known in my life is Steven Anthimedes. A second generation Greek American small businessman still in his mid twenties, the young man is the epitome of the little things that have made and continue to make ours the greatest civilization on the planet. He's the guy you can call at 3.00 am and tell your woes; he is the fellow who wouldn't bat an eyelash before coming over to pick up a buddy too inebriated to drive; he is the neighbor who cheerfully mows the lawn for the elderly lady down the street. I have known him since he was a teenager and am proud to call him a friend and a brother who lives up daily to his (and mine) fraternity's credo of being a man 'who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own'. And so, when the Republican party called on him to do the almost impossible, he did not think twice.....men whose ancestors came from the land of Pericles and Leonidas know a thing or two about duty.

You see, Steve is running in a reliably Democratic district against the entrenched number two Democrat in the Kansas House of Representaitves, Representative Jim Ward. Mr. Ward is an extreme liberal lawyer whose main claim to fame has been as the chief lesgislative obstructionist for the extreme liberal Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Representative Ward's toadying has been rewarded amply from the governor's bulging coffers filled with money from the trial lawyers and the national abortion industry. And as Mr. Ward is busy picking up PAC checks from the governor's ultra-liberal and labor union buddies, Steve is knocking on the doors of his neighbors sharing with them his commonsense Kansas ideas about a safer state, stronger families, and lower taxes. I don't know who will win the race in the district but Mr. Ward will no longer be getting the free ride has enjoyed for a long time.

While courage is a commodity in rather limited supply amongst scared Republicans this year, it is abundant in a Southeast Wichita district where a young man with convictions is taking on a well financed stooge of the liberal special interests in Topeka.

It is well said that evil triumphs only because good men choose to do nothing. That, my friends, is certainly not the case in Wichita, Kansas this year!

To my friend and brother  Steve..a hearty PHI ALPHA!!!

To all my readers, wish my buddy well and say a prayer for him please!

One of the possible candidates for 2008 still under the radar screen is my own Senator Sam Brownback. I say that not only because he is my senator, but because he has most of the strengths that other favorites do, without carrying their ugly baggage. That Sam is still under the radar screen is largely due to his own dimunitive, humble personality.

Personal: The man has been married only once, has procreated children only with his wife, and she is the only ladylove in his life (these days quite a rarity amongst politicians). Definitely not an ethically challenged man like the former mayor of Gotham. A soft-spoken former law professor who has two adopted children as well, Brownback is quite the genuine poster-child for personal and social rectitude. His personality is such that I am yet to find a Democrat in this state (and I know many) who does not like the man after meeting him in person. That Reaganesque quality makes many Democrats here afraid of him, I have been told by several. Brownback is an impossible guy to dislike!

Money: The man is married into money (the wife is from the wealthy Stouffer family) but his genuine ability to connect one-to-one (people in Kansas insist on that from politicians) makes him a very good fundraiser. I have seen him in action....I had the privilege of being his chauffer for a day during one of his earlier campaigns stops in my city when he was running the first time for the Senate.

Politics: Unabashedly, but very humbly, a leader of the right-to-life movement in Congress and a champion of free trade, anti-ballistic missile defense, compassionate welfare, global religious freedoms, comprehensive immigration reform, and the right to bear arms. In other words, a follower of Ronald Reagan's principled, optimistic, hope and growth agenda. In other words, he is no 'compromise on anything' McCain and he is no 'believe in nothing' Pataki.

Watch out for this man....he could be our next President. Plus it's time again for a Kansan to be in the White House anyway. The last time it happened, I wasn't even born...so I'd like to see that.

Two weeks ago, the United States House passed a bill prohibiting the slaughter of horses for human consumption. It was the humane and decent thing to do. Horses, like dogs, have been the best friends of men since the beginning of time. Most Democrats, along with almost all Republicans, voted for the measure. The sheer hypocricy of the Democrats struck me again: not one of them protested about imposing their sense of morality on those strange ones who may think that horse-flesh is a delicacy.

And what does it say about a person who thinks that slaughtering horses is horrible and should be illegal but killing children is an 'unfortunate' choice that must be legal at all costs?

What does it say about a society that rightly shudders at the notion of killing horses but celebrates the killing of the most helpless child as a hallmark of individual autonomy?

The mealy mouth attitude amongst policymakers and opinion-makers is certainly not an isolated phenomena in our contemporary culture. Even in the supposedly competitive corporate world, it is increasingly difficult for executives to say something substantive. Someone I know closely is blessed to be working for a very good, caring, and community oriented company (lets call it ABC Inc) but even here sometimes one has to wonder if political correctness is the newest religion. On a recent project, he asked for certain key files from a client's pointperson two and a half months prior to the completion date of the project. Well, twenty four hours prior to that deadline, his company had STILL not received the completed files; this was after reminding this pointperson every week to send them to ABC Inc. This kind of behavior affected every aspect of the project and took its toll not only on on ABC personnel and that of ABC's client's but also some of their endpoint customers. So what was the post-project observation of the management? Well, there were some "communication issues" and they understood that my friend felt "a little frustrated".

Communication issues?? No, there was sheer and outright negligence on part of an individual or two at ABC's client's business which could have potentially affected ABC's liability and that of the endpoint customer.

Frustrated?? No, frustrated is when you're waiting in line at a DMV office to see some uncaring bureaucrat. This was more like a you gotta be kidding.

I wish three words were absolutely removed from the corporate vocabulary..communication, issues, and frustration. This troika of words has become the first tool in the arsenal of avoidance. Every case of negligence or shortcoming can be explained away by 'communication' (how is rudeness or negligence on one person's part a communication problem with anybody else anyway?).Every major failing is an 'issue' rather than a problem to be solved and accountability to be established. Every serious greivance is considered a frustration, a patronizing description which bespeaks a lazy desire to make everything go away.

It's a pity because there was once a time that singularly amongst the Western world, Americans were known to be the most plain spoken. Now, it seems we speak Kerrylingo even in the halls of our commerce.

 

I was pouring my second cup of coffee that Tuesday morning, watching some special report about New York…and ended up watching live in horror the second plane slam into the Towers. And I had been in the Towers less than two weeks before that, visiting the Windows restaurant and strolling past the esplanade. As we found out later, three of my then company’s own employees perished at the WTC that day.

The war must go on, not because of the past 9/11 but to assure that another does not happen. The dead cannot be brought to live, but those alive must be kept far, far away from such horrendous deaths.

Will we win this long, drawn out war of attrition against a shadowy, sinewy, intelligent, and motivated enemy? That depends largely on our staying power. Since the end of the Second World War, it is said that we have become a selfish society unwilling to sacrifice too much for too long. Others have mocked us as an impatient society addicted to fast food and fast divorces. Are we a society like that indeed? Upon that answer will rest the ultimate fate of this long war on terror.

One of my favorite regular readers, a most delightful lady from South Carolina, made the pertinent observation that my blog posts, while thematically principled, suffered from being occasionally judgmental. I take that observation with good grace and seriousness and will strive to be less harsh in my reflections on others. For it is well said in the Scriptures that we all fall short of the glory of God. I am no exception. Many times in my life I have realized powerfully that 'but for the Grace of God, there go I'.

I hope my readers understand that while often rhetoric blurs the line, my contention is with the deeds of others, not the others as human beings. The fundamental dignity of the human being is a gift granted by the Creator at the inception of life and nothing can take that away. Hence, like true conservatives I do subscribe to the notion that basic respect due to human dignity is immanent regardless of a person's state or status...born or unborn, white or black, woman or man, saint or sinner. Those whose dishonesty, silence, and foul deeds harm others are not worthy of respect as good people...but they are still human beings and children of God and thus entitled to that basic dignity. As a conservative and a man of faith, I cannot believe otherwise.

Neither ethics nor empirical evidence seems to bother the Beltway fellas running the National Republican Senate Committee or the Republican National Committee. The former is busy bashing a Republican (Laffey in RI) in ads and the latter is actively supporting the Democrat-turned-Independent Lieberman over his Republican opponent in CT. These kind of bizarre infighting tactics were common amongst Democrats not too long ago...now the GOP has adopted them in the spirit of unprincipled bi-partisanship.

If principles or the concept of loyalty doesn't bother the latte-sipping, Washington Post reading, moderate image craving Beltway Republicans, at least evidence should. All the money and big guns couldn't help the believe-nothing incumbent GOP Congressman Joe Schwartz in Michigan last month. The same fate befell the Establishment-anointed Jeff Crank in Colorado that same week. It has been well said since time immemorial that those who stand for nothing, fall for anything. Is that the fate that NRSC and RNC are courting this fall?

Why do so many otherwise decent conservative staffers start going pink the moment they get to Washington, DC?

 Just remembered a merciless, but hardly inaccurate in the context of time, comment that a New York preacher made about the Democratic Party on the eve of the 1876 election. He called it, among other things, the party of "Rum, Ruin, and Rebellion"...recalling the party's  efforts to relax state liquor control laws and its contribution to the ruin caused by the then recently concluded War of the Rebellion.

I think today it'll be apt to call the national Democrats the party of "Drugs, Divorce, and Defeat". Recreational drug use, easy divorce, and defeatism abroad seem to be the defining creedo of the liberal Democratic philosophers of the current generation.

 

Family, family, family….it is profoundly bewildering to hear that word constantly bandied about by businesses, doctors, and liberals. Any set of under eighteen individuals with any number of adults under a roof does not make a family, no matter how hard we try to project that image. I know too many children living with a mother and her third boyfriend or second husband while the actual father of the children has voluntarily moved out of their lives or been cruelly forced out by our decidedly anti-family judges. Then you hear the nonsense of having ‘my second family’ (or even a third one)….read I just decided to have multiple litters with multiple partners. Ok, sometimes such hedonism is not the reason, but often it is. Would someone please give people a good dictionary with the proper definition of family in it?

One finds it hardly surprising that the most recent spate of bombings and terror attacks have targeted Israel and India....two widely different countries with amazingly deep common faith in representative democracy. Perhaps it is in our interest, long term visionary interest, to forge a pact of freedom-a common NATO like alliance-with those two nations and others like them. Let us face it, most of the 'old' democracies in Europe are weak and unsure of themselves and take their democratic institutions for granted. It is the likes of Israel, India, Turkey, Botswana, and Lithuania that take the business of democracy seriously enough to defend it vigorously. A sad but remarkable analogy to the state of the Christian faith in the world: except the United States, the rest of the Western world is largely indifferent to Chrsitianity while the most robust examples of shining faith are found amongst Asians and Africans. Will we be looking for the strongest pillars of Western Civilization in Asia and Africa one day? Someone from New York City, the abortion capital of the United States, has hardly any right to preach Judeao-Christian values to a Nigerian Catholic after all. Just wondering.

 

Finally we may have the hidden weapon to beat the Japanese competitive juggernaut. Under heavy influence from the American Bar Association, the Japanese have agreed to drastically increase the number of lawyers who are allowed to practice in that country. Well, for once it seems, the ABA has done a yeoman’s job on behalf of the United States! How better to squelch the competitive spirit of a foe than letting loose on it armies of gladiators who thrive on dubious litigation and aggressively stop any idea of reform in its tracks! Just wait a few years and the Japanese will also have judges who consider themselves gods (until now only the Emperors did!).

Cool. That’s one way to bring down the trade deficit. I am recommending the ABA for a Medal of Freedom.

The networks had a big story this week about how clueless most parents were about the ready availability of drugs at parties their children frequent. As usual, the media got it wrong. Parents are not unaware of that phenomena.....procreators are. Real parents who are involved in the lives of their children love their offsrpring enough to set good examples, make sacrifices, and establish readily enforced boundaries of conduct. It is the sperm and egg donors whose highest values are hedonism and keeping up with Joneses that have kids who end up doing horrible things to themselves and the rest of society.

I have known kids and families of all kinds. Yet, I rarely  find a kid who comes from a two-parent  family where a parent stays at home to raise the children, to have indulged in illicit drugs. Illicit drugs, sexual promiscuity, and failing academics go hand in hand.....no matter how loud the do-anything-you-please chorus sings otherwise. Send the signal that a parent is permissive on one of those three things, and see how the other two follow in quick succession. Real parents don't send those kind of idiotic signals implicitly or explicitly.

Procreators do.

Let us be real. Teens are impressionable. You preach 'tolerance' for deviant behavior, cheat on your spouse, and expect your kids to believe in absolutes of 'right' and 'wrong'? Pleaaaseee!

Teenagers are not my favorite kinda people. Most are boisterous, often disrespectful, and largely clueless about the realities of the world. But most of the blame for this sorry state of affairs falls on men and women who brought them to the world and left them to fend for themselves without an ethical compass. Talk about child endangerment.

 

On my way back from Denver, I stopped at my old college hangout and was thrilled to see a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while. One of them is now a teacher, a card carrying member of the NEA at that. She is the stuff that good teachers are made of, caring, articulate, and concerned about what her kids learn. Nonetheless, she took exception to my using ‘liberal’ as an adjective before ‘Democrat’ everytime I mentioned it. My friend has a valid point: not all Democrats are liberals and indeed there are many good moderates (and even good liberals) amongst them.

But the question so many good moderates fail to answer is that where are the moderates? Where is the moderation? In the case of official NEA policy (which I am sure my friend does not endorse in totality), there is not a shred of moderation or even liberalism for that matter. The NEA’s attitude towards the rest of society smacks of intolerance and superiority complex. It doesn’t want parents to guide the education of their own kids; it believes that the First Amendment stops at the school gate; it wants to retain its monopoly on education no matter how horribly the students do; the list of NEA’s intransigence is endless. And get this: the superintendent of the public school district sends his kids to private school!

The NEA is a lot of things..moderate it is not. And I doubt it is liberal either. Probably the word ‘spoiled’ and ‘totalitarian’ is best used to describe this organization.

So, KsReaganite had to go through the royal mess that Denver Airport was in the aftermath of the London revelations. But he is glad to be back home in Dorothy and Toto's land. On reflection, there is one tiny silver lining for us in the unfolding drama in England: much of the public that had simply become oblivious to the enemy's threat has been shocked back into reality. And the reality is that for most parents, the safety of their offspring is far, far more important than the dubious pronouncements of Nancy Pelosi, the Dixie Chicks, and Chucky Schumer. Hence the concept of "security moms". Security is back on the front stage again.

Can the security of this country, its families, and its allies be entrusted to the 'cut and run' crowd like Jack Murtha? Should it be placed in the hands of the mentally myopic like Albert Gore who can easily panic and push a few nuke buttons? No, we need to keep the faith, stay the course, and hold the line. It is not a coincidence that since 9/11, no other attach has taken place on American soil. Guess who has been in charge of the intelligence, security, and national defense structure during that time? Yep, it's the Bush-Rumsfield-Cheney crowd with strong support from the pro-America part of Congress.

Speaker Pelosi---the sweetest title in the ears of our enemies.

Heavy PAC money, a brevy of top name campaigners including the President, Vice President, and Congressional leadership, and yet....sometimes that is not enough. I am sitting in the Colorado Rockies as results trickle in from two key primary races: next door in CO-05 and further north in MI-07. Heavily favored candidates, including the incumbent in Michigan, lost to insurgents.  The entire Republican establishment was brought to bear to help moderates Jeff Crank and Congressman Schwarz. It didn't work. Republicans should take heed: the profligate spending, the arrogance of incumbency, and cavorting with sleazy Washington lobbyists is taking its toll. If rank and file Republicans are so unhappy, can you imagine what the general electorate is thinking?

There is time. Congressional Republicans have about 90 days to prove to the country that they are different, not just in rhetoric but also in style and policy, from the corrupt Foley-Wright-Rostenkowski gang they had replaced in 1994 on the platform of reform and responsibility.

Or else, we better get ready to live under the Pelosi-Kennedy bi-coastal politburo whose disdain for regular Middle America values is legendary. Remember, these are the people who send their kids to good private schools but want YOU to send your progeny to failing public schools. These are the leaders who want provide 'understand' the terrorists and the criminals rather than fight them. These are the protectors of children who think your 14 year old daughter needs your permission to get a tattoo but only her boyfriend's nod to get an abortion.