I was reading the latest updates on the gubernatorial campaign in Florida. The two leading GOP candidates are, well, quite contemporary. One, the anointed darling of the social conservatives is an admitted drug-user and adulterer. The other, preferred by the Sunshine establishment, is a divorced, tanned, slick, lawyer who is willing to be whatever he needs to be to appear center-right establishment material. As for the Democrats, well…they are Democrats, enough said.

One has to wonder that for all the hype about protecting marriage, why cannot most of these public role models stay married?

The greatest gift my parents gave us three siblings was the example of their own marriage…about to celebrate its thirty seventh anniversary this month. Both of them are ordinary people who have demanding careers, demanding children (okay, I admit!), and demanding schedules. They have their ups and downs..heck, they are from different countries and even spoke different languages growing up. They don’t go around with license tags that proclaim ‘I Love My Husband’ or ‘I Love My Wife’. Rather, they are quiet, unassuming, normal people who have always believed that if their children were happy, they were happy (as opposed to the therapist line that as long as YOU are happy, your children will become happy too). The other thing they have always passionately believed in is that a person’s word is his/her bond: when you pledge love, honor, and fidelity to your spouse for life, well, for life it is. Breaking that promise is unethical, pure and simple.

Those who break that promise are selfish, unethical, and woefully weak. Not exactly the kind of people I want to trust with the Constitution. Do you?

An old man I once knew gave this piece of advice to his grandchildren: don't become policemen, railway officers, or customs inspectors. Having lived his life in the Indian subcontinent, the gentleman knew that those three professions were the pitholes of bribery, corruption, and sheer malfeasance. An honest civil servant to a fault, he did not want his progeny to be tempted or tainted by colleagues who made a living by doing wrong under the guise of public service.

Different time, different place.

Were I in the shoes of that old Indian civil servant, my advice to my progeny here in the good 'ole USA would have been to avoid being lawyers and therapists. Not necessarily because of monetary corruption in those professions but largely because those occupations are built around the concept of short-circuiting the truth. To make a living by encouraging others to repress the truth is not a livelihood I would wish upon those I care about. Most lawyers and almost all therapists do that. The few good ones who want to be true to their conscience and values are faced with tremendous peer pressure to become members of the proverbial club.

 

Facts rarely get in the way of the mind-numbing, make believe piety for America’s mainline Protestant churches or many of their congregants. Their bishops make thunderous pronouncement about how they represent ‘millions’ of Christians; their sermons are filled with venom for capitalism and war; their newsletters proclaim lobbying days for defending ‘reproductive choice’. All in the name of a God whose very name is often referred to in hushed tones lest a neighbor think one belongs to the Christian ‘Right’.

Who are these ‘mainline’ churches?

Well, for starters, there is nothing mainline about them. These are diminishing denominations, ELCA Lutherans, United Methodists, UCC, Episcopalians, USA Presbyterians, with a proud past and a largely inconsequential future. For all the majestic trappings of the installation of the new Episcopal presiding bishop earlier this year, for example, the fact remains that Episcopal churches are largely empty and graying today. The same accelerating trend is seen, with minor exceptions in individual congregations, across all of the mainline denominations. No amount of ‘outreach’, ‘mission’, and ‘openness’ seems to change that.

At the same time, in the same communities, there are many churches which are struggling to find room for exponentially increasing congregations. These are the evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, Southern Baptist, Eastern Orthodox, and conservative Catholic churches. More than one in three Americans worships at a church like these….and many of these Americans are businesswomen, lawyers, accountants, dentists, and MBAs. They are not the unwashed, ignorant, pitiful people that they are often portrayed by the snooty denizens of the mainline clergy.

Let us face it. Most mainline Protestant churches (and many Roman Catholic ones) are little more than Sunday morning coffee clubs with a feel good sermon thrown in for good measure where people go to feel good about themselves. There are no absolutes to live by, no commandments to follow, no preachers to distinguish between right and wrong and fear offending the polite sensibilities of the ‘believe nothing’ class.

No wonder that people who want to go to church, go to a church, not to a coffee klatch housed in a church building with pretentious vestments, dopey relativism, and illusions of non-existent grandeur.

And then they wonder why their ‘churches’ are going the route of dinosaurs.

 

So the other evening I am at a wedding reception, and my date and I end up sitting next to some local judge and his wife. Real nice people. Seems we have some mutual friends and even similar political outlooks. To relieve the boredom usually triggered by ludicrous post-nuptial monotonies of the bride’s- and groom’s friends, the judge and I strike up a conversation. A middle aged man with wits and wisdom, he certainly has kind words for my personal and professional achievements. With a wink towards his wife and then my date, he asks the obvious, “So why isn’t a good young man like you hitched up yet?”

Oh boy, poor judge…he let the wedding aura get to him. My answer, provided below, left him embarrassed, silent, and then stammering semi-legible banalities:

“Why would I do that, Your Honor? So that someone like you can take away my home, my children, half my income, and give it to a woman who stabbed me in the back with dishonesty, cheating, and lies? How stupid do I look to you? Sorry, but I don’t believe in rewarding wrongdoing or punishing the victim.”

So, the primaries are over in this great state of mine. We won a few, lost a few..and life goes on. The biggest prize of all, the Republican nomination for Governor, we did win hands down. With almost 35 % of the vote in a seven way race, Dr. Jim Barnett won convincingly. Now, the pro-life, pro-fiscal responsiblity, pro-commonsense physician takes on the ultra-liberal darling of the Democrat party, our incumbent Governor Kathleen Sebelius. It is an uphill proposition for the physician from Emporia (hometown of the pioneering Republican journalist William Allen White).

Sebelius is a good looking Ohioan who is married into a well respected Republican family. She has the slickness of Bill Clinton in appearing 'moderate' and tons of money from those faint hearted Kansas City country club Republicans whose greatest concern is their manicured lawns and acceptability of their martini-sipping liberal friends.

She is the archetype of the 'look moderate' candidate that red-state Democrats use as a Trojan horse. She is the type of Democrat that so many RINOs vote for to appear 'polite' to their friends.  In a state with a 2-1 GOP registration advantage, she sure is hoping for a lot of turncoats like her running mate, ex GOP chairman Matt Parkinson, to help her secure the next stepping stone to the Vice Presidency of the United States.

In the past, Democrats have won the Kansas governorship with bipartisan help. But most, like the elder Docking and Joan Finney, were commonsense, real moderates with deep roots in the soil and the values of this great state. Sebelius, on the other hand, is an extreme liberal, pro-abortion, pro-tax anti-gun Ohioan.

Yep....I am for the only Kansan in the race. The good doctor from Emporia, Jim Barnett!

At a prominent university on Canada’s Pacific coast, the radical rabble rousers got together with a ‘special meeting’ of the subsidiary teaching/research staff union and demanded an immediate show of solidarity with the ‘suffering’ Lebanese and Palestinian people. The university and the province must divest from Israel and Israeli companies, these pro-Hezbollah folks demanded. And the union leadership was almost ready to cave in; you see Canadians generally do not have much of a backbone about standing up for matters of principle. But lo and behold….KsReaganite’s younger brother, one of the sharpest leaders of the union, was right there. With deft parliamentary maneuvering which left his audience at a loss for words, he quickly dispatched the motion with a substitute motion to study the issue by a special committee headed by himself that was to report in about two months. Now who would oppose the fine Canadian tradition of deliberation till death?

Divestment??? They don’t know how solidly and intellectually pro-Israel my brother is. Wait till his report comes out..heck, knowing him, he will probably recommend more investment in Israel!

Hezbollah and its Canadian allies lost the day to my brother and I am drinking a toast to him. Join me!

On one fundamental issue KsReaganite wholeheartedly agrees with the gay/lesbian lobby: it is the height of hypocrisy for so many Republican politicians to claim to ‘protect’ heterosexual marriage by various kinds of amendments. The idea of ‘marriage’ between two men or two women is beyond my imagination and beneath the dignity of a comment. But that preposterous idea is an extremely miniscule risk to traditional marriage compared to much bigger threats like adultery, spousal abuse, and no-fault divorce. And who are the loudest champions of prohibiting gay ‘marriage’? Here is a small sampling, federal and state:

1. Congressman Steve LaTourette of Ohio, the adulterer who filed to divorce his wife and mother of his five children so that he could openly shack up with his young paramour
2. Newt Gingrich…enough said
3. Congressman Tom Davis III of Virginia, who left his wife of 30 years, and mother of his three children, to marry the protégé he was having an affair with
4. State Senator Jeannemarie Devolitte of Virginia, who cheated on her husband of 24 years, and father of her four children, with Congressman Tom Davis
5. Former U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, who left his wife of 30 plus years, to shack up with a tobacco lobbyist fifteen years his junior
6. State Representative Mike O’Neal of Kansas, Chairman of the Kansas House Judiciary Committee, who left his wife of 15 odd years to put finishing touches on his affair
7. United States Senate candidate John Spence of New York, who left his wife and mother of two children without even the formality of a divorce, shacked up with his secretary by whom he had three kids…polygamy at its best!

If these Republicans were as serious about protecting marriage, they would act more ethically in their own marriages and set good examples for others. And, if they must do something legislatively to protect marriage, such an effort should be directed towards reforming the divorce laws so that children’s homes are not broken up just because a parent has a seven-year itch. Unlikely that this would happen since any common-sense, equitable reform of divorce laws will bring instant bombastic opposition from three most powerful segments of our society that make their living on the backs of broken homes: sleazy male politicians, the American Bar Association, and the National Organization of Women.

Having Tim Hutchinson and Jeannemarie Devolitte protect hetrosexual marriages is like having Sarah Brady protect the Second Amendment.

 

Old guard feminists are so fully stuck in the 1970s, it is almost laughable. That the world has changed and moved on is beyond the fading wits of the Gloria Steinems and Faye Wattletons and their sister hags. Their principal article of faith, that being pro-abortion rights is being pro-woman, has long lost its demographic validity: more American women are pro-life than pro-choice, women are substantially more pro-life than men, and the strongest support for abortion on demand comes from men between 18 and 35. Yet, these feminist dinosaurs cannot let it go…abortion on demand is their litmus test for everything and everyone. So much is their obsession with it that they will gladly label people like Bill Clinton and Teddy Kennedy “champions of women rights”. Tells you how much feminists are out of touch with real women when their heroes are misogynist men who have gotten away proudly with sexual harassment, workplace sexism, attempted rape, repeated cheating on their wives, and murder. Even now, as more and more neutrally culled data challenges feminism to its face, the middle aged feminists and their journalist buddies are calmly living in their cocoon world of three decades ago. A sample of the current facts that have passed the NOW dinosaurs (and their emasculated male Democrat and RINO allies) completely by:

1. Fifty four percent of Americans, men and women, consider the Bible to be literally true.
2. More women than the previous generation, most of them highly educated, are staying home to raise kids.
3. Only half of the college going women, supposedly the most socially liberal of all women, support abortion on demand
4. Close to a third of America’s women agree with the Southern Baptists that the husband is the head of the household
5. A large majority of American women do not consider themselves to be victims of gender oppression
6. Women are far more likely to go to church than men; the churches they go to in ever increasing numbers are the evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, and conservative Catholic congregations, not the anything goes mainline Protestant ones.
7. A majority of America’s women think that the most important job for a woman is to be a good mother
8. Many Democratic women are solidly pro-life. The strong sanctity of life laws enacted recently in South Dakota and Louisiana were spearheaded by liberal Democratic women.

KsReaganite does not necessarily agree with all the points raised above. But the question that begs an answer is this:

What Feminist Majority are these NOW cows representing? There isn't a feminist majority!

KsReaganite’s tentative answer is this: These NOW cows really represent that small sliver of Prozac prescribed well-to-do women who have been educated beyond their intelligence, have hyphenated names, sip martinis while the daycare raises the kids, cheat once in a while to feel liberated, and show up Sunday mornings at mainline churches that tell them whatever they want to hear to feel good about their sorry lives.

Further effort by Kansas Reaganite to help you translate liberspeak. The first sentence is what you hear and the second is what is meant..and so on for each pair of sentences.

Young people need mentors and positive role models.

Kids’ parents are too busy to guide them so they need someone else.

I am a fiscal conservative and social moderate.

I don’t want to pay high taxes and don’t want to offend the media.

There is too much partisanship in Congress these days.

I like the Democratic kind of partisanship, not the Republican kind.

My politics is middle of the road; I am a moderate.

I am a liberal who is too chicken to admit it.

I am pro-woman and therefore pro-choice.

I am a moron who doesn’t realize that a plurality of women are pro-life.

I want the federal government out of the abortion issue.

I didn’t know the Roe v Wade Supreme Court was part of the federal government.

I am a Republican but don’t like the Bible thumpers that dominate the party these days.

I am clueless about how participatory democracy works.

I am a liberal Christian.

I belong to one of those mainline denominations which are DNC spiritual subsidiaries.

I am spiritual but not religious.

I am confused but want to appear respectable.

The government should provide more money for childcare.

I am too much into making money to take care of my kids.

Reagan didn’t win the Cold War, the Soviet Union just collapsed by itself.

I had too much dope and too many liberal professors in the 1980s in college.

Communism is really very good in theory.

I have never met anyone who lived under Communism.

I am personally pro-life but…..

I was born a Catholic but want to be a politician in a blue state

 

Next time you are tempted to strangle your kids out of frustration (and I think all sane parents have that passing thought once in a while!), please move to Texas. If you end up following through on your frustration, chances are that the state will pay for your mental hospital stay and then let you go home once some quack shrink certifies you “recovered”. Yep, that’s what Andrea Yates, the cold blooded murderer of her five children, gets. Not one day in prison, not a dime in fines, not an hour of community service.

Not that it should surprise too many people. For all its reputation of a conservative law and order place, the Lone Star state has a strange record of punishing those who harm children. Couple of years ago a thirty some year old teacher was found guilty of statutory rape of a fourteen year old. You know what happened? A fan of Texas like me had a hard time believing it: Thirty days jail time. The child conceived as a result of this statutory rape was given to the rapist while the young victim was ordered to pay child support and required to stay away from the child!! A Texas state judge made these orders with a straight face. I am not kidding!

Many liberals support killing unborn children. Seems that many conservative Texas judges and juries don’t particularly mind the killing of toddlers or the rape of teenagers.

 

In my great state of Kansas, there is a full fledged Republican primary coming up. The primary pits the Reagan wing of the party against many of the so-called moderate Republicans. These ‘moderate’ Republicans, largely from the tony Kansas City suburbs and Lawrence, are good people with lots of money and membership in beautiful country clubs. They just want to get along with everyone without making too much noise and do not particularly care for the ‘western’ Kansas people, i.e. those in our state who live anywhere west of the famously liberal University of Kansas. The only difference between these Republicans and the state’s Democrats is that the Democrats actually do believe in something greater than manicured lawns in Shawnee Mission. The last pro-life, pro-gun governor of this ‘red’ state was the late Joan Finney, a feisty liberal Democrat.

Well, we have a chance in the next few weeks to place real Republicans in office in Kansas again. Being the true ‘Reaganite’ (in case you did not see the blog name!), I have the honor of supporting the following state-wide nominees who reflect the vision and values of the greatest Republican of our generation.

1. For Governor: Dr. Jim Barnett (a down to earth family physician who takes his Hippocratic oath seriously and has none of the snobbishness of most people in his profession). His running mate is Senator Susan Wagle, a cancer survivor and a successful businesswoman who calls them as she sees them.

2. For Secretary of State: Kay O’Connor (a state senator, businesswoman, mother, wife, and observant Roman Catholic in the famously liberal Kansas City suburbs. The few contacts I have had with her have made me astonished with her humble demeanor. She reads her emails and writes back in detail even in the midst of a legislative session!)

3. For Attorney General: Phil Kline (the man who went to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight for the right of Kansans to legislate their own laws and won, and then took on the abortion industry and its supporters as they try hard to hide rape, incest, and pedophilia. This attorney general has guts to take on the bar association, the Johnson county mega bucks, and the liberal media.)

4. For Insurance Commissioner: Eric Carter (no-nonsense state legislator who intends to monitor the insurance industry rather than be its pet which, unfortunately, the current liberal Republican incumbent has become.)

 

That politics is sometimes no better than prostitution, often worse, is amply demonstrated again by today’s bon homie between a struggling Joe Lieberman and a beaming Bill Clinton. Few men in the United States Senate, of either party, can match Lieberman’s reputation of personal decency and quiet integrity. As for the former Governor of Arkansas, the less said about his integrity and credibility, the better. Yet, as President Reagan once famously remarked, the world’s oldest profession has lots in common with its second oldest counterpart. Hence, a rapidly sinking Joe Lieberman calls in Bill Clinton to endorse him publicly in the Connecticut Senate race.

But I am being unfair to ladies of the evening. Most prostitutes do what they do to put food on the table, send their kids to school, and keep body and soul together. They operate in the shadows of society, condemned by the high and mighty in public and sought after in the dark. Without the protection of law, at the mercy of thuggish 'facilitators', and disdained by self-proclaimed denizens of decency, these women carry on a lifestyle that is far more honorable than most politicians and many average citizens. You don’t say!!

Yes, I do so say. A prostitute sells her body to keep her kids fed and clothed. A politician sells his soul and his honor to keep the privilege of feeding from the public trough. An adulterer or adulteress does the same thing as a prostitute not for feeding the children but to partake in deception for the thrill of it. A prostitute does not deceive and does not break faith; many politicians and all cheaters do both.

I have far more respect for prostitutes than for many people whose names are prefaced with ‘The Honorable’. And a prostitute is far more credible than many a respectable suburban spouse whose cowardly life of deception harms her/his own family, children, community, and country.

Ideally, we should let Israel do its job. The best thing for Washington to do would be to keep quiet and not interfere. In the past, every time Israel came close to mopping up the terrorists, we had intervened to bring ‘peace’: in 1967, 1973, and 1982. Please, let them do their job. Yes there are casualties but Israelis are traditionally very conscientious about hurting civilians and go out of their way to avoid that kind of ugly business. Frankly, if Lebanon’s government cannot keep its borders clean of militants that lob rockets at the neighbors, someone has to step in to restore the peace. And if Israel wants to hit a couple of places in Syria, so be it. My experience with the Middle East and in that region has been that from time to time some of these thuggish colonels do need a dose of reality check in the form of pin-prick air strikes. Call it booster vaccines..they keep the rabies at bay for a while. Israel, with the world’s absolute finest air force, is perfectly suited to do it, and it is a necessity of survival for them.

Go Israel!!!! Mazel Tov!!

Hugh Hewitt made a very good point about the change in Congressional leadership that'll happen if the Democrats win Congress in November. Notwithstanding the Democratic Party's assertion of support for Israel, the fact is that many senior Democrats in Congress, those in line to be charimen of key committees and sub-committees are quite leftist and lukewarm towards our Middle Eastern ally. This is all the more sad considering that American Jews are solid supporters of the Democrats in the voting booth. But, Mr. Hewitt's point goes beyond the foreign policy dimensions.

By voting to change from Republican to Democrat, voters don't just get a new party in power. Rather, they get the leadership of that party in power...a leadership that is quite different from the rank and file average Democrat. The Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party is not exactly representative of the blue-collar, patriotic, hard-working family in the Alleghanies who are registered Democrats. No...not even close. The values of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Charlie Rangel are the values of the blame-America-first Hollywood crowd. These are values that celebrate burning the flag and denigrate the ordinary faith of the average American. This is the crowd that lip syncs support for the working family and then forces that family to send its children to failing schools because the teachers union so demands. This is the cabal that would let Mr. Kofi Anan, tell us when to use our troops in combat. This is the coterie that requires devout Christians to subsidize abortions. This is the group that wants to put up a sign on our courthouses warning "Believing Catholics need not apply".

Most Democrats are as patriotic as Republicans. The Democratic leadership, however, is an entirely different story.

 

 

PUNISHING PATRIOTISM, KANSAS STYLE

Most societies honor their warriors, or at least show them gratitude, by way of bestowing gifts, medals, awards and monuments. In Kansas, we punish our warriors by robbing them of what is more dear to them than life itself: their children. In a stunning assist to the Iraqi insurgents and terrorists facing our servicemen around the world, the Democrat dominated Supreme Court of Kansas on July 15, 2006, upheld a lower court ruling that servicemembers deployed abroad could lose custody of their children for being away on their country’s call. Our august justices, ensconced in the stately Justice Center far away from any combat, held that fighting abroad for America was not good enough to invoke the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Rather, a soldier or marine had to produce detailed orders and combat calendars to be even considered a real ‘servicemember’ (and make the New York Times publish more of our military secrets to the world, I am sure).

Marine Corporal Levi Bradley and his mother Starleen Bradley were given full custody of his infant son Tyler last year when his now ex-wife Amber decided to abandon the child and move in with her boyfriend. Levi Bradley deployed to Iraq safe in the knowledge that his little boy would be cared for well by grandma, a well respected schoolteacher in Ottowa, Kansas. Even before the marine faced bullets in Iraq, Amber and her taxpayer funded lawyers went to court to modify the custody; the hearing judge James Smith, a colleague of Amber’s mother, granted the motion. The plea of Levi Bradley that he be at least given the chance to return home and fight for his son fell on deaf ears. A caring grandmother was left with a picture of the grandson she has cared for since birth. This was the miscarriage of justice that the Kansas Supreme Court upheld on Friday, July 15 in a sneaky decision that was not released till the end of the week when most people were busy with weekend plans.

This is how we in Kansas, unfortunately, treat those who put their lives on the line for us. Every man and woman in uniform that I know would rather face a thousand bullets than lose his or her child. Yet today, the Kansas Supreme Court has made petty district court judges tinged with nepotism far more dangerous to an American serviceman than roadside bombs, sniper bullets, and all the insurgents in Falluja.

I am waiting for the high command of the Iraqi insurgency and the Taliban to send congratulatory flowers to the seven judges of the Supreme Court of my great state.