I am seeing a people who slowly but surely are trading their birthright of conscientious courage to the enchanting conformity of a sheepherding collective. Two generations of overzealous, unchecked, and all encompassing growth of the bureaucratic state has made a once brave and creative people into timid little subjects of a faceless collective whose very mention sends shivers down the spines of the former. We see it in the military where before soldiers and sailors are deployed, the military lawyers are sent out. We see it in my industry where correcting one word of a product description makes otherwise mighty executives become fearful of the wrath of some thirty year old clerk sitting in one of the six dozen regulatory agencies spread from Washington DC to Seattle, Washington who has never seen the inside of a real business. We see it in the back yard of our homes where the appearance of a stray migratory bird is cause enough to put a family’s dwelling under the bane of six thousand pages of regulation.

What the British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians failed to do, we have done ourselves handsomely. From being proud, confident, conscientious individual who was not intimidated by power, the average American, in his day to day life, has become a creature terrified that something he may say or do may offend some petty bureaucrat somewhere. Such an offended bureaucrat may not have the power of life or death over the American but has immense authority to make life a miserable existence for a long time to come. The bank regulator, the child protective service case worker, or the water inspector each have more power over the ordinary American man or woman than King George III ever dreamt of having. It is a sad commentary on the once indomitable American spirit that today an American is more afraid of a call from the IRS than a threat from an armed burglar.

Two hundred years ago, the Indian poet Ghalib penned the famous verse “Love has left me incapacitated/Otherwise I too was a free man.” Change the word ‘love’ to ‘fear’, and the couplet is well said of Americans today.

Imagine this scene of an attempted crime. A WASP suburban  punk has nothing to do during the summer and is short on his allowance so he decides to hold up the nearby convenience store which is run by an Indian American. Well, as the kid is holding his gun towards the owner behind the counter, the latter calls the young man’s bluff and decides to charge at him with his bare fists. In the ensuing struggle, thankfully no bullets are fired and cops arrive in time to see the store owner landing a couple of punches on the kid and calling him a ‘spoiled cracker’. Guess who gets charged with a federal crime? The store owner.

Yep. Under the new federal ‘hate’ crimes bill being proposed by the radical liberal Democratic majority in Congress, using racially insensitive language in a physical altercation-even in self defense-is a new crime to be investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the United States Attorney.  Both Senators Clinton and Obama are co-sponsors of this chilling, bizarre, Orwellian measure which is designed to please certain ethnic lobbies, create jobs for the diversity industry bureaucrats, and line the pockets of the criminal defense lawyers.

Today readers you’ll see a new look blog roll on the right hand panel. In the coming days I will be adding a few more useful links there. For now, I want to draw your attention to three of the websites and the inspiration behind them. First, there is Melissa Hart for Congress. In a post-modern age where women are 52 % of the voting electorate and the radial liberals have basically occupied the feminine space in politics, former (and hopefully next) Representative Hart is the kind of accomplished, attractive, and principled conservative woman we need back in Congress. Go to her website and help the good people of Pennsylvania’s 4^th district to send Melissa back to Congress.  

Melissa Hart is endorsed, of course, by the Susan B. Anthony List PAC whose website you will also see in the blog roll. The idea behind this PAC is simple: conservatives have got to fight radical feminism not with more WASPy male politicians but with true feminists of their own.  The PAC, which someday could mature to challenge its much bigger ultra- radical counterpart EMILY’s List, draws inspiration from its namesake Susan B. Anthony (the pioneering American suffragette and mother of North American feminism) and the late  Representative Clare Boothe Luce, the first  New England woman to electorally  win a Congressional seat in her own right.

Then there is the Children’s Right Council (CRC), a national advocacy group that speaks up for the fundamental right of children to have two parents in their lives. Arrayed against the CRC is a powerful phalanx of special interest groups that make money every time a child’s relationship with a loving biological parent is severed: the American Bar Association ‘Family’ Law Section, ‘family’ court judges and court personnel, child support bureaucrats in state capitals and Washington DC, the National Organization of Women, and the WNLA. I believe the CRC is the organization fighting the most important battle of our times..a battle whose outcome will predicate our economic, social, and ultimately, security future. No wonder that the board of the CRC includes everyone from liberals like Congressman Al Wynn and conservatives like Fred Thompson, and many other decent Americans from all walks of life.

The desire to overcompensate, if not in deeds then in words, is as fiery in the average politician as it is in most mortals. What else would explain Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bombastic utterance earlier this week of wanting to ‘obliterate Iran’ should the latter challenge Israel? Prudent observers know very well-and are afraid to say it for fear of politically correct lynching-that some of our enemies do, quite foolishly, consider women to be the weaker gender and are thus likely to be emboldened with a HRC presidency. At a juncture in history where America is fighting a lone war against a surreptitious and sneaky enemy, a dose of enthusiasm for the enemy is not what we need. Thus, maybe it is to address those perceptions that Senator Clinton did the saber rattling. Or maybe…

Or maybe she is simply too naïve to understand the intricacies of global diplomacy, historical context, and strategic affairs. Yes, believe it or not a Yale trained ‘worldly’ carpetbagger lawyer wearing chic black pantsuits can indeed incorrectly consider herself to be an expert on the world just because she gets invited to the dinner parties of fawning sycophants with South Asian and Middle Eastern hues. Eating twice a week at a Persian restaurant and having an identity-crisis suffering Pakistani-American retainer doesn’t make anyone, even a New York Senator, an expert on the morass that is the Middle East.

Pity for Mrs. Clinton that she has forgotten that while the crazy government of Iran is indeed our foe, the Iranian people have the most pro-American feelings of anyone in the Middle East. Hence the wise men in Washington-the actual foreign policy gurus and generals-speak of the deep yearning of the Iranian masses to be free of their clerical overlords and the abiding friendship between Iranians and Americans. But then actual experts like Dr. Condoleeza Rice and Senator Richard Lugar are not Johnny-come-lately supporters of Israel unlike Mrs. Clinton who seems to find her pro-Israeli tone only during election years.

So this is why I think HRC said the bizarre things she said about Israel and Iran. One, she is overcompensating for her monochromatic pantsuits. Two, she has very little knowledge about Iran or the Iranian people. Three, she was trying to pucker up to Israel after being quite a bit less than dependable of a friend (she is quite buddy buddies with the widow of the terrorist master Yasir Arafat).

Hillary Rodham Clinton tries her best to appear tough like Condi Rice and Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Well, the problem is that Mrs. Clinton forgets the difference between tough and vindictive. Secretary Rice and Baroness Thatcher are tough women who have never needed the crutch of radical feminism to appear tough; they were and are tough, period (several Argentine generals will vouch for that about Baroness Thatcher!). Frankly, I would feel much more secure with Baroness Thatcher in charge of our national security than any of Democratic male or female senators overseeing it.

For all her silly wardrobe and sillier saber rattling, the fact remains that Hillary Rodham Clinton is simply a vain, vindictive, and angry woman who believes she deserves the presidency because, well, because she just does! And that kind of mindset is imprudent to have in the Presidency, especially in a time like this when we are engaged in a War that tests the very contents of our characters.

His descent into the looney fringes of the Left is now complete. First he bashed Southern Baptists (what liberal isn’t intolerant of Christians who follow the Bible) in speeches; then he bashed Jews in his books; now he has appointed himself the spokesman for the terror group Hamas. Just goes to show why ex-Presidents are best advised to retire to Florida, play golf, and shut up.

Even when he was president, however, Jimmy Carter had a very diminished capacity to distinguish between friend and foe. His abject refusal to stand by our ally the Shah of Iran resulted in that country falling prey to a rogue regime that, to this day, terrorizes us. Similar was the case in Nicaragua and the Sudan; in both cases the Carter administration was so keen on trying to punish our allies for not being ‘democratic’ enough that our sworn enemies were able to topple friendly governments with rogue ones who didn’t even pay lip service to democracy. Carter never saw an American ally that he liked. And in the Near East, America has only two real allies: Turkey and Israel.

Hence it should come as little surprise to most prudent observers that now in his eighties,  Jimmy Carter has taken to becoming a front man for the radical terror group Hamas, an organization dedicated to destroying Israel to the last man, woman, and child. I cannot blame Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or any of the Israeli cabinet flatly refusing to meet Carter during the latter’s trip to the Gaza Strip. The peanut farmer from Georgia has learnt nothing from his years in the White House.

There was Ronald Reagan who boldly said to Middle Eastern terrorists ‘you can run but you cannot hide.’ Then there is Jimmy Carter whose actions sound more like ‘no need to run or hide, I will come over and have a cup of coffee with you anyway, Mr. Terrorist.’

Ominously, Carter’s lead in publicly snubbing America’s friends is being emulated well by the liberal Democrat controlled do-nothing 110^th Congress. Last fall, some Democratic committee chairmen went out of their way to insult Turkey for an incident that happened a hundred years ago. This year, Speaker Pelosi and her minions stopped the Colombia free trade agreement knowing full well that Colombia is one of the last US-friendly governments left in Latin America. And they want to control foreign policy??

On an entirely different note, here’s a funny website which claims to spoof stuff that ‘white people’ like though it is more accurately things that are the forte of the WASPs of the latte liberal, clueless, purposeless, East Coast variety. Specially telling is # 2 (scroll down a few pages to get to it).

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com

This is courtesy of friend whose Dutch relatives are wondering why is there even a debate about who should be our next president.

Nothing short of some of the foundational precepts of the 1000 year old judicial canons of the English speaking peoples is at stake in the custody hearing for the FLDS children in Texas today. Based on a call whose origins cannot be traced or bona fides verified, the entire law enforcement machinery of the state of Texas was deployed to break into private property, detain hundreds of women and children, and forcibly separate children-some as young as one year olds-from their mothers. For a week now these kids have been spending their nights in make shift shelters under the care of bureaucrats while the parents are forbidden to see them. Tell me, what again is the definition of child abuse? Or does it not apply to the thugs of the child welfare bureaucracy. Such stormtrooper tactics would have never happened in your average vanilla upper middle class suburbs of Dallas or Detroit or Boston.

But these are different people, these Fundamentalist Latter Day folks. They live in closed off communal properties, dress simply and modestly, and maintain minimal contact with a world they consider wicked. Therefore, the elite thinking goes, they must be evil child abusers and wife beaters. Oh yes the polygamy. Please….adultery is illegal in 32 of the states too and we actually celebrate it, reward it, lionize it. Let us dispense with the ‘polygamy is illegal’ argument unless we can, with equal zeal, enforce the existing statutes against adultery, fornication, and homosexual conduct. Or is the ‘stay out of bedroom’ cry only legitimate when it is unusual sexual mores that the elites endorse rather than those that they find quite awful and ancient?

The only question that should have been investigated is whether there was any statutory rape in FLDS premises and, if so, the alleged perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But then Texas is also the state where five years ago the victim of statutory rape was asked to pay child support for the baby born as a result of this heinous crime…while the perpetrator was given a six month probation. To date no statutory rape charges have been filed against anyone in the FLDS group in Texas as a result of the April 2008 raid. So far it just seems to be one of those “we are the elites and we know how to raise your children better than you do” deals.

Today they have gone after a religious sect whose tenets make most of us (including myself) groan in disgust. Tomorrow it may be another religious group which seems too ancient and retrograde. Next year, maybe the mainstream Mormons or Hasidic Jews…I mean, after all, they too believe in very old fashioned family roles. What about ten years from now? Who will be next? Missouri Synod Lutherans who don’t allow women at church altars? The Pentecostals, who think MTV and Cinemax is too filthy to be piped into the homes where children live?

It is well advised to recall what Pastor Martin Niemloller of Berlin said many, many years ago, “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

The pick-and-choose Catholic politicians of both parties need a talking to from the Pope. Now that he is here, he might as well let these buffet Catholics have a piece of his mind. These cynical and selfish public officials-Democrats and Republicans alike-go to the voters claiming to be adherents of Catholic social teaching but often only promote those aspects of it that nets them money from their special interest groups. Pro-infanticide Democrats and anti-immigrant Republicans, like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hazelton, Pa., mayor Lou Baretta respectively, and the rest of their ilk need some pastoral lecturing from their Pastor Papa: The Roman Catholic Church is crystal clear on the duty of Catholic public servants to uphold and protect the sanctity and dignity of ALL innocent life. Saying it is okay to kill children or bash migrants is convoluted, not Catholic. Over to you Your Holiness.

 Today, the 15^th of April, is the liberal Democrats’ favorite day. It is the day that every year Americans fork over an ever larger share of their hard earned income to fund the bureaucracy. To add insult to injury, ordinary Americans spend countless hours, sleepless nights, and millions of dollars to simply prepare to hand over their hard earned money to the Washington bureaucrats. Thanks to a tax code that is ten thousand times the size of the Bible, an entire industry of lawyers, lobbyists, public sector unions, accountants, and special interest groups exists as a result of the code’s complexity. The money used to feed this monstrous industry is the same money that cannot be used to hire more employees, feed more hungry children, and buy more armor resistant jackets for the military. It is no wonder that any effort to reform the disgrace that is the tax code is always opposed by the liberal Democrats and their johns…i.e. the public sector unions and the lawyers.

The power to tax is the power to destroy, so opined the Founding Fathers. Every April 15 is a reminder of how much American initiative, social values, and sheer enterprise has been destroyed by the federal tax code favored by the liberal Democrats.

Self declared elites, especially around election time, bemoan how America has lagged so far behind Europe in decisively settling ‘ancient’ social questions. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer and civilized, they intone over their lattes and Merlot, not to have to have this silly debate over abortion? I mean couldn’t we Americans settle it like the sophisticated folks in Europe where it is no longer an issue, notwithstanding the historical presence of a strong Catholic Church?

To which I say, absolument.

Indeed had we Americans been allowed to settle the issue in the manner of the Europeans, abortion wouldn’t be the perpetually burning, ghastly, impolite political issue it has become today. The Germans, the French, the British and the Irish have all pretty serious internal divisions over the issue as we do. But each of them used the traditional mechanisms of representative democracies to craft imperfect but sustainable consensus on such a deeply divisive issue. Utilizing time honored democratic tools like compromise, public input, and legislative compromise, most European countries have crafted abortion laws that generally reflect the overwhelming prevailing consensus on the issue amongst their citizens. Were the genius of democracy allowed to work in the United States on this issue, chances are pretty strong that we too would have relegated abortion to a settled matter.

Unfortunately, democracy was hijacked in America when it came to abortion. In one fell swoop, the right and ability of the American people to legislate an abortion compromise was taken away from them by nine old men of the United States Supreme Court. Roe vs. Wade took away the right of the American people to have any meaningful discussion or policy debate about abortion. Whether at the state level or the federal, Americans were denied the right of their European counterparts to craft their consensus on abortion based on compromise and debate.

No wonder it is still a major issue in American politics. So it shall remain until such a time that our democratic rights are restored to us to craft compromises like democratic societies do. I don’t know what such a compromise may look like but suspect it will keep abortion legal on demand the first couple of months of fetal formation and for longer terms in cases of rape and incest. Such a consensus will likely also ban the procedure for sex selection purposes while requiring reasonable waiting periods and parental consent in the case of minors. I can bet that a democratic consensus crafted today will prohibit public funding, outlaw inhumane procedures like partial birth IDX, and limit late term procedures to those in which the life and physical health of the mother is at risk in the absence of an abortion. As someone who believes that the unborn child is a human being like you and I, that is a consensus that is repugnant to me. And yet, as distasteful as it may be, I would be respecting the fact that such a consensus was arrived at using the lofty tools of democratic self-governance of a free people. Unfortunately, and unlike the Europeans many liberals want to mimic, we were not given that chance by the nine old men who arrogated the right to decide the issue to themselves for perpetuity. That is as close to the Iranian system of governance as you can get in America.

While many in politics will remember him for that iconic moment in 2000 at the NRA convention when he held up his rifle and told Al Gore ‘from my cold dead hands’, the Charlton Hesston’s legacy is far more expansive and widespread. For, ‘Moses’, as he was affectionately called by many of his fans, symbolized an era of Hollywood when leading men and women of the screen led lives befitting role models rather than lingerie models. Men like Charlton Hesston ennobled an art form, led exemplary personal lives, and starred in movies that gave insight to the American soul and communicated the greatness of America to the world. They married once or divorced quietly with dignity to marry once more (though Mr Hesston was married once and for life to Lydia). The movies they starred in were family blockbusters, often with themes of honor, courage, sacrifice. Their public activism was genuine and subservient to causes greater than their egos. In Charlton Hesston’s case, he was a marcher for civil rights, an advocate for free speech, and a defender of gun rights. These were men and women who represented what was best in American cinematography on screen and off: they had integrity. No wonder that three generations of people around the world thought ‘Charlton Hesston’ when someone mentioned the prophet Moses.

What a difference a few decades-and decadence-makes. Today, actors like Sean Penn and Matt Damon and actresses like Glenn Close and Catherine Zeta Jones and Angelina Jolie are the norm, not the exception. Without class, without sense of wardrobe, and without a clue they act in movies that have little to portray but narcissism, vulgarity, and mockery of middle American values. Off screen these Hollywood denizens miss no opportunity to bash America, help our enemies, and hog the limelight with politically correct ‘causes’. Pimply faced heroes, feminism tinged lead actresses...such is the sum total of the casting galore in most of America’s film industry today. Hollywood today is a caricatured and conceited shadow of the political ideology of its radical producers guild. No longer does it ennoble America but rather debases it.

And with the death of Charlton Hesston, the last great link between us and the greatness of Hollywood is gone forever. My he find favor with the Lord whom he served so well with his talents and his time.