Guilty Liberals have mastered the art of eliminating shame. Their own shame, that is.
They simply press it onto others.
While living in a comfortable world built on the so-called injustices they decry, Guilty Liberals call those who oppose them racists, homophobes, religious fanatics, demagogues, Right Wing conspirators, or just plain evil in an shallow attempt to dismiss viewpoints and beliefs they refuse to tolerate.
Guilty Liberal intolerance runs far deeper than the intolerances they claim to fight against. In fact, it is their foremost self-defining feature. As diverse as their events and conventions seem to be, the only quality they share is a gut-level hatred of people who won't sit in their tent.
So, they demand tolerance for Islam while castigating Christians, they demand self-determination for Arabs in the occupied territories while calling for the dissolution of Israel, they champion human rights monsters like Castro while calling Bush a terrorist.
The question: Is Liberal Guilt a result of feeble genetics or is it an infectious dementia?
I'll come back to this idea in a moment. First I need to recommend an excellent book.
Embedded, The Media at War in Iraq, a book by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, features interviews with 60 embedded journalists who accompanied U.S. troops into battle. The book packs a powerful punch as the stories impart a rare glimpse of front-line journalism that most of us will never see firsthand.
But these spellbinding accounts don't prepare us for a far more disturbing accusation made in an interview with then New York Times Baghdad Bureau Chief, John Burns.
And there are a lot of journalists who want to bury book and wish that Burns would shut up.
But they can't and he won't.
An excerpt from Burns' interview:
"There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars.
"Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.
"In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories, mine included, specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper. Yeah, it was an absolutely disgraceful performance.
"Editors of great newspapers, and small newspapers, and editors of great television networks should exact from their correspondents the obligation of telling the truth about these places. It's not impossible to tell the truth. I have a conviction about closed societies - that they're actually much easier to report on than they seem, because the act of closure is itself revealing. Every lie tells you a truth. If you just leave your eyes and ears open, it's extremely revealing.
"We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. I think people just simply didn't recognize it. They rationalized it away. I cannot tell you with what fury I listened to people tell me throughout the autumn that I must be on a kamikaze mission. They said it with a great deal of glee, over the years, that this was not a place like the others."
So, faced with the fact that many journalists "sold their credibility" for a visa and favor, deliberately mis-reported, mis-represented, and in some cases, collaborated with Baathist Information Ministers to mislead the rest of the world, the New York Time has "nothing to report."
Nothing to report about collaboration with thieves, rapists and murderers who wore the uniform of Saddam's Death Regime: wives raped in front of their horrified children, men run through wood-chippers feet first so the monsters could watch their faces in excruciating death agonies, kids hung on meat hooks and flayed alive. Reporters couldn't mention this and still count on their entitlement to hot baths, and clean sheets and sweet cakes, so they looked the other way and dreamed of leaping to the big time like Wolf Blitzer, and Christiane Amanpour.
These compromised reporters effectively became associates of the Baath Party Ministry Of Information and immediately leapt to another big time - Peter Arnett's big time.
Ironically, we were laughing at Baghdad Bob for being such a fool, while reading and watching the reports of journalists who were feeding us an infinitely more damaging pile of rubbish.
During the war, I noticed a pattern among the American-bashing reprorters. While other were reporting from Humvees and Bradley Fighting vehicles, the Baath appeasers often started a report with a strange attribution, "A taxi driver told me..." or "One of the hotel workers said..." or "My translator said that his brother said..."
These reporters went for a drive and questioned the driver or reported from the hotel, or worse yet relayed hearsay from government employees.
But not Burns. His experiences in other totalitarian hellholes taught him how to get to the story and hold the depots at bay. In reading his recounting of how he went face-to-face with the Iraqi brass, I could only think of one appropriate word for his actions - fearless.
Burns' fearless brand of reporting has elicited dramatic responses by repressive governments. In 1986, the Chinese government tried to silence him with a six-day day incarceration. In Iraq, he flummoxed his Mukhabarat minders by detailing the horrors of Saddam's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Now, the New York Time is steadfastly ignoring his accusation, preferring to leave their readership in the dark and sit silently on this enormous credibility time bomb.
The Gray Lady, in not acknowledging this media liaison and complicity with the enemy, is rapidly moving from merely dingy gray to positively hoary.
Keep in mind that the New York Times, as the house organ of the Liberal Left, is guided primarily by its own shame and guilt. Don't expect any self-examination or confessions. Just as the Jayson Blair incident, emblemic of wrongheaded affirmative action and preferential treatment, blew over in a flurry of terse e-mails and bluster, the NYT hopes no one important reads Katovsky and Carlson's book.
But that hope is a pittance against Embedded, The Media at War in Iraq's position at 112 on the Amazon sales ranking (09/21/03).
To the NYT and Guilty Liberals, honesty and introspection causes political psychosis and, in this regard, it appears to be neither a genetic disorder nor an infectious dementia.
It reads more like a cult.
In fact, Liberal Guilt most closely resembles a religion that lacks a crucial sacrament. The outward, participatory ceremonies are there; rallies are a type of mob vulgus communion and being an American while indicting America serves as a schizophrenic form of confession.
But the internal ritual of absolution is missing, so even true believers can never achieve redemption.
By example: A Guilty Liberal attends a protest, feels the strength of the crowd and the communitas of its unified spirits. By carrying a sign or chanting a slogan, he redefines his sense of self and retains "person living in America" while discarding "American." The result is a now-familiar absurdity where people (Americans) yell at America (people). These temporary Ana-Americans decry a system they say has been wrong since its inception, yet live comfortably within it.
Here's the bind. After the chanting is over, after the last sappy folksong, after the celebrities have returned to their limousines and the streets are littered and the police return to their normal duties, where do the protesters go?
Regardless of whether the post-protest activity is merely returning home to watch the event replayed on the news, reveling with new-found acquaintances, or languishing in a jail cell, nothing has changed. The oppressed are still oppressed, the victims are still victims, the war machine is still the war machine.
The city streets were alive with defiant spirit and mob-mentality just hours ago, and now, the milk still sits in the refrigerator, the dog still needs a bath, and other than for the buzz on the TV, the net effect of the protest can only be seen in overtime hours accrued by cops and sanitation workers.
The hour-long Anti-American chant has melted into the other 8,759 hours of simply being a disgruntled American who voted for Gore and feels cheated, who enjoys ever modern convenience but feels shame for having an abundant life, and makes his most profound political statement by drinking only shade-grown coffee with soymilk and turbinado sugar at a non-franchised coffeshop while listening to culturally pure ethnic songs, sung in a language he doesn't speak.
The let-down after a protest must be staggering. A half-day of faux empowerment makes the protester feel as though the world must bend to the crowd's will, followed by nothing more than promises to do it again, in a week or a month, or when summoned.
Chronic, political coitus interruptus - an exercise that never gives relief or release to the participant, while intensifying the desire to dominate the situation. And with each frustration, the energy can only grow more violent.
Hmmm. I seem to have drawn a line from the mindset of the protester to the mind of a rapist.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Losing Libs
I'm looking to title a book I've been working on since last year. I'm a fairly quick writer but, nearly everything I commit to paper makes me re-examine what I know and why I know it. The scenario keeps evolving, and so do the working titles.
But after phone calls with two old friends, I was so saddened by their responses that I believe I've decided what the subtitle will be: Losing Liberal Friends.
One of them is a writer/producer in Hollywood, and the other is a tenured professor at a well-known southern University - an amazing, almost stereotypical pairing.
Where Did All My Good Friends Go?
In the last year or so, I've lost over a dozen truly wonderful friends. Not because we've worked ourselves into partisan donnybrooks, but because our language and concepts have grown (or have been pulled) so far apart that we no longer share sufficient reality-ground to stand upon.
The result is semantically loaded, syntactically nuanced, semiotically fractured "talking at each other" that keeps us struggling to pull each other into a context and sensibility that can be presented and argued logically.
It seems hopeless. And after the last extended, yet frustrating call, I scribbled out a list of recurrent problems.
My friends will undoubtedly read these posts, and I hope they understand that I am as stymied as they are about how we can set this aside.
So, in the spirit of "open kimono" honesty:
You have no idea how I feel about Bush, Kerry, the National Guard, Vietnam, cocaine, treason, terror, the economy or Gay marriage.
Yes, you can probably estimate a response I would give when questioned about any one of the above, based on our years of friendship and discussions, wisecracks and arguments. But my feelings are deeper and more complex that you can guess. For example: I served along with National Guard and Army Reservists in Vietnam, so painting the Guard or Reserve as a draft-dodging ploy doesn’t wash with me. In fact it shows the shallowness of the accusation. If you don't know the facts, please don't parrot the talking points or smear du jour.
I also used cocaine during the mid `80's and had a hell of a time eliminating that social and physical addiction from my life. If someone else got caught in its grip and escaped, I feel mild camaraderie with that person, not self-righteous indignation or hatred. I don't care what mistakes a person made in their life - what lessons did they learn, what changes did they make and where are they now.
It's also important that the person learned a life lesson due to the change and is able to understands and communicate it to others, when appropriate.
On the phone with my Mom the other day, I said, "Did you ever think the Democrats would be putting up a Nam vet, reviling draft evaders and accusing their opponents of being drug addicts?" She thought for a moment and offered, "They must be out of ideas."
Heroes
The behavior needed to be regarded a true hero has been so diluted and misapplied that the title is now routinely bestowed on victims, survivors and bystanders.
Merely surviving an incident does not make one a hero. Speaking up when disagreeing with a majority does not: dying in a catastrophe, enduring a painful situation, suffering for good or needless reasons, encountering and besting overwhelming obstacles, being oppressed, hated by others, and willing to defy the law at risk of punishment are not necessarily the earmarks of a hero.
The ground rule of heroism is placing the welfare and needs of others above that of your own safety and subsequent advantage. And this bar is raised for soldiers, police, firefighters and rescue workers. In their situations, underlying heroism is built into their job descriptions.
And more often than not, they go well beyond that.
Who's a Hero?
My Dad was a severely wounded WWII veteran: Bronze Star, Purple Hearts, Unit Citations and a physical disability that brought him over 55 years of intense pain. I never saw his medals or heard a word about his battle experiences. Once a year, he went to a reunion of his unit (the Tenth Mountain Division) and met with other soldiers to laugh and cry and thank each other for their mutual sacrifice.
Other than that, you wouldn't hear much about it from him. And we - my brothers and sister and I - grew up remembering that he was wounded only when we went to the beach or saw him with his shirt off.
I often wondered how he had survived: the silver dollar-sized bullet scars that ran across his chest, the deep trough in his arm and shoulder where a mortar explosion shattered his bones and shredded his muscles, the small shards of shrapnel that he "sweated out".
My Dad was a hero, but it would have embarrassed him to talk about it.
Now, an Army private wraps up her S.U.HumVee, lies on a hospital bed for a week and can't remember anything after the crash is designated a "hero." Loudmouth Liberal Senators confer the title of "hero" upon themselves and each other for the bravery of braying like jackasses during a Conservative Administration. An actor gets thrown from his horse due to his arrogance and lack of skill and is paralyzed from the neck down. When he maintains that he is optimistic about walking again, he's hailed as a "hero".
These people may be lucky, unlucky or have a great press agent, but they are not heroes.
What Did You Do During The War, Daddy?
Flying a soon-to-be-decommissioned jet in the Texas Air National Guard is not heroic unless the pilot was shot down over Austin, held prisoner in a tortilla factory and winged by trigger-happy INS agents while trying to lead the illegal alien dough-patters to an Immigration Attorney's office.
Pulling a fellow soldier back into a boat while hostile fire rages is undoubtedly heroic. Perhaps even shooting a VC rocket carrier in the back is heroic, since life and death transcends the Hollywood code of the Old West.
(Although, if you describe the alternative to a live-fire lifeguard action - moving your boat to safety and watching the helpless soldier get shot or drown - we are left with only one word - coward. Perhaps a Swiftboat commander who HAD run off, leaving the man to die, might have realized this paucity of descriptions and, after four or five minutes, returned to execute the bare minimum required of his rank and mission - save the soldier.)
Throwing one's medals or ribbons (or mibbons or redals - Damn, we `Nam Vets sure do get those words mixed up!) back in the face of America while stabbing 3,403,100 U.S. military men and women in the back - repeating lies told by Vietnam veteran impersonators - meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris to demoralize our troops while the war was still being fought - are most assuredly not heroic actions but are, by simple definition, treasonous and criminal.
Finally, becoming a true, selfless hero is not necessarily event that transforms the rest of one's life, washing away character faults or destructive behaviors. There are certified heroes who are liars, drunks, manic-depressive spouse beaters, sex addicts, greedy manipulators, child abusers, and politically motivated sycophants.
So, I don't care who you believe is a hero...
The question is, "How does the past action of an individual determine who will be of more value in the future."
The skills needed to be an effective President track more toward management, consistency and persistence.
Battlefield heroics? A miniscule part of the equation.
(Want some relevant numbers and myths busted? http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html)
Until you has been in the thick of war, not the armchair-General Fog of War that plays so well in cinematic retrospect, you have no idea what you are talking about.
(BTW: MacNamara is a senile old man who has just recently realized that he was a senile young man.)
In fact, the influence of Hollywood has created hordes of non-military simpletons who have an opinion and agenda about how conflicts should be managed. Watching Spielberg wage war is merely following colored lights on a canvas screen because a story, no matter how well told, is not reality. It's not even a good guide to reality. It's just a fragmented piece of an unknowable mosaic of experiences.
Vietnam was not Platoon, Apocalypse Now or Good Morning Vietnam. It was over 3 million stories and very few happy endings.
http://www.palletmastersworkshop.com/namflash.html
But the functional insanity of non-military strategists is an outgrowth of Police Review Board activism - bhong smoke left over from the `60's - where those who will never find themselves in a life or death situation are authorized to dictate what they feel is an appropriate use of force. Closet anarchists.
Earlier, I said that a strong measure of heroism is built into the job descriptions of the police and military. But make no mistake; job #1 for both professions is arriving home at the end of the day (or war) with the same number of holes in your body that you were born with.
Neither are paid to be wounded or killed. That is not the job description.
So, when anyone resists arrest or capture - and they either have a weapon or act as though they have a weapon - they have forfeited their right to be afforded the courtesy of unarmed restraint.
Most gunfights are mere seconds in length, chaotic and pit a life and death action on the part of the suspect against a measured response from the officer. The suspect has no chance of "punching out at 5 and going home" so this imbalance presents an enormous disadvantage to the military or police employee.
Second-guessing the soldier or police after the fact, is senseless. To even the disadvantage, a police review board should be composed of people who have been in armed conflict and survived.
Knife Versus Gun? Shoot To Kill.
Hell, this isn't a video game.
And yet, I hear PRB morons screaming, "He only had a knife!" as if any of them would risk a razor slice across the throat in the blink of an eye to protect the rights of the suspect. The same people who would take away an American's right to own a gun, illogically support the right of a suspect to brandish a knife.
Laughably, many PBR stooges (and other Lefty politicos)have wangled pistol "carry licenses" to protect themselves. Scare California Senator Dianne Feinstein and you'll be sucking on the stubby barrel of a 38 special.
Here in Denver a few months ago, the police responded to a domestic violence call where the attacker was reported to have a weapon. When the police arrived on the scene, one of the men reached under a blanket quickly and pulled out a can of soda. Mentally deranged? Confused? Thirsty?
No. Dead. In a split second. The same split second it would have taken a bullet from the suspect to hit the officer. You call it. What would you do in the same situation?
If you're sure you could have positively identified the shiny object flashed into view before pulling the trigger, I'll ask you to put your money where your mouth is.
Step Right Up!
Spend an afternoon at a Confidence Course pistol range. Walk through a home defense situation. As the silhouettes pop out at you, you'll see various potential targets: say, a man with a pistol, a child with a toy or a woman with a cell phone. Perhaps the Man will have the phone and the woman or the child will have the gun.
You've got a fraction of a second to recognize, evaluate and decide whether or not to shoot, and if so, aim to wound. The suspect just has to shoot to kill. A full second lag time on your part means you lose.
Shoot the unarmed person and your career is over, and you will live with the incident as the prime defining moment of your life. Fail to shoot the armed person within that brief single second and you are probably wounded or dead. By the way, being wounded does not stop the encounter, you still need to kill or be killed; only now, you may be unable to move or aim your weapon.
So stroll down the Confidence Course and every time you hit an unarmed pop-up, laugh nervously and say, "Oops!" But imagine that every time an armed target appears, it automatically fires a round at you - unless you hit the armed silhouette within a scant 1 second.
You won't have enough reaction time to say "Oops."
That'll be your initiation into the Police Review Board position - lots of dead innocent people and possibly a few new holes in you. After all, if you're not willing to stand in the cops shoes, who the hell are you to second-guess his survival judgment?
It's Even More Fun For Soldiers!
Now, not only do you have to make the same split second decisions to save your life, but you are walking through an environment where seemingly unarmed people are wearing bomb belts, improvised explosive devices can be hidden in cars, boxes, dead animals, bushes, piles of rubble, and the suspects all look alike, are not concerned about surviving the attack and the rest of the non-hostile populace won't make a move to defend themselves or warn you when you are in danger.
Now, here's your motivation - as an E-3 (Corporal) you'll be paid a whopping $1,117.80, per month before taxes. That's $13,413.60 for your 1-year tour of duty being a target in Baghdad. Sixty excitement-filled minutes in every $6.70 hour, 8 hours a day. The other 16 excitement-filled unpaid hours are yours to do with as you please.
It's not an enviable re-imbursement for risking your life - a buck or so less than flipping burgers or sitting on your single-hole ass collecting welfare or unemployment. But think of the honor you'll receive when you hold fire a split second too long to avoid hitting an innocent and take a round or two for the team.
So, that $6.70 an hour had better be supplemented by your strong personal sense of duty, honor and commitment to freedom - the very qualities that so-called "peace-activist" whiners despise. Sure, they'll scream about individual freedoms, but deny them to others when they feel threatened. They'll rally for social justice, but deny it to those who protect the rest of us. They'll march for economic equality, but protest pay raises that would give their defenders the same compensation as a spatula-jockey.
If they really want to bring the troops home, give the Armed Forces the materiel, authority and emotional support they need to take out the terrorists/insurgents/Islamicists and pacify Iraq. The notion of wanting to end all wars and keep the U.S. military dormant is rubbish. End fires and keep Fire Stations dormant. End Hurricanes and keep rescue workers dormant.
Maybe We Can Change Reality By Changing The Language!
This silliness is perpetuated by agenda-reciters who talk about Sensitive Wars and Exit Strategies.
Sensitive War is such an addle-headed buzzword that I refuse to point out how illogical a pairing it is. Caring Mutilation. Gentle Rape. Considerate Beheading. Nutty. The object is to impose your control over the enemy. Period, end of message.
And the concept of an Exit Strategy wasn't even applied to warfare until the corporate world worked up the idea in quasi-criminal acquisition and management schemes, e.g., Michael Milkin and Ken Lay had exit strategies. Not a tactical retreat, mind you, but a way of extricating oneself when the situation you've made turns bad and you want to yank out your plunder.
The reason the military does not have an exit strategy is because it is not an option to leave a war zone while still battling the attackers. It's a win or lose proposition. That's what war is: survival - battle-by-battle, campaign-by-campaign. To have a plan to "pull out" is to admit at the outset that there is another option to the war in the first place. Yet another whiff of Bhong smoke...
The option of not deposing Hussein on March 19th 2003 was deposing Hussein on March 20th 2003 or the 21st. Having been hit hard at the WTC, America could not afford to allow a known supporter of terrorism to remain in power. Time is money.
The U.S. could have conceivably "pulled out" of Iraq after Hussein was apprehended, but the cost in subsequent Iraq civilian murders would be staggering. (Ask Kerry how his estimate of post-pullout assaaination in Vietnam worked out - he stated a "three or four thousand - 2.5 million were massacred)
Besides, the ground rule of heroism is placing the welfare and needs of others above that of your own safety and subsequent advantage. Not the Kerry "acceptable massacre" concept.
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
It doesn't matter what Moktada al Sadr wants, or what the mullahs want, or what the jihad-frenzied foreign terrorists want. All that matters is that we leave Iraq a safer place for the citizens, where they can determine their own rights and freedoms by participating in free elections and referendums.
Of course the Islamicists are willing to die to prevent this. Any choice freely made by the Iraqi people countermands their centuries-old interpretation of the Koran. A similar misreading of the Bible would have fanatical groups of Christians demanding a "Caesar" to impose taxation and legal jurisdiction on all Americans.
That would be as "fanatical" as Fundamentalist Liberals crying out for Kerry's ascension to the Presidency and its resulting aftermath, wouldn't it?
We are at war with 12th Century terrorists, using 21st Century weapons. You can't plan a strategy when the other side is looking forward to dying. All you can do at that point is to help them reach their goal quickly and efficiently without harming those who wish to live.
It's often pointed out that the U.S. military is not equipped to handle Police responsibilities. This "change the argument" nonsense has been hampering the transition of Iraq from a war zone to civilian authority. At this point, Police are still a step away from taking control. It's still a war, Mr. Edwards.
Call the Orkin Man
What Iraq needs - and what the U.S. will need in the near future - is a specially trained team of exterminators. Not military, police or swat personnel, but an independent organization charged with routing and destroying the embedded terrorists. In Iraq they would be Iraqi nationals, trained and supported by U.S. troops. In America, judicious application of the Posse Comitatus Act would allow the military to support covert actions against entrenched terrorists with a civilian -led front. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm
This so-called "Police State" scenario will be keenly opposed only until horrors like those witnessed in Beslan force us to confront the perpetrators of unreasoning evil. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/20/001.html
Exterminators. Not soldiers or police or peace negotiators. A bunch of men, women and children who identify vermin and help set-up their removal.
For example: Begin a program where Iraqi's identify every non-Iraqi living in their area. Shine a light on the jihadists sense of invisibility. Pop a few and the neighborhood becomes too hot for them.
Think it's a fascist, racist idea? Tell that to Black leaders who have cleaned up inner city neighborhoods using the same technique. You might find yourself in a double-Democrat bind.
Meet terror with terror and disregard the demands of the people who weild it. Every suicide bomber explosion should set back plans for negotiations a year, every massacre - a decade. Chechnya can forget about seeking independence until well after 2025, Palestinians should not have a chance at statehood within the lifetime of any one alive today, and Arab leaders will be persuaded to either use their own sharpened senses of greed and retribution to assert control over the suicide-mill madrassahs, or be lumped in with those that must be removed.
Exterminated.
Looking for a Job?
The economy and relative availability of employment are virtually independent of Administration policy.
If the President had the power to create jobs, we'd have them. Right now, if Bush could create 1.4 million jobs he would send Kerry scuttling back to Assachusetts. And Bush is only responsible for putting two people out of work: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.
Hammering on the stats versus who's in office despite major economic upheavals disregards the simple fact that changes for the better are usually glacial. There's every reason to believe that Clinton's "red hot" economy during the `90's was a gift provided by the previous administrations Gulf War. And that the collapse of the Dot.com bubble - and the WTC - were Bill's true legacy to us all.
Other than hiring a couple of hombres to rake the White House lawn, how would any President create jobs? Unable to answer this simple question, some people continue to wail about the lost jobs. Liberal people.
Explain what your contender would do (other than start a bunch of make-work Federal programs) to get America working again. Since the Heinz Company shipped 70% of its jobs overseas, the price of its pickles has remained the same and their cost has gone down. Who do we get to beat up about that?
The Liberal response translates a shape-shifting argle-bargle: "Capitalism is bad, and people who make obscene profits are criminals, unless they donate a lot of money to people who support social justice for underpaid migrant workers whose sweat is the brine the cheap pickles are cured in."
Relishing the Liberal Pickle
Honestly, what does a member of the Heinz family do to deserve $1 billion dollars? Make a pair of shoes as competently as Nike? Brew a steaming cup of Open Sun-picked coffee as well as Starbucks? Stitch up a Kathy Lee halter-top with the word SLUT spelled out across the front in sequins?
The whiners don't straddle the fence here: they're impaled upon it.
I live near Boulder. I lived next to Berkeley. I owned a home just up the highway from Fairfax in California's Extreme Leftist Marin County. You may know Fairfax as the home of its most famous ex-resident, the American Taliban, Johnny Lindh Walker.
I fully understand the hardcore Liberal mindset, "I got mine, you don’t deserve yours."
Remember the schoolyard snitch and gossip, who made points (or got rewards) by exaggerating the behavior of others, setting one group against the other and spreading rumors to destabilize the rest of the students?
These reprobates never stopped meddling, clouding the issues and disrupting those around them. They merely formed pernicious groups of self-proclaimed "socially conscious" gatekeepers and rabble-rousers.
How bizarre are they? I have personally met over a hundred of the dozen or so people who walked side-by-side with Martin Luther King. I met Pro Abortion activists who yelled at pregnant women for smoking. I've seen fireplace mantel pictures in million-dollar homes showing the owner, at 20 or so, fighting with riot police.
And all the while, these preposterous self-deceivers bragged about their triumphs in the `60's, forced their children into socialist indoctrination, casual drug use, hatred of authority and social alienation.
Liberal Revolutionaries - Just Like Mom and Dad wish they were...
I often wondered who thought up the "Question Authority" bumper sticker (so prevalent in university towns and other Lefty enclaves) and how ridiculous a command it was when displayed on the back of one’s car. One routine stop by a traffic cop and you"re either proven a congenital wimp or well on your way to a jailhouse rendezvous with a 300-pound guy named Race.
The common thread with most of the gray pony tailed, Granny Spandex, Earth Shoe scuffling, militant Vegan, namaste bowing, throwbacks I met (including their damaged whelps) was financial independence through hard-driving capitalism in their dim past, a family inheritance or an endowment from a lefty slush/trust fund or foundation. Mostly - free money.
(If you think I'm exaggerating about the "namaste bowing" watch Kerry do it in front of crowds and then talk about matching Bush blow for blow against terror. It's hilarious. Doesn't he realize what he's doing? Do any of them? (Abandoning the Jews in Israel, then emulating the Hindoos... verkakt!)
And yet, rather than being thankful for what they had (and stopping by the orphanage to change a diaper or dish out gruel), these Left Behind Lefties attempt to spread their anti-capitalist rabies to everyone they meet. "Tax the Rich!" they scream, knowing full well that the rich are never taxed. Those who are trying to become rich are taxed: clobbered with assessments and surtaxes and penalties.
That's why they call it an Income Tax. Not a Savings Tax or Endowment Tax or Trust Fund Tax. Income. What people who work for a living depend on.
Not the landed, endowed, posh enclave of Socialist discontent. They’re beyond the reach of an Income Tax. They've got all their stuff already.
The Kerry Exit Strategy
If Kerry wants the Rich to pay their fair share, let him propose a 50% Multi-Millionaire's Tax on all legacy wealth and he could pick up a fast 500M from his wife. It'd send a lot of disadvantaged kids to school, but I think he'd return home to find his suitcases piled on the front stoop of one of the The Heinz Palaces.
And about his claim of being able to create jobs? It might pay for Kerry to find a job himself, even this late in his moneyed life, so he can find out what having one feels like.
Next: Terror and Gay Marriage
But after phone calls with two old friends, I was so saddened by their responses that I believe I've decided what the subtitle will be: Losing Liberal Friends.
One of them is a writer/producer in Hollywood, and the other is a tenured professor at a well-known southern University - an amazing, almost stereotypical pairing.
Where Did All My Good Friends Go?
In the last year or so, I've lost over a dozen truly wonderful friends. Not because we've worked ourselves into partisan donnybrooks, but because our language and concepts have grown (or have been pulled) so far apart that we no longer share sufficient reality-ground to stand upon.
The result is semantically loaded, syntactically nuanced, semiotically fractured "talking at each other" that keeps us struggling to pull each other into a context and sensibility that can be presented and argued logically.
It seems hopeless. And after the last extended, yet frustrating call, I scribbled out a list of recurrent problems.
My friends will undoubtedly read these posts, and I hope they understand that I am as stymied as they are about how we can set this aside.
So, in the spirit of "open kimono" honesty:
You have no idea how I feel about Bush, Kerry, the National Guard, Vietnam, cocaine, treason, terror, the economy or Gay marriage.
Yes, you can probably estimate a response I would give when questioned about any one of the above, based on our years of friendship and discussions, wisecracks and arguments. But my feelings are deeper and more complex that you can guess. For example: I served along with National Guard and Army Reservists in Vietnam, so painting the Guard or Reserve as a draft-dodging ploy doesn’t wash with me. In fact it shows the shallowness of the accusation. If you don't know the facts, please don't parrot the talking points or smear du jour.
I also used cocaine during the mid `80's and had a hell of a time eliminating that social and physical addiction from my life. If someone else got caught in its grip and escaped, I feel mild camaraderie with that person, not self-righteous indignation or hatred. I don't care what mistakes a person made in their life - what lessons did they learn, what changes did they make and where are they now.
It's also important that the person learned a life lesson due to the change and is able to understands and communicate it to others, when appropriate.
On the phone with my Mom the other day, I said, "Did you ever think the Democrats would be putting up a Nam vet, reviling draft evaders and accusing their opponents of being drug addicts?" She thought for a moment and offered, "They must be out of ideas."
Heroes
The behavior needed to be regarded a true hero has been so diluted and misapplied that the title is now routinely bestowed on victims, survivors and bystanders.
Merely surviving an incident does not make one a hero. Speaking up when disagreeing with a majority does not: dying in a catastrophe, enduring a painful situation, suffering for good or needless reasons, encountering and besting overwhelming obstacles, being oppressed, hated by others, and willing to defy the law at risk of punishment are not necessarily the earmarks of a hero.
The ground rule of heroism is placing the welfare and needs of others above that of your own safety and subsequent advantage. And this bar is raised for soldiers, police, firefighters and rescue workers. In their situations, underlying heroism is built into their job descriptions.
And more often than not, they go well beyond that.
Who's a Hero?
My Dad was a severely wounded WWII veteran: Bronze Star, Purple Hearts, Unit Citations and a physical disability that brought him over 55 years of intense pain. I never saw his medals or heard a word about his battle experiences. Once a year, he went to a reunion of his unit (the Tenth Mountain Division) and met with other soldiers to laugh and cry and thank each other for their mutual sacrifice.
Other than that, you wouldn't hear much about it from him. And we - my brothers and sister and I - grew up remembering that he was wounded only when we went to the beach or saw him with his shirt off.
I often wondered how he had survived: the silver dollar-sized bullet scars that ran across his chest, the deep trough in his arm and shoulder where a mortar explosion shattered his bones and shredded his muscles, the small shards of shrapnel that he "sweated out".
My Dad was a hero, but it would have embarrassed him to talk about it.
Now, an Army private wraps up her S.U.HumVee, lies on a hospital bed for a week and can't remember anything after the crash is designated a "hero." Loudmouth Liberal Senators confer the title of "hero" upon themselves and each other for the bravery of braying like jackasses during a Conservative Administration. An actor gets thrown from his horse due to his arrogance and lack of skill and is paralyzed from the neck down. When he maintains that he is optimistic about walking again, he's hailed as a "hero".
These people may be lucky, unlucky or have a great press agent, but they are not heroes.
What Did You Do During The War, Daddy?
Flying a soon-to-be-decommissioned jet in the Texas Air National Guard is not heroic unless the pilot was shot down over Austin, held prisoner in a tortilla factory and winged by trigger-happy INS agents while trying to lead the illegal alien dough-patters to an Immigration Attorney's office.
Pulling a fellow soldier back into a boat while hostile fire rages is undoubtedly heroic. Perhaps even shooting a VC rocket carrier in the back is heroic, since life and death transcends the Hollywood code of the Old West.
(Although, if you describe the alternative to a live-fire lifeguard action - moving your boat to safety and watching the helpless soldier get shot or drown - we are left with only one word - coward. Perhaps a Swiftboat commander who HAD run off, leaving the man to die, might have realized this paucity of descriptions and, after four or five minutes, returned to execute the bare minimum required of his rank and mission - save the soldier.)
Throwing one's medals or ribbons (or mibbons or redals - Damn, we `Nam Vets sure do get those words mixed up!) back in the face of America while stabbing 3,403,100 U.S. military men and women in the back - repeating lies told by Vietnam veteran impersonators - meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris to demoralize our troops while the war was still being fought - are most assuredly not heroic actions but are, by simple definition, treasonous and criminal.
Finally, becoming a true, selfless hero is not necessarily event that transforms the rest of one's life, washing away character faults or destructive behaviors. There are certified heroes who are liars, drunks, manic-depressive spouse beaters, sex addicts, greedy manipulators, child abusers, and politically motivated sycophants.
So, I don't care who you believe is a hero...
The question is, "How does the past action of an individual determine who will be of more value in the future."
The skills needed to be an effective President track more toward management, consistency and persistence.
Battlefield heroics? A miniscule part of the equation.
(Want some relevant numbers and myths busted? http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html)
Until you has been in the thick of war, not the armchair-General Fog of War that plays so well in cinematic retrospect, you have no idea what you are talking about.
(BTW: MacNamara is a senile old man who has just recently realized that he was a senile young man.)
In fact, the influence of Hollywood has created hordes of non-military simpletons who have an opinion and agenda about how conflicts should be managed. Watching Spielberg wage war is merely following colored lights on a canvas screen because a story, no matter how well told, is not reality. It's not even a good guide to reality. It's just a fragmented piece of an unknowable mosaic of experiences.
Vietnam was not Platoon, Apocalypse Now or Good Morning Vietnam. It was over 3 million stories and very few happy endings.
http://www.palletmastersworkshop.com/namflash.html
But the functional insanity of non-military strategists is an outgrowth of Police Review Board activism - bhong smoke left over from the `60's - where those who will never find themselves in a life or death situation are authorized to dictate what they feel is an appropriate use of force. Closet anarchists.
Earlier, I said that a strong measure of heroism is built into the job descriptions of the police and military. But make no mistake; job #1 for both professions is arriving home at the end of the day (or war) with the same number of holes in your body that you were born with.
Neither are paid to be wounded or killed. That is not the job description.
So, when anyone resists arrest or capture - and they either have a weapon or act as though they have a weapon - they have forfeited their right to be afforded the courtesy of unarmed restraint.
Most gunfights are mere seconds in length, chaotic and pit a life and death action on the part of the suspect against a measured response from the officer. The suspect has no chance of "punching out at 5 and going home" so this imbalance presents an enormous disadvantage to the military or police employee.
Second-guessing the soldier or police after the fact, is senseless. To even the disadvantage, a police review board should be composed of people who have been in armed conflict and survived.
Knife Versus Gun? Shoot To Kill.
Hell, this isn't a video game.
And yet, I hear PRB morons screaming, "He only had a knife!" as if any of them would risk a razor slice across the throat in the blink of an eye to protect the rights of the suspect. The same people who would take away an American's right to own a gun, illogically support the right of a suspect to brandish a knife.
Laughably, many PBR stooges (and other Lefty politicos)have wangled pistol "carry licenses" to protect themselves. Scare California Senator Dianne Feinstein and you'll be sucking on the stubby barrel of a 38 special.
Here in Denver a few months ago, the police responded to a domestic violence call where the attacker was reported to have a weapon. When the police arrived on the scene, one of the men reached under a blanket quickly and pulled out a can of soda. Mentally deranged? Confused? Thirsty?
No. Dead. In a split second. The same split second it would have taken a bullet from the suspect to hit the officer. You call it. What would you do in the same situation?
If you're sure you could have positively identified the shiny object flashed into view before pulling the trigger, I'll ask you to put your money where your mouth is.
Step Right Up!
Spend an afternoon at a Confidence Course pistol range. Walk through a home defense situation. As the silhouettes pop out at you, you'll see various potential targets: say, a man with a pistol, a child with a toy or a woman with a cell phone. Perhaps the Man will have the phone and the woman or the child will have the gun.
You've got a fraction of a second to recognize, evaluate and decide whether or not to shoot, and if so, aim to wound. The suspect just has to shoot to kill. A full second lag time on your part means you lose.
Shoot the unarmed person and your career is over, and you will live with the incident as the prime defining moment of your life. Fail to shoot the armed person within that brief single second and you are probably wounded or dead. By the way, being wounded does not stop the encounter, you still need to kill or be killed; only now, you may be unable to move or aim your weapon.
So stroll down the Confidence Course and every time you hit an unarmed pop-up, laugh nervously and say, "Oops!" But imagine that every time an armed target appears, it automatically fires a round at you - unless you hit the armed silhouette within a scant 1 second.
You won't have enough reaction time to say "Oops."
That'll be your initiation into the Police Review Board position - lots of dead innocent people and possibly a few new holes in you. After all, if you're not willing to stand in the cops shoes, who the hell are you to second-guess his survival judgment?
It's Even More Fun For Soldiers!
Now, not only do you have to make the same split second decisions to save your life, but you are walking through an environment where seemingly unarmed people are wearing bomb belts, improvised explosive devices can be hidden in cars, boxes, dead animals, bushes, piles of rubble, and the suspects all look alike, are not concerned about surviving the attack and the rest of the non-hostile populace won't make a move to defend themselves or warn you when you are in danger.
Now, here's your motivation - as an E-3 (Corporal) you'll be paid a whopping $1,117.80, per month before taxes. That's $13,413.60 for your 1-year tour of duty being a target in Baghdad. Sixty excitement-filled minutes in every $6.70 hour, 8 hours a day. The other 16 excitement-filled unpaid hours are yours to do with as you please.
It's not an enviable re-imbursement for risking your life - a buck or so less than flipping burgers or sitting on your single-hole ass collecting welfare or unemployment. But think of the honor you'll receive when you hold fire a split second too long to avoid hitting an innocent and take a round or two for the team.
So, that $6.70 an hour had better be supplemented by your strong personal sense of duty, honor and commitment to freedom - the very qualities that so-called "peace-activist" whiners despise. Sure, they'll scream about individual freedoms, but deny them to others when they feel threatened. They'll rally for social justice, but deny it to those who protect the rest of us. They'll march for economic equality, but protest pay raises that would give their defenders the same compensation as a spatula-jockey.
If they really want to bring the troops home, give the Armed Forces the materiel, authority and emotional support they need to take out the terrorists/insurgents/Islamicists and pacify Iraq. The notion of wanting to end all wars and keep the U.S. military dormant is rubbish. End fires and keep Fire Stations dormant. End Hurricanes and keep rescue workers dormant.
Maybe We Can Change Reality By Changing The Language!
This silliness is perpetuated by agenda-reciters who talk about Sensitive Wars and Exit Strategies.
Sensitive War is such an addle-headed buzzword that I refuse to point out how illogical a pairing it is. Caring Mutilation. Gentle Rape. Considerate Beheading. Nutty. The object is to impose your control over the enemy. Period, end of message.
And the concept of an Exit Strategy wasn't even applied to warfare until the corporate world worked up the idea in quasi-criminal acquisition and management schemes, e.g., Michael Milkin and Ken Lay had exit strategies. Not a tactical retreat, mind you, but a way of extricating oneself when the situation you've made turns bad and you want to yank out your plunder.
The reason the military does not have an exit strategy is because it is not an option to leave a war zone while still battling the attackers. It's a win or lose proposition. That's what war is: survival - battle-by-battle, campaign-by-campaign. To have a plan to "pull out" is to admit at the outset that there is another option to the war in the first place. Yet another whiff of Bhong smoke...
The option of not deposing Hussein on March 19th 2003 was deposing Hussein on March 20th 2003 or the 21st. Having been hit hard at the WTC, America could not afford to allow a known supporter of terrorism to remain in power. Time is money.
The U.S. could have conceivably "pulled out" of Iraq after Hussein was apprehended, but the cost in subsequent Iraq civilian murders would be staggering. (Ask Kerry how his estimate of post-pullout assaaination in Vietnam worked out - he stated a "three or four thousand - 2.5 million were massacred)
Besides, the ground rule of heroism is placing the welfare and needs of others above that of your own safety and subsequent advantage. Not the Kerry "acceptable massacre" concept.
Between Iraq and a Hard Place
It doesn't matter what Moktada al Sadr wants, or what the mullahs want, or what the jihad-frenzied foreign terrorists want. All that matters is that we leave Iraq a safer place for the citizens, where they can determine their own rights and freedoms by participating in free elections and referendums.
Of course the Islamicists are willing to die to prevent this. Any choice freely made by the Iraqi people countermands their centuries-old interpretation of the Koran. A similar misreading of the Bible would have fanatical groups of Christians demanding a "Caesar" to impose taxation and legal jurisdiction on all Americans.
That would be as "fanatical" as Fundamentalist Liberals crying out for Kerry's ascension to the Presidency and its resulting aftermath, wouldn't it?
We are at war with 12th Century terrorists, using 21st Century weapons. You can't plan a strategy when the other side is looking forward to dying. All you can do at that point is to help them reach their goal quickly and efficiently without harming those who wish to live.
It's often pointed out that the U.S. military is not equipped to handle Police responsibilities. This "change the argument" nonsense has been hampering the transition of Iraq from a war zone to civilian authority. At this point, Police are still a step away from taking control. It's still a war, Mr. Edwards.
Call the Orkin Man
What Iraq needs - and what the U.S. will need in the near future - is a specially trained team of exterminators. Not military, police or swat personnel, but an independent organization charged with routing and destroying the embedded terrorists. In Iraq they would be Iraqi nationals, trained and supported by U.S. troops. In America, judicious application of the Posse Comitatus Act would allow the military to support covert actions against entrenched terrorists with a civilian -led front. http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm
This so-called "Police State" scenario will be keenly opposed only until horrors like those witnessed in Beslan force us to confront the perpetrators of unreasoning evil. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/09/20/001.html
Exterminators. Not soldiers or police or peace negotiators. A bunch of men, women and children who identify vermin and help set-up their removal.
For example: Begin a program where Iraqi's identify every non-Iraqi living in their area. Shine a light on the jihadists sense of invisibility. Pop a few and the neighborhood becomes too hot for them.
Think it's a fascist, racist idea? Tell that to Black leaders who have cleaned up inner city neighborhoods using the same technique. You might find yourself in a double-Democrat bind.
Meet terror with terror and disregard the demands of the people who weild it. Every suicide bomber explosion should set back plans for negotiations a year, every massacre - a decade. Chechnya can forget about seeking independence until well after 2025, Palestinians should not have a chance at statehood within the lifetime of any one alive today, and Arab leaders will be persuaded to either use their own sharpened senses of greed and retribution to assert control over the suicide-mill madrassahs, or be lumped in with those that must be removed.
Exterminated.
Looking for a Job?
The economy and relative availability of employment are virtually independent of Administration policy.
If the President had the power to create jobs, we'd have them. Right now, if Bush could create 1.4 million jobs he would send Kerry scuttling back to Assachusetts. And Bush is only responsible for putting two people out of work: Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.
Hammering on the stats versus who's in office despite major economic upheavals disregards the simple fact that changes for the better are usually glacial. There's every reason to believe that Clinton's "red hot" economy during the `90's was a gift provided by the previous administrations Gulf War. And that the collapse of the Dot.com bubble - and the WTC - were Bill's true legacy to us all.
Other than hiring a couple of hombres to rake the White House lawn, how would any President create jobs? Unable to answer this simple question, some people continue to wail about the lost jobs. Liberal people.
Explain what your contender would do (other than start a bunch of make-work Federal programs) to get America working again. Since the Heinz Company shipped 70% of its jobs overseas, the price of its pickles has remained the same and their cost has gone down. Who do we get to beat up about that?
The Liberal response translates a shape-shifting argle-bargle: "Capitalism is bad, and people who make obscene profits are criminals, unless they donate a lot of money to people who support social justice for underpaid migrant workers whose sweat is the brine the cheap pickles are cured in."
Relishing the Liberal Pickle
Honestly, what does a member of the Heinz family do to deserve $1 billion dollars? Make a pair of shoes as competently as Nike? Brew a steaming cup of Open Sun-picked coffee as well as Starbucks? Stitch up a Kathy Lee halter-top with the word SLUT spelled out across the front in sequins?
The whiners don't straddle the fence here: they're impaled upon it.
I live near Boulder. I lived next to Berkeley. I owned a home just up the highway from Fairfax in California's Extreme Leftist Marin County. You may know Fairfax as the home of its most famous ex-resident, the American Taliban, Johnny Lindh Walker.
I fully understand the hardcore Liberal mindset, "I got mine, you don’t deserve yours."
Remember the schoolyard snitch and gossip, who made points (or got rewards) by exaggerating the behavior of others, setting one group against the other and spreading rumors to destabilize the rest of the students?
These reprobates never stopped meddling, clouding the issues and disrupting those around them. They merely formed pernicious groups of self-proclaimed "socially conscious" gatekeepers and rabble-rousers.
How bizarre are they? I have personally met over a hundred of the dozen or so people who walked side-by-side with Martin Luther King. I met Pro Abortion activists who yelled at pregnant women for smoking. I've seen fireplace mantel pictures in million-dollar homes showing the owner, at 20 or so, fighting with riot police.
And all the while, these preposterous self-deceivers bragged about their triumphs in the `60's, forced their children into socialist indoctrination, casual drug use, hatred of authority and social alienation.
Liberal Revolutionaries - Just Like Mom and Dad wish they were...
I often wondered who thought up the "Question Authority" bumper sticker (so prevalent in university towns and other Lefty enclaves) and how ridiculous a command it was when displayed on the back of one’s car. One routine stop by a traffic cop and you"re either proven a congenital wimp or well on your way to a jailhouse rendezvous with a 300-pound guy named Race.
The common thread with most of the gray pony tailed, Granny Spandex, Earth Shoe scuffling, militant Vegan, namaste bowing, throwbacks I met (including their damaged whelps) was financial independence through hard-driving capitalism in their dim past, a family inheritance or an endowment from a lefty slush/trust fund or foundation. Mostly - free money.
(If you think I'm exaggerating about the "namaste bowing" watch Kerry do it in front of crowds and then talk about matching Bush blow for blow against terror. It's hilarious. Doesn't he realize what he's doing? Do any of them? (Abandoning the Jews in Israel, then emulating the Hindoos... verkakt!)
And yet, rather than being thankful for what they had (and stopping by the orphanage to change a diaper or dish out gruel), these Left Behind Lefties attempt to spread their anti-capitalist rabies to everyone they meet. "Tax the Rich!" they scream, knowing full well that the rich are never taxed. Those who are trying to become rich are taxed: clobbered with assessments and surtaxes and penalties.
That's why they call it an Income Tax. Not a Savings Tax or Endowment Tax or Trust Fund Tax. Income. What people who work for a living depend on.
Not the landed, endowed, posh enclave of Socialist discontent. They’re beyond the reach of an Income Tax. They've got all their stuff already.
The Kerry Exit Strategy
If Kerry wants the Rich to pay their fair share, let him propose a 50% Multi-Millionaire's Tax on all legacy wealth and he could pick up a fast 500M from his wife. It'd send a lot of disadvantaged kids to school, but I think he'd return home to find his suitcases piled on the front stoop of one of the The Heinz Palaces.
And about his claim of being able to create jobs? It might pay for Kerry to find a job himself, even this late in his moneyed life, so he can find out what having one feels like.
Next: Terror and Gay Marriage
Recognizing Liberal Guilt
Liberal Guilt is an advanced form of 6th grade classroom clique politics, where manipulation, rumor-mongering, and covert alliances allow a few otherwise unremarkable kids to hold sway over the entire class.
Full-blown Liberal Guilt is unique in that it is both a debilitating psychological malady and powerful political manipulation tool.
Those who SUFFER from Liberal Guilt are unable to enjoy what they have - freedoms, belongings, peace - because there are others who don't have these fruits of democracy, capitalism, and military strength. LibGuilt people writhe in agony at the thought that other Americans enjoy these gifts and, in their hate, seek to restrict freedom, re-distribute wealth, and destroy the powers within the United States that maintain peace.
Those who USE Liberal Guilt to manipulate others, portray middleclass Americans and the actions of the United States to be greedy, brutal, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. This unrelenting re-framing of every American thought, word, and deed produces a hypnotic effect on weak-minded people - they come to believe the inverse of everything: vaccinations cause disease, hating business and technology is seen as concern for the planet, dictators are benevolent / elected leaders are tyrants, tolerance and independence are complicitous social crimes / terrorist violence is justified political dissent, so-called illegal behavior is merely social prejudice against the individual, wealth is greed, poverty is honesty, patriotism is terrorism, terrorism is liberation...
A Guilty Liberal hates the United States because there is less freedom and wealth in the rest of the world. Yet, any attempt to extend this freedom and wealth to others is castigated as imperialism. A politician using Liberal Guilt seeks to gain power not by creating freedom and wealth of the rest of the world, but rather by leading the dissolution of the U.S.
The underlying LibGuilt mantra is: "The U.S. has too much, we care too little, we cheat, we lie, and we take advantage of others." When other countries actually display these attitudes and behaviors, the LibGuilt counters with, "Well of course they did. They HAD to, because of what the United States does everyday!"
The LibGuilt goal is an ethically-segregated socialist utopia where the only people with no civil rights are White European Males, who will forever be the scapegoat for all the ills and shortcoming of others.
The LibGuilt dream is the return of a benevolent dictator who tells everyone the right thing to do and anyone who disagrees can be chased through the streets with impunity. The dream also includes a world were America is insignificant excerpt for its ability to support the rest of the world, unimportant other than for its role as an example of a reformed exploiter, powerless except for its ability to perform the U.N.'s police scut work.
Those who subscribe to the Liberal Guilt agenda are part of a pernicious masochism/suicide cult where the United States must be broken, humbled, and purged of the very people and businesses that give it life. Surely the history of Communism never showed a coherent working model, the history of Socialism never delivered a shred of fairness, equality or competence, but the Guilty Liberals KNOW that the best working model of government and society in the world must be destroyed.
And now, the Liberal Guilt tool of choice is inflaming the resentment of Gore supporters who they call "disenfranchised." This conveniently associates those voters with illegal immigrants, minorities, extremist political groups, eco-terrorist, radical sex causes and prisoners.
As the flames are fanned, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and ACLU lawyers are attempting to abolish voting itself, by arguing that "even if one potential voter is denied the opportunity to vote (for whatever reason) the entire vote must be declared invalid."
The great contradiction here, is that the most of the LibGuilt crowd rarely interact directly with the "oppressed" they seek to "liberate" preferring to destroy the system in anticipation of the 2nd Coming of the "Age Of Aquarius."
Full-blown Liberal Guilt is unique in that it is both a debilitating psychological malady and powerful political manipulation tool.
Those who SUFFER from Liberal Guilt are unable to enjoy what they have - freedoms, belongings, peace - because there are others who don't have these fruits of democracy, capitalism, and military strength. LibGuilt people writhe in agony at the thought that other Americans enjoy these gifts and, in their hate, seek to restrict freedom, re-distribute wealth, and destroy the powers within the United States that maintain peace.
Those who USE Liberal Guilt to manipulate others, portray middleclass Americans and the actions of the United States to be greedy, brutal, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. This unrelenting re-framing of every American thought, word, and deed produces a hypnotic effect on weak-minded people - they come to believe the inverse of everything: vaccinations cause disease, hating business and technology is seen as concern for the planet, dictators are benevolent / elected leaders are tyrants, tolerance and independence are complicitous social crimes / terrorist violence is justified political dissent, so-called illegal behavior is merely social prejudice against the individual, wealth is greed, poverty is honesty, patriotism is terrorism, terrorism is liberation...
A Guilty Liberal hates the United States because there is less freedom and wealth in the rest of the world. Yet, any attempt to extend this freedom and wealth to others is castigated as imperialism. A politician using Liberal Guilt seeks to gain power not by creating freedom and wealth of the rest of the world, but rather by leading the dissolution of the U.S.
The underlying LibGuilt mantra is: "The U.S. has too much, we care too little, we cheat, we lie, and we take advantage of others." When other countries actually display these attitudes and behaviors, the LibGuilt counters with, "Well of course they did. They HAD to, because of what the United States does everyday!"
The LibGuilt goal is an ethically-segregated socialist utopia where the only people with no civil rights are White European Males, who will forever be the scapegoat for all the ills and shortcoming of others.
The LibGuilt dream is the return of a benevolent dictator who tells everyone the right thing to do and anyone who disagrees can be chased through the streets with impunity. The dream also includes a world were America is insignificant excerpt for its ability to support the rest of the world, unimportant other than for its role as an example of a reformed exploiter, powerless except for its ability to perform the U.N.'s police scut work.
Those who subscribe to the Liberal Guilt agenda are part of a pernicious masochism/suicide cult where the United States must be broken, humbled, and purged of the very people and businesses that give it life. Surely the history of Communism never showed a coherent working model, the history of Socialism never delivered a shred of fairness, equality or competence, but the Guilty Liberals KNOW that the best working model of government and society in the world must be destroyed.
And now, the Liberal Guilt tool of choice is inflaming the resentment of Gore supporters who they call "disenfranchised." This conveniently associates those voters with illegal immigrants, minorities, extremist political groups, eco-terrorist, radical sex causes and prisoners.
As the flames are fanned, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and ACLU lawyers are attempting to abolish voting itself, by arguing that "even if one potential voter is denied the opportunity to vote (for whatever reason) the entire vote must be declared invalid."
The great contradiction here, is that the most of the LibGuilt crowd rarely interact directly with the "oppressed" they seek to "liberate" preferring to destroy the system in anticipation of the 2nd Coming of the "Age Of Aquarius."
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