Category Archives: Conservatism

Budget Baloney

Conservatism, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Feminism, Uncategorized

If Barack Obama gets reelected, he will face two Republican Houses. Thus his budget plan has no hope of ever being put to the vote. “It’s all about election year 2012, not fiscal year 2013,” writes CNN’s Alan Silverleib, about Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget.

Obama’s plan hikes taxes on the wealthiest Americans to the tune of roughly $1.5 trillion. It ends the Bush-era tax cuts for families making over $250,000 annually while enacting the so-called Buffett Rule, requiring households earning more than $1 million to pay at least a 30% rate. …
The administration is proposing to spend billions on infrastructure, education and domestic manufacturing. Among other things, Obama’s budget includes $30 billion to modernize schools, along with another $30 billion to hire and retain teachers and first responders….
It also includes an extension of long-term unemployment benefits and the current payroll tax cut, something Congress is expected to take up this month.
“Congress needs to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance without drama and without delay and without linking it to some other ideological side issues,” Obama declared Monday morning. “The time for self-inflicted wounds to our economy has to be over. Now is the time for action.”
Now is not the time, however, for new details on deficit reduction.

NATURALLY.

More details from Larry Kudlow. Veronique de Rugy has her say at National Review too.

‘South Africa’s Bloody Freedom’

Africa, Conservatism, Constitution, Crime, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Race, South-Africa

There is none so complex and politically charged an issue as the new South Africa. Cosseted American journalists, for the most, can’t and won’t deal with it honestly. Barbara Simpson, WND colleague and beloved KSFO talk-show host, is not a member of the pack. In reviewing “Into the Cannibal’s Pot – Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Barbara castigates “a world media” that are “complicit in the massive, politically correct cover-up of the gradual destruction of that country.”

In her WND column, “South Africa’s Bloody Freedom,” this grand lady reaches beyond the remit of the Mandela-worshiping masses, among whom are the insular, petty, provincial penmen of the American conservative press (pulp and pixels).

I was especially interested in her book because I’ve been to South Africa twice, not as a tourist, but spending time with people who live there, talking with them, seeing how they live, reading local newspapers and seeing it, not through rose-colored glasses, but as it is. It led me to pursue the horrors of Zimbabwe as well. The pattern is clear and almost identical.
Unfortunately, the blindness of our country continues, most recently with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg traveling in Africa.

UPDATED: STRASSEL’S Non Sequitur

Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Republicans, Ron Paul, Terrorism

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL of the Wall Street Journal claimed, in “Why Ron Paul Can’t Win,” that “conservative Republicans” cannot accept Paul’s philosophy as it “fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland.”

Is STRASSEL equating American exceptionalism with the kind of non-defensive militarism America currently practices? It would appear so.

This writer’s position on said “exceptionalism”: “the United States, by virtue of its origins and ideals,” was unique. But most Americans know nothing of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. In fact, they are more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical liberal philosophy of the founders, and hence wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive state and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires through war and welfare.

Thus, I find myself in agreement with this one statement by Princeton’s Joyce Carol Oates:

“[T]ravel to any foreign country,” Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, “and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids…deranged and myopic, dangerous.”

[SNIP]

I thought Paul was strong on Jay Leno, but should probably not have cozied-up to the Left in the way he did. More on that later:

UPDATE: About Bachmann, Paul Said, “she doesn’t like Muslims, she hates them, she wants to go get ‘em.'” “In reference to Rick Santorum, Paul said he can’t stop talking about ‘gay people and Muslims.'” (ABC)

Leave aside whether these statements are true or not: Paul has taken a classic Chris-Matthews kind of ad hominem swipe against Michele Bachmann: she hates Muslims. Santorum hates gays and Muslims. Siding with the Left by adopting its arguments may be situationally advantageous, but it is wrong, and will backfire on a Republican candidate in the long run. This tactic, even if it was a not-so-funny joke, damages Ron Paul’s effectiveness from the vantage point of conservative libertarians who think that liberty cannot be reduced to the non-aggression axiom and has a cultural and civilizational dimension.

Paul is wrong to imply, reductively, that Islamic terrorism in general and September 11 in particular are the sole consequences of American foreign policy. Libertarians cannot persist in such unidirectional formulations. Our adventurous foreign policy is a necessary precondition for Muslim aggression but it is far from a sufficient one.

UPDATED: Newt Gingrich Slithers Around in Jacksonville

Conservatism, Elections, Morality, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans

He was supposed to be courting the tea party in a town hall meeting in Jacksonville, Florida. But Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich did everything but. Google reflects the focus in the media on a single question one toadying attendee asked the speaker; she was bemoaning media bias against Newt, who is the consummate insider. They’ve all neglected Gingrich’s reply to a preceding and very poignant question from a tea partier.

For this reason, I am unable to bring you the question and the answer arrogant Gingrich gave. But the speaker, in essence, told this hard-core fellow that he had asked the wrong question with respect to the candidate’s fidelity to conservatism. He, Newt, would be governing an enormous country and he would, therefore, tailor and aim his policies to holding a 60 percent majority.

Can anyone locate the snake’s exact words?

UPDATE (Nov. 19): Kerry, unless I missed it, the link you provided doesn’t feature the question to which I was referring. It was from a pissed-off tea-partier. He wanted to know how faithful NG would be to tea party principles. Not at all was the sum of the arrogant Gingrich’s reply.