Sarah Palin has donated the maximum allowable in support of Rand Paul’s bid for the Kentucky U.S. Senate seat. Neoconservatives are furious. David Horowitz’s new NewsReal blog offers an attempt at an analysis of the contradictions of a Palin endorsement of a Paul.
Since very few brain cells went into designing the site, I will be unable to quote from it. Not only is NewsReal incredibly busy in a bad, ADHD kind of way, but someone really “clever” has ensured one cannot “Ctrl c” so as to “Ctrl v” any excerpts therefrom. In other words, you can’t cut and paste for quotation purposes.
I’m certainly not going to bother typing this stuff out—no body is. Maybe the web designer thought that the originality of the contents warranted anti-copying software.
Rand Paul’s site, on the other hand, is original in all the right ways and reproducible. Sarah for Rand is here. And yes, “Rand is for real”:
Rand Paul is beating all U.S. Senate candidates in both parties and … has huge Tea Party and grass roots support driving his overwhelming success against establishment politicians and their budget-busting ways.
If Sarah helps send Tea Party Paulites to DC, and snubs establishment Republican oinkers—she will have done America more good than most.
Update: On the petty issue of being able to “cut n’ paste” from the NewsReal blog: Could it be that the webmaster fixed the flaw following my post? I suspect so.
The facility is working now, but another reader informed me just a couple of hours back that “cut & paste” was possible, albeit by right clicking only on the text. I’m glad the facility is working now, pursuant to my complaint.
As to the busy, boggling nature of the site: I fully admit that the youth is more inclined than me to white noise. I like clean, clear, and unfussy. However, as Hollywood has made clear for decades, the older generation has nothing on the youth when it comes to technology, style, smarts, etc.
Enable sarcasm. I live with someone who makes the innards of the toys and telephones our deeply stupid, attention-deficient mites depend on to sustain brain waves. He himself doesn’t use all that crap technology (other than a PC and a cell, when needed). Telling, ha? Most thinking people like clear, clean, and unfussy.
The white-noise producing toys, by the way, are usually made by older people (with advanced engineering degrees)—often Asians, many of whom are older—beavering away under one or two really smart Americans (also older), all in an effort to keep the brainwaves of the younger generation (mostly Americans) from flatlining.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews regularly mocks patriots who mention secession or nullification, both essential ingredients in American founding philosophy.
As I’ve written, “Restoring the people’s ‘unalienable rights’ may well lie in Jeffersonian interposition and nullification, whereby states beat back the federal occupier by voiding unconstitutional federal laws.”
In August of 2009, Matthews targeted Texas Governor Rick Perry for invoking secession. Now, the newsman (who boasted about getting a thrill, or was it a trickle, up or down his leg on thinking about Obama’s presidential victory) is pillorying Palin for secession talk.
He barked: “Palin got cheers this weekend when she mentioned secession at a rally in Texas. Is it really patriotic to advocate leaving your country? What’s going on in Texas?” Mathews further hissed hysterically that “such talk” brought about the slaughter of 600,000 in the War Between the States. Don’t these ignoramuses know the history of our country and how such talk ends-up, he wailed.
As though talk of secession, to which Lincoln responded with fratricidal Total War, wrought the destruction of that war; as though the central lesson to be had from that unwarranted Northern aggression is the necessity of forever submerging these fundamental freedoms, because bullies and bigots are allergic to them.
“The moral and intellectual nurturers of Lincoln’s legacy have carved careers out of denying that the soul of the American federal system is state sovereignty. And state sovereignty, as author Thomas J. DiLorenzo points out, is gutless in its power to check the federal government without the right of secession.”
The standard response from neoconservatives is to deny the content or context of the “offensive” speech of which their camp is accused, as they too reject secession and nullification.
All in all, Matthews has been extremely rude about Palin, repeatedly referring to her as an empty vessel, and worse.
That’s Sarah Palin. The Age of the Idiot means that, as I write, no transcript is available of Sarah Palin’s address to the Tea Party Convention. I would have preferred to speed read through the thing, but I am forced to view this. Thanks BAB readers for your solid comments on the speech in the previous post.
• Plenty babble about democracy being beautiful. The founders founded a republic, not a democracy, because they feared majorities as much as they detested monarchy.
• National security. More nonsense. The response to the pantie bomber is far more dangerous than the Mirandized man could ever be. Terrorizing the American sheeple at airports began under Sarah’s man, Bush. She repeats the asinine idea that the American military bestriding the globe, a presence that cost us a $1 trillion a year, is protecting our constitutional rights. Poppycock.
• Terrorists are trying to destroy the American Constitution, says she. Nonsense. American governments have beat them to it. To all intents and purposes, the Constitution is dead. If the lady doesn’t get it, then…
• Support for democracy and its dissemination across the world, now that’s an idea I’ve heard before. Bush branded the United States as the world’s “partner for a better life.” He also recommitted “our nation” “abroad” “to an historic, long-term goal”: seeking “the end of tyranny in our world.” If the Tea Party doesn’t reject root-and-branch this odious neoconservative formula; I’m out of there.
• “We need a strong national defense.” Middle America, or is it Meathead America, erupted in cheers when Sarah got militant. Uttered by Sarah this is code for gallivanting around the world, which Ronald Reagan, whom she invoked, did not do. He withdrew from Lebanon, remember? I’m for strong defense—of America’s borders, of her neighborhoods via local militias and well-armed citizens.
• I’m against sanctions, which Palin trumpets. We killed enough kids in Iraq through sanctions. “Trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to war. The more economically intertwined countries are, the less likely they are to go to war. Boycott Iran less and barter with it more and it’s bound to tone down its belligerence.”
• I liked the mention of Barry Goldwater, naturally. “We can be conquered by bombs, but we can also be conquered by neglect, by ignoring our Constitution.”
• TARP and bailouts. Didn’t her ticket support the Bush bailout? Isn’t she preparing to stump for McMussolini, the man who’s all for this Keynesian kookiness?
• Only twice did Palin get worked up in a real good way, and that was when she spoke of the effects of the bailouts and TARP on the states and the toll it would take on the Tenth Amendment. She should have remained a governor. She was good at that. The other instance was when she delved into energy issues—yet another of her strengths. If you read her book, you’ll know that, “when it comes to the ins-and-outs of the oil and gas industry—ownership, extraction, contracts and leases—Sarah Palin is as sharp as a tack.”
• The federales keep “making us take these steps toward insolvency.” Good. Palin did say that the federal government was printing dollars, funny-money, or worthless paper. More of that was in order.
Someone pick up from here. I’ve had enough.
Update I: GLORIOUS GIMPS. There, I’ve said it. In her advocacy, repeated in last night’s address, on behalf of “special” children, Palin is strengthening the contemptible tradition, embraced by “traditionalists,” of a politically correct tyranny, to say nothing of statism (when she ran as VP, Palin promised a department devoted to the developmentally challenged. Have I used all the right lingo?).
(Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential hopeful, demanded on Monday that President Barack Obama fire his White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, over a reported expletive [“f—-ng retarded”] he is said to have uttered, CBS News reported.)
Palin is pathetic on this front. She also has it all wrong. If anything, a traditionalist ought to defend manners. I find the plain rude “f-cking” more offensive than the legitimate colloquial “retarded.”
Update II: Palin a product of affirmative action? I can’t begin to think why anyone would so assert. Not true. Palin comes from a poor, hard-working, wonderful family. She worked like a dog for everything she has, including catching and gutting fish, and eventually owning a fishing concern with an equally rugged mate, Todd. In her family, the college-goer paid for his or her education. What parent that you know (or who partakes on this blog) has done that bit of character- building for their brats?
Read her book before you declare Sarah a product of affirmative action. Her political career is also anything but. Campaigning for governor involved getting in the pick-up with Todd and the kids—and if Todd was on The Slope in a hard hat, then without the remarkable hunk—cranking up the music and traveling for hundreds of miles around Alaska to meet the folks.
The woman is fearless.
Anyone who doesn’t recognize Sarah for the remarkable lady she is a plain fool. I challenge him or her to read Sarah’s book, the worst sections of which entail her entanglement with the man Barry Goldwater despised, McMussolini; the best tell of her early familial and political years (and too little of the Love of her Life).
The press lied about the content of Going Rogue. Despite the shoddy treatment Palin received at the hands of a bunch of sleazy McCain handlers, she remained gracious and genteel. Moreover, the book is substantive. Liberals simply consider the kind of ideas Palin expresses and the way of life she likes an abomination.
Having said all that, problems remain with her stunted politics.
WHY on earth? Iran is no danger to the US. If it sends a missile our way, we’ll intercept it. But if the missile lands on a city (DC?), Iran will be communing with the 12th Imam in a matter of minutes. One push of the button is all it takes for the US to nuke Iran out of this hemisphere. Obama, who has been very active in bombing Afghani terrorists, their families and villagers with the aid of drones, will press the button.
Any American who says he’s afraid of Iran is lying, is chicken, or is really afraid for Israel.
I too am afraid for Israel. As I’ve said, Israel has been threatened by Iran. If the Jewish state perceives an impending danger of a nuclear attack from Iran, then the Israelis must do what it takes to defend themselves.
Since backward, poor Iran poses no danger to the US, what our somewhat disingenuous neoconservative contributors are in fact suggesting is that the US fight Israel’s battles. I cannot condone that—certainly not while pretending that Iran poses a danger to the US, when it does not.
Update IV: PALIN STATISM. Other than perpetual war and a department for the disabled, Sarah Palin is a staunch supported of some other big-government items.
Larry Auster notesthat “she is a passionate advocate of Title IX, the federal statute barring ‘discrimination’ against females in education which, in Atlas Shrugged manner, [I don’t get this obfuscating reference Auster has inserted] by requiring that there be an equal number of girls’ and boys’ sports teams in each school, has forced hundreds of schools around the country to discontinue boys’ sports teams. And she supports an expansion of federal aid to education–the very essence of the big government, socialist mindset!”
Update V (Feb. 8): BACK TO IRAN.
WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012? PALIN: It depends on a few things. Say he played—and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day – say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really [to] come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do, but – that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today I do not think Obama would be re-elected. But three years from now, things could change if—on the national security front … WALLACE: But you’re not suggesting that he would cynically play the war card? PALIN: I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change. If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would, perhaps, shift their thinking a little bit and decide, “Well, maybe he’s tougher than we think he’s—than he is today,” and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.
Naturally I oppose a Palin foreign policy whereby we send our men to die for the safety of our satellite states.
One more pesky detail, for those of you itching for some war games (as you are not going to be fighting the war you promote): The US can’t afford the wars it’s in.
That said, you’d have to be an idiot to deny what Iran has been broadcasting: The Islamic Republic is cooking-up a Bomb. The French are afraid. So are the Germans.
So for America, war is out. All else is in. Get the IAEA’s ElBaradei working. He did a good job in Iraq before Bush kicked him out and flattened the place. Have the Europeans strain their nukes on Iran and create Cold-War deterrence. The peaceful options are endless.
In his groundbreaking series on the American Progressive Movement, Fox News personality Glenn Beck touched today on the differences between Republican and Democrat progressives vis-a-vis foreign policy. This was the closest Beck, the unambiguously pro-war, military-booster came to examining his support for the kind of state expansion (via war) the founders would have abhorred.
“The military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small.”
Militias are what the founders bequeathed, not mammoth standing armies.
Beck came close to articulating what readers of this space have been reading and imbibing for years. Warring for Democracy is the Republicans’ homage to Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism; nation-building abroad is how the Democrats prefer to honor his “legacy.”
Beck quotes Thomas Jefferson a lot, as he should. But ideological wars like Iraq, unequivocally backed by Beck, belong to the Jacobin—not Jeffersonian—tradition.
I thought I heard Beck quote the 1821 words of secretary of state John Quincy Adams (the 2nd part of the program is not yet on YouTube): “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher of the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
If not Adams, Beck recited another founder’s exhortation against empire.
The next step for Beck is to reject the recreational wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan with the support of his ilk, and espouse a foreign policy compatible with limited authority and republican virtues. You can’t embrace small government at home and big government abroad. The last Republicans are in the habit of euphemizing as a “strong national defense.”
The beauty of Beck is in his goodness. The fact that at times he says remarkably confused things doesn’t change this.
Here are some glaring mistakes Beck made in today’s program. (Continued below.)
He declared that if Americans knew about the Progressives and their creeping, clandestine agenda, they’d reject it.
It all goes back to immigration, mis-education; the changing face of America, and general rot. A few guns and G-d types may reject the “conservative socialism” (progressivism) in which we are mired based on a visceral feel for the principles of the founding. But most Americans I talk to are clueless—and even hostile to the founding ideas. So let Glenn not presume that progressivism is not in the DNA of a changing America. Once the country is 50 percent Third World, Glenn might as well be talking to the hand.
LOST IN TRANSLATION. After bemoaning how Progressives, having infiltrated America’s institutions, have toiled to alter the meaning of the Constitution, Glenn proposed his own revisionism: rewrite the Federalist Papers so that Americans, whom Glenn insist are never dumb, can understand these brilliant, but difficult, debates.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’ That genius, Thomas Jefferson, also insisted that liberty would be ‘a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed and enlightened to a certain degree.'”
