Update II: NCIS Has Always Sucked (Ditto “24”)

Christianity, Film, Hollywood, Islam, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Propaganda

I’d expect a reader as smart and articulate as Mike Bassett to refrain from watching NCIS. I do. I never watch any program in which the actors become “characters”—phony, “quirky,” empty heads, whose nauseating, smarmy interactions trump any attempt at a tale.

Yes, “Law and Order” in all its permutations sports PC elements, as does “CSI.” But generally, these excellent series offer kick-ass scripts and actors. Give me a good narrative. But I will not tolerate some prancing, decked-up, self-styled Goth twenty-something (allegedly) inserting herself into the story, and selling what goes, in these sorry days, for “originality” and “individuality.”

Other than the ladies who always offer up their cleavages in the interrogation room, and everywhere else (you want respect when you go into a situation boobs first? Not from me, bubbles), “Law & Order,” “CSI,” and “Criminal Minds,” especially,—are all top-notch productions.

Update: The other thing I refuse to abide in entertainment is what I call the “giant wagging, prodding finger.” Activism should not replace acting, and sermons must not supplant stories.” I refuse to be lectured by pea brains. GIVE ME A GOOD STORY! No politics.

Writes Mike Bassett:

NCIS, the nations #1 TV show goes P.C. run amok.

Tuesday night’s “Christmas” episode of NCIS, starring and produced by Mark Harmon, was the most disgusting and P.C. episode I have ever seen on the series.

The episode depicts a returned combat veteran Marine murdered while kneeling next to a tree on a Muslim prayer rug.

The crux of the investigation, conducted with a background of the “Christmas” theme in progress, shows various members of Leroy Jethro Gibbs’s NCIS team preparing for various pre-Christmas events while investigating the murder of this Marine turned Muslim.

The suspects are varied (yet inclusive), including:

(1) The Marine’s father, a retired Marine colonel turned “Christian Pastor”.

(2) A group of Marines in the victims former unit.

(3) The Marine’s widow (a very prim and proper white, blonde Christian chick).

(4) The Marine victim’s younger brother (a dashing white Christian guy attending a military prep school).

Also in attendance in the episode is the victim’s Muslim Navy Chaplin, a dashing black officer, who spends the episode quoting the positives of Islam and the traumas of our fighting men who wish to convert to Islam after their tours of duty in the Middle East.

The episode villainizes every suspect in the show as being outwardly hostile toward our victim’s conversion to Islam with the following results:

His father, the now Christianized, retired Marine colonel pastor, who only wants to be referred to as “Reverend”, is found to have paid off some of the current Marines in the victims old unit, to taunt him into rejecting Islam because it is detrimental to the mission of the unit and disgraces his family members.

The old unit buddies spend their time being paid off by Dad (the “Reverend”), and taunting our victim until he is forced to seek counsel from the Muslim chaplin, who, as I said before, spends the episode depicting the wonderful world of Islam.

The widowed wife is depicted as a surly and uncooperative individual, who refuses to assist in the investigation because she has a funeral to conduct.

The younger brother, Mr. Perfect, student at a prestigious military prep school, is in a quandary over who could have possibly killed his brother, the former perfect Marine, that is, before he shamed his family by becoming a Muslim.

Meanwhile, the dapper Muslim Navy Chaplin becomes threatened when he receives a pasted cutout letter describing him as the next victim.

It all boils down to this: Our victim was murdered by his prep school brother in an “honor killing” because he (the victim) was an embarrassment to this wonderful “Christian” family for accepting Islam, thus casting dishonor on his family.

Merry Christmas from NCIS.

As a Christian, a Vietnam Veteran, a retired law enforcement officer, and an American, I am totally repulsed by this further condemnation of my American way of life.

This episode, aired in the Christmas season, is a slap in the face to every American, Christian, Marine, and military man in this country.

It purposely depicted intolerance by the suspects (all of whom were white Christians or Marines) while propagandizing the wonderful tenets of Islam, which were being usurped by a bunch of disenchanted family members and Marines who were serving with the recently “converted” victim.

Disgraceful is an understatement.

Update II (Dec. 20): Virgil is right about “24,” and its hero, “Jack Bauer: Federal Zombie.” This is from the article so titled:

Certain themes in the cult series never change. One is Bauer’s eternal willingness to be chewed and spat out by the successive governments he serves. As Bauer’s Chinese jailers hand him over to his American handlers, the latter chain him like a dog to a fence. But Bauer is accustomed to being manacled by his owners. The Top Dogs just don’t trust their lapdog, despite his devotion.

Or is Bauer’s a zombie’s obedience? As a reader put it, “Jack Bauer is the unstoppable, undead agent who has actually been killed and brought back to life, in service—and thrall—to the state. Instead of the ‘brains’ that ‘regular’ zombies devour, the Federal Zombie feeds on ‘intelligence.’” Jack’s response to his mistreatment is to mutter about his approaching meaningful end—the prospect of giving his life for the Greater Good. Some individualist.

Other abiding Hollywood themes: In real life, the typical Islamic organization—take the Council on American-Islamic Relations—is staffed by media-savvy mouthpieces for militant Islam. “24,” however, has created a chimerical CAIR full of American patriots. One of the central heroes—was it Karen Hayes?—even laments that we are alienating the very community upon which we depend to fight terrorism. On the other hand, suburban Americans are depicted as rabid Islamophobes, wont to turn on their Muslim neighbors at the drop of a hat. In one vignette two such mouth breathers break down the front door of a Muslim family’s home and beat the son up. …

Updated: NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists

Barack Obama, China, Democrats, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column, “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists”:

” … State-sponsored ‘sexy’ technologies in the West have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Copenhagen Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean.

Enter the Chinese worker.

‘You buy a Prius hybrid car and think you’re saving the planet,’ divulged Lindsey Hilsum of PBS’s ‘News Hour,’ ‘but each motor contains a kilo of neodymium and each battery more than 10 kilos of lanthanum, rare earth elements from China. Green campaigners love wind turbines, but the permanent magnets used to manufacture a 3-megawatt turbine contain some two tons of rare earth.’

Mining for rare earth metals is not the cleanest undertaking. Hybrid hypocrites prefer by far that it be done by the poor villagers of the Baiyunkuang District of Darhan Muminggan in Inner Mongolia, northern China. There lie the largest deposits of rare earth metals.

The Prius is packed with the stuff.

The Limousine and Learjet liberals who legislate ‘green’ industries into being prefer to outsource all energy-related extraction. …”

Read the complete column, “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists,” now on WND.COM.

By popular demand, my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is back in print. The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy or copies now!

Update (Dec. 18): A reprieve, for the time being. If I read the veiled vernacular correctly, BO has achieved as much this time around in Copenhagen as he did during his first trip there a few months ago.
The CSM: The Copenhagen Crowd—“the United States and four other countries—“has agreed to a new, voluntary climate pact today. The move, which could become the framework for a broader agreement here, drew responses ranging from cautious acceptance to outrage. But it could prove a historic development in big-power negotiations, say some analysts.”

The Telegraph: “The limited deal was understood to include both developed and developing nations agreeing to ‘list national actions and commitments’ on cutting carbon emissions, US officials said. Agreement was also reached in principle of a package of financial measures to help poorer counties faced with the worst effects of climate change. Crucially, the leaders also gave their assent to targets to limit any rise in global temperatures to 2C.”

[SNIP]

So more foreign aid. The undeveloped countries scored something, but they always do. “Yet More Of Your Money Down The … Rathole.”

From the word salad-like addresses delivered by assorted Third-World shakedown shysters, to the glam factor loitering in the swanky hallways—Copenhagen encapsulates what I’ve called (or, rather, what my dad has coined) The Age of the Idiot:

“Darryl Hannah arrived to make a splash in the city of The Little Mermaid. Thom Yorke, of Radiohead, joined assorted hacks at a British government press briefing. The martial arts film star Jet Li was everywhere and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the grand-daddy of them all, ended his speech with the inevitable promise – or threat – ‘I’ll be back!'” John Kerry and Ban Ki-moon were there too. [The Telegraph]

Updated: America's Founding Philosophy

Barack Obama, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, Individual Rights, Media, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Rights, The Courts

Glenn Beck is invaluable in highlighting the constitutional underpinnings of the republic violated by almost every law enacted by both parties. However Beck’s discussion is generally incomplete (along the lines highlighted in the article “Life, Liberty, and PROPERTY,” where I also readily conceded that “The man exudes goodness and has a visceral feel for freedom”).

Again and again Glenn has alerted his viewers to Obama’s disdain for the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties.” Said the president: (Transcript here)

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

To the president’s telling complaint vis-a-vis the Constitution being deficient in its articulation of negative liberties only, Glenn has retorted as follows: “That’s the way the founders designed it, because they saw what governments do when they are allowed to do stuff for you.”

I’m afraid that’s not quite it. Articulated by the Founders, in the philosophy of classical liberalism and natural law, negative liberties are the only authentic rights. Glenn must articulate more than a utilitarian perspective, which doesn’t do justice to the profundity of America’s Founding Fathers. Glenn is welcome to use the following explanation from “CRADLE OF CORRUPTION,” in my book (buy it), with attribution, of course:

“The only rights of man are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These rights exist irrespective of governments. Rights always give rise to binding obligations. In the case of natural rights, the duty is merely a duty to refrain from doing. My right to life means you must refrain from killing me. My right to liberty means you cannot enslave me. My right to property means you should not take what is mine, or stop me from taking the necessary action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, heed the same strictures.”

“If to exercise a right a person must violate someone’s life, liberty and property, then the exercised right is not a right, but a violation thereof. Because my right to acquire property doesn’t diminish your right to the same liberty, this right is known as a negative right. Negative rights are real or natural rights because they don’t conscript me in the fulfillment of your needs and desires, and vise versa. They merely impel both of us to keep our mitts to ourselves.” [“CRADLE OF CORRUPTION”]

[SNIP]

You see, positive liberties are rejected outright in natural law, unless undertaken voluntarily. So, dear Mr. Beck, the reason the Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president put it, is because positive, state-minted rights violate the individual’s negative (real) rights.

The Great Glenn in action:

Update (Dec. 18): Sitting in for Glenn, Judge Andrew Napolitano delivers a superb explication of the natural-rights doctrine, joined by Joe Salerno, whose lectures at the Mises Institute I greatly enjoyed, and John Tamny of RealClearMarkets.com. What a shame the Wall Street Journal’s statist extraordinaire, Stuart Varney, now tenured at Fox Business, gets to TALK over the Three Wise Men. I’ve had enough of the Stephen Moores and Stuart Varneys of the world, wrong for decades, yet able to keep lucrative careers going, as they pepper their verbiage with the occasional, non-committal, crudely stated truths (“government needs to be throttled”).

Allow freedom and reality to be heard for a change. Expunge the snake-oil merchants from forums friendly to freedom.

Readers, please send me the YouTube clip of this round table, which should be up very shortly (after all, YouTube is not yet run by the state).

Updated: America’s Founding Philosophy

Barack Obama, Constitution, Economy, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, Individual Rights, Media, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Rights, The Courts

Glenn Beck is invaluable in highlighting the constitutional underpinnings of the republic violated by almost every law enacted by both parties. However Beck’s discussion is generally incomplete (along the lines highlighted in the article “Life, Liberty, and PROPERTY,” where I also readily conceded that “The man exudes goodness and has a visceral feel for freedom”).

Again and again Glenn has alerted his viewers to Obama’s disdain for the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties.” Said the president: (Transcript here)

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

To the president’s telling complaint vis-a-vis the Constitution being deficient in its articulation of negative liberties only, Glenn has retorted as follows: “That’s the way the founders designed it, because they saw what governments do when they are allowed to do stuff for you.”

I’m afraid that’s not quite it. Articulated by the Founders, in the philosophy of classical liberalism and natural law, negative liberties are the only authentic rights. Glenn must articulate more than a utilitarian perspective, which doesn’t do justice to the profundity of America’s Founding Fathers. Glenn is welcome to use the following explanation from “CRADLE OF CORRUPTION,” in my book (buy it), with attribution, of course:

“The only rights of man are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These rights exist irrespective of governments. Rights always give rise to binding obligations. In the case of natural rights, the duty is merely a duty to refrain from doing. My right to life means you must refrain from killing me. My right to liberty means you cannot enslave me. My right to property means you should not take what is mine, or stop me from taking the necessary action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, heed the same strictures.”

“If to exercise a right a person must violate someone’s life, liberty and property, then the exercised right is not a right, but a violation thereof. Because my right to acquire property doesn’t diminish your right to the same liberty, this right is known as a negative right. Negative rights are real or natural rights because they don’t conscript me in the fulfillment of your needs and desires, and vise versa. They merely impel both of us to keep our mitts to ourselves.” [“CRADLE OF CORRUPTION”]

[SNIP]

You see, positive liberties are rejected outright in natural law, unless undertaken voluntarily. So, dear Mr. Beck, the reason the Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president put it, is because positive, state-minted rights violate the individual’s negative (real) rights.

The Great Glenn in action:

Update (Dec. 18): Sitting in for Glenn, Judge Andrew Napolitano delivers a superb explication of the natural-rights doctrine, joined by Joe Salerno, whose lectures at the Mises Institute I greatly enjoyed, and John Tamny of RealClearMarkets.com. What a shame the Wall Street Journal’s statist extraordinaire, Stuart Varney, now tenured at Fox Business, gets to TALK over the Three Wise Men. I’ve had enough of the Stephen Moores and Stuart Varneys of the world, wrong for decades, yet able to keep lucrative careers going, as they pepper their verbiage with the occasional, non-committal, crudely stated truths (“government needs to be throttled”).

Allow freedom and reality to be heard for a change. Expunge the snake-oil merchants from forums friendly to freedom.

Readers, please send me the YouTube clip of this round table, which should be up very shortly (after all, YouTube is not yet run by the state).