Category: CULTURE

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2011 – The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

     The entry into the new year of 2011 brings the same set of challenges that every year brings.  The primary emotion is always the sense of renewal, that the worst of the old year’s mistakes can be averted, and new ideas can flourish that will bring a general betterment for all.  That’s the way it’s supposed to go anyway.    2011 opens the new decade, the “tens”, and hopefully this will be a decade of more realistic assumptions, more crisp and insightful analysis, and more determination to preserve the gains mankind has made in making the world a generally more comfortable and individually conscious world than it was for our ancestors. We can only hope.  The first decade of the new millennia was framed by two dark, backward looking medieval philosophies.  The first islamofascism, predicated on forcing the world to accept the edictual interpretations of a 13oo year old concept that women shield themselves from societal interaction, religious diversity be banned, individual expression and freedom be reduced to dust, and death be the revered expression of individual sacrifice. The second, global warming fascism, borne on the individual as the perceived medieval sinner, wantonly improving his own personal comfort at the expense of “others”, based on misrepresentations and pseudo-science, and proselytizing against the future “hell” unless the environmental sins are addressed with severe reductions of personal freedom to achieve, travel, and create.  Both philosophies are shown to be empty and wanting when exposed to any critical scrutiny, and hopefully will be dispatched to the dustbin of history by a more self aware and watching world in this coming decade.  With 2011 comes almost immediate framing of what we as defenders of civilization must keep in focus, and we must be attentive on the ramparts.

     THE GOOD 

      On the first day of the 112th Congress of the United States of America, the defining principles of what it means to have a participatory democracy will finally again be p;laced in the position of prominence it desires.  Word to word, line by line, the Constitution of the United States will be read into the congressional record.  For too long the elements of what makes this democracy unique, the precise rights of the individual and  the precise role and responsibility of the state,  have been subverted by those that feel that principles and rationalizations are interchangeable.  It doesn’t mean that this congress will be different than any other in following through, but there is an inkling of hope that the strong reaction of the citizenry with the most recent national election to restore principled leadership will not be wasted.

     THE BAD

      The overwhelming burden of what is to come may not yet have sunk in yet to the general population.  Multiple states are teetering on the brink of default. State and federal government budgets predicated on the the progressive enriching of the government employee have maxed out, and it is unclear the reaction that is bound to occur with unions when the harsh realities that the “permanent” gravy train may have reached its zenith and is rolling backward.  In Europe this was the stimulus for riots and strikes.  The United States is certainly not immune and there is bound to be friction.  The malfeasance of government to ignore its fiscal responsibilities to support a special interest that guarantees its return to power in return for votes is a dangerous, anti-democratic trend that needs to be stopped now, however painful, to make the future viable for all.    (Graph courtesy of C. Houghton)

     THE UGLY

     The world elite continue to have a love affair with the most reactionary, freedom destructive leaders and this western personality flaw shows no signs of abating.  The lack of outrage and continued pandering to pathetic authoritarians like Fidel Castro in Cuba, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe,  and Kim Jong Il in North Korea despite their catastrophic policies that have left their countries collapsed and starving remains a ugly sore on civilized clarity in action.  A frank romance with Marxist ends of less individual freedom, expression, and capacities remain a bizarre cultish yearning by those western elites who can’t stand the fact that prosperity has been shared with an ever larger slice of humanity without the reins of control they have always dreamed about.  Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.  If this decade gets anything cleaned up, it would be nice to see the end of rewarding the worst of us with our continued blind eye to their self aggrandizing and delusion.

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Bright Idea

     In 1879, Thomas Edison managed to do something that man had yearned for since the dawn of age. Submitting a patent for a light device known as the incandescent bulb, he managed provide for the first time reliable and safe illumination of the dark. There is probably no single idea that has done as more for man’s progress than the light bulb, providing an expansion in commerce, safety, transportation, education, and productive activity to dark rooms and night hours. The idea of carbonizing a bamboo strand, later replaced with tungsten, passing an electric current across it in a vacuum environment created luminescent magnificence that initially lasted for scores of hours, and later, thousands of hours. The invention has provided cheap, reliable, indispensable illumination to the farthest reaches of earth and has changed everybody’s lives for the better.
    

     So in true modern societal fashion, do we venerate such a magnificent outpouring of the best civilization has to offer universally to mankind? Of course not. We get rid of it for a pathetic shadow of an alternative, the CFL, or Compact Florescence Lamp. In 2007, in his one of many moments of catering to irrationality, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, effectively outlawing the incandescent light bulb in 2012. This act of Congress, like most oxymoronic acts coming out of Congress these days, determined that the energy expenditures of the incandescent bulb were excessive when compared to the swirly CFL bulb. The fact that the CFL took longer to reach illumination, painted everything an eye straining dull white yellow, and contained a disposal problem of toxic mercury when broken or thrown away entered into none of our elite leader’s consciousness. The point, excepting the fine one on the top of their heads, was single minded. The incandescent bulb illumination was provided by a greater per bulb draw of energy by that satanic force of nature known as the the evil carbon molecule, and therefore could no longer be tolerated.

      Here’s a bright idea. How about simply encouraging the use of more efficient incandescent bulbs and TURN THEM OFF when you’re not needing them? The world reels at the clarity of the logic.

     We have one year to horde our light bulbs or face a more dangerous, more poorly illuminated future. The other alternative is to get hold of your congressman or congresswoman and shake them until they wake up, and repeal this heinous act. Come on people; lets not let stupid rule and make the prohibition of Edison’s genius go the way of other brilliant prohibitions enacted by other Congresses stimulated by their desire to enforce the unenforceable.

     Defenders of the Ramparts, all hail the Bulb!

 

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The Poetry of the Christ Birth

     The Holy Bible is many things.  A tome of the miraculous relationship of a Supreme Being with His creation.  A device to fashion a life of good acts and deeds.  A missal for introspective prayer.  A means for restoring the balance of a man’s life experience with his needs.

      It is also, however, a great work of literature filled with sublime poetry.  There is no greater example of this then the Gospel’s description of the Christ Birth, filled with the most intense visual ques, profound allegories, and overarching spiritual beauty.  We only need to read a few phrases to immediately attach ourselves to the intimate scene and our eternal connection to the Christmas story and all of its inherent meaning and reflected glory.   In this Christmas season of 2010, take a few minutes again to absorb the beautiful words, craft, and meaning, of the greatest story ever told:

Luke 2: 1-20

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.  And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city.   And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child.”

“And so it was that, while they were there,  the days were accomplished so that she should be delivered.  And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. “

” And there were in that same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them, fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is borne this day in the city of David a Saviour,  which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you;  ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes,  lying in a manger.”

” And suddenly,  there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying ‘ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.’  And it came to pass,as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let us go now even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass,  which the Lord hath made known to us.”

” And they came with haste,  and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.  And when they had seen it,  they made known abroad the saying which was told to them concerning this child.   And all that they heard it wondered at those things which were told by the shepherds.  But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.  And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had seen and heard, as it was told unto them.”

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Anarchy University

     The late 1960’s and early 1970’s were a period of radicalist chic in universities of the United States with an anarchist fringe developing out of eastern and Midwestern universities from the radical group, Students for a Democratic Society.  Anarchists with violent cast accumulated in organizations such as the Weathermen Underground in New York and Chicago and the Karleton Armstrong gang at the University of Wisconsin resulting in bombings and deaths.  The fractured logic of the extremists was the logic of all anarchists, destruction of society’s stable fabric in order to foment revolution. 

     England appears to be suffering under a similar period of anarchist proliferation and the embryonic center appears to be the obscure Bedfordshire University in Luton, England north of the metropolis of London.  This time the radicalist mantra is islamic extremism, and its anarchist tendencies are becoming every bit as violent and dangerous as the American version.  With Great Britain’s role in the response to 9/11 and its history as a colonialist overlord in the near East and Central Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was particularly vulnerable to internalized hatred and feelings of victimhood from a Muslim immigrant population absorbed at the time of the collapse of empire, and the peculiar tendencies of this immigrant culture to resist any absorption in British society and its cultural mores.  At the same time, England in particular has lost passion for its “britishness” in a global world it no longer leads and barely influences. 

     In Sweden, this past week a radicalized former British university student blew himself and several other people up in an effort to create mass death as a suicide bomber, luckily detonating before he achieved a position in the midst of a significant crowd of people.  The biography was eerily similar to the London subway bombers of 2005, british students of muslim faith radicalized at mosques associated with the university in Luton who murdered 52 people in what has been referred to as Great Britain’s 7/7.  Radical cells have been permitted in England to proliferate around places of learning as an expression of British “cultural tolerance” and the penalty for the world has been a parade of anarchist bombers, starting with Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” in 2001, through multiple successful and near successful plots, to this most recent event., effecting multiple countries and providing energy and willing dupes for Al Qaeda’s necrophilic and anarchistic philosophy.

     The parents of the most recent bomber in Sweden blame the british model of educational “tolerance”for allowing young men to become brainwashed by radical clerics protected by their proximity to institutions of higher learning.  The colleges provide easy fodder for the clerics in vulnerable young Muslim males who feel dissociated from their roots, and are looking for any direction and clarity.  the pattern is repeated over and over,; radicalization in the mosque, training in Afghanistan camps, return as willing participants in the Al Qaeda’s war against civilization and Muslim moderation.  A significant national conversation has to be held in Great Britain in how to balance religious tolerance without permitting what has become a progressive cancer on free society.

     Bedfordshire University in Luton, England might be a very good place to start, and maybe end, that conversation.

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Imagine

     This past week was the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, legendary member of the Beatles rock group, and an emblem of the fragmented value that comes with celebrity status in western society.  Lennon is an unfortunate member of a small group of public figures who were assassinated for the notoriety it would bring the assassin rather than any other identified specific cause or perceived societal effect.  On the night of December 8th, 1980, Lennon and his wife were returning to  their mid town West Central Park condominium from an outing, when they were approached by Mark David Chapman, who wordlessly shot Lennon four times in the back as he passed.  Chapman had stalked the entrance to the Dakota complex awaiting Lennon’s return, assured of Lennon’s presence as several hours before as Lennon had left the Dakota, Chapman had asked Lennon to autograph a Lennon album and Lennon had complied.   In the vein of Arthur Bremer’s attempted assassination of politician George Wallace in 1972, or later, John Hinckley, Jr’s. attempt on President Ronald Reagan in early 1981, the crime victim themselves bared very little impulse for the disturbed stalker assassin who simply reveled in their ability to achieve their own personal celebrity through their act.  Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, but was unable to be re-susitated and died that night.  Chapman subsequently was arrested and convicted of murder, and has been in jail since his conviction.

     John Lennon was a difficult human being with multiple run-ins with family, friends, band mates and governments.  His status in western culture, however,  will always be secure due his exalted role as leader of the revolutionary musical force known as the Beatles, and his combative but spectacularly prodigious membership in the song writing duo of Lennon and McCartney.  The duo,with minimal formal training, produced a song catalogue that ranks with the great song writers and songwriter teams of the 20th century.  For the 5 year period from 1964 to 1969,  Lennon and McCartney changed forever the role of the musical group, who to that time had been performers rather than creators of original music; after their spectacular run no quality act could proceed to be seen as elite without producing original material.  Lennon was the stronger wordsmith who often corrected McCartney’s tendency toward saccharinelyrics and brought depth, wisdom and at times angst to the simplest expressions.  He was personally not a revolutionary but formulated a revolutionary style that created new sound motifs, visual poetry, and a competitive personality to always try to top the band’s last creative impulse with each successive effort.  By 1969, the pressure of continuous originality and brilliance exhausted all the members, but particularly Lennon, and he sought and succeeded to gain a way out of the group, and the madness.  Like all creative but unstable personalities, he continued to occasionally produce epic music thereafter, but missed the steadying influence of his musical partners.   It appeared at age 40, he was finally seeing the gentle stabilizing influences of adulthood when his life was cut short by Chapman’s bullets.

     We struggle in western society to accept celebrity as an indicator of achievement, rather than artificial status.  The reimbursement for creativity is often dis-proportunate, the public exposure, claustrophobic, and need to maintain status inevitably self-destructive.  Peculiar to the western societal model, is the desire of certain people to achieve the illumination of celebrity without the hard work and talent that often is required.  The effect is the disturbing glow that is cast on those who succeed at destroying a celebrated person, and through denying the society access to the individual’s further contributions, disturbingly cementing in their own influence on events in a memorable way.  Our continuing weakness for elevating people to impossible heights often contributes to their destruction.  The price of a free society unfortunately will always be the danger of free will to those in society who wish to effect their influence beyond their capacity, for the sheer thrill, and “fifteen minutes” of recognition.

     Whatever John Lennon was, or would have been, was focused on the night of December 8th, 1980, in the hands of an individual who cared about neither.

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Cyber Warfare Is Here

       There have been hints of the power of software assassins to wreak havoc with the world’s computer grid of the past twenty years. These have produced more hysteria than actual damage – the Love virus and the Y2K event, to name a few. Something new and more ominous has presented itself in Iran recently, and across the world software experts are in awe of its sophisticated and cyber-lethal capacity. The apparent spectacular damage it created to delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions has far exceeded the world’s tepid efforts at embargo and sanction.  What seemed to be a minor bump in the road may turn out to be a critical intervention that will allow a sufficient “breather” in the battle to prevent the theocratic and apocolyptic elements of the Iranian dictatorship from living out their anti-Zionist fantasies.  The cyber-weapon of note is known as STUXNET, and the world is just getting to realize the power and potential trouble such technology holds for what has become for all of us a basic staple of life, the computer.

      As the weeks extend from the cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, the information regarding STUXNET becomes more cloak and dagger with every piece of evolving information.  A transfer of the virus was achieved into facilities with the highest security and no outside Internet access.  The virus was so sophisticated that it achieved the control of the critical centrifuges causing them to spin at high and damaging speeds without any monitor showing an aberrant function,  sufficient to damage the fragile and sophisticated machinery without anyone the wiser, the virus then hiding without a trace and waiting for new sites to proliferate and destroy. By the time Iranian scientists realized the damage, the ability to produce the enriched uranium required for atomic weaponry appears to have been significantly set back,  and may require Iran to again attempt to obtain the components of the centrifuges from countries who may no longer have the capacity or desire to give them access to the precision equipment .  

     The question as to who is capable of such sophisticated software capacity, and a recognition of the thousands of man-hours needed to produce such a sophisticated cyber weapon leads inevitably to nation states.  The Cold War was fought by stealth warriors on both sides, whose exploits were popularized in spy novels and Bond movies.  The ‘Bond spys’ were special warriors with special technology not available to the rest of us, designed to protect their nation’s interests and roust out evil plots with all of us being none the wiser in our daily existence.  The realities of STUXNET suggest intelligence agencies of the highest order.  The Iranians with their hatred and paranoia suspect Israel.  The incredible sophistication  of the weapon and its military nature could easily implicate the western intelligence services from the U.S., France, United Kingdom, or Russia.  The reality could be some combination of all of the above given the obvious interests all would have in seeing Iran not being successful in its nuclear ambitions.

     STUXNET has created a new reality and perhaps a new cold war weapon.  In the days of the cold war the fear was nuclear holocaust and we were all trained at school to seek shelter under our desks in case of attack, however ludicrous the level of protection that may have offered.  Now we will have to learn to hide from what is on our desks, as we note the capacity to turn off our communications, our power, our commerce, our lights, and our way of life may just have annouced its first ominous presence on earth.

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A Divine Providence

     We are loathe in today’s society to attach any kind of religious connotation to our holidays for fear of derision from a societal modernist post religious view of celebration. Thanksgiving is about the food, Christmas about the gifts, and Easter about the rabbit. It was not always the case; the very real hand of Divine Providence was an accepted companion to all daily events and had particular focus around communal celebrations. The basic challenge to survival was a very real threat for most human beings in past centuries with none of the conveniences of today. The need to find and develop consistent food sources, decent shelter, protection from the elements and hostile humans facing the same life challenges underwrote every life story prior to our modern conveniences and security. The power of a Divine Being, by whom the forces of nature and fate were directed to determine who would succeed and who would succumb, was considered an inalienable fact of existence. No action taken by man or nature was assumed to be free of the guiding unseen hand of the Divinity. This powerful view of life allowed the most amazing leaps of faith and risks to be taken with an assumption that the outcome was foreordained and therefore not to be reasonably feared in the believer. The story of the first Thanksgiving in particular is an intense example of the power of faith to lead people through great challenge, great sacrifice, and ultimate internal triumph regardless of the external outcome.

      The people who celebrated the first recorded communal thanksgiving in North America believed themselves locked to the vagaries of Divine Providence. The Separatists, or Pilgrims as they were much later referred to by, were by very definition separate from the mores of their current society. Practicing a particularly fierce reductionist and devotional brand of Protestantism, they found little capacity to get along with the great majority of their fellow Englishmen and the state driven Anglican religion. They felt truly separated from the trappings of organized religion and felt it got between each individual and their intimate relationship with God. In 1600, denying the ultimate ecclesiastical role of the head of the Anglican Church, the King of England, was a hanging offense, and the future of the Separatists to maintain their views and remain loyal English subjects was heading to a cataclysm. Leaders of the faith succeeded at transitioning their flock into exile to Leiden, Netherlands in 1609, and for awhile found an adequate home of religious tolerance. Dutch society was, however, relatively mercantile driven and the morals were not for the taste of the Separatists sufficiently secured by the population. Missing the unifying culture of English society and unable to return home, the leaders of the Separatists petitioned the English government to allow them to establish a colony in the American wilderness and succeeded in 1619 with permission to secure land for settlement in the recently defined “New England” segment of the Virginia land tract. The group, 102 strong, eventually set sail September 16, 1620 on the second of two ships originally commissioned for the voyage, the Mayflower. The voyage was classic fall season North Atlantic drama with strong storms lashing the ship and at one moment nearly scuttling the trip due to a fractured main beam. Conditions on board were as was typical for that time, cramped and foul. With the loss of one passenger and the birth of one, the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod on November 13th, 1620, and eventually settled on a small land bluff at a site referred to as Plymouth selected and landed December 21th.

     The year to follow held an all too real harshness and brutality that was typical for these early attempts at colonization. The Atlantic voyage had made most of the group disasterously sick with respiratory and gastric diseases as well as the ravages of scurvy, and only 47 colonists survived the harsh winter conditions. The Pakanoket native tribe with previously poor interactions with Europeans held a particular distaste for the efforts had colonization and persistently harassed the process. The knowledge base of the colonists for communal farming and survivorist instincts was limited, and food production was scarcely supportive, with hunting and fishing the primary means of calorie intake. The survivorship of the colony, much like the ill fated attempts earlier at Roanoke, Virginia were balanced on the thinnist wisp of fate, but the Separatists held an unquenchable trust in a God that held a personal pact with each man and woman who accepted Him, and trusted Providence to determine the outcome.

     And by the thinnest of wisps, the outcome slowly became assured. A small but successful harvest was achieved in the late summer of 1621, and the health of the residual colonists stabilized. Having reached some cooperative relations with another local native tribe, the Wampanoag who supplied further game and fish, a determination by both to communally celebrate in thanksgiving for the bounty provided by a Divine Providence led to a shared harvest feast. The recording of the event by William Bradford, lead to the acknowledgement of this event being the sentinel moment of this eventual tradition of Thanksgiving.

     In modern days we struggle to understand a world where people would willingly risk their comfort, their livelihood, their very survival on completely unknown hazards and risks of a harsh alien existence for the solitary advantage of confronting their internal faith in a way they could feel uninhibited. There are few modern examples and the complete acceptance of spiritual force in their lives more important than any material process seems alien in our current existence dominated by security and comfort. In the face of such sacrifice, though, a simple truth emerges of the more unsullied happiness achieved at that time for sheer miracle of existence and in many ways I envy their sense of internal well being. We would all do well to take a moment on this Thanksgiving, to take our own stock in the powers of Providence in our own lives that has brought us such comfort, such security, and such wonderful capacity to determine the direction of our own individual voyage through life on this beautiful planet.

     As our pilgrim ancestor William Bradford so proudly spoke of this unique human spiritual voyage in words that resonate to this day:

Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. Let them therfore praise ye Lord, because he is good, & his mercies endure for ever.…  

 

To all of you, a happy and blessed Thanksgiving!

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A Year Later, the World Is Slowly Warming to the “Truth”

     It was a year ago that one of the great farces and premeditated frauds  perpetrated on civilized culture began to unravel, to the benefit of all that care in the least about human progress and individual freedom.   World leadership was preparing to gather in Copenhagen for a world wide conference about “climate change and humanity driven global warming” that would codify the economic disarming of the western world in order to “convert economic behavior” through mandatory reduction in so-called greenhouse gas (CO2) production and carbon based fuels.  Secondarily for past environmental sins, the developed countries would agree to shift hundreds of billions of dollars to to economic backwaters like Zimbabwe and Fiji in order to “equalize the playing field”  in an action having nothing to do with climate science and everything to do with Marxist economic theory.  The lemmings in charge of western governments were prepared to sacrifice their own population’s well being and give up enormous chunks of sovereign power to global bureaucrats to sage their guilt on the altar of “settled science”.  Emerging economic powers like China and India were intelligently having none of it, but were perfectly willing to see their major competitors self-emolliate.  The forced serfdom  of individual freedom and human security was all but complete, when the miracle of the Internet once again charged to the rescue.  A still unidentified insider at the global temple of climate change science, East Anglia University in England, released on the Internet thousands of e-mail exchanges by the climate scientists at the center of the “settled science” of human mediated global warming revealing their own doubts of the validity of their own data and their willingness to cover up the inconsistencies to protect “truth” of global warming, along with the billions of dollars of research funds that the “truth” brought to their career work.  May I say it again?  Thank God for the Internet.

    One of the intrepid heroes of the unmasking of the fraud, James Delingpole, who blogs for the UK Telegraph, brought light to the incredible web of deceit exposed in the e-mails of Anglia scientists.  He almost single handedly turned the tide of momentum through his journalist work, when the mainstream media was prepared to bury the facts to protect the Copenhagen meeting.  Thankfully the conference broke down in chaos with the emerging pattern of fraud Delingpole and others brought to light and the organized destruction of western capacity dreamt about deciples of Al Gore was narrowly averted.  Over the past year, trends in global climate measurement continue to show continuing marked deviation and lack of precision from the “settled science” computer models that world leadership was prepared to swallow whole.  We are no closer to accurately predicting man’s effect on world temperature and climate change a hundred years from now than the weather two weeks from now,  and that at least is becoming “settled science”.   Thankfully the upcoming world climate conference in Cancun, Mexico as a follow-up to Copenhagen reflects the world’s identification of the underlying realities of the global warming hoaxers and will be attended by one tenth of the earth enders that populated Copenhagen and Kyoto.

     Mr. Delingpole continues to do important and critical analysis of the work being done in the climate science field and the underlying political agendas of  the most stalwart climate bureaucrats who continue to spout the human driven global warming gospel despite all the evidence to the contrary.  In two blogs that I consider must reads, he reminds us of the Marxist political agenda underlying the continued demands for the developed world to economically disarm for climate change, and how the culprits responsible for the farce are changing their attack through new vocabulary with the same destructive intentions of the global warming mantra on human freedom.

     As a defender of the ramparts of civilization, it is critical to always be on the lookout for the fool on the hill who would destroy all the progress humanity has made to feed a desire to return the planet to a more “natural” state.   We all want clean air to breathe. We all want clean water to drink. We all want to be good stewards of the mother earth that has been our home since Eden.  All that is more likely to occur, when we recognize the power of real truth and real scientific method to explore the boundless creativity and genius housed in each one of us, and not the ravings of those would seek to return the world to a place that never existed in reality and one in which there is no place for us.

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A Tea Party Rant from Arizona

    The Libertarian Party has never really achieved legislative force in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of adherents in the country to the principles of self determination and reduced governmental oversight.  The intensity of expression of libertarian anger in the form of tea party advocacy in the recent election is expressed well in a self described rant from a friend of mine from Arizona and the comprehensive manifesto I decided deserves a viewing on the Ramparts.  It is an important consideration of our recently elected government that they realize the presence of so many highly educated people and intellectually based arguments in the depth of the tea party movement.   A Defender of the Ramparts passionately expressed by my fellow blogodier j. benjamin:

To say that most people are fed up with politics / campaigning right now would be a gross understatement. Most people wonder if our political process and politicians can behave any worse. It is difficult to believe anything they say about themselves or their opponents and it seems like they will say anything. The carefully edited sound bites of themselves and the competing candidates are good at depicting whatever point of view best suits the needs of the party with the biggest campaign budget. This translates to incumbent since they have had the opportunity to work at collecting as much money as possible from special interest groups and lobbyists during their tenure. Indeed the re-election rate for congressmen / women in this country is greater than 90%. This year our congress is scheduled to work 137 days, which translates into 45 3-day workweeks. On Mondays and Fridays we pay to fly them to and from Washington so they can spend weekends working hard for us in their home states. Or maybe lobbyists fly them places on “fact finding” trips.
 
In the 19th century essentially all government jobs were distributed to the winning political party workers. The best way to guarantee a well paying government job was to work in an election for the winning party and this ensured that there was no shortage of campaign workers.
 
The disgusting behavior of politicians is hardly a new development. In the presidential election of 1828 the behavior of the candidates (Andrew Jackson and john Quincy Adams) reach what many felt at the time a new low. Jackson was accused of adultery, murder, treason, drunkenness, theft and cockfighting and declared unfit for the presidency. Jackson’s campaign charged Adams with serving as a minister to Russia – supplying young women to a lust-crazed Czar. Adams was also portrayed as aristocrat who squandered taxpayer money to furnish his home.
 
So not much has changed with politics or politicians in the last 200 years. They will still say anything to get elected and the wheels of government are still greased by favors bestowed by the victorious to their loyal supporters.  Luckily for politicians, the public has a very limited attention span and in a four-year election cycle can forget almost any transgression by their elected officials. The only apparent way a congressman can screw the pooch is by a particularly heinous transgression that lands them in jail. But if the mayor of DC (Marion Barry – Also convicted of tax evasion) can get re-elected after being videotaped buying and smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room, then maybe there is nothing politicians can do that wont be forgotten or forgiven.
 
Does this reflect on the quality of individual that enters the political arena? Surely there are some who pursue a career in politics that, at least initially, have altruistic intentions of service to their community / country. It would appear that whatever their initial intentions are, they quickly learn that the people who voted them into office are not what is important if they want to stay there.
 
 Because I vote I am registered in a political party. We essentially have three choices in this country – Republican, Democrat and Independent. It is not that I have any allegiance to a particular party or its politics, in fact I could care less. My political motivation seems at times to be driven more by being peeved at one elected official or ruling party at a time. I think in reality I am a Libertarian. I believe that government should stay out of my private life as long as I am not hurting anyone – and “hurting” can be used in the broadest sense of interpretation. Government’s role should be to only help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud. I don’t feel this promotes a lawless society but should foster one that encourages people to respect others rights without shoving their own down someone’s throat.
 
I think anyone elected to a political office should be limited to a single term – maybe two at most. If they knew they couldn’t be re-elected then they may be less interested in taking money from special interest groups that ostensibly can only be used for their re-election. If they truly want to serve their constituents then they can run again after being out of office for a term.
 
The centralization of government power in the United States probably began in the early 19 century under the direction of Chief Justice John Marshall who was involved in numerous decisions that expanded the authority of the Supreme Court and congress while weakening the administrative power of individual states. This process has continued to the point that we now have an “elected” ruling class that is above the laws they pass and administrate. What happened to by the people and for the people?
 
Elected federal officials should be subject to the same laws as they people that they are imposed on. Currently a single term in congress gets you discounted health care for you and your family (not that crappy Medicare either). In 2009 taxpayers spent approx $15 billion to provide health care for 8.5 million federal workers and their dependents.  And an annual retirement pension that averages $45K (Even the ones with lucrative jobs provided to them by the lobbyists they befriended while in office). Currently the retirement package for the 400 “retired” congressmen costs the US public about $20 million a year.
 
Why isn’t English our national language? When immigrants first came to this country they learned to speak English to function in public and in the workplace. At home they spoke whatever their “native” language was and the preservation of their cultural practices at home and in ethnic neighborhoods was gradually assimilated into the melting pot of our culture. ( I think preservation of one’s cultural heritage is important and a valuable thing and I am not suggesting that anyone has to embrace another’s cultural habits just to fit in) Why do we need to pay to provide public services in every language? If you are going to receive a free education, health care, social services in this country, is it too much to ask that you can at least learn to speak English? When I travel to another country I am always impressed that people are fluent in a language other than their own and I appreciate how it makes my life easier but I certainly wouldn’t expect their government to provide translators for my convenience.
 
The American constitution is a wonderful document that has been used to guide our country for almost 250 years (originally adopted in 1787). Our constitution has been amended twenty-seven times and the first ten amendments were the bill of rights. Amending the constitution at the present day is a daunting proposition requiring 3/4 of the states support. At the time the bill of rights was adapted there were 13 states all of which had ocean front property on the Atlantic Ocean. There were 12 amendments ratified in the 20th century the last being passed in 1992 that limits congressional pay raises. (Not sure how that ever came up or got passed). At the time the constitution and bill or rights was adapted I doubt our country’s leaders anticipated the citizenship and welfare issues that our country is struggling with at the present time and the financial burden that the rights of US citizenship imposes on its society. We have also blurred the line between civil rights and human rights in this country to the point that the laws that determine citizenship still constitute being born in this country – even under illegal circumstances. It is doubtful that we will be able to address this issue within the law until our society collapses under the strain of the many being supported by the few.
It seems that too many people feel they are entitled to the rights of a US citizen without the responsibilities of a US citizen

      Constitutional devotion, term limits, equality in the rights and burdens of citizenship, immigration reform,  American exceptionalism,  self determination – hmmmm…sounds like a tea party leader has been discovered in the Copper State.

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Rob Ford to the Rescue?

     On November 2nd the essence of forty years of philosophical determinism will be on trial in elections held in the United States.  Born out of the intense events and cultural tides of the sixties, a progressively overwhelming liberalist agenda has consumed the consensus of every day life in the Americas.  This philosophy of  reduction of individual responsibility, overarching governmental regulations on  life activity , policing the “correctness” of personal opinion and thought, and collectivist “balancing” of the individual’s desire for personal advancement has expressed itself in the governments we currently have and will be judging with our vote.   It has expressed itself on issues as “profound” as the temperature of the earth and man’s ability to effect and ultimately control it.  It has expressed itself on issues as “small” as the lack of each individual human’s ability to take personal account of his or her own actions without constant maintenance from an outside governmental guidance.  It is defined by the phrase “It takes a village” .   It has led to the sense by many Americans that their life is no longer their own to determine, and that government, rather than the individual, has become the expression of life experience from cradle to grave.

     Whatever.   Enter Rob Ford. 

     Who is Rob Ford you ask?  Rob Ford is the newly elected mayor of the city of Toronto, Canada, elected overwhelmingly on October 25, 2010 by the citizens of Toronto completely tired of the above paragraph’s consensus.  He is the antithesis of the liberal agenda that has placed Toronto in the status of “legendary” city for all like minded to gaze upon in awe and wonder, a city full of bike paths on streets, mandated political correctness, coffee shops, drug parks, film festivals, extended city worker benefits,  immigrant cultural dominance, and a dense fee and tax structure to pay for it all.  Rob Ford is the proverbial “bull in the china shop” , a 41 year old overweight, inarticulate, in your face Toronto councilman who for years railed against the direction of the city government’s desire to become a “world” city, the perks of governmental officials, the wasteful “services” provided to all comers, the “improvement projects” without end to the taxpayer.  He based his election drive on defeating a governmental philosophy that worried more about solar panels on cars than garbage and snow removal for citizens.  His slogan “Get Off the Gravy Train” featured a well dressed pig driving a train, and is the best selling t-shirt in town.  He could care less about being in government as a vocation, like being a doctor or a teacher, or a plumber.  He sees his job as putting the citizen taxpayer first, restoring governmental fundamentals, reducing waste, and eliminating unnecessary taxes – and that’s it.  He is, in short, the nightmare of nightmares to Toronto’s liberal elite, and his tenure as mayor is going to be nothing short of fingernails on a chalkboard for them.

     The larger question to ask revolves around as to whether 2010 is a brief blip of voter angst or the initiation of the fracture of the bond between the voter and the government that led to the process of progressive establishment of liberalist philosophy over the last 40 years.  In the United States this has expressed itself in the “tea party”,  first derided as racists and country bumpkins, and now feared as a real threat to the presumed “intellectual” dominance of the current elite progressive agenda.   The reality is that Canada has no “tea party” conceptualization.  It has a liberal stream of consciousness, a strong abiding sense of the importance of “village”, and has been much more comfortable with socialist governmental structures than the United States traditionally has been.  Mr Rob Ford shows, however, that there is a limit in democracies to the tolerance of the voter for substituting idealism for competence,  correctness for common sense,  and redistribution for individual endeavor.  November 2nd looks to be only our own expression of what is coming to be a world wide phenomena.