It has not been Barack Obama per se (because I could never give him credit for being that clever) but rather the liberal mainstream media that have succeeded, as in no other presidential election, of drawing shut an impregnable iron curtain between Obama and the truth about Obama.

Their actions – their abject bias – have sparked another paroxysmal event … a turf war of the coldest nature: Americans for Obama openly and aggressively hostile to any and all Americans who are not.

The safety of the United States requires unity. But that unity is falling to pieces because of this new and very ugly cold war.

Leftists, liberals and democrats are married to, but cannot explain or justify, Obama’s brainstorm of an authoritarian agenda to fritter into a general government account Americans’ hard-earned, dream-realized income that will then be “redistributed.”

It’s no secret that some of some of this country’s super-rich, the famous, and the infamous have locked themselves inside the Obama sphere. Don’t they understand that they, too, would be subject to this redistribution plan (the taxable gross income for which has been reduced by Obama and Biden from $220,000 to $200,000, to now $150,000)? That is, unless, he intends to give them a pass.

In any event, they are completely under their candidate’s inexplicable mind-bending control. Under that control their thought processes are locked down tighter than a prison after a riot and have sunk lower than the orlop deck of HMS Titanic.

Conservatives are dedicated to detecting, uncovering and presenting truth. We strive moment-to-moment and day-by-day to correctly identify and bring to light emergent realities facing our country.

Our efforts are similar to those of seismologists who work round the clock gathering crucial data for when and where the next devastating earthquake or tsunami will strike and destroy.

Yet, no matter how many valid warnings conservatives have delivered to liberals or called upon them to acknowledge the perceived dangers, they pretend not to hear or feel the rumbling beneath their feet.

They deny that the current financial crisis was the result of the Democrats’ reckless tomfoolery, and turn their eyes away from the destruction yet on the horizon, which Obama will bring upon us.

Instead, they’re more concerned with seeing set loose that snarling beast called the Fairness Doctrine, which is meant to cut off conservative communications, because our researched opinions are, as much as possible, based in legitimacy.

If Obama reaches the Oval Office and is then able to execute the changes he has in mind, and on the basis of the data conservatives have gathered about him, this country will be hit with a tsunami of insanity, the likes of which this generation has only read about in books written about Socialist Europe and the American Civil War.

His supporters eventually will wake from the spell they’ve been under, which they allowed to be cast over them. They all will discover that they’ve been robbed of their senses and sense of direction, and wonder how they could’ve been so expertly conned.

But the burden of responsibility will be on their heads, because they chose to stand behind a losing proposition.

Only then will they realize that Republicans and conservatives were right, that we were not misguided or paranoid when we tried to do everything in our power to stop the oncoming insanity.

By that time, however, it might be too late, because the liberal mainstream media, via their nefarious dump-truck saturation reporting, had raised the bridge every time we attempted to cross over with the truth.

I’ll say the truth once more:

Barack Hussein Obama is not qualified to be President of the United States. He is desperately short of executive, legislative, leadership, foreign policy and relations, and military experience, because he is a walking, talking intellectual cul-de-sac.

America under Obama and a super-majority Democrat Congress could become like a Nazi Germany or a Stalinist Russia: a totalitarian state which controls everything that is written, printed and read, where all subjects are scrutinized and/or rejected before being produced for television and the cinema, where tax increases will erode our income, where “collectivism” is law, and where objections to such suppression will be forbidden.

The voice of the People will perish under such jackboot regime.

The rights and liberties our founding fathers created to protect and empower you and me are under threat of being stripped away.

The putsch and the pogrom might be resurrected from history’s ashes. Only this time they will be used to harass and persecute Americans.

Is this the America you want to live in? If your answer is yes, then vote for Obama.

Just don’t complain that we conservatives never said, “We warned you,” when those raw, massive, pounding walls of insanity come crashing down on you.

UPDATE: Brought to you by George Soros

I just have to say, these are very similar sentiments to my own. At this point, a McCain defeat will actually probably be a blessing in disguise for conservatives. Of course, for the social-cons and others, this will perhaps only spark greater belief in the notion that we need more hard-core social conservatives on the ticket, though perhaps the failure of Palin to deliver will water this down. Maybe that will be McCain’s gift to secular conservatism–picking Palin and still losing may weaken the social-cons’ claims, whereas a Lieberman or Ridge pick would have only strengthened them.

In any case, I look forward to a conservatism that is actually fiscally responsible, that can approach globalism with wisdom and care, protecting American jobs while still building wealth. I look forward to a conservatism that is strong on defense, but not reckless, invested in humanitarian concerns, but not at the cost of American security. I look forward to a conservatism that hearkens back to our Classical Liberal beliefs in equality and freedom and separation of Church and State. I look forward to an acceptance of smart regulation, tax reform, and less national debt (and increased domestic production of goods, and a compassion for American manufacturers!)

I look forward to a divorce of modern conservatism from the chains of hard-liner social conservatism, that has turned American conservatism into Christian populism, and has eschewed elites for “joe six-packs.”

Reagan busted up unions, but also fought for the American worker. Goldwater openly denounced the Christian Coalition. Where has this integrity gone? Have we become so beholden to the Religious Right? to the Banking Industry that has sold our soul to globalism at any and every cost? I am a globalist, but I believe the only way to enter a global economy is with strength and solidarity. The financiers have betrayed us. We can’t even clothe ourselves without the help of the Chinese now…

Conservatism must enter the fire and reemerge stronger, more focused, and leaner. It must accept smart regulatory practices, and pledge to actually limit government. Quite frankly, so must liberalism, which has become vapid and emotional and absurd.

Perhaps a new center will emerge. Smart, lean, strong, and ready to actually work for America. Perhaps.

I suppose lately I am leaning more toward an Andrew Sullivan brand of conservatism–pro gay-rights; hawkish but not too hawkish; fiscally sensible; and not governed by absurd party lines. He describes himself as a Classical Libertarian Conservative.

He views true conservatism as classical libertarian conservative, where economic control of a citizen’s daily life by the government is very limited. However, this style of conservatism differs from classic libertarianism in that some governmental control or regulation is acceptable in order to preserve a functional society as it currently exists. Stances on social or cultural issues, under this style of conservatism, resemble the stances of classical libertarianism or modern U.S. liberalism. While stances on foreign policy are more hawkish than classic libertarianism, this style of conservatism differs from current neo-conservatism and arguably more closely resemble U.S. liberalism from the early 1930s up until the late 1960s. In the foreign policy sphere, Sullivan’s foreign policy views have become somewhat less hawkish following the difficulties of the Iraq War.

And at this point, I’m in almost complete agreement with Sullivan on Obama, McCain, Palin, etc. Conservatives may howl at this, but at this point I think Obama would be a better choice for the country than McCain/Palin. It’s just time, yes, for a change. It’s time to re-evaluate what it means to be conservative, American, part of a global world. It’s time.

I would add to this, though, that I have increasingly become more pro-oversight, pro-regulation as I watch this collapse of the markets.  I suppose I have also become more “protectionist” as I realize more and more that a country with no production capabilities is nothing more than a house of cards….

Via the Daily Dish:

Fareed Zakaria:

“In a world of competitive capitalism, you need not big government or no government but smart government. We are not in a race to the bottom, on wages, regulations, or anything else. But we are competing against other countries to come up with the government policies that most effectively foster growth, innovation, and productivity. It’s a time to figure out what works, not what ideological mantras to keep repeating. It’s the age of Michael Bloomberg, not Margaret Thatcher.”

Of course, without Margaret Thatcher (or her equivalent, Rudy Giuliani), there would be no Bloomberg. The “small c” conservative point here, it seems to me, is that policy should reflect changing times. People forget that Reagan’s attack on government was premised on a particular time and place: America 1980. Ditto Thatcher in Britain 1979.

I think most Obama supporters in America would have been horrified at the extent of state power and trade union abuse in Britain in the 1970s. But today, there are different challenges that require different solutions. I’m a free market conservative, but I cannot defend the speculation and recklessness of the financial markets in the past decade. I’m a fiscal conservative, but I cannot defend the GOP in the 21st century. I’m for low taxes, but realistically there’s no way to get back to fiscal sanity without someone paying higher taxes at some point.

Being for Bloomberg now, in other words, does not imply rejecting Thatcher yesterday. The problem with conservatism today is that it has become an ideology or even a theology, immune to the changing times. That’s why it will collapse, and should collapse. And why a new conservatism is waiting to be born.

To which I say, exactly.  One cannot be an honest fiscal conservative and approve of the way the GOP has lead us down the road of Chinese debt these past eight years, asking no sacrifice of the American citizen as we waged war on two fronts, insisting we shop, consume, rack up debt after the attacks of Sept. 11th.  This is not fiscal conservatism, this is rampant capatalism, without boundary or sanity.

What will new conservatism look like?  Not the vision of the paleo-cons, whose philosophy has become so dusty it is almost irretrievably lost, nor the social conservatives whose belief in God I respect, but whose vision of America I think will in the end be rejected, replaced with a more progressive religious view.  I think if conservatism, free market, anti-socialism wants to survive, it will need to adopt some of the liberal agenda.  For instance, social tolerance should and could become part of conservatism, without succumbing to the leftist version of tolerance at all costs.  Why not a conservative version of tolerance, that did not include tolerating Islamic radicals and hate-spewers, but did accept the need for gay rights?

Why not a real health care plan–not the very, very bad (scary!) one that McCain proposes?  I agreed with Obama tonight when he said health care is a right.  It is.  And America can provide it through ingenuity and that very American cooperation between private enterprise and government.  We should begin a national study of other countries’ health care systems.  We could learn a lot.

In any case, I’m just sorely disappointed with McCain.  He has stooped to a level of negativity that I honestly didn’t see coming, that I hoped we would avoid this election.  So it goes.  At the debate tonight he regurgitated more talking points, repeated himself, and at one point referred to Obama as “that one” which was just absurdly disrespectful.  Obama did better, but still didn’t leave me with any more confidence than before.

When it all comes down, Palin has soiled the McCain ticket for me.  I will not be voting McCain in November.  At this point, I’m not sure who I’ll vote for.  At one point, McCain almost represented my vision of a new conservative movement.  Not anymore.

I am a committed atheist. I subscribe to Christopher Hitchens’ view that ‘God is not great’, though I would not agree with him that anyone who believes in religion ought to be distrusted. A common misunderstanding is that one must be religious in order to recognize the role religion can play in making society a better place in which to live. This is not true.

In a recent article in Standpoint magazine, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, complains that Christianity’s marginalisation in Britain has created a ‘moral and spiritual vacuum’, and warns radical Islam may fill this void. Nazir-Ali argues the increasing secularization since the 1960s is to blame as religious faith has been replaced by ‘endless self-indulgence’, of which I presume he is making reference to social evils, like the consumer driven society in which we now live.

Nazir-Ali argues Christianity helped create the British identity and values such as freedom, equality, the rule of law, and hospitality, and is still capable of standing for these. Yet he seems unwilling to recognize the failure of the Church of England in providing any form of defence for these values, to help halt the tide of the liberal counter-culture he warns against. To combat a ‘moral and spiritual vacuum’, moral and spiritual leadership is needed, which the Church of England has proved increasingly reluctant to provide in recent years. I would argue this has greatly contributed to the retreat of Christianity in Britain, over society’s addiction to the latest I-phone or widescreen television. Nazir-Ali recognizes the problem - the vacuum, yet he, like most Church leaders is unwilling to acknowledge the Church’s role in enlarging the vacuum, and making it easier for others – notably Islamists, to fill.

The Church of England is emblematic of many in Britain and the world today - in that they consciously endorse relativism. By this I mean they increasingly believe that they have no moral authority over those whom present a challenge to theirs, and society’s prevailing beliefs. Relativism universally prioritizes the oppressor over the victim. For example, in the 1990s the then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey argued no one under 18 should be held in custody, even though it was argued by those with knowledge of the subject that it was often a necessity for the protection of the general public. Yet Carey’s tenure as Archbishop is now perceived as the good old days in contrast to his successor - Rowan Williams.

Williams’ liberal worldview has led him to, among other things, call for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 16, as well as apologising for bringing Christianity to the world. Yet it is his views on Islam which have caused most controversy. Williams has called for Brits to embrace Sharia law by saying its partial adoption into British law is ‘unavoidable’. With reference to al-Qaeda, he argued terrorists often have serious moral goals. Views like these have been typical of the Church’s response to the terrorist threat in Britain. When the head of the Church espouses such views, is it any wonder the secular ‘vacuum’ exists and is growing? It amounts to nothing more than pandering to the threats we face, in the hope that following the liberal, multicultural, relativistic sickness that plagues society, the Church’s reputation will somehow be enhanced, when it is this very sick society which must be cured of its terminal illness.

In Britain, after the London terror attacks, Christian leaders, instead of speaking out in defence of the victims of the atrocities, empathised with the community of the faith which carried out the attacks, and mistakenly denied they were religiously driven. Whilst Church leaders in the US sought to defend the Christian faith against a common enemy post 9/11, the Church of England crumbled after 7/7 when confronted with the terrorist threat. As one critic says, the Church has consistently ‘appeased the forces of secularism’ since. Given this, Nazir-Ali has no right to criticise increasing secularization, because the Church of England has done to little to discourage it.

What Church leaders, like many in society, appear unwilling to accept or believe however, is that the end point of relativism (and the nihilism their appeasement creates) is that the views of their opponents, i.e. Islamic radicals, ultimately begin to appear valuable, and are given equal respect to their own views. Ultimately, it is agreed the opposing views are superior to the prevailing ones, and that our opponents must defeat us, and we have no moral right to do anything about this, as there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’; no ‘true’ and ‘false’.

Clearly my own atheism leads me to reject any form of religious dogmatism. But the Church of England has now become so far removed from doing this, that to hear more dogmatic views on television from Church leaders is the preferable option. Yet their rhetoric need not be dogmatic, as they would be merely representing those citizens who wanted a future where freedom, equality and respect for the rule of law, were protected, the very values Nazir-Ali argues Christianity helped create. To be silent and watch while these established values are slowly eroded would be a fatal mistake. Yet it is this which we see occurring at the present time.

This is what I mean when I say religion can play a role in making society a better place, for both the religious and non-religious. The Church of England can encourage the religious and the rest of society to stand up to extremism by speaking out for what they believe in. Leaders must stand strong in the face of relativism, liberalism and often multiculturalism, and refuse the temptation to play the demagogue. The Church needs courageous leaders who are willing to make a stand and express their beliefs with moral clarity and absolutism. Do this, and the Church would receive far more respect, and the size of the ‘vacuum’ Nazir-Ali rightly warns against would be reduced, as would the likelihood of radical Islam filling the gap. The outcome of which being something Hitchens would certainly argue beneficial.

“Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention.”

-Sir Winston Churchill, March 5, 1946. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri

We have always been partial to those unique individuals who are able – via their powers of observation and induction, their understanding of human nature and history, their vast experience and common sense – to “prophesy.” This involves no supernatural component. It is, however, profoundly valuable.

Such individuals and their ilk ought be regarded highly and sought out in times of turmoil and uncertainty. We are clearly in such times at present.

Thus we encourage those of you who are not familiar with the man, to acquaint yourselves to one Mr. Fred L. Smith Jr., President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. In today’s common parlance that would make them a “right-wing nuthouse.”

Not surprisingly, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) rejects the current bailout proposal before the United States Congress and favors the alternative proposed by The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of pro-market members of the GOP Congress.

Pure partisanship? Election year hijinks? Placing politics before country? We think not.

For consider the seemingly miraculous “prophesy” (below) of CEI founder and president Fred Smith regarding the current economic fiasco spoken before a U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Thursday, 15 JUNE, in the year of Our Lord, 2000!!!

We recommend you read his entire statement. For your edification and enragement, however, we have selected certain key excerpts below. (Subtitles supplied by yours truly.)

Corporate Welfare

Moral Hazard for the Amoral?

The moral hazard problem arises when we bail out investors when things go wrong, when we move toward a “profit-side capitalism/ loss-side socialism” strategy. This is what happened in the S&L crisis and the costs were massive. “Moral hazard” is always a risk when an activity is insured – but the private sector is far better at policing such induced risk. When it’s your money at stake, you’re more careful. Political money managers faces weaker market disciplines: if they fail, they only share in the loss. Government risk subsidies anaesthetize our sensitivity to risk. As Treasury Undersecretary Gary Gensler noted: “Promoting market discipline means crafting government policy so that creditors do not rely on governmental intervention to safeguard them against loss .”…

The moral hazard risks associated with government guarantees have not gone away; indeed, one might argue that they have now been concentrated in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Poverty Pimps

“Other panel members will address the proposition that these agencies are anti-poverty programs – that they are a means of providing “affordable” housing to low-income and minority consumers. Housing subsidies raise the price of housing – this is a well-known phenomena that reduces the desired impact of most subsidies. As noted above, much of the estimated subsidy (about one-third according to a CBO study) benefits the management and the shareholders of these private firms.

Can anyone imagine Congress approving a $2 billion plus appropriation bill to benefit the management and shareholders of any other private sector firm? The wording of the CBO study was colorful: “As a means of funneling federal subsidies to home buyers, therefore, the GSEs are a spongy conduit – soaking up nearly $1 for every $2 delivered.” For that matter, can one imagine an honest debate about the merits of authorizing $4 billion to reduce home ownership costs for middle- and upper- income Americans?”

UPDATE: From the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s OPEN MARKET blog:

“Yeah, maybe irrational greed is a factor in the current crisis, but it is the irrationality of regulators and the greedy demands of community groups that we should be pointing fingers at. If banks had been allowed to act in their own long-term best interest, sure some ill-managed institutions would still crumble, but we would not be witnessing such a wide-spread failure that indicates a system wide error in judgment.”

The Suicide of the West

Is anyone surprised? The British jury privileged with the opportunity to send seven Islamaniacs accused of plotting the most spectacular terrorist attack since September 11, 2001 to legal martyrdom, hadn’t the nerve to do so.

Evidently they found greater accord with the defence which proposed these gentlemen had no intention whatsoever of simultaneously blowing up six transatlantic airliners full of innocent men and women with liquid bombs while flying over American metropolitan areas, but instead were merely planning a little anti-war protest at Heathrow airport enhanced by a few homespun pyrotechnics.

To their credit, the jury did manage to find three of the plotters guilty of conspiracy to murder, which is rather like finding John Wilkes Booth guilty of disturbing the peace.

British defense and intelligence officials are beside themselves and prosecutors are expected to seek a retrial as soon as humanly possible.

We submit, however, and regrettably so, that whatever gaggle of British citizens are thrown together in judgment of this case, they are all too likely to arrive at precisely the same verdict.

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“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

~Barry Goldwater

Watching the Democratic National Convention this year has been an odd experience for me.  I have enjoyed some of the speeches.  Governor Schweitzer of Montana was fun, and his speech was a good preface to Hillary’s call for unity.  Even I can be roused by some of the calls for a better tomorrow, by the pleas for new technologies, greater investment in science and our education.

I just find that on a logical level–on the plain of Reason rather than Emotion–I could not adopt much of the liberal ideology, even if I wanted to.  For instance, last night at the DNC convention, I’m not sure how many times supposedly intelligent people said something to the effect of “Gas prices have gone up, and oil companies are making record profits, so we need to tax gas companies more (to punish them!)”

This use of windfall profit taxes requires a complete abandonment of reason.

First of all, yes gas prices are up.  This is due to a number of things, but primarily to supply and demand.  Also, yes, the oil companies are making record profits.  This, however, is not due to gas prices being up, but to sales being up.  It is costing the gas companies more to get the oil, and this added cost is passed along to the consumer.  Add to this the fact that as China and India develop their economies, they purchase more oil.  So do other developing nations. So, for oil companies, sales are up.  This means they make more money.  So do the nations which sell the oil in the first place, like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and the UAE.
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On our most recent sortie through Sir Winston’s old papers and notes, we came across an item of interest, particularly in light of the philosophical divide that is the subtext of the current United States presidential contest.

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I’ve long thought of Agnosticism as the lazy thinker’s way out of cerebral toil. Whilst not personally sharing the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, I had concluded before I read his fascinating book, The God Delusion, that people who declared there might or might not be a divine being, were as bad as those who caught splinters sitting on the political fence. Surely if the agnostic in question has delved into the history of man’s belief in Gods and the religious and cultural evolution of such concepts, then there would appear to those with doubt, that indeed God does not exist, except as a mental construct. Add to the melting pot, the imperfections of life, from the mass extinctions through to the tendency for one in three people to get cancer in their life times, then one has to ponder that if there is a God, He is as imperfect as we are, and therefore not worthy of praise and worship.

I might be seen to be attacking Theists but that is not my agenda. In my view, religious belief in a higher being is perfectly natural to humanity and it is therefore pointless and perhaps damaging to fight against such a phenomenon. If a person is to hold a devout belief in God, whilst I might disagree, they are at least prepared to sink and lay foundations of moral absolutes and principles.

We’ve been taught in modern society that there is no such thing as right or wrong, only different perceptions. I fully believe this nihilist relativism is in danger of undermining our identity, our cultures, our principles and indeed our freedoms. When we cannot be prepared to stand up for something that is morally right, of which I believe there is only one course, then our whole system is weak to the attack of those with wrong, but unfortunately strong, moralistic absolutisms.

When we start to equate Islamic suicide bombers to noble and brave freedom fighters, or the Communist tyrant Fidel Castro to a saviour of his people, then we must assume our morals are in danger of rotting away. In my humble opinion, it is a mixture of self-gratifying pomposity and dire intellectual fraud to suppose the ‘rights’ we have cultivated over centuries are open to question from the morally corrupt and retrograde forces of, for example, Socialism, or worst still, Islamism.

Whilst a belief in God is not a necessity, the concept of the religiously inspired battle of ‘good versus evil’ is vital. There is not, in my eyes, a giant intellect in the Universe setting the standards of what is right or wrong. However, if democratic and free values are to be defended on our insignificant planet, then humanity in the West must grasp and champion the morally correct universal human rights set out in both the Judeo-Christian scriptures, in the works of the Philosophers of old and indeed, the likes of the American Constitution.

Otherwise we let our comfortable Liberalism self defeat itself and open the doors to those with no doubts about what is right and wrong, but who are in fact, entirely morally bankrupt.

~from Beaman’s World