I couldn't have said this better myself:

For a decade, from the election of Bush 43 forward, the Left has lied and cheated as it tried to return to power. Al Gore made a mockery out of the American electoral system by being a spoilsport over Florida, which Bush indeed won by 537 votes. Dan Rather forged a document to try to derail Bush’s re-election. Twice Democrats stole U.S. senators from the Republicans. After voting to support the war to get by the 2002 election, many Democrats quickly soured on the war. The profane protests were cheered by liberals who misattributed “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” to Thomas Jefferson; the words belong to the late historian Howard Zinn.

Once in power, liberals were the opposite of gracious.

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

Oh, there's more where that came from. Go and read it here. Don Surber, the guy who wrote it, works for a newspaper. In Flyover Country, of course.

Why were t-shirts handed out?

What is going on here? I mean, what is really going on here?

The horrific murders in Arizona, in a sane world, would have been an occasion for most of us--those of us with no direct connection to the victims (or the alleged perpetrator)--for sober reflection. Reflection on the tenuous nature of our existence on this world, how quickly a comfortable, easy life can turn into a horrible ordeal, or worse. Reflection on the fundamentally flawed nature of all humans. Reflection, perhaps, on how we have dealt and continue to deal with those troubled souls among us.

What we have been treated to instead is the spectacle of one politically-obsessed group using the event to yet again attack the very humanity of another group.

I'm talking about people like Markos Moulitsas, figurehead of the "progressive" Daily Kos web site, and other "progressives" who rushed to use inflammatory rhetoric to accuse their political opponents of causing the shooting by using inflammatory rhetoric. I'm talking about people like "redheadonfire2" who on Twitter spewed "I think Sarah Palin should get shot instead of Gifford!!!"

The goal is consistent: to dehumanize conservatives as political opponents.

People who do not speak out to denounce this behavior, at this time, are indeed guilty of a kind of blood libel--or at best, guilty of being a silent accessory to blood libel. Does it surprise you to know that a law professor was the first to use the term "blood libel" in a major media outlet--not Sarah Palin? Why haven't you been told that? Could it be that there might just possibly be a slight . . . bias against Mrs. Palin in the media outlets you're depending on?

It's become a cliche to trot out the Martin Niemoeller quote ("First they came for the Communists, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist . . ."). But consider: are there, just maybe, certain, special times in history when the quote rings particularly true?

One effect of the blood libel against conservatives is that they, the conservatives, have been denied the ability to join with the rest of the country in properly grieving and reacting to the Arizona shootings. Denied by those very people who self-righteously claim that they simply care more about people than the rest of us. The "progressives" have, essentially, stolen a piece of humanity from the conservatives that they are attacking. An objective person must at this point ask: how much do "progressives" really care about their fellow citizens, and how much of their posturing and rhetoric is just a cloak for a naked lust for raw political power?

Those on the left pointing fingers should go off and do some serious soul-searching, and remember another cliche my mother was fond of quoting: "When you point a finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you."

As Richard Fernandez notes, Hezbollah has withdrawn from the Lebanese coalition government after the radical Islamic group, allied with Iran, received indications that it was about to be implicated in the murder of Rafik Hariri.

Little good can come of this . . .

As a general principle, I am opposed to killing people. I think it sets a bad precedent, for one thing (after all, somebody else might get it into their head to kill me). Then there's that whole Sixth Commandment thing, although many scholars allow as how it should most properly be read as "Thou Shalt Not Murder," not "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Generally, the doctrine of "live and let live" pretty much sums up one major pillar of my personal philosophy. If you combine that with "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" you have, I think, a pretty even-handed--dare I say . . . liberal philosophy of life that would stand almost everyone in good stead in almost every situation.

Leave people alone who want to be left alone; help people who want to be helped; offer help to those who need it but maybe aren't ready to accept it yet, but don't press them to take help they do not want. How much better a world would we live in if everyone lived that way?

Unfortunately, the world is filled with people who do not want to leave other people alone, who want to help people who do not need or want help, and are willing to do almost anything to justify their behavior after the fact.

This is dangerous behavior.

In short, it pisses people off.

At some point, you have the problem of people who will not take "no" for an answer. "No, you can't have my goat." "No, you can't have my wallet." "No, you can't have my house." "No, you can't have my daughter." "No, you can't have sex with me right now."

What do you do with people who don't take "no" for an answer? What can you do? They won't let you "live and let live." They quite obviously do not believe in "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Maybe, somewhere, in their own minds, they think they're helping you. They've convinced themselves that they know better than you how you should run your life, spend your money, use your belongings, conduct your sexual relations.

There comes a point where a man--or a woman--of peace will draw the line. That line is the one between the killing of another human as an act of evil, and an act of self-defense.

Where should that line be?

Should a woman, in imminent danger of being raped, be held guilty for killing her assailant? Should a man, seeing another man pull a pistol up to shoot him, feel guilty in pulling the trigger of his shotgun?

It seems to me that the line is the certain and imminent physical danger to you or to someone near you--then and then only are you justified in taking the life of the person who is offering that certain, imminent physical threat.

Anything less than that should be the domain of law, and of politics.

"Live and let live" goes both ways. It does not however require anyone to meekly acquiesce in being beaten, abused, of slaughtered by another person. Some people, and some acts, require a violent, deadly response.

And afterwards, people of good conscience will have to struggle with the aftermath, console the survivors and the friends and relatives of those who did not survive, and meditate upon the flawed and imperfect nature of the human animal.

And we will all go on. Somehow.

Positive freedom is simply the freedom to . . . Freedom to do . . . whatever you want to do. Freedom of action.

Negative freedom is, then simply freedom from . . . Freedom from . . . whatever might negatively impinge on the above positive freedom. So, negative freedoms would include two of Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms:"

Freedom of speech and expression;
Fredom of religion;
Freedom from want;
Freedom from fear.

Taking this view of the two faces of freedom, "The Left" tends to be willing to sacrifice positive freedoms for negative freedoms--especially positive freedoms having to do with economic issues. Paradoxically perhaps, "the left' then turns around and sacrifices negative freedoms in the social sphere--religious and sexual mores, artistic and cultural norms--for positive social and artistic freedoms. "The Right" on the other hand tends to uphold positive economic freedoms over negative ones--the freedom to earn, keep, and use personal property--over negative freedoms such as "freedom from want;" while upholding the negative social freedoms represented by traditional social and cultural institutions and mores over "living on the edge" of expressing positive social/cultural freedoms.

I read through quite a few of the articles I found on the internet regarding positive freedom and negative freedom and quickly found myself wandering into the tall grass of Marxist muddle-headed self-contradictory pseudo-intellectual mush.

It will (I suspect) astonish absolutely no one that the mainstream philosophical definition (i.e. the Marxist definition) of positive and negative freedom is exactly the opposite of what I define above. Thus you discover mind-bending statements like this one earnestly offered up for your consideration:

In hitherto existing Socialist states, like the Soviet Union and China, “negative freedoms” were severely restricted, while “positive freedoms” were advanced.

Got that? In the Soviet Union, in Communist China--the two states that together killed more human beings than any other two nations in the history of mankind--"'positive freedoms' were advanced."

This is why socialism--"progressivism"--communitarianism--Marxism--is extremely, EXTREMELY dangerous bullshit. It is a seductive siren song for overly intelligent intellectuals with too much time on their hands and too many drinks in front of them on the table in the cozy bar adjacent to the campus where they happily study their philosophies in isolation from the real world where most of us live.

Now, consider that one of those intelligent intellectuals is now President of the United States, and famously stated that he considers the Constitution of the United States a "charter of negative liberties."

The spin embedded in the careful use of the terms "positive" and negative" by the Marxists is--or should be--transparent. They believe in the freedom of the community (of which, oddly enough, they tend to always be the ones in charge) over the freedom of the individual, who tends to be rather difficult to control without guns and jails and massive health care programs and total control of the news media and gulags and concentration camps and pogroms against the Jews . . .

That's what the Democratic Party of the United States in the year 2011 is all about. That's what Obamacare is about. It's about ensnaring you, the American people in a velvet net of "positive" negative freedoms, so that their betters--lead by Obama--can "take care of you."

For your own good, of course.

Do you like your freedom?

Are you positive?

(crickets chirping)

Naw. No media bias here. Just remember, it's all totally beyond the Democrats' control. Remember that especially come next election time in 2012, whether gasoline prices are $5/gallon or higher and they're blaming the Republicans, or whether the economy has gone from critical to serious condition and they're crowing about how they've "saved the economy." Because, occasionally, the Democrats do blunder into the truth. It is totally beyond their control. But they keep trying to control it, anyway. And it doesn't matter what "it" is. The more they try to control things, the worse things get screwed up. (And the current Republican leadership isn't much better. William F. Buckley was right--the first 535 names in the phone book would probably constitute a better Congress than what we've been sending to Washington lately. Everyone should fervently hope that the Tea Party Republicans can give the finger to Establishment Washington and break the mold.)

But I digress. This is a rant about energy prices.

Lift the bans and loosen the regulations preventing Americans from getting economical power. Open up ANWR, drill more, drill now. Build nuclear power plants. Put serious money backing behind Polywell fusion. Cheap Energy For Everyone should be a major national policy goal. For one thing, Cheap Energy will mean that fewer elderly people will freeze to death in their homes (or on the streets) every winter. See? Humanitarian. You might even say . . . "progressive." As in "promoting progress."

Has anybody noticed that nobody really cares one way or another about "Don't ask, Don't tell?"

It's a completely manufactured issue. Manufactured by Democrats, I'm afraid.

The original policy is Bill Clinton's. He was, if I recall correctly, a Democrat. It has now been rescinded by a utterly, completely, totally Democrat-dominated Congress.

Mission Accomplished.

We will let you live, politically, for a little while longer.

We still do not trust you, however. You have the next two years to earn back some small measure of trust from the American People. Your task is to:
Reduce the size of the Federal Government;
begin to balance the Federal Budget;
bring Medicare and Social Security into actuarial sanity.

Do those things, and we will let you retain your political lives beyond 2011.

As for you Democrats . . .

Discover religion, and then pray to whatever deity you find that we might be merciful. Because you will not be forgiven for what you have done to this country.

You will not be forgiven.

Make no mistake . . . while I have voted Republican in the past, my allegiance is not to the Republican Party. My allegiance is to the American people--ALL of the American people. The Democratic Party has long ago betrayed the American people in its quixotic quest for some utopian world that will never be (ruled, of course, by the mandarins of the Democrat/liberal persuasion, naturally). The Republican Party, while suffering from a more garden-variety and venal corruption, has retained--in my opinion, of course--a connection to the real world which the Democratic Party has long ago dispensed with as being banal and inconvenient. The Republicans have always been merely the "Stupid Party." In the long run, this may, strangely enough, be the thing which saves them from the political death the Democrats have now so richly earned for themselves.

But neither of the two major American political parties are essential to the continued existence, health, safety, and happiness of the American People.

You Can Both Be Replaced. And maybe both of you should be.

Beware the wrath of the American people. You do not own this country. We do. It is well past time that the American people reminded you, in your K-street lobbyist offices and Congressional staffer watering holes and New York newsrooms of this simple fact. It is our country. You simply work here.

And for what you have done to this, the greatest country ever in the history of humanity, You will not be forgiven.

Democrats. They're monomaniacally focused on Rich vs. Poor. Rich people are bad. Selfish. Undeserving of their wealth. Thieves. Poor people are poor because the rich have oppressed them. Remove the oppression and everyone will have all their needs and wants met. (This is, parenthetically, straight from communist dogma. But let's let that go for now.)

The problem isn't Rich vs. Poor. The problem is The Powerful vs. The Rest Of Us.

Too large a concentration of power--regardless of what form that power takes (money, political power, information power, force of arms--any kind of power) is both intoxicating and inexorably corrupting of those who wield that power.

We see the sorry result of too much money and political power with the current United States Congress, which only thirteen percent of Americans currently approve of. The Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid-led, Democrat-dominated 111th Congress is, by popular sentiment, the worst Congress ever--well, the worst since Gallup has been asking the question, anyway.

The key concept and unique brilliance of the American Way over all previous political systems ever tried by humanity in history is (or was) the dispersal of political power as widely as was humanly possible, while still holding together a single political unit. Ever since the American Revolution, those who lust after political power have steadily re-assembled the various elements of political power again into a single, unitary government--the exact result the American experiment was intended to prevent. (Bonus question: "Who's being 'un-American?'")

The same people who are so vehemently shouting for the redistribution of wealth, for the rich to "pay their fair share," should be asked "what about the redistribution of power? What power are YOU, the politically powerful, going to give up to those who have none--the common people, the regular citizens, the people who get up, go to work, and come home every day, just trying to get by in life? What about them?"

Money is not the only form of power. Remember that the next time a Democrat decides to demagogue the "rich vs. poor" issue.