Oh, my.

Ace. Of Ace of Spades HQ fame.

Ace comments:

I never doubt the equality of the sexes until I read Feminists.

Yeah. I'm there. I'm totally down with the equality of the sexes thing, until I get a snootful of doctrinaire, activist "feminist" rhetoric, which is nothing but tiresome, warmed over politics-of-envy and Marxist dogma (but I repeat myself).

See, that's why Ace is firmly ensconced in the second or third tier of big-time bloggers, and I'm . . . well . . . I post stuff, every once in a while. He's able to pound out a thousand-word-plus post inspired by this nonsense, and I am--significantly more taciturn. Sometimes I think I have an insufficiently disdainful view of my fellow men. And women.

OK, I often think my view of mankind in general is insufficiently disdainful. Hey, what can I say? I'm an optimist . . .

Watch this.

Now.


And watch this too.


You are being lied to. Constantly. Repeatedly. By people who have no honor or shame, and who believe totally that "the ends justify the means."

And the ends they seek are nothing less than re-instituting a sort of 12th-Century feudalism--with themselves as the feudal lords, and you, the "middle class" as the serfs. Of course, this is all for your own good, or so they say.

Slavery is always a good idea if you're the one holding the whip and the end of the chain. Those who wear the shackles and feel the whip on their backs may, at some point, come to have a differing and politically incorrect, non-MSNBC/DNC-approved opinion, however.

Item 1: My personal health care insurance premium will be 20.79% more expensive next policy year (starting September 1, 2013) than it was this past year. And since it is an individual policy (I'm retired and not a member of a group) it was already plenty expensive.

Item 2: The official name of the Obamacare legislation is "The Affordable Care Act." Raising insurance rates by over 20% is an exotic and novel application of the word "affordable" that I myself would not have thought of. That's probably why I'm not a politician. I can't lie smoothly enough.

Item 3: My personal physician a dedicated health professional who started as a nurse before getting a medical degree and becoming a general practitioner, is abandoning general practice of medicine to go into the specialty of bariatrics. She had previously been an independent physician but that independence was impossible to financially sustain and had to seek affiliation with a physician's network. That network--in no small part because of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act--is now in the unenviable position of essentially requiring its member physicians to abandon general practice and go into specialties.

It's every bit the disaster I thought it would be. No politician who voted for this monstrosity should ever be considered for public office again (and should probably be investigated by appropriate grand juries or special prosecutors--but you can say that for most every politician, regardless of their view on Obamacare, can't you?)

Adam Smith, the 18th century natural philosopher, once said "there is a lot of ruin in a nation."

Today, we know the answer to the natural follow-up question: How much ruin is there, then, in a nation?

The answer can be seen in Detroit, Michigan.

Detroit is what inevitably happens when "equality" becomes the primary goal of a society, trumping other values such as "the rule of law," "self-improvement," "personal responsibility," and other values less amenable to demagoguery. Exactly the same policies and behaviors of so-called "equality" which bankrupted and shattered the Soviet Union have bankrupted and shattered Detroit.

Exactly.

The.

Same.

Policies.

And.

Behaviors.

Wise fools like Paul Krugman and Barack Obama continue to cling to those disastrous policies and behaviors with near-religious fervor. They are after all members of that self-appointed elite who live high on the plunder of the masses while telling you that they're working tirelessly--tirelessly, mind you (between vacations and golf games, that is) on YOUR behalf, so shut up, keep your head down, and pay your "fair share," serf. It's for your own good, and if you were only as smart as we are, you would understand.

My contempt for them, and for those who despite all evidence continue to support them, is almost boundless.

Ho. Lee. Shit.



One guy. One guy said he wouldn't sign a petition to repeal the Bill of Rights.

This apathy, ignorance, and mindless yay-our-team-boo-their-team partisan loyalty is how fascist parties like the Democrats get elected, and how they stay in office until they can ensure that free and fair elections are "no longer needed."

Oh. Oh! Upset that I'm calling the Democratic Party 'fascist'? Well, go look here at the 1920 platform of the National-Socialist German Workers' Party. Pay special attention to points 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, which differentiate (to a distressingly small degree) the Democrats from Republicans.

"Public Interest before Private Interest."

Hail the Führer!

San Jose Police To Record Race Of Every Person They Stop, Question.

I don't think this is exactly what Martin Luther King had in mind. We have lost our way.

In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
. . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!
, , , And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

IRS? NSA? Routine, nearly daily police department violations of Constitiutionally-guaranteed rights--by militarized police departments, no less? Confiscation and punishment masquerading as "charity" and "compassion"? Routine intimidation, up to and including mysterious burglaries of political opponents and whistleblowers of the most corrupt Presidential Administration in American history? Rampant yet mysteriously poorly reported incidents voter fraud all across the nation--while those who benefit from the fraud cloak their corruption in rhetoric defending the right to vote? (Free hint: not everyone actually has the right to vote--and perhaps more importantly--those that do have the right to vote only once per person.)

We are not, none of us, free in the United States of America in the year 2013. We have become drastically less free in the past five, let alone the past thirteen years. This is not a partisan issue. This is a human rights issue.

The only solution to the problem of making some people more free is NOT to make all people less free. That is the method of dictators and tyrants. And, not incidentally, it is the method of those in power in this country right now.

There seems to be some sturm und drang in some quarters regarding today's Supreme Court decision shooting down the Clinton "Defense of Marriage Act."

I am not among the particularly peeved.

My attitude is much more aligned with Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds' view that the country he wants to live in is one where same-sex couples are secure in their Second Amendment rights.

Now, I do think it's a legitimate concern that some of the critics of today's USSC decision have, regarding the general erosion of the stability and desirability of traditional, heterosexual, child-producing families in the USA. In this process of erosion, governmental action has not been helpful, but as in most things, government policy is the result, not the cause, of a more general dysfunction in society at large.

You can call that dysfunction by many names, but at its core lies the most pernicious and destructive of humanity's many pernicious and destructive urges. Urges that have names like Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.

Everybody experiences them. All of human history is written with these vices as primary motivators of human behavior. In stories, those that let these urges dominate them usually come to bad ends. Unfortunately, we've all also seen, in history and in our own lives, people who use these urges to grab, hold, and wield power over others.

The fundamental, corrosive dysfunction in today's Western Civilization is the systematic conversion of these human urges from vices into virtues. But even worse is the use of these vices to entice people in democratic countries to cede their rights and powers to the privileged few who seize the reins of power, and are loathe to ever drop those reins.

You can watch that sordid process going on daily in Washington, D.C., in State capitals, and in most major urban City Halls.

This will not end well. It never has before, and people haven't really changed since the ancient Iraqis invented irrigation.

You know that there is a huge problem in the United States when the Chancellor of Germany plans to discuss the NSA eavesdropping scandal with Obama when they next meet.

A question for Democrats and other Obama partisans: what--exactly--could Obama and his Administration possibly do which would cause you to seriously reconsider your support for him, and them?

If you can't answer that question honestly to yourself (or worse, if your answer is "nothing," then you are a danger to other people's freedom and liberty, and you should not be surprised if other people begin treating you as such.

If you do have an honest, principled answer to that question, then take a good, long look at what Obama and his Administration have already done. Chances are that they have already crossed your line--it's just that they've victimized people you don't have any respect for anyway.

What then does that say about your fundamental sense of fairness? Of your sense of humanity itself?

Poll worker convicted of voting fraud.

Guess which Presidential candidate got illegal votes cast on his behalf? Just guess. One guess.

How many more Melowese Richardsons are out there? Two others have been convicted in her county alone, and three more are yet to stand trial. How many counties did this election-stealing occur? Why do the overwhelming majority of these cases involve illegal votes for one party, and not the other?

How many illegitimate votes were cast how many votes for candidates of that party? Hundreds? Certainly. Thousands? Likely. Tens of thousands? Probably. Enough to steal elections? Well, why would people be doing this, except to steal elections illegally that they could not otherwise win?

And oh, by the way, during that same election cycle where the demonstrated vote fraud was occurring, the IRS and the entire weight of the federal government was working overtime suppressing its political opponents.

No. No conspiracy here. That's crazy talk.

Hat tip The Blaze.

Memorial Day is when we remember--not the veterans who returned home, but those who did not.



"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate.

What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.

Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.

The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state.

What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted."
- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787

(Paragraph spacing is mine; for readability only.)

This Thomas Jefferson letter is known primarily for the quotation "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." But equally if not more insightful is an earlier Jefferson comment in the letter: "Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist?"

Free press, yes. But aren't we always told that with freedom (gained by the sacrifice of brave warriors) comes responsibility?

What has our free press done with the freedom they have been given, but lie to us at the whim of the very government which they increasingly depend on for their "copy."

It is past time to call for Separation of Press and State, every bit as restrictive as the separation of State and Religion which is daily imposed on even private citizens in the public sphere.

What shape would this Separation of Press and State take? It is hard to say. At a minimum, the State must not be providing funding to the Press: either overtly through "public broadcasting" or by purchasing advertising from media outlets.

Beyond that, you encounter conflicts between the rights of individuals and the requirements of this separation--just like conflicts occur between expressions of religion and the governmental duty to maintain public order.

But, on Memorial Day, is it really enough to put a hand over your heart, bow your head for a 10-second "moment of silence), and then dig into your burger and beer? Shouldn't people be talking about what the people who died in the service of this country gave up their lives for in the first place? Wouldn't that be a more proper and fitting memorial than a family picnic?

What have you done with the freedoms you have, which were secured by the blood of your fellows of this generation and of the generations which came before? What will you do with those freedoms?

Will you use your freedoms to take away the freedoms of others?

Because unless things change drastically in this country, that's exactly what we as a nation are doing right now. What kind of memorial is that?