Who Among Us Cannot Respond to This Spirit

This from the London Times Online. This woman has people jumping to their feet as their positive response to values. Now there is something to fight for. This is the spirit I know as America. It's the fuel of all of life. Viva Palin!! Viva Life!! Viva America!!

Sarah Palin: conservatives find the girl of their dreams
The Alaskan governor’s family life and political views press the right’s buttons
Sarah Baxter - August 31, 2008

When Sarah Palin stepped into the spotlight as John McCain’s running mate in Dayton, Ohio, and promised that women could “shatter that glass ceiling once and for all”, it was an electrifying moment in a presidential election that had already produced its share of upsets and surprises.

History was on the march again the morning after Barack Obama became the first African-American to accept his party’s White House nomination. After the fireworks, the 80,000-strong crowd who had cheered Obama to the skies at the Mile High stadium in Denver woke up with a hangover.

“We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling,” said Camille Paglia, the cultural critic. “That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.”

With her beehive hairdo and retro specs, Palin, 44, has a “naughty librarian vibe”, according to Craig Ferguson, the Scottish comedian who stars on late-night US television. However, the selection of Palin, the governor of Alaska and a mother of five, as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee is no joke for the Democrats.

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio chat show host, exulted, “We’re the ones with a babe on the ticket” — one, moreover, with a reputation as a tax-cutter and corruption buster in her job as the first woman governor of Alaska.

Palin’s selection on the eve of the Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota, has set the stage for an epic battle for the votes of women, African-Americans, evangelical Christians and the young. The demographic wars that dominated the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton are now set to be replicated in the national election.

Will America fall in love with Palin or will she fizzle, like Dan Quayle, the vice-president to George Bush Sr who could not spell “potatoe”? Can she help McCain to defeat Obama, a modern political phenomenon, who drew a record-shattering television audience of nearly 40m — more than the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing — to watch his convention speech?

“Good Lord, we had barely 12 hours of Democrat optimism,” said Paglia. “It was a stunningly timed piece of PR by the Republicans.”

Whether Palin’s selection is more than a political stunt depends on how she handles the electoral pressure cooker. With the election in November, there is no time for on-the-job training. Karl Rove, Bush’s former aide, offered a guarded welcome to the “gun-packing, hockey-playing” governor, sayhing: “We’ll get a taste in the next five days of how well she does in the 62 days that follow.”

After Obama’s acceptance speech was wiped from the front pages, even he was forced to acknowledge that she “seems like a compelling person . . . with a terrific personal story”. Republicans are hailing their potential new vice-president as the all-American girl of their dreams.

Palin is gunning for the 18m women who voted for Hillary Clinton — a third of whom have not made up their mind to back Obama, according to the latest polls. McCain specifically deployed the language of feminism and civil rights when announcing her candidacy. “She stands up for what’s right and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down,” he said.

Palin’s parents learnt that she had been selected by McCain while they were heading for a remote camp in Alaska to hunt caribou. “I was speechless,” her father said. The skin of a grizzly bear that he shot drapes the sofa in her office.

The more Republicans examined Palin’s record, the more they liked it, although some are fearful of buyer’s remorse. She was born in the conservative heartland of Idaho before moving to Alaska as a baby. At school she was nicknamed Sarah Barracuda on the basketball court because she was so competitive and she led the prayers before each game.

She was a “hockey mom” who cut her teeth at the parent-teacher association before becoming mayor of Wasilla, a suburb of Anchorage with a population under 7,000. In 2006 she beat the corrupt male establishment in Alaska to win the governorship. She opposes same-sex marriage, but one of her first acts in office was to veto a bill blocking health benefits for gay lovers of public employees.

She hunts, ice-fishes and is a crack shot who knows how to fire an M16 rifle. “I was raised in a family where gender was not going to be an issue,” she said. “The girls did what the boys did. Apparently in Alaska that’s quite commonplace.” No softy, she sued to stop the federal government making polar bears an endangered species and favours drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge. However, she also levied a windfall tax on oil companies.

Palin was glamorous enough to have entered beauty contests to earn money for college. She was crowned Miss Wasilla in her home town and was runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest. “They made us line up in bathing suits and turn our backs so the male judges could look at our butts. I couldn’t believe it,” she told Vogue, more amused than outraged.

Counterbalancing McCain’s reputation as a political dinosaur, Palin smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska, admitting, “I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled”, and her children, Track, 19, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, Piper, 7, and Trig, four months, have hippie-sounding names. Track, who joined the US infantry in September last year, is about to be deployed to Iraq. “It has really opened my eyes to international events and how war impacts everyday Americans like us,” she said.

On stage in Ohio, the Palin family looked every bit as photogenic as the Obamas on their big night in Denver. Todd, her rugged husband, is part Yupik Eskimo and is four-time champion of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race. If that is not macho enough, he is a member of the steelworkers’ union and a seasonal oil production operator for BP, from which he earned $93,000 last year. He also helps to run the family’s commercial fishing business. They eloped in 1988 to avoid the cost of a wedding. “We had a bad fishing year so we didn’t have any money,” he said.

Like his wife, he is able to swap the traditional roles. “My husband loves being a dad as much as I love being a mom,” Palin said. “I’ve got great help there.”

She needs it. They “wanted enough kids for a basketball team”, she once said, but Trig was born this year with Down’s syndrome. Palin knew there were complications while she was pregnant but never considered an abortion. When he was born, she said, “I’m looking at him right now and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking: in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?” Undaunted, she held a meeting as governor three days after giving birth. “I just put down the BlackBerrys and pick up the breast pump,” she said of her life as a working mother.

Left-wing websites such as the Daily Kos are leading the chorus of disapproval for now. “Having had two children at home at the age of four months, I know how much help they need even without unfortunate medical conditions,” said one tut-tutter.

Republican women, however, are delighted by Palin’s example. Kellyanne Conway, 41, a Republican pollster and mother of three, said, “I really feel mother knows best without the peanut gallery giving unsolicited advice. She strongly conveys to women today that you don’t have to choose between a successful career and motherhood. You do have to make sacrifices, but you can have it all.”

Evangelical Christians could turn out in droves for Palin, a member of Feminists for Life who opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, if she maintains her promise.

Deborah Fikes, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, said: “I would just trust that the child is not neglected in any way. There are millions of women who work. Why is it that the father cannot provide the same standard of care? There has been an evolving view of working women even in conservative Christian circles.”

Fikes said Palin was an inspiring choice: “I didn’t think the Republicans would pick a female candidate for another decade, but John McCain is not a typical conservative leader.”

Other conservative women have pointed out that Palin was a much more effective counterweight to the super-competent and glamorous Michelle Obama than Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican candidate.

Cindy, a beer industry heiress who bought the seven homes that McCain cannot remember and once said the only way to travel around her home state of Arizona was by private plane, was under fire last week from her own half-sister. She said she was voting for Obama after Cindy had repeatedly claimed to be an “only child” and never expressed regret that her father had ignored her half-sister in his will.

In fact, even though the Clinton aides could barely conceal their satisfaction when she was chosen, the woman who Palin upstages most of all is Hillary. If Obama wins the election, Hillary will have to wait until 2016 to stand again. And if he loses, Palin will be first in line to become America’s first woman president.

Sarah Palin!

A fresh breeze blew in from the north. It came from Alaska. Is this oxygen at last? Can we now be free of the coils and calculations of Machievelli and Alinsky?

Sarah Palin is a brand new face. I immediately was taken with her can-do attitude and spirit. She's fun, funny, and down to earth. Elitism is not her style.

Her breadth of knowledge of the issues surrounding energy production is impressive. Her willingness to clean up Alaska's corrupt government, including members of her own Republican Party, is totally refreshing, even astonishing given the corruption to which we have become accustomed in the lower 48.

She is naturally enrolling and doesn't need a teleprompter to make a good impression. She is funny, charming and straight forward. She doesn't weave, dodge, hedge nor artfully straddle the fence. There is no mask. This is the source of the oxygen.

Listening to her I found myself laughing - that joyous laughter of the unexpected. My first thought? Thank God!

She actually used the word capitalism. She wants it, depends on it for the State of Alaska.

She is married to a "sloper," a person who goes to the North Slope to work for an oil company for a week at a time and then comes home for a week. She has five children, one of which has Down's Syndrome and is not in this picture.


McCain refreshed the political landscape and I find myself hungry to learn more about this candidate - the one with loads of vitality.

An Angry Avenger

My concern is for the spirit, the motor of a man’s existence. I hold that the possibility exists for man, by embracing sound values and good premises and by discarding the false values and fallacious premises, to accomplish what he wants and enjoy his personal power in whatever situations he may encounter. In this vein I offer my comment on Obama’s acceptance speech.

Obama's speech was the clearest, most vehement attack on the American Sense of Life that I've ever seen at this level of politics. That speech was grounded in a hatred of the human spirit - the creative, productive, rational, success-oriented, loving life spirit – that is hard to fathom.

Maybe this will give you the idea. A man who gets up, doesn’t like his job much (at best) and goes to work anyway out of necessity is on the right track. If he has nothing to show for it, that adds stars on his chest. An even "greater" garnishment is if he is sick or has as a "heavenly" host of sick relatives. This man is clearly headed for heaven and has already made it into Obama’s heaven. These are his heroes.

What is wrong with this picture?

Anyone who succeeds and is happy knows that regardless of whether the government gives you money, pays for your doctor, puts food on your table or even flies you around the country there is no spiritual redemption there nor sense of being a hero. In fact except in rare cases these benefits completely eclipse the possibly of ever discovering your own power. They most often seal your fate as a walking dead man.

Obama is the quintessential expression of a self-imposed victim status as a way of life. Now he advocates this spiritual ideal as the American way of life.

By the grace of his own hand, which the American electorate may grant him, he is going to avenge the poor in spirit by exacting punishment from all those who are in the way.

From whom? Ultimately every American who creates his life and seeks authentic values.

You see, a victim never trusts a non-victim, an achiever. The achiever engenders anger in the victim by virtue of his existence. Mostly the achiever is busy achieving values for his life. The victim, on the other hand, thinks no one cares. The victim, in line with his view of the world, transforms himself at some point in his life into the dominator to make the achiever, another victim or himself a victim. This is the motivation of criminals and thugs the world over. It is the motivation of dictators and can be the motivation of Presidents.




Obama’s major attack is against those EVIL corporations and RICH people. Notice he does not distinguish between those who exist on government handouts and protective regulation and those who don't. He doesn't distinguish between the parasites and the providers. He doesn't distinguish between the choices leading to resignation and death and the choices leading to life. He doesn’t distinguish any of this. He assumes HIS world view is right. And Obama was oh so righteous last night. I thought I had gone to a fundamentalist church.

He doesn't care about choices - at least not yours. The subtext of Obama's message is COERCION - PHYSICAL FORCE. He is going to force HIS way on each and every citizen of this country at the point of a gun, the only means the government has to force people to do anything, and cancel out the principles that have distinguished us.

He doesn’t recognize that today, the largest criminal among us – in the sense of using force on people which has nothing to do with the purpose for which it was founded – is the government. Instead of removing all of those government devices and releasing the people to rise as far as their talent and productivity will take them, he is going to be THE ONE. THE ONE we are waiting for. He will be the enforcer! He will bring those bastards to their knees. For what? HIS ideal.



His record for taking by government means stands unblemished. His record for producing results for those he claims to care about does not. All the people he cites as worthy of our utmost concern are only a means to his end, POWER. By his own hand he has shown this to be true.

If you buy his line, then I have a bridge to sell you.

I've pointed out in this blog how carefully Obama has constructed a facade which covers his true purpose. Last night gave us a glimpse behind his mask. Last night it was easy to see him speaking from the pulpit of Reverend Wright, glossing over the terror of his associate William Ayers and uniting with the anti-life dictums of the philosophers he has taken to heart.



You have a man here who wants to exact by FORCE the products of the creators and producers of jobs, big businessmen and small. Don’t be fooled by his pandering to small business. By the time he gets done enacting his programs, a small businessman won’t be able to afford an employee. He cannot see that when he cripples men at the root of why they would create and produce, he also kills the opportunity for the very people he says he wants to help.

I couldn't help wondering if Michael Phelps has too many gold medals. How many of those does Obama want? Does Michael Jordan have too many physical characteristics and too much determination to excel that he needs to be punished too?

Should Einstein have been partially lobotomized? Or Bill Gates forced to work out of nothing more than the garage he began in? Should Wall-Mart be forced to give up their earned power to bring products to the American consumer at a lower price? And what about Henry Ford. He must have been horribly evil given the current global warming hysteria.

What about those evil pharmaceutical companies who produce life saving drugs? Or brain surgeons who put in years of long hours to do what they so love that benefits people all over the world? The list is endless. Obama never mentioned one jot of this achievement. Nada.

He will take it all in service of his hatred of success – the source of all suffering for the poor. Cannot it be seen how his whole idea depends on envy? He is counting on the envy of the "have-nots" and the guilt of the "haves."

He projects no shining city on the hill - no place in American life great to achieve. No place where a man can be acknowledged for a job well done. It can never be said because he must be kept off balance in case he shall be used. And this is true of himself as well.



Obama bristles when anyone questions his patriotism. He did that again last night when he spurted lightning bolts from his eyes and forceful words from his mouth ("Don't you or anyone ever question my patriotism!") at John McCain over their recent bout over patriotism.

I'm absolutely clear that Barack Obama is an enemy of the success spirit of the United States at its root. It is clear to me that he is attacking this: "That all men are created equal (in their eternal nature as a human being) endowed with the unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

My conclusion? Choosing this angry avenger is going to cost all of us.


All picks from yahoo.com.

Showboat Obama Loves Mobs

This image says to me that Obama loves crowds - not mobs. But given the way he and his campaign is operating to quash The American Issues Project's video and Stanley Kurtz, contributing editor to the National Review who is now revealing the relationship of William Ayers and Barack Obama, I'm now persuaded he loves the mob.

Why?

Because he must! A man who does not deal in facts must get you to accept him by relating personal evaluations which you cannot argue with OR he must appeal to masses who eschew critical thinking - a mob.

(This last is Argument from Popularity, a logical fallacy. Yes, millions of people can be wrong. Both of the above techniques are a subset of Appeals to Emotion, a larger category of non-reason.)

The article below by the Chicago Tribune is about Obama's response to WGN's scheduling of an interview with Stanley Kurtz. WGN called the Obama Campaign for a spokesman and it declined the request. And this is not their first action against the charges now being constructed regarding Obama's lying regarding his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Obama's Campaign has sent letters implying the loss of broadcast license to intimidate all the major TV stations who might show the American Issues Project video.

The one thing the Obama Campaign and Obama himself is unwilling to do is tell the truth. Notice the language of the emails sent to WGN. Below that notice how there are no facts provided in Obama's countervideo, directed erroneously to McCain rather than AIP.

This is a battle that promises to become huge because Obama is willing to quash our Individual Right of the Freedom of Speech - the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States. (And Bill Clinton said Obama is now ready to defend the Constitution? I don't think so!)


Obama campaign confronts WGN radio
by John McCormick and Steve Schmadeke

Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
Posted August 27, 2008 11:02 PM

DENVER -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.

Obama's campaign urged supporters to call the radio station to complain.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," the note said.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves," the note continued. "At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies."

Zack Christenson, executive producer of "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenburg," said the response was strong.

"I would say this is the biggest response we've ever got from a campaign or a candidate," he said. "This is really unprecedented with the show, the way that people are flooding the calls and our email boxes."

Christenson said the Obama campaign was asked to have someone appear on the show and declined the request.

"He got into the files just yesterday, so we wanted to have him on to find out what he found. And, if at all possible, we wanted to get the Obama campaign, to get their side of the story," Christenson said. "That's why the uproar is kind of amazing, because we wanted the Obama campaign's take as well."

The show's producer said the calls dropped off after the show's first hour. He did not have a count of calls, but said it was "non-stop."

Obama's campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.


Here is Obama's video response to AIP aired August 25, 2008.

I can see the bumper stickers now.

We are now going to see the proof that Obama lied. The only defense to a charge is to either counter it with facts or smear it. See my ** (footnote) on "Swiftboating".

Obama not only lied, he is a vicious systematic liar. Lying, shading, obfuscating, and pooh-poohing is everywhere in his telling of his past. Everywhere.

And this is why Obama loves mobs. They, and the relating of his personal experiences which we cannot argue with, are his defense against reason, purposeful evasion, and the only thing you and I have in common with any other human being: the real world.

The "Piercing" Has Begun

Obama has carefully crafted a story about his life and associations; one that leeks like a sieve. The mystery has been so great and so deep that many people, myself included, have been drawn to learn the truth. There are too many clues that something is amiss from his grandiose attempt to configure his politics as spiritual symbolism, metaphor and ideals; his inordinate opinion of himself; his moral equivocation on values regarding the country's very founding and survival; his inability to stand for many of the most important people in his life; and his parrying of Muslims - be they in his family, among his friends or simply fans that would happen to be in a picture of Obama taken at a rally. People are traveling the globe to glean these facts in order to sort out this mystery.

Now a backlash has occurred that threatens Obama's facade. The piercing of this fraud has begun. Here's the first video I've seen.*

This was produced by http://www.americanissuesproject.org/.

Naturally the Obama campaign was outraged. They responded by having its lawyers send a threatening letter to all the major TV stations in the country. They demanded the Department of Justice to stop the ads.** They also produced a counter ad. (Obama is also calling for the same against McCain's ads.)

The lawyers for American Issue Project (AIP) were ready since AIP had done its research and written a 160 page report documenting every aspect of their ad before they aired it. The lawyers responded to Obama's letter to the TV stations with their own letter to those stations by showing that the Obama campaign had not proved its claim that the AIP ad was false or misconstrued in any way.

If this story interests you, go to No Quarter. Or Politico.com.

Obama prefers to quash the Individual Right to Free Speech than to blow his created cover. He is simply unwilling to confront the question asked and answer it with verifiable facts. What we are seeing is a Dictator in the making. Not willing to use reason and facts as the final arbiter of his claims, he has no choice but to use force. And he will. If he doesn't get it done now, he will if he is President. Count on it.

* There have also been books, the most extensive documented one that I have run across being Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi, Ph.D. Obama thought it worthy to attempt destruction of this salvo. He published a rebuttal of 40 pages on his campaign website.

**This action is an attempt to prevent Swiftboating. The Swiftboat ads sunk John Kerry in 2004. The Democrats have tried to turn the Swiftboat ads into some kind of evil campaign technique which they call Swiftboating. It was nothing of the kind. It was a group of fellow soldiers of Kerry who knew him and his character and did not think he was of a quality that would be a good President. They exercised their freedom of speech and put together the ads.

The truth is Kerry could have answered the Swiftboat ads with verifiable countervailing facts. He never did. The best he could do was smear the Swiftboaters. The Swiftboat claims stood and Kerry's showboat sunk like a stone. Swiftboating is the most fearsome technique a person can use. It amounts to an assertion based on facts and authenticity that requires countervailing facts to stop its power. Without verifiable facts as the basis for rebuttal, the rebuttal gains no traction.

See "'Extremism' or the Art of Smearing" by Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal published by The New American Library, 1967, for an analysis of this method of "warfare."

The smear does its damage by initiating a story that is not supported by the facts. By the time the facts disproving the story are assembled, the story has reached a wide audience. On the other hand, if a story is grounded in fact in the first place, it is not a smear. Further if some minor and non-essential facts are discovered to be incorrect, it does not change the essential point of the story.

A smear does not work in the first place nor as a defense against a real story. Although it may do damage, ultimately it destroys the "smearer's" credibility.

Obama 's Philosophy Questioned

I'm elated that this article appears in the New York Times today. It provides a good ground for distinguishing what is going on and the inability of our intellectual guardians to distinguish where Obama is coming from and to pronouce moral judgment on his views.

If you stand in Individual Rights, the fundamental political concept of the Declaration of Independence and the purpose of the Constitution along with Ayn Rand's clarification of the concept, then, and only then, does the conundrum of Obama become available to being sorted out.

You find the secret to Obama in what he DOES NOT SAY. And he does not say it because if he did, his whole house of cards would collapse overnight. He knows damn well that he has to cover the reason as to why he wants POWER is the keystone to his success in winning this election.

I'm just happy, very happy, that people are starting to look at this issue. If it is up to the bloggers from the hinterlands to prounounce the moral judgment, then I happily oblige.

There is no doubt in my mind that Obama will destroy America's standing in the world as a moral force. Whatever your position regarding the Iraq War or Russia's invasion of Georgia, America ALWAYS comes down on the side of freedom and democracy. (The detractors always equivocate or become cynical. Obama has flip-flopped and equivocated on both of these cases.) The world absolutely counts on us for that and the dark age that will result if we collapse on that crucial distinction, even if we are muddled, will be devastating for us and the world. This is why Barack Obama is SO DANGEROUS!

The comments in square brackets are mine. The colored phrases are emphasis that I've added to this New York Times article.

Tracing the Disparate Threads in Obama’s Political Philosophy

By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: August 24, 2008

Senator Barack Obama has put a fright of late into some liberal supporters by backing a limited version of gun rights and voting to give legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that helped the Bush administration eavesdrop on American citizens.

Presidential candidates often exude a whiff of centrism as they enter the general campaign. But for Mr. Obama, a relative newcomer to the national stage who will use the Democratic Party’s convention this week to sell himself to voters on his terms, these moves have heightened a sense of his ideological elusiveness.

Much of Mr. Obama’s politics, his opposition to the war and support for raising taxes on the wealthy, and his support of abortion and labor rights, falls squarely in the liberal mainstream of the Democratic Party. But his ideological departures are noteworthy.

He supports the death penalty for some crimes not involving homicides, like child rape, and he favors giving federal money to religious groups for delivering social services.

In foreign affairs, he is a stated admirer of former President George Bush’s foreign policy, often identified now with the so-called “realist” view that the United States should act primarily out of strategic self-interest.

Mr. Obama, an intellectually curious man, is nothing if not pragmatic in the application of philosophy to politics, temperamentally inclined toward no strand of thinking. [This is a false premise] In his books, sentences are pulled taut between opposing viewpoints; a literary critic remarked on the “internal counterpoise” in his writing. [i.e., moral equivalency]

But that leaves a fundamental question for admirers and critics: Is his a consistent philosophy that borrows pragmatically from the center while rooted on the left? Or does he have an expedient slide-step that allows him to appeal to the center without alienating his liberal base?

It is a balancing act not unfamiliar to the Democrats, and likely to play out at the convention in a muted way. Abortion offers a flash-point, as liberal party activists have jettisoned long-held language that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” in favor of a woman’s right to “a safe and legal abortion,” a subtle leftward shift.

Mr. Obama, however, has invited Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, an abortion-rights opponent to give a convention speech. Mr. Casey’s father, then Pennsylvania’s governor, was blocked from speaking at the 1992 convention because of his anti-abortion views.

Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, appears more intrigued by how to acquire power to push through changes than by adherence to ideology. [This is due to his holding to Alinsky’s dictum that it is POWER regardless of the means of obtaining it that is governing Obama’s tactics here.] Lost causes hold little allure.

In economics, he endorses a redistributionist liberalism but is skeptical of too much government tinkering. His most influential advisers hail from the University of Chicago, a bastion of free-marketers and a place where he taught classes for many years.

In foreign affairs, Mr. Obama stands defined by opposition to the Iraq war and emphasis on “transnational” threats, from global warming to disease and terrorism. But he is no pacifist; in his 2002 speech opposing an invasion of Iraq he emphasized that he was only against “dumb war.”

Mr. Obama would increase military spending and has not ruled out military action against Iran.

Guiding Forces

Mr. Obama’s moral and political outlook is subtle or ambiguous enough (take your pick) that liberal and centrist advisers rarely feel cast out. This is not unusual. Presidents often tack in unexpected directions, and ideology can become unwanted ballast. [The liberals are not able to distinguish Obama’s purpose and underlying philosophy because they agree with many of its premises. You have to stand squarely on the idea of Individual Rights to see Obama’s parsing for what it is.]

But election-year pragmatism also can cloak governing ideology. Mr. Obama would be the first president elected whose worldview took shape in a post-cold war, post-Great Society period. He is fond of reminding audiences he was just 9 as the curtain fell on the 1960s; his suggestion is that he is not captive to old culture wars.

Asked about the writers who influenced him, Mr. Obama chose John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Primo Levi, Graham Greene, Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing, a morally serious grouping that spreads in many ideological directions. [What Obama is leaving unsaid are the ones that MOST influenced him.]

He draws also on the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who crafted the concept of the “just war” and argued for the morality, under certain circumstances, of nuclear armament. [Morality is a decoy for Obama. He uses your morality against you. That is the means of getting your pass for his POWER. He’s counting on you, the victim of your own morality, to be unable to answer him.]

“Obama carries in his intellectual DNA [i.e., his premises] many of the tensions between the left and the middle in American political culture,” said Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College. “He was not involved in the fights of the 1960s, and that makes him harder to define.”

Some critics voice skepticism. They see an ambitious fellow who remains intentionally undefined.

“His philosophy is ambition,” said Fred Siegel, a historian at The Cooper Union in New York. “I see him as having a rhetoric rather than a philosophy.” [True in that Obama is all about POWER. Untrue in that he nowhere stands for the individual. He always speaks from the premise of the government controlling individual lives. This clearly is a philosophy. If it weren’t so, why would he want power? If he had no power to direct individual lives, then as head of state, he would be protecting individual rights. This is definitely not of the slightest interest to Obama.]

Communal Rights

Senator, what is your view of the Supreme Court decision barring the execution of child rapists? The question was standard fare for a politician who has questioned the equity of the death penalty.

But Mr. Obama’s answer set reporters to typing furiously.

“I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes,” he said. “I think the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime.”

The communitarian strain in Mr. Obama’s thinking often surprises liberal supporters. Roughly put, communitarianism holds that individual rights must be circumscribed by the communal, with all the cross-generational, religious and patriotic obligations that implies. Sweeping change must be approached slowly; when government enforces individual responsibilities, a moral crisis looms.

Communitarians also hold that government and corporations are bound by obligations to citizens, like a clean environment, education and health care. [In other words, redistribution of individual incomes.]

Mr. Obama was exposed to such thinking while working as a community organizer in Chicago. Saul Alinsky, the organizer who inspired the group for which Mr. Obama labored, argued for working through cultural bulwarks like churches and synagogues, talking to working class people on their own terms...

Culture rather than government, he says, promotes individual success and social cohesion, and federal courts should tread carefully. [But he means individual success inside his dictates and for the purpose of his dictates.]

“He’s certainly center-left but he has a pretty conservative social message,” said Theda Sckopol, a government professor at Harvard.

This impulse informs his views of religion. A deep current in American liberalism holds that church and state are separate realms.

Mr. Obama does not swim in this river.

He would give federal contracts to faith-based groups to fight poverty. (Unlike Mr. Bush, he would require religious groups to hire nonbelievers for these programs.)

“If we scrub language of all religious content,” Mr. Obama said in 1996, “we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.” [Why would he say this kind of thing? Somewhere he has considered this. I can’t imagine an individual rights person saying this. Further there is no distinction between the individual and the government. That is why he is saying this. In his world of power over people, this becomes a question and something to deal with.]

Raised in a secular family, he later embraced Christianity. Today a moral argot streaks his language; in Missouri recently he said Darfur reminds him “how sinful we can be.” [Who is “we?” There is no “we” in reality – only individuals who act. This is definitely the language of a collectivist.]

Alan Wolfe, a professor at Boston College, said no one should mistake Mr. Obama for a raging liberal. “During the primaries,” he said, “I used to tell people that Obama, not Hillary, was the real Clinton.”

On foreign affairs, Mr. Obama marries idealism about human rights to an insistent realism. He would not try to chase Russia out of the Group of 8 industrial nations, as his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain suggests.

“We can’t redefine Russia as evil; that’s not in our interests nor will it work,” said Susan E. Rice, a top foreign policy adviser, speaking before Russia’s military incursion into Georgia. [This is flat wrong on Obama’s part. He says this because he cannot stand the individual rights of human beings and the moral judgment that must by our nature permeate our lives. Thus he breaks it down counting on you people to give him the benefit of the doubt as they have to switch to a religious context in order to abide such a statement. This is how Obama so cleverly practices moral equivalence and the sanction of his victim – YOU, an individual human being.]

Mr. Obama gives his ambition great sweep.

“I will say this, what we saw from Europe to the Middle East was enormous hunger for American leadership,” Mr. Obama told a crowd in Virginia.

Some American foreign policy specialists are not convinced that this sounds quite so transformational. Mr. Obama consistently votes for increased spending on the military and often sounds like a familiar American type. [A person who wants power for CHANGE not aligned with our Founding Documents is not likely to undermine the military. He believes in FORCE as the means to shape society. Wars, regardless of what a power-luster may say, are always an alternative attraction - especially in an attempt to temporarily, at least, unite the country. For Obama this is going to be a growing problem should he be elected.]

“He buys into the precepts of American Exceptionalism, which portrays the 20th century as the story of American visionary leadership,” said Andrew Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University. “What strikes me is how utterly conventional it is.”

Mr. Obama will define his philosophy, the professor says, by how he practices statecraft.

“I doubt seriously he has a fully formed worldview yet,” he said. “There will be an internal fight for the mind and soul of President Obama.” [Bacevich is absolutely on the wrong track here. He is also disarmed by his lack of a place to stand, namely in the rights of individual to his life.]

Changing Views

Like a cutter holding aloft a stone, Cass Sunstein has viewed Mr. Obama’s thinking from many sides. Months ago, the senator called Mr. Sunstein at the University of Chicago, seeking his counsel on President Bush’s assertion of the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance.

Mr. Sunstein had written that such surveillance could be lawful. For 20 minutes, the men examined presidential war powers. Mr. Obama told him he was against the wiretaps and just wanted to understand his side. But months later, after wrapping up the nomination, Mr. Obama changed sides, saying that the Senate had put in place safeguards and that he would no longer abide by a vow to filibuster the bill. [Again, anything so long as POWER is gained, ala Alinsky.]

Many liberals were infuriated; several legal advisers, like the Harvard professor Laurence H. Tribe, disagreed. “He is pretty pragmatic,” Mr. Tribe said. “But that decision was perplexing to me.”

Mr. Sunstein saw a Mr. Obama who was disinclined to see opponents as constitutional marauders.

“Obama doesn’t like telling people that their deepest theoretical commitments are wrong — he is a visionary minimalist,” Mr. Sunstein said. [Obama’s method is to keep everyone unclear and unable to make choices based on rational and critical thinking grounded in reality. If he gets away with this, it will be because the majority of the populace is unable to distinguish the matter of individual rights, the only moral place to stand. This is an indictment of the philosophy governing our culture right now and how it is played out in education and the news media.]

Although, as more than one adviser to Mr. Obama noted, such a description raises that core question again:

As oil prices spiral and housing prices tumble, as Russia flexes its muscles after a long slumber and China asserts a claim and the globe heats up, will the “visionary minimalist” feel emboldened to offer grand guidance?

“He is not rooted in the way of a lot of politicians; we don’t know what his precise philosophy will be,” said Alan Brinkley, provost and professor of American history at Columbia University. “We just see these interesting shards.” [This is an indictment again of the state of philosophy in America that its intellectual guardians cannot see the forest for the trees. If they pass this it is because they pass the same kinds of issues in their everyday lives.]

The Ruse of Race - Revisited

Although I commented on the matter of race as a ruse in Obama's campaign (March 22, 2008), I am now clearer as to what is going here.

Race is a ruse, a decoy, in his campaign. I published this comment at Pajamas Media:

I’m now persuaded that the issue of race is a ruse in Obama’s campaign. The blacks are “the masses” used for Communist/Socialist purposes. (I plan to enumerate the positive evidence for this purpose in a future post.)

This is going to get distinguished because I don’t think for most people the election is about race. It may be for some blacks (and some whites) and it is being underscored by Congressman John Lewis here in GA when he says that “he never thought he would see the day when a black man was a candidate for President” like that by itself is a value. (If it is, then racism is a value.)

Obama has a history of walking on the backs of blacks to get political power. The results for the blacks he claimed to want to help have been negative and injurious. I’m thinking of the worsened condition of the public housing after his work to get Rezko funded, the increase in crime in black neighborhoods following the bill he advocated and voted for to stop “profiling” when police were acting to stop crime in those neighborhoods, and the absence of results in his education project.

Notice further how he is stressing that the middle class, comprised of millions of blacks, is not going to pay higher taxes, ignoring the effects (because the economy is an integrated whole) of higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. His actions will hurt them as any other person in the economy and he could give a damn. It’s not the point of his candidacy. There’s no evidence that blacks have ever been anything other than a means to HIS power.

Notice that many of the directors at the top of his campaign are white. If race were the issue why would he have axed his black mentor, Reverend Wright? Or if race were the issue why didn't he go to Kenya or South Africa for his world debut? It is the ideological base of his campaign that has him choose his associates in the past and he continues to do so.

Obama, if he wins, is set to be a huge disillusionment for the thriving and success oriented blacks. In their completely valid desire for a black to become President as evidence that any remaining barriers to their full political freedom are now demolished, they will learn eventually that once more Obama gained power by stepping on their backs as his means. He is consistent everywhere in his record. "How could one of our own kind do this? How could success be so bitter?"

Leaving unchallenged Obama to make charges or erect defenses based on race allows him to keep his cover in place. The real issue is his political philosophy and drawing him back to this will be the most revealing of his essence in this political race.

I predict this to be a growing major issue in this campaign.

Defiant! Patriotism Defined!

In the election campaign in progress, the issue of patriotism is on high boil. What is it?

The Oxford Shorter Dictionary (2002) defines patriotism as "Devotion to country" and the "quality of being patriotic" which means "devoted to the well-being or interests of one's country."

What is devotion? Devoted is defined in the same dictionary as "vowed, dedicated, consecrated" and "Zealously or exclusively attached to, given up to." Devotion then is "the fact or quality of being devoted to a person, cause, pursuit, etc.; earnest application; zealous or exclusive application to a use or a purpose."

Is anyone questioning McCain's patriotism? I don't think so. I have heard no one questioning him in this regard.

While in the North Vietnamese prison, he chose to be his word and remain in prison rather than leave his fellow soldiers and violate an oath which he took. He was further tortured to the point that he doesn't have full use of his arm and leg. In his speeches, you can hear his call for us to devote ourselves to our country too. I am not a subscriber to self-sacrifice and don't agree with his premises that the government has the right to control citizens' economic activity, but I don't doubt the regard he has for our country and for this I appreciate him.

What about Obama?

"Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country."

Got it. Devotion is not a word he uses now or will ever use.

I have to tell you, Obama's authoritarian "decree" has not a shred of validity in a free country where the Right to Freedom of Speech is My Right to My Life - as it is for every American. Here he being more radical Muslim than American. This is something they do and then proceed tear things up. Remember the cartoons? And thank you, Ezra Levant, for YOUR heroism. For this reason, it had to be said!

McCain touches the sacred in this realm. Obama does not.

And, he cannot. His history is filled with influences and actions dedicated to division and the installation of laws where individual rights are rendered meaningless and maybe even evil. In the Declaration of Independence it is declared for all the world to hear that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed . . . with certain unalienable Rights among these are the Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . "

Granted, the country was begun with the institution of slavery, but with the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties, finally all laws instituting racial discrimination were removed from the books. What was left? Freedom. Political freedom.

And that should be all there is to this story. To institute laws favoring one man over another in his circumstances institutes once again the human bondage this country has struggled against and ultimately eradicated.

Once the legal restrictions were erased, then what is left are all the internalized premises and manifestations that were the result of slavery and Jim Crow but which don't work in a condition of political freedom. These matters work out over time. Individuals and organizations give up the irrational premises because they don't work and alter their manifestations. These are being worked out now and will continue so long as the government maintains the rights of individuals.

Obama, given his choice of church and its advocacy of the Black Liberation Theology, has sided with the reinstitution of slavery. He has had an extended relationship via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and its projects with the domestic terrorist, William Ayers, who is unrepentant in his hatred of the American system of capitalism and who seeks to institute reverse slavery. Then he got involved with Tony Rezko, a crooked "user", now-convicted developer who, in the name of repairing and improving public housing but ultimately causing its further deterioration to the detriment of the inhabitants, to gain money and valuable connections for pursuing his political ambitions. Beyond that, the dictums and methods of Saul Alinsky, the powerful community organizer guru, influenced by Karl Marx, who advocated gaining power by any means required to get it held intellectual and motivational sway in the law firms and groups with who Obama allied himself.

All of these activities are "me/us over them" activities, oblivious that there is a larger context, such as the one Martin Luther King appealed to, that can include the whole of the country and all people.

Would you conclude that Obama is patriotic?

Ambitious? Yes. Willing to go for it? Yes. Patriotic? You can be nice if you want to, but I say NO!

Which One Are You Ready to Saddle Up?

A friend. Rob Diego, with whom I exchange observations of current affairs and often test ideas is guest contributor tonight. Thanks, Rob.

During the questioning (at the Saddleback Civil Forum) last night, Obama was repeatedly equivocating on important issues and this exposes his inability to lead, his lack of any clear convictions. A leader must be decisive, he must use his own mind and rely on his own experiences; and he must know the right questions and how to get the right answers from knowledgeable people. I've been a leader during certain times of my life, and even on that modest level, it was a major responsibility and a very sobering thought to know that my job was making decisions about others and inspiring them to be better. I loved being a leader because I saw the results in people who were better every day and happier and more secure because my leadership helped them be more productive employees.

Obama would never be worth a $32 million dollar CEO salary because he could never be decisive enough to steer a company in the right direction. How can we put him in charge of the most powerful institution in the world? Equivocation and ambiguity are not signs of leadership ability; they are signs of indecision. We can't afford to have him learn on the job. Our lives are at stake. I'd put those million dollar CEOs (that Obama criticizes for making too much money) in the oval office any day before Obama.

McCain was decisive last night, clear and forthright...a characteristic that is rare, even in Presidents. Obama has never been in the line of fire where his own personal freedom was at stake; he's never been in the line of fire where his own life was at stake; he's never had to make a decision that meant a crucial turning point for the nation...he wouldn't know how to recognize such a situation. He'd equivocate and call a meeting of a bunch of people to tell him how to nuance his responses.

A man who makes a decision to become a street organizer is not making a decision that affects an important issue for the country; he is making a decision to avoid making a difference. It sets him up to blame others for problems rather than show the leadership necessary to solve real problems. He admits that 10 years ago he didn't know the value of work as a social phenomenon. Doing things for others by causing a redistribution of someone else's money is not the same as making decisions that make it possible for people to be successful.

Anyone can "bring people together." That takes no special skill, it does not make Obama unique. Even Bush said he could do it. The real problem is that Obama has no real tangible leadership skills, has demonstrated no such skills, and has never made the amount of money in his life that makes him something special. He cannot prove that he is special. He is no Bill Gates, no T. Boone Pickens, no Warren Buffet...he is nothing special. Knowing how to leave people free takes a lot more leadership than knowing who will pay higher taxes.

McCain wants us to all be rich. That Obama doesn't even think in these terms tells you so much about him...it tells you everything. With terrorism one of the major issues of our time, we can't afford to wait for a man to ask his wife or grandmother, or even Ted Kennedy, what to do (I can almost tell you what they will say to him: "Do what helps the most people, honey.") I'm wondering if he asked them what to say before he made his early statements about the situation in Georgia. He clearly is only reciting leftist cliches without an understanding of how his statements relate to the real world, or whether they relate at all. I wonder what his grandmother's leadership skills are and how many thousands of people she has led. And why haven't scholars written about her unique mind? I'd like to read her books. Where are they?

Obama came off of a vacation and the media had to use that fact as a reason why he didn't do as well as McCain. All he has to do is get back on the campaign trail and he'll get his words back. That is a rationalization of the worst kind. What a tough life he's had...his vacation complicated his candidacy and muddled his mind. Imagine McCain saying that he was indecisive because he spent 5 years in a prisoner of war camp tied up with ropes, unable to move. Imagine the media using that fact as an excuse for McCain. It is unthinkable because that event molded his convictions, gave him certainty for a lifetime about important issues, helped him to see things clearly. A vacation that makes a man not have the presence of mind to remember his convictions is not an excuse; it is a sign of no convictions.

What defeated Obama last night is that he had no idea what McCain would say so he could not adjust his statements to match McCain's convictions and passion. Obama has no convictions of his own. That is clear. The worst thing is that there are a lot of people who don't care that he has no convictions; there are lots of people who think Obama's equivocations are an indication of a refined and educated mind. I'll take a prisoner of war, even a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks over Obama any time.

Rob Diego

The New Patriotism

Kobe Bryant responds to questioning of his patriotism. This video by NBC Broadcasting in their Olympic coverage.

The New Hero

Only the heroes of the human spirit are able to take the circumstances as they come and mold them into triumph. Morally certain of their talent, their dedication and their right to be great, Olympic champions are true heroes.


Phelps Faces the Strain Of Making Waves
By Sally Jenkins. Sports columnist, Washington Post
Photo credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

BEIJING

After a while this gold medal thing can wear on a guy, even one with Michael Phelps's seemingly non-biodegradable constitution. It suddenly all seemed tiring, the cycle of eat-sleep-swim, the ice baths, the thousands of meters of warm-ups and warm-downs, the constant carbo-loading. Phelps stood in the pool after winning his fourth gold medal of the Summer Games, ripped off his water-filled goggles and chucked them over his shoulder as if he was sick of wearing them. He looked at the clock, unsmiling, and grabbed at his side under the water, as if the race had given him a stitch, instead of the all-time mark for Olympic bullion.

It was Phelps's fifth straight day of competition at the Water Cube, and suddenly the strain showed. It was apparent that this pursuit of eight golds is not as automatic as we, watching with our feet propped up, might think. With one goggle mishap, Phelps could have seen the end of his Olympic record quest through a pair of bloodshot eyes.

As soon as he dived in the water at the start of the 200-meter butterfly, his goggles tore away from his face and water poured into them. "They filled right up," he said.

By the 150-meter mark he couldn't see the wall. Phelps had won three previous gold medals by eclipsing world records in each, and he had every expectation of doing so again in the 200 fly. He has owned the fly record since 2001, when he was a slack-jawed, mouth-breathing teenager who had to ask his coach, Bob Bowman, "Who is this Mark Spitz guy, and why does everybody keep asking me about him?"

But Phelps wasn't thinking about a world record as the chlorine stung his eyes. "I was just hoping I was winning and hoping I could get my hand to the wall first," he said.

For the first time in the Beijing Games, he swam as if it was effortful. Half-blind as his goggles sloshed with water, he searched for the black T on the bottom of the pool, and tried to gauge his distance to the wall by counting his strokes. His time of 1 minute 52.03 seconds barely clipped Laszlo Cseh of Hungary (1:52.70) at the touch. It was his closest individual finish so far, and a second slower than he wanted, and he was clearly dismayed. "It's fine," he said unenthusiastically.

This is the point Phelps has reached at these Olympics: He is now discerning between great gold medals, and the merely mundane ones.
It was only when Phelps's irritation at the goggle malfunction had worn off, and he stood on the medal podium with yet another ornament slung around his neck, that the realization hit him: He had just broken the all-time career total for Olympic gold medals with 10, surpassing the nine held by the likes of Spitz and Carl Lewis.

"I was in the awards ceremony for the 200 fly when I started thinking about it and that's when I started tearing up," he said. "To be at the top with so many great athletes who have walked in the Olympic Games, it's a pretty amazing feeling."

Phelps's relentless rhythm of excellence is in danger of robbing him, and us, of proper appreciation for what he might accomplish here. The goggle mishap was evidence of just how fragile his quest really is, all of his painstaking preparation and magnificent effort could have been undone with one fluke.

But it was also evidence of what a towering mental giant he is. It was 10:23 in the morning when got out of the pool with a sour face after swimming the fly. At 11:20 he hopped back in it for the 4x200 freestyle relay -- and won his fifth gold medal of the Games, this time with the sort of lofty world record performance he wanted. Phelps swam the leadoff leg in a spectacular collective assault on the world mark with Ryan Lochte, Ricky Berens and Peter Vanderkaay, who combined to shatter it by 4.68 seconds. That's no typo. Phelps, Lochte, Berens and Vanderkaay swam nearly five seconds faster than any team ever, cutting so fast through the water that the other teams seemed to be swimming in another pool.

Phelps won his first gold five days ago with a world record in the 400 individual medley that is widely regarded as one of the great swims of all time, a collectible. From then on, something spectacular has been expected of him every day -- his teammates have predicted that he is on his way to an epic meet. "He's gonna be on fire now," Aaron Peirsol said. "He'll be hard to stop."

As record after record has fallen, evidence has mounted that he could be on his way to the greatest Olympics ever -- a tsunami of records that will wash over and eradicate all other accomplishments. "And it ain't over yet," said Eddie Reese, the U.S. men's swimming coach.

Phelps is now more than halfway to the eight, and his greatest individual challenge has been a pair of busted goggles. We're beginning to take his performances for granted, to expect the same from him that he expects from himself. The trick, as Phelps turns the corner in his chase for eight golds, is to properly admire his last few attempts. Let's not forget to sightsee along the way, to stop and stare at an athlete who is one of the great wonders of the world. Otherwise, we won't fully realize what we got to see.

The New Slavery

Obama Reveals What Change Means



The video was produced by http://www.nakedemperor.com/,
a media organization dedicated to unmasking the shibboleths
and platitudes of our culture.

The race is on and the task of critically thinking people is to learn about our candidates and what they hold as dear, in their character and in reality, that will affect our lives. It requires sorting through the information and identifying the fundamental values important to you for producing a political climate in which it is possible for any human being to surive and thrive to the extent that he is rational.

In my opinion, Obama is a divider when it comes to "all people." He advocates programs which take from one and give to another, not because of a justice based on the right of every individual human being to his life, but based on the facts of particular human beings which are not primary to human beings as a species. This error produces division and fighting among men.

Of what importance is one's economic status at the moment? For many being poor is the spur to make something of themselves and acquire wealth through honest trade with others. Of what importance is one's skin color? Many of all the skin colors of humanity have made something of themselves and reached the pinnacles of their chosen fields. Of what importance is one's gender, one's sexuality or one's handicap given that women, gays and the blind have become supremely successful at what they have chosen to do in life. None of these are essentials.

Politically, the law should be blind to all of these non-essential aspects of individual human beings otherwise it is not a just law. Law is not a primary based on any old ethics whether it be from a philospher, the Bible or some concensus of society. A just law is grounded in the metaphysically eternal nature of human being and cannot violate that nature.

McCain is also a divider (in the basic sense I refer to above and not in the sense that people are going to have differing and often opposite opinions on a particular issue) in some issues of his campaign. No national leader at this time is able to express the principles on which this nation was founded. Some on the Right try to say that we are Christian nation. Some on the Left say that freedom is about equal opportunity and circumstances. Baloney. That's NOT the essence of the Constitution, as it so ably clarified. It's about one's individual right to Life, Liberty, Property and the freedom to pursue that which has him Happy.

At best our political leaders have been able to express that underground sense of life that most of us share as American. I look forward to the day when these values find public expression and exist in full sunlight.

The culture of this nation is playing out the errors of the past. There is a philosophy which lays out the basis of a rational and just foundation for living a human life, a life possible for human being in his noblest sense. It is Objectivism.

The Man Who Led Our Olympic Team

Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2008

This article is from TIA Daily • August 10, 2008 • If you choose, subscribe here.

Thanks, Mr. Tracinski, for this inspiring article. I recommend following the links he included as they flesh out the story. The ones about Mr. Lomong are all inspiring.


Who We Are
Lopez Lomong Represents America
by Robert Tracinski


Amid the gargantuan spectacle of Friday's opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, there was a much smaller detail that really caught my attention: the story of the man whom the US delegation chose as its flag-bearer for the Parade of Nations.

I don't begrudge the Chinese their desire to put on a spectacular display. China has achieved a remarkable transformation in the past 30 years, raising itself up from the abject poverty of a nation brutalized by its Communist dictators, to become one of the world's fastest-growing economies with an increasingly vibrant culture.

And I was particularly encouraged by the way in which China chose to celebrate its moment at the center of the world's attention. Like most Olympic opening ceremonies, it was a sprawling event without much in the way of a connected narrative, but it seemed to be mostly built around two themes. The first theme was the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: paper, moveable type, gunpowder (represented by fireworks, of course), and the compass. The second theme was China's openness to the rest of the world, a theme emphasized when the ceremony's pantomimed overview of Chinese history skipped forward from the silk road and the 15th-century sea voyages of explorer Zheng He to the opening up of China to the global economy in 1978—skipping pretty much everything in between, including Mao Tse Tung and Communism. This is perhaps no surprise, when you consider the background of the ceremony's director, filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who as a young man suffered through the lost decade of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

My impression is that the people of China are not eager to remember the horrors of Mao's rule, because they are looking forward to the better life they are beginning to enjoy. And China's rulers are not eager to remind their subjects of that history, because it does not reflect well on the moral legitimacy of the Communist Party.

So the upshot of the opening ceremony could be boiled down to: China wants to be a thriving part of the world again. It was as good a message as you could expect.

Yet there is a contradiction behind that message, and America sent its own messenger to remind the world of this fact.

The Chinese people as a whole are no doubt sincere in the aspirations they projected at the opening ceremonies. But the relationship of China's rulers to the world is not nearly as benevolent. China's government has maintained what one analyst calls a Zombie Empire of failed and dying dictatorships. Like the zombies of folklore, these states are kept in a state of artificial animation by Chinese support—in exchange for doing China's bidding. And one of the zombies in China's empire is Sudan, which has been shunned by every other civilized nation for its complicity in mass murder and war crimes in its province of Darfur.

That is why the US Olympic team made such a profound statement by choosing as its flag-bearer the middle-distance runner Lopez Lomong. China made its statement to the world last Friday with masses of people—2,008 drummers, 2,008 Tai Chi masters, and so on—while America answered it, quietly, with a single individual.

Lomong's story is a both heartbreaking and inspirational. He was one of the famous "Lost Boys of Sudan." Stolen from his family by Sudanese Muslims as part of their war against Christians and animists in Southern Sudan, he was taken to what was basically a death camp for children—if you can imagine such a thing, which I hope you can't. With the help of some older boys from his village, he escaped and ran for many miles to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived in squalor for ten years until he was brought to the US by an American charity.

This is the bare outline of a story that is told movingly in Lomong's own words and in many other reports in the past few weeks (see here and here especially).

It is a story full of details no one would dare to make up in a Hollywood movie—like this one, from a Washington Post report: Once, in Kenya, he was given five shillings for watering cows. It was his only money but he never spent it, keeping it for the right moment. He heard others talking about the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and how, on the only TV set in the area, five miles away, they might watch it. So Lomong and friends walked five miles to the black-and-white TV only to find out that, for each event you watched, you had to pay—five shillings.

That day, Lopez Lomong saw sprinter Michael Johnson run and win, stand on the podium in a US uniform and cry as his anthem was played. "I want to run as fast as that guy," Lomong says he thought. "And I want to wear that same uniform."

What stands out most from the story is Lomong's gratitude to and love for America. Lomong became a US citizen last year and told reporters, "Now I'm not just one of the 'Lost Boys.' I'm an American." The Lost Boy has been found. "Before, I ran from danger and death," he says. "Now, I run for sport. It would be an honor to represent the country that saved me and showed me the way." And describing what it means to him to carry his new country's flag, Lomong says, "The American flag means everything in my life—everything that describes me, coming from another country and going through all the stages that I have to become a US citizen. This is another amazing step for me in celebrating being an American."

If you want to know why Lomong loves America so much, check out a terrific interview with his foster parents, Robert and Barbara Rogers.

There has been some discussion about whether athletes at the Olympics should try to make some kind of political statement about causes like Darfur or Tibet or China's record on individual rights. But Lomong makes the most effective statement of all. He makes a statement just by being who he is—and by what he implies about who we are as Americans.

An estimated four billion people watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and in every broadcast in every country around the world, the broadcasters would have had to explain, as Lomong led the American delegation into the stadium, who this person was, why America is represented by a young black man from Sudan, and how it is that in America a lost and penniless refugee can become an elite athlete who is chosen by his peers to represent, as one athlete put it, "the epitome of the American dream."

It is a story that says everything about the freedom and opportunity we enjoy in America, and about the benevolence and generosity that follow from it. And one could not imagine a more pointed or effective contrast to the policies of China's rulers.

The Moral Basis of Capitalism

This interview is excellent in distinguishing the moral base of capitalism from the moral base that governs our culture and the cultures around the world. Here

Anti-Energy, Anti-production, Anti-human being

The Democrats have reached the apex of stubborn irrationality. For what? Misplaced environmental concerns that value snail darters and various species over the individual right to own, i.e., the use and disposal of, property and to take care of one's property including the species thereon as seen fit; and, for a global waming theory (alias climate change theory) that is not proven and for which data relentlessly piles up disproving it and which, if carried out, will completely upend the industrial economy that is in existence and on which we totally depend.

Neither of these motives are worth anything except as the basis for an over-reaching, unjust, and stupid power-lust run amok. These politicians and their hangers-on deserve to lose their influence as soon as it can be accomplished.

This video is a stark demonstration of how little the Democrats care about individual people in their daily lives (i.e., their right to their life) and our economy. This is stark irresponsibility and is utterly exasperating that it is going on, let alone continues. Get out of the way! Freedom immediately! Now is the time to deliver a "Come to Jesus" conversation to your Congressman.

Don't exclude McCain and many Republicans for their support of Environmentalism as Religion. They need a "Come to Jesus" talk too.

We as citizens are not free when it comes to economic activities - probably the bulk of our lives. The Civil Rights issue in this century, the 21st, is economic freedom - the individual right to apply one's reason, one's knowledge and one's ingenuity in one's economic decisions - which is essentially the right to own property, a corollary of the right to one's own life.

The ultimate individual right is the right, unfettered by government interference unless one commits a crime against another, to fully use one's mind since it is man's basic means of survival. Rather, we are as pets in a cage with the government as pet farmer.

I'm sorry, but I hate my master. And the last thing I want them to do for me is to care. I just went them to do their goddammed job set forth in the Constitution and which they have under oath agreed to do.

Race

There are some very bad signs for the future of our polity in this election. The attempt to divide and conquer. to drive a wedge between the dependent-minded people and the creative, independent-minded people; the employee and the employer, black and white (remember Reverend Wright?) is coming strongly into the picture. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized here this morning, this needs to stop.

Yesterday the WSJ ran an article on the funding of Acorn, a "community organizing" organization which corrupts the ideals of social justice for poltical purposes to gain power and government grants. This amounts to voter registration for the Democrats, although by law they cannot specify a political party. Why President Bush stupidly signed this into law as part of the mortgage bailout I do not know. Here

To clarify, I do not agree with the ideals of social justice because it is a collectivist idea and attempts to redress what it sees as economic injustice, a reversal of the law of cause and effect. I do agree with them when their work is consistent with the application of individual rights.

ACORN although it justifies itself in terms of social justice it is not a legitimate expression of social justice. See the link above on the ideals of social justice to grasp what a person dedicated to these ideals got into when he worked with ACORN.

The gold standard for legitimate social justice looks like the movement Martin Luther King created to right the wrongs of Jim Crow. It wasn't funded by Washington. It was a man with a vision for all mankind who enrolled people to peacefully demonstrate such that the American people could see the racial injustice for themselves on their own TVs and be moved to purge racial injustice from the country's laws.

It is completely legal for a political party to register people to vote - on their own dime. It is obscene to steal people's money by law (if you don't think the gun is behind the law, try not paying your taxes) to fund this kind of campaign, a corruption of authentic principled justice based on every single person's right to HIS life.

If this isn't challenged in the Supreme Court, we've had it. When the "takers" outnumber the "makers" and vote your money into their pocket, dissolution is imminent. It violates the First Amendment which covers the freedom of political speech. And if the government expropriates your money, what resources do you have left to actively pursue this freedom? The Democratic Party is way over the top on this matter and those Congressmen, President Bush and all the agitators for this kind of action deserve to be publicly and vociferously sanctioned.

It cannot help the African-American who is going to be so crudely lumped by his skin color into a category that distinguishes nothing regarding his character or merit. See Racism. He will be used for greedy unscrupulous men's political power and he will end up paying a price that the honorable blacks do not deserve. So unjust. This breaks my heart - for them and for my country.

This appeared in National Review Online. Ward Connelly, an African-American, has been in the trenches fighting for the equality of all men under the law and has worked by any means he can find to get rid of quotas and preference based on race, ethnicity or any group privileges. He is hated by the victimologists of his race. Nevertheless, he's inspired by MLK's vision for mankind.

My Preferences
John McCain, Barack Obama, and civil rights today.

By Ward Connerly

One thing I have learned from more than 13 years of fighting for equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color, or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue than almost any other — and get away with it. A few days ago, Sen. John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Sen. Barack Obama pounced.

Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” (the participants gave him standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his appearance), Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”

Having been thrust into a presidential campaign, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.

Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.” In addition, the United States Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter.

In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.

Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it's something that has to be acknowledged.”

I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.

If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”

It is true, by the way, that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is not true that he has “flipped” with regard to preferences themselves. He has consistently expressed disdain for preferential treatment based on race.

And even if he had changed his position substantively, he would be far from alone. Millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago, when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled. Without race “flippers,” he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States.

Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress. Something tells me that, deep in his soul, Sen. Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.

— Ward Connerly is the author of Lessons from my Uncle James and a former regent of the University of California.

You can judge Barack Obama for yourself. I'm clear about my judgment of him.