Nuts?

Well, its official I guess, the Democrats are nuts! While I doubt the claim would stand up in a court of law today, Dr. Lyle Rossiter, in a new book “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness” claims, "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," and that "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave." It would appear that just about the time liberals figured it was safe to come out of the closet and call themselves such in public, a psychiatrist says that liberalism is really some sort of a mental disorder! (Strangely enough I’ve had that same thought many times over the last few decades!) And while many of us have made somewhat similar statements over the years, Rossiter is a professional pshrink after all, and apparently has no known connection to political activism or "the vast right-wing conspiracy", so perhaps he does know what he’s talking about. He is a board certified psychiatrist, and who also happens to be a certified forensic psychiatrist or so I understand.

Rossiter claims the brand of liberalism displayed by the Democratic presidential nominee can only be understood as a psychological disorder. As per the good doctor, "A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do."… "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do." He goes on to say that the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by “creating a sense of victimization”, “supporting infantile claims to entitlement and compensation”, “adds to primitive feelings of envy”, along with “rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government”. He adds; "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious." I rather liked the “spoiled, angry children” part. I’ll admit knowing quite a few Democrats that I think quite highly of… and some of them can hardly be called “liberal”, but I also remember the democratic reaction to the last couple of presidential elections, which they still claim George W. Bush “stole”.

In theory, american liberalism consists of an ideology that wants to maximize individual liberty. The theory includes things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. Well, “freedom of speech”, as long as the speaker is politically correct perhaps, and conservative broadcasters can be put out of business by the proposed “Fairness Doctrine” if they don’t toe the liberal line? “Freedom of Religion”… or perhaps it should be “freedom from religion”? I found out why we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse anymore (this was intended to be a joke I believe, but if the shoe fits…) “You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' and 'Thou Shall Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. If you do, it creates a hostile work environment.” Liberalism is also supposed to believe in the government providing such necessities as education, health care, food, and shelter. Well, we do have government welfare programs that are supposed to do just that, but if it’s all the same to the government I’d rather have a decent job. I sometimes question much of the governments education program, but I’m not an expert, so who am I to doubt the validity of rewritten history, or the value of college credit courses in basket weaving and hard rock appriciation? Freedom of the Press? Well, I am still writing… but I doubt I’ll ever be syndicated in the New York Times… Perhaps if I start praising Al Bore’s global warming theories, or begin weeping and wailing about the horrors of off-shore oil wells?

All in all, I’d say the third party Liberatarians fit the technical defination of “Liberal” far more that the democrats who claim the name, and apparently want nothing more than to rule your everyday life, and tax you to death so that they can “redistribute” your hard earned wages! (The IRS under the Democrats… “How much do you make? Send it in.”)

Wikipedia defines socialism as “... any of various economic and political concepts of state or collective (i.e. public) ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods and services, some of which have been developed into more or less highly articulated theories.” This particular piece goes on to interconnect socialism with communism and modern day liberalism. The Democrats of Harry Truman’s day, and even during John Kennedy’s era, were generally trying to improve America’s standard of living. But as the wild-eyed radical social theories of the 1960’s evolved into the democratic party we see today, things obviously changed, and not necessarily for the better. I well remember the discussions of “if only the Scientists (or the Doctors, or the Sociologists, or whomever) ran the world” that were common in the fifties and sixties. Today’s left wing liberals developed from those thoughts, and now seem to be but a step away from reinventing Marxist communism, preferring government to individual control of every aspect of our lives! Still, I’d much rather make my own mistakes!

“Liberalism” as we understand it to be today, has been around for a long time and in any number of guises. America’s founding fathers were quite liberal in their political thinking for their day and age. Strangely enough, they were firm believers in massive doses of individual liberty (and the corresponding civic responsibility), without engaging a mid-sized herd of Kings, Princes, and assorted government officials to make every decision for the great unwashed masses. The country they brought into being seems to have functioned fairly well for a couple of hundred years. Now however, we seem to have all sorts of well meaning people who want to control our every waking moment, “for our own good” of course, and they are terribly close to winning!

I’ll end with a quotation from Sir Winston Churchill who, in his long and variegated political career, was a political liberal at times, as well as staunch conservative. “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

Communications

If you can believe the scientists, nearly every animal species in our world has developed the art of communications by various means and to one extent or another. For the most part this communicating is a method of announcing danger, the availability of food, attracting a potential mate, or just telling the kids it’s time to come home. Nor does it seem that communications requires a highly developed intelligence either, as a few species of plants appear to have the ability of informing others of their species that they are under attack by insect pests, or so the claim is made. (I can just imagine the language around our Lodgepole jumbles when the Pine Beetles appear!) As the level of intelligence increases, the degree of communication appears to increase as well, into the ability of conveying a vast amount of abstract information along with the more basic data.

Imagine for a moment what might have happened to humanity, without the ability to transfer information between individuals. Someone might discover that cooking greatly improves the taste of food, but being unable to communicate, no one else can learn that fact by other than trial and error. Another individual designs a superior club, but no one else can take advantage of that design except by eventually copying it. Things could get real hectic in a hurry when a Sabertooth Tiger suddenly appears on the scene, and you can’t tell the kids to get up in a tree! Without the wondrous ability to communicate, I rather doubt that humanity would have lasted very long. Still, at the higher levels I’ll sometimes question our ability to communicate abstract thoughts. I’ll often read a technical paper, and when I’m finished with all the big words, double talk, and self congratulations, I find myself asking just what it was that the author was attempting to get across. Try actually listening to a political speech sometime, and making any sense of what was said!

A couple of hundred years ago, Americans were pretty much all on the same wavelength and the politicians usually didn’t have much trouble getting their point across to the voters. The contents of a speech were usually printed in the newspapers, everyone could read that speech at their leisure, and generally figure out just where the speaker stood. As time passed and technology changed the way we live, effective communications became an ability that seems to have fallen by the wayside, at least at the state and national level of politics.

The power of speech, both what is said and how it is spoken — is crucially important in politics. How should a President talk? George Washington never spoke publicly for more than ten minutes because of the pain caused by his false teeth, yet his lofty rhetoric established the presidency as a dignified institution. Thomas Jefferson was probably the most brilliant man in the history of American politics, and one of our better presidents, but he was such a poor public speaker that he instituted the century long tradition of sending the State of the Union message to Congress in the form of a letter! In the twentieth century, the development of modern media brought an end to the era of political oratory. A collection of sound bites soon took the place of the lengthy speeches that had once been fully developed arguments.

Like him or not, Franklin D. Roosevelt had a knack of explaining his goals and how he meant to go about reaching them to the American people. By way of his “Fireside chats”, most citizens felt he was speaking directly to them and explaining things in words they could readily understand. With his ability to communicate effectively, Roosevelt was able to convince the American people (or at least most of them) to support his “New Deal” programs, his “Arsenal of Democracy” concept, and even to supporting the violation of the neutrality laws as we joined Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic prior to America’s entry into WW II. Harry Truman’s speeches were terribly stilted until he threw away the script and talked in his normally combative “Give ‘em Hell Harry” style. He didn’t have Roosevelt’s polished speaking skills, but he spoke clearly and plainly to the American people, much more effectively than the media (or Thomas Dewey for that matter) would have thought possible. Ronald Reagan was the “great communicator” in our history, who’s speaking style and skills always seemed to connect with the American people.

Lyndon Johnson could speak quite clearly and plainly when he so wished, but he was a very poor communicator. The loss of the Vietnam War can be laid at his feet, as neither he nor his speechwriters were ever able to find the words explaining to the American public just why we were engaged in Vietnam, and why the war was important to our nation. Jimmy Carter wasn’t much of a public speaker either. President Bush the younger stumbles a lot in his speeches much to the mirth of the democrats, but much more seriously he has a similar problem to that of LBJ, his inability to effectively explaining the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to the American public.

The speaking skills of this year's presidential candidates are just one of the factors that will affect the election’s outcome. Barack Obama is tall, self-assured and photogenic, with the gift of oratory. He has a polished speaking manner, a smooth delivery, and a warm, friendly demeanor. With Obama, there’s no question about his style, but rather it’s the substance of his talks that bother so many people. While John McCain may never become a motivational speaker, his speaking style affects audiences in a different way. His strength of character, experience and authenticity show through, while his town-hall style allows him to demonstrate his judgment, depth of knowledge and solid understanding of crucial issues. And to me, content is always more important than style.

Obama’s speeches are somewhat reminiscent of an evangelist speaking from the mountaintop. His rhetoric and call for change strikes a cord with those lofty thinkers who believe they have all the answers and could save the world if only they were in charge. John McCain sounds more like a military leader briefing his troops, with his plain speaking and “nuts-and-bolts” proposals appealing more to the down-to-earth folks who will worry about solving the world’s problems, after they’re reasonably sure they can feed the kids, put gas in the family flivver, and avoid a confrontation with the mortgage company.

WW III?

“Total War” is roughly defined as “a conflict of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in the total mobilization of all resources available to him, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rival's capacity to continue to resist. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants than in previous conflicts, as nearly every person from a particular country, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of their belligerent's war effort.” While the concept of total war has been around for a very long time, its first widespread appearance followed the French Revolution, where the French “levée en masse” was mobilized to combat the anti-revolutionary European alliance. I will add that in a total war, it is not necessarily a case of “less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants” as it is more properly a case of “no differentiation”.

WW II was a total war by any definition, and we can readily see that all the combatant nations happily bombed their opponents cities in an attempt to kill off skilled civilian workers as well as break civilian moral. Japan indiscriminately bombed Chinese cities; the Luftwaffe indiscriminately bombed English cities, with the Royal Air Force happily returning the favor. The USAAF primarily tried to bomb industrial targets in Germany, while indiscriminately burning out the very large residential areas of numerous Japanese cities. We all know of the nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed.

Until late in the cold war, both Soviet and American nuclear weapons were targeted at cities for the most part, in order to accomplish the greatest possible damage to their opponents infrastructure. (Cities were about the smallest target that could be accurately hit, with accuracy being defined as anywhere within a few miles of the aim point.)

All this brings us to World War Three, a conflict that most Americans deny has happened… yet. Still, many of us maintain that WW III began in November 1979, without the expected nuclear exchange between superpowers. You don't have to be an employee of the CIA or NSC to understand that American citizens and interests have been under organized attack since 1979, when Islamic fundamentalists engineered the take-over of the American embassy in Tehran. Led by an inept administration, America could not respond effectively or decisively, and the terrorists became braver with each day. When the President finally decided that “enough is enough”, and did do something about this little understood war, the democratic left began weeping, wailing, wringing their hands, and proclaiming “it’s all our fault!”, while demanding that we immediately surrender and bring the troops home, effectively they’re hiding their heads in the sand. You can listen to John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid if you like… and your conclusions will be completely wrong, because we’re facing the greatest threat to our existence in our nation’s history! The current idea of total war is simply break one’s enemies will to resist, a point the terrorists obviously understand, and their efforts appear to be working, on our congress at least!

And it is a war to the death as well, misunderstood by most Americans because we are not fighting a particular nation or even a coalition of nations. It’s a war of ideologies, no less so than the cold war, pitting autocratic Islam against the distinctly western concept of freedom and democracy. The religious part of this war has been going on for centuries as Islam periodically tried to encroach upon Europe. They have been defeated in the past to the point of taking hundreds of years to recover, but they have never been totally defeated, and if they are left alone they will recover and try again. Yet they may not need to try again… as they presently have the “ultimate” weapon to defeat the west readily at hand, in the form of oil. Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will do if we simply pull out of the mid-east? It’s not the price of oil we will have to worry about, as oil simply will not be available to us! And yes, it certainly is a war about oil as we’re so often told by the protesters, considering that our economy will curl up and die if that mid-east oil supply is cut off right now. Forget about a recession, we’ll have a depression that will make 1929 look like child’s play!

The present cost of imported oil has done considerable harm to our economy, and which, along with our fast approaching presidential election, has diverted our attention from the real threat of the mid-east. The temporary quiet in Iraq, and lack of recent attacks against America proper have lulled far to many Americans into a false sense of security. This war is far from over…

No matter how much energy any nation conserves, and no matter how quickly anyone develops alternative energy sources, oil and natural gas will power the world economy for the next fifty years and probably more. The Middle East's oil reserves mean that a stable Muslim world is the key to world stability. However, economic development or the lack of it have a large bearing on the Muslim world, with the Muslims seemingly unable to improve the standard of living for the majority of their populations even with the enormous wealth of petrodollars available to them. The booming Muslim population means that there is a vast increase in the "troublesome cohort of male youngsters in ages from 15 to 29", that are chronically unemployed and poverty stricken. Unemployed young men are easily recruited to become “soldiers of jihad” by autocrats and theocrats that use "historical grievances" to blame for their economic condition.

We proclaim that we are engaged in a “War on Terror”, yet all we see is a “comparatively” small scale ground war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But radical Islam, directed by fanatics, supported by fundamentalist governments, and financed by oil revenue, is engaged in a total war with America, one in which they continue to mobilized every asset available to them… and America continually panders to “world opinion”! Without a strong US presence in the Mid-east, which effectively forces a stalemate upon our enemies, Iran can readily dominate the entire region since Iraq is no longer a military threat to them. They have turned their attention to the only western country that can block their economic world dominance, and they are convinced that they will eventually win, because the US is so divided. If we allow those Islamic madmen to gain a nuclear capability then we had better hunker down, because we’ll have lost, big time.

This religious/economic war will continue until the American people elect some tough “no nonsense” wartime leaders that recognize the situation for what it is, and who will act effectively and decisively to carry this war to an unquestionably victorious end. If that means we must repudiate the pious pleadings of our “weeping willies”, then so be it. If it means that we must engage in large scale military actions around the world, then so be it. Certainly we shouldn’t force “our” way of life on “them”, but we must demonstrate beyond any possible misunderstanding that we are not going to allow “them” to force their way of life on us, and neither are we going to back down in the face of their threats! The message we must forcibly impress on the Islamic leadership is that if they really believe in the “rightness” of terror, then they certainly can’t complain if the US Armed Forces come down on them like the proverbial “ton of bricks”, and show them just what terror is all about!

And if the Iranians don’t like America’s new attitude… well, I’ll see ‘yer shiny new rockets… and raise you a carrier battle group.

Oil Again

In recent months there have been three problems facing the nation that seem to have most Americans quite upset, if we are to believe the news media. These are, the war in Iraq, the rather severe economic down turn, and closely related… the steady price increase of food and fuel. The Democrats of course blame the Republicans, and through them the President, for all these problems. The Republicans in their turn happily point out that the Democrats control congress, and so far, despite their glowing promises, have failed to do anything about the whole sorry situation. In the meantime we face a national election, wherein both political parties are so busy struggling for position and a favorable press that nothing can get done anyway! The mainstream news media continue their “Oh woe is me, the sky is falling” gloom and doom predictions, Al Bore continues to tout his version of global warming, Hollyweird’s “progressive” celebrities keep blaming America for all of the world’s problems, and the Russians are mad at us again. Naturally, the American people are taking a beating… again. Or maybe I should say “still”?

I don’t really understand just how the various localized wars and ethnic cleansing going on in Africa can be blamed on the US, nor do I understand why an American missile shield designed to protect Europe from the possibility of mid-eastern nuclear armed rockets is considered to be a threat to Russia. Matter of fact, there are a whole lot of things going on in today’s world that really don’t make a lot of sense to me… reckon that’s why I’m not a TV news talking head or carnival fortune teller… I don’t have a functional crystal ball even if I do sound that way on occasion. But I do know that I’m getting highly fed-up with the situation in this country today!

A couple of years ago the Democrats solemnly proclaimed that “the war in Iraq is lost”, and that the United States should immediately run for home. Instead, the President finally sent enough troops to Iraq to accomplish something besides being targets (the “surge”), put some severe pressure on the Iraqi insurgents, and now it appears that we’ve just about won our part of the conflict. ‘Course the Democrats still want us to come running home with our tail between our legs. Senator Obama, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and apparently arranges for massive troop withdrawals. Meanwhile, Senator McCain, who has not yet been elected president, makes a tour through the area, and seems to think everything is just peachy-keen. At the same time, the Iraqi’s just want us to go home, so they can get on with their civil war. I guess the Iraqi’s… and Halliburton… figure we’ve run out of free money.

The high price of foreign crude oil is raising hob with what’s left of our economy, driving up the prices of everything from gasoline to food to real estate, and in the meantime driving down the stock market. The democratic leadership insists that off-shore drilling won’t have any noticeable effect for fifteen or twenty years, but when the President calls for lifting the drilling ban, the price of oil immediately drops about twenty dollars a barrel! (Retail prices “should” drop slightly in a few more weeks I understand.) Yet the “leader” of the democrats, Senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, says that 'Reversing 30 years of failed energy policies will merely prolong the failed energy policies of 30 years.' Humm… I really don’t understand how correcting a failed policy will prolong it.

At the same time, the enviro-nuts wax hysterical, congressmen jockey for position, and naturally nothing gets accomplished! Ms. Pelosi screams hysterically that we’re supposed to exhaust “all other options” before we start drilling. Other options? I do wish she’d explain how we’re supposed to run the trucks that deliver food all over this country on wind power. How is a farmer supposed to run his combine on solar power? Am I supposed to heat my house on tidal energy? Gravity might power my old pick-up on a downhill run, but after all, most of Idaho seems to be built on an up-hill slope! “Conserving” fuel might aid the cities a bit (and perhaps reduce their smog problem), but are those of us who live in rural areas supposed to depend on electric golf carts for long distance transportation? A hydrogen economy infrastructure is twenty to fifty years down the line. Sorry lady, there ain’t no options available that will have any effect on our national economy in the here and now, except greatly increased domestic oil production! And we should have been doing just that some twenty or more years ago.

Sixty years ago America’s domestic oil fueled nearly the entire Allied cause during WW II. Am I now to believe that, with our known huge oil reserves, we can’t fuel our own economy today!? We’ve got more oil in the ground than the Saudi’s do! We have scadzillions of cubic metres of methane buried in the seafloor off our coasts, which the environmentalists naturally won’t let us access! Or we can shift our electrical generating capacity from oil burning to coal, and we can build a lot of nuclear power plants. But all that is time consuming, and just how much more time do we have? Our national economy is energy (oil) driven, and is presently on the verge of disaster. In the 1940’s American know-how went from a rather vague theory to a functional A-Bomb in four years. In the 1960’s American know-how progressed from rockets that had a habit of blowing up, to American astronauts walking on the Moon, in just nine years. Now the democrats would have me believe that American know-how can’t drill a few holes in the ground in less than fifteen years!?

Hand in glove with the radical environmentalists, our congressional leadership gives every indication of calmly sitting on their hands while waiting for our economy to totally collapse, and for the United States of America to go the way of the Soviet Union. Why? We desperately need oil, but congress refuses to repeal the drilling ban. Why? Congress refuses to do anything about our borders, and literally welcomes a flood of illegal immigrants, while sending tens of thousands of American jobs overseas via NAFTA. Why? China appears to be dumping their contaminated industrial products on us, and congress can’t seem to get a handle on the problem. Why? Not everybody in this country makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, leaving most of us having to float a bank loan if we go to the gas station or grocery store, and congress does nothing. Why? “Poor folks” are loosing their homes in record numbers, leaving those properties to be snapped up by the rich for nearly nothing, and congress merely eases things for the rich! Why? Advanced medical care is beyond the economic reach of most Americans, and congress continues to do nothing about it. Why? Sen. Obama wants to send eight hundred and forty five BILLION of our dollars overseas to temporarily ease things for the world’s poor, while we have plenty of poor or homeless folks of our own to worry about. And congress is seriously considering doing just that! Why? The environmentalists have managed to tie a good many of our rural economies in knots, while congress merely looks on and smiles benignly. Why? The President of the United States advocates “spying” on American citizens in the name of national security, and congress, who is constitutionally responsible for protecting our citizens from just such executive excess, hands him a blank check! Why? The President solemnly asks for, and Congress happily hands him, the “Patriot Act” that quite effectively suspends our Constitution and the Bill of Rights! Why? Why doesn’t Congress do something to protect and defend our nation and our citizens for a change? After all, we don’t pay their ridiculously high salaries so they can run around the world pretending to be Very Important Personage’s rather than common American citizens in whom we’ve temporarily entrusted an important job.

I think it’s well past time for the American people to rear up on their hind legs “in justifiable fury”, and demand some straight answers from our elected representatives! If we don’t get those answers, then I’d say it’s time for a voter’s rebellion to “Throw ‘da bums out”, and elect an entirely new bunch of bums!

Dumbest Generation

We’ve all heard the phrase “The Greatest Generation”, spoken in reference to the kids who came of age during the great depression, fought to victory in World War II, staved off communism for a few decades, and many finished their working lives by placing American astronauts on the moon. I’ll certainly agree that from a historical viewpoint they are indeed The Greatest Generation, and I for one am a bit envious. I’m one of the “Baby Boom” generation (actually I pre-date the baby boom by a few years), that didn’t manage to do anything quite as spectacular as winning WW II, or being the first men on the moon. But we did manage to survive the disruption of the Vietnam years, and the technological era we brought about is second to none. (So are the world wide problems we seem to be getting blamed for.)

Now we have yet another generation coming along, and searching for a definitive title. By this, I’m referring to the current crop of “Under Thirties” among us. Perhaps unfairly, they seem to be earning the title of ‘The Dumbest Generation’ as publicized by Mark Bauerlein in his recent book by that name. “Don’t trust anyone under thirty” he loudly proclaims, rightly or wrongly. We all know that finding examples of teens' and twenty-somethings' “ignorance” is pretty easy… Two thirds of high-school seniors in 2006 couldn't explain an old photo of a sign over a theater door reading COLORED ENTRANCE. In 2001, 52 percent identified Germany, Japan, and Italy as Americas’ WW II allies, but not the Soviet Union. One quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds in a recent survey didn’t know who Dick Cheney or William Rehnquist are. The world's most heavily defended border? Would you believe Mexico’s border with the United States, according to 30 percent of that same age group? College professors are shocked to find students who respond blank-eyed to mention of fireside chats or Antietam or even Pearl Harbor. Many parents are appalled that their little darlings don't know Chaucer from Chopin. Bauerlein sees such ignorance as an intellectual, economic and civic disaster in the making, claiming “the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future”, and that "no cohort in human history has opened such a fissure between its material conditions and its intellectual attainments." He is a little late with his complaint of course… the old folks have been complaining about their kid’s cultural collapse and ignorance of history since admirers of Sophocles moaned that the popularity of Aristophanes was leading to the end of Greek civilization! The Civil War generation was aghast at Ned Buntline’s 1870’s dime novels. Victorian scholars considered Dickens a lightweight compared with other authors of the time. In a Newsweek report, Bauerlein laments that "there is no memory of the past, just like when the Khmer Rouge said 'this is day zero.' Historical memory is essential to a free people. If you don't know which rights are protected in the First Amendment, how can you think critically about rights in the U.S.?" Fair enough I’d guess, but I’d also think that if our young people don't know the Bill of Rights it’s not stupidity but rather a failure of their parents, the school system, and of society (which you might be aware is run by grown-ups) to require them to know it. Drawing on history, it’s noted that philosopher George Santayana in 1905, despaired of a generation's historical ignorance, warning that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The generation in question has been called “fatally flawed,” accused of lacking values, social awareness, or caring about anyone or anything. Author Jean Twenge dubs them “Generation Me”, saying that self esteem programs in schools combined with the Internet may be unleashing “a little army of narcissists” on society. Others argue that youth, consumed by their celebrity and internet obsessions, are superficial and lacking social skills. Busy e-mailing and text-messaging, uploading photographs onto MySpace and Facebook, and creating playlists for iPods, they have trouble identifying the three branches of the American government and where Iraq is on the map.

Bauerlein cites assorted evidence that young Americans have stopped reading books, and blames the "low knowledge levels" of adolescents mainly on the Internet. "The world delivers facts and events and art and ideas," he writes, "but the young American mind hasn't opened." Warning that "knowledge is never more than one generation away from oblivion," Bauerlein is only one of a long-line of Chicken Little critics of American culture that began shortly after the Revolutionary War, when British and French “gentry” visited our shores, and bemoaned the fact that we generally lived in log cabins, with nary a hereditary castle or opera house to be found.
Like many, I’m appalled when I see the reading, writing, and arithmetic skills of our younger citizens displayed first hand. I know high school graduates who read at what I consider a third grade level, and whom I very much doubt are able to count past ten with their tennis shoes on! I have on occasion been known to mutter something about “dumb #&%*^ teenagers” when some kid on a skateboard zips in front of me while jabbering away on his cell phone. (I really don’t know why a ‘tween-ager even needs a cellular telephone!) At the same time I’ve also been known to unfavorably mention the ancestry of adults using a cell phone, particularly when they cut me off in traffic, apparently having failed to realize that their little bitty car isn’t going to make very much of an impression on the front bumper of a forty thousand pound firetruck!

Perhaps the kids can’t quote Shakespeare line by line, and perhaps their version of American English isn’t the same thing I learned in school. Many times their penmanship is atrocious, but then my penmanship is atrocious as well. Strangely enough I’ve found that many of our kids can intelligently discuss orbital dynamics or quantum physics about as easily as they can the lifestyle of Brittany Spears. Given the deep-rooted tradition of anti-intellectualism in the United States, I rather doubt that digital technology is responsible for the dumbing down of Americans as Bauerlein suggests. Digital technology and the internet simply make it easier for us to find whatever data we might need, in what approximates a personal copy of the largest library in existence. Without I contend, having to memorize thousands of printed pages, often specialized data that you’ll probably never again have a use for. (Remember all those boring hours spent in history class, trying to remember names, dates, and places? Try doing an internet search for “Peloponnesian War” and see what turns up!) While we older “generation whatever” folks might have a full set of lumps with the digital age, we should remember that the secret is to know how to find whatever information you presently need, in a hurry, and the kids seem to have that down pat!

The next time you try to program your VCR, who are you going to call for help… the graybeard down the road… or perhaps that fourteen year old computer nerd you seem to have spawned?

Congress

It would seem that our illustrious Democratic controlled congress has finally accomplished something never before done – they’ve achieved the lowest congressional approval rating in the history of political polls. Not surprisingly, President Bush, with his own voter approval rating sitting somewhere down in the basement, has a higher rating than congress. Only 9 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing according to the latest Rassmusen poll. And I rather suspect that those 9 percent are probably sitting in their padded private rooms, waiting for the man in the white jacket to bring them their nice medication. Once upon a time, when a certain nation’s leadership was similarly disliked by the common people, those in power famously suggested that the unwashed mob eat cake. What followed is a history lesson worth considering by our congress. No government really wants to find out what happens if they allow their approval rating to reach zero.

The logical question of course is why this particular congress is so disliked by the American people? Why is this congress such a failure? Is it because they just don’t care, are obsessed with petty partisan squabbles, and apparently are totally contemptuous of the American people? Looking at the various issues since the Democrats took control, Congress seems perfectly willing to sacrifice the health and safety of the American people for free trade relations with China and Mexico, only pay lip service to the public demand for secure borders, seem hell-bent on bailing the financial industry out of their self caused problems, and aren‘t at all bothered by the doubling of gas prices. There seems to be no shame on the Hill nor worry about the fact that the American voters consider them total failures. Instead, these self-obsessed, do-nothing politicians go about their daily business of fleecing the public, and laughing at the wishes of the masses that elected them to their high-and-mighty public offices. This might in part explain why, if we had a Bastille in this country, it would quite likely have been stormed long before now!

If Newt Gingrich's Republican majority had faced a 9 percent approval rating in the 1996 presidential election, the media certainly wouldn't have let us forget it. So given that the media's frequently reminding Americans of President Bush's low numbers (in the upper twenties), why is the mainstream media ignoring the almost nonexistent approval rating for Congress under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, even though they missed no opportunity to point out who was in control of Congress in 2006? (You might also note that Congress is controlled by "mainstream" Democrats, since the mainstream media reports there are no “liberal” Democrats in Congress.) When the result of the survey hit the wires, none of the evening news programs covered the story, not even as a brief mention. The talk news shows made no comment about the development either.

Rasmussen’s news release noted that the numbers are pretty bad even among the Democrats, who gave Congress a 17% positive rating last month, and are now down to 13%. Republicans give Congress a good or excellent rating of 8%, a one point improvement from last month, while the Independent voters giving Congress a 3% positive rating. One reason for the low numbers is that 72% of the electorate apparently believes that members of Congress are more interested in furthering their own political careers than in taking care of the nations business. While it’s seemingly our national pastime to dislike politicians, there are scores of Washington lawmakers who make a difference in the lives of those who elected them. But divided government, full-time reelection campaigning, and a lobbyist stranglehold on the legislative process have joined forces to cause the current problems, with Republicans and Democrats both deserving a share of the blame. Blinded by partisanship, the lack of effective legislation at this time of record gas prices and economic collapse means that Congress is about as popular as a swarm of mosquitoes at a Sunday school picnic. Despite democratic assurances that things would be different this time around (where have I heard that one before?), as of July 4th Congress has passed 260 laws, the lowest number in the last thirty years. Of all the crucial issues facing the nation, 74 of those laws are for naming post offices and 148 could be called ‘substantive’ laws by someone, considering that this substantive legislation includes a law requiring the flag be flown on Father’s Day. Only 8 were “must pass” appropriations bills.

These numbers don’t include assorted resolutions that the Senate or the House took time to consider and then passed, such as: 1) Recognizing soil as an essential natural resource, and soils professionals as playing a critical role in managing our Nation's soil resources; 2) Designating July 2007 as "National Watermelon Month”; 3) Congratulating the men's volleyball team of the University of California, Irvine, for winning the 2007 NCAA Division I Men's Volleyball National Championship; 4) Recognizing the 70th anniversary of the Idaho Potato Commission and designating May 2007 as "Idaho Potato Month”; and 5) Expressing support for designation of June 30 as "National Corvette Day". Both presidential candidates had resolutions of their own to be concerned with, Sen. Obama worked to pass a resolution congratulating the Chicago White Sox on winning the 2005 World Series Championship, while Sen. McCain co-sponsored a resolution congratulating the University of Arizona Wildcats for winning the 2007 NCAA Division I Softball Championship. Congress wants to look like they are doing the peoples’ business rather than merely twiddling their thumbs and devouring the public treasury, so they resort to National Corvette Day!

With a popularity rating number so low, we might expect that Pelosi and Reid would resign in disgrace, shamed by the fact that the only thing they can claim to have accomplished is totally losing the confidence of nearly everyone in the country. If they don’t resign, out of simple respect for the American people, the leadership of both houses might well consider apologizing and resigning en masse.

Perhaps our elitist government officials might consider that sometimes the people get what they want, regardless of what the elitist media tell us we’re supposed to want. If the American voters can ever connect the economic downturn along with food and gas price increases, to continual congressional waffling, partisanship, and inaction, congress (and the White House) won’t know what hit them this November.

2ed Amendment Decision

I sorta - kinda got busy over the 4th of July weekend, and forgot to post that issue's column. So... here it is, somewhat out of sequence.
- - - -
From my viewpoint, the cheers presently coming from the conservative right is a fitting counterpoint to the weeping, wailing, tearing of hair, and gnashing of teeth going on within the ranks of the liberal left. The reason behind all these histrionics of course is the Supreme Courts June 26th decision upholding the Second Amendment Right to keep and bear Arms. In their first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history, the court ruled that American citizens do after all, have the right to own guns, striking down the District of Columbia’s long standing ban on privately owned handguns, and not incidentally putting at risk nearly all the anti-gun laws on the books. It’s my understanding that the NRA has already filed suite hither and yon, contesting a number of those laws. For the first time in many years, I’ll hoist a glass to the honorable justices over this one, and yet another to the NRA!

The city of DC's argument was that by denying citizens the right to own handguns, there were less guns available to be stolen by criminals. The long-debated question is whether such a gun law has any effect on violent crime. Apparently not, as since the ban was passed, more than 8400 people have been murdered within the boundaries of Americas capitol city!

The second amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." To most of us, on the conservative right and the moderate middle ground at least, those twenty-seven words simply indicate that the government, any government in this country, may not restrict the ownership or possesion of “arms”. The defination of ‘Arms’ ranges from rocks and clubs through knives, spears, swords, and firearms, all the way up to ICBM’s and probably nuclear weapons as well, as the left wing spokesmen have been so quick to point out. However, with current prices, even buying a new hunting rifle would put a severe strain on my monthly budget, much less an ICBM! So, just for the sake of argument, lets strike the wide assortment of WMD’s from the list of legal arms. Looking somewhat further down the list of potential weapons, we might want to consider things like combat aircraft and battleships, or perhaps tanks and artillary pieces. Here again, the sheer price of these things puts them out of the reach of most people, so we have another weapons category that really isn’t part of the question. Besides, I’d rather doubt that the Fish & Game people would smile kindly on my going elk hunting with a forty millimeter grenade launcher mounted in the back of my pick-up! I’m reasonably sure that there are a few weapons of this sort floating around, but for the life of me I don’t know why anybody would feel they need something like that. Within the realm of more probable weapons, we’ll find a collection of full and semi-automatic weapons (“assault rifles”, sub-machine guns, and the like) that most people could probably afford, and often already own, both legally and illegally, despite all the gun laws on the books, the liberal left hysteronics, and all the best efforts of the Brady Bunch. But despite the movies from Hollywood, and the gory news headlines, these types of weapons are very rarely used in the commission of a crime.

The mainstream media tells us that the basic issue for the court was whether the second amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is in some arcane way tied to service in a state militia. In my view this is only partially true. When our constitution was written (and based on English Common Law), all male members of our society were considered to be members of the militia, were expected to possess arms and to be proficient in their use. Those armed citizens were also expected to take up their arms in defense of the Republic whenever necessary. Thus, the second amendment specifically denied the government any right to limit or restrict the citizens access to arms of any sort. I’ll agree that for the most part that the situation found in the late 1700’s does not exist today, but neither does it change the fact that our constitution guarentees American citizens the right to keep and bear arms if they so desire! The only way that can be changed is by means of a constitutional amendment, agreed to by Congress and two thirds of the states (an agreement that might be somewhat difficult to obtain), not by a back room decision among a few individuals.

The real question facing the court however is the sancity of our constitution. Is it a “living document” that can be changed whenever some weeping willie decides to save us from ourselves, or is it to be the Law of the Land, set forth for all to see as was the ancient Roman Law “… that should be written down in order to prevent magistrates from applying the law in an arbitrary fashion…”, and certainly not easily discarded by anyone who decides they don’t like things the way they are? In the early days of our nation’s history, Europeans generally looked down on us because we had the strange idea that common sense, along with individual and civic responsibility, was a suitable replacement for the orders of high born royalty. Our constitution was written by men who firmly believed in those precepts, and for nearly 200 years our freedom loving nation prospered. Now however we have citizens who believe we can easily discard whatever portion of our constitutional law that they consider inconvienient. The Supreme Court has just demonstrated that constitutional law is not so easily tossed in the trashcan.

We’ll often hear a plaintive cry that “… it’s for the cheeeldren…” from the far left whenever they’re in a “ban the guns” mode. OK, I have nothing against safety, public or individual, and yes, I’d like my kids and grandkids to be reasonably safe as well. But I’m also realist enough to know that nothing is completely safe in this world. Far to many children have their young lives cut short each year, for many reasons. Chief among those is the simple failure of the family to teach our children of lifes hazards. It seems we want “the law” to take the responsibility of caring of the kids, because we’re just to busy (or to lazy) to do it ourselves! Failing that, the utopians among us apparently feel that lifes hazards can be banned by the stroke of a pen despite what our law says. Hey, reality check here! Like any other tool in mankinds history, firearms have a definate place in our lives, and our kids had better learn about their function and use, along with learning the personal responsibility that accompanies bearing arms.

The world is not a safe place despite all the vapid utopian dreams that seem to come from the liberal members of society. Just because we’d like to be safe doesn’t mean that nature is going to change it’s ways anytime soon, and I for one would think that our kids would be far better served if they learn that “safety” and “responsibility” does not happen just because we’d wish it so, and that an iron bound constitution “writ in stone” is the only way to guarentee their freedom!

Flip-Flop

What keeps politicians honest? A lot of people would answer that question with a heartfelt “not a cotton-picking thing!” Over the last few years a series of political scandals have given us the popular view that politicians are nothing more than a collection of liars and crooks. Sometimes I agree with that particular idea rather vocally… however, while there will always be plenty of dishonest people in politics, most American politicians don’t end their careers by being arrested and marched out of their offices in handcuffs. So, other than the threat of upset voters, what makes politicians keep their campaign promises? Once again the answer is “absolutely nothing”. The only thing going for the voters is that they can make an educated selection from the candidates being offered up by the various political parties, mostly by looking at the candidate’s history, his voting record on important issues, and listening to what he says in the here and now. There are warning signs that a politician may not believe in what he says publicly of course, but those are signs that observant voters can look for. One of those is “flip-flopping” on various issues. If a politician can change his “views” without a good explanation during a campaign, voters can be pretty sure that what he is telling them is nothing more than a momentary political expedient. If he doesn’t hold his views strongly, voters sure can’t trust the politician to keep his campaign promises, or to support the position of the people he hopes will vote for him.

In the last few days, charges of flip-flopping against both presidential candidates started flying thick and fast. For Senator McCain, the flip-flop is his proposal to resume offshore drilling. As the Washington Post pointed out, “McCain's announcement is a reversal of the position he took in his 2000 presidential campaign.” Well, OK, while his switch has the environmentalists weeping and wailing, he also states that a policy which made sense when gasoline was about a buck a gallon doesn’t make much sense with gas at four bucks a gallon.

The charges against Senator Obama have been more numerous and difficult to explain. An Obama primary campaign slogan was “Only Barack Obama Consistently Opposed NAFTA”, and that the threat to “opt-out” could be used as a “hammer” to force Canada and Mexico to "renegotiate" NAFTA. But, on the flip side, Obama said that he was “not a big believer in doing things unilaterally’ and that he wouldn’t force a renegotiation of NAFTA. His explanation for the change in position was that "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified." Still, Obama’s senior economics adviser, Austin Goolsbee, was caught telling Canadians that Obama didn’t really mean his promise to renegotiate the treaty. For Democrats the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was a position in which no compromise was allowed. In September, Obama’s campaign claimed he would "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." But recently Obama switched and supported the FISA compromise which granted telecom companies legal amnesty. Democrat party activists are calling Obama’s switch a “disaster.” Last year, Obama’s stance on Public Financing of Presidential Campaigns was loudly applauded for his dedication to saving public financing of presidential campaigns. Numerous editorials tore into Obama’s opponents for not making the same promise. The excuse for his now breaking this promise is that “The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who have become masters at gaming this broken system.” Still, he hasn’t explained why the system is any more broken now than it was last fall.

So John McCain is now against the federal ban on oil drilling in coastal waters, and Barack Obama is not going to accept public campaign funds… The jury is still out on whether McCain made the proper political move in changing his drilling views, but in Obama’s case it’s simple, he’ll now have more campaign money to spend than McCain, and right now money is extremely important to politicians.

One internet source of the candidate’s states positions is “Project Vote Smart” (located at http://www.votesmart.org/index.htm ). After spending hours wading through their statistics and questionnaires, I’ve found the following about the two leading candidates;

Obama’s claimed stance on abortion is that they should be legally available in accordance with Roe v. Wade, and apparently he has little else to say on the subject. In the case of affirmative action he claims to support taking race and sex into account in college admission, public employment, and government contracting. On crime control he says he favors penalties other than incarceration for some non-violent offenders, increased funding for inmate rehab programs, and funding for juvenile offender “boot camps”. Under the heading of Economy and Employment he favors low interest loans for starting, expanding, or relocating businesses. (A few years ago I’d have loved to have seen that happen!) He’d also like to see an increase in job training programs. On the Environment & Energy chart he wants to require cleaner burning fuels, and supports industrial “self auditing” to clean up pollution.
Sen. Obama’s stance on government reform is interesting even if uncommitted. He’s undecided on term limits at the state level, undecided on requiring a balanced federal budget, supports campaign finance disclosure and partial funding for state level campaigns. On firearms issues he supports banning the sale or transfer of all semi-automatic weapons, increased restrictions on purchase and possession of firearms, and of course he would require child safety locks to be provided by the manufacturer. In the area of Health and social issues he wants to ensure basic health care through managed care, insurance reforms, and state funding. He also seems to think that the states should increase their funding for most federally mandated social programs.
Senator McCain would support abortion when pregnancy results from incest or rape, or when the woman’s life is endangered. He would prohibit “partial birth” abortions and public funding of abortion clinics. On budgetary, spending, and tax issues he would pretty much maintain the status quo, with a slight increase in defense spending. Apparently however, Mr. McCain supports the Presidents tax reduction issue. He hasn’t said much about campaign finance and government reform issues. He does support the death penalty, prosecution of minors as adults when charged with violent crimes, mandatory prison time for drug dealers, and vocational training programs for prison inmates. On education issues he supports national standards for students, school vouchers, charter schools, teacher testing and merit pay, and school infrastructure and technology improvements. For social security he would allow individuals to invest in and manage their own private retirement accounts. Responding to employment and affirmative action questions he would increase funding for national job-training programs that re-train displaced workers, and reduce government regulation of the private sector. Not much is said about affirmative action. On environmental issues he supports the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, along with healthy forests legislation. He would also require compensation for land owners when environmental regulations affect the use of their property. In firearms issues he would strengthen enforcement of existing gun laws, allow concealed carry, and protect licensed gun dealers from lawsuits by crime victims. He supports stem cell research with existing stem cell lines, supports a “Patient’s Bill of Rights”, and limiting punitive damages in medical malpractice suits.

With regard to International Aid, Policy, and Trade Issues, McCain’s said that “While implementing reforms, our nation should participate in U.N. peacekeeping operations when defense of our national interests and values calls for such action, provided the U.S. maintains operational control of our forces. Aid should be granted to countries when extraordinary circumstances cause disaster and threaten civilian lives.” And that “Aid should be granted to countries when it is in the security interests of the United States.” As expected he supports the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, and continuing sanctions against North Korea and Iran. He opposes allowing Law Enforcement agencies greater discretion in “spying” on American citizens, but in the same breath supports Homeland Security. Nor does he rule out pre-emptive strikes on other countries when evaluated on a case by case basis. Sen. McCain apparently supports NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO as well.

So, there are the stated positions on various issues. Now of course we’ll see if the candidates continue with those beliefs, or if they just “tell the crowd what they want to hear”. Character and honesty will show through I suspect, if it’s there at all.

Diversity

It’s become increasingly popular in recent years for liberals to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic virtue. From multicultural festivals to political speeches, the message is always the same, “our differences make us stronger”. (The definition of diversity being "a wide range of sub-cultures and value systems".) However, a recent study based on interviews with nearly 30,000 people across the country has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has found that “the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings.” The study found that virtually all measures of civic involvement are lower in the more diverse settings, with more diverse communities tending to be larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents. Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to "distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." "People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' -- that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

The study comes when the American melting pot is the center of a hot political debate over immigration, and it challenges both sides of the argument. It’s also, and somewhat prematurely, being cited as proof that large-scale immigration severely harms the nation's society. But still, the immigration problem has bedeviled this nation for well over a century now, and we’ve managed to survive, mostly by letting time and established immigration limits solve the problem. Before those limits were established however, our larger cities bore the brunt of immigration, and severely suffered from the same ailments that Professor Putnam describes.

Since the 1830’s the United States has seen a steady stream of immigration almost totally from Europe. These immigrants proved troublesome for the cities, but with national expansion they were assimilated for the most part. Still, large slum areas developed in every city, and proved impossible to extinguish. Shortly after the Civil War, the United States was inundated with a flood of immigrants from all over the world, but still primarily from Europe. These immigrants, like their forerunners, having an alien culture and little or no knowledge of the English language, found themselves banding together along ethnic lines merely to survive. (At least you could ask the neighbors where the grocery store was with a good chance that they’d understand you.) With this, our major cities found themselves being divided into a wide assortment of “districts” (for lack of a better word), based on ethnicity, religion, and culture. Who hasn’t heard of the “Old Bowery”, “Little Italy” or “Chinatown”? With the skills they brought with them, most immigrants found jobs of one sort or another, and by learning the language they were able to spread across the country and become part of the American culture. Look around you and consider the national origin of your friends and neighbors last names… they are after all descended from immigrants, and probably their families arrived in this country less than two hundred years ago. My own great grandfather got off the boat with a shilling or two in his pocket, and speaking only Gaelic. The only job he could find was with the Union Army, and of necessity he learned to speak “American English”. After the Civil War he went to work with a good many other Irishmen building the Union Pacific Railroad, and found himself in the wild and woolly west, which was certainly a far cry from his native Tipperary! Within a few years and with a lot of hard work he owned a New Mexico cattle ranch. Not bad for an Irish immigrant lad in the 1870’s.

Following WW II the US again felt a surge of European immigrants and soon assimilated them with no major difficulties, because of cultural similarities. In the aftermath of the Korean and Vietnam wars we played host to a surge of immigration from the orient. This time around we had problems that continue today because of the vast difference between oriental cultures and our European based national culture. Still, that wave of immigration was limited for the most part, and with considerable effort our society was able to absorb most of our new citizens. Today however we’re being inundated by a virtual flood of illegal immigrants from third world countries, with an even greater variation of languages, religions, and cultural backgrounds… and who resist assimilation into main stream America. Making things even more difficult, a large portion of these immigrants have no saleable skills, and in many cases are relatively uneducated by our standards. Unfortunately for them, the market for unskilled day labor (or guerrilla fighters) is rapidly drying up in this country, they’re forced to depend on welfare or crime to survive, and of necessity continue to live in assorted “ghettos” in our cities, often completely ignoring our laws and social standards. The “promise of America” has certainly changed over the last seventy-five years, and apparently the “word” hasn’t gotten out to everyone yet!

Discounting the questions continuously being raised by special interests about the quota system, legal immigrants are supposed to meet certain standards. Among those are requirements that they’re not bringing various contagious or hard to treat disease with them. Another is that they must not have a criminal background. Face it, we’ve got more than enough home grown criminals without importing even more, and we certainly don’t need additional “gang members” in our cities! They are also required to have a sponsor who will be responsible for seeing that they do not become a burden on the public treasury. I see nothing ethically wrong with these requirements, after all, it is our country, and the legal citizens should have the right to determine who’s coming in, and who’s not! I have stated repeatedly that I do not oppose immigration… and I still don’t… as long as that immigration is legal and controlled. The term “legal immigration” is pretty well self-explanatory I’d think. On the other hand, congress seems to need a definition of “Controlled immigration”. That is, quite simply, we need to limit by whatever means necessary the number of immigrants each year to only those that our American culture is able to absorb!

After all, if they don’t want to be “American” as we understand it, perhaps they should stay home and solve their nations problems, rather than running away from them by coming here and adding to our problems.

Economy

Looking at the gloom and doom predictions in the financial pages generally gives me a headache from trying to understand all the acronyms and arcane theories so easily tossed about by economists. Of course my never having studied the world of high finance, and having just about zero interest in it, probably explains part of the problem. However, if I just pick out one sentence at a time and worry it to death I can usually come up with some vague idea of what they’re babbling about. From that, it appears that at present the faltering global economy is the major concern, closely followed by the worldwide cost and the (apparently artificial) shortage of oil. Here in the US, the Federal Reserve is constantly trying to “adjust” the supply of money, which only serves to further confuse the issue at home, and helps to preserve the rather jittery financial situation in the rest of the world. Congress on the other hand appears to be greatly concerned with keeping the mortgage market intact with federal bailouts, and of course increasing the taxes on oil yet again, neither of which are helping the average citizen any at all. Then of course we have other economic worries as well.

From a recent story on the MSN financial pages it would appear that the UN financial gurus are predicting that a global famine will strike within the next few years. Historically, famine was a regional problem brought about by crop failures, drought, war, or pests of one sort or another (usually either locusts or the tax collector I believe). In this case there are several causes for the threat. The first is the perennial bug-a-boo of over-population, and I can hardly find fault with the logic used. Consider that in the 63 years since the end of WW II, the United States population has doubled, and it’s predicted to double again by the year 2040, and the world population increase is not far behind. The second cause relates to the world population and the subsequent increased demand for improved nutrition world wide, combined with government subsidized demand for “green” biofuels that are produced from our limited supply of food crops. The fixed amount of arable land available worldwide not only has to provide our food but it also has to provide living space for the population. Then to, our unsettled climate isn’t helping the situation any at all. “Experts” state that the world’s arable land “could” feed a population of ten billion people, with some claims as high as thirty billion. (Ten maybe. But thirty!?)

Many parts of the third world are already experiencing food shortages and escalating prices, in some cases to the point of starvation for the “poorer classes”. That food crisis is not only promoting civil unrest hither and yon, but is being used as a weapon in “ethnic cleansing” campaigns. It’s also bringing on the very serious threat of previously stable governments failing, and also of war between the “have” and “have not” nations. That threat is serious enough that much of the UN is becoming quite concerned. The food crisis is not only being felt among the worlds poor, but is also cutting into the gains of the working and middle classes in the more affluent nations, sowing discontent and putting new pressures on various governments. In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In Malaysia, the government was nearly ousted by voters who cite food and fuel price increases as their main concerns. The sudden rise of commodity prices pits the world’s poorer nations against the relatively wealthy, adding to demands for reform of rich nations' farm policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis brought on by so many factors, from the strong demand for food in emerging economies like China and India, to rising oil prices that cause the diversion of food resources to make biofuels. There are no quick answers to handling the crisis either. Asian governments are organizing measures to limit hoarding of rice after shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they could. In Thailand, which produces more rice than it consumes, supermarkets have limited the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to purchase. The Indonesian government recently revised its budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280 million. In Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, police in riot gear used tear gas against people protesting high food prices.

In an MSNBS news report, Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program asked "Why are these riots happening? The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you're hungry you get angry quicker." The report further stated; “Food riots caused by rising food prices have erupted around the world. Five people died in uprisings in Haiti, perhaps the first of many casualties to come from the fad of being “green”. Food riots also broke out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. The military is being deployed in Pakistan and Thailand to protect fields and warehouses. Higher energy costs and policies promoting the use of biofuels such as ethanol are being blamed.” "When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels," an Indian government official told the Wall Street Journal.

Biofuels have generally turned out to be a losing proposition. Claims by environmentalists and the industry as to reducing the demand for oil, and to lowering greenhouse gas emissions have proven false. Research shows that biofuels increase greenhouse gas emissions over the total production/usage cycle (raising the crops, harvesting, conversion, transportation, usage). Adding to the problem is the diversion of food crops and food crop acreage to producing fuels. That diversion has contributed to higher food prices and a reduced food supply. Nor is the situation going to improve in the near future, as cutting farm subsidies and tariffs on sugarcane based fuel imports is another political hot potato that congress can’t seem to get a grip on. Biofuel advocates tell us the reliance on food crops to produce biodiesel and ethanol is only temporary, as they plan a future where biomass (such as wood chips, corn stalks and straw) are the feedstock for cellulose ethanol. But the technology for producing that ethanol is nowhere near mature, and the greenhouse gasses produced over the entire lifecycle will probably be worse than what we’re already seeing. Nor will the cost per gallon of liquid fuels necessarily decrease either. Food riots are only the beginning, now we can expect to see energy riots as well. The world’s population is always growing remember, and those additional people will need food and energy. Yet the Sierra Club fights to shut down coal-fired power plants, the Natural Resources Defense Council fights to keep nuclear power from replacing coal, and Earth First is campaigning against power plants that use natural gas.

Just what the world needs today, overpopulation, a faltering economy, an energy crunch, approaching famine, and rabid environmentalism calling the shots on domestic oil production. I think the Cold War was probably easier to handle!