The Vanishing Of Civilization

     "In order for civilization to survive, man must remain civilized." The preceding words were uttered by Rod Serling over fifty years ago in the context of one of his many operatic shorts about the human condition as he saw it. Those words could not be any truer today, especially in light of the uncivilized behavior engendered by our modern technology.
     Civilization is constructed of a moral code adhered to by its citizens, not at the bludgeoning of government regulation, but out of a sense of decorum and common respect. The governor that individuals possess to mute their behavior and guide their speech away from the crass, sadly is missing from modernity as a result of the veil of anonymity afforded to us by social media. The Internet in general, and social media in particular, have provided their users with a sense of immunity for anything they may say or do.
     People will say things and show images of themselves on social media sites that they would never do otherwise. Could you imagine, for example, a teenage girl showing nude pictures of herself to a stadium full of people she does not know. But yet many young girls, and young boys, are doing exactly that and worse when they post something on social media. It has the potential to be shared with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of strangers.
    One of the tenets of civilization is a deep and abiding respect for one's fellow citizens, a respect that shields them from the darker side of our natures. But social media eliminates the need for that respect by providing a forum for the basest of our instincts to run free and wild. And almost without exception, the price paid for such ugliness is spared the individual, the full brunt of such barbarianism being absorbed by the culture with the loss of civilization.
     I shutter to think how little civilization will remain in 20 years, once a generation of children raised on a steady diet of unfettered "self-expression" through words and photos become adults. There seems to be no appetite by many modern parents to guide their children through the sewage of social media into becoming responsible participants in that medium. Many parents, when confronted with their children's online behavior, simply excuse it by saying it is just kids being kids.
     Meanwhile an entire generation grows up with narcissistic tendencies encouraged by the instant celebrity culture of social media. Children, and many adults as well, become ensconced in a cyber universe that revolves entirely around their participation in it. Far too many of our children never develop the interpersonal skills required to survive and thrive in the real brick and mortar world outside the Internet.
     It is the self-centered nature of social media that contributes to the break down in decent society and the vanishing of civilization. A culture can not remain civilized when selfishness replaces respect, and barbarism replaces decorum. Mr. Serling knew this to be true fifty years ago, long before the existence of Face Book, Twitter, or even the Internet. It is axiomatic of the human condition, whether one is considering the disposition of ancient civilizations or our own. 
    
  

The Pity About Pity

     There is a growing trend in this country which I believe the Left has deliberately encouraged in order to increase the dependence on government. Dependence being one of the many destructive devices that the Left employs to achieve their goals. This particular trend involves attaching a twisted honor and veneration to those who both practice the destructive emotion of pity, and those who are the target of that pity.
     Pity is one of the worst human emotions because as it emulates one of the best human emotions, compassion, it drains all humanity from the practitioner and the practiced upon. Whereas compassion lifts up both the transmitter and receiver, pity drags both parties down into a chasm of victimhood and hopelessness. Compassion says, "I will help build your strength, if that is what you need, to jump the hurdles placed in your way." Pity only looks at the hurdles with watery eyes and laments their existence.
     I know an exceptional young man who is in high school, intelligent, and full of life. He is also in a wheel chair. He recently lost his older brother, whom he loved very much, to heroine addiction. But he insists on doing things for himself and making his life the best it can be. There is a woman who is a social worker who also knows this young man, and she told a mutual friend that she pities him. I wished she would have said that to me because I would have asked her, "Why? He does not pity himself, what gives you the right to pity him?"
     Pity is a negative human emotion because it only prolongs the torment of the afflicted, and strangles the life from compassion. Pity simply sits on the sidelines of life and drains the strength from the afflicted, while compassion takes an active role in fortifying those who are disadvantaged in some way and making them more self-reliant. Social programs of the Left are entirely based on pity and expel compassion from the arena of public policy. There is nothing less compassionate and more pitiable than making a person dependent on money confiscated from their fellow citizens by government.
     Compassion dictates lifting up, while pity only serves as an anchor that drags down the pitied and the one who pities. Compassion creates self-sufficiency, whereas pity's outcome is complete dependence. Compassion receives its charter from love, pity marches to the music of selfishness and reliance on others. Compassion is Mother Theresa and pity is the modern day Democrat party. For there is no more honorable a thing than a human heart filled with compassion, and no greater profanity than one filled with pity.
    
    
    

A Case For Impeachment

     According to the Constitution, a president can be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors." The object of this post is not to argue the chances of a successful impeachment of President Obama. Success being defined as articles of impeachment being passed by the House of Representatives, those articles being prosecuted by the Senate of the United States, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court finding in favor of that prosecution. That scenario has as much chance of becoming reality as Joe Biden has of getting a clue. No, my contention is that even with a snowball's chance in hell of success, Republicants should attempt it, if for no other reason than to make a stand for liberty and against tyranny. The process would also slow down the implementation of President Obama's radical agenda.
     Actually, the Republicants should have challenged President Obama on legal grounds from the start of his presidency. The General Motors bailout, which included a violation of contract law with the federal government transferring equity from legitimate bondholders to the president's union buddies, was a blatant violation of the constitutional mandate of that law. I think that a president's violation of 200 years of civil law qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors." The President repeated the same behavior with his numerous programs to bailout mortgage borrowers who were in default, or in danger of being in default, on their home loans. He placed the federal government in the role of unilateral modifier of private contracts between lenders and borrowers.
     President Obama also committed fraud when his administration cut and pasted the signatures of experts they hired to assess the effects of shutting down drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill. The experts' original report did not support the administration's desire to shut down the rigs, so they pasted the signatures from the original study to their own that did support it. To add fuel to the fire of lawlessness and deceit, President Obama blatantly disobeyed two different federal Judges' orders not to shut down the rigs. I think that behavior qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors."
     And then there is ObamaCare, which in its passing alone qualified for the most egregious forms of bribery, graft, and corruption. But the almost two dozen ad hoc changes to the law by the president without the support of congress, certainly qualifies for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Maybe the American people have been so dumbed down by the deliberate conspiracy of the Left with the U.S. education system over the last 5 decades, that they do not realize that the constitutional responsibility of the president is to execute the laws, not write them on the fly to support his political agenda.
     Even with the preceding evidence against President Obama in favor of impeachment, the piece de resistance is his conspiring with a foreign leader against the interests of the United States. The conspiracy happened prior to the 2012 presidential election when he told then Russian president Medveded to transmit to Vladimir Putin that he, Obama, would have more "flexibility" once he was safely reelected. The comment was picked up when President Obama thought he was off-mic. If conspiring against your own country with a foreign leader does not qualify for "high crimes and misdemeanors," well then I just do not know what does.
     There are many more examples of the complete lawlessness of this president that would certainly qualify him for impeachment. The ones mentioned here are only seasoning to the main course of "high crimes and misdemeanors." If the Republicants do not mount an articulate and reasoned prosecution of Barack Obama's deliberate assault on the United States Constitution, then history will judge them to be complicit in the cowardly act of dismantling liberty for future generations.

Momma Fed Continues Legacy Of Economic Ignorance

    This week saw the first Federal Open Market Committee meeting to be presided over by Janet Yellen, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. And while the Fed's bought and paid for lapdogs on Wall Street, and elsewhere in the financial industry, gave Ms. Yellen high marks for her comments, one would expect nothing less from a coddled industry that has received the benefit of over three trillion created-out-of-of-thin-air dollars from the Federal Reserve in the last four years. But to this realistic viewer of the economy as it is, Chairman Yellen was a worthy successor of the dimly lighted torched passed to her from Ben Bernanke, the previous Fed Chairman.
     Proof of Ms. Yellen's firm grasp of the title Glittering Jewel of Colossal Ignorance was exemplified by one statement she made at her press conference after the two day meeting. She said that the Fed would eliminate the trigger of a 6.5% unemployment rate to increase its interest rate from the historic low of zero to a quarter percent it has held since 2008. She said the reason was that the employment situation has improved more rapidly than expected. I do not know what dim bulbs like Janet Yellen had expected, but thank God her expectations were not met, seeing as how after five years into an economic recovery, the nation has a record number of working aged persons unemployed, and the lowest percentage of that population participating in the work force in almost 40 years.
     The stated goal of the Fed's Quantitative Easing program was to stimulate the economy and spur job growth. After more than three trillion dollars, neither of these goals has been met, unless one considers record unemployment and sub-two percent GDP growth an acceptable outcome for the money. And while companies stock prices have done very well in the age of easy money from the Federal Reserve, earnings of those companies have only done well to the extent that expectations have been dropped so low they would have to look up just to see mediocrity.
     The dirty little secret about the Fed's bond-buying program is that since 2011, the Chinese have been severely curtailing their investment in U.S. bonds, having calculated that they are no longer a good investment. This was about the same time that Standard and Poors downgraded the U.S. credit worthiness for the first time in history. With the Fed's current tapering seeing an end to their bond-buying by this Fall, the Chinese reducing their investment in U.S. debt, the Russians threatening to flood the market with their sizable stash of U.S. bonds, and the threat of hyper-inflation as a result of the Fed's irresponsible monetary policy over the last few years, this country is headed for economic hardship that will make the 1930s seem like an economic boom.
     Of course Momma Fed was left an untenable situation by Poppa Fed Bernanke, who will now be paid gobs of money to be a university president and/or give speeches about economic issues after having helped ruin the U.S. economy. And We The People will be left holding the bag of a rapidly deteriorating economy caused by the crony capitalism of the Obama years.

The "Big Brain" Foreign Policy Of Barack Obama

     The capitulation of Crimea to Russia is illustrative of the real outcome of the dovish foreign policy stance of the Left in general, and Barack Obama specifically. President Obama took time away from his important work of creating his March Madness bracket, golf, and his ongoing life style of the rich and famous, in order to issue a proclamation of weakness to Vladimir Putin. The U.S. president telegraphed to the Russian president that he has essentially taken military action off the table, instead choosing toothless sanctions as a means to make Mr. Putin behave as a world citizen.
     President Obama, with his doctrine of weakness on foreign policy issues from Benghazi to Syria, has made military conflict more likely. For the past five years he has signaled to our enemies like Putin that the United States is no longer interested in defending democratic ideals militarily. Instead, our current president has replaced peace through strength with peace through superior brain power, meted out in diplomacy. In order for diplomacy to be successful, your enemy must be as dedicated to it as you are. Vladimir Putin is not. Therefore, without fear of U.S. military reprisal, he will push the conflict toward a military solution.
     The mistake that the community agitator Obama makes, is treating global bad guys like Putin as he treats his political opponents. To Barack Obama, as to most of the Left, Republicants are the same as Putin, who is the same as Islamic terrorists. The way to defeat them is with lofty words and empty platitudes. Barack Obama uses the same kind of threats against Putin as he uses against Republicants. But where Republicants collapse into little puddles of Jell-O, Vladimir Putin laughs at the Lefts boy wonder who plays world leader on the delusional stage in his mind. Barack Obama is a man of words and Vladimir Putin is a man of action. The man of action will always best the man of words in geopolitical contests.
      Words can inspire men to action, as Thomas Paine's words did during the American Revolution, or Winston Churchill's during World War II. Barack Obama's words are not inspirational, except to inspire hatred of his political enemies, which they are intended exactly to do. The goal of words spoken by community agitators is not to inspire defense of values or ideals, but to attract political power to themselves. Barack Obama has always had the good fortune of having his words translate into political power, but very few solutions to real problems. His brand of sycophantic race and class baiting does not translate to the world stage when confronting anyone more dangerous than an amateur film maker.
     The recent announcement by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel that the administration intends to reduce U.S. military troops to pre-World War II levels, signals that Barack Obama has the utmost confidence in his "big brain" to solve any and all international conflicts. The very real danger to U.S. security is that Putin and others have big brains that understand the world is, and has always been, governed by the aggressive use of force. In the absence of U.S. leadership willing to at least threaten force, Mr. Putin's willingness to do so, will easily defeat Mr. Obama's "big brain"  foreign policy every time.

    

Republicans Need To Change Their Focus

     Republicants appear to be migrating toward two different camps of electoral strategy for this November's mid-term elections. One camp looks at the recent victory by David Jolly in Florida's 13th district as a sign that Republicants' should make ObamaCare the centerpiece of their Fall campaigns. The other camp is proffering the alternative analysis. That Mr. Jolly won because of the economy, and that ObamaCare should be just part of a larger discussion by Republicants that focuses on the economic failures of Obama policy that congressional Democrats have supported.
     I, of course, think that neither camp has the right fuel to stoke the fires of victory this Fall. As usual, the Republicants in Congress, and who populate positions in the establishment outside of Congress, are myopic in their obsessive focus on the next election, instead of educating people in hopes of changing the culture. A good example of this behavior is the complete lack of attention paid to the Financial Reform Act, better known as Dodd/Frank. This law, which was supported by many congressional Republicants, is almost as dangerous as ObamaCare. It is ObamaCare for the financial industry, and it puts government bureaucracies in control of private enterprise in a way not seen before in this country.
     Dodd/Frank codifies future bailouts for the largest financial firms, while it has closed the doors of smaller, community-based institutions because they can not afford the compliance costs associated with the law. Republicants, if they are to insure victory for the American way of life, must run against the ethos of the Obamaites that gives birth to laws such as Dodd/Frank, ObamaCare, et. al.
     The Republicants can win elections and return the country to one of free choice, but only by decentralizing their message away from ObamaCare or the economy. Instead, they should illustrate the folly of Obama and the Lefts desire to move the country away from an opportunity society to a dependent one. The biggest mistake that Republicants have made in recent elections has been to allow Democrats to steer them in a direction that leads to issues rather than the fundamental principles and values that made this country great.
     I am not recommending that Republicants abandon issues, but rather fold them into a larger campaign based on educating the voter why conservative principles work and Leftist ones do not. The Founders knew that an educated populace is the life blood of democracy. They intended for the free press to be key in the education process. But since most media today has become nothing more than propaganda shills for the Democrat party and failed Leftist policies, it falls upon Republicants to inform voters about the foundational values of America, and why they work for the greatest number of persons.
     If Republicants fail to articulate the founding principles of the republic, and instead strictly adhere to defense of policies, Democrats will defeat them most of the time. The reason is that conservatives have abdicated their sacred responsibility to conserve the founding principles over the recent decades. Which has allowed the Left to inculcate many voters with a sense of entitlement and dependence on the government programs that are the bricks that form the foundation of the modern Democrat party. Republicants must use the hammers of freedom, liberty, and self-reliance to smash into bits those bricks of dependence, entitlement, and tyranny.

When Will They Ever Learn?

     As Russian president Vladimir Putin signed an agreement officially recognizing Crimea as part of the Russian empire, Leftists around the world, including in the United States, celebrated Putin's statement that he does not want to divide Ukraine. A statement made moot by his actions to absorb Crimea into Russia. Only those on the Left could experience such comfort and solace from the words of a communist. Actually, in order to keep his word about not dividing Ukraine, Putin must absorb the rest of the country.
     In the 1960s there was a song called Where Have All The Flowers Gone, which communists like Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Joan Baez use to sing. Throughout the song the line "when will they ever learn," was repeated at the end of each verse. Of course, the song criticized the supposed blindness of those who saw the necessity of war. It is ironic that the singers' ideology has been proven in the ensuing years to be the most blind, and the cause of much suffering around the world.
     The most frightening thing in the world today is not Putin, Kim Jong-un, or even Islamic terrorists, but that the people charged with fighting such tyranny were all raised on the communist pap of songs like Flowers. After decades of suckling on a steady diet of their own poisonous regurgitation, those who control the reins of government have abdicated their duty to reason and common sense in favor of a twisted Utopia where no harm comes to those who provide no resistance to tyranny.
     During President Carter's ill advised negotiations with the Soviets about nuclear arms reductions (better known as SALT), my ninth grade math teacher, Brother Rogers, told us that communists could not be trusted. He said they could not be trusted because they defined terms differently than the West. After almost forty years, the Left still believes they can trust communists and take them at their word. Brother Rogers knew what Ronald Reagan would say a few years later, "Trust, but verify."
     Now President Capitulation and his cohorts in the "international community" have quietly ceded Crimea to Vladimir Putin. Something those familiar with the limp-wristed foreign policy of Barack Obama said would happen from the onset of this crisis. Once Crimea has become firmly ensconced in the Russian family, Vladimir will set his sights on the next chunk of real estate he wishes to add to the empire. And just like with Crimea, there will be a lot of bluster and toothless sanctions from the "international community." In the end, Mr. Putin will achieve his goals because his opposition is so committed to "peace at all costs," that fulfillment of those costs will be drawn on the account of  fidelity to the principles of liberty, freedom, and common decency.