For The Love Of Power

Political Power, unlike money, is a zero sum game.

In order for one to gain and consolidate more of it, another must lose it through neglect and carelessness or bitter struggle.

At the same time, power is not necessarily directly correlated with size. A large organization can run fluidly and freely given good leadership and skilled and involved members. A power-grabbing entity does tend to bloat with those drawn to power and the ease of corruption.

It is not size that corrupts, but immoral people.

The presidential race should give us each an opportunity to see honestly and completely the morals, ethics, and skills of those who would lead us but which instead tends to show us carefully scripted appearances controlled by any number of variously corrupt entities.

The candidates themselves try to control their images. None of them have nothing to hide, and therefore, they dodge and obfuscate.

The media, with it’s control over what is shown in living rooms across the world, has a powerful ability to shape the discourse. If it doesn’t show up on the nightly news, it didn’t happen.

Charles Kessler, in a speech before Hillsdale College summarized in In Primis, speaks to the difference between size and power, and how size and corruption are not necessarily related.

Juan Gonzalez, in the New York Daily News, tells the sordid tale of pork and corruption which has birthed an amazingly idiotic tax hike in downtown New York:

No one could recall such a naked combination of arm-twisting and pork-barrel handouts to pressure City Council members to approve the huge tax increase known as congestion pricing.

The real problem is always complex and deep, but a significant part of the root is that we, the people, don’t really care.

Like Charlie Brown’s baseball team, we don’t want to be held accountable for our government. We pass the buck to the elected officials, who pass the buck on and on.

If we and a larger percentage of the population of America took responsibility for our government, there would not be a problem of usurpation of power and conglomeration of authority.

An aware and concerned citizenry is a powerful citizenry and the bane of corrupt politics everywhere.

Late: Line Of The Week

I missed this last week, so I’m pulling editorial prerogative and doing two LOTW’s this week (if I remember Friday).

Jonah Goldberg is asking what was so special or prescient about Obama’s speech about race in America:

…or others — like La Raza or the college professors scrambling to follow Obama’s lead — when they say we need more conversation, they really mean their version of reality should win the day. Substitute “conversation” with “instruction” and you’ll have a better sense of where these people are coming from and where they want their “dialogue” to take us.

Effectively, Obama told us if we’re white we’re racist, whether or not we know it.

Yea, that’s affirming and positive and, heh… accurate.

Coward Host Pulled Anti-Koran Site: 1-800-333-7680

Web host Network Solutions has pulled the site Fitnathemovie.com pending investigation of violation of terms of use.

After intense complaining by Muslims, Network Solutions has blocked access to the site which was to eventually provide access to the documentary by Dutch politician Geert Wilders documenting his arguments against the Koran.

It’s time to complain back to the cowards.

Could not find email address for Network Solutions, but here’s the “Real Person Customer Service” number listed on the site: 1-800-333-7680

To Some, They’re Truth

The words of Jeremiah Wright, the wrong words he’s spoken and made a central part of his message for the 20 years Barak Hussein Obama has considered him a spiritual leader, to some, they are truth.

Mr. Wright, for I do not consider him to be worthy of reverence or title beyond that of a normal man, is not the only person to preach those words either.

They are a variant of the philosophy and world view known as Liberation Theology, specifically, Black Liberation Theology.

From GotQuestions.org:

Simply put, Liberation Theology is an attempt to interpret Scripture through the plight of the poor. It is largely a humanistic doctrine. It started in South America in the turbulent 1950’s when Marxism was making great gains among the poor because of its emphasis on the redistribution of wealth, allowing poor peasants to share in the wealth of the colonial elite and thus upgrade their economic status in life. As a theology, it has very strong Roman Catholic roots.

Liberation Theology was bolstered in 1968 at the Second Latin American Bishops Conference which met in Medellin, Colombia. The idea was to study the Bible and to fight for social justice in Christian (Catholic) communities. Since the only governmental model for the redistribution of the wealth in a South American country was a Marxist model (gained in the turbulent 1950’s), the redistribution of wealth to raise the economic standards of the poor in South America took on a definite Marxist flavor. Since those who had money were very reluctant to part with it in any wealth redistribution model, the use of a populist (read poor) revolt was encouraged by those who worked most closely with the poor. As a result, the Liberation Theology model was mired in Marxist dogma and revolutionary causes…

…Liberation Theology has moved from the poor peasants in South America to the poor blacks in America. We now have Black Liberation Theology being preached in the black community. It is the same Marxist, revolutionary, humanistic philosophy found in South American Liberation Theology and has no more claim for a scriptural basis than the South American model has.

The race problem in America is real, that is undeniably true. But I do not think it is true in the way many assume it to be.

First, slavery was an inexcusable evil and a dark time for America. Today, many of us can trace roots back to those who participated, freely or under coercion, in slavery in America.

But at the same time, many of us can’t. And a significant majority have ancestors from the both the ideological North and South in their blood, as well as those who had no part at all. There has been significant immigration by all races to America after the conclusion of the Civil War and the active work of slavery.

The continuing and very real race issue was summed up by a new friend of Ed Kaitz’s. Ed had been spending time with the Vietnamese immigrants who’d settled in the Bayous of Louisiana, and while flying home he met a an American Black who’d been studying psychology and working as a prison psychologist in Missouri.

Ed tells it like this:

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

“We’re owed and they aren’t.”

In short, he concluded, “they’re hungry and we think we’re owed.  It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going nowhere.”

“They” are the Vietnamese Ed had spent time with, “we” are the gentleman’s own race, his fellow American Blacks.

Ed concludes his commentary on Obama’s inability to recognize the powerful forces of good in his life and the state of racism in America with this call to recognize real sources of ability and equality, accomplishment and future:

We now know that Barack Obama really has no interest in the “audacity of hope.”  With his race speech, Obama became a peddler of angst, resentment and despair.  Too bad he doesn’t direct that angst at the liberal establishment that has sold black people a bill of goods since the 1960s.  What Obama seems angry about is America itself and what it stands for; the same America that has provided fabulous opportunities for what my black friend called “hungry” minorities.  Strong families, self-reliance, and a spirit of entrepreneurship should be held up as ideals for all races to emulate.

Read Obama’s Anger at American Thinker.

Doug Ross, at Opinion Journal, quotes Nicholas Stix in Mens News Daily regarding Barak Hussein Obama’s run against Alan Keyes. Regarding Barak’s religion Nicholas has this to say:

…Obama’s closest religious advisers — Fr. Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and Illinois State Sen. James Meeks, who moonlights as the pastor of Chicago’s Salem Baptist Church – may have quotes from Scripture always handy, but are theologically closer to Karl Marx and black nationalism, than to Christianity… The transcendent-non-transcendent motto the Rev. Wright has given Trinity is, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”

Yes, we need a Marxist president. Exactly what the country needs.

More information on Black Liberation ideology.

LA Times speaks with moral relativism and class warfare.

Roger Simon writes, in homage to Andrew Goodman “Barak, I didn’t do it for this”

And what about the New Black Panthers?

Dead Sexy

In a previous article, Priorities Of Preservation, I discussed the importance Christianity puts on the entirety of an person: body, mind, and spirit.

While the world, in a misguided and myopic view constrained by sin, only really cares for the preservation of the body. And through ignorance, loses the whole person.

In a report released last week which most have already heard of or commented on, it was noted that 1/4 of the US Teenage Female population is infected with one of several Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

The immediate cry was that Abstinence Education must be completely abandoned and further explanation of the ins and outs of safe sex be taught to every child.

I find those making that argument to be their own worst enemies, and I am determined to sit and watch them tear themselves apart trying to make sense of what they’ve said.

Better have a good belt to hold these sides in. The problem is, this is no laughing matter: peoples lives are at stake.
At the blog dbTechno (”Providing Science And Technology News Since 1996″) under the headline “Teens Having Sex, Getting STD’s Due To Lack Of Knowledge” (strongly caution) there is a small picture of three bikini-clad young women shaking their derrières before the camera. This was the picture Google had selected on it’s news aggregator to highlight the several articles on this topic this morning.

In our sexified culture it is considered “emancipated” for a woman to be so “comfortable” with her sexuality that she feels willing to flaunt her body either scantily clothed or free of clothes before the whole world.

I don’t think that it is a sign of a healthy self-image that women are willing and even choose to clothe themselves that way.

I am not for arbitrary requirements in clothing, but it is saddening that, younger and younger, we are compelling out daughters and sisters to choose between frumpy and scandalous.

Removing their modesty with bits of lycra and spandex.

Revealing their bodies for the eyes of all the world.

And then we worry that too many of them are having sex.

I think a healthy self image will result in true self-worth, where the woman will not feel compelled to dress “sexy” to get the approval and acceptance of others.

When a woman is dressing revealingly they are revealing their insecurity, not their assuredness.

The Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board this morning published an article titled “Abstinence-Only Education Needs To Go” (no scandalous images here) in which they completely demolish their own claims, twice.

First, early in the article they lay claim to the moral high ground:

From here, it would be easy to play the blame game. But that would be unproductive. It doesn’t matter if you’re the pro-sex education or abstinence-only type, the statistics speak for themselves, and what matters most is that something be done to make our children more sexually responsible and safe.

And then, in the very next paragraph:

Let’s start with re-tooling the failed abstinence-only approach backed by the Bush administration. Let’s teach teenagers about contraceptives and other precautions that could help protect them if they are sexually active.

Yes, lets avoid the blame game, and lets look at the facts. The Bush Administration has indeed backed and supported an abstinence-only education approach, because no one who practices abstinence contracts an STD, no one. It make sense to back a winner. But how many education programs has the Bush Administrations policy actually affected? Good question.

I would be willing to bet that with state policy, and NEA policy, and DoE policy, there is precious little abstinence-only education going on in the public schools of America.

The article then goes on to make an astounding statement. I very nearly cheered, at work, when I read this:

Abstinence teaching has its merits. It not only promotes a sure-proof defense against STDs and unwanted pregnancies, but also the idea that sexual activity requires a high level of maturity and understanding. An adolescent who engages in “protected” sex prematurely may not run the risk of physical infections, but could be exposed to long-term emotional and psychological damage.

And then gets to the…

BOTTOM LINE: Place more emphasis on contraceptives and STDs in sex-education classes.

And they reached that how?

With this simple caveat they have attempted to justify their entire tortured argument, and by extension, rationalize their continued support for the torture of young minds and bodies with illness both physical and psychological:

Like it or not, half of the teenage girls in this country are already sexually active, according to the study. Something has to be done to make them wiser in their choices, or we soon could have an even bigger public health crisis on our hands.

Do they not see the cruel irony?

Because we’re a bunch hapless, helpless dolts who’ve bought the lie that children are capable of making their own informed decisions regarding sex and mature relationships.

Because we’re a bunch of laissez-faire non-present parental units who feel no particular responsibility to counter the culture’s claims that boys are animals and girls are meat.

Because we’re a bunch of lazy do-gooders who value intentions over actions and outcomes and are willing to allow our children to do whatever they please so long as it makes them feel good.

We will complete ignore what we already know to be true: that premature involvement in adult relationships, emotional and physical, will not only harm the body but will also damage the mind.

So long as we tell enough of them to use condoms, we are perfectly willing to let them hop into bed with any yahoo or floozy who comes along.

Yea, that’s advanced society and parental love for you.

See also:

The Condom Conspiracy: Sex, Lies, STIs and Teenage Girls - the evangelical outpost

While we have Planned Parenthood and sex educators claiming that condoms can “offer effective protection against most serious sexually transmitted infections” the report finds there’s no scientific basis for that claim.

STD Data Comes As No Surprise, Area Teenagers Say - Laura Sessions Stepp and Katherine Shaver in the Washington Post

The Marrow girls offered several reasons why teenagers have sex.

“It’s to fit in, peer pressure,” Christine said, noting that virgins are often mocked. Also, “sex sells on TV.”

Khadijah chimed in that some young girls found their inspiration in the popular R&B singer Rihanna, whose latest album is titled “Good Girl Gone Bad.”

But Christina suggested something closer to home. “Write this down,” she said. “Bad parenting.”

Great Lines, Again

David Mamet, “Why I Am No Longer A Brain-Dead Liberal“, The Village Voice:

I’d observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

Superdelegate Spitzer And Moral Responsibility

It is not a normal thing, by any means, for IPandora to link to the DailyKo(ok)s and it’s assortment of nutroots, but truth, wherever found, is still truth.

BarbinMD wrote today:

Spitzer’s actions are in no way a reflection of Clinton’s judgement or character. But it does put an open letter sent out this weekend by super delegate Steven Grossman, the former Chairman of the DNC and Clinton supporter, in a whole new light.

And BarbinMD’s excerpt from that letter:

…our party concluded that we had demonstrated the ability to act as stewards of the national party–and of the national interest. By dint of our experience in the community and our public service, we were adjudged fit to fulfill a moral responsibility to act in the best interest of the country as we saw it–

“What they do in the bedroom is no business of mine” is a common refrain in cases of moral failure by elected government officials of all stripes and parties, usually by those who’ve invested effort in getting those officials in their positions.

If we really believe that, why are not Spitzer’s actions dismissed out of hand?

Because we don’t believe that.

What is done in the bedroom matters very much outside the bedroom.

If a man cannot honor his wife and family in his own home, his word cannot and ought not be trusted in any other part of his life.

And we know it.

Tellingly, BarbinMD completes their commentary with this gem:

All things considered, perhaps Mr. Grossman and his ilk should spare us their experience and morals and instead respect the will of the voters.

UPDATE: Roger Simon asks for a reality check-up on Alan Dershowitz who apparently doesn’t think it’s such a big deal.

And points Spitzer has made it a signature part of this platform putting prostitutes in jail.

What about the johns? And Spitzer?

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt highlights an article by Carol Platt Liebau “Will Spitzer Resign” in which she makes the following statements:

…(Spitzer) may not plan to resign.  If that’s true, it’s part of a new and troubling pattern in American political life.  It’s not a partisan thing; Larry Craig’s refusal to resign was another manifestation of it.

The whole idea, pioneered by you-know-who and enabled by you-know-who-else, is that illicit sexual behavior and the scandals resulting therefrom can be brazened out by the insistence that they are irrelevant to the discharge of public duties.

…it’s all part of a new ethical calculus concluding that – uniquely in the constellation of virtues — sexual morality is a subjective and purely personal matter that’s of relevance only to “religious” people (or else prurient and “judgmental” ones), even when it impacts the public.

IPandora is ashamed to say we did not trumpet the call for Mr. Craig’s resignation. In defense, I thought there was a lot of condemning going on and not a lot of proof or evidence at the time.

Nothing against the condemning, just when I wasn’t convinced of the burden of proof I wasn’t ready to condemn.

Line Of The Week 06/02/08

Meyers, a former Seattle police officer, said she finds it ironic that part of the reason she moved to Evergreen is because she strives for social justice. “I wanted to be in an environment that questions authority and is socially conscious and active,” she said. “I was attracted to the very thing that got me in trouble.”

Evergreen State College Divided After Riot, Seattle Times

When playing with fire, one is apt to get burned, no matter how pretty the flame.

Great Lines

Jesus never promised people wealth, or instant healing. He didn’t promise his disciples houses on the coast. Pastor Benny has recast Jesus in his own image. He has forgotten that his Lord died, humiliated, tortured, alone and penniless. But how do you sell that.
~Reverend Dr. David Millikan

Reverend Millikan asking if Benny Hinn is really teaching what Jesus taught? Or simply what will bring him (Hinn) money and power.

It would behoove The Sun to enter the real world. Assumptions do not reality make, and safety is not achieved simply by perceiving it.
~John Farragut, Treasurer, Cornell Republicans, Cornell University

Thanks to Haemet, a Cornell University student, who’s been highlighting the fight for Constitutional Freedoms on the Cornell campus.

John Farragut was responding to an op/ed in the student paper, the Cornell Sun, Way Off Target, regarding the hearings scheduled to discuss the issue of on-campus concealed carry.

Who Owns The Money?

McCain may not be with conservatives on many social issues, but he’s definitely with us on fiscal issues. He’ll at least work hard to keep America from going broke.

Three articles across the internet today highlight the heart of this issue: the willingness of the candidates to spend money which you’ve given them in self-serving pork projects.

Buying votes with your cash.

First, from the Washington Post: Candidates Earmarks Worth Millions:

Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, [Sen. Hillary] Clinton [(NY)] supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending.

In the Boston Herald (winner of todays Most Absolutely Annoying And Alliterative Headline: Blustering Bubba Blasts Barak for Babbling Baloney) editorial, The Race For Earmarks, the editors note that Hillary sent $342 million to her own constituents, putting her in the top ten porkers. McCain, on the other hand, was against earmarks before that was even beginning to become popular.The porkers which inhabit Washington desire power. It is not altruism which drives them, but instead a compelling desire to get as many people subscribing to their ascendancy by giving them money.

But whose money do they use? Yours.

If it were their money there would not be an issue, except for the ethical implications of graft and cronyism and what they say of the character of the individual engaging in them.

Further insight into the candidates philosophies can be seen in who they get money for:

As a campaign issue, earmarks highlight significant differences in the spending philosophies of the top three candidates. Clinton has repeatedly supported earmarks as a way to bring home money for projects, while Obama adheres to a policy of using them only to support public entities.

McCain is using his blanket opposition to earmarked spending as a regular line of attack against Clinton, even running an Internet ad mocking her $1 million request for a museum devoted to the Woodstock music festival. Obama has been criticized for using a 2006 earmark to secure money for the University of Chicago hospital where his wife worked until last year.

McCain, for his seeming contempt for many social-conservative causes, respects the citizenry enough to protect their investment in government.

It reminds me of the story of Davy Crockett, who, when a disaster struck his home state while he was a member of Congress, and his constituents begged that he send federal money to help the stricken area, said that he would not.

He stated that money spent by the government can only be used in ways which benefit ALL citizens equally.

If only more in the current crop of public megalomaniacs servants would espouse this truism.

But the porkers currently running for the Democrat nomination do not.

The Scheming Communist Operative, Hillary, does what is best for her and only, ever, what is best for her. If this involves giving your money to someone she thinks can pave her way to power, that’s what she does.

The Idyllic Communist, Obama, only gives to “worthy causes”.

The problem is, people (you and I) are much more efficient and effective at getting money to worthy causes:

• We are better at choosing those causes which are actually worthy.
• We’re less likely to be duped in significant numbers and for substantial amounts of money than the government with its fat-handed largess.
• And it doesn’t cost as much for us to get our money to those causes which are worthy, so more money gets to them overall and less is wasted in the endless iterations of bureaucracy.

Hillary is a smart (not intelligent, just smart) and conniving operative with one goal, her own supremacy.

Obama is an intelligent and misguided idealist. He wants to solve all the world problems, but everything he claims for his plans have all been tried before, and failed. Over and over again.

The picture which comes to mind is that of Kranzy October, the Russian Revolution in “Red” October of 1917.

The idealists, mostly young Russians, many of the Jewish Russians seeking a Utopian society free of the perceived inequities of the Tzarist system followed headlong into the dismal black of Communist Russia. The smart ones saw chance of personal aggrandizement and turned coat. Spying on their idealist brethren and reporting false crimes until they were the only ones surviving. Lenin rose to power in this era not through altruism and idealism but through corruption and power-lust, scheming and buying his way to the top.

Hillary is a Lenin-type, while Obama is a type of the dead idealists.

Both are dead wrong in their goals, but each have their own reasons, methods, and paths to achieve the death of our Great Nation.

Obama is not naive, but he is not a leader.

Check his closet for skeletons.