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Well, we didn't have to wait very long for this - did we?
Today's lesson comes from Comrade the Honorable Deval Patrick, General Secretary Governor of The People's Republic of Taxachusetts.
Radio host Jim Braude asked our benighted governor what his thoughts were on the rally in Washington organized by Glenn Beck.
“It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country,” Patrick said on the “Jim & Margery Show” on WTKK-FM. “You know, you got to, you got to respect that freedom.”
In the time-honored fashion of liberal Democrats from Taxachusetts (e.g. J. F. "it-was-a-botched-joke" Kerry or Barney "Hot Bottom" Fwank), Deval attempted to explain it all away: “I wish they hadn’t chose that place and that day to have that event,” Patrick said. “But it’s a free country. That was my point, and it has to be respected.”
Oh, I see, nothing to worry about, right? I'm sure that Deval will be out in front defending the next conservative who misspeaks, right?
BTW, did I mention what Deval's stance is on the "Ground Zero Mosque" - and those who dare question the means and motives of it's backers? After all, there's "SACRED GROUND!" (once trod by Dr. M.L. King) and "sacred ground?" (where over 2,000 Americans died in a terrorist attack motivated by adherence to militant Islam - so what?)
The scary part is that this carpetbagging socialist, whose approval ratings after four years as Governor are between 19-22% depending upon which poll you believe, has a better-than-even chance of being re-elected if he can get 34-40% of the vote in a 3-way race. That anyone would vote for him at all, especially in the current political climate, is a measure of how thoroughly brainwashed the typical Taxachusetts liberal voter is.
OK boys and girls, today's lesson is about the First Amendment to our Constitution. The 1st Amendment, the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, protects our freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Let's look at some real-life examples of how it applies, courtesy of our friends on the left side of the policital spectrum:
A Moslem group wants to build a mosque in the shadow of "ground zero", the site of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks by terrorists acting in the name of... Islam. Not surprisingly a significant percentage of the population thinks this is a plain bad idea. Some lost loved ones in the attacks and resent the incursion upon what they regard as "sacred ground", others see it as a deliberate provocation, a monument of sorts to a "victory" for militant Islam, still others think it could potentially be used for purposes inimical to the national security of the United States, and some believe it will further damage the image of American Moslems. As with any avidly contested issue there are hotheads who inflame the debate.
Of course under the 1st Amendment the Moslems are free to build their house of worship anywhere, zoning and other laws notwithstanding. Whether it is a good idea to do so, or whether other legitimate interests may come into play here, are reasonable questions to ask - again, under the 1st Amendment guarante of the right to free speech. But to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (among others) anyone who dares question the means or motives of those behind the project ought to be "investigated".
By whom, Madame Speaker? Under what authority? As Winston Churchill noted in 1945, no socialist "utopia" can function without some sort of Gestapo:
"No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.
"And where would the ordinary simple folk—the common people, as they like to call them in America—where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip? I stand for the sovereign freedom of the individual within the laws which freely elected Parliaments have freely passed."
More recently, as you may have heard, talkmeister Glenn Beck held a rally this weekend on The Mall in Washington, D.C. The theme was "Restoring Honor" and it was focused on re-dedicating oneself and America to the Christian ideals of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, in many ways it was closer to a "revival meeting" than a political rally. Intentionally or not it was on the same date and in the same location as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's. famous "I have a Dream" speech in 1963. This did not sit well with the left.
Al Sharpton, for one, was incensed, accusing Beck of "Distort[ing]...Dr. King's dream" and referred to the site as "sacred ground". "Rev." Walter Fauntroy, D.C.'s non-votring delegate to the Congress went considerably further, claiming that Beck and the rally attendees "seized the hallowed ground of the 47th anniversary ... to promote their universal vision of exclusion."
"It would be wrong for us to allow those who espouse the universal value of exclusion to hijack the site and the message of that marvelous day and to use it against the very vision that Martin Luther King Jr. articulated so magnificently," he said (in less-than-articulate or magnificent fashion!)
(Incidentally, Beck's rally was supported - and attended - by Dr. King's niece Alveda Scott King...)
There's a couple of lessons here. Consider the two uses of the word "sacred ground". And consider who's making wild accusations against their political opponents as well. The left takes full advantage of their 1st Amendment rights to free speech even as they use it to attempt to intimidate the right into yielding their own rights. Beware when a liberal Democrat talks about "rights", usually he means "for me, not for thee"...
I'm not too lazy to write anything original, just too busy today. But I'm trying to avoid any more two-week gaps betwen posts, so anyway there were two pieces in today's NRO which I thought you might find edifying:
First off, one of my favorite curmudgeons, John Derbyshire, offers his prescription for reforming the nation's education system: "First, destroy all the schools"
Then let the estimable Dr. Charles Krauthammer explain why you're "a racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobe" - at least to the M.S.M.
Enjoy!
The indictment of Roger Clemens, charged with committing perjury before the United States Congress, brings a few questions to my mind:
1.) Should we be prosecuting a retired athlete for lying about using performance enhancing substances? There's a surprisingly large number who say "no", and they're not all rabid Roger Clemens fans. One argument seems is the old "he's suffered enough", i.e. he's become a pariah in MLB circles and his once-certain election to the Baseball Hall of Fame now seems extremely unlikely.
There are also those who dismiss the gravity of the offense about which he apparently lied, "it wasn't murder or treason or something". And there are those - myself included - who ask what business Congress has investigating steroid use in professional sports.
We heard many of the same arguments during the impeachment trial of President Clinton, who had certainly committed perjury himself. "it's impractical" to remove the President of the United States from office over a lie he told in a deposition regarding a rather personal matter; but this was only a small part of the argument contra impeachment. The most famous was that the offense "didn't rise to the level of impeachment", which I always found specious.
Is anyone reading this old enough to remember Alger Hiss? For the younger set, Hiss was an official in the U.S. State Department who had been at Yalta with F.D.R. and was secretary of the founding meeting of the United Nations. In 1948 an ex-Communist who was an editor at Time magazine, Whittaker Chambers, accused Hiss of being a Communist. This was a cause celebre, especially since Hiss was an member of the "East Coast Establishment", an Ivy Leaguer who'd been a protege of one Supreme Court Justice while at Harvard (Felix Frankfurter) and susequently clerked for another (Oliver Wendell Holmes). Hiss protested his innocence, and sued Chambers for libel. The events which Chambers was able to prove were beyond the existing statutes of limitations, but Hiss was eventually charged with perjury, convicted, and jailed for several years.
Men (and women, lest they cavil at my insensitivity) lie, about matters large and small, for reasons good and bad. But we need to be able to have confidence in our judicial proceedings and so the crime of perjury must be prosecuted and its perpetrators punished. And prosecutions for perjury ought not be so rare that they are reserved as a "safety net" for instances when the law provides otherwise-insuficient remedy for the deeds of a miscreant.
2.) Why is Congress investigating steroid use in Major League Baseball in the first place? On balance I suppose it might be a good thing, insofar as it keeps them from further curtailing our liberties, raising our taxes, or voting on any more legislation they haven't read! But really, how's this their business? Interstate commerce? "Equal protection"? Baseball's informal status as our "national pastime"? Or the "Imperial Congress" doing what it darn pleases? Not that any of that is germane to the plight of Clemens, for one thing he wasn't subpoenaed or anything, he volunteered to testify!
3.) There is much to be said about the effect of steroids (and H.G.H. and other stuff) on the game, far too much for this already-too-long post. But please indulge me in a modest proposal: how about a separate league for players who want to use performance-enhancing drugs? If, as the argument goes, a certain number of guys are going to do this no matter what, why not give them a venue to compete on an equal basis with their chemically-enhanced peers? Middle infielders routinely hitting tape-measure homers, "real" power hitters routinely racking-up 75 home run seasons, relief pitchers throwing 100 m.p.h. for mutiple innings on back-to-back nights, and a 5-day disabled list in consideration for the "quicker recovery" that most players caught using P.E.D.s claim as their reason for using the juice? If the "X-Games" and "Arena Football" were made for t.v., how much more the fully-juiced game of baseball? Maybe then the rest of us fans could go back to watching the game as Wiliams and Koufax played it; or at least reasonably so. (the mention of those names raises the question - how come these guys who are on the juice max-out at 100 pitches every fifth day, or need a break after a few straight games in the field?)
Something's been rotten in the Archdiocese of Braintree Boston for quite a while now, and most well-informed Catholics are aware that the Chancery "Pastoral Center" is riddled with heterodox clerics and self-serving hirelings whose advice and dealings have redounded to the discredit of the incumbent Cardinal Archbishop.
Recently two new blogs have been started by individuals possessed of a good deal of inside information on the peculiar goings-on within the Pastoral Center. The picture they paint is not pretty, but from my own sources I have been able to verify sufficient of their facts to convince me that both blogs are reporting the truth about the state of the Archdiocese.
If you have any interest in what's going on in the Archdiocese, check out:
Boston Catholic Insider
-and-
Bryan Hehir Exposed
Average Americans, many of whom were hornswoggled into voting for him in 2008, have only "known" Barack H. Obama - now our 44th president - for a little over two years. Aside from liberals and members of the Democrat party, he got an awful lot of votes because he: 1.) wasn't G. W. Bush, 2.) was our first serious black candidate, 3.) seemed cool, charismatic and charming, and 4.) promised "hope and change".
That got him elected, but since then it hasn't gotten him very far.
Fast-forward to August of 2010. The national economy continues to stagnate in large part because business and the markets have a great deal of uncertainty about the next 6-12 months. Will there be another "stimulus" - carefully crafted to funnel massive doses of your tax dollars to the hard left's favorite constituencies? How much more will Obama, Pelosi, and Reid add to the deficit - and the National Debt? And will they let the Bush tax cuts expire, thereby implementing the largest tax increase in American history effective 1 January 2010? What effect will the short-term Federal bailouts of many irresponsible states have on their long-term economies?
At a time when every job is precious and most states are running immense deficits due mainly to the cost of entitlements, our border with Mexico remains (malignly) neglected by the Federal government, permitting an ongoing flood of illegal immigrants whose presence further exacerbates the situation - to say nothing of the unfettered entree available to criminals and terrorists.
Meanwhile we're still fighting in Afghanistan and "occupying" Iraq to prop-up the nascent Iraqi government, but it's pretty obvious that the mission is poorly-defined and oh-by-the-way morale is rotten. The SecDef is happily cutting the military budget and the C-in-C never speaks of "victory", only of "withdrawal". Iran is less than a week away from activating a nuclear reactor which will allow them to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Speaking of our enemies, a group of "moderate" Muslims is pushing ahead with a plan to build a mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center site, a.k.a. "Ground Zero". These "moderate" Muslims, however, are only "moderate" when compared to the most zealous and murderous purveyors of militant Islam, and it has been demonstrated thay they have ties to
If ever there was a time for leadership this is it. But what have we got? An aloof president who doesn't "do" press conferences, or any other unscripted appearances if he can help it. On the rare occasions when he sallies forth without his plexiglass wingmen, the "TelePropmter Twins", he is invariably forced to issue a morning-after correction of his latest gaffe - usually delivered from a position of ignorance - on one of the the issues of the day; e.g. "Skippy Gates" vs. the Cambridge Police, the Arizona illegal alien law, the "Ground Zero Mosque", etc. ad nauseum.
Twenty months ago, some of B. H. Obama's more leg-tingling admirers in the M.S.M. were likening him to F.D. Roosevelt. Well, they're both liberal Democrats who never left an opportunity pass to increase the role of government in the lives of the governed. But F.D.R. was a known quantity to the American people when they elected him. Scion of an old New York family, cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War I, candidate for Vice President in 1920, and two-term Governor of New York; Roosevelt had a record of accomplishment and the obvious qualifications for the nation's highest office.
F.D.R. compiled a mixed record during the Great Depression, while his first acts in office unquestionably staved-off a national panic his later policies - which included tax increases and unprecedented government regulation - are now understood to have prolonged the Depression beyond its duration in many other countries. But he was quite willing to acknowledge the failure of one or another of his programs or policies and scrap it in favor of an alternative; and I regard his foreign policy - at least 1938-44 - as having been largely correct.
Alas, B.H.O. is no F.D.R. During the last twelve tumuluous months President Obama has taken no fewer than seven vacations running to some forty days - not including Mrs. Obama's lavish vacation in Spain. None of these vacations were spent at property he owned himself - recall how often President Reagan and both Bushes were criticized for spending working "vacations" at their OWN residences in California, Maine, and Texas respectively. Indeed, F.D.R.'s favorite retreats were his own estate in the Hudson River Valley and the cottage he purchased at Warm Springs, Ga. Nobody doubts that the White House is able to maintain 24x7 contact with Obama when he's away from Washington, but neither do we labor under the illusion that he's devoting much time to the affairs of state.
When he does spend more than a week or so in Washington we are treated to carefully doled-out photo-ops, scripted and Teleprompter'ed remarks, and rambling statements by his press secretary. Poltics 24x7, but damn little substance.
So - who, and what, are these people we know so little about? Obama describes himself as a "progressive" and claims to be a "Christian". The former may be apt, but the latter is a bit of a puzzle. Twenty months after settling into the White House he has yet to "pick" a church. One of his stated reasons is a reluctance to inconvenience the other worshippers but his presence, but this contrasts rather badly with his willingness to inconvenience his fellow golfers, or beachgoers, or diners, etc. when one of his favored leisure activites is on the agenda. He's wont to lecture us - inaccurately - on being "our brother's keeper" when it serves to advance his nationalization of health care while embracing the feminist abortion-on-demand agenda. Reagan was pilloried for peripheral associations with Billy Graham, Jery Falwell, et al, but consider that Obama's two "spiritual" mentors are Rev. Jeremiah "God-damn-America" Wright and Fr. Michael "Non Compos Mentis" Pfleger.
Obama has been called a Marxist, a Socialist, an Alinskyite, un-American, and a closet Muslim. It's safe to say that no other sitting president has ever been identified in this way. The M.S.M. derides anyone who dares to voice questions about whether he really DOES answer to one or more of those designations, but they avoid the question of WHY people think these things about our 44th president. America didn't know who this man was when they elected him. We knew even less about his wife. Nearly two years later we can only judge him by his words and deeds.
One thing is clear - he and the Democrat Congress have taken the country in directions of which a majority of Americans disapprove, and they have lost the consent of the governed. As things stand now it is very likely that the G.O.P. will reclaim at least the House of Representatives in November, and there is certainly a path open for them to take the Senate as well. This election is as much a referendum on the Obama presidency as it is on the Democrat Congress, but the real verdict will be delivered in November of 2012.
America has twenty-seven more months to find out who the Obamas really are. Based upon the first half of his presidency I'm guessing they'll have a very hard time warming up to him during the second.
