For the record, Mike has been one of my top two preferred candidates. He has been growing on me as he has been growing in the polls. (You can guess who my other favorite is.:))
Besides being drawn to a candidate who is conservative, demonstrably moral, a lucid speaker with good presence and a quick wit, I need someone who recognizes the stupidity of flaunting our immigration laws.
Two events occurred today that shook my confidence in Huck:
1) His terrible record on enforcing immigration laws while governor of Arkansas was revealed – see here, and
2) I listened to his interview on the Sean Hannity show this afternoon where he justified the actions of illegal aliens.
This is the way the interview went: Sean was debating Mike on the need to enforce our immigration laws. Mike played the “poor victim” card in defending the actions of aliens entering this country illegally when he said, "...if I needed to feed my family, I'd do the same thing..."
This was a dumb as s--- response on two levels:
1) He is assuming most illegals enter this country because their families back in Mexico are “starving”. More accurately, they sneak into this country to take advantage of our largess and pitiful law enforcement to enhance their standard of living. It is doubtful starvation has anything to do with their reason for being here in most cases.
2) He justifies breaking the law on flimsy grounds. There is nothing wrong with an individual working to enhance his standard of living. But is “enhancing your standard of living” justification for breaking the law? Is “feeding your family” even a basis for law breaking? Can you imagine the anarchy that would prevail if we all practiced what Mike preaches? Don’t we all want to enhance our standard of living. Let’s see, which law is easiest to break without folks doing anything about it? Oh, I forgot. They really won’t do anything about it because they feel sorry for me – they might even think I’m starving when I’m not.
If Huckabee was portrayed as a “conservative” up to this point, his sentiments here sure destroy that myth. His attitude amply demonstrates liberal values:
- Assume people are starving even when they aren’t
- Assume we need to help them, even if there are other ways for them to be self-sufficient
- Just about anything justifies flaunting our laws.
For a plain ‘ol US citizen to justify ignoring our laws is bad enough. But for a Presidential candidate to justify law-breaking at the same time he proposes to lead “a nation of laws” is insane. Anarchy, anyone?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Friday, November 09, 2007
Evangelicals have warped sense of priorities...
...especially where Mormons are concened. For many Evangelicals, being anti-Mormon is more improtant than being concerned about right to life or the Islamic threat. Very strange.
I used to watch Pat Robertson a couple of decades ago in my darker days. I used to respect the man during that period. Some may speculate that when a man reaches 77 years of age, his decision-making abilities begin to recede a bit. The starker reality is that many "evangelical", and especially "fundamentalist Christians" tend to be ignorantly, and rabidly anti-Mormon (aka Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
Talk about flip flop! His endorsement of Rudy was a head-spinner!
Robertson has a long history of preaching against abortion. That had been one of his most passionately held opinions in his decades of televangelism. The only reason I can discern for Pat's pathetic priority, and one that reflects the attitude of most fundamentalist Christians, is his disdain toward Mormons. He apparently prefers to support an abortion candidate than the candidate who is by most accounts more closely aligned with his conservative social values than any other: Mit Romney. Why do you suppose this is so?
Some "evangelicals" I have known have a very narrow view of Christianity. If you don't believe the precise doctrine they believe, you are not "Christian", as they define it. Many spend more time worrying about Mormons than Muslims! They lose their ability to distinguish between degrees of good and evil. And they do this out of blind prejudice rooted in ignorance.
In Pat's case, he apparently spends more time worrying about Mormons than about abortionists who kill babies or Islamic doctrine that fosters hate, terror and intolerance.
I used to watch Pat Robertson a couple of decades ago in my darker days. I used to respect the man during that period. Some may speculate that when a man reaches 77 years of age, his decision-making abilities begin to recede a bit. The starker reality is that many "evangelical", and especially "fundamentalist Christians" tend to be ignorantly, and rabidly anti-Mormon (aka Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
Talk about flip flop! His endorsement of Rudy was a head-spinner!
Robertson has a long history of preaching against abortion. That had been one of his most passionately held opinions in his decades of televangelism. The only reason I can discern for Pat's pathetic priority, and one that reflects the attitude of most fundamentalist Christians, is his disdain toward Mormons. He apparently prefers to support an abortion candidate than the candidate who is by most accounts more closely aligned with his conservative social values than any other: Mit Romney. Why do you suppose this is so?
Some "evangelicals" I have known have a very narrow view of Christianity. If you don't believe the precise doctrine they believe, you are not "Christian", as they define it. Many spend more time worrying about Mormons than Muslims! They lose their ability to distinguish between degrees of good and evil. And they do this out of blind prejudice rooted in ignorance.
In Pat's case, he apparently spends more time worrying about Mormons than about abortionists who kill babies or Islamic doctrine that fosters hate, terror and intolerance.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
"Values". What the heck are they?
The presidential campaign is rife with the "values" thing. Both Democrats and Republicans claim they understand the importance of "values", the need to defend our "values", to have strong "family values", ad nauseum.
What vague, meaningless tripe. What do they mean? Values are like belly buttons: everyone has them. Radical Islam has values, Al Capone had values, Brittany Spears has values. Even I have values.
What we don't hear much is a definition for "values." Unfortunately, most of the traditional values we've long held are out of vogue and the brunt of jokes and disdain. Traditional families, traditional gender roles, traditional moral behavior are all out of favor. The big pop-value now appears to be absolute tolerance of just about anything. A word for that is amorality. A made up synonym is "avalueity". This gets close to the meaning of most political messages.
Could this be why we don't hear any definition given on the stump: We've lost our "value-system" in this nation? Absolute tolerance for anything results in a valueless culture. A valueless culture is difficult to defend or promote. This explains, in part, why a large portion of our population cannot sustain a war more than a few months. We think that our values (whatever they are or used to be) are no better, maybe worse than, anyone elses. We are into self-loathing. Unfortunately, there are major populaton groups on earth who love their values more than we love ours (even if we could agree what they were), who believe their values are worth fighting for, and literally blowing themselves up for.
Granted, our military and many conservatives have a strong traditional value system that motivates and sustains them. But a large, influential, and growing portion of our population has lost their values compass.
How well does this scenario bode for our nation: A culture without values to motivate and sustain its' will, perseverance, and endurance versus a culture with values so strong and deeply held that they turn themselves into human bombs and are numerically the fastest growing population group and religion on the planet. I am speaking of Islam.
We are in a "values" war. And we will be on the losing end if we cannot rediscover values worth defending and promoting. The three decades of mocking and joking and ridiculing (e.g. Garrison Keillor, famed liberal, culture-mocking star of "A Prarie Home Companion" and late night comedy generally) and challenging the deeply held values of the past 200 years is not helpful to our survival. Nothing of any great society-sustaining ability has replaced those values that we have ACLUed out of existence.
I'm all for not taking ourselves too seriously and the occasional joke about our culture. The problem is, these jokesters and mockers and challengers really mean it. They really do seem to hate our historical culture and the values that founded our nation.
An excellent book well worth reading or listening to is "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" by Mark Steyn. He identifies our "values" problem as the greatest challenge to our success in the face of Islamic resurgence. To all of our valueless libs, can you say "Dhimmi" dummy?
What vague, meaningless tripe. What do they mean? Values are like belly buttons: everyone has them. Radical Islam has values, Al Capone had values, Brittany Spears has values. Even I have values.
What we don't hear much is a definition for "values." Unfortunately, most of the traditional values we've long held are out of vogue and the brunt of jokes and disdain. Traditional families, traditional gender roles, traditional moral behavior are all out of favor. The big pop-value now appears to be absolute tolerance of just about anything. A word for that is amorality. A made up synonym is "avalueity". This gets close to the meaning of most political messages.
Could this be why we don't hear any definition given on the stump: We've lost our "value-system" in this nation? Absolute tolerance for anything results in a valueless culture. A valueless culture is difficult to defend or promote. This explains, in part, why a large portion of our population cannot sustain a war more than a few months. We think that our values (whatever they are or used to be) are no better, maybe worse than, anyone elses. We are into self-loathing. Unfortunately, there are major populaton groups on earth who love their values more than we love ours (even if we could agree what they were), who believe their values are worth fighting for, and literally blowing themselves up for.
Granted, our military and many conservatives have a strong traditional value system that motivates and sustains them. But a large, influential, and growing portion of our population has lost their values compass.
How well does this scenario bode for our nation: A culture without values to motivate and sustain its' will, perseverance, and endurance versus a culture with values so strong and deeply held that they turn themselves into human bombs and are numerically the fastest growing population group and religion on the planet. I am speaking of Islam.
We are in a "values" war. And we will be on the losing end if we cannot rediscover values worth defending and promoting. The three decades of mocking and joking and ridiculing (e.g. Garrison Keillor, famed liberal, culture-mocking star of "A Prarie Home Companion" and late night comedy generally) and challenging the deeply held values of the past 200 years is not helpful to our survival. Nothing of any great society-sustaining ability has replaced those values that we have ACLUed out of existence.
I'm all for not taking ourselves too seriously and the occasional joke about our culture. The problem is, these jokesters and mockers and challengers really mean it. They really do seem to hate our historical culture and the values that founded our nation.
An excellent book well worth reading or listening to is "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" by Mark Steyn. He identifies our "values" problem as the greatest challenge to our success in the face of Islamic resurgence. To all of our valueless libs, can you say "Dhimmi" dummy?
I Don't Blame Musharraf
Pakistan is a "moderate" Islamic nation, it has been our ally in the war on terror (which really should be renamed, more accurately, "the war on the religion of hate and intolerance") and it has lots of nukes.
There has been increasing terrorist activity by the Jahadi wing of Islam in Pakistan (blowing up non-Muslim businesses, etc.) not to mention their hosting (involuntarily???) Al Quida in the Paki-Afgan mountains. Our nation has urged President Musharraf to do something meaningful in response to this recent run up in Jahadi activity in his nation.
So now Musharraf is doing something: clamping down on dissident activity, e.g. civil rights attornies, the media, and others who are making his fight against terrorism difficult.
And the United States and Britain are objecting. Michell Malkin calls this a "train wreck".
It appears we are expecting Musharraf to fight Islamic terror in the same way we do... without knowing who the enemy is and without teeth. And we will withhold our billions in aid if he does things his way and not our way. Wow. Yes, trainwreck.
Do I need to spell out the likely outcome if we bribe him to do things "our way?"
If he insists on doing things HIS way...
* We will withhold our billions in aid and the radicals Musharraf was resisting will fill the vacuum
* We will have the first nuclear armed radical Islamic nation.
Or, if he bows to OUR demands...
* He will be ineffective in his fight against the radicals
* We will have the first nuclear armed radical Islamic nation.
We don't yet, as a nation, realize who the enemy is, and thus we haven't discovered the measures necessary to combat it. And we want to handcuff Musharraf in the same way we handcuff ourselves. I hear the train a comin'...
There has been increasing terrorist activity by the Jahadi wing of Islam in Pakistan (blowing up non-Muslim businesses, etc.) not to mention their hosting (involuntarily???) Al Quida in the Paki-Afgan mountains. Our nation has urged President Musharraf to do something meaningful in response to this recent run up in Jahadi activity in his nation.
So now Musharraf is doing something: clamping down on dissident activity, e.g. civil rights attornies, the media, and others who are making his fight against terrorism difficult.
And the United States and Britain are objecting. Michell Malkin calls this a "train wreck".
It appears we are expecting Musharraf to fight Islamic terror in the same way we do... without knowing who the enemy is and without teeth. And we will withhold our billions in aid if he does things his way and not our way. Wow. Yes, trainwreck.
Do I need to spell out the likely outcome if we bribe him to do things "our way?"
If he insists on doing things HIS way...
* We will withhold our billions in aid and the radicals Musharraf was resisting will fill the vacuum
* We will have the first nuclear armed radical Islamic nation.
Or, if he bows to OUR demands...
* He will be ineffective in his fight against the radicals
* We will have the first nuclear armed radical Islamic nation.
We don't yet, as a nation, realize who the enemy is, and thus we haven't discovered the measures necessary to combat it. And we want to handcuff Musharraf in the same way we handcuff ourselves. I hear the train a comin'...
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