Hating Obama's America

According to the left, I am now a member of a treasonous group. I cheered when President Obama and his newly made-over milquetoast wife made asses of themselves in Copenhagen while attempting to wheedle the Europeans into granting Chicago the 2016 Olympics. And I gnashed my teeth when the Nobel Prize Committee decided to fete Obama with the Peace Prize. So, that makes me an America-hater.

"Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?" asks Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, singling out Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as paradigmatic of the conservative "hate America" movement. "The problem for the addlebrained Obama-rejectionists is that the president, as far as they concerned, couldn't possible do anything right, and thus is unworthy of any conceivable recognition."

No, Eugene, that isn't the problem for us. Here's our problem: President Obama seeks an America that resembles modern France far more than the free and prosperous America our forefathers fought and bled and died for. President Obama's America is not America: It is the United Nations writ large, with socialist redistribution at its center and moral relativism at its core. I root against President Obama's America because I don't want to see it become a reality. And the only way it will become a reality is if President Obama is able to make it a reality.

And so I root for events that drain away Obama's political capital.

I rooted against him when he visited Copenhagen to bring the Olympics home. That's not because I opposed the Olympics going to Chicago -- a Chicago Olympics would have been great. I rooted against Obama because if he had achieved his goals with regard to the Olympics, too many Americans would have thought that such success somehow legitimated his agenda here at home -- an agenda totally at odds with all notions of constitutionality, limited government, and liberty of enterprise and thought. By winning in Copenhagen, he would have raised his chances of ramming through his domestic and foreign policy programs -- and that's the last thing I want to see.

I was enraged when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. That's not simply because I think he didn't deserve it, though he clearly doesn't. It's because the Peace Prize was just another sop to Obama's inflated ego. It was a blatant attempt by the "world community" to hand Obama a personal consolation prize for his fiasco in Copenhagen. It was their attempt to screw his courage to the sticking place, to reinforce his self-inflicted perception that he is a world leader destined to direct America toward a more global future. The Nobel Committee gave Obama the Peace Prize because he has already demonstrated real commitment to undermining American strength on the world stage, and they want to see him follow through on that commitment.

In short, I don't root against President Obama because I hate America. I root against President Obama because I hate his vision for America.

It is those like President Obama who see America as a dark and dangerous place that requires earth-shaking change along European lines. It is those like President Obama who feel that Americans are nothing special -- and that America is nothing special. As Obama himself put it: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, America is not exceptional -- it's just because we live here that we feel it is. And the American people are not exceptional -- they are merely Greeks or Brits or Russians or Chinese or Frenchmen born within our borders, with values no better or worse than their foreign compatriots.

Obama's belief in America's unexceptionalism -- his view that America's government, not her people, is the formative force in her values; his view that the American people bear the stain of racial, sexual and military guilt; his view that America must abandon her scrupulous adherence to equality of opportunity in favor of equality of result, traditional morals in favor of alternative ethics, and liberty of enterprise in favor of redistributionism -- that set of beliefs is antithetical to what makes America great.

So yes, I hate Obama's America. Because Obama's America isn't America -- it's the European view of America, implemented from high office. Opposing the total redefinition of America isn't anti-American; it's patriotic. And opposing those, like Obama, who push for that drastic redefinition, isn't "hating America" -- it's fighting in favor of the America that ended slavery, built the greatest economic empire in world history and liberated tens of millions around the globe. If that isn't patriotic, I don't know what is.

Read more...

No More Americanization

Melissa Clouthier writes the following column for RightWingNews:

The impulse is to say Soto-may-er. But that wouldn't be correct. The proper pronunciation is Soto-may-YOUR and with a opening of the mouth to get the proper fullness and roll of the tongue. 

Sigh.

Remember when people Americanized their names? Partly, it made their names easier to say. Mostly, people just wanted to be American. Fully American.

When the in-laws came from Italy, Italian was most certainly not spoken. They were Americans and they spoke English. In the second generation, that would be grandma who is 92, there is not even the remotest hint of Italy in her voice though she is only the second generation here in America.

Not so now with some folks. Oh no. Acculturation is akin to living in the closet and hiding your ancestral glory. Much better to keep the Puerto Rican accent even though you've grown up on American soil.

My uncle is of Mexican descent. He speaks Spanish and knows five dialects. When he speaks English it is not Spanglish. It's English. It is not English with the twang of Spanish hovering over him. I dare say, if I asked him if his Mexican heritage makes his judgment more stellar, he would say no. I'm quite sure he wouldn't say that being a man makes him smarter. And yet, he finds a way to integrate his Mexican heritage and embrace his history.

Generations of Americans have done this. They know the language of the old country. They keep certain traditions. But they were eager to be American. They were eager to Americanize their name, even. It was symbolic. It was a blessed gift to have this country and people were proud to be a part of it. A shortened name meant becoming new and American.

So, while President Barack Obama can say Pak-ee-stahn correctly and every newscaster is embracing his inner Latina pronouncing Soto-may-YOUR with relish, I just see more of an effort to elevate other cultures in relation to the American culture.

For the left, It isn't about proper pronunciation it's about putting America in her place. And her place is no better than any other place, including 3rd world racist, sexist, intolerant, nuclear-armed holes like Pakistan. Well, I say America is better. America is better than Mexico. It's safer. There are more jobs. There is less corruption (for the time being). America is better than pretty much any place in the world I can think of, actually.

People who live here, myself included, are damn lucky to be here by birthright. And those who choose to become citizens are making the best decision of their lives. Their whole future will change.

So, a kid from Puerto Rico can come to America, get educated in the best schools and be put forth as a potential Supreme Court Justice for the best country in the world. That's America. It's great. And America is bigger than our collective pasts. She is better than the places we came from. We do well to melt into her beauty and live to rise to her ideals.

Americanization is a good thing. Assimilating and changing to fit America's mold is what makes this country different from the fractured and racist Europe. So those who are so intent on elevating other cultures might want to consider the outcome of their actions. America doesn't need to turn into a place where races are Balkanized and marginalized by neighborhoods, language, religion and culture. That would be a destructive place.

America needs to continue to be a melting pot. I'm Melissa Clouthier. It is not Cloo-tee-ay. It is Cloth-ee-er. I'm American and proud of it.

Read more...

Confusion About Capitalism

From The American Spectator

By Ralph R. Reiland on 5.12.09 @ 6:07AM

"Only 53 percent of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism," according to an April survey by Rasmussen.

Age made a large difference in how Americans viewed capitalism and socialism, according to the survey, with capitalism getting the worst grades among adults under 30. Only 37 percent of the under-30s favored capitalism, 33 percent preferred socialism, and 30 percent were undecided. It sounds like they could vote in a Castro if he had a good smile.

The preference for socialism, in contrast, dropped to 26 percent among the 30-somethings in the Rasmussen survey, and dropped to just 13 percent among adults over 40.

By party, Republicans by an 11-to-1 margin said that capitalism was superior to socialism, while Democrats were more pro-socialist and more evenly divided, with only 39 percent preferring capitalism, 30 percent favoring socialism, and 31 percent undecided.

Rasmussen didn't define socialism or capitalism for the respondents during the survey, so we really don't know how many of the aforementioned responses were based on even the slightest knowledge about the two economic systems.

In January, for instance, I surveyed 50 recent high school graduates, now all in college or on their way. To the question, "Define capitalism in 10 to 20 words," here are some of the written responses, not atypical:

"Capitalism is making the most money for the government and having the government control the people." 

"Capitalism is the money that is in the government. It is when the government controls all the money."

"Capitalism is based on a money-hungry nation, seeking to establish power through money."

"Capitalism is when an economy is based on the needs of the people."

"Capitalism is when the government takes a bigger role in the economy and controls more things."

"Capitalism is when the government is the only one deciding laws and regulations."

"I have no clue what capitalism is because I've never paid any attention to politics or the world around me until this year."

"Capitalism is everything that makes our government run properly."

"Capitalism is how the government is run. It is the government system."

"Capitalism is when the government has complete control over the decisions that the country makes."

Those responses, coming primarily from students in the top half of their class in allegedly high-quality school systems, don't provide much encouragement about what's going on in high school classes in history, political science, government or business (or much confidence in the value of the Rasmussen survey).

Not all the responses were that bad. One student, for example, wrote: "Capitalism promotes individualism. It is a free market system that allows individuals to use their entrepreneurial skills to advance their lives." Another wrote, "Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth and the means of producing wealth are privately owned and controlled, rather than publicly controlled or state-owned." Wrote a third student, "Capitalism is an economic system based on markets (both regarding markets for goods and services and markets for labor) and based on the private ownership and private control of capital." And more succinctly from another student, "Capitalism rewards hard work and risk-taking -- the opposite of socialism and communism."

The bad news is that there's nothing to keep this latter group of better-informed students from being out-voted by the former and larger group of less-knowledgeable students.

The good news is that it's not very hard to get these students on the right track once they're exposed to even a modicum of information regarding the fundamental differences between capitalism, socialism and communism.

On the final exam in an economics course that I just completed teaching, one question asked students to evaluate capitalism. Wrote one student, not that many semesters out of high school, in a not atypical response:

Capitalism represents a profound change in human thinking that occurred over the past 400 years, a drop in the bucket in time. And yet, these recent centuries have seen remarkable and historic advances, improvements in the quality of life for the masses that were unthinkable in the Dark Ages, due overwhelmingly to free market enterprise. Capitalism carries a host of inherent positives -- the self-regulating effects of competition, workers with specialized skills who can command a livable wage, increasing technological advances, voluntary exchange between workers, consumers and businesses, the property rights of citizens, the encouragement of risk-taking and business creation. Most importantly, capitalism marks a "rags to riches" story never before seen in history, wherein hard work and a cutting edge mind can lead the poorest individual from poverty to wealth.

The bottom line? It looks like we need a bigger supply of pro-capitalist teachers.

Read more...

Security Before Politics

Porter J. Goss writes the following for the Washington Post:

Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

-- We understood what the CIA was doing.

-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. After Sept. 11, the general outcry was, "Why don't we have better overseas capabilities?" I fear that in the years to come this refrain will be heard again: once a threat -- or God forbid, another successful attack -- captures our attention and sends the pendulum swinging back. There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.

Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.

We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.

The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison between our professionalism and their brutality.

Our enemies do not subscribe to the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. "Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask. Instead of taking risks, our intelligence officers will soon resort to wordsmithing cables to headquarters while opportunities to neutralize brutal radicals are lost.

The days of fortress America are gone. We are the world's superpower. We can sit on our hands or we can become engaged to improve global human conditions. The bottom line is that we cannot succeed unless we have good intelligence. Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.

Read more...

America's Biggest Threat

Step aside, al-queda.  America now has a bigger threat.

Homeland security is shifting its focus. The office of Homeland Security under the Obama administration has identified newer and bigger threats to America.  No longer will be on the lookout for Arab bombers looking to bomb bridges or fly planes into buildings.  No longer will we be cautious about middle-eastern men shouting "Allah is Great!" as they seek to kill American citizens around the world.

No, indeed. 

Now the biggest threat to America are people who oppose abortion and taxes.

Do you need to go back and re-read that?  It's not a typo. 

That's right. People who hold conservative, traditional American values, who honor our military, who love God and country, who are tired of tax cheats and the nanny-state ... those are the people we really have to watch out for.

Hmmm.... I wonder what the food is like in an interment camp...

Read more...

Do We CONSIDER Ourselves a Christian Nation?

Yes, Obama lied.  We do, in fact, consider ourselves a Christian nation...

And the surveys say....

- 80% to 90% of Americans identify themselves as "Christian" (depending on the survey used)

- 55% of Americans believe that the Constitution "establishes a Christian nation."

- 50% of Americans would allow schools to teach the Bible as a factual text in history classes

- 75% of Americans view the United States as a "Christian Nation" whether or not the Constitution identifies us as such

Read more...

Are we a Christian Nation? Obama vs. McCain

Obama's view:  "We do not consider ourselves a Christian Nation.  We consider ourselves a nation of citizens ... with ideals and principles" ... but I guess I don't know where those ideals and principles come from because I didn't grow up in America and my tele-prompter isn't telling me.

John McCain:  “I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, ‘I only welcome Christians.’ We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.”

Read more...

Was America Founded As a Christian Nation? (Part VI)

5. THE FOUNDERS WEREN’T ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS OR SECULARISTS; THEY WERE, ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION, DEEPLY SERIOUS CHRISTIANS. The comments of John Adams might count as typical of the Revolutionary generation. In a July, 1796 diary entry, the then-Vice President of the United States declared: “The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity….” He strongly supported the use of tax money in Massachusetts to support church construction and religious instruction. Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and leading Colonial physician, in 1800 wrote sketches of his colleagues in the Continental Congress in which he evaluated them based on their personal religiosity.

About Sam Adams of Massachusetts he wrote: “He considered national happiness and the public patronage of religion as inseparably connected; and so great was his regard for public worship, and the means of promoting religion, that he constantly attended divine service in the German church in York town while Congress sat there, when there was no service in their chapel, although he was ignorant of the German language.” 

About Sam’s cousin John Adams, Rush wrote: “He was strictly moral, and at all times respectful to Religion.” Of Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Rush observed: He was not less distinguished for his piety than his patriotism. He once objected to a motion for Congress sitting on a Sunday upon an occasion which he thought did not require it, and gave as a reason for his objection a regard of the commands of his Maker.” Rush praised his Pennsylvania colleague James Wilson who “had been educated for a clergyman in Scotland and was a profound and accurate scholar,” and Charles Thompson as “a man of great learning and general knowledge, at all times a genuine Republican, and in the evening of his life a sincere Christian.”

Of course, many of the Founding Fathers held religious beliefs that challenged the Orthodoxy of their day, but they continued the assiduous study of the Bible (as a lifelong passion in the case of Jefferson and Franklin) and showed little sympathy for the excesses of the French Revolution with its denunciation of Christianity of proclamation of a new “Age of Reason.” Even the most radical of the Founders, pamphleteer Thomas Paine, would fit more comfortably with today’s religious conservatives than with the secular militants who seek to claim his as one of their own. This restless Revolutionary traveled to France to take part in their Revolution and wrote a scandalous book “The Age of Reason,” which proclaimed his “Deism” while attacking traditional Christian doctrine—a position that alienated and offended virtually all of his former American comrades (including many who have been mistakenly identified as “Deists” themselves). 

Nevertheless, in 1797 he delivered a speech to a learned French society insisting that schools must concentrate on the study of God, presenting his arguments with an eloquent insistence on recognizing the Almighty that would delight James Dobson of Focus on the Family, but mortally offend the secular militants of the ACLU.

“It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin,” Thomas Paine declaimed. “Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles. He can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short, and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only, and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the author of them.” 

In short, even the least religiously committed of the founders wanted to approach public education in a manner that would deeply offend today’s uncompromising separationists, and those who ludicrously claim that the designers of our Constitution intended a “secular nation.”

Anyone who claims today that our country was not founded as a "Christian Nation" or that we do not today consider ourselves to be a "Christian Nation", needs to go back and study history. 

I suppose the recent comments by Obama the Tele-Prompter should be expected.  That's what happens when we elect someone who was not raised in America to be an American and who may not even be eligible for the office he currently holds.

Read more...