A Thought on Bristol Palin

Bristol Palin won this week.

Oh, I know that Jennifer Grey got the DWTS Mirrorball Trophy, and deservedly so. I know that Kyle Massey came in second place -- also, I think, deservedly so. I am happy for them both; I do not mean to diminish their accomplishments. But Bristol's was the greatest victory.

Ever since she was pulled into the national spotlight two and a half years ago, she has had to endure thousands of people saying horrible things about her. They call her a slut, a tramp, an idiot. They call her fat and stupid. They use her ex-boyfriend, a young man apparently wholly without scruples, in an attempt to smear her and her family. They call her a hypocrite for daring to talk to other young women about how she made a mistake and how others ought not follow in her footsteps. When she started on Dancing With the Stars, they went into overdrive, seeming to grow more enraged and deranged with every week that they saw that their opinions were not in the majority -- but rather than conceding that perhaps they did not have a monopoly on truth, they lashed out, screaming about a vast right-wing conspiracy. One man shot his television and then threatened to shoot his wife over the matter. Others decided to take a more direct approach and sent death threats to Bristol and Mark -- and even then I saw commenters who refused to believe that perhaps the whole thing had gone too far, but rather insisted that news of death threats was nothing more than a publicity stunt.

My husband thought I was ridiculous for following the controversy as closely as I did; perhaps he's right. But it was rather like watching a car wreck -- I found myself continually stunned by the level of vitriol aimed at this young woman and, by proxy, to her mother. I held to a vain hope that people would see sense and realize that no one is worth that kind of frothing hate, let alone a 20-year-old young woman whose main offense had been to be the unapologetic daughter of a larger target of that same frothing hate.

Bristol did not win the Mirrorball Trophy. Her victory was a much more substantial one. She endured the screaming mob with her head held high. She refused to cower, to surrender her happiness, but instead redoubled her efforts in rehearsal. She won the hearts and earned the applause of vast swaths of her audience, and on the last night of the show, we all saw her let go of the last vestiges of  her inhibiting shyness and just be herself out on the dance floor. It was a beautiful thing to behold.

There are those who have crowed about Bristol coming in third place, hoping that this last arrow in their quiver will take her down. But no: the smile on her face when her name was announced speaks volumes. She was content with the standings, pleased with her own efforts, and happy for her competitors. Bristol was poised and gracious in her "defeat." But more importantly, she had retained self when so many sought to destroy her. And she had not merely held her ground, but gained more as she won over her skeptical (but sane) viewers. Carrie Ann Inaba had said, over the course of the competition, something to the effect that there's nothing more beautiful than to see someone recognize and claim their own inner power. The comment was not directed at Bristol, but it certainly applies, because that is what we all have had the privilege of watching these last several weeks. She could have surrendered to the madding crowd, but she did not.

And that is why Bristol Palin won.

A Fun New Blogtoy

I've received a fair amount of complaints about the comment process here on Blogger, and trust me, I'm in wholehearted agreement. I want feedback, so I want people to use the comments section , but apparently whoever designed comments on this site hates people. Or something.

I didn't want to move after taking the trouble to set things up just how I want them, but I was starting to think that I didn't really have any other options. And then I stumbled upon the solution earlier today. I installed IntenseDebate here at the Lucy Emerson Blog; it's the same commenting apparatus they use over at the Breitbart Big sites. It's quite user-friendly -- if you have a commenter profile on, say, a Wordpress blog, then you can use that profile here. Huzzah!

So please, feel free to leave any questions or comments you might have. I welcome the feedback.

Govt 101: Balance of Power Redux and the Articles of Confederation

I love a good object lesson, and as it's one of my primary methods of learning, it is also one of my primary methods of teaching. The problem with an object lesson in a bloggish setting is that it doesn't always translate well. I've had family in town for most of the past week, which kept me occupied, but I also spent a fair amount of time musing on my last post here, and the fact that it didn't come off quite as I'd hoped. It seemed as though something was missing; I return, sore puzzler and all, in hopes of adding in those missing bits.

To recap: In our last lesson I showed you two triangles, one resting on its base and one on its tip. Each was a representation of the balance of power between governments and individuals. Whoever gets the long side calls the shots, and there is no such thing as each party involved claiming a long side. Government and individual are diametrically opposed in a power struggle, so this is a contest where one side's losses are the other side's gains. I repeat: there is no such thing as a situation wherein both the government and the individual can maximize their respective power. FDR was fond of talking about a "third way" in which government power could expand without trampling on individual freedoms; this "third way," like most policies FDR was fond of, was a load of malarkey.

But, like most things in this world, the balance of power is not a binary matter. It is not an all-or-nothing situation, which is why the word "balance" is in the term. I touched on this a bit last time, but I don't think I went as in-depth with it as I ought to have, so I'll take another swing at it here.

(I do promise you that if I get largely negative feedback about the content of my writing, I will not embark on a nationwide speaking tour in which I drone on and on, stringing together anecdotes of various degrees of honesty, in an attempt to convince you all that you're simply too stupid to grasp the higher nature of my thinking, and should therefore just trust that I Am Correct.)

In our first Govt 101 lesson, we were introduced to a highly simplified political spectrum; the second held the aforementioned triangles. If we were to put them together, we would get something like this:

The colors purple and yellow were not just chosen because they were the colors of my first high school (though that did play a minor role) but also because they have no affiliation with either major political party.  Each color is representative of the amount of power wielded by the government (purple) or by the individual (yellow). The choice of the darker color for government was no accident either, as it is significantly easier for government to lay claim to power than individuals; and once the government has laid claim to said powers, it's a nasty business trying to wrest them back. Think of it this way -- would you rather have to paint a purple wall yellow, or a yellow wall purple? Same idea.

Of course, what we have illustrated above is an example of extremes, and as such, is not anything you'll actually find in the real world -- at least not for any significant period of time. A government that has assumed total power over its citizenry is just asking to be overthrown; while, as we discussed earlier, total lack of government is as good as an engraved invitation to a power-hungry despot. So what you largely find in the world, governmentally speaking, is a series of bottom-resting triangles with purple bases and varying degrees of yellow at the top. Why? Because government holding the balance of power is the natural order of things, and whoever controls the long end or the base of the triangle controls how much power the other party gets.

And we have once again come to the dilemma of our Founding Fathers. As British citizens, they enjoyed levels of freedom not had by, say, French subjects. English Common Law was a large source of inspiration for the Bill of Rights. The problem, though, with English Common Law was that it wasn't exactly written down in the books, and was enforced entirely at the will of the King. Theirs was a bottom-resting government, with the yellow/purple boundary somewhere in the middle of the triangle, like so:

The Americans didn't really have a problem with this; their problem came when King George decided to move that dividing line up the triangle, thereby increasing his own power, thereby decreasing that of the individual -- all without consent of the governed.

And herein lies the problem -- if the governing power is calling the shots, they don't really have to care about the will of the governed. A wise ruler will do so anyway, or at least pretend to, if only to avoid the sort of disgruntlement that precedes revolution. But the fact remains that your degree of autonomy is entirely at the mercy of the ruling class in this, the natural order of things; and if you find yourself at the mercy of a tyrant, your options are to suck it up or commit to a war that you're unlikely to win. Neither is terribly appealing.

After the remarkable underdog victory that was the Revolutionary War, Americans decided that they didn't want their descendants to ever have to make that awful choice again. They wanted a system of governance in which the consent of the governed, or the will of the people, was paramount -- in other words, they knew they needed to invert the natural balance of power. Their first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, looked something like this:

In order for the individual to hold the balance of power, and thereby determine how much power will be retained by the government, you have to put the whole thing on its head. The AoC was designed a bit like a stand to keep the inverted triangle from tipping over. Many Americans were understandably leery of a system in which the government had too much power, so their main branch of government was the legislative (deemed the branch most likely to be responsive to the people) shown here as a box meant to hold the triangle steady, with the stubby little executive and judicial branches serving as legislative supports.

The problem with the Articles of Confederation is that the federal government had too little power, as indicated by the Curvy Lines of Wobbliness above. The purview of the federal government under the AoC wasn't so different from the same under the Constitution -- handle national defense, international affairs, and make sure the states play nice. Unfortunately, federal power under the Articles, like British Common Law, was almost wholly enforced (or not) at the pleasure of the sovereign -- in this case, the people, acting largely through their various state governments. (States wielded quite a lot of power, but they were and are much more responsive to their constituents than a federal government can be; therefore, for simplicity's sake, I have included them in the yellow.) Sure, there were laws, but the federal government had very little ability to enforce them. It is impossible to do a job properly when you have the responsibility but not the necessary authority, and so things started to fall apart. And our Founding Fathers knew that, without an improvement upon their initial design, their grand experiment in individual sovereignty would come to a dismal and premature end.

And so they went back to the drawing board.

Government 101: The Balance of Power

Nowadays we see a lot in advertising about "natural." It's usually accompanied by vast open fields, cool clear springs, majestic forests, and associated warm fuzzy imagery. "Natural" is by definition a good thing, we are told. But is it?

As with most things in life, the answer is not always. I don't know about you, but my house is an artificial construct, as are most of the things in it. If I had tried to give birth to my son in a more "natural" way, the experience almost certainly would have killed me. Some of the most potent poisons known to man are 100% natural, as are both deadly germs and the creatures that carry them. In the LDS Church we have a scripture that says, "The natural man [that is, a person who makes no effort to curb his impulses] is an enemy to God."

Nature is great, but it is only by manipulating those things found naturally in this world that people are able to even survive, let alone thrive. And government is no different; the natural balance of power amongst people looks something like this:

At first glance this might seem like a good thing -- "Woo-hoo, we're at the top!" Unfortunately, this is not the case. The choice of a triangle was a deliberate one: not only is it shown here in its natural state (i.e., resting on its base) but it's the perfect representation of the finite nature of power. Unlike wealth, power does not grow when shared (note I said shared, a voluntary action, and not redistributed, an involuntary one), but rather the more you give to a governing body, the less of it you have.

The proper way to look at this triangle is to know that whoever has the long side is calling the shots, as well as to know that the individual and the government will always be directly opposite each other in the balance of power. For instance, let's say we have two nations where the above triangle is an accurate representation of the balance of power in each nation; but one is rather more totalitarian than the other. Their graphs would look something like this:

The purple is power retained by the government; the yellow is power granted to individuals. And yes, individuals do have more say over their own lives in Country A, and the choice between the two would not be difficult. But the fact remains that in both cases it's the government granting that amount of power to the individual -- meaning that the government can also take it away. That black bar moves up and down at their whim, and there's not much, if anything, you can do about it.

Okay, so this is the natural balance of power -- what is the unnatural then?

Glad you asked. It looks something like this:

In this chart, it's the individual who has the long side, and is therefore calling the shots. There is, however, a rather massive problem -- when was the last time you were able to stand a triangular object on its point? If you managed it, how long did it stay up? This is an unstable condition at best; this is a chart in which the government has too little power. Just as a triangular object balanced in such a way will inevitably succumb to gravitational forces and topple onto its side, so too is a nation that is governed in such a manner ripe for the taking by those who are power-hungry and ruthless enough to grab for it. Trouble will come, power will shift, the triangle will fall over, and the individual will once again be left with the tip.

(One of the oft-told lies about the Tea Party movement is that we want no government whatsoever. Not true. Total lack of government -- anarchy -- is antithetical to the cause of freedom for the simple reason that it cannot last. People cannot maintain a society with no laws, and laws are useless without a governing body to enforce them. Such a setup is an open invitation for the aforementioned power-hungry and ruthless to step in. This is why you often see proponents of Communism, a vastly totalitarian form of government, marching under an anarchist banner. It may seem contradictory, but in reality anarchy -- a breakdown of law and order -- would be a very quick way of establishing a totalitarian regime.)

And we come to the end of this admittedly depressing lesson with an equally depressing question: Is there nothing to be done to ensure that the balance of power rests with the individual? Are we forever doomed to be subject to the whims of a ruling class? This was the question that was presented to the Founding Fathers of the United States of America not once, but twice. And in our next lesson, we will have a look at both of their answers.

Some Thoughts About Election Day

This is very encouraging -- Sarah Palin's Class of 2010. It's a good reminder for those of us still surrounded by people who think that Progressives do anything other than further their own power that yesterday was a day of many victories.

Speaking of -- Oregon? California? NEVADA? Have you people lost your minds? Or is it just that Progressive policies have so crippled your states by chasing actual business people away that you all have populations heavy on the moonbats? No one really pays attention to Oregon (California's slightly-saner little sister), so I'll say it: Do you honestly look to the south at a once-fabulous state that is now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and say to yourself, "Mm-mm, gimme some of that!"?! And OR4! Peter DeFazio? AGAIN? This man hasn't faced a real challenge in ages, and now when he does he whips out both barrels of the smear machine, and you elect him anyway?? This is the same man who spent about 17 hours last spring pretending he wouldn't vote for ObamaCare so he could mug for the cameras a little bit!

"Go on, Pete, no one pays attention to Oregon; go pretend you don't like it and grab some limelight."

"But wouldn't it be rude to lead my constituents on like that?"

"Please! Who else are they going to vote for?"

Of course, we know that the above exchange is fiction. The idea of Mr. DeFazio caring what his constituents thought is laughable.

Also, he seems to model his campaign signs after whatever the current Pepcid AC box looks like. Just sayin'.

And grats, Oregon, on re-electing Gov. Moonbeam Jr, a man who, after his last two terms, even The Oregonian said was a failure. Good grief.

The idiocy of vast portions of the Left Coast aside, though, yesterday was a huge step in the right direction. And it might sound weird, but I'm kinda glad we didn't win the Senate. If we had won both, then Obama could easily blame all the failures of his agenda on the GOP Congress. With the Senate still in D control, this will be a bit more difficult.

The thing I think we all need to keep most in mind is that yesterday was not the war; it was simply a battle. It was an important battle, no doubt, and the results prove that those of us who wish to fundamentally restore our nation rather than transform it still have a fighting chance in all this. But yesterday was not the end of the heavy lifting; it was the beginning. Obama may, like all bullies, making conciliatory gestures to the new balance of power, but he will not move to the center. The Progressives will double down, and it's going to get really bumpy. Things will have to get worse before they get better, which is why now more than ever we need that firm reliance on Divine Providence that Thomas Jefferson wrote about. But do not mistake that firm reliance for a piggyback ride. As the saying goes, work like it's all up to you; pray like it's all up to Him. If you don't have a rep in Michele Bachmann's new Constitutional Caucus, and your rep will not join, then adopt someone else's. Make it a new hobby to write him or her -- encourage, strengthen, admonish when necessary. Pray for them all. These people are walking into the lions' den; make sure that they are well armed.

Now is the time to continue to educate ourselves and those around us, but also to prepare physically, mentally, spiritually, and materially for tough times; for they will come. But just as in the generations who came before us, we can face them down and emerge, perhaps a bit battered and bruised, but victorious.

Not a Bad Romance

For your listening pleasure, the fruits of my labor this week:




This would not have been possible without the hard work of the delightful Benjamin Shenberger of SubZero Audio. Round of applause!

As always, please feel free to post this anywhere you wish. In the interest of not cluttering up my front page, since Blogger seems to have an issue with embedded video and pagebreaks, I included the lyrics on the song's YouTube page.

I haven't forgotten Govt. 101 -- I've just been hard at work cranking this out this week. Stay tuned.

Govt 101: Learning Left From Right

I've been pondering the direction to take this blog for awhile now, and I think I may have hit upon it.

I was talking to my relatively politically apathetic younger sister the other day, and realized that she really doesn't know the things I've come to believe or how I got to my conclusions. Basically, my whole immediate family thinks I'm nuts for waving the Tea Party flag. So while I'll still be commenting on current events whenever one captures my fancy and I think I have a point that needs making, in the meantime I'll be writing as though my lovely little sister has actually taken me up on my offer. Even if she doesn't, I hope that someone can use this to help communicate their own ideas to rather incredulous friends and family members. I can't be the only one, right?

Right?

At any rate, Jennifer, this is for you.

GOVT 101: Learning Left From Right


When I was a junior in high school, I took an AP US History course. Early in the course, we discussed what constitutes right wing vs left wing stances on various issues, and to illustrate, our teacher drew a little chart on the board that looked something like this:

I dutifully copied it down, but something about it didn't seem right, and I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until about ten years later (which, yes, was fairly recently) that I finally figured out what was wrong with this picture: What are shown as complete opposites -- Communism and Monarchy -- are in fact both totalitarian forms of government. They are not opposites; they are at least cousins. The only substantial difference between the two is one of administration.

Most people nowadays would take that first spectrum, replace "monarchy" with "fascism" (monarchies are soooo 18th century) and call it good. But this leaves us with the same problem -- what are being shown as polar opposites are in fact closely related ideologies.

The fact is that the true left and right spectrum looks like this:

In simple terms: the more decisions and responsibilities you have over your own life, the farther to the right your government is. The more it makes those decisions and assumes those responsibilities for you, the farther to the left it is. Right equals less intrusive; left equals more intrusive. If you sit down and start putting various forms of government on this spectrum, you'll notice it's a little left-heavy. Tyranny has many names.

(And please don't think I'm trying to disparage my history teacher in any way. He's a good teacher and a smart man. He got the chart that he drew from the curriculum; it appears to be regarded as common knowledge. Unfortunately, this is a case where the "common knowledge" turns out to be a bunch of bunk.)

Coming next: More charty awesomeness. Stay tuned.

That's What You Get

 
I reworked the lyrics to this song over the summer -- "waking up in Vegas" seemed to me to be a good metaphor for how a growing portion of the 52% of the country who voted Obama in 2008 is beginning to feel about that vote. The vocals are mine too. I put it up on YouTube a little over a week ago, where it has so far garnished over 800 hits. Not bad for a first run.

("First run, you say?" Oh yes. There are more like this to come.)

If anyone reading this has the skillz to put together video to go with it, by all means feel free to do so and/or contact me.

And the lyrics; everybody sing along!


You gotta help me out
It's all a blur last year
I voted for this guy
Then he up and disappeared
He promised Hope and Change
But we just got more of the same
Lies and corruption
Spending all our kids' money

Just called the White House
To give a piece of my mind
Got called a racist
And then they laughed and told me

Better get used to all the D.C. drama
That's what you get for voting for Obama
Shut up, get back in line, do as you're told now
That's what you get for voting for Obama

The media spin won't fly
I've seen it with my own eyes
Spare me your frickin'
Tingly legs, you don't fool me

Just called the Congress
And told them this is a crime
Got called a Nazi
And then they laughed and told me

We're gonna make this government grow massive
That's what you get for voting for Progressives
Shut up, get back in line, do as you're told now
That's what you get for voting for Progressives

They try to push all this
Information overload
Try to keep their own control
Send out an SOS
And get the word out
We're gonna take back that town
Start this November
Remember what they told us
Remember what they told us
Remember what to tell them, tell hem, tell them

Oh
Get out, you'll have to find a new vocation
That's what you get for messing with our nation
Shut up and get into the unemployed line
That's what you get for messing with our nation

That's what you get baby
Send them packing
Take take take it back now
Don't need a bailout, baby
Just need a ballot baby

What I've Been Up To

Shortly after I started this blog, I started to become a more active participant in another, much larger blog I was following. This one kind of fell by the wayside as a result.

Recently, however, I was on the receiving end of a public missive from the other blog, the upshot of which is that I am no longer welcome on their site, stemming from their misreading of an email I had sent them.

I'm not gonna lie -- I took that missive rather hard. But the truth is that, in the end, there is no such thing as bad experience -- it's all in what you do with it. So, after stepping back and taking a hard look at the situation, I've decided to pick this back up. I felt prompted to make this blog in the first place; perhaps this whole mess has been a sort of Nudge from On High to get back on task. I am sorry for my hiatus, and will do my best to post here regularly.

H/t to IMAO for the inspiration -- I just kinda ran with it.

And many many thanks to the Boyz at Hillbuzz for posting it on their blog, where it will certainly get many more views than it will here. :)

Check out the Zazzle store if you feel like wearing it. Just sayin'.

Let's get this and a thousand other paper cuts out there. Ridicule is one of our most potent weapons.

A thought on rights

This one is an angelaisms original, born of a quiet moment with my son at a Sonic drive-in:

Rights and responsibilities are inextricably linked; you cannot separate the two. A right that is not exercised responsibly will run amok, eventually trampling upon the rights of others. Meanwhile, trying to live up to a responsibility without the necessary rights is an exercise in futility and frustration. A government that attempts to relieve its citizens of responsibility is not granting them rights -- rather, it is disempowering its citizenry by assuming those rights in their stead.

The Intolerance of Tolerating Tolerance but Not Intolerance ... or Something

With all the brouhaha about the whackadoodle in Florida who thinks that certain books ought to be used as kindling, I figured I should weigh in on it. Actually, I think I just did -- if you're still in the dark as to my position on that, then let me refer you to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin on the matter -- I think they sum it up nicely. Let me also emphasize that, while I couldn't give a flying fart about what homicidal maniacs may or may not be offended at, it does annoy me that goodly portions of their insane ire will be directed at our troops who, due to equally insane Rules of Engagement, won't be able to do a damn thing about it. Also, having been on the receiving end of religious nastiness myself, my heart aches for the slap in the face that this is to all the Muslims, here in the U.S. and throughout the rest of the world, who actually like us, or at least don't want to kill us. Way to be classy, Pastor Jones and Co.

Come to think of it, what is it with pastors named Jones, and why do they persist in doing crazy and/or stupid things?

Anyway, I linked to Sarah Palin's astute take on the matter on my Facebook page; as a result, I got a message from my brother-in-law, who I am quite fond of. He told me that, while he agrees with Sarah's stance on the Koran-burning, her opinion on the Ground Zero Mosque was really just one of religious intolerance -- after all, if it was Catholics who had committed the terrorism, would we be so angry about a cathedral being built there? He then expressed his assurance that I, as a thinking person, shared his point of view.

Hahahahahahahahaha! No.

I appreciate being thought of as a thinking person -- believe me, there's been a lot of time in my life where that would have been a misnomer. And I have been thinking about this. A lot. I've talked to other people who have been thinking about this. I've heard arguments for and against. And I've come to my conclusions.

Is there any doubt that Imam Rauf and his merry band of Sharia enthusiasts have the right to build this mosque? No. They have just as much right as the Westboro Baptist Church does to picket funerals with signs that say, "God hates fags;" as much right as the NAACP has to levy vile, unfounded accusations against Tea Parties; as much right as communist/anarchist groups have to burn the flag; and yes, as much right as Pastor Jones and his cadre of haters have to burn a book.

But the very fact that he's insisting on building it at Ground Zero speaks volumes about this man's intentions. Christ said, "By their fruits shall ye know them," meaning, obviously, that a person's actions will tell you much more about the intents of his heart than his words ever could. By this one fact alone, we know that Imam Rauf and his ilk have no intention of building bridges, dialogue, or little doilies made of pink and white construction paper hearts. The very location of this proposed mosque is a deliberate act of provocation. To say that the opposition is born of intolerance or bigotry or xenophobia is as absurd as claiming that the main (or only) reason people oppose our President's policies is because of his relatively high cutaneous melanin levels. Muslims who are fundamentally opposed to the twisted ideals that drove those nineteen evil men to fly planes full of people into buildings full of other people would never dream of putting a mosque at Ground Zero. Why? Because no decent person would do that. You don't stab someone in the eye in a show of solidarity.

Having been, as mentioned earlier, at the receiving end of a fair amount of religious bigotry, I tend to be pretty open-minded about the religious beliefs and practices of other people. I don't care that Muslims tend to pray in the fetal position on special rugs, or that they seem to have a penchant for turbans. (I do care, quite a lot, about how the more radical ones treat women, little boys, gays, and apostates, but that's another topic.) To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, if it neither breaks legs nor picks pockets, I don't care. I don't even care if you want to worship the Purple Monkey Sock Puppet Zamboni. And then, if you want to build a shrine to honor your sock puppet -- by all means. Welcome to America. Don't litter. However, if you propose to put that shrine in a building that, nearly ten years ago, was baptized in the ashes of innocent people who were pulverized in the name of Zamboni -- well, then I take issue.

And we haven't even touched on the other unsavory crap surrounding this little project -- things like Rauf's fondness of Sharia law, or his taxpayer funded fundraising jaunt to the Middle East, or the fact that the mosque's first name was the Cordoba House, or this fun, new little soundbite about how moving the mosque would "endanger the troops." Cute. Maybe Rauf thought, "Hey, it worked for the guy with the stars on his shoulders." You know, Mr. Imam, when General David Petraeus says that something would endanger the troops, it's a warning. When you say it, it kinda comes across as a threat. Perhaps, if you were really concerned about the effect of your little Victory Mosque on U.S. troops, you would have planned to build it elsewhere in the first place. You know, since any sentient being could have guessed that the selection of this particular location would be seen as an affront to 9/11 victims and their families, and that lots of people would be stridently opposed to it. Just sayin'.

I pray that this thing gets moved. Or, if that won't happen, I fervently hope that Greg Gutfeld's plans for a gay bar next door come to fruition.

I could tolerate that.

The result of 8/28

My firm grasp of the English language notwithstanding, I often have a difficult time putting my feelings into words. Trying to do so often feels like trying to describe the taste of salt without using the word "salty," and the result rarely feels adequate.

Even so, it would be wrong of me to let August 28, 2010 pass by unmentioned, because it was a day that marked a profound change in me.

I was not one of the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Washington, D.C. to participate in the rally. Though I dearly wished to be a part of it, it would have required a miracle to make it possible, and I am not now at a point in my life where I can demand personal miracles of God. My miracle that day was a shared one -- the miracle of being able to watch an event as it was happening on the other side of the country.

I'd say I woke up early to watch, but that wouldn't be accurate, as I couldn't sleep at all the night before. So I sat up, and half an hour before the rally started I logged in to Facebook to start the live feed. I was not alone in this; more than 10,000 other people had the same idea. I had suspected that mere tissues would be inadequate, and was proved right when the rally started. I had a towel handy instead, and it served me well.

The speeches and music were moving and uplifting; the sheer goodness of both those on stage and those in the crowd was palpable, stretching the thousands of miles between Washington and little me, alone on my couch in the early hours of the day. By the end of the rally, I found myself no longer so much regretful at not having been there as I was profoundly grateful that I, along with over 125,000 others on Facebook alone, was able to participate at all.

The spin and the outright lies started up right away, as we knew they would. The event was preceded by wild claims of malicious intentions, and possibly the end of the world, by people who clearly had no idea what they were talking about. After the rally, the stories were mainly gross underestimates of the crowd, as well as a massive exercise in groupthink in which "reporters" repeatedly indicted the crowd for being "mostly white," mainly because that was the only potentially offensive thing that the crowd had done -- or, rather, been. (Nice to know that those JournoList contact sheets haven't gone to waste.) Apparently the irony of seeing nothing but the color of the majority of the crowd (hint: it's also the color of most of the U.S.) at a rally on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech was lost on these people.

Ordinarily things like this would have me spitting mad. I admit, it was a rather rude awakening when I initially found out that America's "trusted" media sources were not to be trusted at all, and I found myself seeing red at all of the injustices I had wakened to. "How could they do this?!" was my common refrain, and no matter how many times it was calmly explained to me our "fourth branch" of government is largely populated with Alinskyites, it rankled.

So imagine my surprise when, upon hearing all the nonsense spouted by media types in the aftermath of the Restoring Honor rally, my dominant emotion was not ire. It was amusement. Wry amusement.

Something clicked into place on Saturday, and solidified its position in my head even further the next three days -- it doesn't matter. More specifically, they do not matter. If people want to lie, to libel, to slander, to write and report the things they wish had happened rather than the things that did ... well, that's their lookout. Sooner or later the lies will get so ridiculous that no one will believe them anymore. That much has started already. Our revered Fourth Estate have sold their credibility for a mess of pottage that is heavy on the mess and lean on the pottage. The 8/28 rally could not have possibly made it any more clear that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" as the line between the two sides was thrown into stark relief. This struggle is not about parties; it is about being able to choose how to live our own lives in whatever way we see fit, and allowing each of our fellow human beings that same courtesy.

Make no mistake -- my change in attitude is not one of becoming apathetic. Far from it. 8/28 strengthened, at least doubled, my resolve to fulfill whatever role it is that God has for me here. My change in attitude is rather the result of seeing clearly, even second hand, where true strength lies, and the stark weakness of the self-storied "giants" of our time. Some people would call this "getting perspective." Those people are correct. What others say about or against me does not define me, it defines them. And all the slings and arrows of the world are of little use if I stand where God tells me to stand.

Thank you, Glenn. I, too, will pick up my stick.

Eric Holder and Race Relations

I mentioned earlier that I tend to mentally chew on things, and the process can take some time. This, I think, is mainly because I'm really not used to questioning with boldness. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of leftist thinking, which often requires shutting one's brain off.

I mention this because what I'm thinking about today is a statement made about a year and a half ago, and one that has been stuck in my craw ever since: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

This is, of course, from the man with the most amazingly selective eyesight I've ever seen, Attorney General Eric Holder. He said this in February of '09, and the uproar was immediate. My knee-jerk reflexes kicked in (I am, after all, a work in progress) and I joined in the furor in my own way, but there was then and still is now a part of me that agrees with the essence of that statement: too many people in America are afraid to talk about anything racial. And it is a sad state of affairs. We shouldn't have to pussyfoot around each other, terrified that some offhand look or remark might send a total stranger into a frothing-at-the-mouth conniption fit.

Unfortunately for Mr. Holder, this is where his moral authority ends. For Eric Holder to bemoan the abysmal state of race relations in this country is like a heroin dealer complaining about how there are too many drug addicts in the neighborhood, or an OPEC executive ranting that he's paying too much at the pump. The reason race relations in this country are nowhere near as good as they should be is because of people like Mr. Holder and his cadre of race-baiting hucksters who insist upon seeing racism where no sane person would. People who insist upon opening up old wounds and pouring in salt, and people who insist on continuing to collect on a debt that has been long since paid.

If you owed a man money, and then paid it off with interest, you would be more than justified in calling the police if that man's son tried to shake down your kids to pay him the same amount you had paid his dad, claiming that your kids were "guilty by association."

Yet this is the state of race relations in America, mainly because self-styled leaders of the "black community" (whatever that is) know that perpetuating this false sense of guilt will directly lead not only to very comfortable homes and expensive cars, but also to power. Lots of power.

And therein lies the disconnect: There's no way a man like Eric Holder is going to throw the brake on this gravy train. I don't think anyone is buying the idea that the man who dropped an open-and-shut case against the New Black Panther Party for racially motivated voter intimidation, while pursuing a lawsuit against Arizona SB 1070, is secretly pining for an America where unfounded accusations of racism would be met with eye-rolling derision. Mr. Holder's motivation in this 18-month-old speech was not to reprimand, but to gloat. And why shouldn't he? His cushy new job was a direct result of his new boss's old Republican opponent throwing the election, and of (so-called) news outlets outright ignoring Barack Obama's less savory connections -- all for fear of being called racists. Prominent media figures scrambled over the tops of each other in a never-ending quest to prove just how truly open-minded they were, and anyone who had the audacity to question the halos that photojournalists kept giving the Democratic candidate was quickly branded a heinous bigot. In short, the entire '08 presidential campaign was a race-baiting grievance-monger's wet dream.

Is this still relevant? You betcha. The Leftists currently running this country are still operating out of the same bag of tricks that worked so well for them in 2008, and, as it's all they really have, they will work that ugly little bag for all it's worth. Fortunately, the rest of us are now a little wiser.

Tammy Bruce has said that when someone calls you a racist, act as though he has called you a cocker spaniel, because it's just as likely to be true. Thanks in large part to the Left overplaying the Race Card to the point that even Jon Stewart thinks it's been maxed out, more and more Americans are taking this approach. We need to continue this trend. Repeat after me: The debt of slavery has been PAID. The debt of Reconstruction and segregation has been PAID. Any further offenses, by a person or persons of any amount of dermal pigmentation, are the sole responsibility of the perpetrator thereof, and cannot be tacitly applied to a group of people arbitrarily boxed together due to an accident of birth. (That last one was a little wordy, sorry.) There have been some truly ugly chapters in American history due to a widespread acceptance of racism at the time; this attitude is no longer prevalent, nor is it acceptable to the vast majority of Americans. Any people who are somehow still stuck on injustices that, in many cases, they've never actually experienced, should cease the endless navel-gazing and go quietly help someone in genuine need.

Free Speech vs. Hate Speech: A Pictorial Comparison

There seems to be a bit of confusion of late as to where the line is between "free speech" and "hate speech." So here's a handy guide you can use if you get lost in the jargon:

The Story of Jim: A Modern Parable

I am terrible at thinking on my feet.

Sure, I've uttered my share of witticisms and even profundities, but far more often than not they have been the result of past conversations or debates that I'd had wherein the other party left me dumbstruck or unsuccessfully scrambling for an answer. I'm the person who has the perfect comeback . . . five minutes later. In short, I am one of the last people you want spearheading your side of an argument in an impromptu debate.

A couple of months ago a dear friend of mine posted on his Facebook page his belief that a large (and growing) federal government has given us, as Americans, more freedom than the much smaller and limited one that we started with. This felt profoundly wrong to me, but pontificate as I might (and did), I still couldn't put my finger on why his reasoning was flawed. I've been chewing on the matter ever since; what follows is the result of my ongoing mental mastication.

This is the story of Jim. Jim was an average young man in an average American town. He earned above-average grades in high school, and went on to attend an average American college. Jim's parents, while not destitute, were in no position to help him with finances, so Jim worked full-time at an average college job to support himself, riding his bike to school, then to work, and then back to his far-below-average studio apartment to study, eat average college food, and fall asleep. The next day began the whole process again.

One day, while Jim was enjoying a rare free moment, his uncle paid him a surprise visit. Jim's uncle was a wealthy man, though no one quite knew what he did to amass his fortune. He entered the tiny rented room with a warm greeting, and sat on the edge of the bed. After exchanging pleasantries and small talk, Jim's uncle asked if there was anything he could do to make Jim's life easier. Jim didn't want to impose, so he politely declined. Jim's uncle pressed his point, saying, "Jim,I've known you for longer than you remember, and it pains me to see you having to struggle this way. Here," and he pulled a small black card out of his jacket pocket. Jim tried to refuse, but his uncle insisted. "Use this as you see fit," he said to the young man. They talked awhile longer about various family members and Jim's classes, and then, after affectionate goodbyes, Jim's uncle left.

Jim followed his uncle to the door, and shut it after him. He then turned over the small black card in his hand. It was a credit card. . . sort of. There was a sixteen-digit number on it and a magnetic strip , but no expiration date, no name, no logo, not even a signature bar. Just a wholly unremarkable, glossy black card. Jim wondered how it could even work, and then decided that he would not find out. He was determined to go it on his own, just like his parents had taught him. "Earn what you get, or there's no joy in having it," his father liked to say. Jim went to throw the card away, but hesitated. It couldn't hurt, after all, to have options, could it? That's really all he was doing, was being careful, he told himself as he put the card in his desk.

For months, Jim rarely even thought of the card. Then, one day he noticed a letter from the college in his stack of mail. Times had grown tough not just for Jim, but for everybody, and money was tight all around. Though Jim had carried his above average grades with him to college, they were no longer enough to maintain his scholarship. Jim sat crumpled in his chair, head in hands. He would have to delay his schooling and spend the next semester saving for the following term. The thought was not at all appealing -- hadn't he suffered enough? He worked his heart out and sacrificed so much; how could this happen? Suddenly, that little black card loomed large in Jim's mind. Surely it wouldn't hurt to use it for his living expenses. Not luxury items -- just the stuff he was already using. Then he would work even harder, improve his grades so he could get his scholarship back, and then put the card away. Other students lived on credit -- was it really so wrong?

Jim put his plan into action, knowing full well that he might regret it when the bill came. He determined he would cross that bridge when he came to it. He was a little nervous the first time he swiped the little black card, but it worked just fine. All he needed to do was sign. He stayed true to his word, using his credit judiciously. A month passed. Then two. Jim checked every day, but no bill came to him. Worried, he called his uncle. "Don't worry about it, my boy, it's all taken care of," Jim's uncle reassured him. "But..." Jim started to protest, but his uncle cut him off: "It's all taken care of. I meant what I said -- use it as you see fit. I'll tell you what: I'll arrange with your employer to automatically deduct payments from your paycheck, alright?" This eased Jim's mind, and he let the matter go.

In the ensuing months, Jim came to rely on the card more and more. He asked his boss to move him to part-time hours: With all his needs paid for, he could start focusing on his wants, and one of those was more leisure time. The money he earned could also go to wants, rather than needs. Jim felt as if the weight of the world had been removed from his shoulders. His wants, however, soon outstripped his income, and he found himself pulling out that little black card more and more often. The card seemed to have no limit; though his purchases grew progressively larger, the card was never declined.

Jim was coming out of the store after one of his larger purchases when he saw a man standing at a nearby intersection holding a cardboard sign. Jim walked over to talk to the man, and found that the man, Andrew, had fallen on hard times. He had lost his job, could not find another one, and had a family to feed, so he stood on the corner begging strangers for money. Andrew's story troubled Jim; he'd experienced hard times himself, and could not imagine having to face unemployment with a family to feed. Jim quickly told Andrew about his little black card, and offered to use it for Andrew's family's expenses as well. Andrew, overcome with emotion, threw his arms around Jim and sobbed thanks into his shoulder.

Word of the miraculous card spread quickly, and soon Jim was inundated with requests for help. Some seemed more legitimate than others, but who was he to judge? Jim accepted them all, and it seemed that in no time half of the town was dependent on the card Jim's uncle had given to him. Jim was thrilled that he could help so many people. Gone were his days of counting change for food; now, because of him, those days were gone for so many others, too. "This," Jim thought to himself one night, "is freedom."

Jim's philanthropic ventures weren't the only thing on his mind. There was a young lady he'd met in class. Sharla. She was beautiful, intelligent, kind -- everything Jim was looking for. And, though he could hardly believe it, she reciprocated his feelings. It wasn't long until he had a ring on her finger. Money no longer being an object, he made sure that their wedding was everything she had ever wanted. He thought nothing could have made him happier, but he had to admit he was wrong on that point on the day that Sharla gave birth to their first child, a darling baby boy who they called Sam.

Sam was just a few days old, sleeping in his mother's arms in their comfortable home, when there came a knock at the door. Jim ran to answer it and found a delivery man standing there with a package. Jim signed for the package, thanked the man, and went back in the house. He turned the box over to see not his name, or Sharla's, but Sam's. Thinking it was a gift for the new baby, he opened it. He was puzzled to find not gifts, but a stack of official-looking pages. He grabbed the first one and began to read.

Jim could feel the blood draining from his face. His hands began to shake. This had to be wrong, this could not be possible. He raced for the phone, punched in his uncle's number, and demanded that the old man get there NOW. Jim paced the floor while he waited, unable to continue perusing the pages in the box. Not possible. Not possible.

Jim's uncle knocked on the door in short order. Jim nearly wrenched the door off its hinges, grabbed his uncle by the arm, dragged him to the box, and thrust the first paper into his face. "How?" bellowed Jim. "How is this possible?!"

Jim's uncle stepped back, stroked his white goatee thoughtfully, and calmly said, "Jim, I told you it was taken care of. You never asked how."

Jim's eyes grew wide. "How could you do this to me? To him? My son, he's just a baby! How on earth can he pay this off?" Another thought gripped Jim, turning him paler still. "Half the town is living on this card! They depend upon it! I can't just cut them off! But if I don't..." His sentence trailed off as he stared in anguish at his son, who had somehow slept through Jim's outburst.

Jim's uncle nodded gravely. "I'll tell you what, Jim. I can help you with this problem as well." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out another card, just like Jim's, but with a different number on it. "Give him this when he's of age."

Jim was flabbergasted. "You cannot be serious," he said. Another thought occurred to him, and he grasped at it like a drowning man lunging for a piece of driftwood. "What about the payments that were being taken from my paychecks?"

Jim's uncle laughed. "My boy, surely you don't believe you made this much?!"

"Well, no," admitted Jim, clinging to this last tiny piece of hope, "but it's got to count for something, right?"

Jim's uncle laughed again. "My boy," he said again, slightly shaking his head from side to side, "how do you think I've made my fortune?" He stuffed the second card into his stunned nephew's hands, nodded to an equally stunned Sharla, and escorted himself out, leaving a horrified silence in his wake.

And now I will ask you the question that was surely running laps around Jim's beleaguered mind: If you have to steal from and enslave your own children to achieve it, can you truly call it freedom?

Obama's Mosque Endorsement Sounded Vaguely Familiar

I discovered on Saturday, in the aftermath of President Obama's ringing non-endorsement endorsement of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, that I had been holding on to a shred of hope that our President does not, in fact, despise this country.

I discovered this as I watched that last shred of hope shrivel up and die.



It wasn't what he said -- his carefully parsed words are perfectly true -- but how he said it. His speech can be easily broken into two parts: addressing 9/11 victims and their families, and addressing the issue of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque. Listen to his change in tone between the two parts. Part one sounds like he's reading out of a phone book; it isn't until part two that he really shows some real feeling, as if opposition to this building is something at which he is personally offended (which is likely not far off the mark). While his "let me be clear" pronouncement usually precedes obfuscation, in this case he was true to his word: he told us all that if you oppose this gross insult to the 3,000 people who were murdered by Radical Islamists at Ground Zero nine years ago, not to mention their families, then you are un-American and you hate the Constitution. And it was this part of his speech that sounded eerily familiar to me.

When I was fifteen, I had a good friend who was a bit more than that. He was quite naturally hurt when, as will happen with fifteen-year-old girls, my affections shifted. His reaction, though, was less natural, and I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship for the next three years. He told me that I was the cause of every bad thing that was going on in his life, going so far as to give me details on an alleged suicide attempt that he told me was my fault. And I believed him. I believed every word, which made me feel obligated to stick around to "make things right," which of course let him continue his abuse.

One of his favorite tactics was to use my own standards against me. Whenever I started to show signs of indignation at what he was putting me through, he would say, "Doesn't your church teach forgiveness?" The same sentiment was echoed when, later in our relationship, I told him how happy I was that I was finally starting to heal from all he had done. His reaction? "What, you're not over that yet?"

It was not difficult to hear that exact sentiment in Obama's finger-wagging scolding of the American people for having the audacity to not act like the doormats he thinks we ought to be. Just like my old "friend," he had no problem using that time-honored tactic of abusive dirtbags everywhere: insisting that their victims' blaring internal "injustice alarm" is simply a sign of said victim's own moral deficiencies. Adding insult to injury is the fact that he was saying this as President of the United States. It's one thing for an abuser to use those arguments; it's something else entirely to hear them coming out of the mouth of a man who has sworn to protect you. It would be like having your parents insist that you apologize to and get back with a spouse who deliberately put you in the hospital.

My own experience, while painful, was quite educational. I learned the same things that more and more Americans are coming to realize and/or act on: Forgiveness does not mean that I have to continue taking your garbage. Moving on does not mean forgetting. The proper synonym for tolerance is respect, which is a two-way street -- not obsequiousness, which is not. Righteous anger at out-and-out abuse is a far cry from unrighteous dominion.

And gross provocations of this nature are very rarely, if ever, accidental.