op ed review 12/2
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
A new Gallup
poll shows that 54 percent of Americans think it is not the federal
government’s responsibility to ensure all citizens have health care coverage.
This is the first time Gallup
trends have shown a majority of Americans holding this opinion since 2000.
“Two-thirds of millionaires left Britain to avoid 50 percent tax
rate”
The first family will be
vacationing in Hawaii
for the Christmas holidays at a cost of at least $4 million to taxpayers,
President Barack Obama has
dramatically upped his demands in the fiscal crisis negotiations: He wants
Congress to levy twice as much in extra taxes from Americans as he urged during
the election campaign, give up its control over the nation’s debt limit, and
fund an immediate $50 billion stimulus for his political priorities.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/30/obama-demands-1-6-trillion-tax-boost-and-an-unlimited-credit-card/
Actor
Jamie Foxx recently called Barack Obama "our lord and savior."
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/11/26/jamie-foxx-calls-obama-our-lord-and-savior#ixzz2DLIwJZ3J
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/11/26/jamie-foxx-calls-obama-our-lord-and-savior#ixzz2DLIwJZ3J
A painting that features President Obama posed as Jesus
Christ crucified on is on display at a community college art gallery in Boston.
Texas
Sen.-elect Ted Cruz advised the Republican Party to rebrand itself under a
banner of “Opportunity Conservatism” during a sweeping speech that will only
stoke speculation about a 2016 presidential run. “Why did we lose? It wasn’t as
the media would tell you: because the American people embraced big government,
Barack Obama’s spending and debt and taxes. … That wasn’t what happened. I’m
going to suggest to you a very simple reason why we lost the election: We
didn’t win the argument,” Cruz said before pointedly lowering his voice. “We
didn’t even make the argument.”
Media tries to ambush Senator Marco Rubio: the Republican front-runner for 2016, was
asked, "How old do you think the Earth is?" It´s a ridiculous
question of utter irrelevance to the status of the country and whether Marco
Rubio would be a good president. Rubio´s answer was excellent: "I´m not a
scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what
the Bible says, but I think that´s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it
has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.”
“Susan Rice’s enrichment program”: The portfolio of embattled United Nations
Ambassador Susan Rice includes investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars
in several energy companies known for doing business with Iran.”
“Harvard approves
student club dedicated to ‘kinky sex’”
Female Marine officers are unlikely to join the infantry
anytime soon, in part because of a lack of volunteers for the Marine Corps‘
Infantry Officer Course, which was opened to women in September. Only two of
about 80 eligible female Marines have volunteered for the course — a grueling,
three-month advanced regimen conducted at Quantico,
Va., that was opened to women to
research their performance. Of the two female volunteers, one washed out on the
first day and the other dropped out two weeks later for medical reasons.
But the ACLU is undeterred, suing
the U.S. Defense Department on Tuesday to end a ban on women in combat.
“Obama Donors Got $21,000 in Government Money for Every $1 They Gave”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday revived a challenge to
President Barack Obama´s healthcare reforms, allowing a Christian college to
pursue litigation raising First Amendment objections to a law that the court
mostly upheld in June.
Finally, there´s proof that Americans prefer "Merry
Christmas." By a wide margin, 68 percent to 23 percent, Americans prefer
stores with signs that say "Merry Christmas" during the Christmas
holidays than the more generic and secular "Happy Holidays,"
according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey.
_____________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED
COLUMN
Important article:
(edited for length)
“Conservatives Must
Learn the Dark Arts of Image Manipulation”
J.R. Dunn
Okay, we've had the
End of the Republic, the degenerate electorate thesis, and the ritual beating
of Mitt Romney. I hope everybody has had their catharsis, because it's time to
get serious. It's typical in an election lost by the right for every last
factor is poked at, examined, and raked over the coals except for the single
most important element, always and forever overlooked: conservatism itself……One
of the major failings of millennial conservatism -- possibly its major failing
-- involves image…….Several common stereotypes of conservatism exist and are
utilized to define and destroy conservative candidates and movements. These
include the twittering, ambiguous urban right-wing intellectual, (Steven
Colbert has made quite a tidy fortune caricaturing this group), the backwoods
wild man wearing camo and a white hood, a Kalashnikov in one hand and a Bible
in the other, the greedy, cold-blooded businessman, and a variant on the
backwoods theme distinct enough to form its own category, the crazed
evangelical (the left uses the term "fundamentalist", not knowing the
difference between evangelicals, Pentecostals, or, for that matter any other
type of Christian.)
What all these have
in common is that they are clown images -- laughable, easily caricatured, and,
like all clowns, sinister and menacing at base. They are neither rigid nor
fixed, and possess enough variety so that virtually any GOP or conservative
spokesman or candidate can be slotted into a particular stereotype, and often
more than one. None have any positive aspect. All are intended to
degrade, dehumanize, and remove the individual in question from serious
consideration. Leftists and their captive media utilize these stereotypes to
construct a narrative in which the GOP -- and conservatism beyond it --
produces such types as a matter of course, decade after decade and generation
after generation, and that little else can be expected of either.
Image manipulation
has been a useful tool for the left ever since liberalism turned transcendental
as long ago as the New Deal……Since that time left-wing image manipulation has
continued unabated through the Cold War (when conservatives were pilloried as
McCarthyists), the Civil Rights Era (racists, naturally enough), the Reagan
era, (the "decade of greed"), and the Bush era, which introduced
"neocons", a distortion of a very real faction which no leftist could
have accurately defined if hung out a window by his heels.
Under this
onslaught, conservatives simply sat there stupefied, like pinstriped versions
of those clown dolls that pop back up when hit. The left worked every possible
theme from every possible angle through every possible medium, from the printed
press through entertainment, though academia and finally though the Net and
social media. These efforts have been highly effective, and are one of the
primary explanations as to why left-wing progressivism remains a serious force
in a society so inhospitable to it. (Note that the typical left-wing image --
various shades of congenital rebel -- carries little of the ignominy attached
to those pinned on the right, and in fact, has considerable innate appeal to
the inexperienced, uneducated, and plain foolish.)
These images have
become received wisdom among the public at large, beyond debate or necessity of
proof. They are fully integrated into public consciousness and have virtually
become matters of instinct -- people hear "conservative",
"Republican", or "neocon" and immediately picture one
stereotype or the other. They govern all discussions of conservatism in this
country -- anyone who doubts this has never spoken to a liberal….. The typical
leftist method is to create and maintain the stereotype and then slot
individuals into the one that they share superficial characteristics with. The
individual is then saddled with all kinds of baggage usually having no
relevance or connection to his actual status or character. He has to battle his
way through all of it simply to reach the starting line. Ten years after
Senator Joe McCarthy nearly wrecked the anti-communist movement though a
display of pure opportunism, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was
hit from all sides with the label of anti-communist extremist. ….A little
over twenty years later in 1986, Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the
Supreme Court. Bork was -- and remains -- one of the most perspicacious legal
minds in the country. His record was impeccable, his credentials beyond
criticism. So the left, in a campaign that came out of nowhere, simply made
their case up. Bork was characterized as what might be called the legal variant
of the Northeastern conservative template: a cold , cruel intellect enslaved by
dusty legal tomes, quite satisfied to let people suffer so long as all the i's
were dotted. Aided by a substantial wave of media hysteria, it worked quite
well. In a shameful display of senatorial pusillanimity, Bork went down to
defeat. No figure of similar stature has been nominated to the Court in the
years since.
With almost
clockwork timing, 22 years later Governor Sarah Palin, a reform politician of
high reputation, was selected as GOP vice-presidential candidate…..Using every
possible means, and attacking every conceivable target -- including her family
(and not forgetting her disabled son), the left poisoned Palin's image to
extent not seen since the Goldwater era.
Palin's life in Alaska…enabled
the left to utilize the dangerous backwoods hick motif. The governor's status
as a convinced evangelical Christian gave them further ammunition…
With Mitt Romney,
the choice of stereotype was obvious: that of the rapacious cold-blooded
businessman derived from Gordon Gekko, J.R. Ewing,
and the little man on the Monopoly cards. Romney, a man who tithed, who had
once shut down his multimillion-dollar firm to free his entire staff to search
for the missing daughter of a company employee, a man who had spent a year
overseas as a missionary, was the farthest thing in the world from any such
figure. But the caricature, in the absence of any conservative pushback
whatsoever, was extremely effective. Most of Romney's vote deficit involved
middle-income voters in the $30,000 to $50,000 range, apparently fully
convinced by the portrayal of Romney as a corporate looter. (The sad irony here
is that it is precisely these voters who have suffered most -- and will suffer
further -- under the Obama regime. There are few other cases where the American
public has so clearly voted against its own interests.) So effective was it
that the left's fallback, Romney as religious crazy - remained unused….
A detailed analysis
of leftist tactics and techniques in this regard can wait. What is important is
the conservative response. Disheartening as it may seem, this has been almost
exclusively negative, when it has occurred at all.
The typical
conservative reaction to leftwing image manipulation consist of simple
paralysis, a deer-in-the-headlights response composed of equal parts fear,
confusion, and ineptness…. A politician or party that will not stand up for its
own reputation is unlikely to stand up for anything at all -- principle,
tradition, or the interests of the voters. But this is far from the lowest
class of response. That belongs to the conservative turncoats, a large group
among the upper conservative punditry, who
are not only easily led into stereotyping their own but can often be found
taking the lead…….And yet, at the same time, these people are still esteemed by
conservatives, still honored, their advice and presence still sought after.
This is clear evidence of a serious strain of decadence within the conservative
movement.
Which could also be
said of the third major class of response, that of embracing the stereotype, of
taking it on as a kind of costume, and even pushing it farther than the left
themselves. I knew a noted spokesman for one of the major conservative media
organizations who used to appear at public lectures with two heavy-set young
men standing at either side of the lectern wearing camo fatigues and
sunglasses, thus turning himself from conservative spokesman into Benito
Mussolini. This same kind of behavior can be found at all levels of the
movement from comment threads all the way to the top. Rush indulges in it all
too often. Ann Coulter has made a career of it. While definitely a
crowd-pleaser, it is, in the end, self-defeating. These stereotypes were
constructed by the left for a reason -- to manipulate the public at large,
ignorant of political subtleties and unfamiliar with doctrine, into certain
visceral reactions to conservatives and their ideas. They were created to
destroy conservatives. Why play along with them?
It's not at all
clear why no effort has been put into combating leftist image manipulation and
stereotyping…we'd better resign ourselves to getting our seersucker rumpled and
start doing that kind of thing. Inaction may have been excusable fifty years
ago, when the major papers, the two newswires, and all three networks were
owned and operated by convinced liberals. In the age of the internet and social
media, it is excusable no longer. There are vast resources that remain unused
in the image wars. We need to learn how to use them….
Many old-school
conservatives would stand aghast at such a campaign on grounds of brutality and
incivility, and they would be as correct as they are irrelevant. There comes a
certain point where you must take up the weapons of your opponent if you wish
to survive. That point came and went when some clever network exec in the
spring of 1964 said, "Let's make Goldwater into a Nazi." …..Punishment
is also useful. Every time a leftist media figure employs a degrading
stereotype, or insults an innocent party, or suggests that a political figure
be assaulted or killed, they need to be punished. The social networks, Twitter
and Facebook being the leading examples, comprise perfect weapons for such an
effort. Thousands of tweets or emails will send the heads of the network execs
spinning, with calls sent out for Larry or Ed or Rachel to drop by the office
before they go the studio. Make them pay a price -- now they pay no price
whatsoever….We need to learn all there is to know about image generation,
narrative strategies, propaganda, and the tricks of the media…..
….the new
conservative activists, often dismissed as the Tea Parties….are the ones who
can remake the conservative image into something that will attract rather than
repel. The 2012 election has clearly revealed how high the stakes are. This is
a knock-down, drag-out battle, a battle that the movement has so far declined
to accept. We must stop refusing to play the game as it has to be played --
refusing to learn, refusing to move into a new era, refusing to step beyond the
stereotypes. Above all, we need to stop walking into sucker punches.
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"One of the more amazing post-election spectacles is
the media celebration of Republicans who say they're willing to repudiate their
pledge against raising taxes. So the same folks who like to denounce
politicians because they can't be trusted are now praising politicians who
openly admit they can't be trusted. The spectacle is part of what is becoming a
tripartisan ... attempt to stigmatize Grover Norquist as the source of all
Beltway fiscal woes and gridlock. Mr. Norquist, who runs an outfit called
Americans for Tax Reform, is the fellow who came up with the no-new-taxes
pledge some 20 years ago. He tries to get politicians to sign it, and hundreds
of Republicans have done so. He does not hold a gun to their heads.... The real
problems are a political class that won't control its spending and economic
policies that are retarding growth. That's where the GOP should keep its public
focus. Mr. Norquist's tax pledge has been one of the few restraints over the
years against those bad Beltway appetites. Democrats demonize Grover because
they know this. They want to pit Mr. Norquist against other Republicans
precisely so they can dispirit the tea party grass-roots and take away the tax
issue as a GOP advantage."
-The Wall Street Journal
"[R]aising
taxes would result in less economic activity, not more. Herein lies the key to
understanding why the left wants higher taxes for 'the rich.' To the
rich-should-pay-more crowd, the question of whether raising taxes hurts
economic growth is less important than the issue of 'fairness.' ... Andy Stern,
the former head of the Service Employees International Union, the
fastest-growing American union, describes the economic philosophy of the left:
If raising taxes on 'the rich' hurts the economy, that is an acceptable price.
'Western Europe,' says Stern, ' has made
different trade-offs which may have ended with a little more unemployment but a
lot more equality.' Any questions?"
-Larry Elder
"The Left misunderstands conservatives when it
believes the argument over tax rates is an argument about greed -- that
wealthier Americans simply want to grab all the money we can. In fact, many of
the top 5 percent are among the most generous people in the world; they just
tend to give their money to charities that actually produce results. Leaving
aside -- for the moment -- the increasingly inverse correlation between
taxation and individual liberty (a crucial consideration all its own), we
conservatives look at the vast bureaucratic beast with a sense of utter
futility. We opt out of government projects and seek personal independence in
part because we see government fail time and again -- and not for lack of
resources. For millions, government is less 'the thing we do together' than it
is the 'monster inflicted upon us,' and the taxes we pay are less a
contribution to the well-being of the community than a ransom payment to keep
the monster away from our door."
-David French
______________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS, FILM
“Sex and God at Yale” by Nathan Harden with forward by Chris
Buckley. Bill Buckley’s now legendary
“God and Man at Yale” carries a more world-historical formulation of what was
going on at Yale than “Sex and God at Yale.” This is Nathan Harden’s point. In
the 60 years that separate Buckley from Mr. Harden, the experience at Yale has
devolved from the ascendant intellectual liberalism of Buckley’s day to the
solipsistic “just do it” postmodernism of today.
A Civil War Professor Reviews ´Lincoln´
_____________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
An
Islamist-dominated panel is voting on Egypt's new draft constitution. Omissions of certain articles, such as bans
on slavery or promises to adhere to international rights treaties, were equally
worrying to critics of the new draft.
____________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
A French politician who calls for nationalizing certain French companies
told CNBC that his government is only “acting like U.S. President Barack Obama.”
“Nationalizing is a very modern step to take.”
In Cuba,
“the largely tax-free life under a paternalistic government is on its way out.”
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Dennis Prager: “If you want to
understand why President Obama was re-elected despite a largely unsuccessful
presidency and almost unprecedentedly high and continuous unemployment, just
look at the Cuban-American vote. In fact, if you want to understand America
today -- specifically, why it is in decline -- just look at the Cuban-American
vote. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, "The president captured 48
percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida
-- a record high for a Democrat." Democratic presidential nominees went
from 25 percent of the Cuban-American vote in 2000, to 29 percent in 2004, to
35 percent in 2008 to 48 percent on 2012. We obviously have a dramatic trend
here. Now, why would that be? There are
two reasons: No experience of evil and American education.”
Mitt
Romney’s presidential campaign paid millions of dollars to companies led by top
advisers and, by many measures, the campaign got less to show for it than
in-house staffers performing a labor of love for President Obama’s campaign,
expenditure records show. The Romney team spent twice as much as the Obama
campaign on direct mail and telemarketing, paying tens of millions of dollars
to two companies tied to Romney aides. Republican operatives said that resulted
in a potential conflict of interest that could explain why the party’s nominee
relied heavily on those tactics, and not enough on the kinds of grass-roots
efforts Mr. Obama rode to victory. “The problem is the Republican consultants
have a very incestuous relationship. They’re sending money to companies they
all control at a profit, and they’re telling donors this is what wins
elections. And I think they were exposed badly” on Election Day, said Drew Ryun,
a former RNC official………“No one has figured out how to make a 15 percent
commission when they hire a field representative to line up county
commissioners and precinct captains and, shockingly, we do too little of it,”
he said. “The fact that someone’s making money from a specific type of voter
outreach has got to at a certain point affect their judgment.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/26/romney-loss-big-bucks-but-less-bang/#ixzz2DRTQLi1U
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/26/romney-loss-big-bucks-but-less-bang/#ixzz2DRTQLi1U
Three views on immigration, read and decide:
Krauthammer: “They lose and immediately the chorus begins.
Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it
must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority. The only part
of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural
Republican constituency:…. The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue
of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made
the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney
could never successfully tack back. For the party in general, however, the
problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border
fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal
normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.
Imagine Marco Rubio
advancing such a policy on the road to 2016. It would transform the landscape.
He’d win the Hispanic vote. Yes, win it. A problem fixable with a single policy
initiative is not structural. It is solvable.
Schlafly: The Republican
strategists who confidently predicted that their candidate, Mitt Romney, would
win the 2012 election are already pontificating about what Republicans must do
to win in 2016. After their disastrous defeat, strategy and policy mistakes and
expensive super PAC advertising that failed to win votes, why should anybody
take their advice again? The elitists now tell us that amnesty for illegal
aliens, aka "immigration reform," is the key to future Republican
nirvana. That's wrong-headed advice….
Linda Chavez: There
may be no single, simple explanation why Mitt Romney lost the election -- but
clearly the perception that the GOP is anti-Hispanic didn't help. For years,
I've been warning my fellow conservatives that their position on immigration
would be costly, not just politically but for the economy as well….Without
winning more Hispanic votes, the Republican Party may be doomed to permanent
minority status. Most of my fellow conservatives
don't understand why Hispanic citizens are so offended at the party's
position.……So let me try to explain. First, even for someone like me whose family
has been here for centuries, the tone of the debate on illegal immigration has
been unsettling. Illegal immigration is down to historically low levels….Still,
the GOP platform and Romney himself insisted that those illegal immigrants who
are living here -- some of them for decades -- must self-deport. I doubt there is a Hispanic
anywhere who doesn't know at least one individual or family this policy would
affect. Illegal immigrants are not numbers -- they're people we know. Telling workers, friends and family members,
we don't want you here -- no matter how productive and law-abiding you are and
no matter how long you've lived here -- sounds very much to us as if we're
being told the same thing....
Post election data from Pew, some of it depressing: A third of young voters
described their political views as liberal, while 41% said they were moderate
and just 26% said they were conservative. A majority (59%) said that the
government should do more to solve problems, while 37% said the government
is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals……Black women
under 30 voted 91% for Obama.
http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/26/young-voters-supported-obama-less-but-may-have-mattered-more/
On Tuesday evening, Glenn Beck featured an Obama bobble head
doll in a jar of yellow liquid, meant as a parody of the controversial
“artwork” that defaced a crucifix in a glass of urine. Beck’s piece was meant
to highlight the hypocrisy of those who rail against disparaging figures who
they hold dear, but do not hold themselves to the same standard when
disparaging figures others hold dear. Beck was auctioning the
jar, complete with the Obama doll, on the auction site, with all the proceeds
set to go to Beck’s Mercury One charity. At the last entry its bid
was up to $11,300.
Predictably,
liberals went berserk:
Mitt Romney isn’t going to be the next President of the United States.
But the familiar spectacle of the post-election circular firing squad shouldn’t
blind us to the many good things that Mitt Romney brought to the 2012 election.
First and foremost, he had the courage to campaign on the most pressing
domestic policy problem we face: the explosion of deficit spending caused by
our health-care entitlements. No modern Republican presidential nominee—not
even Ronald Reagan—has ever attempted anything like it.
________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
Putting Some Facts in the Tax-the-Rich Debate
Pravda: “Obama has
been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society”
'Dear God will you please take care of my dog': Heartwarming
story of girl who mailed letter to heaven... and post office worker who wrote
back to her
Things you never knew had names.
_______________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly
against it."
-Virgil
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