PROMETHEAN ANTAGONIST

The conflict in Iraq (most of it taking place within a hundred miles of Baghdad) will now be referred to as the Iraqi "civil war" by NBC News. Of course, terrorists will still be referred to as insurgents, gunmen, or "those opposing the occupation."

Ya gotta love these arrogant socialist snobs so dedicated to returning the Iraqi people to dictatorship and enhancing the position of the fascist ideology that opposes us.

If the talking -- but not thinking -- heads of journal-land have chosen to call Iraq a "civil war" maybe it's time we refer to them as what they truly are; dishonest partisan mouthpieces for America's enemies and pampered control freaks who seek the failure, demise, and destruction of their own fellow citizens.

"...Having overwhelming military force on your side, and letting your enemies know that you have the guts to use it, is being genuinely anti-war. Chamberlain's appeasement brought on World War II and Reagan's military buildup ended the Cold War..."

An excellent essay. No nonsense insight from a genuine scholar.

And; equally insightful, Theodore Dalrymple offers this great quote in a recent essay:

"...the European Union is the creation of bureaucrats, by bureaucrats, for bureaucrats..."

It's may be accurate to say that the left despises libertarians more than conservatives.

With conservatives, the left can at least try to "argue" that their opponents are "Nazis" and "Fascists." Regardless of how contrary to fact such accusations are, there are some strains of conservatism that are very religious, "flag-waving," or hyper-traditional, so caricatures can be falsely extrapolated to extremes in such cases.

It's considerably more difficult to claim one's opponents are "Nazis" or "Fascists" when the opponent's essential premise is that government should be limited considerably and that individual freedom is the hallmark of a decent and successful society.

Leftists can pretend that conservatives are Fascists but with libertarians they can't even muster a lie effectively. Add to this the fact that leftists actually do favor considerable government "intervention" (control and coercion), and they lose their case immediately.

A socialist of any stripe is more kindred in spirit to fascism and Nazism than anyone even moderately libertarian in outlook. Add to this the fact that many conservatives (those who aren't religious, flag-waving, or hyper-traditional) are rather libertarian, and the leftist finds him or herself looking in that ugly mirror again where their own desire to feed authority to an all-powerful state is seen in everyone who opposes their own excessive statist sympathies.

With groups like Rock the Vote and other assorted institutions (like the neighborhood public school or university), many young people were convinced to vote for Democrats in the recent elections. Okay; good and bad reasons may abound for such a decision, but there are always repercussions for any decision and, increasingly, a political decision can have serious consequences to one's private affairs, particularly in view of the increased authority of government beyond its constitutional mandate.

Enter, a typical Democrat wet dream…bring back the military draft – classic.

The same Democrats who say we should pull out of Iraq completely – or at least "set a timetable for 'redeployment' " – are now saying we need to reinstitute the military draft to provide more troops in Iraq. Give me a break…

Get a clue folks. The left is not "revolutionary," the left is not about increasing civil rights and personal liberties. There's nothing a leftist loves or wants more than government authority, even if it means forcing unwilling citizens to sacrifice a few years of their life to the state – all part of that "community" euphemism they so often use to justify the their alterations to America's constitution.

Are you young? Did you vote for Democrats in the last election? Great! Now deal with the repercussions.

Only the "anti-war" left would take so brilliant a stand – priceless.

Some clownish socialist legal clique in Germany has determined – not the first time – that Donald Rumsfeld is "guilty of crimes against humanity." Then again, so were Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt I suppose (considering they were not being nice to a good guy like Adolph Hitler and the stupid willing drones who supported him).

The idiots who regularly come up with nonsense like this are the people who think that sleep deprivation, long periods of standing, cold temperatures, "humiliation," and scaring one into THINKING they're drowning ("waterboarding") are torture, but think Saddam having people's tongues cut off or eyes gauged out, or terrorist cutting people's heads off are "more preferable" and simply expressions of "frustration at having been oppressed" (no international socialist organizations calling for war crime trials against Bin-Laden or Al Zawahiri, etc -- why is that do you suppose?).

I recently read of a journalist who allowed the "waterboarding" "torture" to be applied to him to demonstrate the technique and response for the network's audience (I think it was the Fox News Network). Regardless of how much discomfort or fear this "torture" produced I think the nature of "torture" will be clearer when journalists allow themselves to be put into shredding machines, to be tossed off of four story buildings, or submit to beheading -- it appears that no journalists seem ready to demonstrate real torture yet.

I think a few people keep forgetting that "Secretary of Defense" – unlike other departments of government -- requires a military orientation. That's why the department of State and the Department of Wildlife Management don't direct armies in battle. I suppose choosing a florist to head the Department of Defense would be a nice flourish for the more squeamish and less historically conscious among us but a Secretary of Defense in a time of war actually directs…the military [!] One can debate the issue of "war crimes" and philosophically argue that all acts of violence against another are "crimes" but, let's get real here. We're in a war with a very brutal enemy who follows no rules of any kind – other than the Koran (which tells them that, in war -- Jihad -- one can do virtually anything to impose "the faith").

If the average leftist would put their glass of wine down long enough to become sober and see that there is an enemy who has breached the gate, they may realize that a certain serious and undiplomatic act of retaliation needs to be applied to those who harbor the Islamo-fascist ideology. If information on future attacks is gleaned as well then, definitely, start applying the pressure. The phrase "cycle of violence" means nothing. World War II was a "cycle of violence" that democratic civilization won. Ironically, if this "cycle of violence" results in our defeat, the wine sipping pampered elitists from leftland will be among the first to go – and it won't mean an air-conditioned room with a Koran and three meals a day.

(From Germany of all places…don't make me laugh).

In the grand scheme of things, nature and natural processes are self-regulating. This does not mean that all land is equally flat or mountainous, that all animals are fast, slow, wild, or docile, or that mountains should be leveled and fast animals slowed down.

Inequality (an obsession to some) is a natural condition and will always exist in the realms of economic status, beauty, stamina, and even -- dare I note -- luck.

Where most of us hope for "justice" as a context for all, to expect, demand, or legislate, "equality" as a constant end or outcome is absurd and destructive to the flow of all events in the big picture.

Call it "The Tao," the natural order, or simply, the way things are; "justice" is not served by imposed dreams of enforced stasis, and contrived notions of equality are no cause for the donning of halos by those who merely think the world should be frozen into their own boring vision of imagined goodness.

Before anyone falls for the mainstream news hype and thinks that what happened in the recent election was some groundbreaking, revolutionary, historical turn of events, they should read Charles Krauthammer's recent interesting and insightful observations regarding past elections.

Like most Libertarians and Conservatives, I'm not thrilled about characters like Nancy Pelosi holding considerable legislative power that will ultimately further constrain the private lives of individuals and punish the actions of society's most productive forces. I doubt if it will benefit the country much that every word and action of the President will now be scrutinized with costly hearings or attempts to impeach. Of course, in this "making nice" warm-up period everyone in the new power center is saying that no such legislative animosity is on the agenda. Anyone who believes that, after years of non-stop hate Bush hyper-mania is seriously deluded about the nature of Leftism.

Beyond my disgust over the inevitable agenda of Democrats, I have to say that my response to the election results is ultimately, "oh well." I can't really get all that excited about the issue. I agree with Neal Boortz who, on several occasions, said the Republican Party got what it deserved. Indeed, they have not been a party of limited, decentralized government – at all. But now the voters have empowered an alternative; a European socialist model of mega bureau-social schemes that seeks to punish success and achievement and reward an endless list of conjured "victims" -- and that's just their domestic program.

To be sure, the power of congressional committees that will now be headed by the left is unsettling to those of us who favor limited government, respect property rights, and admire individual initiative, but let's face it; the country is beyond the point of return on these issues. Too many people "love big brother," or at least get enough in government checks that it keeps them from complaining about a little thing like loss of liberty.

We should be able to guess the result of a Democrat empowered foreign policy by whom, overseas, expressed pleasure in the party's success – communists, socialists, and terrorist organization "spokespersons." Basically anyone who hates the U.S. and would like to see it weakened, harmed or eliminated was happy to see Democrats gain political power – no surprises there. This doesn't mean that Democrats are terrorists or communist, but they come suspiciously close in their acceptance and sympathies toward some of the most unsavory political systems, and they certainly haven't been noted to take strong stands or call for the use of strong measures against any of America's sworn enemies. That's right; Islamo-fascist and communist dictatorships are our enemies. They're not "people with a different view who we can talk to, compromise with, trust, and join with in peace."

My ultimate hope – and it's a real possibility – is that the radical neo-Comm wing of the new Democrat party will wear out their welcome rather quickly. Bill O' Reilly is right when he speaks of a conflict between "San Francisco values" and common citizen's values. A few too many honest proclamations from Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, or Al Gore and the Democrats will be toast in the next election.

If this election had gone the other way we'd see massive street protests no doubt contesting the election's results, complete with cries of how it was "stolen." Screams of "Nazism" would be heard and placards of Bush with a Hitler mustache would be seen in rallies everywhere. It's to conservatives' credit that, when they lose, no such nonsense occurs. There'll be plenty of whining on blogsites and talk-radio but for the most part, when conservatives (or, in this case the often not so conservative, Republicans) lose, they typically accept that they slipped up and continue to address the individual issue that have always been there anyway. It's not as if the government before this election was modeled on libertarianism – or even the constitution for that matter. The American government has been a top-heavy monolith of growing socialist encroachment upon individual liberty for quite some time now under both dominant political parties. The only difference between the parties that really counts now is their attitudes toward foreign enemies and the clear and present war we are in, not just with Islamo-fascism but its many friends in authoritarian governments and socialist dictatorship wannabes (i.e. Hugo Chavez) across the world.

For all intents and purposes, America has now symbolically joined the E.U. which is why Euro-leftist's have publicly praised the election's results (just as many of them have praised Yasir Afafat and Fidel Castro).

The course of action now should be for libertarians to keep telling Bureaucrats, Democrats, and Republicans to mind their own business. Republicans themselves should get their act in gear and get back to some serious philosophical roots that favor limited decentralized government. They may also want to address some serious issues in the wings, like illegal immigration.

The left in general should just keep on doing what they've always done; hate the U.S. for it's free enterprise system while sucking as much blood from said system as they can – remember, they are superior human beings – kind of like a master race. Now we have an even greater opportunity to obey their philosophy of…obedience to the state.

We've been able to hear the left's acerbic rhetoric from the media, entertainment, and academia for some time now. The new (i.e. Soros, Moore, Dean) Democrats are now going to have an opportunity to put some of their "ideas" into action. In the end, the same public that just gave them power is likely to be very disappointed in what they've done.

…oh well.

I've addressed the issue of patriotism before. It's a somewhat dicey issue for a libertarian to confront, considerably less so for a conservative. This writer is a little of both (depending on the issue) and I think even a libertarian can see the flaws of an anti-patriot view that is so at odds with the preservation and support of a country which is essentially free and diverse. Of course being free means one can believe and express whatever one wishes. Just the same, those of us who differ with the views of the anti-patriot can express our disdain for them and their offensive values as well.

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For all practical purposes, American leftists have generally become anti-patriots (they've always been more inclined to that stance but now it has become a predictable standard among them).

All the emotional passions seen in degrees of patriotism can be seen in patriotism's opposite. Just as a patriot may love his or her country, a typical leftist now feels compelled to despise his or her country with the same emotional charge (so long as that country does not honor the political demands of Leftism against a free market in products and ideas). All PR lip-service aside, just as a patriot will speak or act passionately in a country's defense, a leftist -- anti-patriot -- will deliberately act fervently against the interests of their home country. Biting the hand that feeds them would be an understatement. They would openly acquiesce in the destruction of that which has provided them their very platform of free expression.

The anti-patriot is definitely not "oppressed." More often than not the left's spokespersons are beyond a condition of mere material comfort. They are often well to do, have been educated, have traveled and indulged in all the luxuries and pastimes of the "materialistic" lifestyle they claim to hate and would seek to deprive others of. They are often actors, musicians, artists, writers, journalists, and college professors – hardly among the deprived, or "victims" of a free and open system of expression and commercial exchange.

How would one respond to an individual if they were to be so ungrateful and malicious toward his or her own family? Disdain for such types should be expected from anyone who sees through such transparent weaknesses in human character.

In America, the left's espoused purpose is no longer simply "creating a better world" through attacks on free enterprise (that was pretty much just a scam anyway). Their main motivation has now become the desire to destroy the very institution of America itself and punish its people for not bowing down to the elitist's unanswered demands for total power. They sympathize with and support ruthless authoritarian tyranny and now also a radical religion whose main strategy is deliberate violence against civilians (including the numerous groups the left has always claimed to champion). They will let their families, friends, and nation perish so that a clear and present enemy triumphs, often facilitating an enemy's goals to those ends.

They critique a thousand perceived sins amongst their fellow countrymen and women while fancying themselves saints of superior judgment and moral standing. They are patriotism in reverse, reliability in retreat, degeneracy, decline, and the opposite of all that is courageous and upstanding amongst fellow citizens.

They possess all the fervor of a patriot, but are a patriot's very opposite. While they typically raise their fists in rage they are more than suited to hang their heads in shame.

Shame on the anti-patriots and the weakness of character that motivates them.

I don't agree with all the sentiments and ideals expressed in the following quotation but find it an example of superb writing none the less

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“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that every right
implies a responsibility, every opportunity, an obligation; every
possession a duty."

"I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that
government is the servant of the people and not their master."

"I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the
world owes no man a living but it owes every man an opportunity to
make a living."

"I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that
economy is a prime request of a sound financial structure, whether in
government, business or personal affairs."

"I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be
as good as his bond; that character-not wealth or power or position-
is of supreme worth."

"I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of
mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross
(waste matter) of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human
soul set free."

"I believe in an all-wise-and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and
that the individuals highest fulfillment, greatest happiness, and
widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will."

"I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone
can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

-- John D. Rockefeller, Jr., quotation inscribed at Rockefeller Center in New York City.