Divisions and factions
J. Robert Smith writes about "delicious irony" of Obama the Great Divider.
I am not sure if "delicious" is how I would describe it. Yes, the silent majority is now speaking up and they are speaking up for liberty. That is the good news—but that is the only good news, as far as I can see.
America is dividing up. Rasmussen's Daily Presidential Tracking Poll has 32 percent of Americans strongly approving on Mr. Obama and 40 percent strongly disapproving. 72 percent of likely voters have strong opinions on the President! How would that 40 percent get along with the 32 percent? Those who have not made up their mind, i.e. the potential "neutral party", isn't even a plurality of this nation (well, counting only those who vote).
Unlike Mr. Smith's characterization, times of division has not been the greatest moment for America. Yes, the American right to dissent, the tradition of loyal opposition is a very valuable thing. But with dissent came the possibility of compromise. The Constitution was such one.
Today, we have the luxury of laughing at the absurdity of counting a person as "three-fifths" of a person because of the color of his skin. But without that compromise, United States of America would not have come to be. There would not have been 9 states to ratify the document, and divided colonies would have been quickly swallowed up by the British, French, or Spaniards.
The first hundred years of this republic was compromise upon compromise, most especially on the matter of slavery. Each time a new state joined the union, the foremost question was whether it was a "slave state" or a "free state". The careful balance had been kept for decades. Critics may argue that these compromises only delayed the inevitable: but this delay allowed the nation to develop, and the economic situation to change. By the time Civil War broke out, the North overwhelmed the South, as we can see in the fact that the South lost, when all they had to do was defend their own territory, not extend supply lines ravaging farms after farm.
Even so, the Civil War represented the most perilous period of this republic. When compromises could no longer be satisfy the factions, when the division became so deep that the mere election of a president who can be voted out in 4 years provoked military action, this was the time when this nation could have been destabilized and destroyed by a foreign power. At no other time, save for the revolutionary war and the war of 1812, did this republic face an existential threat.
And the Civil War left so many wounds in this republic that had been so difficult to heal. We can perhaps argue today that hurts of racial politics have been mended and that we are now in a "post-racial America", where color of a politician's skin matters quite not so much as his policies. But there are other damages that have yet to heal: one is our system of federalism. Our system of government, our union has always been based on a voluntary union of states with its own almost sovereign sphere of influence. No state has ever joined the union under compulsion (we still have territories that choose not to become part of the union and there is no pressure on them to), and until the Civil War, it had always been assumed that every state was free to leave.
The Civil War changed that. That may have only been a small step for the centralized government, but it is a giant step backward for local autonomy, and ultimately individual liberty. And this may come back to bite us if the federal government becomes so oppressive that secession becomes necessary: we have a precedent against us.
The downfall of the Athenian empire had been partisan politics. Extremists for democracy and oligarchy fought for control, inviting foreign actors inside the city walls in order to slaughter the opposition. George Washington could not predict the revolution of 1800 and the two party system that emerged eventually, but he was still right about dangers of factions. Our two party system worked so well so far because the two national parties had been forced to the center, as illustrated in the parable of ice cream vendors. Division was not good for political parties, and extreme differences didn't develop.
In the end, dissent is like pain. It's good for you, because it lets you know what's wrong. But it is not to be embraced warmly. It is a sign that something needs fixing. We cannot afford to let this divide destroy us. We cannot afford to fight another civil war. After all, current left-right divide does not have the clean geographical separation that slavery divide did. We will have our cities at war with countryside, and our suburban counties at war with inner city districts. Although Orson Scott Card imagines a happy ending, do we want to take that chance?
Eventually, we need a uniter. We need a healer—or we may not be able to keep this republic.
What happened to gender equality?
Let me just say that I would be, and for a good reason, the last person to claim that women should be slaves to men. Or to claim, as Greek philosophers did, that women have no faculty of reason—or at least one much inferior to men's.
I believe in gender equality. I believe that anything men can do, women can do better, and that anything women can do, men can do better—which means by mathematical consistency, men and women can do everything equally as well as the other gender. Some statistics, of course, show that more men are in prison than women, or that more women are now in colleges than men. I do not think this represents some kind of gender bias, either at the individual level or at societal level. There is some argument that this has to do with different evolutionary paths men and women have taken due to their different role in reproduction.
But, fundamentally, aside from our physical differences, I believe that men and women are equal, as should every reasonable person.
Then why is Obama administration launching a government program to somehow bring more attention to "women's rights" while ignoring, well, men's rights? Are women's rights not also men's rights? If spousal abuse is a problem for women, is it not for men as well? If a wife slashes the husband, does he not bleed?
Every social problem that can be framed as women's right (perhaps with the exception of abortion issues) can also be framed as men's right. If it is a fundamental right, then it should apply to all the U.S. citizens, not just the women half of them. If it is not a fundamental right, then the government has no business messing with private affairs.
The pendulum has come to full swing. Women do enjoy equal rights and privileges as men, except where physical differences prohibit them. If we are to pay any more attention to gender differences, perhaps we should spend more time with the troubled, neglected boys, rather than girls who enjoy plenty of attention already.
Price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Because you never really win. After all, that's the thing about a free society: a society is not truly free if it does not give enemies of freedom enough berth to try and destroy it—or at least its freedom.
We may be able to hold the tide back. We may be able to stop Obama, his cronies, and "the powers that be", especially if Democrats lose control of the House, where spending bills must originate, in 2010. We may be able to stop government intrusion into private health care system, and the final form of ObamaCare passed may be the best we could hope for: one that fixes what is broken (tort reform, less restriction on selling insurance across state lines, and removal of distorting tax incentives that ties insurance to employers) and leaves alone what works (the rest of the system).
Would that mean that we won and our children can live in peace?
Of course not. It might mean that this temporary victory may be so overwhelming, like our victory over U.S.S.R., that no statist would have the audacity to try it again for decades. But more likely than not, we will have to fight another similar battle in our lifetime once more, and our children will almost definitely have to earn their own freedom. After all, we have a republic if we can keep it, and each generation must prove that they can keep it.
Difference between Obama’s speech to the school children and previous speeches
So, Laura Ingraham called Obama's live speech to the school children "something that no other president has done". Was that correct?
Well, after a week of media coverage, it appears that Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush have also given speeches that were televised to the school children. But here is a crucial difference: those were speeches made at a specific school (and presidents are popular speakers at any venue; it would be senseless to ban them from speaking at schools at all) that were recorded and later distributed nation-wide for re-broadcast.
While some may protest that these speeches were political in nature, not educational, the fact of the matter is, that the content of these speeches were well known before they were mass-distributed. If either Reagan or Bush tried to fundamentally change American youth through these speeches, they couldn't have done it. The adults would have stopped them well before that could have happened, and "your children belong to the state" moment could not have happened, even if Reagan or Bush had such designs at heart.
Obama's speech is different. As it was going to be broadcast live to schools (admittedly ones that elect to broadcast it live; but we don't know how much federal pressure is (or is not) there, especially for schools that receive significant federal funding), there was no way for any adults to know what the speech would say. It could have told our kids to report on their parents' fishy activities so that they can help President Obama. After the controversy broke, the administration said that the speech will be available today for review, but that's just the typical backpedaling; this hadn't been in the original plans.
In fact, original plans included "educational activities" where union thugsteachers would discuss how the children can "help President Obama" (ostensibly in fulfilling their own educational goal, but why did it have to say anything about helping any particular political figure, especially one as divisive as Obama?), which would be scheduled to take place right after the speech. This is something indeed no other president has ever done.
When the speech becomes available later today, we may find out that all this fuss is over nothing (and after all, the administration had plenty of time to re-write the speech to remove anything controversial they had in the first draft, before this became public). But regardless of what happens in this particular incident, we must remember one thing. our children do not belong to the state.
A totalitarian government bypasses educated citizenry with its indoctrination of the youth through the apparatus of public school. Nazis have done it, and there is no reason to believe such an event absolutely cannot happen in America. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and we must never forget that. Let no president, Obama, Reagan, or Bush, get to our children without going through us first.
Edit: Hot Air has the speech. As predicted, nothing controversial remains.
‘Trouser women’ should be flogged
And their trial is set to resume soon.
At the risk of sounding like Socrates (who I think deserved to die for insisting that even an unjust law needed to be obeyed), these women deserve to be flogged for trying to subvert the proper procedure for changing a law.
I want to make something clear: I have no problem with women wearing trousers in general. I have no problem with them wearing mini skirts, or, for that matter, at least when they are not in front of my children, I have no problem with them wearing no clothes whatsoever. It's not the trousers that I have problem with. It's this:
Hussein, a widow in her 30s, was charged with public indecency under Sudan's Islamic law after she was arrested in July along with 12 other women who were wearing trousers at a Khartoum restaurant.
Thirteen women don't spontaneously decide to show up with trousers on in a country where trousers are outlawed. This was a clearly staged sit-in. That is perfectly clear in this statement; no one is trying to hide the fact that these women are activists:
Hussein has said she wants to be tried to challenge the law, and that she wished to waive her UN immunity.
Ten women have already been whipped for the same offence -- including Christians -- and Hussein has said she will fight a guilty verdict and the law itself.
Ladies, if you want to change the law, the court is the wrong place to press your case.
I am utterly unfamiliar with the Sudanese system of government (do they have a constitution?), but most modern form of government is comprised of three branches: legislative, executive, and judiciary. For proper functioning of government, checks and balances, as well as separation of powers is very important. This means that judiciary branch shouldn't be writing or re-writing laws. The only way it can be allowed to change the written laws is when the legislative overstepped its powers by passing an unconstitutional law. Even then, the judiciary is only allowed to strike down the law; it's up to the legislative branch to propose a new law, if one is needed.
It is a common technique of the liberals to get judiciary to do their bidding. After all, in the case of U.S., to get the judiciary to subvert the legal process, they only need to convince 9 old men and women. Convincing the legislative branch is a far more difficult task.
Of course, as I am utterly unfamiliar with the Sudanese system, I cannot say whether the same standards and procedures that apply to our system apply to theirs. But, generally speaking, written laws should be followed where reasonable—and one must make legitimate, good-faith effort to change the unreasonable laws by established procedures. That doesn't sound like what these women tried to do, but then, the details are lacking so I could be wrong.
But until further details emerge that shows that these women did try all other legal avenues open to them, I will say: the trouser women should be flogged, according to the law of the land.
Van Jones resigns
I think Glenn Beck deserves a lot of credit for his investigation of Mr. Jones' radical activities and bringing these into the attention of the mainstream media, as well as many conservatives and moderates. He put himself in the line of fire with his work. He's not in the clear yet, as the left-wingers are calling for his blood, not to mention the boycott Jones' Color of Change initiated against Glenn Beck advertisers after Mr. Beck started covering Obama's "czars" as a window into his policies, as Mr. Obama himself suggested during last year's presidential debates, but no matter what happens, Mr. Beck is a hero and patriot.
As for Mr. Jones, he cannot be ... honest even in resigning:
"They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide," he said. "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."
What "lies and distortions" are those, Mr. Jones? Glenn Beck didn't read into or somehow extrapolate from Mr. Jones' supposed motives or circumstantial evidences. Glenn Beck showed videos of Mr. Jones espousing radical, communist ideas, with contexts intact, as well as revealing documents that bore Mr. Jones' signature—and he made sure that Mr. Jones' signature couldn't have gotten there by mistake and, every single time, asked the White House for response before going public. If these are "lies and distortions", I wonder what kind of words Mr. Jones uses to describe his own words and his own criticism of the previous administrations.