----
Harvard review of recent campaign praises Obama's ground game and attributes that to his re-election success. (See 2 below.)
---
Is this sour grapes or an excellent explanation as to where we are and where we are heading. You decide. (See 3 below.)
You thought slavery was gone. Think again! (See 3a below.)
---
Why Conservative thinking lost. (See 4 below.)
---
Has Assad effectively transferred his WMD to Hezballah? (See 5 below.)
---
Peter Beinart explains why Obama will ignore Israel. (SEe 6 below.)
---
Is this sour grapes or an excellent explanation as to where we are and where we are heading. You decide. (See 3 below.)
You thought slavery was gone. Think again! (See 3a below.)
---
Why Conservative thinking lost. (See 4 below.)
---
Has Assad effectively transferred his WMD to Hezballah? (See 5 below.)
---
Peter Beinart explains why Obama will ignore Israel. (SEe 6 below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Money in, money out. Balancing a budget or trimming a deficit shouldn't be hard.
Yet in reality, it's preposterously difficult. Every dollar of wasteful spending is someone's paycheck -- and that someone isn't going to bow out quietly. Every tax deduction can be seen as either a boost to the free market or an unfair subsidy to a particular social class. Budgeting is about much more than arithmetic. It's politics, economics, psychology, philosophy, lobbying, and public relations all rolled up into one big, ugly brawl.
Over the next few weeks, Congress and the president will try to hammer out a budget deal in order to avoid the fiscal cliff. If elected leaders fail, taxes will rise, and spending will be cut come Jan.1 -- there's something for almost everyone to hate.
Any final budget deal will probably attempt to cover a 10-year period, but that's more formality than substance. Budgets are made on a yearly basis, and anything done today can easily be overturned tomorrow. The whole reason we're having a fiscal-cliff debate is that no one wants to accept the conditions of previous budget deals, which shows how fickle the deals really are.
So, Motley Fool readers, let's look at this on a one-year basis. Here's what federal government spending looks like this year:
Source: Office of Budget and Management; Federal Reserve; author's calculations. Income security = unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.
And here's what tax revenue looks like this year:
Source: Office of Budget and Management; Federal Reserve; author's calculations.
We're looking at a deficit of about $1.3 trillion.
And for good measure, here is the cost in lost tax revenue of the top 10 tax deductions:
Source: Credit Suisse.
Those are the numbers. Now it's your turn.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)
Secret to Obama's Success: A Great Ground Game
President Obama won re-election in part because his crack campaign team understood 2012 voters and put together an impressive ground operation. Out of professional respect, Republicans should refrain from cracking jokes about the president's erstwhile profession, community organizing. That's what I took away from recordings of Harvard's Institute of Politics quadrennial presidential campaign autopsy, which were released Monday.
Team Obama conducted nightly surveys of 9,000 likely voters in 10 battleground states. Because of those surveys, campaign manager Jim Messina told the gathering, "We thought we knew exactly where the electorate was." The campaign's targeting was so tight that national field director Jeremy Bird was able to see support slacken at Ohio State University and respond by multiplying the campaign's presence. Messina claimed, "We knew exactly who we had to go get."
The Obama campaign continually asked not only for people's votes but also for their time and engagement. Call your friends, the campaign would urge supporters, and make sure they vote for Obama, too. Digital campaign maven Teddy Goff boasted that an astounding 99 percent of the campaign email list voted.
Political consultants like to think of themselves as the secret ingredient that wins or loses races. The Obama campaign, to the contrary, depended upon volunteers and field workers. In 2008, the campaign sent out regular "state-of-the-race memos," then-campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in his book, "The Audacity to Win," because, "It could not have been more important for our supporters to understand how we saw the race and to know why their money and time were so important." The campaign saw grassroots supporters "as full partners and had designed a campaign with the belief that they could make the difference for us."
You could call the 2012 Obama operation a successful marriage of old-style ward-heeling to state-of-the-art numbers-crunching and milking social media. The journalist moderators asked Team Romney if GOP candidates would have to moderate their positions on, say, immigration, to win in 2016. Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades regretted the campaign's decision to hit Texas Gov. Rick Perry's support for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants as well as Mitt Romney's call for illegal immigrants to engage in "self-deportation."
The GOP ticket's share of the Latino vote has fallen since George W. Bush won about 40 percent of that vote in 2004. John McCain garnered 31 percent of the Latino vote, Romney 27 percent.
Ron Paul adviser Trygve Olson suggested that the party might want to channel some libertarian ideas to attract enthusiastic young voters.
Matt David, who advised former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman in the race, posited that the GOP might want to rethink a couple of positions but argued that the real reason for a Republican freak out is technology. "The GOP is far behind there.'"
The last strong push to modernize the GOP, GOTV (get out the vote), came in 2004. It's time for an upgrade at the Republican National Committee. Quoth David, "The beauty of technology is that you can buy it. The challenge is that you need the institutional knowledge to use it."
I wish the Obama White House cared as much about the economy as the campaign cared about winning. But I have to respect success. Obamaland knows how to appeal to voters. Republicans should listen and learn.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)By Laura Hollis
Associate Professional Specialist and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law at University of Notre Dame. Past Director at Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Associate Director and Clinical Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Education: University of Notre Dame Law School, University of Notre Dame.
I am already reading so many pundits and other talking heads analyzing the
disaster that was this year's elections. I am adding my own ten cents.
Here goes:
1. We are outnumbered.
We accurately foresaw the enthusiasm, the passion, the commitment, the
determination, and the turnout. Married women, men, independents, Catholics,
evangelicals - they all went for Romney in percentages as high or higher
than the groups which voted for McCain in 2008. It wasn't enough. What we
saw in the election on Tuesday was a tipping point: we are now at a place
where there are legitimately fewer Americans who desire a free republic with
a free people than there are those who think the government should give them
stuff. There are fewer of us who believe in the value of free exchange and
free enterprise. There are fewer of us who do not wish to demonize
successful people in order to justify taking from them. We are outnumbered.
For the moment. It's just that simple.
2. It wasn't the candidate(s)
Some are already saying, "Romney was the wrong guy"; "He should have picked
Marco Rubio to get Florida/Rob Portman to get Ohio/Chris Christie to get
[someplace else]." With all due respect, these assessments are incorrect.
Romney ran a strategic and well-organized campaign. Yes, he could have hit
harder on Benghazi. But for those who would have loved that, there are those
who would have found it distasteful. No matter what tactic you could point
to that Romney could have done better, it would have been spun in a way that
was detrimental to his chances. Romney would have been an excellent
president, and Ryan was an inspired choice. No matter who we ran this year,
they would have lost.See #1, above.
3. It's the culture, stupid.
We have been trying to fight this battle every four years at the voting
booth. It is long past time we admit that is not where the battle really is.
We abdicated control of the culture - starting back in the 1960's. And now our
largest primary social institutions - education, the media, Hollywood
(entertainment) have become really nothing more than an assembly line for
cranking out reliable little Leftists. Furthermore, we have allowed the
government to undermine the institutions that instill good character -
marriage, the family, communities, schools, our churches. So, here we are,
at least two full generations later - we are reaping what we have sown. It
took nearly fifty years to get here; it will take another fifty years to get
back. But it starts with the determination to reclaim education, the media,
and the entertainment business. If we fail to do that, we can kiss every
election goodbye from here on out. And much more.
4. America has become a nation of adolescents
The real loser in this election was adulthood: Maturity.
Responsibility. The understanding that liberty must be accompanied by self-restraint. Obama is a spoiled child, and the behavior and language of his followers and their
advertisements throughout the campaign makes it clear how many of them are,
as well. Romney is a grown-up. Romney should have won. Those of us who
expected him to win assumed that voters would act like grownups.
Because if we were a nation of grownups, he would have won.
But what did win? Sex. Drugs. Bad language. Bad manners. Vulgarity.
Lies. Cheating. Name-calling. Finger-pointing. Blaming. And irresponsible
spending.
This does not bode well. People grow up one of two ways: either they
choose to, or circumstances force them to. The warnings are all there, whether
it is the looming economic disaster, or the inability of the government to
respond to crises like Hurricane Sandy, or the growing strength and
brazenness of our enemies. American voters stick their fingers in their ears
and say, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you.";
It is unpleasant to think about the circumstances it will take to force
Americans to grow up. It is even more unpleasant to think about Obama at the
helm when those circumstances arrive.
5. Yes, there is apparently a Vagina Vote
It's the subject matter of another column in its entirety to point out, one
by one, all of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the Democrats this
year. Suffice it to say that the only "war on women" was the one waged by
the Obama campaign, which sexualized and objectified women, featuring them
dressed up like vulvas at the Democrat National Convention, appealing to
their "lady parts," comparing voting to losing your virginity with Obama,
trumpeting the thrills of destroying our children in the womb (and using our
daughters in commercials to do so), and making Catholics pay for their birth
control. For a significant number of women, this was appealing. It might
call into question the wisdom of the Nineteenth Amendment, but for the fact
that large numbers of women (largely married) used their "lady smarts"
instead. Either way, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are rolling
over in their graves.
6. It's not about giving up on "social issues";
No Republican candidate should participate in a debate or go out on the
stump without thorough debate prep and a complete set of talking points that
they stick to. This should start with a good grounding in biology and a
reluctance to purport to know the will of God. (Thank you, Todd and
Richard.)
That said, we do not hold the values we do because they garner votes. We
hold the values we do because we believe that they are time-tested
principles without which a civilized, free and prosperous society is not
possible.
We defend the unborn because we understand that a society which views some
lives as expendable is capable of viewing all lives as expendable.
We defend family - mothers, fathers, marriage, children - because history
makes it quite clear that societies without intact families quickly descend
into anarchy and barbarism, and we have plenty of proof of that in our inner
cities where marriage is infrequent and unwed motherhood approaches 80
percent. When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, many thought that the
abortion cause was lost. Forty years later, ultrasound technology has
demonstrated the inevitable connection between science and morality.
More Americans than ever define themselves as "pro-life." What is tragic is that
tens of millions of children have lost their lives while Americans figure
out what should have been obvious before.
There is no "giving up" on social issues. There is only the realization that
we have to fight the battle on other fronts. The truth will out in the end.
7. Obama does not have a mandate. And he does not need one.
I have to laugh - bitterly - when I read conservative pundits trying to
assure us that Obama "has to know" that he does not have a mandate, and so
he will have to govern from the middle. I don't know what they're smoking.
Obama does not care that he does not have a mandate. He does not view
himself as being elected (much less re-elected) to represent individuals. He
views himself as having been re-elected to complete the "fundamental
transformation" of America, the basic structure of which he despises.
Expect much more of the same - largely the complete disregard of the will of half
the American public, his willingness to rule by executive order, and the
utter inability of another divided Congress to rein him in. Stanley Kurtz
has it all laid out.
8. The Corrupt Media is the enemy
Too strong? I don't think so. I have been watching the media try to throw
elections since at least the early 1990's. In 2008 and again this year, we
saw the media cravenly cover up for the incompetence and deceit of this
President, while demonizing a good, honorable and decent man with lies and
smears. This is on top of the daily barrage of insults that conservatives
(and by that I mean the electorate, not the politicians) must endure at the
hands of this arrogant bunch of elitist snobs. Bias is one thing.What we
observed with Benghazi was professional malpractice and fraud. They need to
go.
Republicans, Libertarians and other conservatives need to be prepared to
play hardball with the Pravda press from here on out. And while we are at
it, defend those journalists (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Atkisson, Eli Lake) who
actually do their jobs. As well as Fox News & talk radio. Because you can
fully expect a re-elected Obama to try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in
term two.
9. Small business and entrepreneurs will be hurt the worst
For all the blather about "Wall Street versus Main Street," Obama's statist
agenda will unquestionably benefit the biggest corporations which - as with
the public sector unions - are in the best position to make campaign
donations, hire lobbyists, and get special exemptions carved out from
Obama's health care laws, his environmental regulations, his labor laws. It
will be the small business, the entrepreneur, and the first-time innovators
who will be crushed by their inability to compete on a level playing field.
10. America is more polarized than ever; and this time it's personal
I've been following politics for a long time, and it feels different this
time. Not just for me. I've received messages from other conservatives who
are saying the same thing: there is little to no tolerance left out there
for those who are bringing this country to its knees - even when they have
been our friends. It isn't just about "my guy" versus "your guy." It is my
view of America versus your view of America - a crippled, hemorrhaging,
debt-laden, weakened and dependent America that I want no part of and resent
being foisted on me. I no longer have any patience for stupidity, blindness,
or vulgarity, so with each dumb "tweet" or FB post by one of my happily
lefty comrades, another one bites the dust, for me. Delete. What does this
portend for a divided Congress? I expect that Republicans will be
demoralized and chastened for a short time. But I see them in a bad
position. Americans in general want Congress to work together. But many do
not want Obama's policies, and so Republicans who support them will be
toast. Good luck, guys.
11. It's possible that America just has to hit rock bottom
I truly believe that most Americans who voted for Obama have no idea what
they are in for. Most simply believe him when he says that all he really
wants is for the rich to pay "a little bit more." So reasonable! Who could
argue with that except a greedy racist? America is on a horrific bender. Has
been for some time now. The warning signs of our fiscal profligacy and
culture of lack of personal responsibility are everywhere - too many to
mention. We need only look at other countries which have gone the route we
are walking now to see what is in store. For the past four years -certainly
within the past campaign season - we have tried to warn Americans. Too many
refuse to listen, even when all of the events that have transpired during
Obama's presidency - unemployment, economic stagnation, skyrocketing prices,
the depression of the dollar, the collapse of foreign policy, Benghazi,
hopelessly inept responses to natural disasters - can be tied directly to
Obama's statist philosophies, and his decisions.
What that means, I fear, is that they will not see what is coming until the
whole thing collapses. That is what makes me so sad today. I see the country
I love headed toward its own "rock bottom," and I cannot seem to reach those
who are taking it there.
3)By Laura Hollis
Associate Professional Specialist and Concurrent Associate Professor of Law at University of Notre Dame. Past Director at Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Associate Director and Clinical Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Education: University of Notre Dame Law School, University of Notre Dame.
I am already reading so many pundits and other talking heads analyzing the
disaster that was this year's elections. I am adding my own ten cents.
Here goes:
1. We are outnumbered.
We accurately foresaw the enthusiasm, the passion, the commitment, the
determination, and the turnout. Married women, men, independents, Catholics,
evangelicals - they all went for Romney in percentages as high or higher
than the groups which voted for McCain in 2008. It wasn't enough. What we
saw in the election on Tuesday was a tipping point: we are now at a place
where there are legitimately fewer Americans who desire a free republic with
a free people than there are those who think the government should give them
stuff. There are fewer of us who believe in the value of free exchange and
free enterprise. There are fewer of us who do not wish to demonize
successful people in order to justify taking from them. We are outnumbered.
For the moment. It's just that simple.
2. It wasn't the candidate(s)
Some are already saying, "Romney was the wrong guy"; "He should have picked
Marco Rubio to get Florida/Rob Portman to get Ohio/Chris Christie to get
[someplace else]." With all due respect, these assessments are incorrect.
Romney ran a strategic and well-organized campaign. Yes, he could have hit
harder on Benghazi. But for those who would have loved that, there are those
who would have found it distasteful. No matter what tactic you could point
to that Romney could have done better, it would have been spun in a way that
was detrimental to his chances. Romney would have been an excellent
president, and Ryan was an inspired choice. No matter who we ran this year,
they would have lost.See #1, above.
3. It's the culture, stupid.
We have been trying to fight this battle every four years at the voting
booth. It is long past time we admit that is not where the battle really is.
We abdicated control of the culture - starting back in the 1960's. And now our
largest primary social institutions - education, the media, Hollywood
(entertainment) have become really nothing more than an assembly line for
cranking out reliable little Leftists. Furthermore, we have allowed the
government to undermine the institutions that instill good character -
marriage, the family, communities, schools, our churches. So, here we are,
at least two full generations later - we are reaping what we have sown. It
took nearly fifty years to get here; it will take another fifty years to get
back. But it starts with the determination to reclaim education, the media,
and the entertainment business. If we fail to do that, we can kiss every
election goodbye from here on out. And much more.
4. America has become a nation of adolescents
The real loser in this election was adulthood: Maturity.
Responsibility. The understanding that liberty must be accompanied by self-restraint. Obama is a spoiled child, and the behavior and language of his followers and their
advertisements throughout the campaign makes it clear how many of them are,
as well. Romney is a grown-up. Romney should have won. Those of us who
expected him to win assumed that voters would act like grownups.
Because if we were a nation of grownups, he would have won.
But what did win? Sex. Drugs. Bad language. Bad manners. Vulgarity.
Lies. Cheating. Name-calling. Finger-pointing. Blaming. And irresponsible
spending.
This does not bode well. People grow up one of two ways: either they
choose to, or circumstances force them to. The warnings are all there, whether
it is the looming economic disaster, or the inability of the government to
respond to crises like Hurricane Sandy, or the growing strength and
brazenness of our enemies. American voters stick their fingers in their ears
and say, "Lalalalalala, I can't hear you.";
It is unpleasant to think about the circumstances it will take to force
Americans to grow up. It is even more unpleasant to think about Obama at the
helm when those circumstances arrive.
5. Yes, there is apparently a Vagina Vote
It's the subject matter of another column in its entirety to point out, one
by one, all of the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the Democrats this
year. Suffice it to say that the only "war on women" was the one waged by
the Obama campaign, which sexualized and objectified women, featuring them
dressed up like vulvas at the Democrat National Convention, appealing to
their "lady parts," comparing voting to losing your virginity with Obama,
trumpeting the thrills of destroying our children in the womb (and using our
daughters in commercials to do so), and making Catholics pay for their birth
control. For a significant number of women, this was appealing. It might
call into question the wisdom of the Nineteenth Amendment, but for the fact
that large numbers of women (largely married) used their "lady smarts"
instead. Either way, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are rolling
over in their graves.
6. It's not about giving up on "social issues";
No Republican candidate should participate in a debate or go out on the
stump without thorough debate prep and a complete set of talking points that
they stick to. This should start with a good grounding in biology and a
reluctance to purport to know the will of God. (Thank you, Todd and
Richard.)
That said, we do not hold the values we do because they garner votes. We
hold the values we do because we believe that they are time-tested
principles without which a civilized, free and prosperous society is not
possible.
We defend the unborn because we understand that a society which views some
lives as expendable is capable of viewing all lives as expendable.
We defend family - mothers, fathers, marriage, children - because history
makes it quite clear that societies without intact families quickly descend
into anarchy and barbarism, and we have plenty of proof of that in our inner
cities where marriage is infrequent and unwed motherhood approaches 80
percent. When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, many thought that the
abortion cause was lost. Forty years later, ultrasound technology has
demonstrated the inevitable connection between science and morality.
More Americans than ever define themselves as "pro-life." What is tragic is that
tens of millions of children have lost their lives while Americans figure
out what should have been obvious before.
There is no "giving up" on social issues. There is only the realization that
we have to fight the battle on other fronts. The truth will out in the end.
7. Obama does not have a mandate. And he does not need one.
I have to laugh - bitterly - when I read conservative pundits trying to
assure us that Obama "has to know" that he does not have a mandate, and so
he will have to govern from the middle. I don't know what they're smoking.
Obama does not care that he does not have a mandate. He does not view
himself as being elected (much less re-elected) to represent individuals. He
views himself as having been re-elected to complete the "fundamental
transformation" of America, the basic structure of which he despises.
Expect much more of the same - largely the complete disregard of the will of half
the American public, his willingness to rule by executive order, and the
utter inability of another divided Congress to rein him in. Stanley Kurtz
has it all laid out.
8. The Corrupt Media is the enemy
Too strong? I don't think so. I have been watching the media try to throw
elections since at least the early 1990's. In 2008 and again this year, we
saw the media cravenly cover up for the incompetence and deceit of this
President, while demonizing a good, honorable and decent man with lies and
smears. This is on top of the daily barrage of insults that conservatives
(and by that I mean the electorate, not the politicians) must endure at the
hands of this arrogant bunch of elitist snobs. Bias is one thing.What we
observed with Benghazi was professional malpractice and fraud. They need to
go.
Republicans, Libertarians and other conservatives need to be prepared to
play hardball with the Pravda press from here on out. And while we are at
it, defend those journalists (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Atkisson, Eli Lake) who
actually do their jobs. As well as Fox News & talk radio. Because you can
fully expect a re-elected Obama to try to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in
term two.
9. Small business and entrepreneurs will be hurt the worst
For all the blather about "Wall Street versus Main Street," Obama's statist
agenda will unquestionably benefit the biggest corporations which - as with
the public sector unions - are in the best position to make campaign
donations, hire lobbyists, and get special exemptions carved out from
Obama's health care laws, his environmental regulations, his labor laws. It
will be the small business, the entrepreneur, and the first-time innovators
who will be crushed by their inability to compete on a level playing field.
10. America is more polarized than ever; and this time it's personal
I've been following politics for a long time, and it feels different this
time. Not just for me. I've received messages from other conservatives who
are saying the same thing: there is little to no tolerance left out there
for those who are bringing this country to its knees - even when they have
been our friends. It isn't just about "my guy" versus "your guy." It is my
view of America versus your view of America - a crippled, hemorrhaging,
debt-laden, weakened and dependent America that I want no part of and resent
being foisted on me. I no longer have any patience for stupidity, blindness,
or vulgarity, so with each dumb "tweet" or FB post by one of my happily
lefty comrades, another one bites the dust, for me. Delete. What does this
portend for a divided Congress? I expect that Republicans will be
demoralized and chastened for a short time. But I see them in a bad
position. Americans in general want Congress to work together. But many do
not want Obama's policies, and so Republicans who support them will be
toast. Good luck, guys.
11. It's possible that America just has to hit rock bottom
I truly believe that most Americans who voted for Obama have no idea what
they are in for. Most simply believe him when he says that all he really
wants is for the rich to pay "a little bit more." So reasonable! Who could
argue with that except a greedy racist? America is on a horrific bender. Has
been for some time now. The warning signs of our fiscal profligacy and
culture of lack of personal responsibility are everywhere - too many to
mention. We need only look at other countries which have gone the route we
are walking now to see what is in store. For the past four years -certainly
within the past campaign season - we have tried to warn Americans. Too many
refuse to listen, even when all of the events that have transpired during
Obama's presidency - unemployment, economic stagnation, skyrocketing prices,
the depression of the dollar, the collapse of foreign policy, Benghazi,
hopelessly inept responses to natural disasters - can be tied directly to
Obama's statist philosophies, and his decisions.
What that means, I fear, is that they will not see what is coming until the
whole thing collapses. That is what makes me so sad today. I see the country
I love headed toward its own "rock bottom," and I cannot seem to reach those
who are taking it there.
3a) Obama and Slavery
By Daren Jonescu
Thomas Jefferson owned about six hundred slaves over the course of his life. That is to say, he was involved in denying individual sovereignty to six hundred people. Barack Obama, by comparison, wishes to deny individual sovereignty to over three hundred million people. And yet according to the left, Jefferson should be dismissed as a hypocrite, and one of the noblest documents ever written reduced to the status of mere "politics," whereas Obama, who seeks to destroy that document, ought to be seen as a champion of equality and fairness.
If you are inclined to incredulity at the notion of comparing Obama's policy agenda to slave ownership, then you may wish to excuse yourself from the rest of this discussion, as the comparison only gets worse for Obama.
What, at its base, is slavery? Slavery, we would casually answer, is the ownership of one man by another. That is to say, it is a perversion of the notion of private property, rooted in a fundamental illogic about the nature and source of property itself.
Property is a derivation from what Jefferson, following Locke and others, termed the right to life. A human being, as an animal, has a natural inclination to self-preservation; however, as a rational being, this inclination is not simply an instinct, but initiates a moral imperative, i.e., it becomes a matter of choosing to live in accordance with his nature, first and foremost by preserving himself. It is this moral imperative that modern political philosophers termed a "right," in the sense that to thwart or restrict it is to deny a man his very nature, which means to deny Nature itself. Thus, it is literally correct to say that to violate the right to life is unnatural.
As a rational agent, a man achieves his self-preservation through voluntary effort aimed at providing the means of his survival and prosperity. Just as the right to preserve himself entails what may be called ownership of his own life, so the man's efforts are also his property, in as much as they are the practical manifestation of his right to self-preservation, i.e., of his self-ownership.
From this, it is a "self-evident" truth that the acquired (earned) product of the man's voluntary effort is also his rightful property, following upon his ownership of the labor that produced it, which in turn followed upon his ownership of himself, and his moral imperative of self-preservation.
The institution of slavery is a perversion of property rights because it treats as one man's property an entity that already has a natural owner, namely the entity itself, i.e., the slave. But what exactly is slavery's definitive violation of the principle of self-ownership? Owning a man, independently of owning his actions, would be as meaningless as it is rationally incoherent. If I am free to act as I choose, and to enjoy the fruits of my efforts, then I cannot be said to be owned by another, in any practical sense.
Thus, slavery's definitive violation of self-ownership is the presumed ownership of another man's actions. In other words, to be a slave is, at its core, to live without any property claim on one's own effort or its results. The more overtly coercive elements of slavery are corollaries of this basic denial. To own the results of a man's work -- that is, to own them without mutual voluntary exchange -- is to own his labor; to own his labor is to own his time; to own his time is to own his life.
If, however, one grants the humanity of the slave, then the institution of slavery is refuted by a clear understanding of the notion of property itself. Property rights presuppose -- are derived from -- self-ownership. A naturally self-owned being cannot logically be owned by someone else. Therefore, slave ownership -- one man "owning" another man -- violates the premise of all ownership. Slavery is self-refuting, as it contradicts the foundation of property rights, namely that a human being owns himself.
The American founders, experts on property rights, understood this, which is why the nation's internal conflict over slavery devolved into a question of whether African slaves were fully human. Americans wishing to defend the institution of slavery had no choice but to answer "no" -- basic logic required this, for reasons outlined in the preceding paragraph. Common sense, on the other hand, forced men like Jefferson to answer "yes," thereby concluding, in the name of reason, that slavery was illegitimate.
Jefferson's famous "all men are created equal" is in no way susceptible to the smug condescension of all-knowing leftists like Jon Meacham, as it is obvious that Jefferson meant to include African men in that subject, "all men." He was implicitly addressing, as broadly as possible, the great moral inconsistency of his time.
Hence, Meacham's snotty demurral that Jefferson was "somewhat of a progressive on slavery as a young man -- as much as a young slave owner could be in the Virginia of his time," rings false on every level. As a child of a slave-based society, living among and owning slaves his entire life, the courage revealed in his grand declaration that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" is a monument to a man of character -- the antithesis of the "pragmatic politician" Meacham describes. He saw the iniquities of the world that had nurtured him, as much as of the circumstances imposed upon him by the British crown, and wished to set down as a line in the sand of history his desire that all men should be granted their birthright. The declared equality of all men, powerful in its simplicity, implicitly raises the slave, just as it lowers the king.
What is more, for all the modern left's snide remarks about the fact that Jefferson did not free his own slaves, we can say that in a more fundamental sense, he did effect the change he sought, and did so more definitively than any private act could have achieved. After all, it was precisely Jefferson's own words and principles, as invoked by later Americans, which proved the ultimate downfall of the institution of slavery -- which, we must recall, was a multinational institution in his day, as irrationalism, socialism, and a degenerate popular culture are today. We all live in conditions of moral inconsistency; correction is always maddeningly incremental. Jefferson, however, was instrumental in enunciating the founding principles of the nation that delegitimized slavery more thoroughly than any nation ever had.
The left, in its effort to undo the constitutional republic, would smear Jefferson as a moral hypocrite. On the contrary, we should all wish to be so efficacious in realizing our moral intentions in the grand scheme of things. There is a lesson here for all of us today, imperfect beings though we be, who seek a path to civilizational renewal.
The most predictable and telling aspect of Meacham's ahistorical sophistry is his claim that Jefferson's youthful distaste for slavery showed him to be "somewhat progressive," while his ultimate failure to free his slaves reveals that he was "not progressive enough." Meacham's point here, beyond mere antifounders revisionism, is that the antislavery position is progressive, while the pro-slavery position is, by implication, "regressive," i.e., conservative. This is the pseudointellectual version of Joe Biden's rant about how the Republicans "are going to put y'all back in chains."
This claim must be addressed directly, as it takes us to the heart of the leftist educational establishment's long range purpose of skewering language on the spit of Marxist indoctrination.
Progressivism, as its most prominent advocate these days tells us, represents the desire to "spread the (that is, your) wealth around" by means of government coercion. Progressivism is the advocacy of so-called positive rights, i.e., claims against other men grounded not in human nature, but rather in a vindictive ideologue's wish list. Progressivism is the balkanization of society based on income strata and their corresponding layers of resentment. It is a fundamental denial of even the possibility of individual achievement, in favor of the antitheory that all goods are ultimately the product of collective, centrally planned action -- that "you didn't build that," that no human being ever ultimately achieved anything, but rather the state achieved everything.
Progressivism is, in sum, the rejection of the individual, which means of individual human nature, which means of individual natural rights. Where there is no rights-bearing individual, there is, needless to say, no self-ownership; there is no concept of "my labor" and "my time"; therefore, there is no product of "my efforts." Property does not exist.
Allow me to emphasize this point. For progressives, private property is not merely to be "sacrificed" in the name of some higher good. Their goal is much more profound: property is to be refuted.
And what, according to every semi-rational conception of mankind the world has ever known, is a man who has no claim on the product of his labor, on his effort, his time, or, as naturally follows, on his own life? The answer would have been self-evident to every man, woman, and child, until Marxist progressivism overwhelmed modern education: that man is a slave.
Progressivism espouses the basic principle of slavery. Unlike past slavery, however, the progressive version does not try to force the square peg of "owned men" into the round hole of property rights. The progressive simply denies property rights completely, and hence rejects the tortured reasoning of private slave ownership in favor of universal enslavement to the state.
The progressive, in short, seeks to nationalize the slave industry. This is the literal (though unspoken) meaning and source of his demands for confiscatory tax rates, redistribution of wealth, hyperregulation of industry, and government control of health care and education. It is the meaning and source of the progressive's mockery of private success in favor of the charms of public dependency, his efforts to redefine and legislate the private family out of existence, and his disdain for religions which teach the dignity of the individual soul, and appeal to men's hearts beyond the reach of their allegiance to the government.
You may object that whereas a slave is not free to leave his owner's land, a citizen in progressive America may live or work elsewhere. This is true -- for now. It has not always been true in leftist nations, of course. In any case, we ought to judge the left by its hopes and inclinations, rather than by its practical manifestations alone. (The fact that the progressives have been resisted on many of their wishes cannot be used in their defense.) And what is the last hundred years of leftist evolution, if not the development of ingenious strategies for tempting civilization into its own demise -- for slowly habituating men to desire the chains that previous oppressors had to slip over their targets' necks as they slept?
To understand the defining intentions of progressivism, consider the left's demonization of those who avail themselves of foreign "tax havens." Consider the death tax. The assumption is that whatever you have acquired ought to be subject to government confiscation -- that you are cheating the state by acting as though your "possessions" are actually your own, rather than a loan from the collective. Watch during the next few years, as doctors' appeals to individual rights are crushed under the tank of socialized medicine, just as they have been in every nation that has adopted that inhuman scheme.
Progressivism is the nationalization of slavery. This brings us back to the Jefferson/Obama comparison with which we began. Contrary to Jon Meacham's lame effort to claim Jefferson's antislavery instincts as progressivism, it was actually his dedication to the notion of property, which, following Locke, he understood to be inseparable from self-ownership, that stoked his moral objection to slavery.
And here is the point: Jefferson was a man who opposed slavery at its root -- its incompatibility with the basis of private property, namely individual sovereignty -- but who found himself unable to undo the societal wrong in his lifetime, or even to extricate his own life from its taint. His ideas and his words paved the way for many great developments, not least of which was the end of slavery in America. His principled hope was achieved, albeit belatedly.
Obama, on the contrary, is a man who embraces the core principle of slavery -- the denial of individual sovereignty, i.e., self-ownership. His main difference on this score from the slave owners of the past is that, rather than pursuing the contradiction of defending private property while simultaneously defiling it, Obama merely wishes to undo property itself, thus rendering enslavement a universal principle of government. If his hopes, which he shares with the Communist Party and all other progressives of the past hundred and fifty years, are achieved, life in the resulting America will make life under George III seem a lost paradise.
Bluntly stated, Jefferson was a great, imperfect man who believed deeply in freedom as an equal right, but struggled to find the best path to its realization. Obama is a resentful demagogue who deeply disbelieves in the notions of freedom and property, who believes only in the equality of shared dependency, and whose planned post-Marxist nightmare presently slouches, like Yeats' "rough beast," towards America to be born.
In the earliest moments of representative government, the philosopher Democritus could already see something:
"Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to so-called prosperity under tyranny as freedom is to slavery." (Fragment D115)
The Greek experiment in political self-determination revealed something that subsequent generations broadly remembered and refined, until education finally came under the control of the relativists and propagandists for tyranny: the government's denial of self-determination -- of the dignity of the individual, of self-ownership, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of property -- is merely slavery by other names. Those other names -- social justice, fairness, progress -- must no longer be allowed to stand in the public arena without their proper translation.
That translation may sound harsh, strange, or extreme to some ears -- all the more reason to be clear and unequivocal now, before language grounded in reason, our primary weapon, dissolves completely into the goo of progressive irrationalism.
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4)Why We Lost: The Big Picture
By Jay Haug
Critics of the Republican loss in the presidential election, which returned the status quo to Washington for another four years, have spent a number of weeks analyzing the reasons for the debacle. Pundits have put forth demographics, messaging, the Obama turnout machine, and a whole host of other assertions to show why Republicans must go back to the drawing board and reinvent themselves. No doubt this sifting process will continue for months to come. Though John F. Kennedy's oft-quoted dictum that "victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan" still holds true, it appears the orphans are having a national convention asking themselves, "Who's your daddy?" Now that Mitt Romney appears to be fading from the scene, Republicans have not quite decided either who will come off their fairly strong bench to lead the party, or what the Republican message for the future will be.
In light of this much needed self-criticism, we must remember that elections are almost always about big ideas. At least that was what Ronald Reagan and Republicans told themselves. If so, we have a problem. The big Republican ideas of the last forty years have been exactly two: peace through strength abroad and free enterprise at home. These were the twin themes of the Reagan Revolution reiterated again and again by Republican candidates to win elections. But now, these ideas not only do not work for us. They have turned against us and are actually working to defeat us. How did this happen and what can be done about it?
But first we must understand how the two big Republican ideas came to the forefront. In 1980, the U.S. economy was stagnating. The misery index, a depressing combination of unemployment and inflation statistics created economic problems, 20% interest rates, American "malaise," a word Jimmy Carter never actually used, and a sense that America was adrift. Abroad, the Soviet Union rolled into Afghanistan without firing a shot. Jimmy Carter inexplicably responded by punishing U.S. Olympians, exiting the 1980 Moscow games. Iranian radicals held Americans hostage for 454 days, while OPEC created long gas lines which frustrated America's sense of energy entitlement. Carter nattered away about America's "inordinate fear of communism." When the attempted rescue of the hostages failed in the desert due to faulty equipment and planning, it seemed as if the epitaph for the Carter administration had already been written.
Into this breach stepped Ronald Reagan with a twofold message. First, at home, "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem." Reagan thundered that the "federal government is spending money like a drunken sailor. The only difference is the drunken sailor is spending his money. The federal government is spending yours." The message was simple. Free the American economy from high taxes, waste, and government spending and it will take off. With the lowering of secular interest rates providing a tailwind over the next decade, it did. Reagan was the new Calvin Coolidge. "The business of America was business," once again and America thrived. Patriotism surged and employers hired millions of workers. When Reagan survived an assassin's bullet with humor and aplomb, it appeared that America, in the words of Thomas Paine at Valley Forge, "had it in our power to begin the world over again."
Now critics of Reagan will say he was unserious about economic conservatism because deficits grew under his administration. But the question was why? In Reagan's view, there was a much more important long-range goal than immediate deficit reduction, namely the defeat of Soviet communism and its eventual demise worldwide. Besides, according to supply-side economics, a robust economy would eventually either greatly reduce or eliminate deficits. It eventually did under the Clinton administration. Moreover, the opening of Eastern European markets to American goods created a once-in-a century "peace dividend" that accrued under Clinton. Reagan believed the Soviet economy was on the verge of collapse and with removal to the "ash heap of history" its hegemony over Eastern Europe would end. This was one reason Reagan refused the deal on disarmament offered by Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986. To do so would have let the Soviets off the hook and cushioned their fall, something Reagan was loath to do. But not even Reagan could have imagined how soon he would be proved right about Soviet communism.
The Reagan doctrine "peace through strength" was the second big idea. The notion was if the U.S. had by far the strongest military in the world, we would rarely have to prove it. In fact, Reagan never got us into a war of any significance. He bombed Gaddafi's compound and met the takeover of Grenada by communist forces with a decisive reversal. But the big war was a one that was never fought, the "Cold War." When the British fought a hot war over the Falklands, Reagan at first remained infuriatingly neutral before supporting the British side. What are we to learn? Very simply that the hoped-for result is "peace through strength" not "war through strength." The goal was peace, not endless conflict. Why is this important?
It is here we begin to understand how Obama and the Democrats won in 2012. Instead of the Republican Party being the party of peace, in too many minds it has become the party of war. Electorates do not like parties of war and tend to turn them out. Once upon a time, Democrats got us into war and Republicans got us out of war. Kennedy and Johnson got us into Vietnam, Nixon got us out. Truman got us into the Korean conflict. Eisenhower presided over the truce. Carter lost the hostages. Reagan got them out. This was the recent pattern, until the war on terror. Legitimate or not, Republicans got us into both Iraq and Afghanistan, both problematic conflicts filled with ups and downs, uncertainties, loss of life, debilitating injuries, corruption, and off-budget expenditures. Republicans are supposed to believe in limited powers. Though we believe in a strong military, we are chary of too much power in any government arena. Like it or not, believing the cause was just or not, this has cost Republicans.
Iraq and Afghanistan may have been a necessary price to pay, but it did allow one great political advantage for the Democrats. It allowed them and Obama to ride in as the "solution" to those evil Republicans. Bush got us into a wrongheaded war in Iraq? Obama would get us out. Bush opened Guantanamo Bay? Obama would close it. (Even wrongheaded intentions count as actions for Democrats). Bush couldn't get bin Laden? Obama would. I didn't matter that Obama used many of the intelligence gathering techniques he formerly opposed in doing so. He would take credit for the results. Every business in America markets itself as a source of "solutions" for consumer problems. Obama's advantage was that he offered the solution of "peace" in return for war. That is a huge advantage in a war-weary country, especially one that has economic problems and deficits. Never mind that the money will not be returned to the people and will be spent in Washington. At least it is coming home. That was the sales pitch and it was successful in two campaigns. It also allowed Obama to temper his hard domestic leftism with reason and balance, further shielding him from criticism.
I mentioned that Americans do not like war. They often fire war presidents. Bush 41 came off the Gulf War with a 90% approval rating and lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Was it only the "stealth recession" that caused Bush's defeat? This is something of a Western tradition: Churchill was fired by the British people after World War II. They chose others to install the British National Health Service. A little further back, King David was not allowed to build the temple because he was a "man of war." Solomon was praised for his wisdom and wealth, but presided over a nation put together by his father. After World War II, and the dropping of the two atomic bombs, Truman almost lost to Dewey in his only run for the presidency. At the very least, people and parties with blood on their hands, like Churchill, are deemed unworthy to oversee the mundane tasks of installing the welfare state.
The point is: a major advantage Republicans possessed, "peace through strength," demonstrated over the last generation is now gone. And until and unless the American people perceive Democrats once again as the party that gets us into trouble abroad, (we may not have to wait too long for that) the Republican advantage here is now lost. If current budget talks fail, the "strength" part of the deal may be lost as well, as the "fiscal cliff" will entail substantial cuts to the U.S.
But the domestic side is where Republicans have really come a cropper. The message of free enterprise can only stand in an economy that is producing jobs, prosperity, and upward mobility. None of these are happening right now. This is the "crisis" referred to by Democrats as something that "cannot be wasted." Why? Because it allows them to reverse Reagan's famous dictum that government is the problem. For Democrats and the unemployed, underemployed, and suffering, government becomes the solution once again. Just as the Reagan majority praised business for the blessings of the "city on a hill," so now any criticism of the "food stamp president" is met with cries of closet racism. How dare anyone criticize the golden benevolence of government that stands between so many Americans and destitution? When PBS runs the series "The Dust Bowl" praising the role of the federal government in rescuing farmers, why would anyone think government was a problem? I have heard anecdote after anecdote recently of jobs going unfilled because they cannot attract workers at $12 an hour. Has our own government disincentivized us with benefits? Has the shame of government assistance been removed?
But the worst part of free enterprise's demise is the portrayal of it as fundamentally immoral. Mitt Romney was portrayed during the recent campaign as an economic vulture who was "not one of us." During the 2008 campaign, Michelle Obama blew her cover by telling people they should not go into business but should spend their efforts in the nonprofit world. During the Obama care debate, Nancy Pelosi articulated a world where artists, writers, and poets should be free to pursue their passions supported by federally provided healthcare. It did not matter much that Republicans argued that the financial crisis was orchestrated by Democrats in Congress overseeing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, or that the crony capitalism of Wall Street is no longer the free enterprise bastion it once was. Democrats and Obama were able to repeat ad nauseum that the system failed, that we cannot return to the wrongheaded policies of the past and that its essence is "you are on your own." The message "you didn't build that" should have cost Obama the election. Instead most of the electorate shrugged and voted for him anyway.
Republicans are in a pickle. The unshakeable American belief in free-market economics tempered by mostly-private compassion has been shaken and displaced. We should have seen this coming under George W. Bush. When Karl Rove pointed out to him that unless he endorsed Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit, that he would lose the election, what was Bush to do? Never mind that it actually came in under budget or that its secret was competition between drug companies that drove down prices. The reality was that for the first time in our history, both parties had endorsed government as the seat of compassion. The race was on: not to ask what you can do for your country but what your country can do for you. If the electorate is going to elect a party of bigger and bigger government, they know which one is better, the Democrats. It was an argument Republicans were destined to lose, much like the me-too Republicans of the 1970's who were lost in the wilderness until Reagan woke them up.
So what do we do? First of all, have a little patience. There have been many false narratives in American history that have gone the way of the dodo bird. The Dred Scott decision, FDR spending the nation out of the Depression, communism as a viable alternative, the "Great Society," the "holiday from history" and on it goes. The world about to dawn in 2013 finds the country in as dire straits as anyone can remember, with the current administration offering no answers and digging a bigger hole. Republicans are debating whether to give Democrats the rope to hang themselves or to fight them on principle. Anyone with any intelligence knows what Democrats are proposing, namely higher taxes and more spending cannot work. Can the Democrats win the White House or control of Congress in election after election with big turnouts of "low-information" voters? When will the electorate be intelligent enough to recognize the Democrat agenda cannot work? Time will tell, if we still have it.
Here is the point. On the domestic side, we must make a dramatic case that free enterprise is in fact much more moral and successful than a government-controlled command economy. Free Americans will not only feed themselves but also each other much better than the nanny state. If Republicans can make that case and earn back the trust of the American people, they can and will lead again. They will probably not get the chance until the current regime collapses of its own weight, which it will surely do in time.
Here is the point. On the domestic side, we must make a dramatic case that free enterprise is in fact much more moral and successful than a government-controlled command economy. Free Americans will not only feed themselves but also each other much better than the nanny state. If Republicans can make that case and earn back the trust of the American people, they can and will lead again. They will probably not get the chance until the current regime collapses of its own weight, which it will surely do in time.
On the international scene, the Obama narrative is already collapsing. The happy talk of reset buttons and sitting down with terrorists to talk things out has produced an unstable Middle East unsure of America's resolve. Americans elected and re-elected Obama to get us out of war. Now both parties are embracing an orderly exit from Afghanistan, though with different concerns. The question now becomes what America's vision of the world and itself is to be. Obama's is a hoped-for orderly demise to a nation among many nations, complete with required reading about "Greek exceptionalism." Republicans know the world cannot be governed safely without American leadership and strength. Republicans must remember both sides of the peace through strength mantra and remember two things: there is sometimes an electoral cost on the home front to war and American weakness invites aggression from its enemies. President Obama knows the former and is the process of learning the latter. For all these reasons, the Republican Party will rise again for one simple reason: the electorate will ask us to lead again.
Jay Haug is author of Beyond the Flaming Sword
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5)Concern that Assad may have passed some chemical weapons to Hizballah
Chemical weapons
There is growing concern that some of the chemical weapons the Assad regime has been pushing out of the Damascus area in the last few days were sent across the border to Hizballah strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley to keep them out of rebel hands. Syrian army officers who recently defected report that containers were last week removed from Syrian bases at Jabal Kalamon and loaded on vehicles camouflaged as commercial trucks. On the Lebanese side, the consignment is thought to have been split up and hidden at different Hizballah bases to make them harder to attack.
Israel’s US Ambassador Michael Oren, asked by a FOX TV interviewer Saturday Dec. 8, if he could confirm this, said he could not, but warned that any evidence of chemical weapons being passed from the Assad regime to extremist groups like Hizballah would be a "game-changer," and a "red line" for Israel. "We have a very clear red line about those chemical weapons passing into the wrong hands. Can you imagine if Hizballah and its 70,000 rockets would get its hands on chemical weapons? That could kill thousands of people."
Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon on he other hand saw no indication Sunday that Syria was planning to use chemical weapons against Israel. He refrained from going into any of the three possible perils presented by the regime in Damascus as it finds itself in a knife-edge situation:
1. Syria’s chemical weapons are deployed in at least five air force bases, with evidence of preparations to use them, as confirmed by British Foreign Secretary William Hague Saturday, Dec. 8.
US military sources explained early Monday, Dec. 10, that the nerve gas sarin is effective up to 60 days after its precursor chemicals are mixed. Placing the weaponized material in close proximity to warplanes indicates an intention within that timeline to drop the poison gas bombs from the air. After that, sarin must be destroyed in controlled conditions lest its poisons escape into the environment. No one knows if the Syrians have the necessary scientific manpower to take responsibility for this process.
2. The battle around Al Safira, site of Syria’s biggest chemical weapons store and Scud D missiles fitted with chemical warheads, is fierce and fluid: the base changes hands every few hours in heavy fighting between Syria army and rebel forces.
Saturday, the base’s capture by the rebels triggered a warning from the Assad regime against throwing chemical weapons into the battle. Sunday, Al Safira was recaptured, but the rebels are sweeping through the surrounding villages and closing in on three sides. For now, Syrian forces control the road connecting Al Safira to Aleppo, but the rebels have seized parts of Sheikh Suleiman, the biggest air base near that city, and are getting close to that highway. Its fall would snap shut the rebel siege on Al Safira.
Control of Al Safira would place the big chemical weapons stores in the hands of rebel forces in that sector, many of whom belong to Jabhat al-Nusra, the roof organization of the al Qaeda elements fighting in Syria against the Assad regime.
3. In the estimate of Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, Assad has already directed his troops fighting in and around Damascus to use chemical weapons if the rebels get near to seizing any part of Damascus international airport.
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6)Why Obama Will Ignore Israel
By Peter Beinart
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