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May 20, 2013
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David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
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May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
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April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
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April 24, 2013
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Jewish World Review
July 30, 2012/ 11 Menachem-Av, 5772
Stupidity Sold As Common Sense
By
Arnold Ahlert
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
For me, there's nothing quite like an ideological argument whose final destination brings us to terminal stupidity sold as common sense. Two of my personal favorites are playing themselves out right now, one courtesy of the atrocity in Colorado, the other courtesy of the 2012 election. Once again, the issues of gun control and the economy are at the forefront of the national conversation. And once again, both illuminate the utter bankruptcy of progressive ideology.
Let's begin with gun control. Actually, the words "gun control" are a bit misleading. Government-imposed "self-defense control" would be a far more accurate statement of what the American left is attempting to foist on the public. Only a progressive could imagine that limiting a law-abiding citizen's right to own a firearm would reduce the amount of gun violence, inasmuch as the law-ignoring citizen (or non-citizen, for that matter) would be completely unaffected by such restrictions. Perhaps progressives, as is their wont, envision a society with no guns at all, as if the proverbial toothpaste can somehow be squeezed back into the tube.
Of course in order to achieve that, one would first have to confiscate all of the existing illegal firearms, and/or eviscerate the Second Amendment. No doubt that is something a lot of progressives would like to do, especially if they could just avoid that "messy" constitutional amendment process that requires an enormous level of consent by people still quaint enough to believe in the rule of law. Like so much of their agenda, progressives would prefer to rely on the courts to do their dirty work for them. Perhaps if Barack Obama is re-elected, he will appoint one or two Supreme Court Justices who could manage to find a "living" reason for tossing the Second Amendment overboard.
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Which brings us directly to why we have a Second Amendment in the first place. Unlike the straw-man arguments progressives and their media lapdogs are currently pushing about how much firepower a hunter does or doesn't need, or American cities turning into shooting galleries should the right to carry be extended to places where it is currently illegal, the real reason we have a Second Amendment is because the Founding Fathers remembered why they came to America in the first place: to escape tyrannical government and all its excesses. It is truly remarkable how many Americans would willingly surrender their right to protect themselves from such tyranny, even as self-protection per se becomes a nice side benefit.
In recent media accounts of the Colorado shooting, the only one to raise this important point was former rapper Ice-T.
Whether that says more about the quality of rapping, or the lack of quality in a college education is something for my readers to decide.
And then there's the hypocrisy. Few things are more laughable than a professional blowhard like NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg speechifying about the need for more gun control—while surrounded by armed bodyguards. That goes double for our deep-thinking celebrities, who similarly espouse the epitome of "do as I say, not as I do," while common riff-raff like me and you are expected to take a bullet—or two or three—for the proverbial team. Only a progressive would countenance innocent Americans literally being held hostage to armed thugs in countless cities on a daily basis in order to assuage their personal, oh-so-righteous, sensibilities.
It's no accident the phrase "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" resonates. Unfortunately some people must actually endure that particular "rite of passage" in order to discover such wisdom. As for police protection, a cop I know expressed two realities in that regard. One was for policemen themselves, who confront armed thugs on a daily basis. "Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six." The other phrase speaks to daunting but immutable reality regarding the rest of us. "When it's a matter of seconds, the cops are only minutes away."
That's reality, and all the progressive hand-wringing—short of imposing tyranny—isn't going to change it one iota.
As for the economy, nothing is more maddening than the experts who continue to be baffled by "unexpected" results—all of which stem from one undeniable reality: with rare exception, most of the world is up to its collective eyeballs in debt. This has led many so-called economists to the remarkable proposition that the only way to pay off this debt is to issue future debt to pay down current debt. That the total amount of debt increases exponentially as a result (they don't call it interest for nothing, comrades), is irrelevant.
Why is it irrelevant? Because this new debt is buying the one and only thing these Keynesian quacks believe ultimately solves the debt problem: time. The longer we stretch out the payments, the more likely it is that somewhere down the line, an economic recovery will occur and the debt will eventually be paid off.
What could possibly go wrong? For starters, the same thing that can go wrong when you tell an alcoholic that he has to stop drinking at some point—even as you hand him another drink to get him through a "rough patch." Second, in order to keep piling up future debt to pay for current debt, one has to find a sucker...I mean lender...willing to keep loaning one money even as it becomes more and more apparent the odds of getting paid back are moving perilously close to lotto territory.
Now, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has devised a rather clever way around that last obstacle: he's turned the Federal Reserve into both the borrower and the lender, although the word "lender" is a bit of euphemism. Ben's paying off a large part of our current debt with future debt consisting of freshly-minted (actually computer-generated) greenbacks, mostly because the number of suckers is dwindling. Ben is also kicking the proverbial can down the road waiting for some economic recovery that will solve all of our problems.
Economically speaking, no solution to the problem could be simpler than the most obvious one: spend less than one takes in, and start paying down the debt. Politically speaking however, the entire Democrat party and half of the Republican one are dedicated to the idea that dependency on the state is directly correlated with their ability to maintain power. A substantial number of clueless and/or self-entitled Americans are on board, and nothing assuages their sense of clueless self-entitlement more than the notion that someone else is not paying their "fair" share.
Understand how remarkable that kind of thinking is. Not only have such Americans been alleviated of the guilt and shame of living off someone else's effort, they have been told they have every reason to be self-righteous about it.
Barring a sea change—or a watershed election—thoughtful Americans must face a sobering reality: the ideological bankruptcy of progressivism leads directly to the economic bankruptcy of the nation. Progressives will continue to lie and tell the nation it isn't so.
Unfortunately for all of us, the math never lies.
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Previously:
07/24/12: Obama's 'You Didn't Build That' Was No Gaffe
07/17/12: LIBOR: Another Symptom of the Same Disease
07/09/12: Dear Mr. Romney
07/02/12: Different Shades of Lipstick on the Same Socialist Pig
06/27/12: We're Going to Do What We Want, and We Dare You to Stop Us
06/25/12: Fast and Furiously Diverting Attention from the Economy
06/20/12: So Much For Stopping the Leaks
06/18/12: Another Feckless Attempt to Change the Conversation
06/12/12: Mr. Obama's Latest Fantasies and Fabrications
06/04/12: Progressivism: An Adolescent Ideology
05/21/12: Drones Against Democracy
05/17/12: Pay Up --- Or Else
05/07/12: A Tale of Two Women
05/01/12: 2012: The Economic Paradox No One Wants to Talk About
04/23/12:2012: A Referendum on Our National Character
04/13/12: Feel This
04/11/12: Teaching Dependency
04/04/12: Network News Shapers
04/02/12: Stabbing Israel in the Back Is More Like It
03/19/12: Gas Pains and Debt Bombs
03/12/12: Israel Under the Bus
03/05/12: Baby Steps Down the Road to Depravity
02/27/12: Debasing Our Military, One Politically Correct Moment After Another
02/20/12: The 'New Normal' of Rampant Illegitimacy
02/13/12: Sandwiches or Freedom?
02/10/12: Progressive Obsolescence
02/06/12: Safeguarding Kids No Match for Following Procedure
01/29/11: 2016: R.I.P. GOP
01/26/11: Obama's Happy Talk Versus Bernanke's Action
01/23/11: South Carolina Goes for the Media-Masher
01/17/11: Nuking the Strait of Hormuz?
01/09/11: Coercion and Incentive Are Not Interchangeable Terms
01/06/11: Will We Retire Obama --- or the Constitution?
01/03/11: Dumb -- or ‘Disabled?’
12/27/11: Islamists ‘Celebrate’ Christmas
12/19/11: A Deficiency of Decency
12/16/11: Better a A War On Whiners Than Christmas
12/12/11: Anybody But Obama
12/07/11: Connecting the Feckless Foreign Policy Dots
12/05/11: Can We Keep Our Republic?
11/28/11: Cyber Crack-heads
11/21/11: Water Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Think
11/18/11: Walking along Avenue J(ew)
11/09/11: Military Scandal, Media Blackout
11/09/11: Open-Mics and Closed Minds
11/07/11: Back in the EU--SSR
10/31/11: Camping Out in La-La Land
10/14/11: Bagman Tim
10/13/11: Are Colleges Too Big to Fail?
10/11/11: Why aren't they upset when their child is mugged in school?
10/07/11: I Stand With the ‘One Percenters’
10/03/11: Can We Legalize Assassination?
09/29/11: Tim, Liz and Bev Equals Moe Larry and Curly
09/26/11: No Acknowledgment of Israel? No More Money
09/19/11: ‘Jobbing’ America
09/16/11: Carville knows a few things about ‘crazy’
09/12/11: Contemptible Krugman
09/09/11: Solving the 9/11 Invitation Controversy
09/06/11: Our Progressive Economic Wrecking Crew
09/01/11: Summer Swoon
08/29/11: The Real American Fanatics
08/24/11:The Five Stages of (Progressive) Grief
08/22/11:The Inevitable Descent From Progressivism to Nihilism
08/22/11: Perry Stands Firm. Obama Stands Mute
08/15/11: Give Me a Flatscreen TV, or Give Me Anarchy!
08/11/11: Resign, Mr. President
08/08/11: Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts
08/03/11: Manufactured Crises
08/01/11: Stay Healthy, America --- or else!
07/28/11: Existential Crisis, Part 2
07/25/11: Three-Out-of-Four Americans Are Radicals
07/21/11: What Does Two Plus Two Equal?
07/18/11: News Nuggets
07/13/11: The ‘Write Stuff’
07/11/11: Completely Expectable ‘Unexpectedness’
07/07/11: Organized Cheating
07/05/11: Stimulating Disaster
06/30/11: Progressivism Masquerading as Education
06/27/11: America: Greece With Better PR
06/23/11: NBC-ya Later
06/19/11: One Man's Conversation About Race
06/10/11: An Exhibitionist in an Exhibitionist Age
06/07/11: NAACP Betrays Black American Schoolchildren
06/02/11: For the First Time in My Adult Life . . .
05/31/11: If I Were President
05/25/11: California Dreamin'
05/23/11: On Wisconsin!
05/20/11: Obama's Farewell to Israel Speech
05/16/11: ‘Krauthammering’ Amnesty
05/11/11: Bounce, My Backside
05/09/11: The Epicenter of Progressive Contempt for the Rule of Law
05/03/11: SEALing Osama's Fate
05/02/11: The Education plantation
04/24/11: The Bell May Toll for Jersey Toll Collectors
04/19/11: From Medical Dependency to Dependency on the Welfare State
04/14/11: Trumping the Debate
04/06/11: It Takes a Bigot to Expose a Death Cult
04/04/11: Charlie and Snookie --- and Barack
03/30/11: ‘Disabling’ America, One Lawsuit at a Time
03/28/11: The MSM Kills the ‘Kill Team’ Story
03/23/11: Another Military Scandal
03/21/11: Barry, Joe, Helen and Wisconsin Teachers
03/16/11: The Inevitable Viability of Conservatism
03/14/11: Progressives in Their Own Words
03/09/11: $61 Billion in Cuts --- Vs. $223 Billion in One Month of Spending
03/07/11: Bean Bag B.S.
03/02/11: A ‘Green’ Catastrophe in the Making
02/28/11: Ain't Noting Like the Real Thing
02/23/11: Progressive Rot vs. the ROTC
02/21/11: Wisconsin: Progressivism in All its Ugly Glory
02/18/11: News reporters --- or Narrative Shapers?
02/16/11: The Presidents Budget Proposal: An Obamination of Progressive Profligacy
02/14/11: Only Another 9/11 Will Alter the Illegal Immigration Status Quo
02/10/11: Is O'Reilly losing his touch or is he just irresponsible?
02/07/11: Tossing Britain Under the Bus
02/03/11: Starving the World In Order to Save It
01/31/11: Walking the Middle East Tightrope
01/27/11: Small-scale Terrorist Attacks: Big Strategy?
01/24/11: Jeffery Immelt: A Crony Capitalist In Charge of Job Creation
01/20/11: An ‘Intimate’ Prime-time Interview
01/17/11: Progressives: Always Angry, Newly Desperate
01/12/11: Twain vs. the Totalitarians
01/10/11: Politically Correct Passports?
01/05/11: Showdown at the Fiscal Corral
01/03/11: Reading the Constitution Aloud is a Good Start
12/30/10: Getting Our Moral Mojo Back
12/27/10: PC Airport Safety is an Oxymoron
12/23/10: Getting America Back On Track
12/20/10: A Collectivist Coalition of Convenience
12/15/10: The President Who Wasn't There
12/13/10: Tech-No!
12/08/10: A Lethal Military, Inclusive or Not
12/06/10: The ‘Unexpected’ Consequences of Progressivism
12/01/10: Leakers and Losers
11/29/10: ‘We Won’, Part One
11/22/10: Keep Your Hands Off My Constitution
11/17/10: Grope and Change
11/14/10: Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time
11/11/10: Checks (and Balances), Please
11/08/10: Curtain Up, Progressives Down
11/04/10: Last Chance, Republicans
11/01/10: By Their Own Words Shall Ye Know Them
10/28/10: Progressive Determination to Undermine American Elections
10/25/10: Shock, but more importantly, action: De-Unionize Public Schools now
10/20/10: Multiculturalism? Check, Please
10/18/10: Healthcare: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vs. The Constitution
10/11/10: Vote for Restoring the Rule of Law in November
10/11/10: Dems: Running From Clarity
10/07/10: Hypersensitive Hogwash
10/04/10: ‘Comprehensive’ Con Artists
09/29/10: Why Dems Are Going Down in November
09/27/10: The Unholiest of Unholy Alliances
09/22/10: Two Words for Republicans to Remember: ‘I Won’
09/20/10: Purging ‘Me First’ Politicians
09/17/10: No More ‘Lesser of Two Evils’
09/15/10: ‘Recovery’ Arms Race
09/13/10: ‘Bigots’ in the Majority --- Again?
09/09/10: Giving Voters Something to Vote For
09/07/10: Irresponsible Dems, Incomprehensible Bills
09/02/10: War Weary Americans vs. Implacable Islamists
08/31/10: A ‘Dream’ Debased
08/25/10: American ‘Bigots’ Versus Media Propagandists
08/23/10: Recovery Bummer
08/19/10: An Unholy Alliance of Radicals
08/16/10: You've Lost America, Mr. President
08/13/10: The Twin Towers of Progressive Disconnect
08/11/10: A Far Better ‘National Discussion’
08/09/10: It's ‘Only’ One Dead Nun
08/06/10: Incremental Tyranny
08/04/10: Ground Zero Mosque: Context Counts
08/02/10: The Arizona Ruling: a Gift for November
07/29/10: The United Cities of America
07/26/10: JournoList: ‘Coordinated’ Ideological Bankruptcy
07/20/10: Go For Broke Or Get Out of the Way
07/14/10: You're a Liberal/Progressive if You Believe…
07/12/10: $33-an-hour--For Sleeping On the Job
07/08/10: Extortionist Government
07/06/10: ‘Commerce Clause’ Totalitarians
07/01/10: Another Public School Travesty in MA
06/30/10: Calling YOUR Bluff, Mr. President
06/28/10: A Trifecta of Progressive Corruption
06/23/10: Plug the Darn Hole --- In Our Border
06/21/10: Our Empty-Suit-in-Chief
06/16/10: Betraying Our Children
06/14/10: Who Gets the Benefit of the Doubt?
06/07/10: Politically Correct Warfare
06/01/10: Bill Maher's ‘Black’ President
05/25/10: A Mosque At Ground Zero
05/23/10: Libs Stand Tall --- For Mexico
05/19/10: The 'Unintended Consequences' of Liberalism
05/17/10: 'Los' Suns: Stuck on Stupido
05/12/10: Union Audacity: Yes We Will!
05/10/10: Greeks, Leaks and and Double-Speak
05/05/10: Twelve Million Illegals --- or Thirty?
05/02/10: Republicans: Playing Not to Lose Doesn't Cut It
04/28/10: Arizona: Progressivism's Waterloo?
04/26/10: Son of Amnesty
04/22/10: Mortgages and Moral Meltdowns
04/20/10: Bashing Christians — Or Gays?
04/15/10: Personal Integri-‘tea’
04/12/10: Fools, Tools and Ghouls
04/08/10: (Tea) Party On
04/05/10: The Triumph of Mediocrity
04/02/10: Two For the Road
03/29/10: The Innate Immorality of Liberalism
03/24/10: The Art of War
03/22/10: I Want My Country Back
03/18/10: A Perpetual Process
03/17/10: American Exhibitionists
03/15/10: A Light Bulb Moment of Clarity
03/10/10: Little Things Mean A Lot
02/03/10: Budgetary Fork in the Road
02/01/10: Liberal Economic Illiteracy
01/27/10: ‘Roe-ing and Wade-ing’ Back to Reason
01/25/10: Arrogance When Up, Denial When Down
01/20/10: Connecting the Educational Dots
01/19/10: The Next Tea Party?
01/15/10: The Myth That Keeps on Giving
01/13/10: Airport Security Begins Away From the Airport
01/11/10: Secrets and Lies
01/08/10: Embracing Bigotry — or Rejecting Bullying?
01/06/10: Hanging by an Ideological Thread
01/04/10: Our ‘Wonderama’ Bureaucracy
12/30/09: A Day Off
12/28/09: Dangerous Myths
12/25/09: I, Me, Mine
12/23/09: A Very Harry Christmas
12/21/09: My Opinon
12/18/09: The Party of Repeal
12/15/09: Privileged Exemption
11/30/09: ‘Settled’ Science and Unsettled Children
11/30/09: American Sharia Law
11/23/09:The Trial (Travesty) of the Century
11/04/09: American Vampires and Their Political Enablers
11/01/09: ‘Opting Out’ of Insanity?
10/28/09: Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer. Brain Required
10/26/09: Communism: Nazism With Better PR
10/21/09: Just Asking
10/16/09: Cost Projections vs. Actual Costs, or Hope and Change vs. Reality
10/14/09: News you can use …
10/07/09: Incremental Insidiousness
10/05/09: MIA: Common Sense and Common Decency
09/30/09: Iran: Bad Options and Unpreparedness
09/21/09: Crying Racism: the Last Refuge of Scoundrels
09/11/09: 9/11 Cannot Be Sanitized
09/08/09: ‘Truthers’ and Consequences
09/01/09: A ‘Paper Trail’ Challenge for the Mainstream Media
08/31/09: Drowning in Amorality
08/26/09: The Republican Recovery Program
© 2011, Arnold Ahlert
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