The Violence Worker!

The Tuscon Shooting

If you are reading this, then you know that a shooting took place in Tuscon in which a Congresswoman was critically wounded and and several others, including a child and a federal judge, were killed by a gunman.  Thankfully, Representative Gabrielle Giffords is expected to recover.  Every true American is outraged. We pray for the victims and their families. 

It's a tragic event. and one that is thankfully extremely rare in American politics. 

As tragic as this was, it was interesting for me to watch the comments at various news and left-wing sites.  Instead of waiting for the full story to emerge, many of the more rabidly insane lefties were already blaming the likes of Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and people like me who considers themselves part of the Tea party Movement..

Over at the fever swamp, otherwise known as the Democratic Underground, the denizens there tried and convicted all of them, (especially Palin).  Almost ALL of the over 400 comments so far blame them and people like me.  A few people advised that we need to know the whole story or suggested it wasn't the Right-Wing, but most were posted before we even knew the shooter's name!  Want a sample:

AnnieBW wrote:  The Freepers must be happy today. Not only was Rep. Giffords shot, but the shooter assassinated a Federal Judge, too. Sarah Palin has blood on her hands, and it's not caribou blood.

JenniferJuniper wrote:   Palin and Fox cannot be allowed to get away with this.

DinahMoeHum wrote:  G*D HELP SARAH PALIN AND THE TEABAGGERS if Giffords dies. It will be open season on them AFAIC.

RoccoR5955 wrote: TEABAGGERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS... HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE!  Caribou Barbie, and the rest of her buddies belong in jail for collusion!

Lest you think it's just the kiddies at DU, Even Paul Krugman accused us!  He's supposed to be a grown-up!

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.

The truth is, this was not a Right-Winger or a Palinista and no evidence that he listened to Limbaugh, Hannity or Beck.  I've heard (unsubstantiated) that he was mostly left-leaning.  What he is, is a nut-burger.  He was not driven by the likes of Sarah Palin, he was driven by a really bad case of brain chemicals gone wild.  It probably wasn't even ideological.  His rantings on YouTube were more paranoid than anything else.

There seems to be more than a few on the left that hopes and dreams that the Tea Party or some prominent Conservative will someday do something violent so they can finally have some kind of twisted confirmation that we are violent people. 

They scare me.

VW

Where Have I Been?

It's been difficult to sit down and write.  There are so many things that I see going wrong that I'm somewhat dispirited.  I see a President who is an avowed socialist.  Our Congress is a mess of self-serving, flatulence-laden pigs, most of whom care about this country and its citizens about as much as a dog cares for a fire hydrant.

We are broke and yet they demand more and more money be spent to justify their office.  We have no more money and yet the special interest groups stand at the trough and demand it like they have a right to it. 

I'm not totally without hope, but the horizen is leaden.  If the Democrats lose power in this upcoming election, they are promising a burn the bridges by passing some really repugnant lame-duck legislation.

So yeah, I'm still here and not planning on going anywhere.  I guess I'll get back into it regularly at some point.  I have a trip coming up to Hawaii next month so maybe that will help brighten my mood.

Stay Tuned!

VW

D-Day

Today is the 66th anniversary of Operation Overlord, more commonly known as D-Day.  Since then, an army or two of writers have tried to find the right combination of words that sum up our gratitude for the heroic men who assaulted those beaches to save the world from a great evil.  We've striven to encapsulate the enormity of their task in mere words.  We struggle to wrap our minds around the courage of those men who stepped off of those landing boats and waded straight into hell on earth.  The National D-Day Foundation has confirmed 2499 American troops died that day.  Thousands more were wounded.  We are grateful to all of them.

My only purpose is to remind you of that day.  Like all the rest, I do not have the words to properly put it into any kind of perspective.

God bless our Armed Forces and their families, and God bless America.

VW

Forget The Tent

Whenever people start talking about the Republican Party and its current state of disarray, the "Big Tent" analogy is immediately trotted out to show that we need to be "inclusive" and willing to compromise for the sake of including more people.  I hate the analogy because the image I get when I think of it is a circus tent with three rings, one of which is filled with clowns, another with one-trick-ponies and another with true performers trying to shine, but the audience is distracted by the other two.  Nothing stands out and nothing gets done.  In the end, we just become "Democrat Lite" and end up having it used against us.  This has been on my mind since Arlen Specter abandoned any sense of principle and announced that he was now a Democrat.

Since Specter announced his defection, I read the endless MSM analysis (or what passes for analysis from the press in these days of Obama worship) telling me that the GOP was too conservative and not inclusive enough, blah-blah - retch,  Their "learned' conclusions are forced down our collective throats like some horrible tasting medicine.  In this case it's Doctor Democrat's Party Fixin' Elixir and Tent Repair Solution.  All we have to do is take a dose of it and VIOLA, our party will unite and we will be on our way to regaining control of the wheels of government.  It's 100% pure poison but somehow, they are convincing us it's right out of the fountain of eternal knowledge.  Are we that stupid?  Are we just too lazy come up with our own ideas and solutions?  Are we so afraid of being branded a racist, xenophobe, homophobe, hater, extremist, Nazi, etc. that we allow ourselves to be kowtowed into silent submission?  Do we really think the Democrats want us to become a force again or do you think maybe their tent anology just might be in their best interests and not ours?  I don't know about you, but I'm inclined to think we are being hoodwinked.

The resurgence of the Republican Party that occurred in the 1980s and led by the immortal Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich happened not because we became "Democrat Lite".  On the contrary my dear Watson, it was because we moved to the right of center.  We united under the Reagan banner after Jimmy Carter's disastrous one term and we brought our economy back from the brink of collapse.  We didn't do it with bailouts and socialist solutions.  We did it by lowering taxes and allowing free market principles to work.  We also were successful in disbanding the very system of government that we seem to be rushing headlong toward establishing here 20 years later.

If we are to regain the majority, we need to understand several things.  The first and foremost is that the Press will be hostile to anything we say or do.  They will do whatever they can, including lie and misrepresent, to thwart us.  We must understand that much of Academia is downright hostile.  They too will use every resource to counter our message. 

The third thing we have against us is the trial lawyers and that is probably the most powerful and hardest to overcome.  What most people don't understand is that Trial Lawyers are a de facto fourth branch of government.  Understand what I'm saying here.  Trial lawyers have established themselves as an unelected, self-appointed body, dedicated to forcing societal change, not though legislation where their ideas can be examined and debated, but through endless litigation until they get the outcome they wanted.  Robert Reich alluded to this when he once said:  “The era of big government may be over, but the era of regulation through litigation has just begun.”  In other words, they stopped us in the legislature, but they can't stop us in the courts.  It should be noted that the Press sometimes considers itself the "fourth estate" (a term attributed to Edmond Burke) or even the "fourth branch".   That may have been the case years ago, but I believe these days, they are not much more than cheerleaders rather than the actual drivers of government.  They do have their moments, but their last big hurrah was over 30 years ago with Watergate.  As much as they despised Bush, they were ineffectual in keeping him from re-election. 

We don't need a tent.  A tent gets blown down with the first big wind that comes along.  First, we need a foundation built upon the bedrock of liberty; a foundation composed od sound conservative principles.  Our foundation should be made up of basic materials such as small government, lower taxes, free markets and private ownership.  We should be explaining how this provides opportunity for all people regardless of color, religion (or lack thereof), ethnicity or even sexual orientation.  We should be out there extolling the benefits of capitalism and exposing the false ideas of the statists.  Do not be afraid to be a conservative. 

We are not extremists.  The left are now the extremists and if we can't show that and prove we are the solution, then we may as well welcome our socialist overlords. 

Forget the tent, build a building.

VW

On Greed - Part I

This is the first of a two part series exploring the concept of greed and an attempt to define it a little differently than most people.

PART I

Greed - It's one of the seven deadies.  It's one of those sins that Christian tradition says will get you a reserved spot in one of the more roastier-toastier places in Hell.  Dante Alighieri imagined the greedy eternally pushing huge stones against another greedy soul who is pushing back against the other in his work, "The Divine Comedy".  I've been thinking about greed since Mrs. VW and I watched a History Channel mini-series few weeks ago that exposited each of the seven sins from several different faiths. 

What is greed?  Is working hard and trying to better your station really greed?  Am I really taking something from someone else when I make more money? 

Greed is one of those things that seems to be as hard to define as it is to nail gelatin to a wall.  Modern life demands that I need to make a certain amount to sustain myself and my family.  Back in Alighieri's day, existence was more precarious and it took much less to eke out an existence.  Back in the 13th and 14th centuries, greed and covetousness were often linked together under the Latin word for avarice - avaritia.

Part of the problem is that we've been defining greed in the same way since the 13th century.  In Summa Theologica (written 1265–1274), Thomas Aquinas said this about greed or covetousness:

Covetousness may signify immoderation about external things in two ways. First, so as to regard immediately the acquisition and keeping of such things, when, to wit, a man acquires or keeps them more than is due. On this way it is a sin directly against one's neighbor, since one man cannot over-abound in external riches, without another man lacking them, for temporal goods cannot be possessed by many at the same time.

In other words, if I have more than I need, then someone else is without.  That seem to be a prevalent thought still today. If I achieve a certain amount of wealth or status, it must be at the expense of another less fortunate person.  Although Aquinas' words have some truth to them which we will explore in Part II, that's not necessarily how things always work.  Bill Gates didn't become wealthy by making me poorer.  We traded.  I got something of value for my money and I considered it a fair trade.  Read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" if you have trouble understanding that idea.  Smith understood the relationship of trade and labor.

If my wealth or status was ill-gotten, then I would not deserve it.  That, I suppose, is my delineator.  Simply put, if I came by wealth dishonestly, I really would be making someone poorer.  Their loss would be my gain and that would be wrong.

A desire to obtain wealth is not necessarily greed or wrong.  Without that desire, we might still be living in a cave hunting with a spear.  Certainly, we wouldn't be near as technologically advanced.  What would be the incentive?  We benefit when someone decides they can do it better, or cheaper then the last guy.  Sometimes, it's someone who gets a stroke of genius and comes up with something completely out of the blue.

Whatever the case, bettering humanity and gaining from it is not necessarily greed unless you succomb to the idea that it's all about the money and getting more money becomes your sole motivation.  Then you might have a problem.

Part II will deal with a different interpretation of greed.  What I have to say may surprise you.

VW

The Conservative Message

There is a lot of talk about the future of Conservatism flying around cyberspace, from the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, to bloggers and diarists concerning the future of Conservatism, free markets and the Republican party.  Much of the talk concerns using the web and those social tools to reach and expand our base.  Indeed, a twitter group #TCOT or Top Conservatives On Twitter has sprung up with a myriad of projects and networking ideas to do just that.  Most of those running for RNC Chairman are members and even engaged in discussions with us at the root level.   I'm a member and I agree with the goals and ideals that they are working on and toward.  There is no doubt that much needs to be done in the networking and activist sphere.

While all this is important, we need to realize we are losing the war of message.  We all talk about lowering taxes, cutting spending and  the benefits of the free market.  We bang our heads and our keyboards over the antics of Harry Reid, Rod Blagojevich and their ilk to no real avail.  We may as well be writing about our toddler's toilet habits or our latest doctor's visit.  We preach to the choir and everyone says amen.  We have a message and it needs to get out, but no one is listening. 

Most people know and understand at a fundamental level that Conservative principles are the key to a strong and prosperous America.  They know it, but the left doesn't argue those points, nor do they really care.  We can talk or write about these things until Hell freezes over and we will not make a difference.  That's not to say that we shouldn't keep communicating these things.  We need to keep talking about them, but we need to understand what we are up against and then how to re-wrap that message in order to counter the left and what they've been able to do with their message.

What the left does is transfer greed from one level to another and they play upon our fears.  They look for every possible vehicle to either scare the hell out of us, or make us feel guilty for having more than some poor starving Ethiopian.  They play upon our generosity and work to make us feel bad about what we have.  Notice their energy policy.  It's not about alternative energy, it's about the "oil addiction".  That's what they say, but what it's really the evil, capitalist oil companies who they see as making "obscene profits".

They couch their message as a moral argument.  They play upon the greed of many poor people while railing against the excesses of corporate officers.  They tell those of us who work for the man that the man is taking the food out of our mouths and leaving our children sick in the streets. 

The message of the left plays on our emotions.  It calls to our sense of fairness and goodness.  We Conservatives need to understand this and tailor our message to meet them at this same emotional level.  It's all well and good to extol the benefits of the free market or lower taxes, but the left is telling them people they can get free healthcare and even free housing and food. 

We need to repackage our message in a way that will address those emotions and sense of fairness and goodness.  Our message is prosperity and yes, even fairness, but we deliver that message in a matter-of-fact or clinical way.

In my discussions with people, they always resort to the emotional and you can even get them to at least agree with most of what you say, but they just can' leave the emotion out of argument.  Conservatives are mean greedy people who don't like minorities, old people or children.  It always falls back to some variation on that theme.

I'm not sure I have any answers.  I just see the problem and I hope someone smarter than me can figure out how to address it. 

In the mean time, I will be trying to figure it out.  Maybe someone out there already has or at least is trying.  Our message is sound, we just need a way to breech the emotion wall.

VW

Thoughts On A Wintery, Stormy Day

Al Franken
It appears that Al Franken is on his way to the Senate.  The fix appears to be in.  Ya gotta wonder why anyone would vote for this emotionally retarded jerk in the first place.

I'm Annoyed
In Brighton, Michigan (not far away from where I grew up), they passed an ordinance that makes it illegal to annoy someone.  Can I have the whole city council and their police chief arrested for annoying me with their stupid anti-First Amendment laws?

Blaming Bush
A Drudge Teaser:  NYT SUNDAY: BUSH TO BLAME FOR HOUSING NIGHTMARE, MORTGAGE BONFIRE... DEVELOPING...
Democrats have made a cottage industry out of blaming bush for just about everything wrong under the sun.  I can't wait to see what they blame him for in 2012!

Locked And Loaded
The USAF Rocks!

Merry Christmas!

VW