(Category: Random Thought)

I was thinking yesterday about the paradox of moral relativism.  I'll probably post on that later, but right now, I want to talk about it less directly.  You see, liberals often claim to believe in moral relativism.  They say that you cannot judge actions because they are a result of society/upbringing/circumstances, etc.  However, I am convinced that nobody truly believes in moral relativism.  People like to say they do because as long as you claim there's no universal code of right and wrong, you can avoid ever having to admit having done wrong.  Liberals scoff at the idea of "good" and "evil," and yet they make those generalizations more hastily and often than anybody else.

First of all, consider the case of George W. Bush: liberals almost universally condemn him as being evil, a tyrant, a dictator, etc. etc.  Doesn't sound like moral relativism to me.  Any (conservative) person who displays even a hint of racism or says something suggesting they're not too hot on homosexuality is loudly condemned in every liberal outlet in existence.  Where can I find a liberal who will dare to apply the same standards by which they give Muslims a pass for their treatment and opinions of women to the religious conservative who believes homosexuality is a sin?  Why do liberals stand ideologically toe-to-toe with Osama bin Laden when he says 9/11 was a reaction to Western involvement in the Middle East (thus excusing the terrorists from wrongdoing), while they ruthlessly condemn white, male college students who are (falsely) accused of rape?  We have heard all the excuses they make for the terrorists' war against us: They're poor.  They have been victimized by the West.  Yadayadayada.
Where are the excuses for our war against terrorism?

So don't believe liberals when they say they don't believe in the quaint notions of "good" and "evil."  They have a moral compass, just like every other human in the civilized world.  The only difference is that theirs always points south.

(Category: Random Thought)

So, I couldn't help but notice a strange disparity that seems to be indicative of the way this nation is heading.  You see, it seems as though it used to be that there was a "town drunk" whom all disdained, because he was a nuisance and a liability to himself and others.  Well, in college, there's a "town sober," whom all disdain because he's no fun and won't make a fool of himself for others' amusement.

(Category: Random Thought)

I just saw a campaign commercial for John Edwards.  He complains of the evils of "corporate greed" and how it will ruin our next generation of Americans.  First, I would like to insert that, insofar as we define "greed" as "self-interest," "greed" as Mr. Edwards is using the term is responsible for more progress in America than any government-run socialist program, which have only managed to foster poverty, idleness and dependence.

Second, it is flagrantly hypocritical for a senator to complain about "greed" when his entire career is spent legally stealing money from his fellow Americans--and I'm not even talking about his career as a senator.

Many of us know that Senator Edwards's favorite case when he was an ambulance chaser was to sue doctors who failed to deliver babies by Caesarean section when they weren't born within a certain timeframe, claiming that these post-mature births resulted in cerebral palsey.

Now here's the rub: when corporations profit, at the very least it's because they provide us with a good or service which we desire.  Edwards never even gave us a positive benefit for all the money he took.  After the dust settled, it turned out that waiting longer to perform a Caesarean section had no effect on the chance of the infant having cerebral palsey.  But doctors now perform the dangerous operation more often, because they risk being sued by fork-tongued hyenas like Mr. Edwards, eager to score a buck off of someone's misfortune.

Quick fact: John Edwards's net financial worth is greater than George W. Bush's net financial worth.  Who's greedy, now?

Since I have to see the old, bored fogeys standing on the street corner every so often waving around signs that say "NO WAR" and "PEACE NOW" and a bunch of other tired pacifist slogans with no hope of changing anyone's idea on the matter whatsoever, I thought I would write a post on the actual nature of pacifism.

You see, modern Americans are very tolerant, gentle, and morally guided people.  We have a very hard time criticizing people who seem simply to care about peace and hate violence.  I think the problem is that we see them as the innocent idealists, perhaps wrong, at worst, but certainly not morally at fault for their foolishness.  I'm afraid, however, I simply cannot tolerate the mealy-mouthed half-criticisms of the pacifist ideology in general.

What pacifism really is is the same thing as what most aspects of the modern left really are: indulgent, self-gratifying, and without worth.  The pacifist has the ability to feel good about being "peaceful" while never having to confront the difficult question of what could be worth their life.  The answer is unequivocally nothing.

Moral absolutes like pacifism are seductive thoughts.  They are simple, and the only onus they place on us is not to act.  But experience will teach that few values are, in fact, absolute.  Killing is usually wrong.  Deception is generally not a good deed.  If you were about to give birth to the spawn of Satan, you might even want to get yourself an abortion (I am not implying that Planned Parenthood will one day save the world).  To give oneself in to the notion that we should never take up arms in defense of anything is to reject the foundation of this country and even the virtues of the Bible.  Even Christ said to his disciples before he left them, "If you do not own a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."
I hope that we can see this pacifist ideology not as the yearnings of an innocent heart, but the whispers of a devil's tongue.

The best way to market a vice is to make it appear to be a virtue.  In fact, this is essentially the only way vice is marketed.  Pacifism falls into this category of vice appearing to be virtue.  A wolf in sheep's clothing, so to speak.  First of all, the tenets of pacifism, namely the notion that "war doesn't solve anything," have been as thoroughly disproven as the assertion that the Sun revolves around the Earth.  War, to be honest, has solved many more things than peace has.  War solved Hitler.  War solved communist encroachment on South Korea.  War solved the Taliban in Afghanistan.  War solved Saddam.  The only reason peace, while desirable, does not have as good a track record at solving problems as war does is that peace is not a means; it is an end.  If you threaten a man breaking into your house that you will blow his legs off with your shotgun if he doesn't leave the way he came (hopefully he can see the weapon in your hands...hopefully he came in through the second floor window), he is far more likely to accede to your demands than if you threaten him that you will curl up in a ball and beg for your life.

It is in this train of thought that I realized pacifism is not so much a mentality of peacefulness as of weakness, so I want to draw a line of separation between pacifism and restraint.  Plenty of us have seen or heard about anti-war protests in which the protestors deface property and even attack people.  Clearly, the driving mentality behind them is not peacefulness, or they would not resort to violence.  But what makes me say that pacifism is weakness?  The reason I make this claim is that pacifists generally do not only advocate a stance of unconditional non-violence (unless the target is conservatives), but rather a state of being unable to even threaten violence.  Pacifists advocate nuclear disarmament quite often, and even occasionally call for the complete abolition of the military.  What they want is not for us to be restrained in our use of force, or even for us never to use force.  They want us to be weak.  Even Gandhi would have a problem with that.  He said the worst trespass the British occupation committed against India was depriving the people of their guns.  If I might, I believe that puts Gandhi solidly on the "pro-2nd Amendment" side of the argument.

To deprive oneself of the capability of defense is to invite attack.  Or shall I use the old saying by the Roman, Vegetius: "Whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war."

(Category: Half-baked Idea)

Thanks to John Hawkins, at www.rightwingnews.com, I discovered this little "poem" at the Daily Kos.  Mr. Hawkins provided some good commentary, but I thought it deserved a little more.  The reason?  This "poem" (if one can call such a piece of garbled trash with no rhyme or meter a poem) is a perfect snapshot of the modern Left.

Everything about it, from the juvenile way it is written, with many incoherent statements and grammatical errors, to the ridiculous demands for violence and un-civil protest, reeks of the utter state of immaturity and childish thinking which dominates the Left.

Note also how the author says that his poem is "dedicated to the real patriots of America," and not a page later refers to America as "Amerikkka."  I guess I'm not using the same definition of the word "patriotism" as this fellow is.  See, I thought patriotism was loving your country.  Apparently I have it backwards.  For comparison, let's say I wanted to prove that I was not a racist, and so I said, "I really like black people" and then 3 sentences later referred to black people in general as "dirty n****ers."  You would, I hope, come to question my non-racism.  Patriotism doesn't just mean loving some fantasy image of your country as a socialist paradise.  It means loving your country as it is.  There are many things I dislike about America, but all of them together are not enough to stop me from loving it all the same.

Seriously, though, the poem is laugh-out-loud funny, thanks to its utter stupidity.  But after reading it a few times (mostly for the sake of this post), my only impulse is to bury my face in my hands and wonder how this happens to people.  Let's observe the author's demands, towards the bottom.  Specifically, I want to analyze the demands for "Free Education For Everyone!" and "Free Healthcare For Everyone!"

Does this person live on Earth?  What sort of disease of the mind could possibly lead one to believe that education and healthcare can simply be gotten for free, no strings attached?  The assumption is that the only reason healthcare and education cost anything at all is that people are greedy and mean.  Of course, the real reason healthcare and education cost anything is the same reason anything costs anything: that there is not an unlimited amount of the good or service demanded.  If healthcare required no skills, time, or other resources to provide, it would be free.  But healthcare does require rare skills, often a great deal of time, and plenty of resources, and none of those things exist in infinite abundance.  Whatever monetary limit congress sets on the "price" of healthcare, it will not change the underlying fact that the resources needed for it are not infinite, and therefore we have to find some way of rationing out the limited supply of healthcare to a vastly greater demand for it.  Without money, some other means of rationing would have to come into effect.  Perhaps it would happen at random.  Maybe you would need to know the right doctors or the right bureaucrats.  You could do it like Great Britain does and just have people bribe doctors under the table for expedited service.  The point is, congress cannot change the fact that there is not enough to go around.  That's called "reality," for you liberals out there.  Come and join us here, for a while.  Thank God our capitalist system lets us use our money to decide how much or how little we need of something like healthcare by how much money we are willing to pay for it, rather than having some haughty politician take the choice out of our hands and use our own money for us, whether we want what they're going to use it for or not.

The only thing you get in this world for free is forgiveness.  The rest you have to pay for, some way or another.

(Category: Random Thought)

I recently saw a commercial for ITT Tech's School of Criminal Justice that began with the quote, "Crime is an unfortunate part of our society."
Anyone considering going to college who hadn't figured that one out yet may want to reconsider that decision.

    One popular quip among the more leftist students around the University of Iowa (and probably elsewhere) is “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”  This is an obvious case of moral relativism.  If our reality is boring or uncomfortable, then it must be wrong.  One of the aspects of reality that leftists reject is the fact of a divine and perfect God.  They deny God, and substitute Him with a deity of their own making: secular government.
    One of the primary reasons the atheist Left must object to the truth of God is that this truth places moral imperatives on all those who believe.  It makes them uncomfortable to be commanded to separate the world into degrees of good and bad.  Yet they do this, regardless, perhaps without noticing; they vilify George Bush and Christians, primarily because these are symbols of the good/bad mentality that they violently reject, while simultaneously saying that you shouldn’t judge people.  There is no doubting that, despite its belief in moral relativism, the atheist Left does, indeed, divide the world into degrees of good and bad, the Good being fellow leftists, communists like Hugo Chavez and Che Guevara, and often extending to enemies of America and God, such as the radical Islamist terrorists.  The Bad are George Bush, Republicans, Christians, and often America or the West in general.
    This might sound hypocritical.  It is, but I don’t find it all that unusual.  The point is, when you remove God, the whole Christian worldview goes with Him, leaving a void which must be filled with something.  We humans have a natural need to make sense of the world we live in.  We need a way to separate the desired from the undesired.  Leftists find this in the government.
    Why the government?  While conservatives see the federal and state government as an entity that should be wielded cautiously and sparingly, the Left sees the government as a divinely competent system, capable of remedying all of society’s ills.  This belief in the utter competence and efficacy of the government is what leads many Leftists to harbor sympathy and even enthusiasm for the communist ideology.  Under communism, God must necessarily disappear, His role being consumed by the government, which must then act as Father, Mother, and Mentor over the people.  While all experience denies that any government has the ability to perform all (or any) of these roles effectively, it is not the habit of the Left to allow rationality to impede their utopian ideals.
    The incompatibility of expansive government with the virtue of society has been demonstrated right here in America.  During the Great Depression, unemployed Americans would stand on street corners holding up signs that said, “I don’t want charity, I want a job.”  Can anyone imagine a vast majority of our Greatest Generation complaining that the government isn’t doing enough for them?  Nowadays, thanks to our ever-expanding federal government, this opinion is extremely prevalent on one end of the political spectrum: the Left end.  Our high taxes dampen our industry while over-wrought welfare programs supersede our initiative and creativity and encourage us to behave irresponsibly, with the belief that the government’s “safety net” will ensure our wellbeing.  Many, I believe, have found this safety net to be more akin to flypaper.
    In substituting the Government for God, the atheist Left has sealed themselves into slavery to an imperfect ideal.  Despite all evidence against the notion that government can solve all social ills, they continue to pine after it.  In this deified government, the Left sees salvation.  They see an entity that can protect us from every inconvenience of life--hardship, accountability, morality—at the simple expense of our personal freedom and our souls.  My God may not always protect me from trouble, but His rewards are greater than any secular government can offer: “God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way.”
    No creation of Man has the power to provide any of these things.

This is my blog.  It shall be a repository for all random thoughts, half-baked ideas, and profound exegeses that I deem worthy to be published.
I have dubbed it "The Asylum" because it is a haven for all harried conservatives needing a good dose of common sense and a momentary respite from liberal mud-slinging.