No, I’m not advocating violence. I’m just observing the existence of a conflict between 2 completely irreconcilable ideas (and the people who hold them) that’s been growing for the past 100 years in America.

On one hand is the simple idea that “by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground“. Or stated only a bit more pleasantly, that everyone should work, that earning a living must be encouraged, that charity should only be given to or accepted by people in a misfortune entirely beyond their control.

On the other hand is a century of serious intellectual effort not to accept that fact. To proclaim, in much prettier words than I’ll use here, that people are entitled simply by their existence to various things they want (a “job”, a “living wage”, “social justice”, “access to healthcare”, “decent” housing, and other items in the intellectuals’ easily malleable list of “rights”), without the traditionalists’ demand that they pay for such things themselves, or receive them as a willing gift from another who had.

In the middle of this have been the mostly decent people of America going about their business and paying sporadic attention to the ideological conflict.

For the past 100 years, the entitlement idea has advanced. There have been rear-guard actions opposing it (fought by, e.g. William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Ronald Reagan), but these have delayed or postponed, rather than reversed the trend.

Now, however, the idea of entitlement is, to borrow a term used by many others, literally and figuratively nearing bankruptcy. The cost of taxing, borrowing, or inflating to pay for people NOT to produce is going to be higher than Americans are willing to pay within the next 10 years.

On the side of the entitled are a motley collection of genuine scum who want to use them as a way to actively destroy civilization, the “Anointed” busybodies trying to hold on to their self-image as morally superior (or in many cases, to distract from their own fantastic wealth acquired partly or wholly through the political process), politicians (almost all of the Democrats, but many Republicans as well) who’ve managed to use “compassion” through the money of others to get themselves elected, and an army of sympathizers throughout the media, government agencies, court systems, unions, Hollywood, and subsidized universities.

On the side of the workers (the producers, not the proletariat of Marxist lore) are reality, and a relatively young (the Tea Party for lack of a better comprehensive term) movement supporting them, with good intentions, few illusions, but little or no experience in political battle. There are also the established conservative and libertarian organizations – some of which, like any organization, have some inertia in their culture, but almost all of whom recognize the need to fight.

What do we need to do now?

• First, we can’t forget that also on the “entitled” side are the victims of the welfare state themselves – the children (and even the mothers and fathers) from families whose breakup was subsidized by the welfare check. The disabled worker whose will to be productive in spite of his disability is eroded. The able-bodied young man who loses the habit of working daily after more than a year of collecting an unemployment check and pretending that he’s tried to find a job. The elderly who haven’t made provisions for their own retirement income or medical care. Most of these are people who can work and get along with each other if they have an incentive to do so.

  Keep them in your mind when you’re lectured for your supposed lack of compassion. Keep them in mind too when you’re tempted to think that it’s only a lack of moral character and not the perverse incentives in a man-made system that led to their current conditions.

• Second, fight relentlessly and NOW. There are a minority of the Entitled who are going to fight back just as fiercely at any attempt to take away what they think is Theirs. We’ve seen them in 2011 in Greece, in the Wisconsin statehouse, in public parks all over America.

  They’ve convinced themselves they can win this fight, despite the fact that the United States federal government alone has a debt greater than what all Americans produce in a year (leaving aside its less-binding promises such as Social Security and Medicare), and despite the fact that even some local and state Democrats have recognized the looming fiscal crises.

  They will continue to convince themselves of a win unless and until their funding dries up and their ideas are widely recognized as the rotten lies that they are. And they will grow temporarily much stronger if they get to keep any semblance of the current President and Congress.
  (Which category of entitlement supporters the President and various members of Congress belong to is debatable; that they’re on the side of entitlement is not.)

  This fight, like other predictably imminent conflicts throughout history, can be resolved with much less cost now if it’s decisively pursued to a conclusion than if it’s delayed or half-assed. Would there have been an American Civil War, had a compensated emancipation program been instituted in 1850? Would the conflict of 1914-18 still be the only “Great War” had Hitler been removed from power after occupying the Rhineland? It’s plausible but not certain in both cases. Would the costs in money and lives lost have been much lower had slavery and National Socialism been defeated earlier? Undoubtedly.

How can we defeat entitlement now? Fight it with everything we’ve got.

• We have a largely sympathetic population around us who understands the underlying reality. They want economic growth and job opportunities, not entitlement. We are the only ones offering that, and we should not be ashamed nor should we deviate from that path.
• We should by all means continue to encourage each other and the less ideologically committed in the House and Senate of the reality of our conviction, at every chance we get.

And by all means, do not just stand on the sidelines and cheer.

• Get involved in your local Republican Party as a precinct captain, and oppose the party leadership if they won’t fight.
• Register sympathetic voters and get them to turn them out at election time.
• Politely correct people when they state Entitlement assumptions as though they were fact.
• Ridicule Leftists when they spew nonsense, no matter how prominent they are.
• Expose the “long march” through an institution before it gets entrenched.
• Continue working to get conservative Republicans elected to office, and don’t shy away from stepping on anyone’s toes to get that done.
• DON’T get bogged down in personality conflicts with people who agree with you.

Do ALL of these. They don’t take that much time once you’ve done them once; it takes less time to succeed then to fail.

With you all to victory,

Chris Renner

I don’t think so. That would be such an attempt at political suicide that Democrat-Media Complex couldn’t possibly spin their way out of it. I think the President’s just trying to put a bit of fear into the hearts of those who rely on Social Security for a significant portion of their income (and as he amusingly admits, bluffing). But the only way that the Social Security Administration will fail to issue checks next month is if the Treasury actively chooses to do so.

The whole piece from the Wall Street Journal is worth reading, but here are the important details:

Congress spent these surpluses[CR: from 1984 to 2009], and the U.S. Treasury issued the Social Security Trust Fund special bonds, which can be redeemed whenever the Social Security system has a current account deficit. In 2010, the Social Security system ran its first current account deficit since 1983, and for the first time since the reforms the deficit was covered by redeeming Trust Fund bonds.

By law the Treasury is bound to redeem any bonds presented to it by the Social Security Administration. And when the Treasury does, total government debt subject to the debt limit falls by the amount of the redemption—thus freeing up the Treasury’s ability to issue new bonds equal in amount to the redeemed Trust Fund bonds.

In other words, Social Security bonds can be redeemed, and Social Security payments made, without raising the debt ceiling. Thomas Saving asks the logical follow-up question:

If issuing Social Security checks does nothing to immediately affect the debt limit, how is it possible that Social Security would be at the top of the expenditure cut list?

The reason is simple and stems from the constitutional question that arose from a federal program in which all citizens were required to participate. In Helvering v. Davis (1937), the Supreme Court upheld Social Security’s constitutionality because “The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way.”

As a result, the federal government can apply the revenues collected from Social Security payroll taxes, and the income taxes collected on benefits collected from higher-income individuals, to any government liability.

So, when the president says that thanks to the debt ceiling “there may simply not be the money in the coffers” to send out the $20 billion in August Social Security checks, he either does not understand the way the system works, or the administration intends to spend the money on something else.

Emphasis mine. The only way that Social Security payments are not going to be made over the next few months is if the President and Treasury Secretary choose to radically alter the way that Social Security payroll taxes have been applied for the last 75 years. Please make sure everyone you know understands that fact, and assigns responsibility accordingly.

Promoted from the diaries by Caleb

The highlight of my day at CPAC (and I’d guess many other bloggers would share that opinion).

Before giving the keynote speech, Rep. Allen West (FL-22) stopped in to talk about diversity within the GOP, the GOProud controversy, the Middle East, libertarianism, the Congressional Black Caucus, motorcycles, defense spending cuts and more.

Here’s the video, thanks to FTR Radio:

What a day it is indeed. I don’t mention my own service all that often in the context of politics (I would rather win over others to my views with universal truths than with biographical details), but I’m proud to have been a Marine for 7 years, to have been deployed to Iraq twice, and above all to have served alongside such fine men and women that I did.

Their courage and commitment to their honorable mission in that country is worthy of more praise than I could hope to give in a lifetime. The veterans of the military, in my experience, have continued to embody all of the greatest traditions of American culture that have led our country to the prominent position it stands in at this time, even when those cultural traditions have been eroded in the larger society that they defend.

It is not through the troops on the ground, the air, or the sea, in cold outposts all over the world, that we have to fear the decline of ANYTHING that has made America great, and I proudly salute them for standing up for freedom, and thank all the others, too many to name, who have recognized the service of our veterans and the birth of our Corps during the past 2 days.

This year, two things drew my attention to the sacrifice made by the veterans of the Korean War in particular. First, in going through old papers on my desk, I noticed a fundraising letter from Clint Eastwood on behalf of the Korean War National Museum.

Second, one of the traditions of the Marine Corps Birthday celebration is the annual message from the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Dating back to 1921 and John A. LeJeune, the message that all other Marines have heard since then is read; however in modern years the current Commandant and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps produce their own video message to the Marines. This year, Commandant General James Amos and Sergeant Major Carlton Kent recognized the heroism of Marines in Korea. Here is their video in full:

Happy 235th, Marines. And happy Veterans Day to all who’ve served. This veteran salutes you.

This from the Sunshine State News, via Bluegrass Pundit:

In one of the most closely watched U.S. House races in the nation, Republican Daniel Webster now holds a 7-point lead over Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson in Central Florida’s 8th Congressional District, according to a new Sunshine State News Poll.

Webster, a former state senator, leads the freshman congressman 43-36 in the survey of 559 likely voters conducted Sept. 25-27. TEA (“Taxed Enough Already”) Party candidate Peg Dunmire drew 6 percent and NPA hopeful George Metcalfe garnered 3 percent, while 9 percent remained undecided (2 percent cited “other” and 1 percent refused to state).

Digging deeper, the numbers look even worse for Grayson as 51 percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of the Orlando-area congressman.

Feel free to donate to Daniel Webster and help remove this whore from Congress.

It’s hard to even start naming everything that’s wrong with this situation. From Charles Jacobs at Big Peace:

My organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), just released a video showing 6th graders from Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to the largest mosque in the Northeast. Teachers did not intervene. Parents have not been told.

Let me repeat that: 6th grade kids in Massachusetts were taken, by their teachers, on a field trip to a mosque, and led to bow down before Allah.

More from Peters:

The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – Boston’s controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque – during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly mis-educated about Islam. A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed’s 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago.

And:

The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.

This is just unbelievable. Replace “mosque” in this story with “church” and imagine the reaction: “Separation of Church And State! Stop forcing your religion on our kids!” Think we’ll hear that here? I doubt it.

Read and watch the whole thing. And if you’re motivated to express an opinion – here’s some contact info.

Wellesley Middle School, and its social studies department which organized the trip.
In case the site crashes, the school phone number is shown as 781-446-6250.

The Islamic Society of Boston is here – the phone number is 617-876-3546.

This woman has the blood of thousands of aborted babies on her hands.

I’ll leave the detailed analysis to others. You can read background here , here and here.

The bottom line is this: In 1996, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a generally pro-abortion organization, shared one of their policy statements with the Clinton administration, which stated that partial-birth abortion was NOT MEDICALLY NECESSARY.

Elena Kagan then PERSONALLY suggested an alteration in the text of ACOG’s policy statement, making it say the exact opposite – that partial-birth abortion was medically necessary in some cases. ACOG made this alteration.

This flagrant, behind-the-scenes distortion of medical science not only influenced the debate over a federal ban on partial-birth abortion (which passed Congress in October 1997, but without enough votes to override President Clinton’s veto), but that policy statement language, written not by doctors but by Elena Kagan herself, was cited by the Supreme Court as reason to overturn Nebraska’s state ban on this barbaric practice.

In other words: Elena Kagan’s meddling with a “scientific” policy statement arguably caused partial-birth abortion to be legal for 6 years longer than it would have been.

This is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start, but our Senators need to know about this IMMEDIATELY. Kagan’s confirmation hearing is going on as I type this, and her immoral and unethical disregard for science, medicine, and lawmaking should COMPLETELY disqualify her from the Supreme Court nomination.

Call your Senators now.

The former veep/perpetual teller of depressing environmental fairy tales seems to have made a Clintonian slip with a masseuse in Oregon in October 2006.

HT to The Other McCain, who’s posted on it here, here, and here.

The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office confirmed today that a woman who alleged unwanted sexual contact by Al Gore reported it to police in 2006, and the prosecutor’s office was briefed by the Portland Police Bureau in late 2006 and January 2007.
“We were told the woman was not willing to be interviewed by the Portland Police Bureau and did not want a criminal investigation to proceed,’’ Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk said, in a prepared statement.

And:

The masseuse told investigators about an evening massage session during which Gore allegedly became enraged at times and tried to gain sexual favors from the woman.
“I was shocked and I did not massage beyond what is considered a safe, nonsexual area of the abdomen,” she said. “He further insisted and acted angry, becoming verbally sharp and loud.”

My favorite comment about it so far comes from TOM commenter Paul Mitchell:

Goodness, the entire Clinton administration is guilty of rape. The law dogs better keep a sharp eye on Rahm and Hillary.

Cross-posted to Renner’s Here.

Good job LaborUnionReport and civil_truth especially, for bringing Maj. Godin’s case to the attention of RedState readers. The ending’s about as happy as could be. From the Daily Caller:

The Massachusetts Governor signed a bill on Wednesday afternoon that saves the job of a retired Marine and public high school ROTC instructor who refused to pay teachers union fees.

Gov. Deval Patrick signed a supplemental bill that included language added as an amendment by state senator Richard R. Tisei that exempts Junior ROTC instructors at public high school across the state from having to pay union fees. Juan Martinez, Patrick’s press secretary, confirmed that the ROTC provision was signed.

I’ve been asked by several folks to recommend specific books by Thomas Sowell, since I’ve read about 20 of them in the past year and a half. That number’s not so high because I’m such a voracious reader, but rather because Sowell’s such a phenomenal writer that his books can be read quickly.

The first thing that a new reader of Sowell should be aware of is that though he was trained as an economist, ultimately receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (Milton Friedman was one of his teachers there), he’s written great analysis of many different subjects that aren’t strictly related. This is important for 2 reasons.

First, it shows that possibly more than any other living American writer, he knows how to think. Before our educational institutions were dumbed down with feel-good nonsense unrelated to actual learning, teachers (ideally speaking) considered it more important that their students were able to think using logic and empirical evidence than that they knew particular sets of facts. Sowell’s ability to think has made his books troves of subtle wisdom, and is delightfully contagious as well.

The second, and more obvious reason that you need to care about Sowell’s diversity of writings is that what book you’ll want to read depends on your specific interest. Broadly speaking, his books can be classified in the following categories:

• Elementary Economics
• Race/Culture Issues
• Late Talking Children
• “Intellectuals”* and decision-making
• Education
• Economic Theory

I’ll make some recommendations here by category:

Elementary Economics

This would include Basic Economics, Applied Economics, and Economic Facts and Fallacies. I’d recommend reading Basic Economics thoroughly (as well as testing yourself with the questions Sowell helpfully has provided at the back of the book) if you’ve never read anything on the subject before or taken an econ course. If you’re more advanced in your knowledge of economics, it’s still worth reading through quickly for the specific examples.

Applied Economics and Economic Facts and Fallacies are, as the titles would suggest, a bit more advanced (and Economic Facts and Fallacies in particular gets into some of the other categories of Sowell’s writing).

Race/Culture Issues

I’d start here with Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Affirmative Action Around The World, or Ethnic America. If you’re motivated, you could read through his Race and Culture 3-volume work, each volume of which is between 400 and 500 pages of text. (The specific books are titled Race and Culture, Migrations and Cultures, and Conquests and Cultures, but it’s not necessary to read them in any particular order.)

Late-Talking Children

This includes Late Talking Children as well as The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late (my most recent Sowell read). These are obviously written for a more specific audience, but The Einstein Syndrome has some interesting insight into gifted children in general as well as the education system. Sowell actually started writing about this by chance (his son John was extremely bright but didn’t start talking until after age 3).

“Intellectuals” and decision-making

In this category I’d put The Vision of The Anointed, A Conflict of Visions, Knowledge and Decisions, The Quest For Cosmic Justice and Intellectuals And Society.

The Vision of The Anointed is possibly the best insight into the “thinking” of the intelligent leftist that’s ever been written, and if I absolutely had to pick one book from this post to recommend to everyone, that would be it.

Knowledge And Decisions is a great insight into the technical reasons that collectivism fails.

The others in this category contain many of the same insights, but I’d especially suggest Intellectuals And Society, the most current of Sowell’s books.

Education

Inside American Education is a great summary of many problems with the educational systems prevailing in the US. Choosing The Right College is fairly self-explanatory, and obviously of particular interest to parents of teenagers.

Economic Theory

In this category would be books like Say’s Law: An Historical Analysis, On Classical Economics, and Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. These, particularly Say’s Law, require background knowledge of economic theory and philosophy to be maximally edifying. If that doesn’t describe you, I wouldn’t categorically advise against reading them, but be aware that it won’t be a casual endeavor.

Other Miscellaneous

Sowell’s also published several collections of his syndicated columns, such as Is Reality Optional?, Barbarians Inside The Gates and Ever Wonder Why. Handy just to have them in book form.

The Housing Boom and Bust is good, but again hard to categorize.

Lastly, there are his more personal books: A Personal Odyssey and A Man of Letters.

That’s about all I can think of. Feel free to point out anything I missed, and happy reading!

*I’ve put “intellectuals” in quotes because when Sowell writes, he doesn’t really use the term generically to refer to someone who’s smart, well-educated, or working in an academic setting, but to someone who makes a living from ideas alone. The preface to Intellectuals And Society explains why this distinction matters.