Muzzammil Hassan and Islamic Primordial Violence

Yesterday's entry on the beheading of Asiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York, brought out the representative trolls of the anti-American left. The meme at the comments, following Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, is that Muzzammil Hassan is a "moderate" Muslim and his wife's murder was a routine case of patriarchical domestic violence against women (can there be such a thing?). This refusal to see the genuine and unique brutality in Islamic culture is found in the inherent anti-Americanism on the radical left.

The truth is that Muzzammil Hassan is no "moderate" Muslim after all. Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, sets the record straight on this medieval killer (via Jihad Watch):

Last Thursday, a woman named Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37, was founded decapitated in Orchard Park, New York, a village near Buffalo. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, was charged, rather oddly, with second-degree murder in the case. But the specter of someone who beheaded his wife being charged only with second-degree murder was the least of the oddities in this case: Aasiya Hassan’s body was found in the offices of the cable channel, Bridges TV. Aasiya Hassan was the inspiration for Bridges TV, and Muzzammil Hassan was its founder.

Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he thought were dominating the mainstream media. According to a Reuters story at the time, Aasiya “came up with the idea in December 2001 while listening to the radio on a road trip.” Muzzammil Hassan explained: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.”

Bridges TV originally declared that its intention was to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way.” However, there were indications at the outset that it might not have been as moderate as many assumed. Bridges TV from the beginning had ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, and Islamicity.com, which retails rabid anti-Semitic literature. In 2006 Arab News reported that Hassan was trying to raise money for the network from Saudi investors.

And now comes the clearest, most harrowing indication of all that Bridges TV’s founder was not the moderate he appeared to be, but was rather a man who had imbibed deeply the traditional Islamic understanding that women are possessions of men, to be punished severely when they get out of line. Of course, this singular lesson of the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, who apparently had raised Muzzammil’s ire by filing for divorce, is the one that the mainstream media and the American Muslim community is doing its best to obscure. Immediately after the killing, Khalid J. Qazi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) chapter of Western New York, declared: “There is no place for domestic violence in our religion — none. Islam would 100 percent condemn it.”

Unfortunately, all too few Muslim men seem to share Qazi’s view. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.

Spencer's essay continues with an explanation of the intrinsic brutality among Muslim men, indicating that primordial violence against women is a central component to "Islamic tradition."

See also, "Beheading in New York Appears to Be Honor Killing, Experts Say."

The Left's BushHitler Double Standard

It's just the beginning, no doubt, but readers will shake their heads at the faux uproar against Michelle Malkin and conservatives at the anti-"swindle us" rally yesterday in Colorado:

Michelle Malkin's got the story, "Nutroots Suddenly Hypersensitive About Nazi/President Comparisons."

Malkin posed for a photo yesterday with an activist holding a "No Obama" sign with a large encircled swastika (here). ProgressiveNow Colorado immediately went into the attack mode:

ProgressNow Colorado was at today's presser put on by Colorado Republicans and their Big Oil-funded front groups ....

That's noted right-wing shill Michelle Malkin posing with who we've dubbed "Swastika Guy," owing to the sign he carried right onto the stage with State Senator Josh Penry, Congressman Mike Coffman, Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams, State Senator Dave Schultheis, former Congressman Tom Tancredo, and Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, among others. None of whom did anything about it, and in fact one person defended the guy to one of our people saying that the swastika is not a Nazi symbol, but an honored Native American symbol.

These folks aren't too bright, and even Media Matters piles on the stupidity with its own spin:

Ohhhh, wait a minute. I get it. The man with the sign isn't professing his affinity for Nazis. He isn't even identifying himself as a Nazi. The swastika in question has a circle around it forming an O and the rest of the sign reads "BAMA". Get it? Obama is a Nazi. That's much better. Sigh.

A quick click through to some of the links at Malkin's finds this from Democratic Underground: "'Bushitler' (George W. Bush Comparable to Adolf Hitler)."

I found this jewel at the link: "The Neocon Pledge to Bushitler":

Those of you who still believe in George W. Bush and his party, please place your right hand over your heart and repeat the following – all eleven of you.

I BELIEVE that President Bush is a good Christian, who is guided by God in all of his decisions – even when God tells him to torture, steal, lie, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and ignore his own citizens when they are dying in New Orleans ....

I BELIEVE that good Christian values should be part of government – except when it comes to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and caring for the sick, in which case Christian values have no place in government at all.

In summary, I BELIEVE everything I am told to believe by people who have lied to me, deceived my country, manipulated the government in order to line their own pockets, eroded my rights, destroyed my freedoms, and wave their ability to get away with it in my face at every opportunity.

I BELIEVE – because I am an idiot who will believe anything.

Leftist double standards at work ...

Keep the pressure on, folks.

Kids Having Babies: Let's Be "Realistic"

A few nights ago, my wife and I talked to our oldest son about Alfie Patten, the British 13 year-old who is said to be the country's youngest father.

Our son's also 13, so the shock value of childhood parenting was particularly strong (the pictures of "baby" Alfie with his baby were particularly helpful). Actually, my son and I had the "birds and the bees" chat some time back, but with interest in girls on the rise around here, it never hurts to reiterate the basics.

So, with Bristol Palin's recent remark that abstinence was "not realistic at all," I'm even doubly convinced on the need for early and often parental intervention on these matters.

I'm not the only one. Robert Stacy McCain's taken a little friendly fire for his hasty "judgmentalism" on Ms. Bristol's teenage parenthood, and responds with a little pushback from his own fertile experience:

Look, I have three teenagers myself, a 19-year-old daughter and twin 16-year-old sons. Being judgmental is a full-time occupation, OK? I just put one of my 16-year-old boys onto a plane to visit relatives in Ohio, where he's also got a blonde girlfriend. When I called his cell phone before he boarded the plane, what was the last thing I told him? "Keep it in your britches, son."

Understand that sexy is a hereditary condition, so it's not like the boy won't encounter temptation. But something else is hereditary, too: Extreme fecundity.

My wife is one of seven children in her family, and we've got six kids, so there's really no such thing as "safe sex" with this crew. I've had to have this little talk with my daughter and her boyfriend, much to their embarrassment. It's about 100% certain they're not having sex, because if they were, there's a 99% chance I'd be a grandpa by now.

Well, as the father of two boys, "keep your britches on, son" might get some airtime around these parts in the years ahead.

The Beheading of Aasiya Hassan: Patriarchy-Conferred Privilege?

I just finished my once-per semester lecture on gender-equality (which I deliver to multiple sections), and I'm a little fired up on the topic of discrimination against women at the moment. Plus, I'm reading an extremely fascinating (if somewhat contradictory) scholarly essay on the role of patriarchic systems of dominance in the incidence of interstate wars. (See, "The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States," available here.)

So, I'm finding great interest (but little sympathy) in Melissa McEwan's essay on the murder of Aasiya Hassan in Orchard Park, New York. Mrs. Hassan was allegedly beheaded by her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, in what appears as a classic case of Islamic ritual murder, a beheading in the fashion of Daniel Pearl's, and an "honor killing" in the fashion of literally thousands of women around the world who have been murdered or who are now at risk of death to this Islamic barbarity. According to Phyllis Chesler, the murder of Mrs. Hassan "is very probably an honor killing, a crime which has little to do with western-style domestic violence."

Well, not according to Ms. McEwan:

Particularly in comment ... threads on posts about this story, there are a lot of jokes about how Hassan sure isn't improving Muslims' reputation by beheading his wife, all predicated, of course, on that most basic foundation of prejudice: The insistence that one member of a group represent the entire group. Certainly, I understand the source of the potential irony, but it's contingent on reducing Hassan to one piece of his identity—his religion—and suggesting that his religion is uniquely (or mostly) responsible for his crime. Which, as it turns out, there are people quite eager to do, too.

The thing is, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

Now you know the woman who constantly says like a broken record "This shit doesn't happen in a void" isn't about to argue that Hassan was not a product of his environment; I will, however, note that Islam was only one part of his environment. He is also an American resident, which made him the beneficiary of all the patriarchy-conferred privilege inherent to that environment, too. He is a member of a family, which likely granted him a higher status for being male. He is/was a businessperson working in corporate America, which favors and privileges men. Et cetera. In most or all of these overlapping and intersecting environments, violence against women will have been tacitly—and sometimes overtly—condoned via media imagery, advertisements, "jokes," turned blind eyes, public religious admonishments from multiple religions, and possibly intimate example.

So how much sense does it make to blame his religion, exclusively or even primarily?

None.

Which means that anyone who isn't just cynically using the occasion of a woman's gruesome murder by her husband's hand to advance an anti-Islam or anti-religion agenda needs to rethink their argument—because if they really care about the victim at the center of this crime, or any of the millions of women hurt or killed by domestic violence every year, they won't mask the real culprit behind a cheap, and misplaced, shot at a single religion.

The real culprit is undeserved male privilege and the resulting second-class personhood of women.

Folks can see why I'm just not sympathetic to Ms. McEwan's case. You see, there are distinctions between the phenomenon of domestic gender abuse in the United States and the historical subordination of women in Muslin countries, and now in the nations of the West as well where Islamic fundamentalists are increasing their grip.

The U.S. is the international system's leading democracy and few other nations in the history of the world have made as dramatic advances toward civil and poltical rights for women. When I teach this subject in class I'm struck by how agressive the United States has moved to abandon its history of patriarchy and real structures of dominance, and I can certainly understand where continued progress might be expected.

But this isn't the case in Muzzamil Hassan's beheading of his wife. This is not "run-of-the mill" domestic violence, as horrible as such crimes are. Violence against women is never okay. But this is a murder of world-political significance. It illustrates the deeply rooted primordial codes of Islamic culture. "A beheading suggests that the murderer wants to separate his victim’s mind from her body, he does not want to hear what she has to say, he wants her mute, beyond what duct tape can do and he wants her completely severed, disassociated from her ability to flee," as Chesler indicates. Indeed, to read McEwen is revealing of the crass ideological blindness to pure evil in the world today. As a professor who teaches civil rights, and as an advocate for the unlimited advancement of women in politics and society, I'm astounded at the moral bankruptcy of Melissa McEwan and the radical left's cultural relativism.

The logical disjuncture in this kind of thinking among leftists here at home is just too much to fathom sometimes.

Lincoln Tops New Presidential Survey

Abraham Lincoln is ranked America's most important president in a new ranking by C-Span (via CNN and Memeorandum):

It's been 145 years since Abraham Lincoln appeared on a ballot, but admiration for the man who saved the union and sparked the end of slavery is as strong as ever, according to a new survey.

Lincoln finished first in a ranking by historians of the 42 former White House occupants. The survey was released over Presidents Day weekend.

The news wasn't quite as good for the latest addition to the nation's most exclusive fraternity: George W. Bush finished 36th in the survey, narrowly edging out the likes of historical also-rans Millard Fillmore, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce.

James Buchanan - the man who watched helplessly as the nation lurched toward civil war in the 1850s - finished last.

"As much as is possible, we created a poll that was non-partisan, judicious and fair-minded," said Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley, who helped organize the survey of 65 historians for cable television network C-SPAN.

The survey - which asked participants to rank each president on 10 qualities of leadership ranging from public persuasion and economic management to international relations and moral authority - was the network's second since 2000.

The hero of Springfield, Illinois, finished first nine years ago as well.

"It's fitting that for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln that he remains at the top of these presidential rankings," Brinkley said.

"Lincoln continues to rank at the top in all categories because he is perceived to embody the nation's avowed core values: integrity, moderation, persistence in the pursuit of honorable goals, respect for human rights, compassion," Howard University's Edna Medford added.

Lincoln embodied "the nation's avowed core values," as do neoconservatives. See, "Abe Lincoln - The First Neoconservative":

Lincoln clearly viewed the success or failure of the American Experiment not only in domestic terms, but as a benchmark, a turning point, in the struggle of all mankind. He wrote on December 1, 1862, in his Annual Message to Congress, the following:

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free —honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.

President Lincoln echoed, in those words, the call to destiny in Thomas Jefferson’s “the last, best hope for mankind”. Let us not forget that all freedom loving people in the world depend upon America’s continued success here and abroad.

I love President Lincoln. My visit to the Lincoln Memorial in 2007 was one of the most important political experiences of my life. I look forward to making that pilgrimage again.

Here's wishing all of my readers a happy holiday evening.

Dismissing Your Unworthy Opponents

One of the things that amazes me is how folks like Ann Althouse, for whom I have great respect, can get along just peachy with folks like Matthew Yglesias, for whom I admire only for his perfunctory ability to put words to a page. Beyond that, this is the kind of guy Snooper would identify as loving "nothing better than to slaughter the Eagle." Perhaps it's that people of Althouse's professional profile - being in her case an occasional columnist at the New York Times, etc., and who appears regularly on Bloggingheads.tv (with these same said people) - might prefer ideational amity rather than ideological enmity.

As for me, I guess I don't do that kind of nuance. If ideas have consequences, I tend to bristle at how some folks put over radical boilerplate as "good policy" or "sophisticated analysis." Perhaps that kind of style deprives antagonists of cul-de-sacs of comfort, which is something Daniel Larison raises in his takedown of Nate Silver's argument today regarding progressives:

For someone inclined to accuse others of dishonesty, Silver is being fairly deceptive in his labeling from the beginning. Naturally, he is going to set up his own position as the rational one and the one he is attacking as implicitly irrational. That isn’t the main point here, but it is typical of the technocratic, anti-populist side in any debate to frame disagreements with their critics as a battle between reason and passion. You can find this with David Brooks’ description of anti-TARP Congressmen as “nihilists” (even though their skepticism and advocacy for alternatives were entirely warranted and correct) or any of the usual pro-war and pro-immigration advocates that seek to impute malicious intent or hatred to their opponents. This is a method used for dismissing, rather than engaging, and for treating opposing arguments as inherently unworthy of attention or serious consideration. Technocratic types prefer practicing this politics of contempt, because it automatically rules out serious objections to certain policies as automatically invalid and invests them or people like them with a certain unchallengeable authority. They tend to make respect for expertise into a debilitating inability to question experts’ assumptions and biases.

Dismissing rather than engaging, ahh, like E.D. Kain, for example, who ridicules George Will's perfectly good argument against global warming hysteria with a kind of stuffy intellectualism:

Essentially, global warming has become just another talking point in a long and growing list of talking points that the conservative movement uses to keep apostates out of their fold (shrinking that big tent) and to berate liberals with, rather than viewing warming as both a real cause for worry, and as an opportunity to demonstrate honest governance. Apparently obstructionism and denial are better tactics.

It seems to me in this case E.D. would be the "technocratic type" who is "practicing a politics of contempt" against more populist folks (or those who identify with populists) like George Will, Scott Johnson, and Michelle Malkin. It gets pretty confusing, or simply, those who accuse others of claiming unchallengeable authority cloak themselves in a sort of, well, unchallengeable authority, and then not too much debate gets accomplished.

Note how Larison dismisses those like Silver, who argues for pragmatic reason over radical ideological passion, as of the same kind of intellectuals who advocate "for starting wars and expanding the role of the security state" and "for policies that are illegal and result in detaining, harming or killing other people."

And that's really it. It's all dismissal of opponents here in the end, while folks like Larison and E.D. Kain pretend to have real "internal" debates with people just like themselves, who while adopting various political labels indicating different ideological persuasions nevertheless express opinions the differ little on substantive merit. Antiwar leftists like those at Open Left obviously have much more in common with paleconservatives at AmCon than they would at Weekly Standard. In the same vein, "liberaltarians" are pretty much the same as Oakshottian postmodern conservatives, particularly in advocating anything-but conservative policies such as same-sex marriage absolutism. Basically, you get a lot of guys under different monikers who get along just peachy, making no need to carve out spacy cul-de-sacs of disagreement, since the point isn't really to debate, but to mislabel and repackage policies that have already been repudiated by traditionalists in the great silent cultural majority.

Maybe nuance is better than pummeling pushback, although I'd rather end up bloodied and unbowed than patted on the bottom by some soft-and-squishy policy mentors after a good day at the faux-debate playground.

Tammy Bruce: Conservative Moral Power

I'm reading Tammy Bruce's, The New American Revolution: Using the Power of the Individual to Save Our Nation from Extremists. I was particularly struck by this passage on the left's devilish program of moral confiscation, which needs no further comment from me:

I was privileged to be a part of a panel at David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend, an annual event that brings together like-minded independent thinkers. After my presentation, two women approached me. They identified themselves as conservatives and confessed they had finally accepted that conservatives should acquiese the moral high ground to liberals and focus on their strong points - economics and limited government.

I was astounded. Here were two smart people, both businesswomen and quite successful, attending a conference that showed they were aware, educated, and in touch with the details and realities of our cultural and political civil war. And yet even they had been so brainwashed by the Left that they not only believed the Left was a moral force, they had lost touch with the power and morality of their own conservative foundation.

Here's what I told these women: It is the conservative who holds the moral high ground. The Left Elite, whether through lies or their own paralyzing groupthink, are the opposite of what they claim. Not only do they lack any sort of moral authority, but also they have desecrated the very idea of decency and values by using those ideals as slogans in their attempts to smash them into oblivion.

You must realize the Left's effort is not to gain the moral high ground, it is only to squat and defile that land once they have tricked you into leaving it. Make no mistake, their intention is not to act morally or enact decent policies or truly help the individual. It is to take the moral high ground from you so you will have no place to stand.

If Leftists can successfully make you feel as though they will take care of the moral needs of this nation (do you realize how absurd that sounds?), then you will stop daring to interfere, they hope. And when you stop interfering, when you retreat, the Left's own hypocritical inaction guarantees this nation will be condemned by their god of nihilism, narcissism, and self-hate.

But they can only do it if they can manage to make you believe the sickening lie that they have morality and decency on their side, while you are sadly lacking. It is imperative for you to know that they are working feverishly to steal your identity. They want you to believe, as the women at the conference did, that you have been usurped by better, more compassionate people.

"Peaceful, Even Joyful, Protests Against Proposition 8"

This picture shows some of the violent-hooligan "No on H8" protesters who targeted Westwood's Mormon temple on November 6th, following passage of the traditional marriage initiative in California. We indeed find peaceful activists here, of course, but see additional photos of gay mayhem at the Los Angeles Times' slideshow, "Proposition 8 Protests":

I'm reposting this stuff to counter Andrew Sullivan's meme that last year's gay-rights demonstrations were "peaceful, even joyful." Oh sure, Sullivan's slurring "Christianists" such as Michelle Malkin, et al., while on the streets gay radicals were peppering black passers-by with the "n-word." See, "N-Word Hurled at Blacks During Westwood Prop 8 Protest":

Not that this wasn't expected. The recent passage of California's Proposition 8 has exposed some of the latent racism of many within the LGBT community—instigated in part by many in the e-telligentsia such as revisionist Andrew Sullivan and sex advisor turned sociologist Dan Savage. Unfortunately the "blame the blacks" meme is being commonly accepted by some so-called "progressive" gay activists. A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night's marriage equality rally in Los Angeles.

Christy Hardin Smith's also getting into the act here, denouncing some new issue advertisement out of West Virginia: "Boogah boogah scary gays ooogah boogah ..."

"Scary gays" is putting it mildly. Lock your doors people. The homosexual hills have eyes.

Neoconservative Antidote to the Postmodern Left

Dr. Sanity has a big post up offering some musings on Barack Obama's faux post-partisanship and the ever-attendant fawning media, plus some historical perspective on presidential greatness (will George W. Bush win history's vindication?). But frankly, I think Dr. Sanity's just getting some stuff off her chest, and as neoconservative I can fully relate:

The left deeply fears neoconservatism and the economic and political freedom that it supports, and will stop at nothing to discredit its ideas. But they cannot do it using reason, reality, and truth; so these impediments they must abandon.

Neoconservatism is far from perfect. After all, neocons are ordinary human beings - as opposed to Obamacons who are perfect beings of pure (and vague) "hope and change" postmodernism. As I noted in "What the World Needs Now":

The problem is countering the source of this pervasive nihilism, promulgated and promoted by the West's own intellectual elites under the pseudonym of postmodernism.

And the only intellectual remedy brought forth in the last five decades to nullify postmodern philosophy and rhetoric is neoconservatism.

If you listen at all to the MSM, you might begin to think that neoconservativesm is either in dissaray, dead and abandoned by all its former adherents.

Indeed, the left said pretty much the same thing even before Ronald Reagan got elected in 1979. It was wishful thinking then, and it is wishful thinking now.

Today's left is a nothing more than the hallow shell of what was once known as "liberalism"; and it is held together by the empty and meaningless rhetoric of postmodern intellectual nonsense, otherwise known as political correctness and multiculturalism (or, cultural relativity).

Neoconservatism as an intellectual theory actually arose from the observation in the 1960's that classical liberalism had been hijacked by the left and its essence literally reconstructed to suit the needs of socialists and communists who were beginning to realize that the jig was up for them.

All over the world it was becoming apparent that political and social collectivism was an abject failure. Where implemented, such policies led to intractable poverty and misery economically; and unbelievable oppression and the crushing of the human spirt politically and morally.

I have discussed elsewhere how the recent revival of socialism and its collectivist/totalitarian agenda in the late 20th and early 21st century was made possible by the adoption of postmodern epistemology, rhetoric and politics by western intellectual elites ....

The rise of neoconservatism represents the only modern intellectual counter and the only known antidote to the infection of postmodernism and its resultant toxic effects on philosophy, rehtoric, and politics.

In order to succeed in undoing and undermining the clear and unambiguous evidence of socialism's and communism's utter human toxicity, the totalitarians of the political left had to undermine nothing less than reality, reason, and truth. Furthermore, they had to deconstruct and invalidate human consciousness, making sure that the everyone understood that the only apparatus available to humans for perceiving reality - the mind - was completely unreliable, and that the evidence of the senses must the refore be discounted. This intellectual strategy resulted in a pervasive cultural relativism and intellectual nihilism that permeated all aspects of society and intellectual thought. Words and language were redefined to mean whatever one wanted; history was deconstructed - ostensibly to expose it's lies, but really to render it meaningless; and the ideas and values that were the foundation of Western civilization were mocked and shown by postmodern "logic" to be no better than any other random ideas.

So today's polls seriously presented as meaningful and full of import by a somber MSM at the behest of their political masters is nothing more than an attempt to hijack history and historical analysis. To strip it of its very meaning in the true postmodern tradition, and to ensure that it cannot be used by true scholars to expose the pathetic lies, abject economic failues and horrific human legacy of leftist thought.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Danger Ahead? Searching for Liberals, Progressives, Radicals

One of the things that's endlessy fascinating about the progressive left is how adherents vehemently resist being identified as "liberal," "radical" or "socialist."

Today's progressives are simply the heirs to the New Left anti-establishment activists of the 1960s, in the most immediate sense. In the larger scheme, these folks are the standard-bearers of radical-left ideological movements that are based in Marxist theories of class struggle and utopian goals for transcendance from poverty and misery. The strains found on the left range from today's establishment Democratic Party to the most hardline revolutionary factions such as International ANSWER. Programmatically, progressives vary on questions of the pace and scope of reform of capitalism and the balance between individual autonomy versus state control of the most basic personal space. What we've seen most recently, as I noted yesterday, is an emboldened progressive paternalism that, by dint of electoral victory in November, sees itself as politically empowered to transform society's rules and institutions in dramatic fashion, away from competition, markets, and transparency to conformity, command, and intolerance of individual initiative (see, for example, "Totalitarianism in Leftist Fairness Talk").

But again, leftists will not talk about what they really want and what they truly stand for. If they did, they'd be even more reviled and repudiated than they already are. To win power, today's left has to frame its agenda in terms of "change" rather than "collectivism." President Barack Obama, the first genuine chief executive of modern progressive-left ideology, was nutured and formally trained in communist-post-structural activism, ideology, and anaytical methods. It's no surprise that bonafide Stalinists organizers and registered communist parties endorsed his campaign for the presidency last year. But when called out on this, leftists cry foul. They denounce any identification with "socialism" or "radicalism" as McCarthyite fearmongering or BushChenyite domestic terrorism.

Yesterday, for example, Jillian at Sadly No! threw an ignorant hissy fit over Newsweek's recent cover story on "We Are All Socialists Now." After throwing out a number of encyclopedic definitions of "socialism," and bandying about the notion of the "means of productions, a favorite Marxist concept, Jillian gives us this whopper:

“Means of production” is a term that refers to the actual productive industries in a society that make things which people buy. McDonald’s is an example of one of these productive industries; they make hamburgers. Now, there has been some talk about the government nationalizing the banking industry. But, American journalism, what I want you to understand is that “banking” - according to socialists - is not a productive industry. Banks don’t produce things - they don’t produce physical things that you can buy like you can buy a McDonald’s hamburger. Now, it’s not that socialists don’t have a lot to say about the nature of finance as an industry, but we’re not going to go there now - there’s a lot of big, scary, hard to understand words involved in the concept, and we’re going to start small. Just trust me that even if our government does completely take over the financial sector of our economy, that’s still about as far from “socialism” as you can be.

Boy, it's a good thing McDonald's' market share is up during the economic crisis - their managers won't have to turn to the giants of "industrial finance capital" for funds to keep the wheels of hamburger "production" rolling. Will somebody please send Jillian copies of Das Kapital and Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism? Man, this women needs to bone up on doctrinal foundations!

Not so much with David Sirota, who is the author of The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington.

Sirota's up in arms this morning over Nate Silver's essay today, "The Two Progressivisms." Silver, who recall made a splash last year as the breakout polling expert of the presidential campaign, breaks down progressives into binary categories, as "rationalists" and "radicals," which is another way of contrasting "reformers" from "revolutionaries."

The essay is worth a look, not the least of which for Silver's nice table drawing contrasts between the two strains. What's interesting is how Sirota pounces on Silver faster than the Dobermans in They Only Kill Their Masters (and keep in mind that Silver's own identification as a genuine "rationalist" is belied by his own lapping at the pig's trough of progressivism this last year or so).

In any case, here's Sirota's smackdown, where in particular he takes exception to Silver's notion that today's progressives are "dangerous":

If American history teaches anything, it is that the "dangerous" epithet is the last and most banal refuge of those who seek to preserve the status quo. From Joe McCarthy slandering progressives as dangerous communists to George W. Bush saying anti-war activists were dangerous terrorist sympathizers, Estasblishmentarians have been painting their foes as threats to the nation for decades.

Aimed at me individually, the charge is clearly so silly it should undermine the credibility of anyone making it. I'm a journalist, an author and a blogger. The idea that I alone can "marshal an army," as Nate says I can, is laughable. I mean, yes, I'd like to think my work is making an impact - but me alone "marshaling an army?" If you think that, you're spending too much time with Michael Phelps and his bong.

The idea that my work, or the work of anyone more "radical" than Nate Silver, is "dangerous" - well, that's not laughable, nor is it insulting, really. It's a badge of honor, and I want to thank Nate for throwing out the epithet. I say that not because I think the progressive movement is "dangerous" to the United States, but because it is, in fact, dangerous to the status quo, and throughout history, when the status quo starts calling progressives dangerous, it means we're actually starting to make a serious impact.

I'll let readers enjoin the debate at the links.

It is interesting that Sirota first decries any talk of today's progressives being "radical," then rejoices in the notion that his movement is "dangerous," in the same way for example that Martin Luther King, Jr., was "dangerous." Things are much more complicated than this, I imagine, although it's true that Dr. King flirted with communist associations and ideology during his run as the nation's most important civil rights leader.

But labels are less important the definitions and doctrine. Simply put, today's progressives are radical in that they fall the farthest to the left of the ideological spectrum, where the farther we go left the more drastic and far-reaching is the change desired. It's not kosher for folks to use terms like "liberal" or "socialist" nowadays, and that's why Jillian and her similarly less-informed brethren endlessly evade such identifications, and it's also why David Sirota obscures any coherent definitions of his ideological foundations at all. These people will engulf moral goodness in a reign of deceit and decrepitude, and they'll enforce mediocrity through the elimination of competition and initiative. We're seeing the lies of the left already, less than one month into the Obama administration. Leftists are pushing to quash free speech and mobilize union power against "corporate expropriators."

Most common people will be fooled by the left's legerdemain of nomenclature ("hope" and "change"), but rest assured, both Jillian and David Sirota are in cahoots in the very "dangerous" radical destabilization that Nate Silver describes. Indeed, it's much more dangerous than even he realizes.

Darwinian Fundamentalism

Last Thursday was the 200 anniversay of the birth of Charles Darwin, the intellectual progenitor of the theory of natural selection. Just about every mainstream publication's run some essay or another on Darwin's impact, for example, the New York Times, "Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential."

What's interesting to me about this latest round of "Darwinmania" is the rekindling of the politics of evolution versus divine creation; and as a "scientist" (a political scientist actually, trained in positivist ontological methods), folks might have wondered where I come down on all of this?

Well, as a believer in the essential compatibility of faith and reason, I'm not one to get too worked up about the conflicts between the science of national selection and the theological origins of man. It's a complicated thing, especially in terms of historical timelines (the natural life of the earth is said to be in the billions of years; the Biblical creation just a few thousand), although we can at least make reference to Stephen Jay Gould's doctrine of nonoverlapping magisteria, in which he argues that evolution is "both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief ..."

In any case, debates over religion and society have been particularly intense following last year's general election and the passage in three states of initiatives making marriage available to one man and one woman exclusively. Radical critics attacked people of faith mercilessly, and the left's meme is that "Christianists" have increasingly become the core cell of a "Talibanized Republican Party" (if that makes any sense ...).

In any case, here's a snippet from Stephen Jay Gould's 1997 essay, "Darwinian Fundamentalism":

I am amused by an irony that has recently ensnared evolutionary theory. A movement of strict constructionism, a self-styled form of Darwinian fundamentalism, has risen to some prominence in a variety of fields, from the English biological heartland of John Maynard Smith to the uncompromising ideology (albeit in graceful prose) of his compatriot Richard Dawkins, to the equally narrow and more ponderous writing of the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (who entitled his latest book Darwin's Dangerous Idea). Moreover, a larger group of strict constructionists are now engaged in an almost mordantly self-conscious effort to "revolutionize" the study of human behavior along a Darwinian straight and narrow under the name of "evolutionary psychology" ....

The radicalism of natural selection lies in its power to dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought, particularly the notion that nature's benevolence, order, and good design, with humans at a sensible summit of power and excellence, proves the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent creator who loves us most of all (the old-style theological version), or at least that nature has meaningful directions, and that humans fit into a sensible and predictable pattern regulating the totality (the modern and more secular version).

To these beliefs Darwinian natural selection presents the most contrary position imaginable. Only one causal force produces evolutionary change in Darwin's world: the unconscious struggle among individual organisms to promote their own personal reproductive success—nothing else, and nothing higher (no force, for example, works explicitly for the good of species or the harmony of ecosystems). Richard Dawkins would narrow the focus of explanation even one step further—to genes struggling for reproductive success within passive bodies (organisms) under the control of genes—a hyper-Darwinian idea that I regard as a logically flawed and basically foolish caricature of Darwin's genuinely radical intent.

The very phenomena that traditional views cite as proof of benevolence and intentional order—the good design of organisms and the harmony of ecosystems—arise by Darwin's process of natural selection only as side consequences of a singular causal principle of apparently opposite meaning: organisms struggling for themselves alone. (Good design becomes one pathway to reproductive success, while the harmony of ecosystems records a competitive balance among victors.) Darwin's system should be viewed as morally liberating, not cosmically depressing. The answers to moral questions cannot be found in nature's factuality in any case, so why not take the "cold bath" of recognizing nature as nonmoral, and not constructed to match our hopes? After all, life existed on earth for 3.5 billion years before we arrived; why should life's causal ways match our prescriptions for human meaning or decency?

I'll have more later, dear readers ...

Totalitarianism in Leftist Fairness Talk

One thing I've been noticing more and more in monitoring debates on the Democratic-left is how for radicals fairness is the handmaiden of totalitarianism.

This morning's example is Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars (via Memeorandum), who's attempting to defend the left's resestablishment of the "Fairness Doctrine." Check out the contradictions of the following passages:

Here in Seattle - the town Bill O'Reilly derides as a "far left haven" - one would think that a properly functioning free market would create offerings on local AM radio reflecting the political climate: generally liberal to middle of the road, with a few dedicated conservatives hanging in there.

But that's not what we get.

We have three all-conservative talk stations in town. The largest news station has a popular talk show featuring a right-winger and a fake centrist. The other big news-talk station, KIRO, is supposed to be a pan-ideological station; it features a popular centrist Democrat but also one of the most obnoxious right-wingers - and no genuine liberals, having dumped David Goldstein awhile back. And then we have a little Air America station that's reasonably popular but only runs nationally syndicated material and does nothing locally.

I have friends in the Bay Area who tell me it's not any better there. (I'm sure readers from there can fill us in down in the comments.) And in Washington, D.C., the owners are shutting down their progressive talk station in a population that's decidedly Democratic.

It's happening all over, and it's a problem, because these are the public airwaves, not just the private commodities that are radio stations - which is why we have a Federal Communications Commission in the first place. We need to talk seriously about reforming radio so that the public's well-being is served on its airwaves.

Now, we've had a little fun making fun of the right-wing paranoids for getting all worked up about this issue well in advance of it actually surfacing. But now it is in fact surfacing: Sen. Debbie Stabenow earlier this week said she'd be interested in taking a look at reviving the Fairness Doctrine ....

What Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been telling their audiences is that any talk about the Fairness Doctrine is actually about trying to "silence" them. But of course, no one's interested in "silencing" anyone on the right: all we're talking about is creating a level playing field on the public airwaves so that a broad range of viewpoints can be heard instead of just one narrow bandwidth of ideology. This notion, naturally, is what they fear most, since their ideas don't compete well outside the vacuum they've created.

Neiwert goes on to indicate that he's opposed the Fairness Doctrine in the past, altough not on principle - which is noteworthy for the context here - but because it wouldn't work to overthrow the "structural defects" of the marketplace, which clearly include the fact that mainstream Americans don't buy what the left is selling over the airwaves. Indeed, looking over that passage above is just classic: All of these extremely left-wing cities can't keep on the air the brainless blather of socialist talking heads, obviously, "since their ideas don't compete well outside the vacuum they've created."

And I'm not being facetious. Seriously, you have to really take a look at what Neiwert's proposing:

The core problem is ownership: Radio station ownership in the past twenty years has been decidedly conservative. And anyone who's worked in media can tell you that ownership sets the tone and direction of what you do. After the Fairness Doctrine was removed, these wealthy right-wing owners effectively proved right one of the fears that drove the creation of the Fairness Doctrine in the first place: That the wealthy can and will dominate the political conversation on the public airwaves by simply buying up all the available space. Since the wealthy in this country are overwhelmingly conservative, the end result was not only predictable, it was in fact predicted ....

Rather than bring back the Fairness Doctrine, though, it might be better simply to reform the structure of how FCC licenses are distributed and make diversity of ownership a priority ...

We need to have robust, informed, and mature discussion about reforming radio and the use of the public airwaves. Unfortunately, because of the wingnuttery of the right, that's been all but impossible.

Perhaps we can start by framing this not as an attack on right-wing radio but on creating a level ideological playing field - not driving out the right, but ending the dominance of right-wing wealth.

One of the things that's actually rewarding about being in the minority is how the accession of Democrats to power has truly unleashed the statist-totalitarianism in the left's agenda that was disguised from view - or repudiated as "wingnuttery" smear - during the campaign.

The brutal truth is that the left cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas. The logical outcome of that competitive impotence is to simply remove the market mechanism itself. This is the essence of state-socialist ideological advocacy. An ideological truth - socialism - that is so frequently resisted by the slow-witted cattle of the leftosphere, is in fact being repackaged, ironically, as "robust, informed, and mature discussion" toward state violence and control of freedom of speech and commerce.

Every day I'm more and more flabbergasted by the tenor of debate in the country, which is really to say that it's sometimes shocking to see how the left simply refuses to debate and defend it principles and programs. Following the passage of the Obama-Democratic-left's stimulus porkulus maximus (without debate or public airing), hardline leftists are now urging a repeal of the filibuster, since it's "not right that the minority party" should be able to slow the socialist-hegemonic tide.

I know. It sounds unbelievable. But the top voices of the nihilist leftosphere have been agitating for the repeal of congressional protections against tyranny of the majority, for example, Steve Benen, Kevin Drum, Hilzoy, and Matthew Yglesias.

People keep asking, "what is happening to our country?" Well, this stuff is, and the majority of sheeple who facilitated this monstrosity of Democratic power have no one to blame but themselves.

(O)CT(O)PUS = CYBER-BULLY

Some time back, (O)CT(O)PUS, the anonymous proprietor of The Swash Zone, began leaving the most awful comments on my blog. These were plainly trolling and abusive drive-by taunts. I tolerated them for some time and then finally I sent him an e-mail as follows:

(O)CT(O)PUS:

My blog, my rules, hello?

You've said your piece on your own blog. Maybe you've gotten some of your derangement off your chest.

You're free to comment on my blog as long as it's germane to the post, of which your earlier comments we're not.

Follow the rules, or be banned...

Donald

A few months later, I left a couple of comments at The Swash Zone, at entries posted by Captain Fogg and Repsac3, as the blog is a group effort. I frankly didn't make the connection to (O)CT(O)PUS (who I later realized runs the place), and for that transgression I received this threatening warning in my e-mail inbox:

And these are my rules: DO NOT HARASS ANY OF MY WRITERS AT "THE SWASH ZONE" AGAIN. IF YOU HARASS ME OR ANY OF MY WRITERS ONE MORE TIME, I WILL NOTIFY ELOY OAKLEY AND DONALD BERZ AT YOUR PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT AND TAKE IMMEDIATE LEGAL ACTION AGAINST BOTH YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYER. THIS GAME OF YOURS ENDS HERE.

The ALL-CAPITALS format in BOLD TEXT are in the original.

I have to admit this caught me off-guard, and recall this stuff isn't new, as I've received hate-mail and death threats before.

But I want to draw readers attention to the stark differences here in the comparative responses: My original e-mail simply requested of (O)CT(O)PUS that he abide by a standard of decency and relevancy. He was free to comment at my blog without personal attacks on me or my readers. No threat was made or implied. (O)T(O)PUS in return, and in response to comments at posts he had not written, and that were not directed at him, threatened my livelihood, and my employers (oddly enough).

There's a real cheap cowardice at work here that's not only annoying, but downright creepy.

Considering this, it's even more bothersome to find a whole new post dedicated to this threat at American Nihilist, a blog set up by Repsac3 to ridicule and smear me for fun and a bit of revenge (the only relief available in the face of the intellectual incompetence inflicting these demons).

Entitled "DEFAMATION - DONALD STYLE," (O)CT(O)PUS is responding to my take down of Captain Fogg, who implicitly called for the execution of Rush Limbaugh in a post last month. (O)CT(O)PUS gets fairly vicious at the post, but it's the conclusion that's out of this world:

We know these behaviors all too well, and why some of you bother with this pinhead is beyond me. The Coward is not welcome at The Swash Zone; we delete his comments immediately. More disturbing are the comments and e-mails left by his followers: Profane, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic … worthy of report to the FBI. What to do?

If the Coward or any of his followers harass you online you, contact President Eloy Oakley at (562) 938-4122 or Executive VP of Academic Affairs Donald Berz at (562) 938-4127 and describe the harassment. For serious online abuse or defamation, there is always this option (case file in progress).

So notice here: Not only has (O)CT(O)PUS now escalated his campaign of harassment with a public call to threaten my employment, but he's accused me of online abuse and defamation without one shred of evidence.

It's been almost six months since I first e-mailed (O)CT(O)PUS and I haven't heard one word from my college administration or from a plaintiff's attorney. It's funny too, because Repsac3's blog is all about abuse and defamation, for example in the next post to follow (O)CT(O)PUS', where Truth101 impugns my reputation by smearing me as "Donald the Dog."

And remember, all of this is taking place at a blog called "American Nihilist," which (if you click the link) is a website specifically designed for a demonic campaign of personal attacks against American Power.

What's all very interesting here is that each and every one of my antagonists goes by an anonymous online handle. Now that's cowardly. And worthy of a little analytical consideration.

Readers may recall that I noted, in response to TBogg, that I'm reading David Denby's Snark. Denby's extremely liberal, so a lot of his stuff is suspect, but I have to admit he's got one of the best discussions of online anonymity I've seen so far:

People who start their own blogs almost always identify themselves, but many snarking writers exercise power anonymously, hiding behind a handle, attacking people who appear in public, who run blogs, or other commenters. The insults come out of nowhere, as if waiting for the occassion. But why hide? This love of anonymity is amazing to me. If you have something to say, why in the world would you want to hide yourself? ....

The answer, of course, is that anonymous writers are either ashamed of what they're saying, or, alternatively, quite proud of what they're saying, but, in either case, they're not eager to confront anyone directly ... Anonymity frees us to attack whites, blacks, Muslims, men, women, gays, birders, arachnophobes, philatelists - frees us in a way that would be impossible in the office, at a cocktail party, in a bar, or a schoolyard ...

Denby continues with the notion that anonymity is inherently childish, something that's available to essentially non-grown-ups. But there's a totalitarianism to anonymity as well, for as Denby notes, "a phone call to the secret police is a much more serious act than a snarking post, but that's the kind of negative vibe anonymity can give off - it's not something to be played with; it has danger lurking in its secrecy."

And that's a perfect way to summarize the cyber-bullying of (O)CT(O)PUS and his demonic allies at American Nihilist.

These people are manifestly ignorant pests of juvenile proportion. But they're totalitarian as well, in the classic standard of today's left where dissent against the Obamessianic line is not tolerated. But things have gotten to the point in which I can't ignore the abuse and attacks. While of course these idiots have no plausible case for a lawsuit, the opposite in my case is nearly true. "Donald the Dog" is pretty close to defamation, although these brilliant hacks don't have the faintest clue as to the inherent hypocrisy of their project.

If it's any consolation to me, it's simply the fact that what I do at American Power is working, and that's to expose the left's truly diabolical plotting for the death of moral right in this country, and when the left is reduced to pure babbling incoherence in failed attempts at intellectual parry, their only recourse is rank bullying.

As always, I'll stand my ground, even in court with legal representation if it comes to that.

You're Bamboozled, Sucker

Via the People's Cube, "'Thank You Sucker' Motivational Currency Replaces Dollar":

Obama won the election with a rhetoric that skillfully replaced the words "socialist revolution" with the word "change." Now he is skillfully replacing the word "recession" with "catastrophe." The next logical step is to keep the economy running by replacing "dollar" with "thank you."

But see also, Vinegar and Honey, "The Big Bamboozle":

I think that generations from now ... we will look back and tell our children that this was the moment when our country got sold out, when we lost hope of ever again being able to believe in what was good, and right, and honorable ... that this was the moment of the beginning of the end of our once great nation.

I can't add anything to that, so read the whole thing, here.

The Crisis of Liberaltarian Intellectualism

In yesterday's entry, "Liberaltarianism and Intellectual Dishonesty," I focused on the ideological incoherence, intellectual pedestrianism, and moral perfidy of the left-libertarians who are often labeled "liberaltarians" (with most of my attention directed at Mark Thompson's League of Ordinary Gentlemen).

Robert Stacy McCain kicked up a bit of a controversy with his critical comments on these folks, "The Luxury of 'Liberaltarianism'," and he's generated a new (and quite raw) response from Ron Chusid at Liberal Values: "Must You Be Out of Touch With Reality to Be An Economic Conservative?" These passages are particularly juicy:

The current left/right divide is now primarily over social issues, civil liberties, and one’s position on the Iraq war, with economic issues no longer providing a clear delineation between left and right. The left/right continuum has increasingly become based upon two parameters: support for liberty on the left in contrast to the authoritarianism of the right and support for science, reason, and a reality-based view of the world on the left versus the reactionary opposition to modernity, science, and reason from the right. This division can be seen in Robert Stacy McCain’s response to Wilkinson’s views on liberal/libertarian fusionism ...

Ron cites a passage from Robert's post that stresses the bedrock of Middle American "Rotarianism" and the religious traditionalism of the Republican base. He then continues:

In expressing this belief in creationism, McCain already demonstrates a limited ability to either think rationally or to coherently comment on the issues of a twenty-first century world. The degree to which he is out of touch with reality also comes from the manner in which his views of liberals comes from a Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotype as opposed to anything which exists in the real world.

The typical liberal is just as likely as most conservatives (and more likely than Rush Limbaugh) to be in a traditional marriage, go to work every day, and abstain from drug use. The difference between liberals and social conservatives is not as much life style as the toleration of other life styles. Many of us live a basically conservative life style but do not feel the drive seen among conservatives to use the power of the state to impose their life style and personal choices upon others ....

Obama’s victory was an example of the emergence of socially liberal and economically conservative or pragmatic voters as we had a significant impact in both the Democratic primaries and the general election. All of us affluent wine and latte drinking liberals who enjoy and understand the virtues of the free market are still around despite all the opposition from both the Clintonistas and Palinistas. Our views may or may not win in future elections, but we have become a force to counter both the views of the big-government elements of the left and the authoritarian right.

Genuine thanks should be tendered here to Ron Chusid, who has provided a fabulous window into the mind of those of contemporary left-libertarianism.

Robert Stacy McCain has already replied to Chusid's piece, in "Faux Argument," where he writes:

Chusid's "about" page envisions a point at which "Republicans break free of their control by the religious right and neoconservatives." I'll let the neocons defend themselves, but what harm exactly has the "religious right" done to deserve Chusid's contempt or hostility? Who does he have in mind by this term, "religious right"?

Well, as a bonafide (and increasingly despised) neocon, I'll take that as my entree into this stage of the debate (and be sure to check Robert's link). So, first notice all of Ron Chusid's demonic attacks on traditionalists as backwater yahoos, as "authoritarian" and "reactionary" people who oppose "modernism" and "science." These people are also unable to "think rationally" or "comment coherently" on the issues, and are thus unfit for life in the "twenty-first century world." Further, with full obligation to the nihilist fever swamps of the netroots left, people like this take all their talking points from "Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity promoted stereotypes."

Okay, this is all quite interesting. No, wait ... it's more, it's utterly fascinating actually, unbelievable in fact, since it's defies reason that for all of Chusid's hot and heavy upturned cosmopolitanism, he still claims left-libertarians are practically jonesing to be "in a traditional marriage."

But wait! Traditionalism is bad, right? Shouldn't Ron be repudiating that old fashion stuff, not embracing it. I mean really, if these backwoods yokels are so ignorant and reactionary, you'd think the enlightened types like Ron Chusid would be beating a path to abondon such "stereotypical" lifestyles faster than you can say Stonewall. It's all so mid-twentieth-century like.

But more than that, the truth is the left-libertarians aren't at all in favor of "greater liberty" and "free markets." I mean take a look around. Some of the same folks who're are now key proponents of the liberaltarian movement are some of the biggest apologists for state centralization of the economy (only the Obama administration hasn't yet "incorporated" enough "libertarian thinking") and they advocate the violent supression of the free speech rights of marriage traditionalists, as we've seen in California with the extremist left-wing backlash to the passage of Proposition 8. Indeed, basic religious freedom of expression itself is totally under fire by these very same "libertarians" (yo, look out Mormons), although someone's forgetting that religious liberty is the very first item selected for protection in the First Amendment, and is historically guarded as a key foundation of a free people. It's thus exceedingly strange for one who promotes "liberal values" to make such hackneyed attacks on conservatives as this. Aren't there enough Daily Kos clones online?

Further, Ron Chusid doesn't understand economics himself if he thinks the Obama administration's getting anywhere closer to freedom anytime soon. There's been all kinds of attacks on the new stimulus legislation and the process, from bloat to the absence of transparency. But as a killer of liberty, this one's got to take the cake. On the question of parental autonomy alone, as Michael Franc noted Thursday, the Obama-Democratic left evisicerate families by guaranteeing that children would be able to receive family planning benefits without parental knowledge whatsoever! It must be a violation of libertarian logic of historic proportions for someone like Ron Chusid to be railing away at country bumpkins while simultaneously claiming to be an advocate for family traditionalism amid the biggest expansion of state power in 75 years. God, there's got to be a bigger bogeyman than flag-waving creationists who want to have babies!

To be sure, what about this notion that libertarians are just like marriage traditionalists except they don't "impose their life style and personal choices upon others"? Is there any particular age, for example, in which libertarians have decreed it as being okay for kids to have sex and bear children? Of course, folks like me - us "evil neocons" - might sound a little "authoritarian" when rejecting juvenile liberaltarian licentiousness as social policy. You know, some people might actually be inclined to think that their "life style" is actually the superior one for the preservation of life and liberty, and the recreation of preferred standards of right.

I mean really, I'm just blown away here ...

When did left-libertarians abandon universal morals? Can Ron Chusid and his brethren even be taken seriously, when by implication the libertarian thesis holds that every human action, every decision made on the basis of personal liberty, is of equal benefit to the regeneration of moral society? It certainly seems that way, when we have examples (only the most recent) of people like Nadya Suleman - the now notorious "Octomom" - having aggressive fertility treatments at will, essentially on demand, with the demonstrated results likely to put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in public-benefit expenses. Is that something that's truly in the public good? Whoo hoo, liberaltarians! More choice, more freedom, more out-of-wedlock fertility "science" enabled babies!

The fact is, choice is the handmaiden of responsibility. Liberaltarians, or progressive conservativces, blah, blah, as far as I can see, are hardline leftists who are afraid to admit it, so they cloak themselves in a bunch of incoherent hogwash about superior knowledge of free markets while their electoral "choices" empower Democratic mandarins who are now advancing a proletarian-minded leftist-authoritarianism hell-bent on dismantling the institutions of liberty that have made and kept this nation great for over 200 years.

We're facing a complete bankruptcy of intellectual honesty and moral righteousness, and Ron Chusid's ilk are blazing the trail down the highway of good intentions. So, who really is so "unprepared" for a life of increasing complexity in modernity? Don't bet on the completely bereft liberaltarians, who in fact offer nothing more than the losing hand of demonic compromise to a secular messianism of libertine supremacy.