Who are we....?

.... I must confess that I do not know.

In ways large and small, subtle and outrageous, the cracks are widening and threatened to destroy us as a nation.

A personal note... Last year on an informal e-mail group comprised of folks I went to high school with, one of the classmates forwarded a typical patriotic "forward" calling on readers, in so many words, to "pray for our troops."

I regarded it as a sweet and heartfelt sentiment from someone I'd known since I was 15 years of age, and then deleted it.

Within 12 hours another classmate wrote back and attacked--there's really no other word for it--the sender, saying "not everyone believes (religiously) as you do" and blah, blah, the usual liberal venting of the spleen, essentially saying it should not have been sent to the group.

We were used to left-wing political views of "Miss Priss" and therefore not surprised, but as a group we were angered at the baseless ad hominem attack.

For Miss Priss and most of the liberal-to-hard left, politics has supplanted religion. You're not wrong in their eyes, you're a heretic.

Despite her college education she actually believes that Valerie Plame was a covert "agent" ala James Bond; that she was intentionally outed by George Bush... but cannot answer the simple question, "why"?

And for good measure, she probably believes that Scooter Libby was convicted for illegally revealing Plame's identity.

She also fervently believes that the nation was founded on "the separation of church and state".

I'd rather hit myself in the head with a ball-peen hammer than talk politics with her.

And therein lies the crossroad we face... if we cannot discuss "facts"... absolutely, incontrovertible facts, then where do we go from here?

So, I never argue with a lefty, just as I don't argue with someone's religious beliefs... there's no point to it. 

Tin Foil Hats

This unwillingness of the left to accept truth on its face, allows the radical fringe to operate with more and more "legitimacy", if you will. How else do you explain Michael Moore sitting next to President Carter at the 2004 democrat convention?

How can elected officials, even presidential candidates, call an American four-star general a "liar" even before they have heard what he has to report?

Exhibit #1): "Bush lied about WMD."

Anyone who can correctly define "lie" cannot believe Bush did so, but this bumper sticker mentality is the left's entire assessment of the war in Iraq. Since Bush "lied" to get us there... everything since is indefensible.

Exhibit #2): "Almost half of all African-Americans believe that HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is man-made, more than a quarter believe it was produced in a government laboratory and one in eight think it was created and spread by the CIA." ---Study by the Rand Corporation and the University of Oregon.

Exhibit #3): Eugene Robinson on NBC's "Meet the Press-- "I was stunned in New Orleans at how many black New Orleanians would tell me with real conviction that somehow the levee breaks had been engineered in order to save the French Quarter and the Garden District at the expense of the Lower Ninth Ward, which is almost all black,"

... and even the word "truth" has been hijacked:

Exhibit #4): The 9/11 attacks, "9/11 Truthers" say, were planned by high-ranking U.S. government officials. Their goal: to arouse fear and the kind of nationalist sentiment necessary to justify a preemptive war and ensure continued high levels of military spending.

More than a third of the American public agrees, according to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

The left believes that it is using radicals like George Soros, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Daily Kos, ad nauseam to attack Bush and conservatives; not so, it's the radicals who are manipulating the democrat left for their anti-American purpose.

The sole purpose in this is to split the nation right down the middle; I believe the radicals have, with the help of the "useful idiots" in the national news media, succeeded.

Is the "news" actually the truth?

Scores... hundreds of times in just the last several years the mainstream news media has been proven to have spun the news to the left, ignored positive news about Iraq and in many cases has simply fabricated stories, news sources and even photographs in order to damage this administration, undermine the war effort and literally place our troops in greater harm.

This simple fact -- the intentional manipulation of "facts"--is the greatest threat to our society for it creates from whole cloth the wedges by which the whole is split.

This split then allows for the following....

"sanctuary" cities, the complete undermining of our willingness to protect our Southern and northern borders, Supreme Court justices who believe that we should consider "foreign court decisions" in our own, a public school system that favors "diversity" and political correctness over facts, U.S. history and a respect for America.

The chips on the table

To my mind, this is how far we have fallen:

Today the retired battleship, the USS Iowa, is anchored near the city of Stockton California because "the San Francisco City Supervisors voted 8-3 to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things."

"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said.

One of our great American cities.. from where so many of our troops embarked in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.. has become an embarrassment to the rest of the nation.

I have more in common with the average wanker in a small town in Australia than I do with the typical resident of the City by the Bay... or Berkeley, or Boulder, or Madison, or Minneapolis... and so on.

It's as if they are not connected to America, to its history... and as a result, dine on the free lunch which most sane people know comes with a price that must ultimately be paid.

Warning

It will take us losing an entire city in a catastrophic terror attack to bring us together... but once that happens, a great case can and will be made for the suspension of significant personal freedoms as the pendulum swings to the right after 40 years of arcing left.

Ironically, those who whine about personal rights being attacked now, are actually creating the climate which will make their fears, and even worse, come true.

Comments

[DontAskMe]

I think one of the keys to understanding American Liberalism and it's mentally challenged step-child, Global Warming is that they are not simply "like" religions, they ARE religions (or at least "cults"). That is why you cannot argue with a true believers. You either agree or you are some sort of heathen. They are not the kind of people to be concerned with facts, history or science.

[Ken Larson]

I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. I believed another Vietnam could be avoided with defined missions and the best armaments in the world.

It made no difference.

We have bought into the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). If you would like to read how this happens please see:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703

Through a combination of public apathy and threats by the MIC we have let the SYSTEM get too large. It is now a SYSTEMIC problem and the SYSTEM is out of control. Government and industry are merging and that is very dangerous.

There is no conspiracy. The SYSTEM has gotten so big that those who make it up and run it day to day in industry and government simply are perpetuating their existance.

The politicians rely on them for details and recommendations because they cannot possibly grasp the nuances of the environment and the BIG SYSTEM.

So, the system has to go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous.

This situation will right itself through trauma. I see a government ENRON on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning.

The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. The event to watch is the collapse of the MIC.

For more details see:

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html