This video from The Onion shows you just how elite media over-hype works and how they get you to care about news that really isn’t news at all. You will see the techniques that are designed to generate an emotional response and suggest the editorial point of view into your mind with very little facts at all. This is perhaps the most important video The Onion has ever done.
Category Archives: Culture War
The Real Meaning of Christmas
Sky News: Western Europe Weak on Iranian Stoning
Schlafly: Americas Decline, Candidates Just Don’t Get It.
This is a solid piece by Phyllis Schlafly, the matriarch of the conservative movement, where she makes what is perhaps the most important point in the campaign. The American people feel the nation’s decline and most people can feel the change in the national consciousness. Having recently finished a new degree I can tell you that even most students feel it. Talk radio has talked about how Obama is presiding over the nations decline and President Obama is telling is that American exceptionalism is no better than Greek exceptionalism. We are not getting this message with moral clarity and boldness from our candidates, or at least that is how it seems in the elite media.
For those of us who have been paying close attention though, Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has been saying these things. He is the only candidate who calls out President Obama, and many in his staff, as the Saul Alinsky radicals they certainly are. The media does not like reporting it, but it is there and will be unavoidable if Newt is the nominee. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, while not a candidate, has been calling out Obama and his friends as Saul Alinsky neo-Marxist radicals since 2008. Mayor Giuliani is very falimiar with the violent radical left and their front groups such as SEIU and ACORN.
Despite the inordinate quantity of press coverage about next year’s presidential election and attention to TV debates, plus the consuming desire of the media to predict who will win in 2012, the polls show that no candidate in either party is reaching 50 percent public support.
Meanwhile, the NBC News/WallStreetJournal poll, conducted jointly by Democrats and Republicans, reports that 74 percent of Americans think our government is taking us in the wrong direction, and only 17 percent think we are on the right track. Other polls are similar, with Gallup reporting 85 percent dissatisfied with the way our country is headed, and only 13 percent satisfied.
The locals are restless, the grassroots are demanding change, and the Tea Partiers are expecting results, but Congress is stalemated and President Obama spends his time fundraising and campaigning for his own reelection. Why hasn’t any candidate been able to ride citizen dissatisfaction into majority support?
I recommend that every presidential candidate read three books to understand why they don’t get it. First, they should read the best book about Barack Obama, Radical-in-Chief
, which explains how he became a Socialist while attending Columbia University.
Nobody knew anything about what was called the “lost chapter” of Obama’s life until a real scholar, Stanley Kurtz, did the original research. The highlight was a 1985 Socialist Scholars Conference addressed by Frances Fox Piven, known for advocating the Cloward-Piven strategy of killing capitalism by loading more and more people on welfare.
The presidential candidates should then read two books that explain in depressing detail why grassroots Americans are convinced that our government is taking us in the wrong direction and over a cliff before our children and grandchildren will ever achieve the American dream. Those two new books are Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?
by Patrick J. Buchanan and After America: Get Ready for Armageddon
by Mark Steyn.
Those books will help the candidates understand, and maybe even develop some empathy for the Americans whose votes they seek and must have if they are to win.
Buchanan explains how the America most adults grew up in is fast disappearing. Americans resent the dictatorial, undemocratic way that elitists in the media, academia, the bureaucracy, and the courts have spit on the foundations of our culture.
Those elite opinion sources have carried on a war against our Judeo-Christian faith, traditional marriage, and our patriotic belief that America is exceptional and should be militarily superior. They have trashed and tried to abolish symbols we cherish such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, and a cross erected in a public place to honor our veterans.
Those same elitists, using the power of government, have destroyed the economic stability of the family by legalizing unilateral divorce, giving enormous taxpayer subsidies to single moms which discriminate against marriage, adopting so-called free-trade policies that shipped millions of good jobs overseas, importing millions of foreigners from Third World countries to take the remaining jobs away from Americans, and enforcing so-called affirmative action policies that discriminate against white men. They are replacing e pluribus unum with what Theodore Roosevelt warned against: unrestrained immigration that will make us “a ‘polyglot boarding house‘ for the world.”
Buchanan is eloquent in describing the coordinated attack on Christian America and its replacement with the new religion of diversity, using the language of political correctness. Equality, a French-Revolution word that does not appear in any of America’s founding documents, has been elevated to become our national goal instead of liberty.
Buchanan cherishes the hope that our political leaders will, in time, recognize that enough Americans still want to remain one nation under God and one people united by history, heritage and language. He gives specific suggestions for how we can avoid driving off the cliff into national suicide.
Mark Steyn’s book delivers the same message, but in his uniquely different and delightful style. As Ann Coulter said, “Only Mark Steyn can write about the decline of America and leave you laughing.”
Steyn is particularly critical of the failure of our educational system. In 1940, a majority of Americans were schooled only from grade one to grade eight, and they grew up to be the greatest generation.
Now the plan is to keep kids in school from pre-Kindergarten until their mid or late twenties, laden with debt and coached to accept dependence rather than liberty. And worse, it isn’t clear they have learned anything useful.
Steyn puts it to us bluntly: we can rediscover the animating principles of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the freedom to exploit our talents, or we can join the rest of the world in terminal decline. His message is, “if you want a happy ending, it’s up to you. Your call, America.”
Professor Gary Wolfram: ‘Occupy’ College Students Blind to Benefits of Capitalism
By Gary Wolfram William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College
Whenever I watch media coverage of another Occupy Wall Street event I am reminded of an exchange between Jewish protesters in the 1979 Monte Python movie Life of Brian. One of the protesters asks another what the Romans have brought to the area and the conversation goes like this:
Question: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Answer: Brought peace? Response: Oh, peace – shut up!
The point is that the Roman institutions brought a good deal to the area that was being overlooked by the protesters. The Wall Street protesters, in their hatred of capitalism, overlook things including the fact that over the last 100 years capitalism has reduced poverty more and increased life expectancy more than in the 100,000 years prior.
Every semester I ask my students: “What would you rather be? King of England in 1263 or you?” Turns out, students would rather be themselves. They enjoy using their iPhone, indoor plumbing, central heating, refrigerators and electric lighting. All of these things are available to the average person in America today and none of them were available to the aristocracy when the West operated under the feudal system.
How is it that for thousands of years mankind made very little progress in increasing the standard of living and yet today half of the goods and services you use in the next week did not exist when I was born? It wasn’t that there was some change in the DNA such that we got smarter. The Greeks knew how to make a steam engine 3,000 years ago and never made one. The difference is in how we organize our economic system. The advent of market capitalism in the mid 18th century made all of the difference.
We need not just rely on historical data. Look at cross-section evidence. I try another experiment with my students. I tell them they are about to be born and they can choose whatever country in the world they would like to be born in. The only caveat is they will be the poorest person in that country. Every student picks a country that is primarily organized in a market capitalist system. No one picks a centrally planned state. No one says, “I want to be the poorest person in North Korea, Cuba, or Zimbabwe,” countries which are at the bottom of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.
What does it mean to be poor in our capitalist society that the Occupy Wall Street crowd so hates? Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has several studies of those classified as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau. He found that 80 percent of poor persons in the United States in 2010 had air conditioning, nearly three quarters of them had a car or truck, nearly two-thirds had satellite or cable television, half had a personal computer and more than two-thirds had at least two rooms per person.
Contrast this with what it means to be poor in Mumbai, India, a country that is moving rapidly towards market capitalism but was burdened for decades with a socialist system. A recent story in The Economist described Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, where for many families half of the family members must sleep on their sides in order for the entire family to squeeze into its living space.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has shown a lack of understanding of how the market capitalist system works. They appear to think that the cell phones they use, food they eat, hotels they stay in, cars they drive, gasoline that powers the cars they drive and all the myriad goods and services they consume every day would be there under a different system, perhaps in more abundance.
But there is no evidence this could be or ever has been the case. The reason is that only market capitalism solves the two major problems that face any economy-how to provide an incentive to innovate and how to solve the problem of decentralized information. The reason there is so much innovation in a market system compared to socialism or other forms of central planning is that profit provides the incentive for innovators to take the risk needed to come up with new products.
My mother never once complained that we did not have access to the latest Soviet washing machine. We never desired a new Soviet car. The socialist system relies on what Adam Smith referred to as the benevolent butcher and while there will undoubtedly be benevolent butchers out there, clearly a system that provides monetary rewards for innovators is much more dynamic and successful. The profit that the Occupy Wall Street protesters decry is the reason the world has access to clean water and anti-viral drugs.
The other major problem that must be solved by any economic system is how to deal with the fact that information is so decentralized. There is no way for a central planner to know how many hot dogs 300 million Americans are going to want at every moment in time. A central planner cannot know the relative value of resources in the production of various goods and services. Market capitalism solves that problem through the price system. If there are too few hot dogs, the price of hot dogs will rise and more hot dogs will be produced. If too many hot dogs are produced, the price of hot dogs will fall and fewer will be produced.
Market capitalism is the key to the wealth of the masses. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in his 1920 book, Socialism, only market capitalism can make the poor wealthy. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek in his famous 1945 paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, showed that only the price system in capitalism can create the spontaneous order that ensures that goods will be allocated in a way that ensures consumers determine the use of resources. The Occupy Wall Street movement would make best use of its time and energy in protesting the encroachment of the centrally planned state that led to the disaster of the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, and dictatorial North Korea.
Wild Bill: Secret Service Talks About Obama
Wild Bill is a former U.S. Marshall and Sheriff. He is retired and now he writes and does video commentary. Listen to what he says about how the presidents treated the Secret Service.
As far as what Wild Bill says about Reagan, this is well known and has been written about in several books. As is what has been said about Hillary Clinton by former FBI Agent Gary Aldrich and some of the White House staff.
Rush Limbaugh: The true story of Thanksgiving
Rush at his very best telling the true historical account of the first Thanksgiving:
[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnaWhQe1Iac]
George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to:
“recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness”
Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3d day of October, A.D. 1789.
The Control Freaks Credo: If it will save just one life…..
Bill Whittle gives us this important and entertaining piece of wisdom.
Ann Barnhardt: Lindsey Graham You Jack-Ass!
Ann Barnhardt is a commodities trader and ran a successful business. She has a take no prisoners attitude to what sees as “dhimmitude”. We at Political Arena are not saying that you have to agree with her point of view, but she does make a highly spirited and substantive argument. And like it says at the top of the page, this is an arena and Ann Barnhardt, like her point of view or not, is a rhetorical gladiator if there ever was one. Hold on to your seat and secure your hat.
Ann Barnhardt: Lindsey Graham – If you want to pick a fight with me bring it on player….but the only way it ends is with you sobbing in the men’s room.
After this video she takes a heavily dog eared Koran and reads every quote telling people to beat their wives, engage in prostitution, kill Christians and Jews etc and burns the pages. You can see that video HERE.
Secularist explains why you should support Israel
The commenter is Pat Condell.
James Madison on the General Welfare Clause
Prophetic!
Federalist Papers:
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands;they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
Congressman Allen West: There is a Definitive American Culture
Video: Muslim Men Should Rape Jewish Women Says Egyptian Lawyer
What is interesting is that after the Egyptian lawyer says that Muslim men should not rape Jewish women, but rather should just sexually harass them, she goes on to justify the rape of Jewish women and say that if it happens they have no right to complain.
VIDEO: CSU students sign petition to ban Beck and Limbaugh from Radio and TV while proclaiming their support for free speech
Here are your California public school university students in action!
KMPH TV:
A video shot on Fresno State’s campus shows students signing a petition to ban conservatives like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh from radio and television.
One student can be heard saying he believes in free speech but then admits he has no idea what the First Amendment is.
Over and over students say they believe in free speech but think they can actually ban someone from saying something they don’t like.
If you thought that video was priceless, wait till you see this one…
American Left Acting as Apologists for Sharia Law
Update – American Thinker has a great post called Obama’s Revisionist History when it comes to our Middle-East policy. It corrects the record while providing a great history lesson.
Via Stephen Gele at American Thinker:
Daniel Mach, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights program, recently co-authored an article on the Huffington Post attacking legislative efforts to prohibit the application of foreign laws inconsistent with the rights granted by the U.S. and state constitutions or state public policy.
The article posits a series of disjointed, hypothetical misapplications of the legislative efforts to prevent sharia from encroaching into our legal system. Yet, the authors cite no actual examples of misapplications of laws already passed and in force, in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arizona. The authors fail to distinguish this American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation from other legislative efforts, such as the Oklahoma constitutional amendment, which do not explicitly reference the protection of constitutional rights and public policy in prohibiting application of sharia or foreign law.
Further, the authors contend that these laws, explicitly protecting established constitutional rights, are superfluous because the First Amendment already protects these rights, and then allege that these laws violate the religious freedom granted by the First Amendment. The authors thereby dangerously conflate the judiciary’s interpretation and enforcement of secular law with interpretation and enforcement of religious doctrine. The freedom of religion and establishment clauses of the First Amendment do not address the application of foreign law, including sharia, in American courts, and, as demonstrated below, have not been applied to prevent such application.
Additionally, American courts have repeatedly held that freedom of religion does not require the judiciary to void secular laws which may incidentally conflict with religious doctrine, and that the First Amendment prohibits the judiciary from interpreting or enforcing religious doctrine. For example, in the case of S.D. v. M.J.R., the New Jersey Superior Court of Appeal reversed a trial court judge who did not find sexual assault to have been proven when a husband admitted forcing his wife to engage in sex, because the husband lacked criminal intent as he was a Muslim, and sharia, as described by an imam, mandated that a wife submit to her husband’s sexual advances. The New Jersey appellate court cited several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that held that freedom of religion does not include violating criminal laws, including Reynolds v. United States and Cleveland v. United States regarding polygamy, and Employment Div., Dep’t of Human Res. of Oregon v. Smith regarding smoking peyote, even when religious doctrine permits or mandates the prohibited practice. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church and its progeny, have also consistently held that deciding disputes over religious doctrine violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Most egregiously, the title of the article, “Anti-Sharia Law: A Solution In Search Of A Problem,” suggests that the enforcement of sharia law in the United States is simply not a problem worth addressing. The authors completely ignore dozens of published state appellate decisions in which American courts addressed litigants who demanded the enforcement of sharia, and on many occasions succeeded.
A recent study entitled “Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases,” released by The Center for Security Policy, identifies 50 such appellate court cases from 23 states. Many of these cases involve blatant violations of constitutional rights, usually to the detriment of women and children, including the enforcement of foreign custody orders to wrest children from their mothers.
For example, a Maryland appellate court in Hosain v. Malik enforced a Pakistani custody order, issued under a sharia rule granting sole custody to the father when the child reaches age seven, handing a little girl brought to America by her mother over to the father. The Maryland court bowed to the Pakistani court order even though the mother did not appear for the Pakistani proceedings, because, although she may have been arrested for adultery if she returned to Pakistan for the hearing, and been subject to “public whipping or death by stoning,” the court found such punishments were “extremely unlikely.” The judges explicitly proclaimed that the best interest of the child should not be “determined based on Maryland law, i.e., American cultures and mores,” but rather “by applying relevant Pakistani customs, culture and mores.” The court, explaining that “in the Pakistani culture, the well being of the child … is thought to be facilitated by adherence to Islamic teachings,” intentionally applied Islamic, rather than American, cultural and legal precepts.
Video: The Bigotry of the Literati
Ludwig von Mises. He totally understand the leftist mentality. He said this in 1954 and yet Mises gives a flawless description of the leftist mindset and tactics.
Video: University of California Muslim Student Association Supports Genocide of Jews
Fact: The Klan Lynched Republicans Including 1,300 Whites
What public school history books often do not tell you is that the KKK was the militant wing of the Democratic Party.
Historian David Barton:
David Barton: Our Public School books have filtered out most of the good changes that American Christians carried out.
The Republican Party in many states such as Texas were founded by black Americans. The KKK was as partisan as it was racist.
Official list of Occupy Wall Street’s supporters, sponsors and sympathizers
At the time of publication the links provided are working and are varified.
Sections in brackets added by Political Arena.
Via PJ Media:
Official list of Occupy Wall Street’s supporters, sponsors and sympathizers
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Communist Party USA
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American Nazi Party
Media Matters, American Nazi Party, White Honor, Sunshine State News |
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Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
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Barack Obama
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The government of North Korea
Korean Central News Agency (North Korean state-controlled news outlet), The Marxist-Leninist, Wall Street Journal, Times of India |
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Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam
video statement (starting at 8:28), Black in America, Weasel Zippers, Philadelphia Weekly |
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Revolutionary Communist Party
Revolutionary Communist Party, Revolution newspaper, in-person appearance |
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David Duke [Former Klan leader and now anti-Semetic ‘celebrity’]
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Joe Biden
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Hugo Chavez
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Revolutionary Guards of Iran
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Black Panthers (original)
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Socialist Party USA
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US Border Guard [Supremicist Extremist Group Note: not affiliated with the Minuteman Project]
White Reference, www.usborderguard.com, Gateway Pundit, Just Another Day blog |
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Industrial Workers of the World
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CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations – Public Relations front group for the Muslim Brotherhood]
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Nancy Pelosi
Talking Points Memo, video statement, ABC News, The Weekly Standard |
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Communist Party of China
People’s Daily (Communist Party organ), Reuters, chinataiwan.org, The Telegraph |
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Hezbollah
almoqawama.org, almoqawama.org (2), almoqawama.org (3), wikipedia |
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9/11Truth.org [The “Bush took the towers down” conspiracy group]
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International Bolshevik Tendency
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Anonymous
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White Revolution
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International Socialist Organization
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PressTV (Iranian government outlet)
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Marxist Student Union
Marxist Student Union, Big Government, marxiststudentunion.blogspot.com |
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Freedom Road Socialist Organization
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ANSWER [Partially funded by communist groups and nations]
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Party for Socialism and Liberation
Liberation News (1), pslweb.org, The Daily Free Press, Liberation News (2) |
Imam: Convert to Islam, give us your money, or to be killed
42% think Karl Marx is in the founding documents
Via New American:
A recent survey conducted earlier this month by the Harris Interactive polling firm on behalf of the Bill of Rights Institute reveals some startling results. According to the survey, 42 percent of the over 2,000 respondents believe that Karl Marx’s maxim, “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need [or needs]” is part of one of our nation’s founding documents. Further, nearly 20 percent assigned it to the Bill of Rights. When the survey results are fragmented according to age, we find that 30 percent of young adults misidentified Marx’s statement as something written in either the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.
The particulars of the answers to the poll’s questions are equally disturbing. Over half of respondents named “education” as a right protected from government encroachment by the First Amendment. Furthermore, not even 20 percent could name the five rights actually guaranteed by that amendment (those rights, should any of our readers need a refresher are: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right peaceably to assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances).
Study: 82% of medical students agreed to perform intrusive exams on unconscious patients without consent
This shows about how well medical students, (at least in Australia and Britain where the study was done) are being taught ethics. If medical students cannot uphold even the most common sense ethical standards, imagine how bad journalism students are.
AUSTRALIAN medical students are carrying out intrusive procedures on unconscious and anesthetized patients without gaining the patient’s consent.
The unauthorised examinations include genital, rectal and breast exams, and raise serious questions about the ethics of up-and-coming doctors, Madison reports.
The research, soon to be published in international medical journal, Medical Education, describes – among others – a student with “no qualms” about performing an anal examination on a female patient because she didn’t think the woman’s consent was relevant.
Another case outlined in the research describes a man who was subjected to rectal examinations from a “queue” of medical students after he was anaesthetised for surgery.
“I was in theatre, the patient was under a spinal (anaesthetic) as well and there was a screen up and they just had a queue of medical students doing a rectal examination,” a student confessed.“[H]e wasn’t consented but because … you’re in that situation, you don’t have the confidence to say ‘no’ you just do it.”
The author of the study, Professor Charlotte Rees, voiced concerns about senior medical staff ordering students to perform unauthorised procedures, leaving the students torn between the strong ethics of consent in society and the weak ethics of medical staff.
Of students who were put in this position during the research, 82 per cent obeyed orders.
“We think that it is weakness in the ethical climate of the clinical workplace that ultimately serves to legitimise and reinforce unethical practices in the context of students learning intimate examinations,” writes Prof Rees.
The study consists of 200 students across three unnamed medical schools in Britain and Australia.
Prager University Video: The Middle East Problem
Prager University: Is Israel an Apartheid State?
Gov. Bobby Jindal: Brown University Administrators & Faculty Undermine Christian Faith & Western Civilization.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal also spoke the oil crisis and how the federal government had gotten in the way with some of the most foolish regulations one can imagine. Wasn’t the Department of Homeland Security reorganization supposed to fix this problem? Looks like it didn’t work.
At 7:00 the governor talks about how subversive public education has become.
Dick Morris: Public schools are an obvious failure. School choice is cheaper and better.
In just under four minutes Dick Morris described flawlessly why public schools are too expensive, failing and are starting to lose dominance because state governments just cannot afford them any more.
Why conservatives are happier and more generous than liberals
This is a great article by Dennis Prager who actually wrote a book on the subject of happiness. This article is also gives great insight as to the psychological differences between conservatives a liberals.
According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans.
Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.”
But common sense and data suggest other explanations.
For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing to sacrifice American treasure and American blood (often their own) for other nations’ liberty.
Both of these facts refute the liberals-are-more-concerned-about-others explanation for liberal unhappiness.
So, let’s look at other explanations.
Perhaps we are posing the question backwards when we ask why liberals are less happy than conservatives. The question implies that liberalism causes unhappiness. And while this is true, it may be equally correct to say that unhappy people are more likely to adopt leftist positions.
Take black Americans, for example. It makes perfect sense that a black American who is essentially happy is going to be less attracted to the Left. Anyone who has interacted with black conservatives rarely encounters an angry, unhappy person.
Why?
Because the liberal view on race is that America is a racist society. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a black American must abandon liberalism in order to be a happy individual. It is very hard, if not impossible, to be a happy person while believing that society is out to hurt you. So, the unhappy black person will gravitate to liberalism and liberalism will in turn make him more unhappy by reinforcing his view that he is a victim.
The unhappy gravitate toward the Left for a second reason. Life is hard for liberals and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert’s funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’”
Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky as to be born or naturalized an American.
Third, imagine two Americans living in essentially identical socioeconomic conditions. They earn $45,000 a year, they have the same amount of debt on their homes, and both have the same number of dependents. One seeks governmental assistance wherever possible; the other eschews any governmental help. Which one is likely to be the liberal and which one is likely to be the happier individual?
This is not a question only an oracle can answer. The one who yearns for governmental help is the one who is likely to be both liberal and less happy. Conservatism, which demands self-reliance, makes one happier. The more a man or woman feels like captain of his or her ship (as poor as that ship may be), the happier he or she will be.
A fourth explanation for greater unhappiness among liberals is that the more people allow feelings to govern them, the less happy they will be. And the further left one goes, the more importance one attaches to feelings.
It is liberal educators and liberal parents who have clamored for protecting young people from the pain of losing games. The liberal world came up with the idea of giving trophies to kids who lose; they don’t want their children feeling bad. Conservatives, on the other hand, teach their kids how to lose well. They are less worried about their children feeling bad.
A couple of years ago, I gave a speech on happiness to the students and faculty of a prestigious high school in the Los Angeles area. The subject was the need to act happy even when one isn’t feeling happy — because it is unfair to others to inflict our bad moods on them and because we will never be happy if we allow our feelings to dictate our happiness.
From what I experienced that day and learned later, liberal students and faculty generally loathed my speech; conservative students generally loved it (there were no conservative faculty to speak of). Why? Because conservatives are far more likely to be comfortable with the idea that feelings are not as important as behavior.
Those who know that feelings must not govern us, but that we must govern our feelings, are far more likely to be happy people.
The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the Left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don’t complain, who can handle losing, and who are guided by values, not feelings. In other words, teach them how to be happy adults.
Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law
The readers of this web site are not surprised by this at all. This is trajic, especially for the women of Libya and Tunisia and as well know the women of Egypt are already suffering forced virginity checks etc.
On the domestic front, this will not inspire women to vote for Obama.
BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Libya’s transitional leader says Islamic Sharia law will be the “basic source” of all law.
The leader of an Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote was heckled outside a polling station by people shouting “terrorist” — highlighting tensions between Islamists and secularists that are also being felt in other countries touched by the Arab Spring.
Libya’s liberation: interim ruler unveils more radical than expected plans for Islamic law …
Must See Video – Newt Gingrich: Orwellian Government from 1979-2010
The good stuff starts near the end of video one when he starts talking about Poland at 7:35
From CPAC 2010.
Political Arena 