Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/31/737368/-More-proof-that-its-anti-choice,-not-pro-life

I don’t usually read the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and other liberal blogs; I’m just not masochistic.  My argumentative side goes crazy when I read stuff like that, and I just don’t have the time to respond to people who probably wouldn’t listen anyway.  The above article, however, deserves some sort of response.

Satchel Robinson, the writer of the above article, attempts to generalize about the pro-life movement from the specific act of the murderer of Dr. George Tiller, and this is where you basically don’t have to read any more of the article.  Robinson commits one of the most egregious acts of illogic so often perpetrated by political punditry, both left and right, which is to apply the actions of a single individual of small group of individuals to a larger group.

I am quick to point out that the right often does the same thing.  There have been plenty of left-wing terrorists (Bill Ayers, for example), yet it would be absurd to say that every liberal is violent and wants to blow up the Pentagon.

What’s interesting is that Robinson contradicts himself.  He essentially blames Bill O’Reilly for influencing the murderer (who, by the way, Robinson never mentions by name, as if the name doesn’t matter because, in Robinson’s view, he’s just a stand in for every pro-lifer) while criticizing Bill O’Reilly’s criticism of music, video games, and the internet as influences on youth violence.

The problem here is that you can’t have it both ways.  Either we’re blaming the “influences” or we’re not.  Robinson rightly points out the ridiculousness of O’Reilly’s freak-outs over youth culture, and then immediately turns around and does essentially the same thing.

What I dislike the most about Robinson’s article is that fact that at no time does he actually blame the person who is actually to blame.  A murder was committed.  The murderer is entirely to blame.  Robinson should quit trying to shift the blame wherever it is politically expedient.  But, of course, liberals have been trying to mitigate individual responsibility for years.

Amarillo Zoo

Originally uploaded by starflyer3000

I found this sign at the Amarillo Zoo. Its purpose is, of course, to let people know that there isn’t any handicap parking in this particular lot; the handicap spots are a little further down, closer to the entrance (as one would expect). Just the fact that this sign exists, however, made me laugh.

Quick point about a quote from Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) (from Time magazine, May 18, 2008, p. 24)

“We’re excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice – the list goes on. Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promise land.”

Problems with this quote:

1) Snowe commits one of the greatest offenses of the left: group everybody up instead of treating them as individuals. As a writer, I’m personally offended by her grouping of unlike things, but it is also an ideological problem. First, the young and minorities are two “groups” that have things in common that have little to do with beliefs and ideas. There are conservative young people, liberal young people, and moderate young people. There are conservative minorities, liberal minorities, and moderate minorities. Environmentalism and pro-choice are ideological positions, and they lead us to point two:

2) What is the point of having a political party if there isn’t a common ideology? People that believe and think as the majority of Democrats do should be Democrats. Perhaps Senator Snowe could explain why she’s a Republican? You see, a party cannot represent everyone; if it could, there would only be one political party. Certainly there will be disagreements in a party, but in general those disagreements are not over fundamental ideological principals; otherwise, the party should split, just as the Democratic-Republicans did in the early 1800s.

A large part of point number two is that different people have different priorities. For example, I am pro-life, but that is not my number one consideration in voting for a political candidate. The issue may make a difference in choosing between two candidates who are otherwise very similar, but I am not going to vote for a socialist who happens to be pro-life. If the abortion issue is your primary issue, then you have a clear choice: pro-lifers vote Republican, pro-choicers vote Democrat. Let’s say, however, that someone is more concerned with limiting government spending, lower taxes, greater economic freedom, and national security than they are abortion, but they happen to be, if pressed, pro-choice. This person should (and usually does) vote Republican also because their priorities.

None of this requires that the Republican party change its ideology; it simply needs to know how to get its message out there.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13579055&fsrc=nwl

So Arlen Specter has finally taken off his elephant suit.  It was probably about time; he could never be reliably counted on to actually stop a lot of President Obama and the Democrat’s measures to transform American society.  On many issues, there was often the possibility that he (and a couple other North Eastern Republicans) could go along with the Democrats.  It is no consolation that sometimes he’ll vote with his former party.

This is the second time that a member of the national legislature has switched parties soon after an election.  The last time, Senator Jefferies became an independent rather than totally joining the Democrats, but Jefferies defection had a more immediate impact, changing the way things were done in the Senate.  This time, at least, the defection doesn’t significantly weaken the Republicans.

The above article from the Economist misses a crucial point in its analysis of Specter’s defection.  In such a defection, and in Republican defeats in the North East (for example, there are no longer any Republicans from New England in the House), all the Economist can see is party.  Such an analysis misses out on the ideological aspects of the issue.  In the Republican defeats, all the Economist can see is the weakening of a party.  What it misses, however, is that the Republicans who lost in the North East were all of Specter’s ilk: what Rush Limbaugh and others often call “Democrat Lite.”  They are Republicans who try to win elections by being more like Democrats, rather than Republicans actually running as Republicans.  From a typical voter’s perspective, why would I vote for a Democrat-Lite Republican when I can vote for the real thing?

In the North East and other parts of the country where Democrats have been dominating, the Republican party needs to actually provide an alternative to the Democratic party line.  They need to explain to the American people why they should be elected over Democrats, what they’re going to do differently, and why their ideas will actually work.

The Economist suggests that it is the Republican party moving right that caused Specter’s separation from his state party and subsequent defection.  This, however, has the cause and effect backwards.  It is the Republican party elite’s insistance on moving the party to the left that has caused the loss of North Eastern states: many Conservatives would rather stay home than vote for a liberal Republican, and Democrats aren’t going to vote for a Republican at all.

It is because of this reality that Specter has to change parties: he will no longer be able to win as a Republican, since he was basically a Democrat anyways.

http://www.diddlysquat.tv/theplot.htm

I’m not sure what to think of this. I was listening to the Rush Limbaugh Show today, and Rush mentioned, as he often does, his opinion audit by the Sullivan Group, which showed him to be “almost always right 99% of the time.” I always love comments like this; it’s part of the reason that I like Rush so much. I have a natural sarcastic bent (runs in the family), so I love the use of sarcasm that is done so seemlessly that it throws people into confusion. It often provokes an emotional response that brings out the truth of people’s feelings.

However, there are times that even I cannot quite tell if someone is being sarcastic or not. I did a quick Google search on Rush’s opinion audit, just to see what would come up, and I found the above link to a site called Diddly Squat, purporting to expose Rush’s errors and his plot to “dumb down dittoheads.” The whole “plot” focuses on the Sullivan Group opinion audits, and, in fact, on the phrase “almost always.” The site points out quite right that “almost always” is a meaningless phrase, but then totally gets wrong why that’s important. “Almost always” is purposefully chosen precisely because it points out the sarcasm in what Rush is saying.

What’s funny for me about this is that Leftists and others who can’t stand Rush often strike their foot on the sarcasm. They hate it when he says things like “talent on loan from God” or “serving humanity just by showing up.”  It riles them up in a way that shows their lack of understanding.  Now, it has to be admitted that there are plenty of Conservatives who also lack an understanding of sarcasm and have similar reactions to Leftist commentators, so I’m not suggesting this is just a problem with the Left.  But it’s still funny.

My problem in looking at this site, however, is that I can’t decide if it’s actually serious or not.  I’ve been looking for evidence that the whole thing is just a joke, but the barbs launched at both Rush and President George W. Bush suggest that it’s actually serious.  This is hard for me to believe because I usually assume that people are smart, and the sarcasm, the poking fun at himself, is so obvious in Rush’s delivery that I just can’t see how people don’t get it.  However, sometimes they don’t and some of them are just unhinged enough to create a site like this.

So I leave it to you to get a laugh out of this site for whatever reason you want.  Personally, I’m laughing because I think the guy’s completely insane, and for some reason I think that’s funny.

Nancy Gibbs has an article in Times Magazine for May 4, 2009 (which I just got in the mail today) in which she discusses the idea of Texas seceding from the Union.  This reflection was brought on by Governor Rick Perry stating (I’m quoting from the article)  “he thought the U.S. was still a ‘great union,’ but ‘if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come of that?’”

In her hurry to engage in some standard East-Coast-style jabs at Texans’ pride in their state and moralizing about secession (where she finds it necessary to bring up President Lincoln), Ms. Gibbs misses the larger issue: the relationship between the federal government and the states.  Federalism is, in fact, much more important than Gov. Perry joshing a bit about secession (especially considering that reminiscing about Texas being its own country is basically a state past-time). Read the rest of this entry »

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/04/16/garofalo-tea-partiers-are-all-racists-who-hate-black-president

I became aware of the above story while listening to Mark Levin’s radio show today; I haven’t decided if I like his show (although Liberty and Tyranny is an excellent read), mainly because he yells a little too much for my tastes.  Anyway, he played a clip on his April 17th show from Keith Olberman’s show on MSNBC, in which Olberman was interviewing Janeane Garafalo about the Tax Day Tea Parties.

Exactly why Garafalo was on the show I’m not sure, and it should be evident from the clip and transcript linked to above that she had no idea what she was talking about.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve reposted the “What If?” demo that I had up at Puddleglum Music. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

The first post of my analysis of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, covering the first part of the Introductory chapter, is up at DeTocqueville.US.  The article looks at the development of democracy in Europe, especially France.  The second article, which I will have up this weekend, will finish out the introduction.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 book Democracy in America has been coming up a lot recently on conservative talk shows (such as Rush Limbaugh) and in books (such as Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny), especially as it relates to conservative principles, and I realized that while I am familiar with de Tocqueville in a general sense, I’ve never actually read the book. In order to study the book and share my findings, I started a new website, detocqueville.us.

The project will be a read-through of the book with commentary of both a historical and contemporary nature. I’d also like to get a discussion going about the book, especially about how de Tocqueville’s analysis of American government compares to today, so please leave comments and such at the site. I’ll put up a post here at rosenguild.com when I have the first substantive article up; I’m hoping to do about one chapter a week (or more if a chapter is shorter, or I end up with more time).