More wisdom from LGF

Charles is great for digging up good quotes. This is one that I find applies particularly well to the left:

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.

— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

A great deal of leftist sophistry is founded upon faulty, yet unexamined, assumptions. If a leftist can trick someone into buying into certain assumptions, then the erroneous conclusions that follow from those assumptions are a simple matter of logic. This is part of what makes their nonsense so pernicious. The vast majority of people are simply not perceptive enough to see through to those assumptions and realize that they are bunk. Some will intuitively sense that they are being had, but there are many who will not, especially if they are surrounded by it every day. It is unfortunate that too few people really try to understand things.

Obama's candidacy explained

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
-- Lin Yutang

DOJ Prosecuting Those Who Enunciate the Law

http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=2074

At what point is the political process in America so compromised that it ceases to have any validity? When the power of the government is no longer derived from the consent of the governed, the result is tyranny. Why should I, or anyone else, submit to the will of a state that has no legitimate authority?

Back in 2000 when the lefties were going into hysterics over the non-existent fraud they claimed gave Bush in the white house, I thought they were simply engaging in theatrics as usual. But as time has gone by I've come to realize that what I thought was calculated manipulation was in fact what psychologists call projection.

What the left sees when it looks to the center is a reflection. When they scream about racism it is because they are racist. When they scream about oppression it is because they are oppressors. When they scream about voting fraud, it is because they wrote the book on it.

They learned long ago that the American people would never knowingly vote them into power. Therefore they engage in various deceptions in order to trick voters. The first of these is to obscure their agenda, or to describe it in the most oblique terms. Obama is a poster-child for this tactic. This deception is able to fool some of the people all of the time. But by itself it is not sufficient to give them a ruling majority, no matter how hard they spin or how complicit the media is in their deception.

Because they cannot sell the American people on their ideology and the policies that derive from it, they have sought to, as Bertrand Russell put it, "elect a new people." Illegal aliens, dead people,, fraudulent registrations, multiple registrations in different districts, all serve to undermine the will of the American people and replace it with the will of leftist operatives and the alien invaders who are drinking from their trough. At one point the left might have been subtle in going about this, but in recent years they have become far more blatant. I don't know whether this smacks of confidence or desperation.

What I do know is that if they are allowed to get away with this, the US will cease to exist. The left will have succeeded in doing what no foreign power has ever come close to accomplishing: the destruction of our republic. These people are traitors and enemies of the worst kind, and should be treated accordingly.

Any state agency that seeks to persecute a citizen for informing the public of the law as it is written is an instrument of evil and tyranny. There really isn't any other way to put it.

Choose the form of the destroyer

http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=4382

GOZER: CHOOSE THE FORM OF THE DESTROYER

HOWARD DEAN: Okay people, what ever you do, don’t think of anything! Keep your mind completely blank!

GOZER: THE CHOICE HAS BEEN MADE!

NANCY PELOSI: Uh-oh.

DEAN: WHAT DID YOU DO, NANCY??

PELOSI: I tried to think of the most harmless thing possible. The kind of person I learned to make fun of after my rich husband married me for my giant tits.

DEAN: NANCY!! WHAT DID YOU DO??

PELOSI: A broad from some nowhere place like Alaska… with five kids, one of them retarded. A working-class husband. Old-fashioned glasses!

DEAN: NANCY!!

A giant cone of flame engulfs the tip of the Trans-America building. A mighty roar shakes the buildings

PELOSI: It’s Sarah Palin.

DEAN: Oh God.

BARACK OBAMA: SARAH PALIN?!?

PELOSI: I’m sorry, Barry….

OBAMA: FUCKING SARAH PALIN?? YOU STUPID BITCH. Do you realize racecard 1.0 is COMPLETELY USELESS AGAINST UNENTITLED WOMEN YOU GODDAMNED IDIOT?

PELOSI: Jesus, I….

OBAMA: THIS FUCKING UNLICENSED DYSTOPIA ACCELERATOR ON MY BACK DOESN’T DO JACK SHIT AGAINST CONSERVATIVE WOMEN YOU DUMB WHORE! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO AGAINST HER, COMPARE OUR FUCKING RESUMES??? TALK ABOUT HER PRIVILEGED UPBRINGING?? I’M A FUCKING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POSTER CHILD OVER HERE AND THIS WOMAN OWNED THE OLD BOYS NETWORK OF HER STATE WITH A DEGREE FROM A NOWHERE UNIVERSITY AND FOUR GODDAMNED KIDS! I’M GOING TO HAVE MY ASSHOLE OPENED UP WIDER THAN THE HOLLAND TUNNEL!

BIDEN: Settle down, Barry..

OBAMA: FUCK YOU TOO, you goddamned clownshoe! So now what? I oughta…

Entire entourage engulfed in flames

Racism and misandry still a problem for vaginated Americans

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/08/huge-20-point-shift-towards-mccain-among-white-women-since-last-month-in-new-abc-poll/

Pink skinned females have abandoned The One just when he needed them most. How dare they choose a vaginated American over this man of color whose racial constitution affords him absolute moral authority and the vision to lead America forward.

</sarcasm>

Power corrupts, especially those who are corrupt to begin with.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2696031/Anti-terrorism-laws-used-to-spy-on-noisy-children.html

This is what happens when the power and reach of the state is not held firmly in check.

In America, the left blames Bush for giving law enforcement and intelligence agencies powers that have the potential to be used as tools of tyranny. Such powers are dangerous. They should not be conferred without strong cause and never on a permanent basis. To be sure, there have been...problems... here in the states with the FBI and other agencies using their new powers in ways that are questionable in some cases. But so far at least these powers have been mostly used for the purpose they were intended.

Meanwhile across the pond in a country where the left is so entrenched that its citizens are unaware of any other philosophy (I'm being generous today), the government is blatantly abusing powers that it has granted itself in the name of fighting terrorism.

In America the left screams about abuses that aren't happening while the leftist government in the UK actively and grossly engages in precisely those sorts of abuses.

I suspect that the biggest issue that the lefties have when it comes to the patriot act is that they're not the ones in control of the state yet. Were they in power you can be quite certain that they would not only be fully in favor of it, but they would expand it greatly.

The difference between a leftist and a liberal

Calling a nihilistic leftist a "liberal" is the kind of thing that would have Jefferson spinning in his grave.

These are not people who believe in liberty. They are not advocates for freedom. They do not believe in individual rights. They do believe that the world can be made a better place by placing it firmly under the heel of their boot. They feel that restricting freedom and denying liberty are the keys to making the world a better place. As sick and evil as that is, it is what they truly believe. They are would-be tyrants and should rightly be identified as such.

When you call a leftist a liberal, you're allowing them to define the language that is used to identify them. This hands them the advantage, if not a victory.

The left loves to play word games. They are masters of manipulating language to obscure their own intentions and malign the intentions of their ideological foes.

If you allow them to choose the language in which the debate will be framed, you are going to lose. Don't fall for that trap.

There are many choice words that I could use to describe these people. I could call them crypto-marxist gramscian whores, but that would only serve to confuse people. Instead I generally stick with just calling them leftists. I choose this term because it does not cast them in a positive light, yet its meaning is still understood by the vast majority of people.

As a libertarian (small L), these people are my existential enemies. They are the enemies of anyone who believes that freedom is both a moral good and a practical necessity for a free and just society.

A message from John Adams

There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

A candidate I can believe in

What does it say about our nation when a high school dropout who is best known for her performance in an amateur porn video is more appealing than either of the major party candidates?

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

My thoughts on the UBS "scandal"

News articles repeatedly talk about ASSETS being hidden from the IRS, when it is INCOME that is taxed. As much as the extortionists in the IRS would love to, they can't go shake down someone for money just because they know the person has it.

As long as these people were paying the required taxes on any interest they earned, it is none of the government's business how much money they have or where they're keeping it. A free society requires that the power of the state be limited. The government should always have one hand tied behind its back, in some cases two. Hiding money from the state should not be a crime because ALL money held privately should be hidden from the state by default.

Now obviously the implications of this money being hidden is that taxes were not being paid on the interest earned. All I can say is that these people should have paid their taxes. This is what the news articles should be pointing out instead of implying that simply having money stashed somewhere is somehow a crime.

Call me jaded and cynical, but I'm having a very hard time looking at the antics of Levin as anything other than political grandstanding. When Democrats start whining about people paying taxes, I always think of the legal gymnastics that the Kennedy clan repeatedly pull whenever one of their lot kicks the bucket.

Religious expression as Obscenity

Student Sues school over censorship of religious drawing

The freedom to express one's religious beliefs is being progressively denied in America. Those behind this effort to deny you freedom of religion use many different strategies. One of the more common approaches is to cast religious expression as a form of obscenity.

Before I go any further, I think it appropriate to address the question of what exactly obscenity is, because this is a term that is easily abused by dishonest people who seek to play word games when confronted with the truth.

A simple search online for definitions to this word came up with the following pertinent meanings: "Something that is offensive or repulsive to the senses", " Indecency, lewdness, or offensiveness in behavior, expression, or appearance."

The story told in the article above is a textbook case of religious expression being cast as something offensive or repulsive, in other words as something obscene, and therefore warranting censorship.

The assistant principal tells this student that his religious expression is a violation of other student's rights.

(This post is unfinished...more will be added later).

Maoist speech police hard at work at N.D. Univeristy

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/28/nd-university-investigates-raunchy-skit-where-white-student-played-obama-in-blackface/

Upon reading this article I found the response from the university officials far more "offensive" than the skit they were seeking to condemn.

“We’re still going to be proactive in student government, as far as diversity education and training,” he said. “If there are pockets out there that we don’t know about, we want to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Racism is bad, but using racism as an excuse to empower tyrants in waiting to be speech police is infinitely worse.

Freedom of speech is the right to tell other people what they do not want to hear. The alternative is a world in which only popular ideas are allowed to be expressed, and that my friends is a world where the tyranny of the majority ensures a stagnant society.

The only response that this skit warrants from the university is no response at all.

"Now there is a valuable lesson — it just belongs to a different political system." -- Jonathan Turley

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080305/D8V7BKM00.html

What do Iran, Cuba, and the US public school systems have in common? All three persecute online dissidents.

Students are not the property of the schools they attend. They are not inmates in an asylum nor convicts in a prison. The school employees had no cause nor right to punish this student; she did nothing wrong.

This case has absolutely nothing to do with impolite language, and everything to do with a student's willingness to criticize the state employees in charge of her school. If only we had more like her.

School administrators should not be held immune to the criticisms of the students under their care. Educators have a job to do, and that is education. Their students are their customers. Educators are not prison guards, the principal is not a prison warden. The students in their charge are guilty of no crime sufficient to hold them in contempt nor deny them their natural rights. Prison convicts are deserving of punishment when they dispute the policies set down by the warden. The same is not true of students in a public school.

Sadly I don't think that this case is going to result in anything but an increase in the powers of school employees to attack and persecute students whose speech they disagree with. Luckily the students are not without recourse. It has long been said that on the internet no one knows you're a dog. The same thing is true of students, some of whom will simply begin writing online under pseudonyms...just like they do in Iran and Cuba.

A wonderful definition

Delusion: (from psyweb.com)

Delusions are false beliefs that are deeply entrenched and clearly not based in reality. They are not consistent with cultural tenets or with the person's level of intelligence and life experience. Persons cling to these beliefs even after they are shown to be false.

When reading this definition, I can't help but be reminded of certain people. I'm sure you're experiencing a similar sort of Deja Vu as well. All of us know, or know of, people who cling to demonstrably false ideas, even in the face of conclusive proof that they are wrong.

There is no use trying to reason with such a person. They are blind, or at best indifferent, to the truth.

It isn't always easy, or even possible to determine what is true, but determining that something is false is usually not nearly as hard.

Someone finally said it....

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2243805,00.html

Mark your calendars folks as today marks a new low point in the ongoing destruction of our civilization, from within of course. Why do I say this? The quote below, from the article linked to above, says it all:

"'It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn't mean the right to offend,' said Maxime Verhagen, the Foreign Minister..."

'Freedom of expression' does not only mean the right to offend, it means this more than any other possible interpretation of the phrase.

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." (If you can tell me who I'm quoting, I'll give you a cookie.)

To forbid speech that others take offense to is to forbid speech period. There is no objective measurement of how "offensive" something is, or objective criteria for what constitutes an "offensive" statement.

I could choose, with a perfectly straight face, to pretend to be 'offended' by just about anything anyone anywhere might choose to say at any time. Because what is 'offensive' to me is completely subjective, those targeted by me for causing offense would be unable to defend against the charge.

This scenario is in fact precisely what those who demand freedom from being offended intend to create. They want a world in which ideas and facts with which they disagree can be made illegal to express, and they've made a great deal of progress in that direction.

Genuinely valid restrictions upon freedom of expression are few in number and adhere to a stringent objective standard. Inciting someone to commit a crime ("Go kill that bastard!") is not protected. Neither is speech that would cause a reasonable person to endanger themselves or others, such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater when no fire was present.

Restricting speech because it hurts someone's feelings is not only foolish, it is wrong. The truth is more important than how anyone feels, and without near-absolute freedom of expression, the truth can and will be obscured by the powerful and the zealous. This is nothing more than tyranny through manners, a new spin on a very old game.

To create a world where people can demand freedom from the things they don't want to hear is to create a world where everyone will be free...from the light of truth.

A reverse nickname?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uthdea6X2PE

Is the "Democratic" in "Democratic Party" a reverse nickname? Is it like the "Democratic" in DPRK?

Lawsuits to prevent people (mostly "minorities") from holding a caucus after they endorse the "wrong" candidate? Say it ain't so Joe!

I do understand where they are coming from though. Their goals for this country are too important! Why should they let something as trivial as the democratic process stand in their way? If you can't win the game, to hell with the rules. This will teach those uppity minorities working in the casinos to remember their place. Just who do they think they are anyway? Voting is a privilege for those "people," not a right. If they can't vote for the right candidate, then they just won't get to vote at all! [/sarcasm]

Then of course there is the lawsuit filed by Denny K in New Hampshire claiming that the Clintons rigged the Diebold voting machines (with the help of Dick Cheney maybe?)

The more I look at things, the more the histrionics in the 2000 election over supposed voter fraud look like Freudian projection to me.

Does experiencing this much schadenfreude make me a bad person?