Truth And History Are Relative Things To Progressives, Especially The Progressive-In-Chief

History, facts, our perceptions and feelings, the founding, the constitution, and even our future's most important legacy ... our kids ... are all things to be manipulated in different ways at different times for whatever purpose du jour. I'm speaking of course about progressives in general but most important, about the progressive-in-chief President Obama. Victor Davis Hansen's article today, "Obama in Never-Never Land" is by far the most straight-forward, common sense description I've seen yet about what President Obama has been up to the past four years.

All things are relative to these people. Truth becomes whatever they can manipulate us into believing makes them look good. Appearance is everything. Success is relative. Content and character are irrelevant. MLK would be horrified! Promises aren't really commitments. Promises are delivered with such passion that it sounds like a genuine promise, a genuine commitment. Performance to goals? You've got to be kidding! Objective measurement? Are you insane? Use common sense? Do not let Americans start thinking for themselves!

How can we measure progress and performance if the goals and promises against which progress and success can actually be measured are malleable things after the fact? To progressives that's not a problem. In fact, that's the whole point! Their only problem comes when we don't buy what they're selling. In that case, they have a tried and true solution: sell it loud enough. often enough and long enough. Eventually the skeptics/unbelievers will believe it. At lest enough of them to control the debate. Perhaps enough of them to accomplish majority control over everything educational and political.

But why should this development surprise us? For generations progressives have been working diligently to replace historical teaching methods, subjects and course content with progressive feel-good versions, first in post-secondary education then, trickle-down fashion, in K-12 education. To my everlasting horror, I now find that they've been succeeding far beyond what I thought possible.

But why is that surprising, considering that progressives have been inflicting this on and inculcating this in K-12 students very aggressively for about 60 years? In teachers-to-be for twice that long beginning with John Dewey; beginning in, surprise (not!), the University of Chicago. For the eye-popping, somewhat horrifying truth about what really happened to our education system I highly recommend John A. Stormer's "None Dare Call It Education". The consequences he describes about what a hundred years of trusting our kids to progressive education professionals has done to that most precious national resource is horrifying to me. To the same extent those children have been our precious resource, while we were napping at the switch our kids became progressives' most important targets and means of brainwashing generations of Americans to advance their agenda. Progressives have been both patient and persistent. In their hands our kids have been their completely political tool for many generations.

We must not let this continue. For the sake of our country's future, parents and communities must regain authority and control over our kids' education and life outside school. We must not submit to the government as 'parent'.

ObamaCare: Taxation Without Representation!

It is most likely true that ObamaCare would not have passed if it had been presented to congress and the American people as a tax. Now that it has been declared a tax in fact that means the people's interest AND WILL were NOT represented when the bill passed. Its passage is (albeit, retroactively) factually and fundamentally taxation without representation. We fought a revolution over this.

By the way, Obama's lawyers were deeply involved in getting it represented to the people as not a tax and to the Supreme Court as a tax. So, which time did the Executive Branch (with Obama's obvious support) lie(!) to the American people? Or would you have us believe that they didn't know whether it was a tax in which case I'd ask you whether it's okay for any branch of government to flip-flop on something as basic as a tax? 

How come "the smartest people (man) on the planet" flip-flop on something so basic and so fundamental to the reason why we separated from Britain? They don't know when something's a tax or not? Are you kidding me? They either lied to The People (to get it passed) or to The Supreme Court (to keep it from being repealed). Is either okay? It is NOT, to anyone who'd call himself/herself a patriot!

Manipulating, Flip-Flopping, Deceiving, & Lying. Do You Care That Describes Your President?

Three problems are undermining the fabric of America. We have such short memories, integrity matters too little any more and so does the spirit of our constitution.

Everyone understood the seriousness of our economic troubles four years ago. That's why ANY legislation that created a tax, especially a big tax, was doomed before it began. Even Democrats embraced "The Bush Tax Cuts" as necessary and good for our ailing economy ... albeit while holding their collective noses.

Three plus years ago President Obama and Democratic leadership were lock-step vociferously proclaiming that the individual mandate IS NOT a tax. (Remember the exchange between Stephanopoulos and Obama described in this article?) Was it because they believed it wasn't a tax? Hardly, and their charade was exposed in this month's arguments before the Supreme Court and in that court's ruling today.

The reason the "individual mandate" was upheld today: White House lawyers convinced the Supreme Court that the individual mandate IS a tax. If even the Supreme Court believes it is a tax, most certainly in their hearts those in the Obama administration believed three plus years ago that is a tax. To argue otherwise is to claim Obama is even more clueless than most conservatives think. The proclaimed (self- and otherwise) smartest person on the planet couldn't possibly change his mind on something so fundamental as whether the biggest tax in our history is a tax or not. A rational person doesn't change his mind on something so fundamental. (Note the assumption.)

That leaves us choosing between only three possible conclusions. Either he knew it was a tax all along and he lied to us to get it passed, he's completely irrational or he's so politically vested in the progressive agenda that he doesn't understand or care(!) what he did (ie, he's not so smart after all, just off-the-scale 'political').

So, his own words prove he's a flip-flopper (check the Stephanopoulos reference above). That fact also means he lied to and deceived us (unless you're willing to admit he's so not smart after all).

Bottom line: he and the American people are losers in this proposition. Yes, he's a winner in terms of this battle but how he did it defines him in terms of integrity, honesty and genuine fairness as a loser. Americans are losers for two reasons: ObamaCare was upheld and we have a proven, totally agenda-driven deceiver as our president. If a Wall-Streeter had consciously mislead investors about what an 'investment' would cost them in this way liberals would be outraged, he'd be sued for all he's worth and he'd likely be going to jail. What just happened is a crime. It may not be a crime in a legal sense but it is a crime punishable by removal from office.

Martin Luther King And Our Founding Documents

It's becoming popular for people, including African Americans, to make a point of MLK's imperfections as a person. Of course it's useful to understand the person as well as his accomplishments but let's remember what he stood for. He was human but his message is good and right.

It has become 'popular' to call MLK's movement as one seeking "social justice" and that, in order to honor, respect and preserve what he started we should therefore extend his "fight for social justice". Unfortunately, that's a dishonest hijacking of his values for modern political correctness purposes.

In fact, Dr. King was a Christian first and his movement was "faith-based". What he pushed for was not secular, rather Christian. Judgement based on moral character was a pre-eminent need to him. To him, the expansion of and dependency on a welfare state would represent a failure of society, including African Americans who seem to have no problem with their increasing dependency resulting largely from a willingness to be okay with it. To Dr. King, this trend would no doubt represent a significant decrease in self-respect, a diminished will to succeed on one's own merit ... by choice more than by circumstances. Accepting the role of victim would be reviled by Dr. King.

Dr. King saw the original principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as foundational to economic and social freedom for all. He said(!), his dream was one "deeply rooted in the American dream" embedded in "the magnificent(!) words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence". He said as much many different times in many different ways but he believed it to be true. How one can say he didn't respect or love the principles(!) of those documents defies logic. To say he must not have really understood them is an ignorant thing to say about this man who studied philosophers and old cultures. He understood the value of those documents as unique(!) counterpoints to historical evils.

The greatest surviving highly politically correct claim is that those documents are racist in nature. Dr. King certainly didn't think so. Doesn't that matter? In fact, the most often repeated example is nothing but PC nonsense and twisting of historical truth for purely political purposes.

Yes, the Constitution made Blacks three fifths of a person ... for apportionment sake ... but one has to take it totally out of context to conclude it was racist in a negative sense. Southerners, a large Democratic(!) block of states, wanted to preserve slavery and wanted to institutionalize it in the Constitution by counting slaves as whole persons for enumeration purposes but still not giving Blacks the right to vote. Being able to count slaves as whole persons without giving them the right to vote would have given Southern Democrats the POWER in congress to fight AGAINST freedom for slaves. The slaves wouldn't have gotten ANY more power by being counted as whole persons, only racist(!) Southern politicians would have been the benefactors!!!

The constitution convention delegates were faced with this dilemma. Either yield to Southern states and give them the power to resist freedom for slaves (by giving them enumeration numbers sufficient to do so, free of voting opposition by slaves) OR say no in which case the Southern states were prepared to remain separate from the United States. The former choice would, at a minimum delay freedom for slaves if not render it impossible and the latter would probably enshrine slavery as a fact of life in whatever country The South decided to create separate from the USA. Either way(!), southern slaves (minorities in general) would have been big losers if NOT for the three-fifths rule.

Then someone decided to try a compromise: count Blacks as three-fifths of a person. The southern states agreed to that because they thought they could still resist freedom for slaves (rights, voting, etc) while deriving the benefits from being part of a larger federation of states. What that three-fifths rule did was PRESERVE the ability of the Constitution's principles to migrate our laws to provide rights to minorities. Indeed, that the three-fifths law was eliminated is proof that the three-fifths approach worked. That would NOT have been possible if slaves had been counted as whole persons for enumeration sake without the ability to vote OR if the southern states had chosen to separate from the USA. If today's PC crowd had its way, slaves would have been counted as whole persons which probably would have led to the institutionalization of slavery in the South. Counting them as three-fifths of a person gave us the opportunity to overcome that detestable practice over time.

The Constitution, therefore, was ANTI-RACIST because the three-fifths compromise preserved the union in way that allowed us to eventually eliminate slavery in the South and give minorities all the rights that the Constitution promised. Without the three-fifths rule, the South would be far less free than it is today.

As far as Democrats being the historical fighters for minorities rights, that's complete nonsense. For nearly 200 years Democrats or those who were to become Democrats fought strongly for slavery and no rights for Blacks. In fact, they opposed most civil rights legislation. Too few people remember or know, for example, that it was Democrats who fought AGAINST the Civil Rights Act the strongest by a margin of 2 to 1 over Republicans.

Don't believe the revisionist history of the PC left. MLK's movement was a faith-based movement for equal rights. MLK loved the principles of the Constitution. The Constitution that MLK loved was NOT a racist document, rather it held the Union together (for the good of southern slaves) and set us on a trajectory to eliminate discrimination. Yes, we're not done even yet but we're still headed in the right direction.

Daniel Hannan's Warning To America: You Don't Want To Become The EU

For our own sake, we should not dismiss lightly Mr. Hannan's warning in his book, "A New Road To Serfdom". For one thing, barely a couple of years since its publishing, events are validating his concerns. The EU is unravelling economically and cultural/societal red flags abound in ways he said seemed pretty inevitable. How far must the EU go down that road before we accept the inevitability (you don't think they wanted to go there do you?) and that making similar socialist-type choices doom us to the same undesirable fate?

Here's a link to the Hoover Institution's excerpts from his explanation of various elements of his book:
http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uncommon-knowledge/53911

The consequences he describe are pretty jaw-dropping considering how they're being validated every day in Europe. THAT really can happen here? R U Kidding Me? In fact, we can count on it happening here if we remain headed in the same direction. Just the very reasonable realization that it COULD happen here for the same reasons it happened in Europe ought to make us pay attention to Mr. Hannan's warning. There's too much at stake to ignore it because if there's any truth in what he said it won't be long before the inertia of the choices we've been making render the same results unavoidable.

The Truth About "The Bush Recession": What Really Caused It

Vertical Lines Legend:

1st (Black) Line: March 2000 ... Dot-Com Crash And The Resulting Recession Begin

2nd (Blue) Line: January 2001 ... Bush Sworn In

3rd (Yellow) Line: Bush's First Tax Legislation Passed

4th (Red) Line: Bush's Second Tax Legislation Passed

Here are the key points on which I’ll elaborate below:

1. The so-called ‘Bush Recession’ actually began in March 2000, ten months before(!) Bush took office.

2. It was caused by the Dot-Com Bust, not Bush policies (because he wasn’t even in office yet)

3. It was very severe, in some ways worse than the latest ’great’ recession of 2008-2010.

4. The NASDAQ lost nearly half(!) its value before Bush took office and was still headed sharply downward

When it looks like a recession may be in progress, economists like to use the GDP as a metric by which to determine whether we’re actually in one. To be specific, two successive quarters of declining GDP confirms to them that we‘re in a recession. That’s a completely useful tool because it helps us know for sure whether we‘re in a recession so we can make relevant policy changes to address it. The unanswered question for which the GDP is a totally inadequate measure is when the recession actually began and what event(s) or circumstances caused it.

It can be difficult at the beginning of a recession to ascertain the underlying causes of it. In most cases we must take a historical look at it to know with greater certainty. It’s easier to see and analyze the unfolding of events looking back some time later on everything that happened. So it is with the “Bush Recession”.

For some time after that recession became fact, economists called it the “2001 - 2003” recession. That assumed it actually started in March 2001. The symptom they rely on, GDP, suggested it began then. However, a clearer view of the whole picture today, with which economists now agree, shows without doubt that everything began unraveling when the NASDAQ began a historic dive in March 2000, a year earlier than economists pegged it at the time based on what the GDP was doing. What caused that dive starting in March 2000? Clearly now and without a doubt, the Dot-Com Bust. That bust began in March 2000 and is what precipitated the so-called Bush Recession. I’ll refer to it more accurately as the 2000 - 2003 recession hereafter.

Nearly all economists now agree on what I said above. In addition, most of them also now agree that several interest rate increases under Clinton precipitated that Dot-Com Bust. It’s completely true that the NASDAQ was ‘overheated’ and was headed for a crash at some point anyway. All it needed was a trigger. The interest rates didn’t cause it all by themselves so blaming Clinton’s economic policies for it isn’t entirely fair either. It was pretty much inevitable. The important point I want to make is, neither is it true that Bush did anything whatsoever to cause it. After all, the recession began nearly a year before Bush was sworn in. To put it in the same kind of context as Obama‘s comments about what was going on when he came into office, Bush inherited not only that recession but a NASDAQ that was already 10 months into in a severe(!) decline and was still headed sharply downward (toward its eventual 77% loss).

The severity of the Dot-Com NASDAQ collapse matters in a couple of important ways. A severe recession isn’t easily turned around as Obama has also discovered. The fact that the NASDAQ lost 50% more of its value in the 2000 - 2003 recession than in the 2008 - 2010 recession tells us something about the difficulty of recovering from the worse one that began under Clinton in 2000. Also, when speaking about the effectiveness of Bush’s subsequent tax cuts, one must put them in the context of a severe market collapse to accurately assess their effectiveness. More about that in my next blog on these subjects.

Here are the links I used to assemble the information above:

1.  Dot-Com Bust: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

2.  NASDAQ closing price history: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EIXIC

3.  When the 2001 – 2002 recession actually began (check out the section titled “UNITED STATES”): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2000s_recession