Although I am an avowed conservative and by association, am a member of the Republican Party, the following is not about party affiliation. It is about being American.

Our leaders have failed us. It has taken some 30 years since the Reagan revolution and the Republican wins in 1994 to expose the farce but now it is complete. We now have to candidates fully representative of this decline in a Democrat who is basically an empty suit filled with meaningless rhetoric and a Republican who is unwilling to engage the support of conservatives to win – in fact, he shows all appearances of not even wanting to win (can you imagine Reagan not taking advantage of the multitude of openings handed to McCain by Obama to expose his fatal flaws?). This is what we have brought upon ourselves in the process of moving to the much touted “middle” (read – mediocrity).

We have elected and supported a political class that routinely says anything necessary to get our votes and then “recalibrates” their positions for power, personal gain and a feeling of “going along to get along”. What passes for progress in Washington is now so far divorced from what is needed for the progress of America that it no longer bears any currency for the average citizen, the average businessman or almost anyone outside the beltway.

The leadership failures (all of them) of the current political class (R’s and D’s) are manifest in one singular failure and that is the failure to keep the USA as the top engine in the world for freedom, economic growth and innovation.  Rush Limbaugh speaks of his belief in “American Exceptionalism” – this is the key.  When one hears the word “can’t” over and over from our leadership, one knows that nobody thinks of us as Numero Uno any more. I challenge you to look back over the last two weeks and count the number of times a public official used the terms “can’t”, “won’t”, “lost” or “shouldn’t” – all negatives indicating in unwillingness or fear of doing something.

The world economy and the world power structure both are basically a pyramid scheme. If you aren’t on the top of the pyramid, you and your populace suffer. For a century, the USA was on top of that pyramid and enjoyed the fruits of that position. The only difference between then and now is that we have lost the belief that being #1 is the right thing to do, that we can responsibly continue to exploit (exploit is not a bad word) our own resources be they intellectual, natural or other to support our economy and we should try to bring freedom to the world (who are we to say that freedom is better than totalitarianism – we can’t judge).

As for the loss of belief in # 1, it is all around us.  From elementary school sports not keeping score or kid’s baseball leagues cancelling All-Star games because it could harm self esteem, to the “Don’t Drill Democrats”…self defeatism in the name of some crazy belief that if we all lose, that equates somehow to “fairness”.  I have a newly formed theory that the reason that our political class doesn’t want to be #1 is because with leadership comes hard decisions – decisions that will not be universally accepted and situations like Iraq, take a moral component to make. This kind of decision is such an anathema to the modern political operative that it is out of the question to make one.

Gas prices have less to do with speculation and supply concerns that they do with the lack of a positive and clear economic message from our leaders. We are very clear as to what we can’t do. We can’t explore for more of our own oil, we can’t win a war, we can’t find Osama, we can’t execute trade agreements with other partners, we can’t use nuclear power…these are all the things that we are telling the world that we can’t do. This has resulted in a dollar at historic lows, interest rates that are driving capital out of our financial institutions, a stock market in free fall. The world looks at us with a very uncertain eye, they are perplexed at our inability to move forward and it is incomprehensible to most countries why we are so unwilling to be #1 in the world when they would give their right leg to be where we are. Failure in leadership, confusion, political agendas – this is what we, as an electorate, wrought.

Where can we go from here?  Here’s my take:

1.       We have to return to a mindset that we, as Americans, are exceptional. No matter what we say, there is not a person out there that says every morning, “I’m going to be average today!”  Even though it has taken a beating over the last 20 years or so, the spirit of exceptionalism still exists, it has just gone underground and taken a back seat to the sham of multi-culturalism.

2.       We need to keep score. The world is …through things like exchange rates, trade deficits, gas prices and political power. The world cares not for our self esteem.

3.       The current political class has to go and the bureaucracy that facilitates it must go as well. With some exceptions on both sides of the aisle, these people have failed us. We need to vote them out and we need to install some methodology of immediate redress when they violate a pledge to their constituents.

4.       Power must be put back in the hands of the people. When people no longer have a direct connection with their representative governance, they lose the ability to govern. We see this in low turnouts for national elections and the rise of “special interest” groups. We have to get government back to the concept that it derives its power from the consent of the governed, not in spite of that consent or lack of because lack of consent is also a decision and sends a message. In these days where one can view anything or purchase anything via the internet from the comfort of our own homes, having our political class isolated in Washington is obsolete. My senators and representatives should be spending 90% of their time in our state and 10% in Washington, not the other way around.

5.       Along with the changing of the political class, the era of “Big Government” has to end. The nature of any organism is to do what it takes to survive and grow and we see this in our current federal structure.  Laws are passed that require other laws and regulations and the agencies to oversee them. Every law has unintended consequences that overtime costs us all some liberty or some of the fruits of our labor.

6.       We have to make decisions and move forward. The cultural perspective that says that everything is relative is a load of garbage; there are “right” and “wrong” decisions.  As a business person responsible for a company, if I took the position that nothing is right or wrong, the business would fail and I would be out of a job.

Until we make a decision to demand better from our elected representatives and hold them accountable for their actions, we will continue to wallow in confusion and indecision. If anyone is happy with the status quo, this is an example of the future if we don’t change.

 

In an incredibly crass attempt to regain power, Democrats are allying themselves with “genie” like movements. This “genie” consists of groups running the gamut from the inane and obnoxious, such as the relatively peaceful communists and socialists of Win Without War, International ANSWER and other Soros funded groups to the dangerous, groups like La Raza and CIAR, groups who espouse violence in the guise of political change and in the case of CIAR – ties to terrorist groups like Hamas.

There can only be one reason that they choose such allies…that is to regain the power they have lost by any means, power that they cannot gain in the marketplace of competing ideas. Under the guise of fighting for civil liberties that are not in danger, we have seen normally reasonable people take positions that when stripped of the rhetoric, support the very people and movements that seek to destroy America.

As I have stated, I believe that these people are reasonable, intelligent people. I have to believe that they understand the consequences of this “dhimmitude lite”. By virtue of their positions on gay rights, social spending and abortion, even I can see the inconsistency in their positions when compared to the beliefs of the groups that support them. I can come to but one conclusion: they believe that once they use these genies that they can put him back in the bottle. This is a very dangerous game.

I simply cannot believe that people like Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha, John Kerry and others are so blind that they cannot see the damage that the combinations of Islamic militancy and these various movements could cause if left unchecked; however, we strain all logic to ignore the danger because we all have started to worship at the altar of secular progressivism. Even true Conservatives have started to bend to the will of a society that tries so hard to neuter itself that it has become completely emasculated.

Our current logic is so tortured that we have lost the simple ability to discern right from wrong, left from right. When faced with a problem, we punish the group (usually through legislation and regulation) rather than deal with the specific problem. We punish all air travelers because we don’t want to “profile”. Rather than going after specific groups, we pass the Patriot Act (which I support but am wary of its true benefits because of the watering down of key provisions). Our media class and diplomats scream and wail when our President specifically identifies the components of the Axis of Evil.

If we cannot identify our enemy and his evil, God help us all for only he will save us. We certainly will not be able to save ourselves. Our current silliness in political discourse (think Mark Foley) belays that point.

The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game. This unholy CAIR/ANSWER/WWW genie will not easily be put back in the bottle. He will demand payment for his services and given the current lack of backbone within both parties, if the Democrats do regain power, I could not guarantee that the Republicans will be able to help contain him.

If you need to understand why "civilians" are getting killed in Lebanon, you have to go no further than Yahoo News... See it here.


Simply mind boggling that more people in the US don't get it.

 

When do radical movements become the identity of a government and a nation?

This is a question that must be asked given the current global political situation. With the legitimate selection of Hamas, Hezbollah and others by the constituency that they represent, must we assume that the people who elect them are responsible therefore the subject nation is also responsible?

There is a common meme that is beginning to take hold in the world community that organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah can be separated into two parts and that rational people can negotiate with one of the two parts. This is patently absurd. This would be like having half of the Green Party sitting in Oakland and lobbing rockets into San Francisco while the other half is at the San Fran City Hall attending a meeting. It would be like the Democratic Party maintaining a militia (as unlikely as that would be).

The world has to apply logic to these situations and recognize that actions speak louder than words. This is not the civilized Jeffersonian world where a nuanced conversation with a French diplomat yields supplies or ships to fight Barbary Pirates. In our world nuance is the business end of a baseball bat.

Countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iran have to recognize that they will suffer the consequences that are justified by their surrogates. They are the sum of their parts. I truly do not think that we would care as long as the safety and security of we or our allies was not threatened. We seem to be held to that high standard by them due to our alliance with Israel. If Lebanon does not want to suffer the damage caused by Hezbollah, they must deal with Hezbollah’s behavior themselves. The Palestinians have a similar situation with Hamas. The issue must become an internal one, not an external one or America will always be obliged to participate in some form.

Bibi Netanyahu got it exactly right. I heard an excerpt of an interview with Netanyahu and Tucker Carlson of MSNBC on Laura Ingraham’s show this morning (she has it up as the quote of the day on her website. In it, he likened the terrorists to the creature in the movie, Alien. His premise is that the mother beast (in his case, Syria and Iran) vests her parasitic progeny on the host country (Lebanon) and that host provides sustenance and safety while the creature grows. As the creature matures, it bursts through the chest cavity of the host, killing it before starting the cycle of destruction all over again.

I wish it was only a movie.

 

In the natural world, many similarities exist in nature to the current clash of civilizations in the Middle East. There are answers there as well.

Take for example the African Army ants. Let’s hypothesize for a moment that the Islamic fascists and other assorted terror merchants around the world are similar to these ants. Individually they present little of a threat but when they do work in concert, they can take down animals significantly larger than they…a bird, for example, has little chance when faced with this onslaught.

Size has its advantages. An elephant has little knowledge that it is even being attacked. Its large flat feet can destroy huge numbers of these small attackers. Over the millennia, these little aggressors have learned that the elephant isn’t a legitimate target.

Think of Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qeida as the ants. Israel is the bird. The bird can be overwhelmed. The method to winning the war on terror is not political, it is military. Israel with Great Britain, Australia and the U.S. can be the elephant. The answer is an open, expressed military alliance that provides for a rapid crushing response to every terrorist attack…the foot of the elephant. Sort of NATO on steroids…too large to ignore and too strong to challenge.

We need to create the elephant.

 

Let’s divide up and play…

What say ye, Islamic fascists? Let’s settle this once and for all like we used to do on the playground. As we say in the basketball world, we got next. You get your guys, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iran, Syria, North Korea and a few of those ‘Stan countries and let’s run one (sorry that you will be without your starting point - Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi (or Zarkman as IowaHawk refers to him). We’ll take Israel and Great Britain and just to make it fair, we will take the country that always gets picked last – France. Having them with us would be like a handicap because all they will do is hang out by the three point line tripping over their own feet and bitching because they never get the ball.

We’re about to roll out on your rear because we are sick of the smack. Jihad this, jihad that, assimilate or die, we will rock you…yeah, yeah, we have heard it all. Want to talk about disproportionate force? Look what happened the last time you got up in our grill…man, please – we took out two countries. Even with the school nerds (the Dems) harshing our groove on a regular basis, we hardly broke a sweat…and guess what else bitches, we are still playing on two of your prominent courts. Nobody has put us on the bench yet.

We haven’t even started taking it to the rack yet. You saw a little of our running game on the full court break to Baghdad but mostly you just see the long range treys that our Air Force team drops on ya. We rain the treys, my man, we rain the 500 pound treys.

We are just going to drop a few dimes on our front court dudes, the Israelis, just to get our assist totals up but don’t forget when we come with the trap, you guys will never cross the center stripe.

Have a nice day…and sit down and shut up if you ain’t ready for showtime… like I said, we got next.

There is a problem with modern war. There is not enough death and destruction. Sounds crass and heartless doesn’t it? Read on…

The human spirit has a persistent duality that is represented in a singular drive. That duality is evidenced as a drive to survive…by any means. This duality is that for some this means capitulation, for others it means confrontation. We see it every day in our society. We all know people who have hardship after hardship weighed upon them yet continue to inspire and push forward but at the same time, we also know of people who seemingly have every advantage and continually slide into the abyss of defeatism, self loathing and loss of direction.

Modern war does not address this duality. It is my hypothesis that “surgical” strikes and the aversion to collateral damage and civilian causalities never create the necessary feeling of “loss” to break the survival instinct paradigm. Up until the Korean Conflict (we never officially recognized it as a war) there was one commonality – the defeated knew that they were defeated and reformed thier paradigm to survive in light of this fact. There was enough death and destruction that forced a change in the the behavior of the society, one that was more compliant to the dictates for peace.

In a world where homicide bombings and radical death cults exist, just how does the destruction of another building, airport runway or oil refinery translate into defeat? How do economic sanctions that are targeted at a government but only increase the suffering of the people engender enough pain to make the leaders of that country reform the paradigm? The answer is that they do not. Terrorists will never stop until they, thier families, the society that breeds them and the support infrastructure are completely destroyed.

In a modern expression of this duality, we have salient examples in full view of a reasoned mind. We can see the resolve of the Islamic extremists in their pursuit of jihad. They have created the illusion of winning, so much so that they never stop and will create a “win” even out of the most demonstrable loss. We can only stand by and watch as the countries of the European Union, Democrats (except for Joe Lieberman) and the Cindy Sheehan/John Murtha/American Leftist conclave are Hell bent on forgetting the lessons of capitulation that existed in WWII and creating a position of loss out of a superior position of strength. Both are difficult to watch because both paths converge at a future point of disaster.

The survival instinct is not just a paradigm that exists in the mind of the enemy; it also exists in the mind of the challenger. We see it here every day. When we are fighting a war for survival of our way of life, how do we translate that to the populace when 1) every major media outlet opposes even the very idea that this is a war, 2) the judicial branch equates international terrorism as a speeding ticket and 3) the casualty rate over three years (as horrid as it is) is roughly ten percent of our annual national highway death rate? When a national figure like John Kerry states unequivocally that he wants to fight a more “sensitive” war, there’s the first sign that we have clueless leaders in our government.

“Great Men” (see Mark Steyn’s column of today - HT to Lucianne.com) will continue to debate, ad nauseum, about the definitions of both conflict and the constitution of victory. Until we are galvanized as a people to do the necessary dirty work to not only gain victory by their definition but to create defeat in the minds of our enemies, there will be no peace. The collective societal mind is no different from the individual mind in that sense; to alter the survival paradigm we must create the requisite pain to convince the enemy that he is defeated. Ruthless, decisive, painful and conclusive – no quarter, no surrender. It is the only way. This IS a war. Israel understands this; it is time for America to see it as well.

...if I should even put my ideas out there. What qualifies me to voice an opinion on anything?

Then I read sophomoric, illogical, ignorant of history opinion pieces like this by Bonnie Erbe of the Scripps Howard News Service (courtesy of the Deseret News) and I realize that I am just as qualified as most.

This type of screed has unfortunately become the standard BDS approach employed by some liberal commentators. No terrorists before we liberated Iraq and Afghanistan, if only Bush and Cheney would leave them alone, there would be no more terrorists, blah, blah, blah.

I guess that the Marine barracks in Lebanon, Khobar Towers, et.al. just were unlucky coincidences...

There is a storm gathering beyond the horizon. Since the end of the Crusades this storm has been mitigated by other pressing world problems and was largely compartmentalized much as the localized summer thunderstorms are in my native Mississippi. These localized events are now coalescing in this age of instant communication, rapid global mobility and ever dissolving borders into a Katrina size storm that has the potential to destroy the Western way of life.

The individualistic ideals of modern Western civilizations have given way to secular states that are so focused on not offending any particular class that they will be ill prepared to deal with this coming storm. We are facing a war of global proportions that many will class as a “religious” war and use every pejorative available to try to define it in those terms and it is in the sense that, on the surface, pits Islam against all other religions.

In the past 40 years, we have become so “sensitive” to each interest group or ethnicity that we are on the edge of losing the thing that makes the United States so powerful, our national identity. In doing so, we lose touch with the principles that dictate right and wrong and our “offense free” approach to society blinds us to the reality of the events that are taking place. It keeps us from assigning responsibility to people, groups and nations and as a result prohibits us from accurately defining the root causes of this global problem…and it isn’t “religion” in the sense that most media types (and apparently our government) define it.

With the exception of Christianity, our liberal friends speak of Islam as if it is sacrosanct from any criticism and our government goes out of its way to soft pedal any harsh comments. We have seen instances where we frequently apologize (oft times in advance) to the Muslim community for the results and outcomes of commonsensical and necessary acts. This indicates our complete misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.

Because of our Western beliefs that religion is an individual right and as such and criticism on one’s religion equates to an attack on the individual, he one question that we dare not ask is, “at what point does a religious movement become a political one?” It is my belief that this one question is the one that needs to be asked to successfully prosecute the global war on terror.

I would submit that the brand of Islam that we have seen in Afghanistan with the Taliban and now in Somalia with the rule of Islamic Courts is nothing more than a totalitarian/dictatorial rehash of so many others that the world has seen in the past. Defined by actions rather than ideology, the recent histories of these countries have more in common with the Stalinist regime in Russia, Nazi Germany of the 1930’s and 1940’s, the regime of Pol Pot in the 1970’s than they have with the Islamic societies that produced quantum advances in mathematics, literature, engineering and art.

Several columnists have recently alluded to this phenomenon, from Charles Krauthammer in his Washington Post column last week about the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision effectively declaring that the War on Terror is not a “real” war and if it is, it is over”, to today’s column by Michael Goodwin in the New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/433715p-365242c.html ). We ignore this transformation from religion to political at our own peril.

Even though some so-called “noted” scholars will argue that the US was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, it is difficult for even a casual Christian to deny the stark similarities between the precepts in the Christian Bible and the ideals set forth in the Founder’s discussions and writings. We should not be ashamed of this beginning. For over 230 years these guiding principles have allowed us to enjoy unparalleled freedom and growth. The fact that we have enjoyed this bounty in the past is no excuse for failing to live up to those responsibilities for the future. Let’s hope that recognition of the true threat comes before the conflict reaches World War III proportions.

 ...new here.

Great to be on such a great host as Townhall. Thanks to Hugh Hewitt. I have admired his radio show for a long time and am a solid devotee of both he and the lovely and talented Mary Katharine Ham.

Welcome to any and all readers from my days at The Hairless Beach Ape, a blog of mine from a while back. I look forward to reading and hopefully writing insightful commentary on the world around us...even from the far reaches of the ski country of Utah.

For those of you who do not know Utah, Park City is a world class ski destination and the bastion of non-Mormon liberalism in this state (yes, Virginia, we aren't all Latter Day Saints out here) and as such is "Moonbat Central" when it comes to politics. Most people think that Utah = Republican but we have both a Democratic city mayor (a environmental crusader, a true global warming warrior) and the Salt Lake County Mayor is a Democrat as well. Makes for an interesting study in politics.

I hope that this avenue presents to the readers a new view of Utah as a whole and that I can add something meaningful to the national discourse. I am but a regular guy with enough education to be dangerous and an opinion to match.