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Comment by Dave Gosse on May 25, 2012 at 10:38pm

Ohhh... you gored my oxymoron!

Comment by James Robertson on May 25, 2012 at 5:09am

Oxymoron: reactionary progressives.

Comment by Dave Gosse on May 25, 2012 at 12:01am

What Happens When ‘Free’ is Unaffordable?

posted by Jordan J. Ballor on Tuesday, May 22, 2012

 

As I noted yesterday, I’m in Montreal for the next couple of weeks, and today I had the chance to see some of the student protests firsthand. These protests have been going on now for over three months, and have to do with the raising of tuition for college in Quebec.

I’m teaching at Farel Reformed Theological Seminary, which is located in the heart of downtown Montreal, and is adjacent to Concordia University. As I walked around earlier this week, I noticed the following on one of Concordia’s buildings:

As I noted yesterday, I’m in Montreal for the next couple of weeks, and today I had the chance to see some of the student protests firsthand. These protests have been going on now for over three months, and have to do with the raising of tuition for college in Quebec.

I’m teaching at Farel Reformed Theological Seminary, which is located in the heart of downtown Montreal, and is adjacent to Concordia University. As I walked around earlier this week, I noticed the following on one of Concordia’s buildings:

 

 

The text is article 26 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads in part, “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages.”

I think that the kinds of protests we are seeing in Quebec might be the inevitable end of the logic of the welfare state. The logic goes something like this:

Education is a right, and should be free, or the next best thing to it. In order for it to be “free,” it must be administered, or at least underwritten, by the state, because we know that the only way to make something appear to be free is to requisition the necessary funds via taxation. This is, in fact, precisely the rationale for the existence of the modern welfare state, in which in the context of the Netherlands, for instance, it is understood to be “the task of the state to promote the general welfare and to secure the basic needs of people in society.”

Education is a right (per the UN Declaration), is constitutive of the general welfare, and a basic need. Thus it must be “fully guaranteed by the government” (to quote Noordegraaf from the Dutch context regarding social security, mutatis mutandis).

The upheavals we are seeing, then, are what happen when we can no longer sustain such guarantees. They are what happen when “free” becomes unaffordable and unsustainable.

This means that the flawed logic of the welfare state will have to be critically reexamined, no small task for a developed world that has steadily built infrastructure according to logic for much of the past seventy years.

For Quebec this does not bode well, as Cardus’ Peter Stockland puts it, “This is a province in the grip of reactionary progressives afflicted with severe intellectual and institutional sclerosis. Their malaise prevents any proposals for change from being given fair hearing, much less a chance of being put into play. Real change, not merely revolutionary play-acting, is anathema in this province.”

Comment by Dave Gosse on May 20, 2012 at 7:27am

Terror suspects arrested in apparent plot to bomb Obama headquarters, mayor’s  home

Published: 2:37 AM  05/20/2012

 

CHICAGO (AP) — Three activists who traveled to Chicago for a NATO summit were  accused Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack  President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home and  other targets.

But defense lawyers shot back that Chicago police had trumped up the charges  to frighten peaceful protesters away, telling a judge it was undercover officers  known by the activists as “Mo” and “Gloves” who brought the firebombs to a South  Side apartment where the men were arrested.

“This is just propaganda to create a climate of fear,” Michael Deutsch said. “My clients came to peacefully protest.”

On the eve of the summit, the dramatic allegations were reminiscent of  previous police actions ahead of major political events, when authorities moved  quickly to prevent suspected plots but sometimes quietly dropped the charges  later.

Prosecutors said the men were self-described anarchists who boasted weeks  earlier about the damage they would do in Chicago, including one who declared, “After NATO, the city will never be the same.”

At one point, one of the suspects asked the others if they had ever seen a “cop on fire.”

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy dismissed the idea that the arrests were  anything more than an effort to stop “an imminent threat.”

Read more:  http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/20/terror-suspects-charged-in-plot-t...

Comment by Dave Gosse on May 11, 2012 at 8:42pm

Look who's paying for Occupy's DC digs

More proof 'economic terrorist' may be directing movement

 

A labor union with strong ties to President Obama is paying for Occupy’s Washington, D.C., office space inside a thinktank that also is heavily tied to the White House.

Both the thinktank and the union are closely associated with Occupy

The Service Employees International Union is forking over $4,000 per month for three offices inside the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS thinktank, whose headquarters are a short distance from the tent city Occupy set up in McPherson Square in Washington in October.

The information was confirmed by IPS director John Cavanagh in an article by Abrey Whelan of the Washington Examiner, who first reported yesterday on the origins of Occupy’s rental bill.

The link may serve as further evidence that Stephen Lerner, a controversial anti-capitalist SEIU organizer, is one of the main forces behind Occupy.

WND was first to identify the economic-protest templates being used by Occupy, including the concept of the tent city, as the brainchild of Lerner.

Lerner in March 2011 laid out a mass economic protest plan intended to bring down the stock market while boasting his plan could be used to cause a new financial crisis. Lerner’s ideology and statements prompted some conservative critics to go so far as to label him an economic terrorist.

[...]

Read more

Comment by James Robertson on May 11, 2012 at 11:40am

Comment by James Robertson on May 7, 2012 at 2:02pm

Comment by James Robertson on May 7, 2012 at 1:16pm

Thomas Sowell
The Moral Infrastructure

The "Occupy" movement, which the Obama administration and much of the media have embraced, has implications that reach far beyond the passing sensation it has created.

The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people's lives, their trespassing, vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the 14th Amendment's requirement that the government provide "equal protection of the laws" to all its citizens.

How did the "Occupy" movement acquire such immunity from the laws that the rest of us are expected to obey? Simply by shouting politically correct slogans and calling themselves representatives of the 99 percent against the 1 percent.

But just when did the 99 percent elect them as their representatives? If in fact 99 percent of the people in the country were like these "Occupy" mobs, we would not have a country. We would have anarchy.

Democracy does not mean mob rule. It means majority rule. If the "Occupy" movement, or any other mob, actually represents a majority, then they already have the votes to accomplish legally whatever they are trying to accomplish by illegal means.

Mob rule means imposing what the mob wants, regardless of what the majority of voters want. It is the antithesis of democracy.

In San Francisco, when the mob smashed the plate-glass window of a small business shop, the owner put up some plywood to replace the glass, and the mob wrote graffiti on his plywood. The consequences? None for the mob, but a citation for the shop owner for not removing the graffiti.

When trespassers blocking other people at the University of California, Davis refused to disperse, and locked their arms with one another to prevent the police from being able to physically remove them, the police finally resorted to pepper spray to break up this human logjam.

The result? The police have been strongly criticized for enforcing the law. Apparently pepper spray is unpleasant, and people who break the law are not supposed to have unpleasant things done to them. Which is to say, we need to take the "enforcement" out of "law enforcement."

Everybody is not given these exemptions from paying the consequences of their own illegal acts. Only people who are currently in vogue with the elites of the left — in the media, in politics and in academia.

The 14th Amendment? What is the Constitution or the laws when it comes to ideological soul mates, especially young soul mates who remind the aging 1960s radicals of their youth?

Neither in this or any other issue can the Constitution protect us if we don't protect the Constitution. When all is said and done, the Constitution is a document, a piece of paper.

If we don't vote out of office, or impeach, those who violate the Constitution, or who refuse to enforce the law, the steady erosion of Constitutional protections will ultimately render it meaningless. Everything will just become a question of whose ox is gored and what is the political expediency of the moment.

There has been much concern, rightly expressed, about the rusting of bridges around the country, and the crumbling and corrosion of other parts of the physical infrastructure. But the crumbling of the moral infrastructure is no less deadly.

The police cannot maintain law and order, even if the political authorities do not tie their hands in advance or undermine them with second-guessing after the fact.

The police are the last line of defense against barbarism, but they are equipped only to handle that minority who are not stopped by the first lines of defense, beginning with the moral principles taught at home and upheld by families, schools, and communities.

But if everyone takes the path of least resistance — if politicians pander to particular constituencies and judges give only wrist slaps to particular groups or mobs who are currently in vogue, and educators indoctrinate their students with "non-judgmental" attitudes — then the moral infrastructure corrodes and crumbles.

The moral infrastructure is one of the intangibles, without which the tangibles don't work. Like the physical infrastructure, its neglect in the short run invites disaster in the long run.

CREATORS.COM

Comment by Dave Gosse on May 3, 2012 at 5:12pm

Tea-party reawakening with call for huge rally

Event challenges grass roots to take America back

by Bob Unruh

 

Private pilots who may want to fly near Chicago on the weekend of May 19-20 have been warned they could be shot down, and a Red Cross memo suggests there could be mass evacuations of the city in the event of riots by left-leaning activists protesting the NATO summit.

Less than a day’s drive away, however, near Jefferson City, Mo., at the same time there will be an event for Americans who also are worried about the nation. But instead of protests and riots, participants will focus on how to build up America, repair it and stabilize it for future generations.

The “Rally for Common Sense” will be held Saturday, May 19, at the “Patriot Field of Dreams” at Holts Summit. It will be more of a “Woodstock” as it’s on private property in the rolling hills of Missouri, where there will be camping, a nondenominational church service and vendors along with the rally.

A key organizer, Kim Paris, who was the Missouri grass roots director for Herman Cain’s presidential campaign, told WND that people who have been described as tea party folks need to make their presence, and their choices, be known.

“We need to be visible on this in a grassroots way, and what that does is it wakes up other people,” she said.

The event website highlights the freedoms that Americans traditionally have enjoyed: “We may not have agreed on who the Republican president candidate should be. We may not share precisely the same social views. We DO agree on the constitutional principles of smaller government, a balanced budget, lower taxes and less federal interference in our lives.

“We the people are comin’ and want our power back! It’s Common Sense.”

The speakers expected to be on hand include WND CEO Joseph Farah, Cain, Alan Keyes, Michelle Moore, Selena Owens, K. Carl Smith, Dave Roland, Stacy Swimp, Darin Chappell, William Temple, Dee Rock, Alfonzo Rachel, Mark Block, Gina Loudon and CL Bryant.

[...]

Read more

Comment by James Robertson on May 3, 2012 at 7:37am

May 3, 2012 - AmericanThinker
Deciphering the Occupy Wall Street Movement
By Robert Weissberg

How are we to understand the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement? Is it, as many on the left insist, a commendable reaction to "obscene" inequalities in wealth? Or is it, as according to the right, a union-financed, thinly disguised Obama-supported ruse to stir up egalitarian envy? Both interpretations are partially valid, but let me offer a different take, and one that links OWS to countless similar political outcroppings that have flourished since the 1960s.

My descriptor is "recreational politics" and as such lies somewhere between, say, the well-organized ideologically driven Communist Party USA and the spontaneous, disorganized 1992 LA "Rodney King" riot. The ancestors of today's recreational politics would include a small portion of the civil rights movement and much of the opposition to the Vietnam War.

As a biologist might identify the key characteristics of new species, here are the Occupy movement's essential traits.

First, the ideological "glue" holding the movement together is a collection of alluring slogans and clichés that evaporate into nothingness when probed. Critically, if asked (and I have asked), no two participants can flesh out terms like "social justice" or "ending poverty." This is predictable, since recreational politics lacks anything resembling officially certified dogma, let alone leaders who can impose orthodoxy. No Communist Manifesto or Chairman Mao's Little Red Book here. This is make-it-up-as-you-go-along politics, and the result is, naturally, a cacophony of strident voices light-years away from anything resembling a legislative agenda.

The ideological incoherence is displayed in any OWS event. I recently watched their Manhattan May Day parade; dozens of signs and banners abounded, most homemade, and no two were precisely alike. Messages covered the ideological waterfront -- everything from opposing racism to calling for bankers to be put on trial. There were signs for open borders, a Palestinian flag, and demands for government-supplied well-paying jobs. Some marchers just shouted obscenities at nearby police. Try assembling these messages into a sensible political agenda. Hopeless.

Second, participants gravitate to the easy, "fun" aspects of movement politics while neglecting essential drudgery. My forty years as a college professor confirms that this is typical for today's politically inclined (often lazy) youngsters. Who wants to collate mailing lists if one can chant slogans while dancing to the drum beat? With no hierarchy to assign odious tasks and monitor performance, "pop-up" crusades tend toward chaos. Beyond calling for the marchers to assemble so as to "confront the ruling class," running OWS is akin to herding cats.

Third, since the movement lacks any concrete agenda, there can be no pay-off; absent this incentive, the only available fuel is passion, and we all know how passion wilts with time. The upshot, then, is that tactics abandon accomplishing anything tangible (too tedious, anyhow) to favor behavior whose real purpose is sustaining the passion. Given a choice between, say, drafting a legislative proposal to help the poor versus walking down the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge to instigate a media-circus police confrontation, the latter wins every time. After all, who can get excited over researching the impact of the minimum wage on poverty? But five minutes on the local 6:00PM news and screaming "police brutality" is such great fun -- enough fun to keep doing it, at least for a day or two more.

Political participation is one of my academic specialties, and my lectures always cite the great German sociologist Max Weber to explain political successes and failures. In a nutshell, successful movements must transition from charismatic leadership to bureaucratic organizations, where aims are advanced business-like. The contemporary gay rights movement illustrates this perfectly -- from ragtag spontaneous Stonewall demonstrations to the Human Rights Campaign with an impressive Washington headquarters and a paid, ample professional staff to promote gay rights with specific proposals, expert fund-raising, and all the rest. Most bottom-up movements cannot make this transition and are thus doomed to become historical footnotes.

Finally, down deep, OWS, like so many spontaneous recreational movements before it, is not serious about accomplishing anything other than some fun therapy. How do I know? Oscar Wilde once quipped that only shallow people do not judge by appearances, and I judge by appearances. If you want to shape American public opinion, you must outwardly respect public norms, and one look at the OWS crowd shows that they don't. Thanks to living in lower Manhattan, I've long observed these people in their various habitats, and take my word: with few exceptions, they look like unwashed, ill-clothed street people. To make matters worse, their trash-laden venues only confirm this rejection of public sensibilities. And I suspect that this is intentional -- they have no interest in winning public sympathy by looking like well-scrubbed all-American college kids. Once more, fun outweighs accomplishing anything.

In general, the attire of movement participants is, in my estimation, the best indicator of seriousness. Remember the pictures of Southern blacks conducting sit-ins or marching for the right to vote? Every single participate was in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie and was neatly groomed! And they made a point of speaking clear English with zero profanities. Let their opponents dress like slobs and curse. In 1968, many students traveled to New Hampshire to elect the anti-war Eugene McCarthy, who was running in the Democratic primary against the hawkish President Lyndon Johnson. Given that many of these volunteers faced the draft, this was serious business, and their slogan was "Neat and Clean for Gene." Thus, rather than alienate conservative New Hampshire voters, they got real haircuts, shaved their scruffy beards, and dressed like preppie college students. And it was worth it -- McCarthy fell short, but his strong showing forced LBJ not to seek a second full term.

The bottom line, then, is that OWS is not a serious political movement -- not a movement to be feared, let alone respected. It exists thanks to a kind and gentle political system that has a warm spot for wackiness and dissent that stops well short of treason. Only in Western democracies do police receive special training on how to handle protestors with kid gloves. Actually, street theatre, not political activism, better depicts OWS, and perhaps we should be thankful that its most serious offense is occasionally disrupting traffic, a few minor police scuffles, making too much noise, and generating millions in police overtime. America has seen and occasionally experienced far worse.

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