Category: Liberty

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How Did The 0! Get Elected, Anyway?

Go HERE and take the simple, easy-peasy (seriously!) “Civics Quiz” and see how The 0! got elected. Americans are simply illiterate when it comes to American history and knowledge of our governing documents, etc.

Paula-beats-Abe

“If there is any presidential speech that has captured a place in popular culture, it is the Gettysburg Address, seemingly recited by school children for decades. The truth is, however, Lincoln’s most memorable words are now remembered by very few.

“Of the 2,508 Americans taking ISI’s civic literacy test, 71% fail. Nationwide, the average score on the test is only 49%. The vast majority cannot recognize the language of Lincoln’s famous speech.

“The test contains 33 questions designed to measure knowledge of America’s founding principles, political history, international relations, and market economy…

“…The results reveal that Americans are alarmingly uninformed about our Constitution, the basic functions of our government, the key texts of our national history, and economic principles.”

Well, maybe for a majority of the proles that is true, but surely our well-educated college grads fare better? Nope.

“College graduates in all age brackets—except Baby Boomers (ages 45 to 64)—typically earn an ‘F’ on the exam. Baby Boomers who ended their formal education with a bachelor’s degree score an average of 61%, or a ‘D-.'”

(Well, that certainly squares with the report that 69% of college graduates couldn’t read directions to find their way out of a paper bag… *feh*)

But wait! There’s more! From the “Civics Quiz” report:
Continue reading “How Did The 0! Get Elected, Anyway?”

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Look for the Union Label

If you run into thugs attempting to stifle free speech at a townhall meeting, just look for the union label:

look-for-the-union-label


Just check YouTube for “SEIU ACORN violence (or thugs) at townhall” for slews of videos.

Or, if you want some easy-greasy-sleazy money and can buff up your physique while dumbing down your intellect to the level of slime mold, you could apply to be an “SEIU organizer” and go around playing thug at townhall meetings, yourself!

SEIU-organizer-app

Check out a “teaked” verion of the SEIU Goon graphic suitable for posterizing at Woody’s Place.

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Congress Intent on Swearing The Dhimmicrappic Oath

The 0!’s “Campaign to Enslave America” (A.K.A., “Health Care Reform, “Cap and Trade” etc.) uses the Underpants Gnomes’ Business Plan as a model to create further crises in order to bring our society to its knees. Once he has fully exhausted the benefits of

Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!

and the havoc such a plan will wreak on our society, he can reap the rewards of his refinement of the CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY,

“First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”

Let’s call The 0!’s plans for America what they are, The Underpants Gnome Cloward-Piven Maneuver to Enslave America. Sure, it’s a mouthful, but it has the charm of being more honest than the lying “Health Care Reform” or obscurantist “Cap and Trade” bullshit.

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On Liberty

Back in the day when there were liberals on The Left, liberty was a concept that was much-valued by those who called themselves liberals. When I was but a lad, as the expression used to go, I exposed myself to John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, which dealt not so much with liberty of conscience or of will but liberty as exercised by individuals within the civil realm, in the social order. Of course liberty of conscience and social liberty are closely related, but Mill made clear that freedom to express oneself in the marketplace of ideas was a different thing to liberty of conscience.

Those who call themselves liberals nowadays seem to have forgotten any kind of liberty in their pursuit of extirpating all discourse that challenges their dogma in the areas of

homosexual behavior/priviledges

pseudo-scientific dogma in everything from Darwinism to anthropogenic global warming

economic suppositions

statist control of private matters

property rights

education

religion

and just about all other areas that touch our lives.

Of several things that Mill said in his famous essay that influenced much of my behavior during my formative years, two stand out: his comment that truth need not fear debate and that we must always be wary of the tyranny of prevailing opinion stifling debate.

A simple example to demonstrate that the typical soi-disant “liberal” of today is no such critter is Algore’s response to those who would challenge his AGW position with… facts.

“There’s no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. . . . There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the evidence.”

Funny thing, that “no more debate” meme he seems intent, along with other AGW dogmatists, on making fact: real scientists (as opposed to AGW dogmatists) are debating it, examining the facts and the hypotheses. You can find links to quite a few real scientists (AGW dogmatists simply dismiss real scientists as “deniers”) who have some inconvenient facts to discuss with Mr. Gore here, although anyone who can type “google” can find many, many more references (including this one–pdf, and do note the creds the interviewee has that Algore lacks).

Cutting off (or shouting down) debate on an issue to avoid having to deal with facts is the mark of a weak argument, which says a lot about most fake liberals’ arguments.

I do encourage you to track down (there, that wasn’t so hard, was it?) and read a copy of Mill’s essay, On Liberty. I have my copy, first read as a wee lad *heh*, within reach of my right hand, as I have had for many years. You might find it useful to purchase a hardcopy for marking and note-taking (it’s interesting to me to go back and read my “arguments” with Mill and see how they have changed over the years).

BTW, Mill’s arguments concerning liberty bear very closely on an upcoming post on authority, one I keep deferring but need to write soon.

Trackposted to Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Wolf Pangloss, Democrat=Socialist, A Newt One, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Those who do not learn from history…

…are doomed to repeat it.

Sadly, this is not necessarily true. I’ll get out the “splainsit stick” in a bit to expound on that.

/curmudgeon’s rant: on

George Washington was not the first president of the United States. Seriously. Now, I know many would deride such a comment as silly, even those who already know, as any student of American history knows, that John Hanson was the first president of the United States of America under the Articles of Confederacy, because some do not believe the United States existed before the Constitution of 1787-1789.

Pish-tosh. If the United States of America did not exist before then, then what entity was it that foreign governments treated with under that name? What authority paid troops, what authority issued the Great Seal of the United States in 1782, if the United States did not exist until the Constitution of 1787 was ratified?

Why is it important that we acknowledge that there were seven presidents before George Washington, despite the naysayers who wrongly assert there was no United States until the 1789 ratification of the 1787 Constitution? Because the Articles of Confederacy form the backbone of the fleshed-out Constitution, just as the Declaration of Independence describes the blood that flows through its veins.

Oh, dear me! Did I just make an allusion to a “living document”? Continue reading “Those who do not learn from history…”