A Week into the Democratic Dream Season,

and they're still terrified of ....Sarah Palin!!

These comments - here - in response to Sarah Palin forming a PAC - are hysterical (literally). The Democrats Dream Team has been in session for exactly 1 week, but they're already trying to 'explain away' their looming failed Democratic Congress policies by talking about 'how long it will take BO to fix everything. And most amusing of all is how they're wetting themselves with fear over Sarah Palin - imo because they know in their gut that she's a force of Nature, and with some seasoning she'll be a very formidable candidate. Let's see ... no successful terrorist attacks on US soil in last 7 years - thanks, GWBush. 52 month bull market and expanding economy - thanks, GWBush. 80% of Al Queda leadership killed, and Bin Laden in a cave somewhere and sending messages by donkey - thanks GWBush. Iraq now a democracy friendly to the US - thanks GWBush ... Fannie and Freddie underpinnings of financial meltdown - thanks Democrats. Detroit unable to make a profit - thanks UAW and Democrats in its pocket (along with Detroit mgmt incompetence). Two years of single-digit Congress-approval ratings - congratulations, Democratic-controlled Congress (not that I don't agree that many Republican congressmen are also incompetent). And the first thing in office that BO does is forbid more of the 3-times-used aggressive interrogation techniques that saved many many many American lives (see here )... yeah, he's brilliant ain't he?, and any tragedy as a result of that is on his head, and those of his supporters.
Sorry for the inconvenient facts. Enjoy your time at the wheel, children. Please don't take offense, though, if I wear my seat belt.

Ayn Rand

Steve,

I love the thrust message of her books (Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged). I'm fascinated that against the backdrop of your political views of People and the State that you find some of these notions compelling (maybe there's hope for you yet! hehe) .....
Many of her posits are positions I have been beating against your 'liberal political wall' to no avail for much of 2008. To wit, Objectivism holds that reality exists independent from consciousness; that individual persons are in contact with this reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation; that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest; that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez-faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form­a work of art­that he can comprehend and respond to.


I think Buckley's objection to Rand was twofold - 1) her denial of God's existence (surely one reason you like her), and 2) her insistence on dwelling in the purely theoretical, whereas Buckley sought an end (the saving and betterment of the United States and individual liberties) to the means of his conservative reasoning. Witness his comments "She was an eloquent and persuasive anti-statist, and if only she had left it at that, but no. She had to declare that God did not exist, that altruism was despicable, that only self-interest was good and noble "


I truly loved reading both of her seminal books - they were 'projects' that required concentration and endurance. And the celebration of the individual and his right to pursue his own truth and beauty and also own the fruits of his labor and vision mesh very nicely with my political leanings. Unlike Buckley, I was able to ignore her views on God - of course, I was engaged with her only to my own enjoyment and edification, not the point man (as Buckley was) in the existential struggle of a generation.

I have both these books around the house somewhere. I'll send you one to read if you like.

Happy New Year.

Domestic Drilling, Dems, and Disaster

B,

quite frankly, I think the hard times ahead will be God's way of spanking us as a society for falling so far off the trail of His prescriptions for how we should be conducting ourselves. If we don't 'get the message', then the spanking will becoming progressively harder and harder, ultimately ending in the 5th cycle of discipline, which is the destruction of the nation. Lots of examples of that throughout history.

The Democrats will be looked upon 50 years from now as either criminally traitorous or phenomenally naive and stupid. Either way, end result is the same - our plane just tipped over and is going in a nose dive. I figure we've got about 10 years to 'wake up and turn it around' ... any longer than that, and the downward momentum will be too great to reverse.
Of course, if we suffer a major terrorist attack in the next few years (an increasing likelihood as a result of Obama's intent to gut our Intelligence Gathering community, it could cripple us economically and socially to the point of you and me not living long enough to see the rebound happen (if it does happen).

We are living the '30's all over again, and danger is in the wind. Keep your powder dry, Packn1.