The Dumbacrats and Progressives Progressing Toward Nothing

several weeks ago (on AM radio- go figure!) dennis prager (one of my favorie hosts) interviewed the owner/founder/CEO (whichever) of Air America Radio. on a side note, i laugh every time someone refers to it as Scare America Radio, since it's got all these slogan-quoting, sound-biting liberals wetting themselves over imminent threats like the melting of the polar ice caps and the extinction of native owls if we drill in alaska...

anyway, the only thing noteworthy or quoteworthy the AA guy said the entire interview was that he kept referring to the dems as dumb-a-crats. now, i'm sure he didn't actually mean to cast them in such a light. i'm sure it was just an accent or speech impediment or something, but it absolutely cracked me up. (i know, i obviously need more humour in my life...). he said lots of random things, mostly non-sequitors, but literally the only thing i remember clearly is the dumb-a-crats.

but, for the sake of actually having something to say in this post, i'm going to discuss the progessives. many seem to wear this moniker proudly, as if the sheer act of progressing is in and of itself utterly fabulous. yes, sometimes progress is great, like air conditioning and cars (unless you're a global warmingite) or antibiotics. but some progress, like that of the herd of lemmings progressing over a cliff, must only be characterized as underwhelming in the least, and downright dangerous if we want to be honest. some progress toward change, while others progress toward a recapturing of values, cherished, but lost. so, what's the inherent contradiction about progressives? they seem to value progress only in the direction of the dangerous or obscene. let me illustrate by a few examples:

while conservatives want parents to have school choice for their children, "progressives" want to keep everyone (especially the poor, who suffer inordinately for not having any viable educational options) lockied into a failing system of outdated public education.

while conservatives want to provide incentives and training for able-bodied welafre recipients to go to work, "progressives" want them to sit and rot on welfare, under some misguided and paternalistic notion of "helping" those less fortunate.

conservatives want to try new and innovative ways to help the truly needy (like funding church, or faith-based programs) while the "progressives" are so intimidated by the idea of anyone believeing in G-d that they would rather just let people stay on heroin or live in filth.

conservatives want justice for victims, while progressives want to let the most barabric and sick of society's criminals live out their lives on our tax money.

progressives want to do away with profiling (which used to just be called 'good police work') for terrorists, under the complete delusion that political correctness is more vital to a successful society than safety.

progressives push an agenda of belittling the institution of marriage, giving free reign for anyone to have sex with anyone and then abort the baby if you're unlucky enough to be fertile. progressives appear only to be in favor of death if it involves innocent babies or victims of crimes perpetrated by those "less fortunate" (oh, such pity we should have for them...)

progressives are all about progress. too bad they are progressing toward the destruction of society.

progressives have a heck of an agenda going. perhaps one day soon they'll speed up their progress towrad their own destruction. hopefully it'll be before they drag the rest of us down with them.

semper valor.

The 14 Best Books Ever (in no particular order)

1. Albion's Seed
2. Angela's Ashes
3. Amish Society
4. The Man Who Tasted Shapes
5. The Turner Diaries
6. Never Again
7. Cold Zero
8. The American Heritage Dictionary
9. The Death and Life of Great American Cities
10. The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine
11. Spice and Spirit
12. Anything by Paul Riser
14. Parenthood
15. Anything by Dr. William Sears
16. The Turner Diaries

Artestimonial To Idiocy

yesterday i drove past a bridal boutique called 'brides by dementia'. i circled around in the parking lot to do a second drive-by, just to confirm. yep, either someone named her daughter dementia, or someone was trying to get a little too fancy on the naming of her store. either way- ugh...

last night on the news, i saw an interview with ron artest- some basketball guy who hit? attacked? jumped on? some guy who threw beer on him? at him? near him? near his friend? anyway, apparently he was sentenced to community service to undo the damage of his outburst. so, guess what the judge had him doing? talking to a group of kids. okay, that has good potential- a public apology in front of his smallest fans, warning them to stay on the right side of the law. but guess what this clown spoke about? how not sorry he was. how someone can call you names, but if they do anything more than that- hit, kick, throw- whatever- then you'd better retaliate. huh? is this our criminal justice system bankrolling a program where wayward sports heroes can corrupt what little chance there is of the next generation NOT getting in trouble with the law? is this vigilantaism on my dime? so this yahoo just kept going on and on about how he wasn't going to apologize. he wasn't going to characterize what he did as a mistake. he urged all the little kids to do the same- if someone 'steps up to you' you respond in kind. no 'just walk away'. no 'be the bigger man'. no 'i wish i had considered my actions before i acted like a big goon and jumped on some little geeky defenseless beer throwing suburban idiot.' so, what's up? is it not bad enough that our national "heroes" are decidedly unheroic? do we really need to actually put them in front of children to preach and glorify their idiocy?

maybe they should run a disclaimer before all sports matches. WARNING: the following people are good at throwing balls or chasing balls or running with balls. other than that, they are, by and large, weak-minded amoral thugs. enjoy their performance, but do not, under any circumstances, try to emulate their behaviour in real life"

or maybe the next sports season should be called the NBA by dementia.

Lies My Mother Told Me

i have a book called 'lies my teacher told me", which details many of the historically inaccurate "facts" which history teachers persist in indoctrinating their students with. granted, many (maybe even most?) of these teachers have no idea that they are disseminating lies, since they are teaching what they were taught or what comes from textbooks, which are globally assumed to be Ultimate Truth.

on the radio today (surprise!) was an ad for an upcoming show about lies your mother told you. they were asking for things like 'if you go swimming after you eat, you will get a cramp and drown', but it got me thinking about the lies my mother told me for real. the kind that mess you up without you even realizing that your entire perspective on the world is just totally messed up. i get the outright lies. someone very near and dear to me comes from a background of liars. they equivocate, they color the truth, and when it suits their purpose, they just out and out lie. it's a cultural thing that i don't exactly get, but at least you know that if their lips are moving, you may be on the recieving end of a tall tale.

my mother had a great life. until it fell apart. for whatever reasons, which i will not share on this blog, her really put together life came undone. she went from glassy eyed suburban housewife to cynical raging bitch in the space of less than a year. what i didn't realize was how her constant simmering anger would cause me to have constant simmering anger, even though i was neither the aggreived party in her messes nor aware of the impact of her 'life lessons'.

now, as a mother myself, i really see that although you want to be a role model for your children, you are a person first. whatever you are dealing with is dealt with on the stage of your role in the family. even what you think is private is not, even what you think you are hiding you're not, and even what you think nobody notices, they do. you want to show your kids how to rise above adversity and how to soar over challenges, but really, they hear you crying through the bathroom door. they hear you on the phone with your friend when you're wispering and they're supposed to be sleeping. they hear your tone and see your eyes roll when that certain neighbor's name is mentioned and they internalize it.

but, rather than give a sermon about how we should all be good role models for our offspring, i'm gonna just write about one of the multitude of ways my mother messed me up. cuz it's my blog, and i can.

my mother hates men. no, she's not a feminist. no, she's not a lesbian. she has no political agenda, and she doesn't rant and rave about it. she just takes pot shots at them. she makes sarcastic comments about them. she sneers and jeers and informs her children (now grown) and her grandchildren (quite young and impressionable) that men juts totally suck. you can't depend on them. they lie. they cheat. they are selfish. you better get what you want from them and leave before they leave you. no man can be trusted even with your front door key, much less your heart. she tried her best to insulate us against the hurt she carried around. but really, she just made all of us have really low expectations about men. i guess we figured that if they were all equally bad, we might as well not look too hard to find someone who put up a nice facade. it would just fall away eventually anyway, to reveal the Man underneath. it made everything very straighforward and very clear.

until i met my husband.

my husband is awesome. he was not raised in a world where men leave. he was not raised believing that it was only a matter of time until someone messed you over. he was actually raised in a family that believes that they are incredible people and are entitled to all the good life has to offer. what revolutionary concepts.

you see, i was taught that the expectations reflect the realities. my husband showed me that the expectations shape the realities.

if you expect bad and assume bad, you attract bad. or you mess up the good because you are so convinced that it is or will be bad that you can't enjoy it. this is not some metaphysical woo-woo theory. it is a simple fact that if you go through life with white knuckles and your teeth clenched, you often end up with numb fingers and broken teeth.

so, should you look through rose colored glasses? should you believe in your deepest heart that if you wish it good it will be good? of course not. but neither can you live a full, rich, functioning life if you are locked behind layer upon layer of protective coating.

all i'm saying is that i'm only human. my mother was only human, as were her parents and their parents and everyone on back. we do the best with what we can with what we have, we play the cards we're dealt, and the rest is pretty much out of our control.

it's comfortable to dwell on this, but i prefer to try to make a conscious effort every day to rise above the lies my mother told me.

6 Million- Or Not. What's The Difference?

thanks to melly mel gibson, we are once again revisiting the idea of holocaust deniers. whatever anti-semitic remarks he made (i still haven't heard exactly what he supposedly said, but that doesn't even matter), he has once again caused people to revisit his father's holocaust denials.

it seems that, of the golden holy issues which nobody can ever speak of, the primacy of having 6 million jews killed in the holocaust is the jewish untouchable issue. not that there is any serious scholarship to speak of concluding that the holocaust didn't happen at all. like 9/11, there are simply too many witnesses of too many events from disparate times, locations, backgrounds, and agendas to have totally made it up. that many random people just would not be complicit in such widescale fraud. that said, who cares if there were 6 million jews killed or 6,000 or even 6? it may lessen the impact on the jewish nation, but does it really lessen the horror or the implications for now?

yes, a man who can exterminate 6 million people has "accomplished" more than one who has killed a mere 6. but the implications for society are the same. a very compelling and persuasive man, who has a clearly laid out agenda for widescale murder and anihilation, was able to convince lots and lots of people that he had the right idea. that is scary any way you look at it.

usually, genocide is the result of some sort of vendetta. in africa, for example,the genocide of one tribe against another is the result of a loooooooooooooooong history of tit-for-tat and somewhat earned hatred. while no (or few?) rational people would support genocide as a means to end internecine conflict, it is at least somewhat understandable that the 'thorn in your side' would inspire you to want to get rid of it, once and for all.

but hitler's hatred of the jews wasn't like that. for all of the anti-semitism that has grown since hitler, and all of the anti-semitism that was around before him, nobody was actually personally affronted by the jews. some people justify their anti-jewish stance based on 'jewish control' of stuff. to me, that's kind of a chicken and egg argument- which came first, we'll never really know, so it's hard to sort out cause and effect. did people hate the jews because they imagined them in control of _________________________ (fill in the blank) or did people hate the jews and they needed a reason to hang it on other than, 'they just rub me the wrong way'? but hitler really made no such pretense. not with the jews, not with the gypsys, not with the homosexuals or catholics. hitler just spoke very persuasively about the inherent flaws of these people and persuaded hundreds of thousands of people that the world would be better off without them. and that is what is important.

what people need to focus on is the idea behind extermination of people. really at the end of the day, it doesn't make a bit of difference if hitler killed 6 million people or not. there is nothing holy about that number. to make that number somehow unassailable misses the whole point of what needs to be fought for. whether 6 million people were murdered or 3 million or 600, the point is that he had the will, the way, and the popular support. the point is that people need to quit apologizing for and softening and excusing the stance of manics like the guy in iran, or the leaders of hamas or hezbollah or al quaeda and wake up before it is too late. if we can't wrap our minds around the fact that some people have a completely different paradigm for viewing the world, it will be to our detriment. if we assume everyone to be 'good at heart' and simply misguided, we have sorley underestimated the potential for true evil in our midst. if we get so caught up in fighting for numbers and excuses that we forget to fight for principles and right, then we may as well start carving the headstones for the next 6 million.

just remember, next time it may not be the jews.