Flashpoint

I'm surveying the political landscape and I don't like what I see.

I grew up in the 'burbs of Flint, Michigan...birthplace of the UAW. Adolph Hitler and Mickey Mouse could run for office there and as long as they had that magic (D) after their names on the ballot, they would be elected. I was a product of my environment, and was a self-professed Democrat even when working on my B.A. in Political Science at the University of Michigan Flint, although the further I got, the more doubts began to arise. Just the same, I was a leftist elitist swine. I, like many good enlightened leftists believed that the average person wasn't smart enough to make important political decisions, and that it was going to be up to people like me to make sure that people were taken care of, and that we relieved them of the burdens of any potential failure. Along with that arrogant nanny-statist belief, I also believed that the U.S. was doing nearly everything wrong in its relations with other countries. William Appleman Williams' "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy" was extraordinarily persuasive. I stopped short of concluding that our actions were willfully malevolent and believed that we were simply misguided. (Sorry. I wasn't a bomb-thrower.) I also snidely dismissed the Conservative beliefs that things could be simply defined as right and wrong, and black and white, clinging to the leftist belief that the world was immersed in shades of grey, and that things were not that simple.

However, I got older. I continued my schooling after a few years. I started to look a bit more critically at what government was doing. I was also learning the law. At this point, politically, I was starting to drift a bit more to the right, and started to find myself more and more annoyed at the abdication of personal responsibility and the apparent belief that government had to save us from ourselves. I also started to meet more people, many of them from other countries or first generation American. This was the beginning of my understanding that many of the people in the world who don't like us feel that way for reasons that exist independent of our interactions with other nations and that these dealings merely provide a pretext for this hatred. I also started to realize that personal responsibility, and yes *gasp* religion was at the very heart of the American Ideal. The more I looked at the things that government was doing, the more I was left with the feeling that something was wrong. Careful study showed me what was wrong. I was starting to realize that government was doing things it had no business doing, and it was horribly inefficient, also. I'm not sure exactly when I realized that I was a conservative, but by the time I was earning my Masters in Tax Law, I knew that I was now a conservative.

Now I see many things that I could not see before. Leftists love the "shades of grey" and "nothing is simple" world views for several reasons. First, because complexity makes it easier to obtain and retain power. It virtually cries out for a ruling class to run things and take the burden from the common folk who are too busy (and too simple minded) to understand how to effectively deal with the day-to-day functions of government. This is the reason for the hysterical and vitriolic attacks against Sarah Palin. Her success as an executive undermines the carefully groomed perception that the average person simply is not equipped to govern.

Secondly, these beliefs foster and nurture an atmosphere of ambiguity that allows their way of thinking to slowly but inexorably gain a foothold and continue to advance until society has accepted so much of the necessary leftist dogma that it accepts poisonous concepts as truth. Concepts such as "political correctness", "diversity", and new definitions for old concepts that are so far astray from original connotations that any person with an understanding of history and etymology would think that they have stepped into the Twilight Zone. These words and concepts also serve the dual purpose of indoctrination into the "new" way of thinking, and equipping the new masters with tools to condemn and ostracize those who do not go along with the program and recognize it for what it is. Hence the cries of "racism" when someone dares question the substance or reason of policies promulgated by the left. It also explains the allegations of intolerance when someone questions the wholesale acceptance and societal sanction of any aspect of the homosexual agenda.

Creating this brave new world would have been far more difficult without an aggressive and intellectually dishonest campaign to marginalize the dominant religion. As I have discussed before, our law, and the reasoning underlying it is tremendously influenced by Judeo-Christian belief and philosophy. Much in this belief and philosophy is hostile to the agenda and beliefs of the left. Thus, we had to be subject to lawsuits based on a frightfully misguided belief that the Union must be governed by a policy of "separation of church and state" that did not just ban God from places he had not dwelled in our society and government, but also deliberately and specifically drove him from places where he had historically occupied.

Why have I engaged in this exercise of personal confession and political analysis? So you understand that I understand the breadth and depth of the more advanced thinking on the left, and to lay a foundation for my authority to say that our current political predicament is at a flashpoint. On the one side, I see kerosene. On the other, I see gasoline. The various issues in play right now are a lit match.

On the left, we have a candidate who has tried very hard not to have his past on display for people to view. However, even those who try not to have a record will occasionally leave enough of one to alarm reasonable people who are paying attention. While we really don't know where he was born, he has responded to a lawsuit to discover it not with production of a birth certificate, which would render the lawsuit moot, and dispel the rumor that he is not a natural born U.S. Citizen, but by filing motions to dismiss instead. As an Illinois State Senator, he when on record not only to be against any restriction on abortions, but clearly stated that he was not in favor of babies who survived their mother's attempts to murder them receiving life-saving medical care once they were born. The pastor of his church, the man who performed the marriage ceremony, and presided for 20 years while he sat in the pews nodding, was discovered to be a raving, anti-semitic, Whitey-hating black liberation theology preacher. He has been a close associate of a convicted felon who was involved in many shady real estate and money deals. He has known and associated with two unrepentant terrorists for the past 20 years...people who said as briefly as 10 years ago that they did not regret their bombings and lament that they had not done more. In two years in the U.S. Senate, he collected more money from Fannie and Freddie than any other Congresscritter other than Chris Dodd. He has a long association with ACORN, which is now being investigated in 11 states for large scale voter fraud. The group has also received $800,000 from this candidate to get out the vote in the upcoming elections. Whenever he comes under scrutiny or criticism, he points to the other party and cries "Racism". He actively implies "Racism" by the other side when nothing justifies such an assertion. He has gone on record in saying he will cut the military and talk to threats like Amahdinnerjacket without preconditions. He claims "dirty campaigning" when his opponent brings up facts that he'd rather you not hear. He has said things on the trail that legitimately raise concerns on how he would act to curtail the Second Amendment, and makes no bones about the fact that he would appoint judges who believe that the Constitution is a living breathing document that must be interpreted in the context of the times we live.

On the other side, we have a man who was shot down in Vietnam and beaten so badly that he remains crippled to this day. A person who has demonstrated an annoying propensity to cooperate with the other side of the Aisle when conducting what he believed to be the people's business. His past is an open book when compared to that of his opponent, and although he is not nearly conservative enough for my liking, I also have no reason to question his patriotism. While I think he does not understand that border security is essential to national security, I also know that he will not capitulate to our enemies, or deliberately take steps to weaken us, because he understands that the world is a dangerous place, and if we put the rock down before we extend a hand, we will get the bums rush. He has caused the left to collapse in seizures of Tourettes and foaming at the mouth over his choice in a running mate, because she so effectively destroys a perception they have labored long and hard to impose upon the American people, and yet he helped enable an ill-conceived bail-out plan that helps extend the reach of government further into capitalism to "Fix" a problem created by the intrusion of government into capitalism.

More and more, the average person, and by average, I mean those who haven't bought into the "New" society that the left continues to try to mainstream on the rest of us have been watching the government ignore us about drilling for oil when the price of crude started spiking, and refused to listen to us when we told them not to do the bailout. Now the economy appears to be in a freefall, and the mainstream press still ignores the stories on the leftist candidate and tries to pin everything on the other party.

The left, convinced of its superiority and the need to save us from ourselves by making government mother and father, has given up on dialogue and stridently marches forth, insisting that they have the answers and they must be empowered. The average person is feeling less and less like the government is serving us, and the candidate we are left with still holds opinions that we do not, and is arrogant enough to act on them. The fraud continues to climb, and we are continually confronted with Obamatrons who continue to allege whatever is convenient for their candidate, and completely ignore any attempts at reason, and worship (WORSHIP!!!) their candidate, who, at least with a teleprompter, dazzles with glittering generalities and nebulous promises of hope and change. And the press seems oblivious to the realities of what is occurring. A climate of general panic and fear is gripping the country. I am now convinced that if Obama loses, there will be riots and unrest. I am equally convinced that there will be unrest if Obama wins, because his associates seem to have created the perception that there is widespread fraud and corruption, and the government no longer serves our interests anyway.

I fear that we have the ingredients for a civil war, with the stakes no less than the determination of America's future as a nation united and guided by the principals that have made us an example to the rest of the world, or an America that is a hovel, buried under the weight and tyranny of mediocrity.