Oh good, a day off and nothing much to take care of until later today. Coffee’s on, dog’s asleep under the blanket, and my Sweetie has a new garden magazine. All is good.
Michelle points us to this piece by Heather MacDonald about Chicago’s South Side, Barack Obama, and a fatally dysfunctional Black culture. No PC BS in this article.
This past September, a cell-phone video of Chicago students beating a fellow teen to death coursed over the airwaves and across the Internet. None of the news outlets that had admiringly reported on Obama’s community-organizing efforts mentioned that the beating involved students from the very South Side neighborhoods where the president had once worked. Obama’s connection to the area was suddenly lost in the mists of time.
Haiti. It was a disaster even before the earthquake struck. I wonder if this will be Obama’s opportunity for “nation building”? Literally. Just askin’. And I’m afraid the worst stories are yet to happen there.
What happened in Haiti this week is a catastrophe of staggering proportions — one that’s likely to shape U.S. policy profoundly in the Caribbean for years to come.
There literally is no “there” there in Haiti anymore. But it was hardly a functioning state even before the deadly earthquake added its devastating blow to tribulations man had created.
There was nothing remotely resembling a system of emergency relief or basic medical care. Propping up the country was an enormous charitable state-within-a-state, beginning with the better-known international agencies, extending to hundreds of religious charities, and filtering down to individual Americans of faith who literally flew in and built their own orphanages.
Leave it to Doc Zero to point out that America’s wealth is the only real answer to crisis and disaster in Haiti, and the world for that matter. Not only are we the wealthiest nation on earth, we are the hardest working and most giving. God has blessed us for many reasons, and this is one of them. Don’t piss it away.
The governments and people of other nations make admirable efforts, but none has the combination of strength and compassion that makes Americans the first to lift debris from broken bodies, or raise emergency medical tents where hospitals once stood. The selfish and brutal tyrannies jockeying for dominance of the post-American world do not have the heart, and the good people fearfully watching their shadows lengthen don’t have the wealth.
Make no mistake: it is wealth that feeds the hungry, cures the sick, and mends the broken. Capitalism is the practical expression of freedom, and wealth allows the tangible expression of compassion. Right now, the Red Cross can use hard cash from capitalists more than sincere best wishes from penniless bystanders. Kind hearts and helplessness blend into despair.
Mankind cannot afford to watch America slide into a socialist coma. It cannot endure the voice of freedom fading into a whisper. Those unemployed people sending their bottom dollar to help the people of Haiti would do more if they could. They don’t want to be unemployed. Businesses don’t want to lay people off. A nation with our incredible resources and human capital has no end of work to do.
Mark Steyn. Each article he posts could provide a “qoute of the day” for the week. Go, read. Will Massachusetts follow Barack off the cliff? Stay tuned on Tuesday for the outcome of a race between the “usual” Mass-Dem and some guy with an R after his name (who looks for all the world like an Idaha-Dem to me, but hey, what do I know?).
A week before the presidential election, I wrote in this space:
“Settled democratic societies rarely vote to ‘go left.’ Yet oddly enough that’s where they’ve all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter.”
For the most part, that’s just the ratchet effect of Big Government, growing, expanding, remorselessly, under cover of darkness. What happened this past year is that Obama and the Democratic Congress made it explicit, and did it in daylight. And, while Barack may be cool and stellar if you’re as gullible as “the educated class,” Nancy Pelosi and Ben Nelson most certainly aren’t: There’s no klieg light of celebrity to dazzle you from the very obvious reality that they’re spending your money way faster than you can afford and with no inclination to stop.
“The educated class” is apparently too educated to grasp this insufficiently nuanced point.
It’s not just the money. The notion that the IRS should be able to seize your assets if you don’t arrange your health care to the approval of the federal government represents the de facto nationalization of your body, which is about as primal an assault on individual liberty as one could devise.
Speaking of what’s going on in Massachusetts, here’s a WSJ opinion piece by Jon Keller: The Backlash Is Coming! I certainly hope so.
OK, that’s enough for now… I think some bacon, eggs, and English muffins might be in order. Then I might load up the truck and head out to the desert for a little 200 yard prone Garand practice, in anticipation of the Battle Rifle Match later this month. I hope you have a good day planned as well.
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