Cats Are Liberals

Nothing exemplifies the welfare state better than the life of the average cat. My cats Rolo and Harpeth are perfect examples. Their food and water bowls are always full. They come and go as they please, sometimes staying out all night doing God knows what. They are incredibly ungrateful, sometimes sharpening their claws on the furniture and laying in the laundry basket. They have everything they need, yet they still whine and moan as if they are entitled to more. When they get in fights or become sick, they receive free health care. They never take responsibility for any of their behavior. They have an entitlement mentality, passed down from generation to generation. They refuse to work and they lay around all day.

Now I realize that all liberals aren't cats. Some liberals are idealistic and hard working. They are the ones who enable the manipulative felines.

Wait a minute, does that make me a liberal? Aaagh!

Nativist, Xenophobic, Or How To Argue Against Enforcement of Immigration Laws

Racism, xenophobia, and nativism. If you are a left winger and looking to enter any discussion about illegal immigration, be sure to arm yourselves with those words. They offer you your best chance of victory. Never ever try to argue on an intellectual basis. Forget about the message. Just gun for the messenger. If you do this, victory is yours, regardless of how wrong you are.

I really don't understand the cynicism that people like S-Town Mike have toward their neighbors. Do Mike and his friends, like commenter Ginger, really believe that every one who opposes illegal immigration is a hate filled racist? If they do believe that, no wonder they are so angry.

After hearing this story yesterday, I reacted like most people. A very bright young student, a track star at TSU, and a future law school student, was killed yesterday by a drunk driver. That alone is enough to leave you bothered. Every life is valuable regardless of one's potential, but it especially hurts when an all American girl like this has her life cut short. Maybe we are wrong to seemingly put more value on this young lady's life than others. I don't know, but that's not the point. The point is, a young person was killed by a drunk driver.

Not only though was she killed by a drunk driver, she was killed by a drunk driver who was in this country illegally. But wait, it gets worse. Not only was this guy in this country illegally, but he was arrested four other times for various crimes, including car burglary and public intoxication. That's four times that this man was in the custody of law enforcement without being sent home.

I don't know what sources Mike uses to make his judgments about conservatives, but his immediate assumption that racism has fueled this discussion is just plain wrong. Are people angry and upset? Yes they are, but I haven't seen any protesters walking up and down Nolensville Pike wearing sheets and hoods. No the anger that most Americans feel today, is not aimed at the illegal aliens themselves.

The anger that most Americans feel today, is squarely aimed at the government. Americans don't hate Mexicans. Most Americans probably understand the reasons why illegals come here. As far as the government is concerned though, the average American feels betrayed. They feel like their President, their Senators and Congressmen, their governor, and their state legislators do not care about them nor listen to them. The public has grown increasingly cynical because they lobbied hard to have a fence built, and it has barely been started. The President that they helped elect, has resorted to calling them names, the same names used by lefties like S-Town Mike. When private citizens took time out of their lives to go down to the border and do a job that the government should have been doing, the President even called them "vigilantes". That kind of stuff has left the public angry and they have a right to be angry. When the average American looks at our government, he sees a collection of men and women who pander to special interest groups, rather than the public they are supposed to represent. Some of those groups even represent people that are in this country illegally.

Personally, I am pretty liberal on immigration. I believe we should change our laws to make it easier for people to come here. I also believe we should spend whatever amount it takes to build a fence along the southern border. As far as amnesty is concerned, I don't really care. But before we even start talking about granting anybody amnesty, we need to erect that fence. After we build that fence, then we can talk about amnesty. What is the point in having laws if you are not going to enforce them? The cynical side of me believes that laws passed by Congress merely amount to lip service. They calm the masses for a little bit, while not really amounting to anything. That's why I haven't paid much attention to the immigration bill debate. It just seems like business as usual.

I don't have much else to say about this subject, except that I am tired of seeing descent people labeled racist and xenophobic. That just isn't right and it is far from the truth.

Recovering Southerner Syndrome

Dinesh D'souza on Mike Nifong and the Duke professors.

Nifong seems to be suffering from Recovering Southerner Syndrome. This is the ailment, first named on this blog, in which Southerners feel so guilty about slavery and segregation that they perform undignified backward somersaults to prove that they are "not really Southern." When they encounter something Southern--like white Southern frat boys at a party--their mind immediately conjures up images of segregated water fountains and they draw their swords and go into Crusader Against Racism mode. Viewed in this way, Nifong saw himself as a kind of white knight slaying the dragons of Southern bigotry. Nifong was not alone in this: dozens of Duke professors reacted to the incident in exactly the same way.

It's like this. You will never ever see me treating black people "differently". Not better, not worse. If you really care about black people and believe that we are all created equal, then treat them the same way you treat white people. Let me warn you though. If you do, there is a good chance you will be labeled a racist.

Reagan and the Wall

Yesterday was the anniversary of Reagan's Berlin Wall speech where he famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Of course if you listen to the revisionists, Reagan had nothing to do with the wall coming down or the Soviet Union falling to pieces. No, he merely just happened to be at the right place at the right time. To them, Gorbachev was the hero. Yes the communist who tried to save communism and the loser of the Cold War is the one they admire, not Reagan, not Thatcher.

Lech Walesa knows the truth about Reagan though.

When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty.

As do many.

When liberals talk about human rights, they often mention protesters and even a little peanut farmer from Georgia who used to talk about the subject, while never really doing anything. But no man has ever done more for human rights and liberty than Ronald Reagan. He didn't protest. He confronted evil and demanded change. Yet, the so called human rights crowd hated him. Weird.

The Dirty Word "Profit"

John Stossel is spot on as usual. He asks:

When did profit become a dirty word?"

I wish the oil executives would face the media. They could say something like:

"What are you complaining about? What do you think we do with our profits? Buy fancy cars and homes? Well, we do, actually, but nearly all the money goes to looking for more oil and following environmental rules that you want us to follow. You should want us to make more profit. Anyway, we make less profit per gallon than your beloved government takes in taxes."

Envy, which happens to be one of the seven deadlies, is what drives American populism. I have a question for all of you economic populists that often complain about the gap between the rich and poor. If you make a rich man less rich, what does it gain the poor man? The answer is nothing. Milton Friedman once said, "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."

Left wing populism my friend, is the very definition of an economic fallacy. It doesn't make sense, but then again it doesn't have to. All it has to do is make people angry and envious, so that when they vote, they will vote Democrat.

Would You Liberals Please Stop Calling Bush A Conservative

It is really getting old. It seems like that every time I or anybody else writes something about the philosophy of conservatism, or right libertarianism, someone from the left enters into the argument by telling us how much George Bush sucks. Even though I and others have repeated this a million times, I will go ahead and do it again, GEORGE BUSH IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE. If you have a brain, perform a Google search and find out how conservatives define conservatism and compare it to the way that George Bush has governed. Better yet, read some conservative writers and even listen to some talk radio (skip Hannity, he is an idiot). You will find that, not even Rush Limbaugh considers George Bush to be a conservative.

I realize that it is a lot easier for you to just throw in "George Bush sucks" to every philosophical discussion, but by doing so you are revealing yourself to be an idiot. Perhaps you are okay with that. It sure seems like it.