The Certitude of Liberal Genius.  The overriding principle of liberal thought in America today is the certitude that they know better what is good for you than you know yourself.  As a general principle, this would not be so dangerous.  There are many very intelligent people in the liberal universe and the fact is that in many cases, they may very well have some good ideas about how society and government should work.  There can be no question that in these struggling economic times, there are many people who need a helping hand in our country; there is a place for compassion and heart.

But here is the rub: Liberals have elevated this principle to the very top of their concerns.  By definition, that means that all other concerns are subordinate to this.  Concerns such as the rights of the individual, the free market nature of our economy, the impartiality of government, and the right to have a chosen religion set guidelines for how we live our lives.  Liberal thought has arrived at a point in its evolution where any means justify the end.  This, I contend, is the culture that has led us into the many scandals that are currently percolating throughout this Administration.

I have always thought that Presidents get far too much credit when times are good and far too much blame when times are bad.  But there can be no question that they do in fact set the tone for those they choose to help them run this government.  Any person selected through the patronage system will understandably think that they are to emulate the philosophy espoused by their patron.  Now you and I, as regular citizens, can factor in the nuance of the politician saying one thing to one group and an entirely different thing to another group, many times on the same day.  But these political appointees don’t really have that latitude.  They are soldiers on the front; they are defending the holy grail of thinkspeak; they are charged with the task of transforming this nation.  We have never been surprised to find these political handmaidens behaving in an overzealous fashion and we never should be.  But it has also been understood, up until recently, that when this exuberance occurs, it is admitted and those excitable parties take their abundance of energy to another, more appropriate cause that is outside of the public trust.  That has not been happening with liberals over the last decade or so.    They have become quite shameless in their quest for “the principle” and have basically accepted that anything… and I do mean anything, goes in pursuit of that goal.

Conservative thought can be just as wrongheaded as liberal thought.  It can, and does,  lead to the very same abuses and corruption.  But the conservative wing of our political spectrum has undeniably done a better job of calling out its radicals than has the liberals.  Obama came into the White House in open and unabashed intention of not only pursuing this principle, but actually ingraining it into our government to such an extent as to make it intractable.  Until the leadership of the liberal wing in this nation reverts back to placing the principle to a proper position below more central and important concerns, I fear that the arrogance exhibited by Obama and his ilk will continue to run amok in our government; to the detriment of our nation.

Epiphany of Distinction.  After living in this world for over 60 years, I believe that I have finally realized the difference between a liberal and a conservative.  Now let me be clear; I did not say “the difference between a Democrat and a Republican”.   I did not say that because based on my life experience, all Democrats are not liberals and all Republicans are not conservatives.  As further clarification of my clarification, I do not mean liberal in the social sense or in the fiscal sense; I do not mean conservative in the foreign policy sense or in the judicial sense.  I am speaking about these terms as they pertain to a general philosophy of life; a guiding principle that colors all that makes up an individual.  I have always known there was a difference between a liberal and conservative and, being a moderate conservative myself, have sought to define how I am different from those liberals that I have so heartily disagreed with over the years.  However, I could never clearly, in a general sense, quantify what this difference is.  I think I now can.  Like many things in life, it begins as a simple choice and over time and through a series of compound equations and unintended consequences, it evolves into a way of life that in many ways does not resemble what it was first intended to be.

My wife and I were keeping our grandchildren with us for a couple of days; they are a 2 year old boy and a 3 year girl.   These are our first grandchildren and we are both shamelessly overindulgent with them; her much more than me.  I am recognized in the family as the hard case, the disciplinarian, otherwise known as “mean old papaw”.  Upon awakening this morning, the kids ate only a minor portion of the breakfasts prepared for them by their grandmother and it was my position that there would be no more food or snacks until lunch time.  My wife found this to be unreasonable because, after all, they are just children and must have nourishment.  As I typically do, I went my way with my belief and she went hers; the kids got pretty much what they wanted the rest of the morning.  The distinction I see in our two approaches was that of discipline; I required it and she did not.  And that, my friends, is the difference between a liberal and a conservative.  Not only does a liberal lack behavioral discipline, they tend to demonize it.  Now when I say a liberal lacks discipline, I don’t mean they are weak and unable to “stick to the task” at hand.   Quite the contrary, I have found their reliance and resolve quotients about the same as conservatives.  I am talking about that general philosophy of life.  Let me try to explain.

My position is that the kids will learn from being hungry to take full advantage of morning food being offered to them in the future.  This in turn will hopefully lead them to recognize this principle in other walks of life and lead them to a higher level of accountability.  On the other hand, if we allow them to eat when they wish, they lose respect for the appointed meal times in their lives and reasonably develop a poor view of those who demand a certain degree of rigidity in those meal times.  Are they prepared for their elementary school careers where there will be appointed meal times or will they rebel against those schedules as being arbitrary and nonsensical?  Will they demand the same casual attitude from their teachers and peers that they have grown so comfortable with at home?  Will this lead to a certain tolerance for those who wish to nibble throughout the day rather than eat on a conventional tour?  Will they tend to view those who adhere to the conventional tour as narrow-minded and unenlightened?  Will this permissive attitude about meal times extend to study schedules, work careers, and other aspects of their lives as they grow and mature into adults?

Is this an oversimplification?  Yes, of course.  Is this an extension of the elementary into the complex?  Absolutely yes.  However, who can deny that we as a society have become so tolerant, and supportive of tolerance, and so politically correct, and supportive of political correctness, that we have managed to dilute some of the fundamental things that create our true worth as individuals?  Accepting the reality of mediocrity and promoting mediocrity is two entirely different things; and perhaps the line between them has been blurred.  While recognizing and defending the rights of individuals to be different, to be themselves, to be non-conformist as compare to the bulk of society, and to live a life with narcissistic blinders, have we not diminished the alternative, and many times more difficult, choices that are made by most people in our nation?  There is an old saying that has been used by Alexander Hamilton, Ginger Rogers, and Malcolm X (how’s that for diversity?) that goes…”If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”.  Standing and fighting for right and wrong, for clear principles of fairness, and for protection of the weak will always be honorable; but to promote tolerance simply for the sake of tolerance is nothing more than a parody on paving that highway to Hades with good intentions.  It can only lead to a culture where no one is accountable, no one is decisive, and our people simply devolve down to a level of civilized anarchy.  Could that be the “new normal” that we hear so much about these days?  When we as a society consider tolerance, it is essential that we first examine the true value of that being tolerated before we debate the actual practice of tolerating it.

Too Big To Heal?  Over the last few years, a popular phrase has been “Too Big to Fail”; the implication being that the wide-ranging effects of failure outweigh the costs of saving the entity, even if saving requires extraordinary and preferential methods.  To put a different spin on the phrase, it is entirely possible that our government has become “Too Big to Heal”; the implication being that it is too massive and complex to clean up and it must be downsized to make it “manageable”. 

The recent explosion of scandals involving this Administration seems to add credence to this theory.  To his credit, Obama never made any pretense that his intention was anything other than a nanny state, replete with an ever-expanding government; any person who was paying attention knows this.  Unfortunately, he has followed through on his intentions and has only been marginally slowed by a Republican House of Representatives.  Obama’s masterful use of executive power and action has largely accomplished by fiat what he could not accomplish legislatively.   Only now, with the sheet being pulled back on the AG, the IRS, HHS, etc. are we beginning to realize how widespread the tentacles of Executive Power have spread throughout our society.  But let us be honest here….Our burgeoning government with all of its layers, redundancy, and hidden compartments didn’t just get that way with Obama’s election.   Every administration since Reagan has contributed, in varying degrees, to this decay.  For all of his talk about compassionate conservatism, the size of government exploded under George W. Bush and has only accelerated under the tutelage of the One. 

The fact is that the corruption we see with the combination of past (and current) administration employees/appointees, retiring Senators and Congressmen, Wall Street, corporate America, and international banking has been strengthening for decades and has become so commonplace that a large portion of it is hidden by the sheer bulk of government.  Until we can shrink the government down, eliminate some of the dark nooks and crannies, bring every single department under some type of scrutiny and accountability, and eliminate the opportunities for corruption that exist today, it is doubtful that we will ever have anything faintly resembling a government worthy of respect, trust,  and praise.  We need to trim out the brush, consolidate the missions, eliminate the trash, and bring in the healing effects of sunshine.   Only then will the corrupt individuals from both parties realize that there is no place to hide and they will either serve honorably or get out.

Will We Ever Breath Fresh Air Again?  The dramatic impact of low-to-no information voters in the last election cycle coupled with the drip-drip-drip of Obama administration scandals leaves one disillusioned and jaded.  Unfortunately, when faced with the disgust of how corrupt and ethically-challenged this Administration is, one turns to the alternative and sees…..the Republicans.  The Republicans…who differ only in a few principles; but differ very little in practice.  Here we have on the one hand the Democrats, whose insatiable quest for tolerance leads them to a type of leadership that is full of arrogance and a race to see who can withstand the greatest indignity and on the other hand the Republicans, who feign outrage in a self-righteous vein while behaving just like the Democrats behind the scenes.  I think that is the one main difference I have seen between the two parties in my lifetime; Democrats find a way, any way, to win and see no shame in it; while Republicans continue to bring knives to gun fights.   Ultimately, they are members of the same club, but just present different fronts.

It is really, really difficult to see how this cesspool of a culture that we currently have in WDC will ever change.  Bush had eight years to do it, some of those with control of both houses of Congress, and did not move the needle.  For all of his lofty and hollow rhetoric, Obama has done nothing to move the needle either; it has likely regressed a bit during his watch.  When we look at the candidate prospects for the next presidential election, is there any reason to expect anything different?  What reasonable person should expect a different style of Executive leadership when we continue to draw our candidates from the same contaminated sample?  Republicans and Democrats alike continue to recruit their party leaders based on pocketbook and influence-peddling abilities while choosing their candidates from their training academies that school the students in the old “party first, country second” mantra. 

It is a terrible attitude to carry, but I fear that our nation’s government must endure a terrible tragedy in order to right itself.   A wise friend once told me that sometimes a train must wreck in order to fix itself properly.  Until the informed (and uninformed!) voters of this nation reach a stage of total disgust with our current two-party leadership in this country, demonstrate that disgust in some fashion that transfers real pain to the two parties, and begins to seek their new leaders from a source other than the two-party (not necessarily a third party) training system…I fear we will continue to devolve as a nation, see the morass in WDC deepen and widen, and continue to hurtle in an ever-increasing fashion towards that point of no return.  Government as it currently exists may very well be too large to tame.  A clear first step is to shrink it, get it down to a manageable size, and then begin to attack the cancer that is destroying it.  I am talking about practice here; not policy.  What our Government has become is not a Democrat or a Republican thing; it is a corruption thing, pure and simple. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Obama administration will be to create the train wreck that leads to a proper fix.

How Did We Get Here?  "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" arose as part of a quotation by the expansively named John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902).   "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."  I am afraid that the Obama administration, like a few before it, has become a poster child for Mr. Acton’s theory.

As pathetically impotent and biased as they have become, the sad truth is that the press is essentially the only firewall between the common man and absolute political corruption.  Consider the overwhelming media in today’s real-time, 24/7 news cycle world, couple that with the rapid increase in low-to-no information voters, and you have a formula for what we witnessed in the last election cycle.  By any objective standard, Mitt Romney was one of the most qualified presidential candidates in history.  Given his qualifications and resume, given the challenges that currently beset this nation, he was indeed the perfect man for our times.  But for whatever reason, the press determined early on in the process that Obama would be re-elected; and as part of that decision, they abdicated their power and responsibility in order to secure that determination.  Shame on them; the chickens are now coming home to roost.

As we saw with Nixon, a President who becomes drunk with power quickly loses sight of any moral or ethical obligation to transparency.  With his minions following his every word in lockstep, and going about their self-preserving missions independently, this Administration has decided to maintain control at all costs.  Any action, regardless of ethical, moral, or even (perhaps?) legal implications, was deemed appropriate to keep The Hand on the lever of power and push the agenda that was divine beyond question.

As this harvest of shame continues and the press finally begins to unravel this pitiful tapestry, I would hope that they will take a moment or two along the way to reflect on their massive and unforgiveable failure to be the non-partisan and objective guardians that they should be…and should have been.  We should not expect the press to be perfect; but is it too much to expect them to be honest?  The absolute corruption that Mr. Acton referred to has, in this case, not only applied to the Obama administration; it has equally applied to the press who has checked out on their important role in this nation and drank the kool-aid so generously furnished by the One.

The List is Growing.  I am not fan of Barrack Obama; his behavior, his ethics, and his performance.  I am not a huge fan of the Republican Party either; but it is presently the lesser of two poor choices.  I feared that a second Obama administration would feel so empowered by hubris that they would veer into dangerous territory regarding executive actions.  Unfortunately, recent news developments indicate that the veering began well before the second-term election.   Let us count four of the ways.

An amateur YouTube filmmaker is dragged out of his home by gray shirts in the middle of the night (yes…this is literal) under the guise that he is primarily to blame for the Benghazi attacks.  Now it has become clear that not only was he not the primary cause of this tragedy, but this Administration knew that from the beginning and fabricated/nourished this fairy tale to purposely mislead the American public; with, I might add, the mainstream media (Candy Crowley anyone?) on board as co-conspirators.  This should not only alarm any sane person concerned about citizens’ rights in the country, but is also indicates a severe lack of awareness or concern by this Administration about honestly, ethics, and morals.

This Administration (and their Fed puppet master) continues to prop up this economy with federal hiring, federal spending, and massive currency pumping.  How long the bubble can be maintained is anyone’s guess, but the longer we wait for the “pop”, the worse the implications will be.  Once again, go to any mainstream media outlet and you see the rosiest spin possible on any economy-related number, while fostering a veil of self-denial for the darkness coming that is hidden in any reasonable analysis of the data.

Obamacare continues to accrue baggage as it stumbles towards some type of implementation.  So far, the baggage has been invisible to the public because it is primarily behind the scenes and mostly associated with preparation for upcoming events.  However, once those upcoming events become reality, the true suffering and economic damage from this colossal legislative blunder will become all too apparent to the nation as a whole.  Putting this big, fat genie back in the bottle will be a task that will be monumentally difficult, but equally unavoidable.  The ultimate tragedy is that so much of the bill’s content could have been accomplished in a deliberate, intelligent, and bipartisan fashion had this Administration been willing to spend a bit of political capital and place a portion of its gargantuan ego in the back seat.

And now comes the coup de gras; we find that the IRS, leading up to the last election cycle, was targeting conservative organizations in an adverse fashion.  This belated confession comes with the qualifier that it was done without political motivation, but what other possible, conceivable explanation could there be?  Of course it was done for political reasons.  If the use of such a powerful and omnipresent federal agency as the IRS by a sitting Administration for naked political gain does not concern you, then you are a great candidate for Soviet or Chinese citizenship.

History will record that this is not only one of the worst Administrations in history based on its accomplishments, but it appears quite likely that it will also go down as one of the most ethically and morally bankrupt Administrations this county has ever known.  And when that chapter is written, those self-professed guardians of the truth, known as the mainstream media, should have co-billing right along with them.

Unprincipled Media and It’s Futile Pursuit of Perspective.  I worked a career as a federal civil servant in the Department of Agriculture.   A great deal of my work involved farm crop disasters and their national impact.  Many times, the width and depth of a particular disaster would not reach a high enough level to trigger any type of federal relief legislation; but if you were one of the few affected by the disaster, it was indeed a catastrophe.  All news is relative and should be kept in perspective.  These principles have been lost by our media and many of the non-thinking followers that follow it in a zombie-like fashion.  Please consider two quick examples from recent days. 

The Boston marathon tragedy was a terrible ordeal for those affected by it and it could very well end up sending shock waves through our nation’s anti-terrorism efforts.  However, by any measureable standard, the west Texas fertilizer plant explosion affected many more people, resulted in much more damage (both human and physical), and may yet have some of the same national security concerns as the Boston affair.  Why then did we see 24/7 coverage on the Boston bombing and a night of two of brief leads on the Texas incident?  At a minimum, a big part of the explanation lies in the fact that Boston is the center of this nation’s liberal establishment which is intertwined with the liberal media and liberal entertainment (i.e. the recent WDC correspondents/celebrities dinner) and Texas is in the heart of the conservative movement of this country.  “Urban versus rural” is not new and we should not be surprised when a greater population delivers a larger viewing audience.  But as Tom Brokaw has so aptly illustrated in the last few days, the media presence in this country (ALL of them, right and left) are shameless  to the point of not even realizing an appearance of conflict of interest and are only driven by their own relentless pursuit of chic self image.

As a second note, I recently watched a few moments of MSNBC covering the gun control issue during which their correspondent asked a gun owner why they would want to own an assault-type weapon when it “looked so dangerous”.  Does a rifle in the hands of a middle-income American male at a recreational gun range or in the hunting woods appear any more dangerous than an airliner in the hands of a hijacker?  How about a psycho driving a Ford Mustang on a busy sidewalk in nighttime LA?  How about a drunk driver in an eighteen wheeler driving I65 from Indianapolis to Nashville?  How about an unlicensed surgeon illegally practicing medicine in Oregon?  Will we ever learn that once we get past a handful of automatic weapons that have no applicable purpose other than military and law enforcement, a gun is simply a tool of the idiot who wields it?  Put that same idiot in an airliner, in an alley with a long knife, or behind the wheel on a crowded street with a few belts down and you have the same threat.   

My plea to the media is this:  Cover the news in a fashion that exudes professionalism and integrity, keeping the real impact in perspective.  Cover the threats based mainly on the individual delivering the damage, not the instruments used to deliver that damage.  Demonstrate to the thinking people of this country that you respect their ability to interpret the facts for themselves rather than attempting to dictate exactly what is important and why it is important.