The Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals

I've alluded to this quite often in posts, the mental outlook of liberals versus conservatives, and the idea that conservatives understand that a) the world isn't fair, but b) it's up to the individual to take the initiative to make things go his way, rather than wallowing in self pity about the unfairness of it all (which is why I often get turned off by the frequently whining lyrics in rock nowadays).  Liberals, on the other hand, agree that that world isn't fair, but that everybody else (ie the government) should do all they can to change the world so that it is fair (ie, so it's easier for them), and then whine and get depressed when it doesn't happen.

Well, I was reading this article by the blogger named Stacey McCain (no relation to John McCain), whom I don't often read, but he had a great discussion of this, in an ongoing back and forth he's been having with some liberal blogger.  I only wanted to highlight one section of the article where he says what I try to get at in a much better way; the earlier part of the article is more of his back and forth with the blogger:

Good mental health is characterized by optimism and a sense of agency — that is to say, the belief that we are ultimately in control of our own lives. The sense of agency is critical to success and happiness in every area of life, in large part because it is necessary to self-improvement and problem-solving.
Everyone encounters failure and disappointment, but a person who believes that his life is within his own control will respond to such setbacks in a positive, constructive way — analyzing the cause of the failure, seeking ways to improve, determining to work harder to overcome disadvantages and remedy personal deficiencies. A psychologically healthy person therefore must accept responsibility for his failures and shortcomings just as willingly as he accepts reward for his successes and abilities.
While it is true that other people sometimes contribute to our failures by undermining our efforts, it is also true that our successes generally require the assistance of others. Factors which are genuinely beyond our control tend to even out over time. In a free and prosperous society, few people are so disastrously disadvantaged as to have no hope whatsoever of improving their lot in life.
Thus, it is psychologically unhealthy to blame others whenever things go wrong in our lives, but this is exactly what “therapeutic morality” encourages.
Attempting to comfort people by flattering their sense of blamelessness — “It’s not your fault” — therapeutic morality ultimately undermines the vital sense of agency, in effect telling people that they are neither culpable nor competent. It promotes the notion of innocent victimhood, the blameless self, and encourages people to avoid responsibility for their failures by wallowing in self-pitying rationalizations.

There is good stuff after this section as well.

Very interesting report from the National Intelligence Council.

I got this report off of Glenn Beck dot com and I thought it was very interesting. I haven't read much of it but I will post a few interesting things I got from the very beginning. The report comes from the National Intelligence Council which according to its website is

Welcome to the website of the National Intelligence Council. The NIC is a center of strategic thinking within the US Government, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and providing the President and senior policymakers with analyses of foreign policy issues that have been reviewed and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community.

The report is titled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World". The report is similar to the "Joint Operating Environment" report in the required reading section of the blog and it seems to restate some of the basic "predictions" present in the JOE report: "Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States’ relative strength—even in the military realm—will decline and US leverage will become more constrained."

The report also states the fact that wealth is being transferred from the West to the East, "The unprecedented shift in relative wealth and economic power roughly from West to East now under way will continue." This sounds like one of Obama's goals and maybe Obama can help make this a reality.

Another interesting thing is that the report seems to agree with the premise that anthropological climate change is a fact, "Climate change is likely to exacerbate resource scarcities, particularly water scarcities."

The next fifteen years will be marked by great changes,

More Change than Continuity The rapidly changing international order at a time of growing geopolitical challenges increases the likelihood of discontinuities, shocks, and surprises. No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic liberalism, democracy, and secularism, for example, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its luster—at least in the medium term.

One of the "shocks" will come from the energy transition that will occur when the world shifts more away from traditional fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The report notes that this has in the past lead to great advancements for civilization; but if there is a transition away from traditional sources of energy without any new reliable renewable sources that don't exist as of now, then this would be a regression for civilization, at least for the West. Just look at the goal of fighting climate change that entails the Western nations lowering its energy consumption while transferring its wealth to the developing nations.

On the recent financial crises and how it has strained current international governing entities, IMF, and the global economic structure which calls for major reforms in the international economic structure,

The crisis has increased calls for a new 'Bretton Woods' to better regulate the global economy. World leaders, however, will be challenged to renovate the IMF and devise a globally transparent and effective set of rules that apply to differing capitalisms and levels of financial institutional development. Failure to construct a new all-embracing architecture could lead countries to seek security through competitive monetary policies and new investment barriers, increasing the potential for market segmentation.[...] Despite recent inflows into dollar assets and the appreciation of the dollar, the dollar could lose its status as an unparalleled global reserve currency by
2025, and become a first among equals in a market basket of currencies. This may
force the US to consider more carefully how the conduct of its foreign policy
affects the dollar.

Regarding demographics and the aging population of the developed nations and the ensuing "pension boom",

The Pensioner Boom: Challenges of Aging Populations Population aging has brought today’s developed countries—with a few exceptions such as the US—to a demographic “tipping point.” Today, nearly 7 out of every 10 people in the developed world are in the traditional working years (ages 15 to 64)—a high-tide mark. This number has never before been so high and, according to experts, in all likelihood will never be so high again.

I don't have much time to read the whole thing and to do a well-put-together post. Overall, the report is interesting but it doesn't seem to say anything new and I don't really know what to make of it. But I think it is interesting to read and provides a look into the world of the future--although it is a prediction and nobody can accurately predict the future.

Something worth keeping an eye on.

The fact that the government has been floating the ideal around of confiscating individual retirement accounts has been brought up before on this blog and especially the fact that Teres Ghilarducci floated this ideal before an interested audience before the Senate in fall of 2008, but I came across a short article about these plans concerning a request for information from the Labor Department

"In February, the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), in collaboration with the Department of Treasury, announced a "request for information" to study the Lifetime Income Options for Retirement Plans and asked 'for ideas on how to help reduce the chances that workers will run out of funds during their retirement years.'"

According to the Department of Labor's website this request of information is "not a rule or regulation. It is a pre-rulemaking act by an agency, or in this case two agencies, to collect information and data on a specific topic. This RFI is the starting point for a discussion of whether, or to what extent, the agencies might take some action to address identified problems facing today’s retirees." The purpose of this request for information " is merely a vehicle to engage interested persons in exploring ways that the Agencies and the private sector can work together to ensure that workers have the tools they need to help ensure their retirement savings last a lifetime." And also to "On February 2, 2010, the Department, in conjunction with the Department of the Treasury, published an RFI as a first step towards exploring what steps might be taken to enhance retirement security." So this push for the government taking over retirement accounts will come under the name of security.

The fact is that the government is in massive debt of around 130 trillion dollars. This is larger than the GDP of the world which is fifty seven trillion according to the IMF. The interest alone on the national debt in 2020 will be more than the amount that the U.S. spends on defense and the largest single item in the budget--this is assuming the economy picks back up to where it was previous to the Great Recession. This is why Admiral Mike Mullen, and recently Hillary Clinton, stated that our debt is the biggest threat to our nation's security. And following the article about Obama's anti-colonialism and desire to redistribute America's wealth around the world, having to pay all of this interest to foreign debt holders will do just that and having such a large amount of our debt held by foreigners will help reduce America's sovereignty. (Note that most of the nation's debt is not held by foreigners.) The world's economy is one big bubble. According to the article above, there is about eight trillion dollars out there in retirement accounts. This is a lot of money for the government to pass up considering its level of debt. Of course when the debt becomes a big enough problem, the government will have no choice but to take some of this money under the guise of diverting a "disaster" and providing "security" for our retirement accounts to confiscate them. I would support the government taking over this money to pay down the debt. The fact is that our nation is consuming more than it produces. People want free health care, medicare, social security, GI bill, a military structure that is turning into a welfare system, and a government that can solve all of our problems. One of the short comings of the Tea Party is that no one is willing to touch the social security or the other "sacred cows". People will simply not accept it. Nothing less of a MAJOR change of course will prevent the nation's debt from becoming a very real problem in the coming decade. Well, somebody has to pay for this. So pay up. Not anything to care about at the moment, but something to keep an eye on.

More Scalps for Palin

The most influential member of the most influential movement in the country continued her run of success against establishment candidates.  Palin-endorsed Senate candidates won the Republican primaries in Delaware, New York, New Hampshire, & Wisconsin on Tuesday.  The Tea Party is indeed transforming the Republican party from the inside out.  Proving that she's a force to be reckoned with apart from the Tea Party Movement, her candidate, Kelly Ayotte, won the New Hampshire primary against a sprited effort by the Tea Party-endorsed candidate, Ovide Lamontagne. 

In state after state (though certainly not all the candidates she's backed), Palin's endorsement has taken a little known candidate and thrust him/her into the spotlight, resulting in Tea Party publicity and conservative money heading their way.  The candidate then becomes a household name, and their message resonates, eclipsing the Establishment Candidate. 

Whether this is all for the good of the Republican Party or not is debateable.  Joe Miller, Marco Rubio, Kim Ayotte, & Nikki Haley are all good candidates. 

The big controversy is in the Delaware Senate primary, where, with a boost from Palin, Christine O'Donnell overcame much controversy and a big deficit to beat long time Delaware Republican RINO Mike Castle.  Mike Castle is a type of Republican that would make Jeff's (and my) blood boil, with his vote for Cap 'n' Trade, and his vote before the Iraq Surge for a Congressional Resolution against it:

pledges support for U.S. personnel serving “bravely and honorably in Iraq” but says Congress “disapproves” of the president’s plan to add more than 20,000 combat troops. The resolution was approved 246 to 182. Seventeen Republicans joined 229 Democrats in support of the resolution. Two Democrats opposed the measure.

This was similar to a statement made by Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith in Dec 2006, just before the surge:

I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more. I believe we need to figure out not just how to leave Iraq but how to fight the War on Terror and to do it right

That statement by Smith convinced me that Republicans and Americans didn't need him and I refrained from voting for him in the 2008 election, helping to hand one of Oregon's senate seats to uber-lib Jeff Merkely. That doesn't make me happy, but a Republican undercutting the war effort, particularly at that critical time, was unconscionable.

However, and this is a big however, in every poll conducted in Delaware so far, Mike Castle easily defeats the Democratic candidate, Chris Coons, while every poll also shows Chris Coons easily defeating Christine O'Donnell.  It's quite possible that Republican control of the Senate could come down to the Delaware vote.  If Mike Castle were nothing else, he would at least be a number determining whether Harry Reid will be the leader of the Senate or not.  And that, as Joe Biden says "is a big fucking deal".  Well, it doesn't matter if it was right or wrong for Sarah to endorse O'Donnell, but she did, and she won.  We'll see if O'Donnell can close the gap in Delaware.  Even if she doesn't, she has poached RINO from the Republican Party, and maybe we don't even want control of the Senate at this time.  Many blogs have given this topic in-depth analysis.  See Ace for the most even-handed. 

But, regardless, the Power Behind the Republican Party: my gal Sarah, and the Tea Party continue to roll on and transform the Republican Party and America.  The MSM destroyed her as a candidate, but, as in Star Wars, striking her down, made her stronger than they could possibly imagine.  This campaign season is a sweet revenge.

Really, I've just been waiting for quite a long time for a good excuse to post that exclusive photo of Sarah during her last Arctic hunting trip.

Why does Obama want to "fundamentally transform" America?

Why does President Obama's policies seem to be aimed at redistributing America's wealth and destructive to America's economy? Why does he view America as an evil Country that has been the source of great injustices throughout its history? Why does he chose to surround himself with socialist and communist who have openly espoused the very same goal of fundamentally transforming America that entails the destruction of America as we know it? Why is he compromising our national security by contributing $2.5260 trillion to our national debt, which is more than the cumulative debt of all Presidents from Washington through Reagan? Why does he support a victory Mosque being built near Ground Zero by our enemy? Basically he is a foreigner and an enemy of America-- by foreigner I mean culturally and by enemy I mean one who is dedicated to the destruction of the last remnants of America as it was founded. This article explains the roots of President Obama and provides some insight into what motivates him and might explain his reasoning behind his transformative policies.

"Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa." If this statement is true than this would technically make him America's first foreign, culturally, President. This would also explain why he does not believe in American exceptionalism.

The article goes on to explain who his father was and takes a look at Obama's book "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" to see what these dreams were.

But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, 'The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races.' Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called 'Problems Facing Our Socialism.' Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. [Might this explain the President's previous statements in 2001?] It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.[Might this explain why he is pushing for a Cap and Trade system that would help to redistribute America's resources throughout the world?] But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.[Imagine the ghost of despotic African ruler.] (All [ ] indicate my words.)

Most of us on this blog are aware of Obama's major reforms: the stimulus package that did nothing for the economy but put us into greater debt, his attempts to slow our economy down and redistribute America's wealth to the world by regulating carbon emissions through a cap and trade scheme, health care reform, and financial reform. These reforms take on a new meaning if Obama holds these views as it would indicate what the goals of these reforms are: the humbling/leveling of America and the redistribution of our wealth. If he holds the views then this makes him a very dangerous man to America because he views it as an evil Country that must pay for its sins. If one did hold these views what would you do as the President of America? One thing is for certain: that Obama plans on "fundamentally transforming" America.

What's Beck Doing?

I'm not a close follower of Glenn Beck, but he sure is making waves and driving Liberals nuts.  He makes their heads spin round and round almost as much as Sarah Palin does.  I think they do for related but not quite the same reasons.  The key is that they both are in-your-face challenges to everything Liberals believe in (or don't believe in maybe is a better phrase). 

But what was this Restoring Honor rally all about?  I've read a lot of comments on it, but the best comes from a Univ of Chicago associated blog called Chicago Boyz.  Here is what someone named Lexington Green says,

The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.

Why?

He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.

Using Boyd’s continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral.

Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

This is just the beginning of a 'read the whole thing' post. I think the guy nails it. Critics tried like heck to find a blatant political angle in this, but couldn't. Yes, politicians were there, most notably Tea Party Heroine and candidate-backing juggernaut Sarah Palin (who just pulled out another in a long string of victories, giving the

big push that enabled Tea Partier Joe Miller to overcome great odds to beat RINO and political scion Lisa Murkowski in the Alaskan Republican primaries).  They also again tried like heck to find a racist angle to things (as liberals continually, desperately, pathetically do with The Tea Party), but couldn't.  In fact there were many conservative black people in the crowd.

This event may seem a little cornball, hackneyed to the urbane, cynical observer.  I admit it does to me.  But cynicism is for losers.  The sense of moral mission Beck is trying with some success to instill in the country will pay dividends in many ways.

More from Lexington Green:

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

Word.