Politically Independent

About Being Politically Independent

2017-05-29T22:32:00.003-04:00

Everyone is biased. The degree of our bias is relative to others.

Open-minded people are receptive to new ideas or arguments. They seek to be unprejudiced, unbigoted truth hunters. They gather facts and then use logic and reason to form their opinions.

Closed-minded people are unreceptive to new ideas or arguments. It's hard to argue with, much less convince, a closed-minded person. More often than not, they lack the facts necessary to arrive at informed opinions. If presented with the facts, they either dismiss them or rigidly hold on to their opinion in spite of the facts.

When I say that I am politically independent I mean that I am not rigidly attached to any U.S. political party. That said, I cannot think of any plausible circumstance in which I would vote for a Democrat. But that does not mean that I am rigidly attached to the Republican Party. I have done my due diligence and gathered the facts about both major U.S. political parties and their histories could not be more different.

I am receptive to all well-developed fact-based ideas and arguments. I am nonreceptive, even dismissive, of poorly-inspected ideas or ill-considered arguments based on hearsay, pure emotion, or insupportable ideological beliefs.

A Letter To Matt Damon

2009-03-26T15:46:00.014-04:00

Mr. Damon,

I realize that the election is over and your guy won, but here's some advice to help you in the future.

I just watched a video in which you said the following regarding Governor Sarah Palin: "I need to know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago, that's an important ... I want to know that. I really do. Because she's going to have the nuclear codes. I want to know if she thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago. Or if she banned books or tried to ban books. We can't have that." Those were your words verbatim and not out of context.

As I listened to you, I wondered: Is this the same guy who impressed us all when he played the part of a brilliant math whiz in "Good Will Hunting"? Of course, I immediately heard the words, " ... played the part" and understood. You're good with scripted words and thoughts but it seems to end there. The problem is, that little video along with a couple of other things like your appearance with the charlatan, Al Gore, in which you all but kissed his ring, have so diminished my opinion of you that I may never be able to fully enjoy another movie of yours. To be fair, it's not your fault that you are, apparently, not too bright but it's a real problem for me to excuse the astonishing level of ignorance you so often display.

When you say, "I need to know ..." and "I want to know ..." and "I want to know ..." once more, I wonder loudly why you do not know. Do you know how to use a computer? Have you heard of the Internet? Never in the history of mankind has information on everything and everyone been so readily available. So I wonder: Why would a high-profile guy like you talk publicly on a subject that you obviously know nothing about? If you really need and want to know these things about Sarah Palin, why didn't you take about fifteen minutes to do a little research? Of course, when I think about the company you keep, that's probably not a good idea. You would most likely go to a bunch of loony-left websites where they, literally, manufacture bogus myths about everyone they don't like and spread them around the world like the nasty viruses they are. It's called "character assassination" and it is a common tool of small-brained wantabes who lack the intellectual capacity and moral fortitude to engage in honest, informed, civil debate. If left unchecked it may very well destroy America.

But let's get back to the case in point: You wanted to know if Sarah Palin "... really thinks dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago." You said, "... that's important." Would it also be important to you if she said that President Franklin Roosevelt went on television in 1929 to reassure the public about the depression? Or here's another one: Would it be important to you if she thinks we have 58 states in the union? I mean, one could sensibly argue that both of those things are more important than the dinosaur thing. Right? But of course she didn't say either of those things: The gaffe machine and plagiarist, Joe Biden, delivered the first one during a television interview and Barack Obama was the unfortunate author of the second one. Now, just in case you don't know and want to know; FDR was not president in 1929 nor was there was any TV then. Also, there are 50 states in the union, not 58. So now that I've told you who made those two really big intellectual blunders, is it important to you? (Why do I think it may not be?)

Look, if you really care about this great country of ours as much as you say you do, then you should commit yourself to an objective, honest pursuit of the truth without the influence of political bias or the cult of celebrity. With that in mind, I'll give you a couple of things to think about: 1) Sarah Palin never banned a single book, nor did she try to ban any books. That is a loony-left myth. In other words, it is a lie. 2) It is not mere coincidence that she is the most popular governor in the United States. Her approval rating has at times exceeded 90% and she has always earned every single percentage point. Finally, everyone who knows her or has worked with her says she is a very smart, tough, effective governor who gets things done. But don't take my word for it, find out for yourself - that is, unless you are afraid of the truth, or worse, afraid of what your loony-left friends might think of you if you say anything even slightly admirable about the most popular governor in the country.

You say you care, then prove it. Do your homework so that the next time you bless us with another opinion, it will be an informed opinion. Now there's a novel idea!

Most sincerely,

A former fan.

Postscript added on April 27, 2009

Sarah Palin never said that dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. The whole thing was a complete fabrication by a left-wing blogger named Bob. Take a look at CNN's video and watch "Bad Bob" confess.

I also found that despite the fact that she never banned a single book, the left-wing propaganda machine shifted into high gear and set out to make the world believe that Sarah Palin was a book-banning fascist of the worst kind. Incredibly, they even distributed a long list of books that she allegedly banned and, stupidly, some of the books on their list had not even been published when she allegedly banned them!

On The Matter Of Gay Marriage

2009-03-21T13:18:00.030-04:00

In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, we beatniks (yes, we) scoffed at the institution of marriage, proclaiming that it was just a piece of paper. If you want to set up house with a member of the opposite sex—or the same sex, for that matter—then you do not need a legal document or the official approval of some religion to do it, we said. We argued that neither an official government document, nor the blessings of a church could enhance, protect, or sustain a commitment, which had been freely made between two people. “As long as the relationship continues to appeal to both parties and the commitment remains strong, then we will stay together. But if our feelings or priorities change, we always have the right to end the relationship.” After all, there seemed to be so many unhappy—even abusive—marriages that we stated with profound certainty that the institution of marriage was an archaic idea that sometimes caused more harm than good. For one, we said, it was too easy to get married and too hard to get divorced. It was not too many years later that hippies asserted the same position and in the ensuing years millions of Americans established de facto marriages by simply “living together.”

Were we right? Well, as with many matters having to do with humans in their sometimes equivocal process of being, for some, the answer (as one of my favorite beatniks wrote) is “blowing in the wind.” But if we are to develop a truly informed opinion about marriage, there are some things we need to consider—things we beatniks chose not to explore too deeply, if at all. At the very least, we should know something about the origins of marriage as we know it today. At the top of the list are the reasons our ancestors created the institution of marriage and why subsequent societies have assiduously protected and honored it for so long. This knowledge will also give us an informed basis upon which we can consider the matter of “gay marriage.”

Note: While human mating practices such as polygamy (many spouses) or more commonly, polygyny (many wives) can be found throughout our history they were and are the exception rather than the rule and have been associated with certain religious beliefs or practiced more often by the most powerful men in society—or when war had killed off large numbers of men. To these, we could add polyandry (one wife with many husbands), although this practice has been quite rare. But for my purposes here, I will restrict the discussion to the most common and enduring form of human mating: The civil institution of monogamous marriage as established and administered by the state.

Origins and reasons

The concept and definition of marriage as the practice of committed, monogamous, legalized mating of men and women able to produce children is, in fact, ancient. A case can be made that some form of it existed in early civilizations that predated written history. But what is more relevant is that the formal establishment of marriage as a state-decreed institution predates all three major religions. In other words, marriage was not originally established for religious reasons. It was not created in order to satisfy the moral tenets of a church or other formalized set of religious beliefs. Therefore, any informed argument designed to consider the idea of gay marriage need not—and I think, should not—be framed as a religious or moral one. Such moral judgments should be considered separately because the history of marriage is solidly established as a civil expedient. Simply put: Religious faith is not a prerequisite to legal marriage.

The origin of civil marriage is well-documented and its purpose is clear. Around 1750 B.C., Sumerian traditions were codified by Hammurabi, the king of Babylonia. Widely known as “Hammurabi’s Laws” or "Hammurabi's Code", customs and traditions developed and practiced by the Sumerians, were formally organized and written into law. This meant that the state could prosecute on its own behalf those who broke the law. Among these new laws and as an essential element of a larger need to organize, sustain, and preserve their cultures and states, and to create a secure environment to ensure the perpetuation of the species, Babylonia and other ancient societies established the institution of marriage.

Consequently and most importantly, as a legal institution, marriage organized and made secure the granting of property rights and the protection of bloodlines. In time, as the needs of various societies required, such matters as the delineation and enforcement of personal responsibility for the protection and welfare of one’s legal mate and children were added to and became common elements of the legal institution of marriage.

“Gay Marriage” is an oxymoron

The reasons for the establishment of the institution of marriage as a legally codified set of laws are unambiguous: Marriage was created to organize, protect, and sustain society for the very practical, important reasons given above. Therefore, when we consider the dictates of nature and the reasons for the institution of marriage, the concept of gay marriage is incongruous with all of them. The purposes and intent for legalizing and documenting marriage were and still are very practical and are by their very nature, applicable only to members of the opposite sex. It is nature itself—not man, nor the state—that requires the union of two members of the opposite sex to ensure the perpetuation of the species. So, for what purpose would a responsible government expand marriage laws to include members of the same sex? Same-sex marriage by definition is not only a fatuous notion; it is an oxymoron.

Marriage is not a civil right

So far as marriage-as-law goes, gay-marriage advocates in the United States correctly argue that marriage is a civil matter, not a church affair. But they abuse all logic when they further argue that since marriage is a civil matter, it is therefore a civil right and that because it is a civil right, it is unconstitutional to deny homosexual couples the right to marry. This is a fallacious argument. First, as shown earlier, civil marriage was created for rigidly practical reasons having to do with child-bearing members of the opposite sex, only. Second, while marriage is a civil matter, it is not a constitutionally-protected civil right. Where in the constitution are we given the “Right to Marry?”

Equal Protection

To deal with this argument, gay-rights advocates attempt to include marriage under the constitutional principles of equal protection and equal treatment. In other words, if opposite-sex partners can marry then so can we, they argue, because the constitution guarantees equal protection and equal treatment. Yet this is merely a specious assertion. Is this what our founders intended when they wrote the constitution? If so, what else should be included? How about polygamy? Or what if someone wants to marry his or her comatose mother or father or their three year old daughter or, for that matter, their pet? Or consider business partners that seek equal treatment before the law in an attempt to change their legal status from a business partnership to a marriage—in which case they could not be required to testify against each other.

The clear purpose of civil rights protections is to provide and assure every citizen of equal treatment when such equal treatment conforms to the intent of laws that are based on social realities and are designed to enhance and promote the general welfare of the people. But when the right to equal protection is invoked in a manner and for a purpose, which would controvert the intent of a good law, it should not be recognized or applied. Instead, if a society determines through diligent consideration that a law no longer serves to enhance and promote the general welfare of the people then it can and should (through lawful process) change the law. Again, good laws are created to improve and advance the general well-being of a society and the institution of marriage has for almost four thousand years, done just that.

It follows, then, that to brashly and suddenly dilute, diminish, or demote such a time-tested, socially critical law that has served countless civilizations so well for thousands of years without proper knowledge of either the reasons for the establishment of the law or the consequences, which would ensue should the law be functionally altered in such a way as to literally remove the sound reasons for which it was created, would be grossly irresponsible.

Other arguments

What about love? Should not people of the same sex have the right to love each other in the same manner as heterosexual couples? Of course all people should have the right to love whomever they choose—and in America, they do. We should all acknowledge that love enhances and makes better all things human. Yet, while we are guaranteed the right to love whomever we choose (the pursuit of happiness), it does not follow that the presence of love gives us the right to legally marry whomever we love. It is a matter of fact that love never had anything to with the creation of the civil institution of marriage. It is also a fact that while the the institution of marriage is strictly limited to one man and one woman, this does not prevent others from loving whomever they choose.

Hospital visitation: In states where this is an issue, we need to design fair and wise mechanisms (laws?) to allow appropriate members of clearly defined, established caring relationships such visitation rights.

To oppose gay marriage is a homophobic reaction: In some instances, it may very well be. Yet, to say that everyone who opposes gay marriage is homophobic is, factually, incorrect. Even worse, it is clear that such accusations are designed to cast aspersions on the opposition in an effort to eliminate them as fair and objective participants in the discussion.

But whether opposition to gay marriage is engendered by homophobia or by moral or religious beliefs the central argument against gay marriage remains intact. In other words, such things as homophobia are irrelevant to the historically sound reasons presented here for the preservation and maintenance of legalized civil marriage between one man and one woman.

Homosexuality is unnatural and/or immoral: As stated earlier, opposition to gay marriage based on these reasons is another matter entirely and they have no place in this discussion.

Anti-gay marriage is anti-gay: Again, for almost four thousand years, civil marriage has applied to heterosexual couples only and to oppose gay marriage for the reasons given here does not in any way pass judgment on homosexual behavior. So, to say that anyone who opposes gay marriage is anti-gay simply reveals one more attempt by gay marriage advocates to misdirect the discussion away from the real issues toward disingenuous, inflammatory accusations, which they hope will arouse base emotions in those people who are woefully ignorant of the four thousand year history of civil marriage—why it was established in the first place and why it has endured for so long.

Recently, I watched a clip on television of the actor, Sean Penn, in which he shamed all Californians who voted for Proposition 8—a California ballot proposition passed in the November 4, 2008 general election that changed the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples and eliminated same-sex couples' right to marry. Penn’s patently judgmental and demagogic diatribe was clearly intended to accuse all Californians who voted for Proposition 8 of being anti-gay, homophobic bigots of the worst kind. Instead of engaging them in an informed and intelligent discussion he self-righteously and unfairly condemned them all.

As is too often the case, instead of choosing to engage in intelligent, informed, constructive debate Penn chose to appeal to the prejudices, emotions, or special interests of his audience rather than their intellect or reason. It is an old and deplorable tactic of the left: If you are unable to mount a sound argument on the issues, then attempt to destroy the character of your opponents. Unfortunately, and to the detriment of our society, this tactic is a standard practice for many liberals in America.

Some final thoughts

A case can be made that we Americans are currently experiencing a kind of collective, cultural Attention Deficit Disorder. The news cycle is such that often news is old within hours. The Internet, cell phones, and other technologies have dramatically increased the pace of virtually everything we do. Unfortunately, one debilitating unintended consequence of this phenomenon is that we too often fail to take enough time to seriously consider important issues of the day. Perhaps worse, is that this lack of inspection extends to our media who regularly fail to do the kind of comprehensive reporting that would provide us with the information we need in order to form intelligent opinions. Instead, our major media outlets produce biased news and commentary, which amount to nothing more than agenda-driven propaganda. As a result, the American electorate has never before been so uninformed and misinformed as it is today. It is for this reason that bloggers like myself do what we can to inform and expand the discussions on important matters, which affect us all.

Finally, the fact that civil marriage was created in order to assign personal responsibility to child-bearing couples for each other and for the children they bear is undeniable. Without such regulation, societies decline, inexorably, into chaos and eventually fall. Whenever the integrity of the family unit—a child bearing man and woman—has been compromised, nations fail. Therefore, anything that would or could diminish the intrinsic value of the naturally imposed (by nature) family unit and its time-tested critical role in maintaining the overall integrity of a society should be avoided at all costs. The very idea of gay marriage is anomalous with the fundamental intent of civil marriage. Its adoption can add nothing of practical value to our society and could in reality weaken the purpose of that which has served countless societies so well for so long.

Robert Dixon McKinley
Wednesday, March 21, 2009

President Bush's "Failed economic policies."

2007-11-04T15:17:00.005-05:00

President Obama and the Democrats continue to blame our current economic problems on "Bush's failed economic policies." Of course nothing could be further from the truth. To be sure, President Bush's economic policies were extraordinarily successful given the circumstances, which accrued to him and were not of his doing. In fact, the root causes of our current economic problems are well documented (though avoided by the mainstream media) and can be traced directly back to the social re-engineering policies that began decades ago. Further, the "trigger" was more recent. (See Did Bush Cause Our Financial Crisis? and Obama Blames Bush For Financial Crisis)

But for now, let's take a look at just some of the results of President George W. Bush's economic policies.

Beginning in August 2003, President Bush’s economic policies resulted in the creation of 8.31 million jobs. It was the longest continuous months of job growth on record.

November 2, 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new jobs figures – 166,000 jobs created in October. Since August 2003, 8.31 million jobs have been created, with 1.68 million jobs created over the 12 months that ended in October. Our economy has now added jobs for 50 straight months – the longest period of uninterrupted job growth on record. The unemployment rate remains low at 4.7 percent.

The U.S. Economy Remains Strong, Flexible, And Dynamic

Real GDP grew at a strong 3.9 percent in the third quarter of 2007. The economy has now experienced six years of uninterrupted growth, averaging 2.8 percent a year since 2001.

Real after-tax per capita personal income has risen by 12.7 percent – an average of over $3,800 per person – since President Bush took office.

Real wages rose 1.2 percent over the 12 months that ended in September. This rise is faster than the average rate during the 1990s.

Since the first quarter of 2001, productivity growth has averaged 2.6 percent per year. This growth is well above average productivity growth in the 1990s, 1980s, and 1970s.

The deficit today is at 1.2 percent of GDP, well below the 40-year average. Economic growth contributed to a 6.7 percent rise in tax receipts in FY 2007, following an increase of 11.8 percent in FY 2006.

In other news, the Democratically controlled congress has also set a new record — they now have the lowest congressional approval rating in history. After promising virtually everything, they have accomplished virtually nothing.

Ignorance and the Political Left

2007-10-29T02:07:00.006-04:00

It is extraordinarily disingenuous when liberals sneeringly accuse the Fox News Channel of being conservatively biased when all credible studies reveal that every so-called mainstream media outlet in America is politically biased to the left. Moreover, 80 to 90 percent of "mainstream" media reporters, journalists, and supporting personnel vote almost exclusively for Democrats. So can anyone seriously wonder why a fair and balanced news outlet like Fox would look "conservative" to liberal viewers who have been fed biased liberal reporting, analysis, and commentary for decades?

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson

It is a sad and dangerous fact that political left operatives are now demonstrably akin to fascist propagandists. It has become apparent that, for them, the end justifies the means and truth and respect for fellow countrymen are mere obstacles to overcome. Liberals do not want open and honest debate because they know they cannot win in a fair exchange of ideas, nor can they possibly appear credible if questioned on the facts. Hence, Political Correctness and other insidious thought-police concoctions of theirs are designed to severely limit such debate.

To be clear, an inseparable element of the political left are the biased media outlets that control and shape their news, analysis, and editorials in order to convey a specific and very intentional point of view to their audience. The resulting product is pure propaganda.

The political left is attempting to destroy the essential political/socio-economic tenets upon which our nation was founded. Knowing human nature as they did, our founding fathers worried that this kind of power-driven self-interest based on highly flawed political ideology could someday bring down the nation they worked so hard to create. Yet, now, powerful politically-left forces are organized and mobilized in an unrelenting assault on our culture and our political and economic systems. They are heavily financed by self-proclaimed socialists like George Soros and their goals are very clear: They want to change America into a “Europeanized” socialist country.

This problem cannot be overstated. The liberal left collective reaches beyond their political majority to encompass our education system and our media. Yet, while even the most casual student of history should be alarmed by this knowledge, there seems to be no widespread concern, which is precisely what was intended and should have been expected.

Yet, perhaps the most insidious form of ignorance, and the most dangerous to our survival, is to not know that it is the structure and nature of our constitutional republic and our capitalistic economic system, combined, that have enabled us to become the most successful nation in world history. Consequently, we (who understand) are left to wonder what those who seek to destroy that which has worked so well, can possibly be thinking! What drives them? Is it the allure of power or is it ideology? Or is it something yet undiscovered or undefined? Whatever it is, one thing is certain: We cannot sit idly by and merely wonder. We must, aggressively and persistently, act to restore and protect the political and socioeconomic systems and values upon which our nation was built and with which we have thrived.

Post Election 2008 Update:

As shown in post 2008 presidential election surveys, the majority of Obama voters were pathetically ignorant of the most important issues of the day, positions and statements of the presidential candidates, and other pertinent information such as which party currently controls congress.

There is no doubt that if the media had done their job, Barack Obama could not have won the election. Without the indulgent complicity of the media, Obama’s populist and demagogic message of “hope and change” would not have been enough. Ignorance was, in fact, an essential element of the Obama victory.

60 Minutes On The Valerie Plame Affair

2007-10-22T01:29:00.004-04:00

60 Minutes & Katie Couric
Sunday, October 21, 2007

Another CBS Propaganda Piece

Dan Rather or Valerie and Joe Wilson could have written this piece. Richard Armitage at the State Deptartment "outed" Valerie Plame to Robert Novak. Period. End of story. Both Novak and Armitage have confirmed this. Anything that anyone said after that meant nothing and more important, neither of the Wilsons, nor anybody else, have ever provided an ounce of proof that the White House planned or did anything to hurt either Valerie or Joe Wilson. The Wilsons simply indulged in what all liberal, left-wing Bush-haters do: They fabricated accusations in order to hurt our president and destroy the reputations of perfectly innocent people. No? Then where is the proof? Not innuendo. Not suspicion. Proof! No one has produced any. None. Zip.

Before I continue, let's be clear about Richard Armitage—who he is, what he did, and what his relationship was to the Bush White House.

He was Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell when, in an unrelated discussion with journalist Robert Novak, he mentioned that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA.
Armitage was a career diplomat and did not have a close relationship with the Bush White House who knew nothing about what Armitage had said to Mr. Novak.

It is also important to know that Mr. Armitage has never been charged with any wrongdoing and that, contrary to what the Wilsons have said very loudly, very publicly, and very often, there is no evidence that Valerie Plame was a covert operative of the CIA when Mr. Armitage spoke with Mr. Novak. In fact, no one has been charged with any wrongdoing as regards the "outing" of Valerie Plame. Why? Because no law was broken and therefore no crime was committed. More importantly, neither President Bush nor anyone in his administration did any of the things they are still being accused of doing. Yet the propaganda and the character assassination never lets up.

But what has been absolutely documented is that Joe Wilson has lied numerous times during the course of this despicable witch hunt and now Valerie Plame is doing it too. Yet in her interview with Valerie Plame, Katie Couric never so much as hinted at the countless lies that can be so easily documented by anyone willing to spend a little time on Google. But then of course dear honest, unbiased Katie left out everything that would have made this piece an honest one.

CBS pulled another bogus hit job on the Bush administration and anyone who thinks otherwise is either in denial, ignorant, certifiably stupid, or a pathological ideologue. To say that CBS is a propaganda arm of the political left is to state the obvious. Can anyone doubt that Dan Rather would still be there if it were not for the existence of the Internet and a couple of alert citizens?

Tonight's 60 Minutes program is just one example of how biased media outlets control and shape a story in order to convey a specific and very intentional point of view to their audience. It is pure propaganda.

An Email To U.S. Congressman Pete Stark

2007-10-18T22:27:00.001-04:00

Mr. Stark:

I am not usually a man without words but your remarks regarding the President of our great nation have caused me to feel such deep outrage and visceral anger toward you that nothing I shall say here will be adequate. How dare you! It is one thing to disagree with the President, it is another thing entirely to accuse him of horrendous crimes for which you cannot even begin to make a credible case.

Throughout our history presidents have been criticized for taking us to war and for their conduct of those wars, but, possibly with the exception of the Civil War, never has the criticism reached the volume and the level of meanness, which you and your fellow Democrats viciously inject into the body politic on a daily basis. It is horrendous and it is shameful, and if left unchecked, it may well destroy our great nation.

Among your other despicable accusations against the President, was your charge that he is criminally killing innocent civilians. So let’s look at the truth against the dark lies of your twisted propaganda. The fact is that Democratic presidents have led us into every major foreign war in our history and almost 2 million of our best young people died in those wars. Furthermore, as to the killing of innocent civilians it was Democrats Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman who ordered ongoing massive "carpet bombings" of civilian populations in Europe and Japan. As a result, our military killed more civilians in WWII than military personnel. But under President Bush it is our policy to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible. Yet you and other despicable Democrats accuse him of unspeakable crimes of which he is absolutely not guilty. Compared to presidents of your party, Mr. Bush looks like a saint. I do not make these comparisons in order to disparage the aforementioned presidents but rather to establish honest perspective and context — something you so dishonestly and so conspicuously failed to do.

In a relative sense, the Iraq War is a minor war. It is also clear to any informed person that if we succeed in Iraq (You would hate that.), compared to the massive "Democrat wars" and considering the geopolitical gains, which would most likely accrue, it will have been a real bargain.

You and other dishonest, self-interested political goons constantly decry and sabotage noble American efforts to build a safer world. Your relentless false depiction of the Iraq War as the biggest and most costly war in our history is just one example of this. The truth is, we suffered almost twice as many casualties on D-Day alone than we have suffered during the entire Iraq War and I haven’t even mentioned the First World War, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War—all “Democratic Wars.” Moreover, mistakes made in wars conducted under Democratic presidents fill volumes. But of course you know all of that. So you are a bald-faced liar, Mr. Stark. You are a disgrace and I am ashamed that you are a member of the United States Congress.

Our time-honored tradition of coming together in a time of war has been indispensable as the backbone of our national resolve. Yet you Democrats have trashed that tradition. You have made it starkly (that’s appropriate) clear that your political party and your pathological quest for power comes first and if there is anything left of the country, it comes second. Power is everything to you and you have shown that you will do anything to get it; even destroy honorable and good people who are real American patriots. You truly have no shame.

Finally, you should know that I am a veteran who knows how lucky I am to have been born a U.S. citizen. Now, given the behavior of Democrats over the past six years, I cannot imagine ever voting for one. I see the current Democratic Party as being perhaps the most heartless, morally corrupt, and politically corrosive, party in our history. Your party's standard practice of character assassination is thoroughly disgusting and it is certainly antithetical to what our country stands for.

Frankly, you should be thrown out of congress.

Sincerely,

Robert McKinley

The Truth About Compassionate Conservatives

2007-02-15T15:56:00.002-05:00

Another Liberal Myth Is Dispelled

While it won’t come as a surprise to those who have been paying attention, liberals will inevitably try to spin the facts when confronted with the most recent evidence that conservatives are considerably more charitable than liberals. Still, they will not find it easy to refute the numbers and the fact that conservatives are as a group indeed more compassionate than they are.

For decades, liberals have lectured that they are the most compassionate among us. Their political bag of talking points is stuffed with “We-take-care-of-the-underdogs.” and “Conservatives-are-uncaring-selfish-rich people.” rhetoric. But now, their persistent self-righteous sermonizing is shown to be nothing more than the class warfare propaganda of dishonorable demagogues it has always been. Someone has opened their bag of rhetorical lies and found it filled with nauseating hot air—so much it is finally drifting into the crowded upper atmosphere of liberal political myth.

Conservatives give a lot more

Not only do conservatives give more to charity than do liberals, they give much more: a whopping 30% more—and this while conservative’s income is less as a whole than liberal’s, which dispels yet another myth so revered by all liberals—that Republicans are wealthier than Democrats. So is it then fair to say that “Liberals are uncaring, selfish rich people?” and that “Conservatives take care of the underdogs?” Using “Liberal Logic” of course it is. And unlike liberal political myth, it is fact-based on hard evidence.

Arthur C. BrooksWho Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism, by Arthur C. Brooks

Mr. Brooks is a professor at Syracuse University. He studied economics at the prestigious Rand Graduate School. After exhaustive nonpartisan research into the charitable behavior of liberals and conservatives he found that the average conservative-headed household gives 30% more to charity than the average liberal-headed household. He also learned that among the same households conservatives earn 6% less annually than do liberals. Simply put: Conservatives earn less but give much more money to charity than do liberals. His study also revealed that of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average, George W. Bush won 24 of them in the 2004 presidential election. Yes, 24 of the 25 most charitable states are red states.

But the deception runs much deeper
John Edwards, who was the vice-presidential nominee for the Democrats in 2004 and is now running for president in 2008, is constantly telling us that there are two Americas: The haves and the have-nots. In doing so, he continues to reinforce standard liberal class-warfare propaganda. What he and virtually all Democrats would have us believe is that the Democrats can and will fix the economic inequities inherent in our system.

Notice he does not produce evidence that Democrats have a history of actually having helped the less-fortunate sector of our society. Rather, he tells you only that they will and that Republicans will not. Why? Because he also knows that his party has been telling us these things for decades and they have yet to deliver on their promises. In fact, most of their policies have not only failed, they have often been utterly disastrous to large portions of the American underclass. For example, until a Republican congress led by Speaker of The House, Newt Gingrich, reformed our welfare system it had all but destroyed the economic potential of millions of our citizens who had become “slaves” to the very system that was supposed to lift them up out of poverty. He also knows that Republican welfare reform has been quite successful and that it has literally changed the economic dynamic in our society from one of dire hopelessness for an entire class of people to one that has enabled new generations to educate themselves to become productive members of our society and to realize a sense of personal self-worth and dignity unattainable by their parents who were dependant on handouts from their government.

So when John Edwards and other Democrats talk about haves and have-nots, be careful to know exactly what they are doing. They are appealing to your sense of social duty—to your social conscience—in order to get your vote, but not because they intend to actually fix anything.

It is an old Democratic strategy

They are appealing to your simplistic, emotional self in the hope you will not take it upon yourself to learn what the root causes of poverty really are and how to deal with them. They are demagogues. They are trying to convince you that they are the compassionate party—that if you don’t vote for them, there is no hope for our society. Yet in a very real sense, their welfare system was far more successful in getting people to vote for Democrats than it ever was in lifting welfare recipients up and out of poverty. As long as the welfare recipients received their monthly checks, it was virtually guaranteed they would vote Democratic. It was an insidiously deplorable bargain between the Democratic Party and the welfare recipients: The Democrats got votes and gained power, which is always their primary goal, while the welfare recipients remained stuck in a state of virtual economic slavery. It stank.

There are two Americas

There are still have-nots among us. Yet, thanks to Republican welfare reform and other effective policies, there are far fewer as a percentage of population than during the decades of “Welfare Dependence”, which was so near and dear to the hearts of Democratic vote getters. But now we know for certain that there is another significant social divide in our nation: The charitable ones and the less charitable ones.

So let’s dispel this devilish, insidious liberal myth once and for all: The Democratic Party and its loud liberal component, is not, nor has it ever been, the compassionate, charitable party they would have us believe it is. Moreover, if they protest and argue differently; if they still insist they are the most charitable and compassionate among us; ask them, “Compared to whom, the Republicans?”

Of course there are many more myths in their red-hot bag of rhetorical lies. In fact, they have built their entire political house on a bed of deceit.

More later.

Letter To Republican Members Of Congress

2006-11-24T21:48:00.003-05:00

Thursday
March 16, 2006

To all Republican members of the House and the Senate:

We gave you both houses of congress and the presidency. We gave you an opportunity and a mandate to do something great and, thus far, you have let us down. Instead of greatness we got backroom political compromise and self-interested deal making with no solutions to important national problems. Your shortsighted business-as-usual pork barrel greed was a monumental disappointment to millions of us who expected far more from you. Moreover, you spent the people’s money as though you were bent on doing a “best-ever” impression of good-old-boy Democrats.

Your wimpy, faint-hearted behavior in the face of outrageously disgraceful and dishonest Democratic attacks on our president—your party leader and the man who helped a lot of you get elected—has been disgraceful. Overall, you have done such a completely mediocre job you now stand a chance of losing control of the House in a few months. Unless you make a truly fast and miraculous recovery, history will forget you within weeks after your eventual departure. Newt Gingrich where are you?

The “Ports Deal.”

Wow, you really showed your mettle there, didn’t you? You didn’t take a single nanosecond to find out what the deal was all about before you joined some Democrats to condemn the president and make him look like a damn fool. President George W. Bush! You remember him don’t you? The one who we can absolutely trust to do everything possible to protect us—the man whose name is synonymous with national security. You surely remember because most of you spent the last five years telling us how safe we were in his hands. Yet suddenly, with no rational reason, you told us that he was about to put us all in great jeopardy by turning over control of some major U.S. ports to an Arab nation! Good God! Had the man lost his mind? Had Muslim radicals somehow nabbed him and substituted one of their own? Otherwise, how did this steadfast leader for whom the words national security had become his daily mantra suddenly and inexplicably make such a monumental error in judgment? Well, of course you never explained that sticky little discrepancy to us. You never explained much of anything because as we learned later, you didn’t know anything.

You opportunistic grandstanders knew as much about the deal as we the public did, which was zip! As a sign of your collective wisdom, some of you actually cited the fact that about 70% of the public opposed the ports deal—implying that the public had a better handle on the deal than the president and his cabinet, and all the appropriately responsible departments of government did. “Collective wisdom?” We the public knew only what self-promoting politicians like you and your Democrat friends on the other side of the isle told us, which was nothing credible! So there you (and the Democrats) were, essentially using us (the general public) as experts on port security to make your case to us in order to convince us that the Port Security Deal was a bad deal for us! How damn dumb can you get? Yes, that was a rhetorical question.

It’s clear that facts don’t matter to you. For you, it is all about perception. All that mattered was that it smelled like a political hot potato and none of you wanted to touch it. Even if it was good for the country (as the president and many others said it was), it was too much work for you terribly overworked public servants to explain it to your constituents. Who cared if the president knew more about it than all of you self-important blowhards combined? Who cared if the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and many more well informed, highly competent government experts supported the president and endorsed the deal? Just never mind all of that mundane stuff. Ignore it all because you thought the politically advantageous thing to do was to disparage the president’s judgment, stop the deal cold, and to declare the president and his administration incompetent. It looked like the Democrats had taken control of your minds. Sadly, they had not. It is an election year and you were running scared. To Hell with what’s right and good for the country and to Hell with the president.

That is what you did regardless of your pathetic attempts to spin your way out of it. That is exactly what you did and it contributed to driving the president’s poll numbers down. Of course, your (members of congress) numbers went even lower than his but while you all deserve your low numbers, on the facts, he did not. Speaking of that: Due to your less than mediocre performance over the past years and your most recent disgraceful behavior, unless you turn things around pretty damn fast, you will soon be on your knees kissing the rings of the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, and the rest of that gang of political misfits. Talk about going to Hell for your sins!

Here are a few things to consider:

Stand up for the president when his (and your) Democrat opponents, including the media, unfairly accuse him of everything from lying to being the biggest terrorist in the world. Don’t let a single false accusation go unanswered. You should have done this from day one instead of saying things like, “Well, I don’t always agree with my good friends on the other side of the isle.” Your good friends on the other side of the isle? Your “good friends” viciously savage your president—the leader of your party—on a daily basis and that or something just as limp is all you have to say? Every single time you hear one of them accuse the president of “misleading us into war” or “lying to us about the WMD” or countless other bogus accusations, call them on it and don’t let go until they either prove the accusations or apologize for falsely accusing the president.

When they say that his “incompetence” in the Iraq War has cost American lives:

Remind them that beginning with WWI, Democrat presidents have led us into every major war—that we have spent almost 16 years in those wars compared to a little over 3 years in “Republican wars.”
Point out that we have suffered almost 2 million military casualties in “Democrat wars” compared to about 19 thousand in “Republican wars.”
Finally, remind them that even though we have lost over two thousand troops in Iraq, we often lost that many in less than an hour in any one of at least four “Democrat wars.”

When they try to shame the president for civilian casualties in Iraq:

Remind them that the policy of our current military forces, under orders from President George W. Bush, is to minimize civilian casualties and not to intentionally target them.
Remind them that other presidents were not so careful to protect civilians — that massive saturation bombing of civilian populations was an intentional ongoing practice ordered by Democratic presidents.
Remind them that under direct orders of Democratic presidents we killed more Japanese civilians during WWII than Japanese military personnel—millions.
Remind them that military blunders are common in war and that the biggest military blunders in our history were made under Democratic presidents.
While you’re at it, remind them that every time someone made a blunder or mistake or just didn’t foresee whatever, the Republicans didn’t demand the resignation of the cabinet or the impeachment of the president because they understood that mistakes are as intrinsic to war as death itself.

If you think these are unfair arguments then ask yourselves if the borderline treasonous behavior of some of your “good friends” on the other side of the isle is fair. I tell you this: The information presented above is accurate. Yet during those major wars I do not recall the same kind of incessant disgraceful behavior to discredit the Commander In Chief and to undermine the war effort as we now experience every day from your Democrat "friends" on the other side of the isle. The current Democratic Party and the left-biased media have gone far beyond constructive opposition. They now freely and with no meaningful opposition from Republicans seek daily to undermine the national security of the United States. It is apparent that their quest to regain political power is their first priority and America be damned. So challenge the bums and do it now!

What’s that? That’s not the way it’s done in Washington? You don’t want to ruffle the feathers of your good friends? Okay, keep doing it your way and you’ll soon be on the highway out of D.C. I understand: Some people never get it.

Corruption: Wow, a couple of you just couldn't control your corrupt natures once you were in power. We gave you both houses of congress and the White House and you thought you hit the lottery and that you were above the law. I can’t, adequately, tell you how much you disappointed so many of us. Clean it up fast and do a thorough job.

President George W. Bush is a leader. You all must know that. He actually wants to do the people’s business. He wants to take on important issues and make our country and the world a better place while he is president. I believe one of the reasons he always worked so hard to help you get elected is that he wanted you to help him get some important things done. Yet, while he draws fire from his detractors (as happens to all real leaders) and endures the attacks with courage and determination, you people too often behave like fair-weather friends, defending him when it is politically convenient and fleeing in haste when it is not.

Yes, you did get some things done and you deserve credit for what you accomplished. But when you fail to robustly and sincerely address big problems like Social Security, you cheat us because you know that it needs fixing. And why must we wait for tax reform? Of course, there are many other important issues as well. A legitimate, robust energy bill would have been nice but it didn’t happen. Instead, along with your Democrat "friends" you passed a so-so-what-did-you-really-expect bill. As usual, you politicians got in the way. Health care needs serious attention too and your pork barrel spending has been disgraceful. I voted Republican and I got Democrat! Or is there no distinction any more?

We gave you the power; now use it for the good of this great nation. In case it slipped your minds, that was the idea, you know. Go back to the history books and revisit the wisdom of our founding fathers. Come the think of it, just read George Washington’s farewell address and pay special attention to the cautionary words he delivered to his fellow founders—his words about the dangers inherent in political partisanship and political parties. It was an exceptionally prophetic admonition.

Finally, if you really do intend to do something of value, you had better do it fast because, trust me, time is running out.

Sincerely,

R. D. McKinley

Note: While this letter was written on March 16, 2006 and was not originally written for this blog, due to urging from others, I posted it here.

Postscript: As prophesied here, in the next Congressional election Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. The voters threw them out.

Media Bias: MSNBC Clinton Interview

2006-01-31T01:36:00.001-05:00

(An email to MSNBC)

If I assume that your political reporting and commentary is honest and unbiased, then I must conclude that your so-called journalists are remarkably ignorant. I just tuned in for a few minutes and caught your coverage of Bill Clinton's latest dishonest propagandizing. The remarkable (though predictable) thing is that, apparently, none of your people knew that he delivered four or five big lies in a matter of a couple of minutes. Don't you have a journalist or commentator with enough political knowledge and savvy to interview someone as slick as Bill Clinton? Why is it that Republicans always get the hard questions from you guys and when you interview Democrats it’s like you’re reading a script written by the Democratic National Committee or MoveOn.org? In this particular Clinton interview, you repeatedly commented on his lies as though what he had said was true. This of course led ignorant viewers to believe his lies. And you do this sort of thing every day!

Let me help you out a little: Among other things, he said that his administration had created a program that had cut poverty significantly and that the Bush administration got rid of the program. Can you tell me just exactly what program that might be? I defy you to do so because there is no such program. You see, it's simple: Bill Clinton made the whole thing up. He lied. Of course that should surprise no one because he has always had a really big problem with the truth, but that's another story. My question to you all is why you don't know that he lied? It is your job to know these things. Isn't it?

But that's not all: If you revisit his words and do your homework, you will find that he lied a number of times while accusing President Bush of doing things he has not done. You should not only know this, you should report it vigorously. Don't you agree that it is big news when a former president of the United States blatantly lies about important national issues and, additionally, falsely accuses a sitting president of committing reprehensible acts? Are these not things that we the people should know about? Bill Clinton’s remarks were part of the anti-Bush propaganda that has been ongoing for years.

The difference, and what is news, is that the lies and the false accusations leveled against a sitting president, did not come from the likes of Howard Dean, of whom, sadly, we now expect such things. It came from a former president who, like Jimmy Carter, has breached an unwritten, though formerly respected rule that living former presidents do not criticize the policies of sitting presidents regarding issues of national security. Yet Mr. Clinton also used the occasion to denigrate our current president with other outright lies. He used Katrina (perhaps our worst ever natural disaster) to imply that the President does not care about the poor among us and that his (the President’s) uncaring indifference caused much suffering among those unfortunate people. All in all, Mr. Clinton’s performance was one of the most despicable displays of low-class political deceit and opportunism I have ever witnessed. And you people missed it all—apparently because you just don’t know what’s going on! Or for some other reason.

Here are some things to check out: Contrary to Mr. Clinton's claims, measured against the Clinton administration, under President Bush anti-poverty program spending has increased and poverty levels have decreased; minority home ownership is higher than ever before in our history; unemployment is lower than the average unemployment rates during the eight Clinton years (now at 4.9%); President Bush increased education spending significantly over the Clinton years, and test scores of minority children are at all-time high levels. And should I mention that President Bush has assembled the most racially/ethnically diverse administration in our country’s history?

There is much more, though my point here is that Mr. Clinton and so many others would rather lie to us than admit the truth. In fact, dishonest spin was and continues to be standard procedure for Mr. Clinton, Democrats in general, and biased, agenda-driven media outlets like MSNBC. As long as you fail to report the truth you are as guilty as the political liars you support. Furthermore, you abuse your priviledged use of public airwaves. In so doing, you weaken our country just as surely and as effectively as any enemy could.

I am right about this yet it is reprehensible that you and other media outlets remain guarded and protected from accountability. You simply don’t respond to these honest and accurate charges and questions. What could you say if you did? Would you plead ignorance? If not; then what? The only rational alternative explanation I can think of is that you know when the politicians lie to you but you fail to confront them in order to protect them. Given your record, that is the most plausible explanation. Of course you won't admit to this. In fact, you won’t answer this email. You will send me an automatic response, which will say that you appreciate my feedback but that you cannot answer my email because you get too many of them and it would be too time consuming, etc. Worse, you won’t address the issues I raise at all—either by email or on the air, which you certainly could and should do. That’s too bad, though it is a sign of our times.

My conclusion: You are not professional journalists and news reporters. You are propagandists for the Democrats, political shills, and hacks of the worst kind. Your network should, by all reasonable ethical standards, be banned from the use of public airwaves. You do these things as a matter of policy and practice. You are a disgrace to the ethical principles on which our democracy depends for its core strengths and values. Daily, you weaken our nation with your dishonest propaganda. You are enemies of democracy.

© Robert D. McKinley
All rights reserved.

Where Did All The Flags Go?

2005-12-28T01:39:00.004-05:00

You remember the flags, right?

Remember 9/11? You know, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania? You do remember, don’t you? Of course you do. Remember all the flags? They were everywhere; we put them on car windows, we made bumper stickers; we flew them on lawns and porches; and yes, they were even in classrooms. They were everywhere. So what happened? Where did all the flags go? Of course that is a rhetorical question because we all know where they went—we took them down and we put them away.

So the big question is: “Why did we put all the flags away so quickly?” But first, let's understand why we put them up in the first place. No one made us go to the stores and buy American flags by the millions and put them on almost everything we could think of. Unlike some countries, no one ordered us to do it. We did it spontaneously. In fact, some of us did it instinctively. Men, women, and children of every color, religion, political persuasion, rich, middle class, less fortunate, young, old, whoever—bought flags and stuck them on and flew them from all kinds of things. At the time, I thought we did it because vicious, heartless zealots had attacked us and murdered almost 3,000 of our fellow countrymen without warning and we were apalled and angry and defiant and we were expressing our outrage and solidarity against the attackers. I thought we put the flags up to tell the world we did not deserve that kind of treatment nor would we sit idly by and do nothing about it or fail to defend ourselves from further abuse. I thought we displayed the flags to tell each other and the rest of the world that we were proud Americans and to show them we stood as one, determined to bring justice to the despicable terrorists who had attacked us.

To see the flags everywhere and to witness the apparent expression of patriotism they represented produced conflicting emotions in me. My first emotion was pride—pride in my fellow Americans for responding so swiftly and unequivocally to the biggest most atrocious attack on our homeland, ever. These monsters had not even bothered to limit their attacks to military targets; instead they consciously chose to murder innocent, defenseless men, women, and children. So the intitial response of my fellow Americans reminded me of the America I knew as a boy growing up during the Second World War. Still, to be honest, part of me was uneasy—unsure of the genuineness of it all. I saw a lot of flags during the long years of the Second World War too, but there was at least one essential difference back then: There was a clear sense of national identity that had its roots in the same fundamental values held by our founding fathers. We had an unambiguous national character. In other words, we knew who we were and what we stood for. We understood very clearly that we were at war against enemies who wanted to destroy us and the flags we put up then stayed up for the duration of the war. Another difference was that back then we often reminded each other to “Remember Pearl Harbor” because that was something we never wanted to forget, nor did we want to let anyone else forget it. It was a rallying cry.

So you see, it was different back then. During WWII, we were proud to be Americans and patriotism was as natural as breathing. We flew the American flag because it symbolized all the good values our country stood for so we flew it proudly. There was no equivocation. There were no grey areas. There was nothing to “nuance.” We were Americans. It wasn’t Pollyanna; we knew our history and we knew we lived in the greatest country that ever existed on planet earth.

So what happened so quickly after September 11, 2001 to make us take the flags down and put them away?

Just as surely as we had reasons to put the flags up, we had reasons to take them down. Yet I believe the reasons we took them down are not as clear nor as honorable as why we put them up. I think we, intuitively, got it right when we put them up and then got it wrong when we took them down. We did not put the flags away because the terrorists had a change of heart; nor had they surrendered. According to all credible estimates, the War On Terrorism had no immediate end in sight. So why did the flags disappear so quickly? First, let's try to understand exactly who put them up. I now believe that immediately after 9/11 certain groups of Americans expressed their patriotism more than others by displaying more flags than those who were slow to display flags or those who abstained completely. I also believe that those who did not display our flag were the same people who later influenced millions of Americans to take them down. They made it uncomfortable for proud Americans who displayed our flag for all the right reasons and embarrassed some into taking them down by defining patriotism as something bad—as some kind of intellectually deficient concept to be shunned and derided.

While it was common to see Republicans and others of moderate to conservative persuasions wearing small American lapel flags—with only a few exceptions, one was hard pressed to find any “street” Democrats with them on. In fact I'll venture it was more likely to find a hundred albino mules wearing purple top hats and singing God Bless America before you could find a street Liberal Democrat wearing an American lapel flag. So maybe it just seemed like almost everyone was flying our flag. Maybe it was overwhelmingly Republicans and Independents with some conservative Democrats who put them up. I think the Liberal Democrats took a pass on the entire patriotic, flag waving exercise. Apparently not even the most horrendous attacks on our homeland, ever, motivated them enough to feel at least some sense of indignation, not to mention outrage. There is certainly a large amount of evidence to support this proposition.

How many of you remember that even before the smoke had cleared at Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and at the field in Pennsylvania, Liberal Democrats were already telling us that we should have expected such a thing, that we deserved to be attacked because we are not good people—that our sincerity, our intentions, our very reason to exist as a nation are all suspect. Time and time again, they tried to convince us that we are a dishonorable, greedy, imperialistic nation with a singular desire to suck the lifeblood out of every other nation in the world. They had already convinced millions of their Liberal followers—our fellow Americans—to, essentially, hate America. They attempted to make us feel ashamed to be American. They ridiculed and demeaned anyone who unabashedly expressed their patriotism. I think it a safe bet that not a single Liberal Democrat ever said, “Remember 9/11.” Even though we were at war against a demonstrably real enemy whose sole purpose was too kill every American they could, we had no battle cry because thanks to the Liberal Democrats and their left-leaning media affiliates, there was no clear, clean, robust sense of identity and pride among millions of Americans. While millions of Republicans and some Independents displayed full-fledged patriotism in the best sense, millions of Liberal Democrats were acting like America-hating-bashers of the worst kind.

For years, Liberal Democrats have been playing a deadly smoke and mirror game in which they have convinced their political base plus much of the world, including our enemies, that the United States of America is a bad country not to be trusted. Of course they could not be more wrong and if they had the desire and took an honest look at our history compared to all other nations in the history of mankind they would know that we are the most honorable and the most giving nation ever.

But for now the answer to “Why did we put all the flags away so quickly?” is that too many of us allowed a minority of our citizenry to confuse us about our national identity and to intimidate us into feeling embarrassed by our patriotism. Of course, that, my friends, is not only unacceptable on its face—it is a threat to our very existence. By any honestly informed measure, the United States of America is in fact the greatest nation in the history of the world. We must not only know that to be true, we must also truly appreciate our great good fortune to be among its citizens and to speak out and stand up against all unfair criticism and attempts to destroy our true national identity.

So it is imperative that we have a clear understanding of what our flag represents. It is the symbol of all things good in America and of the uniqueness of those things. Our constitution stands alone in the history of mankind. No other political document guarantees such freedom to its citizens or the protection against tyranny as does ours. It should also remind us of those who have sacrificed so much for the freedom we enjoy each and every day. But it does not end there. Our flag also stands for what we aspire to going forward toward an ever-improving nation of people of goodwill. This is America! People want in, not out. Fly our flag and feel pride in what it represents. It represents us and tells the world who we are.

Media Bias = Liberal Democrat Propaganda

2005-12-21T03:11:00.004-05:00

Don’t believe what they tell you

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson

I was always curious and inquisitive. At a very young age these traits led me to question the veracity of adults because sometimes things just didn’t seem to add up. The most troubling discrepancies usually had to do with contradictions between the ethical values I was being taught and dishonest adult behavior. For example, if I read a newspaper report in which some politician claimed this or that, only to be contradicted by another politician who seemed to have different “facts,” I would ask my parents how that could be. After all, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that one of them was either ignorant or dishonest. In time, it was clear that some of our elected so-called leaders lie—and that realization was not easy to accept. Did their parents not teach them the same values that mine were teaching me? Did they not know it was wrong to lie? Even more baffling was that if they were liars why did the newspapers print their lies and why did other adults vote them into office? Had they completely fooled the voters with their lies? That didn’t seem likely since even I—a naïve young boy—was able to catch them lying! Then there was the famous statement by Abraham Lincoln, “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." Didn’t they know this?

When I discovered an outright falsehood printed in a newspaper and disguised as the truth, I would ask my parents how this could happen. Wouldn’t the readers soon catch on and stop buying that newspaper? Their answer was almost always the same: “Don’t believe everything you read.” Okay, but who and what and when can I believe anything for certain, I wondered. It was my age of disillusionment. It was troubling. It still is.

Over the years I have found answers to those early questions, yet the answers trouble me even more than the questions did when I was a boy. For example, I have learned that most American voters that I’ve spoken with are not well informed about the candidates, the issues, our political parties, our government, or American history. This partially explains why and how dishonest politicians get elected. Their lies go unnoticed and unchallenged by the general public because they don’t know the facts. This unfortunate condition denies the inherent promise of great and good things for the citizens of an honest republic.* An uninformed or misinformed citizenry is not capable of rendering the kind of good judgment required to maintain a vital and healthy nation or government “… of the people, by the people, for the people.” Ignorant people are more readily "worked" by skillful propagandists than are the informed. They can be persuaded to a particular view by those with the desire and means to do so, and that is precisely what is happening in America today.

The media are not what they would have us believe they are. Instead of being our guardians of truth who seek out and expose corruption in government, they are part of the corruption. Their bias is evident everywhere any serious observer cares to look. Among other things, they selectively report or withhold facts and slant their reporting so as to promote their political agenda. The majority of the American media today are propagandists. To be sure, the media does expose abuse and corruption in government, however they do that selectively, as well.

Countless studies by credible organizations have confirmed that both the American media and the American education system are predominantly left-biased politically and that their bias is actively applied to their work and their product. As recently as six days ago, the title of a new study reads, “Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist.” As countless studies before have shown, this new study confirmed that, “…almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.”

The following are just a few examples of biased media reporting:

The media gave far more coverage to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal than to the grossly worse abuses of terrorists, such as the videotaped beheading of Nicholas Berg. Even though the military itself had discovered the abuses at Abu Ghraib, had already begun an investigation, had informed the media of the abuses, and told the media that an investigation was underway, the media took the story and hyped it all around the world in a manner and with an intensity well beyond the actual significance of the story. The New York Times ran Abu Ghraib stories on their front page over 50 times—far more often than they ran stories dealing with the horrible atrocities being committed daily by al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists. In this one example, The New York Times and others made America look like the bad guys and the terrorists look good in comparison. Of course, precisely the opposite was true.
Notwithstanding protestations from CBS to the contrary, I believe that Dan Rather's attempt to discredit President George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential election campaign is just one more blatant case of gross media bias. As we know, the Dan Rather/60 Minutes story about Mr. Bush's alleged misconduct during his National Guard Service was based on what credible analysts described as counterfeit documents. Without relating the entire list of particulars, it is my opinion that Mr. Rather lost his job as a direct result of his use of phony documents in order to influence a U.S. presidential election. Given the next two examples, it is extremely difficult to arrive at any other conclusion.
Neither Dan Rather nor anyone else in the mainstream media seemed at all interested in doing a high-exposure story about Bill Clinton when he was running for president even though Mr. Clinton is a well-documented, bona fide draft dodger—which is obviously shoddier than anything Mr. Bush never did. For the record, we still haven’t heard that story from the "mainstream" media. To the contrary, they are currently in the process of resurrecting Mr. Clinton’s reputation and if they are successful, they will have millions of people around the world believing that Bill Clinton was a great president. Incredibly, a few months ago Esquire magazine actually named Mr. Clinton the most powerful man in the world. Do they know that he is not even president? Of course, we should never be surprised at these outrageous positions. After all, there were those who suggested that Tookie Williams should get a Nobel Prize.
Finally, the despicable treatment by the media of the "Swift Boat Veterans" during the 2004 campaign was another manifestation of their grossly anti-Republican bias. In this instance, a very large group of veterans who had served with John Kerry did something which seems to be unprecedented in U.S. history: Based on their service with him in the Vietnam War, this very large group of veterans—many highly decorated—publicly denounced Mr. Kerry, asserting that he was unfit to be Commander In Chief of the military forces of the United States of America. Over sixty of these men signed affidavits in condemnation of Mr. Kerry's military service and his character in general. The “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” came from a variety of backgrounds and political affiliations. There were Democrats, Republicans, and independents among the over two hundred members. Despite the “political mix” of the group and the fact that many of them were war heroes, the media did their best to suppress news coverage of the story and (when that failed) to discredit the group. Here was an extremely well documented story presented by highly credible war heroes and the media did not want us to know about it because it could have hurt Mr. Kerry’s chances of becoming president. Instead, they produced a story based on lies to help prevent a Republican from becoming president. Any questions?

Multiply these few examples by thousands and you can get a sense of the magnitude of the deception—the incalculable number of distorted news stories being fed to us daily by the "mainstream" American media. A preponderance of our so-called reporters and journalists now seem like nothing more than well-dressed, highly paid propagandists promoting their personal and collective political agendas. They produce news stories that we cannot trust for objective reporting, honest content, fairness or balance. They are con artists all dressed up to look like legitimate professional newsmen and women. So, what is to be done? Fortunately, the Internet offers some hope. If more people speak out with articles like this, it is entirely possible that we can bring about change. Meanwhile, make no mistake about it: What the American media are doing every day is very dangerous to all American citizens at home and abroad. Their anti-American output in print, radio, and television portrays our government and our military in such a dishonest negative manner that it divides our nation, weakens our resolve, and at the same time emboldens our enemies and provides them with propaganda material to turn millions of people around the globe against us.

To use the Abu Ghraib example once more: With the distorted and thereby dishonest reporting of the Abu Ghraib story, The New York Times managed to convince millions of people here and abroad—people who were not informed enough to know better—that the abuse was a direct result of Bush administration policy, which they claimed encouraged such abuse. They offered no proof because they found none. Yet the damage was done, which most certainly must have been what they had wanted to accomplish because they are neither stupid nor naive. I believe they knew exactly what they were doing. Did they consider the global implications of their behavior? I must conclude they did. How inept would they have been if they had not? Therefore, I not only believe that The New York Times knew their Abu Ghraib stories would inflame Muslims throughout the world who would then use the exaggerated and hyped up stories to stir up anti-American hatred—I also believe that as a direct result of their stories, their irresponsible (treasonous?) stories, Americans died. I repeat; this is just one example of a preponderance of politically motivated media bias.

The undeniable truth that we need to accept if we aspire to the high standards of truth and decency we teach our children is that the majority of our current media are propagandists and we cannot trust them to inform us honestly. It means that my parent’s advice to not believe everything one reads (or hears) is more appropriate than ever and that it applies to all media outlets. This has been called “The Information Age,” yet with the media factored in, it would be more accurately described as “The Misinformation Age.”

The major media outlets have refined and perfected the art of propaganda well beyond anything imagined by past propaganda practitioners. It is not difficult to imagine that well-known fascist propaganda masters of recent history would have marveled at how effective our American media propagandists are in a free society. They would have been very impressed at the ease with which our media successfully manipulate the American masses on a daily basis without so much as a passing glance of recognition, least of all protest, from us—the manipulated.

There is much more to this story than I describe here. Our education system, from public schools to our colleges and universities, are at least 90% left-biased and over the past several decades they have chosen to de-emphasize the teaching of honest, comprehensive American history and national civic literacy. Add that to widespread dissemination of media misinformation and we now have perhaps the most ignorant American electorate in our history. What should be clear though, and what we need to address, is how very much this problem affects us, and how important it is to begin immediately to formulate ways to protest and to demand the changes necessary to ensure a different future for our children, one in which they can be certain of honest, unbiased, fair and balanced media information and reporting. We need to shake off our apathy and rid ourselves of the belief that the problem of media bias is bigger than we are. Once again: An uninformed or misinformed citizenry is not capable of rendering the kind of good judgment required to sustain a vital and healthy nation and government “… of the people, by the people, for the people” and, notwithstanding protestations to the contrary, presently the vast majority of Americans are critically ignorant on such matters as American history, current affairs, and politics. I offer an oft-repeated slogan of a large clothing chain. It goes like this: "An educated buyer is our best customer." It is a good slogan and the message is clear: The more you know about clothing and value, the more you will appreciate what we sell. The analogy is obvious. An educated voter is our best citizen. Conversely, an ignorant voter is our worst citizen, and, in the majority, ignorant voters pose a threat to our national security and the future of our nation. To summarize, the liberal left dominates our educational system and our media, and they have an agenda. Therefore, is it not rational to suspect that when our reporters and journalists betray the trust we have vested in them through the First Amendment to our constitution (behind which they so often hide) and our educators fail to properly educate our children on the fundamentals of American history and current affairs, perhaps their slogan goes something like this: An ignorant voter is our best mark? What else can explain the steady, insidious decline of a once well educated, informed American electorate? Keep them dumb and keep them voting for Democrats, because for Democrats, it is always all about power. You need look no further than the events of the last six years to see how they so often and so easily put party before country.

America is the first ever great hope for people all over this planet and if we fail to properly grow and protect it, it might never appear again. Our founders had it right, so right that America has become the most free and powerful nation in the history of the world. But our founders warned that it was fragile and that our very existence would require "eternal vigilance." Yet the liberal Democrats are attempting to change the essential nature of our political system. What they envision is far different than what our founders designed and what has worked so well for so long. If they succeed, it is more than likely they will set into motion the slow but inexorable decline and fall of America. I urge you to reread Mr. Jefferson's cautionary quote at the top of this article. If you understand the once-in-the-history-of-the-world phenomenon that is the United States of America and you want it to survive and evolve for those who follow, then you must take this message seriously.

*Republic: A state in which the sovereign power resides in a certain body of the people (the electorate), and is exercised by representatives elected by, and responsible to, them.

Reagan Was Stupid Too

2005-12-19T14:58:00.002-05:00

Just ask the Democrats and their media affiliates

Every day, the Democrats criticize President Bush on the Iraq War—and anything and everything else they can think of. More accurately, they degrade, humiliate, debase, and demean him. Their purpose is to destroy the President’s credibility and if possible to assassinate his character in the process. Besides their propensity to lead us into war after major war, and their skill at rewriting history, destroying the credibility and reputations of their political opponents is what Democrats do best. They do these things as a matter of practice and policy in order to gain political power. Make no mistake about it: The first priority of Democrats is to gain and keep power. The prime prerogative of each and every Democrat candidate is to get elected and to get reelected for the sake of the party and the far-reaching benefits and consequences of political power. National security and the general welfare of American citizens are distant considerations. While such statements inevitably provoke Democrats to claim they are being abused by virtue of being called unpatriotic, the facts reveal their objections to be nothing more than angry cries from overly defensive, guilty operators attempting to hide from the truth of their political sins.

Let’s review:

According to the always lurching left Liberal Democrats and their propaganda affiliates, the mainstream media, Ronald Reagan was stupid. No, not merely stupid, he was a simpleton, a shallow, unsophisticated, unschooled and unthinking dunce. As “… the silver-haired Brahmin” of the Left, Clark Clifford, put it: Reagan was an “amiable dunce.” Furthermore, as the Democrat propagandists repeatedly (Repetition is the key.) told us: being stupid and being president of the most powerful nation in the world, made him the most dangerous man in the world as well. So as to leave no doubt, they also said he was a warmonger!

So there it was: We had a bloodthirsty, war crazed, dunce for a president who, unless brought down yesterday, would destroy the world by inciting the Soviet Union to launch their huge arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles—loaded with multiple nuclear warheads—against the U.S.A. and its allies. Not only did the Democrats keep telling us these things; they told the world—including our enemies. That’s right, they told our enemies that our president was a stupid, dangerous man—exactly what they are now telling us, our allies, and our enemies about our current president.

Satisfied that they had sown their seeds of deceit so well—that they had convinced the American public and much of the rest of the world that our president was a dangerous buffoon—the Democrats now attempted to panic the world by convincing us that as long as Ronald Reagan was president, nuclear destruction was imminent! They demanded that we “freeze” all nuclear weapons, immediately. As Charles Krauthammer put it, “Like George W. Bush today, the U.S. president was seen as a greater threat to peace than was the enemy he was confronting.”

The Democrats wanted us to stop the arms race and above all, to not make the Soviets angry with us. But President Reagan had a far different view and a plan to go with it. Contrary to virtually every position espoused by the Democrats, Reagan took a very hard line on the Soviet Union, which had placed missiles in Europe, thus ending the nuclear status quo. With the backing of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain and Helmut Kohl of Germany, Mr. Reagan stood firmly against the Soviets. He faced them down and they dismantled their missiles. Fundamental in his strategy, he:

Took a nuclear hard line
Aggressively expanded our military capability
Strongly backed the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) and
Defined and promoted the Reagan Doctrine of supporting anti-communist guerrillas everywhere (especially Nicaragua).

He did all of these things and more despite relentless negative criticism and demeaning, dishonest attacks on him from the Democrats—and in the face of highly publicized, media-hyped “peace” rallies here and abroad, including the largest one in U.S. history in New York City in 1982.

In their obsessive determination to destroy President Reagan, the Democrats managed to panic millions of people in order to get a nuclear freeze—something they would rather not speak about today. Why? – Because the insights, policies, and strategies of Ronald Reagan worked astonishingly well. Moreover, history has wasted little time in establishing Mr. Reagan as perhaps the second greatest U.S. President of the twentieth century.

Ten months after Ronald Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down. After decades of failed policies of various U.S. presidents, the Cold War was over. The “amiable dunce” had accomplished what none before him could. For eight long years, while his Democrat opponents and the Liberal media kept up their dishonest, often disgusting, attacks on him, he forged ahead buoyed by his sense of optimism and his unwavering belief in himself and the nation he so loved.

Historians have long since discovered volumes in Reagan’s own handwriting of his thoughts and ideas on a great diversity of subjects spanning decades of his life. They have been greatly impressed with his breadth of knowledge, his ability to find core meanings, and his clear vision for the future. Of course to those who knew him well, none of these “discoveries” came as a surprise. For countless years, they had been telling his critics that they had it all wrong—that the Ronald Reagan they knew well was a smart, insightful, decisive, and wise leader as well as an honest and decent man. That he was also a very likable and charismatic man was a bonus and something that was ultimately apparent to a vast majority of Americans. In time he was referred to as the "Great Communicator," which became just one more Ronald Reagan trait that dismayed and irked the Democrat attack dogs who, apparently, could not be even slightly fair minded toward this fair minded man of goodwill—a man who accomplished almost everything he set out to do and which others had failed to do for so very long.

To quote Charles Krauthammer once again, “This success is an understandable embarrassment to the critics who opposed his every policy. They supported the freeze, denounced the military buildup, ridiculed strategic defenses, opposed aid to the Nicaraguan anti-communists and derided Reagan for telling the truth about the Soviet empire. Ultimately (Reagan’s strategy) brought about the collapse of the overextended Soviet empire. The result was the most profound peace the world had experienced in 60 years -- since the very beginning of the totalitarian era in the early 1930s.”

So what did the Democrat Propagandists learn from their failed attempts to destroy Ronald Reagan and the Republicans? - Apparently nothing of value. Since the destroy-Reagan days the only things that have changed are the intensity and the cruelty of the Democrat/media attacks, which are now viciously aimed at George W. Bush. Beginning with the Bush-Gore campaign in 1999 until the present, their attacks have been predictably persistent and destructive. They have also been more outrageously dishonest, more cruel, and at times, borderline treasonous.

I will address these things more fully at another time, but for now I can say with confidence that the dishonest Democrat Propagandists will, once again, be proven wrong. Accordingly, they will again become mired in their own cesspool of false accusations and political deceit.

Until then, I have a few nagging questions:

If Ronald Reagan was a stupid man, how did he manage to defeat the Democrats time and again?
How did Reagan manage to accomplish the very things that Democrats had tried but failed to accomplish for so many years?
If, as Democrats claimed, Al Gore was intellectually superior to George W. Bush, why did Mr. Bush repeatedly outscore Al Gore at Yale?
If, as Democrats claimed, Al Gore was more intellectually curious than George W. Bush, why did Mr. Bush consistently select a far more diverse and challenging curriculum than Al Gore?
Why did Al Gore flunk out of Seminary School?
How is it that George W. Bush is our only president to have an MBA from Harvard?
With his “limitations”, how did Mr. Bush manage to pass the very difficult tests and meet the high IQ standards required for acceptance into officer/fighter pilot Air National Guard training? (Note: No, his father did not and would not have helped even if he could—which he could not. George W. passed the tests and went on to become a highly skilled jet fighter pilot.)
How did Mr. Bush beat the best of the Democrats in Texas to become the only person in Texas history to be elected governor two consecutive times?
How did Mr. Bush beat the best of the Democrats in the country to become President of the United States two consecutive times?
If John Kerry is smart and George W. Bush is not, why, during the 2004 election campaign, did Mr. Bush accept virtually every request for interviews from major media outlets and agreed to answer any and all questions without any prescreening while Mr. Kerry rejected virtually every request for interviews from major media outlets, thus declaring his unwillingness to answer any questions at all?
If John Kerry is smart and George W. Bush is not, during the 2004 election campaign, why did Mr. Bush agree to an unconditional interview with Bob Woodward in which he answered the over one hundred non-prescreened questions he was asked while John Kerry declined to be interviewed by Mr. Woodward even after Woodward sent Mr. Kerry twenty questions in advance—something Mr. Woodward said he did not normally do?

Considering all of the above, just exactly where does that put the Democrats on their Smart-Stupid scale? Feel free to answer at will.

Democrats hate all wars that are not theirs

2005-12-19T01:49:00.001-05:00

Most of them are theirs

The Democrats constantly bash President Bush over the Iraq War. Some say it’s the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Others say the president lied to us about WMD while they ignore indisputable facts to the contrary. Then there are the “He has no plan”- group of bashers who know very well that Mr. Bush and others in his administration have been communicating and articulating their Iraq planning for years.

Of course the Democrats in Congress want you to forget that most of them gave the president the authority to invade Iraq—essentially, at his discretion, and yes, they did have the same intelligence available to them as the president had. So what is the payoff for the Democrats? Why do they behave this way? Perhaps because they are corrupt, political opportunists doing what corrupt, political opportunists do: Lie, mislead, cheat, obstruct, destruct, and everything else they can think of to totally discredit their political opponents in order to gain power. It’s what Democrats do best—that is, except taking us to war.

If you know American history, you know that when it comes to war, Democrats are experts. After all they led us into every major war in our history, starting with the First World War. Apparently, they think that makes them the experts. So who does this Republican President think he is, anyway? War is Democrat turf and don’t you Republicans ever forget it! So what if we let Republican Presidents bail us out of a couple of wars we screwed up, like Korea and Vietnam? Just don’t let it go to your heads! Furthermore, as our own John Kerry once said, “America doesn’t go to war because we want to, we go to war because we have to.”

Yes indeed, Democrats are experts at knowing when, where, and why America has go to war. For example, any fool knows that the Koreans and Vietnamese were going to invade us at any moment. We were in imminent danger! We had to invade them! Geez, don’t you Republicans know anything?

Daily, Democrats demand to know how long our troops will be in Iraq. They insist that the president tell us exactly when he will order them to come home. Yet what these same Democrats never tell you is that we still have tens of thousands of troops deployed around the world, most put there by Democrat presidents over fifty years ago, and some by President Clinton more recently! Oh, yes, I forgot it’s okay if Democrats do it because war is their thing; they are experts.

Then there are the Democrats (most of them) who constantly badger the president to admit any mistakes he may have made in Iraq. Additionally, they have demanded the resignation or firing of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld more times than I can remember for more reasons than I can remember—not to mention a few demands for the impeachment of Mr. Bush. These are among a long list of disingenuous and ad hominem arguments and attacks on the present administration. Here, as with most things, they completely and intentionally avoid comparison—which is necessary for all serious political argument.

To be sure, Democrat presidents, others in their administrations, and military leaders made huge mistakes in all of America’s four major wars yet there were no similar outrageously opportunistic—sometimes borderline treasonous—charges and demands made by Republicans against the Democrats during those wars.

If the same demands for firing, resignation, and impeachment had been made against Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and members of their administrations, according to and applying the same Democrat criteria and arguments now made against George W. Bush and his administration, they would have all been thrown out of office.

When you listen to the Democrat war “experts” and their media propagandist affiliates constantly tell us that everything the President is doing is wrong and who, daily, use the casualty count in Iraq to shame and disgrace President Bush—consider this:

Democrat presidents have led us into wars in which we suffered approximately 1,747,278 American casualties. That is one million, seven hundred forty seven thousand, and two hundred and seventy eight casualties!
Republican presidents have led us into wars in which we suffered approximately 18,977 American casualties (including Iraq War casualties to date).
Democrat presidents have led us into wars in which we were engaged for 15.8 years!
Republican presidents have led us into wars in which we were engaged for 2.7 years.

Note: Total casualties include military deaths plus wounded.

The matter of responsibility, which Democrats should clearly bear for their war record, is rarely if ever portrayed accurately in history books or in the Democrat-dominated media. In truth, their record is very disturbing. Even now, while we are in the midst of a war unlike any before, instead of offering sincere constructive criticism and acknowledging significant accomplishments, they exploit any and every misstep or setback in order to discredit President Bush and to defeat virtually everything he aspires to accomplish. They constantly tell us that he has bungled the war in every aspect and that in so doing he has cost American lives. Yet we must not forget that Democrats have led us into every major war we've had and they managed to make some monumental mistakes in the conduct of those wars—mistakes that cost more American lives than any of us want to think about. Now they would have us believe that they know best? I think not.

In the final analysis, it is all about power. Far too many Democrats are livid at their loss of power and are saying and doing anything and everything they can to get it back—even posing as war experts! Not.

Copyright © 2005 Robert D. McKinley
All rights reserved.