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December 4, 2012

I’ll See Your Economic Collapse and Raise You National Demise

By Selwyn Duke

Being just weeks away from reaching our debt ceiling and
with frightening talk about a fiscal cliff, there’s much sympathy in Washington
for tax increases. Even conservatives are wavering. A few Republicans have
dumped their anti-tax pledges, and former Nixon official-turned-actor Ben Stein
favors taxing the wealthy. He says that we can’t cut our way to a balanced
budget and insists that the revenue end must be addressed. But I have news for
him: he’ll have a better chance finding Ferris Bueller on
his day off than fiscal sanity through tax increases.

Let’s get real. Federal revenue this year will be approximately
$2.5 trillion.

(more…)
December 2, 2012

Another Victory for the Anti-Christian Grinches

By Selwyn Duke

The Salvation Army has long been a holy-day season fixture
in front of my local supermarket, providing some Christmas sounds and cheer as
it raises money to serve the poor. But when I went grocery shopping a couple of
days ago, a difference was apparent: there was an SA volunteer and collection
pot on the premises, but no trademark bell-ringing. So I asked the man why —
even though I already knew the answer.

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November 30, 2012

Target: Old White Men

By Selwyn Duke

While modern society prides itself on being unbiased, it’s
no exception to the rule that every age has its fashionable prejudices — and
unfashionable people. Among the latter today are white men, and the closer they
are to “dead white male” status, to use a favored leftist descriptive, the greater
the disdain in which they’re held.

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November 26, 2012

Black Friday’s Black Hearts

By Selwyn Duke

“As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.” So said the Frank Costanza character on Seinfeld,
as he described a toy-store struggle with another man over a doll
during the holiday season. It was comedic fiction, but, lamentably, it
is also art that has been imitated by life.

Most of us have heard the Black Friday stories. Two men viciously beat another man over shoes in a Sacramento mall; two people were shot over a parking spot at a Florida Wal-Mart; there was a brawl over women’s underwear at a California Victoria’s Secret; and a man punched
another while trying to cut in line at a Texas Sears, prompting the
victim to pull a gun. I guess you don’t mess with Texas shoppers. These
incidents are nothing unusual, either, as Black Friday — the mad
shopping day after Thanksgiving — is now associated as much with bad
behavior as good deals.

It’s ironic, too. A day originated for the purpose of giving thanks
for what we have is now followed by one devoted to aggressively seeking
what we do not. And while it’s fashionable to bemoan the
commercialization of holidays, we ought to wonder how we got to this
point. Because it didn’t happen overnight.

Ever since “holy days” was contracted into “holidays,” there has been ever less holiness in them. This is no coincidence.

Read the rest here.
November 22, 2012

What do We Have to be Thankful for?

By Selwyn Duke

Among the beautiful messages in the 1937 film Captains Courageous is one relating to
thankfulness. When spoiled rich kid Harvey says to Portuguese fisherman Manuel
about Manuel’s father, "[H]e didn’t do much for you; I mean, he didn’t leave you
anything,” it evoked quite a reaction. Manuel passionately replied in his
broken English:

He leave me this hurdy-gurdy [a
musical instrument] that his grandfather leave him. He teach me how to fish, how
to sail a boat. He gave me arms and hands and feet, feeling good outside… and
he teach me how to feel good inside. My father do all this; he have 17 other
kids, beside. What else a father do, huh?

This dialogue presents two very different perspectives. One
always wants more; the other knows we have already gotten more. And don’t we see
both — one perhaps all too frequently — represented in our society today?

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November 21, 2012

Maine’s Mysterious Black Voters

By Selwyn Duke

There are endless “anecdotes” from the last election “that
prove nothing about vote fraud,” as the critics put it. And one that would be
comical, were this not a tragic topic, involves reports of dozens of black
voters showing up to cast ballots in small Maine towns. The Portland Press Herald writes:

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November 21, 2012

Invasion of the Liberal Body Snatchers

By Selwyn Duke

When I was a younger and more naïve man, I sometimes thought
to myself, “Boy, if I could just get a forum in which to express my ideas, I
could really change people’s minds.” This was before I realized that, more
often than not, it wasn’t a matter of changing minds. It was a matter of
changing hearts.

This is why I shake my head when hearing talk of how
conservatives can possibly “win over” women or Hispanics or blacks or whatever
the latest pander-worthy group may be, of how they need to “reach out” or
“reframe their message,” as if everyone is a logic-worshipping Mr. Spock. After
all, even if the media would disseminate the conservative argument without
twisting it into a soggy, unpalatable pretzel — which they won’t — did it ever
occur to these tacticians that the problem isn’t mainly a matter of intellect,
but emotion?

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November 16, 2012

Shameless Judges Strike Down Michigan Affirmative-action Ban

By Selwyn Duke

Hundreds of years ago, satirist Jonathan Swift described lawyers as
“a society of men … bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by
words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is
white….” And evidencing that some things never change is the 6th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an 8-to-7 decision, the court just declared Michigan’s
constitutional amendment banning affirmative action (AA)
unconstitutional, with multiplied words that molest reasonable minds.
Fox10Tv.com writes:

The court said the 2006 amendment to the
Michigan Constitution is illegal because it presents an extraordinary
burden to opponents who would have to mount their own long, expensive
campaign through the ballot box to protect affirmative action.

That burden "undermines the Equal
Protection Clause's guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal
access to the tools of political change," said Judge R. Guy Cole Jr.,
writing for the majority….

However bad AA may be, the “reasoning” of these judges is more
troubling still. For their argument could be used to strike down any
law. ObamaCare? Overturn it “because it presents an extraordinary burden
to opponents who would have to mount their own long, expensive campaign
through the ballot box to protect” healthcare choice.

Read the rest here.
November 15, 2012

Useful Liberal Idiots and Vote Fraud

By Selwyn Duke

Among the responses to my recent article on Democrat
vote fraud were those of liberals who were happy to hear no evil, see no
evil — and be the evil. Their rationalization-aided attitudes ranged from
accusing traditionalists of being sore winners to equating 2012 with Bush-Gore
in 2000 to simply denying hard evidence. Does it matter at all to you,
liberals, that Democrats were actually caught on video facilitating and
promising to engage in vote fraud? Rhetorical question, I know. And the denial
much reminds of what ex-KGB Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov said about people born
of the process of “demoralization”: even if you took them to the USSR so they
could see the gulags with their own eyes, they would not believe it.

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November 14, 2012

In Defense of Price Gouging

By Selwyn Duke

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, there has been much talk
about price gouging. New Jersey is prosecuting some who engaged in it, and
pundit Bill O’Reilly has threatened to put offending gas stations in his fearsome
Factor pillory. But is this prudent?

To be clear, I personally wouldn’t want to raise prices amidst
a disaster were I a provider of products or services. And I’m not alone: After
devastating floods struck the Margaretville, NY, area last year and destroyed
the local supermarket and drug store, the only remaining mass supplier of food,
Dollar General, refused to increase its prices (its nobility earns it a plug).
Yet is it beneficial to use government to compel all businesses in
disaster-stricken areas to follow suit?

Obviously, there is no action without motivation. If someone
provides products or services, he does it for some reason, such as profit, a
feeling of gratification, the idea that it’s God’s will, or out of some
conception of what’s right. And that there are so many more businesses than
charities in the world indicates that profit is a far more common motivator
than all the other reasons combined. This is why business owners who would,
left to their own devices, hold the line on prices during disasters are
probably in the minority.

Read the rest here.