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June 20, 2012

Is Bill Clinton a Caine Mutiny Coward?

By Selwyn Duke

If Dick Morris is right and Bill Clinton is like a solar panel — only warm and bright when the sun is shining — he has certainly been catching his share of rays recently with his defense of Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. In case you missed it, the former President said in a CNN interview with Harvey Weinstein, “I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we say ‘This [Romney’s Bain endeavors] is bad work’ — this is good work”; he furthermore said that Romney had a “sterling business career” and “crosses the qualification threshold” to be commander-in-chief.

Well, well, something tells me that, were it not for Clinton’s fund-raising utility to the Obama administration, he’d be joining Cory Booker on the dead-to-us list.

After all, since the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s attack on Romney is that he is a “vulture capitalist, not a venture capitalist,” Clinton’s remarks help to cut the legs out from under the President’s re-election effort. The question is, though, why did he make them?

Some chalk it up to the notion that Clinton “always speaks his mind,” and his comments certainly seem like refreshing honesty. Here is, after all, Mr. Democrat himself saying flattering things about the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Ah, what an American! He has risen above politics!

But has he?

Read the rest here.
June 20, 2012

Democrats and Republicans: No, Both Parties Are Not the Same

By Selwyn Duke

There is a certain tiresome message we’ve all heard: the notion that the Republican and Democratic parties are the same. It’s often put forth by people who consider themselves outside-the-box thinkers, and they fancy their point of view the enlightened one. Sometimes cynical George Carlin types, their message is, “Hey, I’m smart enough to know both parties are playin’ the game. Don’t try to fool me!”

This attitude was apparent in a few of the comments under a recent piece I wrote about liberal immorality. One respondent opined, for instance, “What still amazes [me] is that there has been definite documentation about the lack of morals that all politicians have. Neither side can claim to be exempt from this. Yet, there seems to be this arrogance among the right, that they can explain away any misgivings that a Republican does.”

Read the rest here.
June 12, 2012

North Dakota Votes on Abolishing Property Taxes

By Selwyn Duke

When North Dakotans go to the polls today, they'll have a chance to strike a blow for freedom.

They can make their state the first in the nation to ban all property taxes.

With such levies having become a fixture on the American landscape, the ND proposal is seen as being radical. But it is property taxes themselves that are radical.

I've always objected to property taxes because they do violence to the concept of property ownership. After all, what am I describing when saying the following: I have to pay a fee on a regular basis to stay in a home or apartment, and if I don't I will be evicted from it?

That is the status of a renter — not a landowner.

(more…)
June 12, 2012

The Immorality of Liberals

By Selwyn Duke

“I think he did the right thing,” said the man, emphatically, in reference to Bill Clinton’s 1990s infidelity with Monica Lewinsky. The sentiment, expressed during a conversation I had some years ago, was really no surprise. You see, the fellow was a fine specimen of his political species.

In every civilization you have, to use psychological terminology, well-adjusted individuals and dysfunctional ones. Of course, dividing people into two groups in this area will always be problematic, as moral status is a continuum. As we walking, talking anachronisms like to say, we’re all sinners; it’s just a matter of degree. Nonetheless, some people do try to exercise virtue in their lives while others are so immersed in vice they could mistake it for virtue. However you characterize it, though, in our time the dysfunctional vice-lovers are described by what is another lacking term: liberals.

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June 11, 2012

Obama Administration: Cory Booker is “Dead to Us”

By Selwyn Duke

Newark mayor Cory Booker made the mistake of deviating from the Marxocrat Party line, and now he’s learning the hard way that illiberal modern liberals don’t tolerate dissent. In fact, zey have vays of making you not talk.

And, it seems, of not talking to you.

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June 7, 2012

Trampling Freedom of Speech: State Tries Censoring Online Advice Column

By Selwyn Duke

As far as diet goes, I believe you should adhere to the old adage “everything in moderation” and avoid extreme regimens of all kinds. I don’t know what you think of this counsel, but North Carolina’s position seems to be the following: I just broke the law.

Blogger Steven Cooksey found this out the hard way — when the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition ordered him to take down part of his diet-advice website.

The 51-year-old resident of Stanley, North Carolina, became passionate about nutrition after a 2009 hospitalization during which he learned he had Type II diabetes and was told he’d probably be insulin-dependent for life. Inspired to finally get serious about his health, Cooksey became a student of nutrition and, after considering many opinions, settled on a high fat/low carbohydrate “caveman” diet, which involves limiting oneself to only unprocessed or minimally processed foods. He also chronicled his personal health evolution on a blog he created in early 2010.

And what an evolution it was. Cooksey’s weight dropped from 240 lbs to 163, and his blood sugar normalized. And, as his waistline contracted, his website expanded: He was inspired to help others.

After initially mentoring friends, Cooksey started offering life-coaching services and then, in December 2010, instituted a Dear Abby-type column in which he answered readers’ questions. This was when he found that he had traded health problems for legal ones.

Read the rest here.
June 5, 2012

Michelle Obama’s Food Desert Myth

By Selwyn Duke

It may be a peculiar manifestation of American exceptionalism, but the United States has the distinction of being a nation that actually has fat poor people. This doesn’t sit well with those who want to grow government faster than waistlines, and thus do we have Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, designed to fight obesity by eliminating “food deserts.”

No, that isn’t supposed to be “desserts’; although the health Nazis aim to eliminate those, too. (That is, except for themselves. Michelle can clear a table like a hurdler it’s said; as for the commoners, however, it’s “Let them eat whole grain bread!”) It is “food desert,” which, we hear, is a poor area “underserved” by food suppliers, creating a situation wherein its denizens are relegated to a hell of fatty fast food offerings. And, you guessed it, Michelle wants to use our tax money to remedy this problem.

Only, it appears it’s a cure in search of a disease.

Even the Boston Globe now admits this in an editorial. The paper writes, according to American Thinker:

Read the rest here.
May 30, 2012

The Left, the Right and the Wrong Side of History

By Selwyn Duke

It’s always amusing when secularists speak of traditionalists being on the “wrong side of history.” We heard this recently after the vote in North Carolina upholding marriage; liberals said that the state was on the wrong side of history.

Now, these people are circling around something that is absolutely true, and it's only charitable to help them understand exactly what it is. What they really mean is that traditionalists are on the wrong side of fashionable trends, and the polls on marriage certainly bear this out. But as G.K. Chesterton said, “A fallacy doesn’t cease to be a fallacy because it becomes a fashion,” and one fallacy secularists have fallen victim to is that they actually grasp history.

History isn’t merely what has happened in the United States during the last century, which has certainly seen the seemingly inexorable advance of moral and intellectual decay — or, as some people like to call it, “progressivism” — through our institutions and social fabric. History isn’t just that same time period in the whole of the West or even the world; it is, rather, the story of Man from the very beginning of recorded time.

Now, history is invaluable because it actually is the record of a grand series of social experiments. Through it we can learn what works and what doesn’t, what stood the test of time in the laboratory of life and hence is timeless, and what are merely old mistakes masquerading as new ideas. But as with science, we cannot learn from it if we, so to speak, lose our data. This is what some call forgetting history but actually is a failure to learn it in the first place. It also could be called progressive education.

Read the rest here.
May 29, 2012

The 10 Least Religious States: Also the Meanest?

By Selwyn Duke

When it comes to religiosity, some American states truly do fit in to the union — the European Union, that is.

According to recent surveys, the most and least religious states are mainly where one might expect: respectively, the Bible Belt of the South, and New England and the West. A recent Gallup study, for instance, rated (in order) Mississippi, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma as the 10 most religious states; and Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, New York, and Rhode Island (the last three were tied for 10th place) as the least.

This is significant because authentic religiosity correlates with many other things. Just consider voting patterns, for instance. Nine of the 10 most religious states are conservative bastions that consistently vote Republican in presidential elections; the one exception is North Carolina, which, owing in large part to demographic changes, is now a Republican-leaning swing state. In contrast, 10 of the least religious states are either Democrat bastions or are close to that; the exceptions are Democratic-leaning swing state New Hampshire; and Alaska, whose rugged rural individualism breeds a conservative libertarianism. And is it surprising that these American states vote like Europeans? When it comes to faith, their residents believe like Europeans. Modern liberalism is the political arm du jour of atheism.

Another thing that correlates with atheism is lower charitable giving.

Read the rest here.
May 28, 2012

When Conservatives Follow the Left’s Vulgar Lead

By Selwyn Duke

Many of us have heard the story about the North Carolina schoolteacher who shrieked at her students that they could be “arrested” for criticizing Barack Obama. The teacher’s words speak for themselves and have been, as is only right, roundly condemned. But it’s not her behavior that bothers me most.

It’s no secret that schoolteachers often seek to instill their leftist tendencies in students or that conservatives recognize the problem. What conservatives don’t recognize so well are the leftist tendencies in themselves.

What do I mean? Consider the following exchange between said teacher (her name hasn’t been released) and the student she locked horns with:

Read the rest here.