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May 10, 2011

Barack Obama’s Seven-dollar-a-gallon Gas Ambitions

By Selwyn Duke

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” said Steven Chu — the man Barack Obama would ultimately tap to be energy secretary — in September 2008. He was explaining to The Wall Street Journal that higher energy prices are the centerpiece of the Left’s energy overhaul. Well, I don’t know if they’ve figured out the Euro-boost yet, but we are halfway to Vienna.

Now, while I’m sure Barack Obama would love it if gas prices declined until November 6, 2012, there’s every reason to believe he shares Chu’s sentiments. And if the fact that he hired such a man in the first place isn’t enough for you, consider his campaign-trail implication that he wouldn’t have a problem with four-dollar-a-gallon gas (hey, it won’t cramp his lifestyle. Golf, anyone?). Consider also that he’s quite willing to subordinate the satisfying of energy needs to symbolic environmental deeds. For example, in 2008, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that his policies would bankrupt the traditional coal industry and said “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket [emphasis added].” It’s amazing what comes out of his mouth — even on the campaign trail — off Teleprompter.

Given this attitude, it’s not surprising that oil rigs, denied permits to drill by the Obama administration, have been leaving the Gulf of Mexico for foreign shores. And don’t expect to see them back anytime soon, either. After all, moving a Walmart-size rig is no small feat, and not all countries have a national death wish that causes the afflicted to kill the golden goose like ghetto criminals who ensure that businesses will leave their neighborhoods.

Read the rest here.
May 9, 2011

Austria’s Geert Wilders Rails against Immigration and Muslim Influence

Is this footage of the best statesman in Europe? This is a video of Austrian parliamentarian Ewald Stadler violating every tenet of political correctness and giving the Turkish ambassador to his nation a dressing down the Turk will never forget. It’s chicken soup for the soul for anyone who is sick and tired of how Western nations subordinate the interests of their native citizens to those of unassimilable foreigners.

I don’t know much about Stadler’s general ideology, but on this issue our politicians could certainly take a leaf out of his book. Geert Wilders, you have some competition.
May 9, 2011

Do You Really Want Constitutional Government?

By Selwyn Duke

There is a simple reason why we don’t have constitutional government: By and large, most Americans don’t want it. In fact, most don’t even know what it would entail.

This is true even of most people who preach adherence to the Constitution.

Just recently I lunched with a fellow commentator, an extremely nice man (he really is) who is part of the conservative blogosphere. As you might imagine, politics, religion and philosophy were the stuff of our conversation, and we found ourselves largely in agreement until….

That is, until the issue of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) somehow arose and my amiable colleague started singing its praises.

This prompted me to aver that, good idea or not, the act is unconstitutional. My lunch mate didn’t deny this — but nor did he accept it. Instead, he provided a few reasons why he believed it was necessary, despite my pointing out that constitutionalism is not a pick-and-choose proposition.

Read the rest here.
May 3, 2011

Importing Disaster: Demographic Changes Mean Democrat Future

By Selwyn Duke

At a gathering some years ago, I had a political conversation with a man who had recently arrived here from Denmark. He was advocating his home country’s socialist system, which, of course, led to profound disagreement. He was good natured and cordial, however, so the debate ended on a polite note. Yet it also ended on an ironic one: When asked if he wanted to return home, his answer was no.

This is a common phenomenon. We see it, for instance, in liberal northerners who move to the South for the lower taxes and cost of living and greater freedom but then continue to vote for the kind of politicians who made the Northeast a nice place to leave. And while this befuddles many, it’s simply man’s nature. Of course people want that which is good, such as a better lifestyle, but wanting and attaining are two different things. Everyone wants good health, for example, but many nevertheless are too attached to unhealthful foods and practices to relinquish them. Oh, they might move into your healthy body if they could, but they would likely do to it what a government–subsidized project does to a good neighborhood.

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April 29, 2011

Up from Mexico Way: A Lawsuit Against U.S. Gun Manufacturers

By Selwyn Duke

In the early days it was Pancho Villa, then it was undocumented Democrats and drug runners, and now we have the latest incursion across our southern border: The Mexican government is poised to file a lawsuit against our domestic firearms manufacturers over U.S.-made guns that are finding their way into Mexico. Writes CBS News:

"Sources say Mexico's frustration with U.S. efforts to stop the flow of weapons has pushed them into this novel approach. The law firm [that has been retained] is looking at charges that may include civil RICO. The contract was signed on November 2, 2010 by a representative of Mexico's Attorney General, at their Washington embassy.

"On November 5, 2010 President Felipe Calderon expressed his frustration to CBS News correspondent Peter Greenberg: 'We seized more than 90,000 weapons…. I am talking like 50,000 assault weapons, AR-15 machine guns, more than 8,000 grenades and almost 10 million bullets. Amazing figures and according to all those cases, the ones we are able to track, most of these are American weapons.'"

Frustration with efforts to stop a cross-border flow….

Wow, we wouldn’t know anything about that.

Read the rest here.
April 25, 2011

No, Beauty is Not in the Eye of the Beholder

By Selwyn Duke

The American Thinker’s Rick Moran recently wrote a blog piece about how some Catholics in France destroyed two of Andres Serrano’s creations, excreta that some euphemistically refer to as art. Moran opened by saying that his topic would make for lively debate among commenters, and he was right. And it has also provoked a lively response from me.

In his piece, Moran states, “Art, as we learned when growing up, is in the eye of the beholder.” Yes, most of us did learn this growing up—and we learned wrong. That is to say, unless “art” doesn’t really exist.

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April 21, 2011

Gandhi Reconsidered: When Paganism Met Progressivism

By Selwyn Duke

When an Indian-born man I knew a couple of decades ago expressed an intense dislike for Mohandas Gandhi, I found it a bit surprising. Wasn’t the “Great Soul,” that quintessential 20th-century icon, India’s George Washington?

That certainly is the narrative created by historians — who, history has taught us, can tell a lie — and works such as Richard Attenborough’s award-winning 1982 film Gandhi. But there is a reason why Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie responded to that movie by lamenting, “Deification is an Indian disease. Why should Attenborough do it?” And with Gandhi back in the news owing to a newly published biography about him, it’s fitting to examine what that reason might be.

Any discussion of Gandhi should start with what most characterizes his image: non-violence and respect for all peoples. And the image certainly is a bit different from the reality. Everyone knows, for instance, about how Gandhi advocated non-violence in India’s struggle against the British; what is less well known is that, after the British’s 1906 declaration of war against the Zulus in South Africa, Gandhi encouraged that nation’s Indians to support the military effort, writing, “If the Government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.” And while the British weren’t amenable to this — thus, ironically, doing more at that time to ensure Indian pacifism than the drum-beating Gandhi — he was appointed a Sgt. Major in the British army and allowed to lead a stretcher-bearer corps.

Read the rest here.
April 13, 2011

Illegal Aliens Get More Welfare Benefits Than Citizens

By Selwyn Duke

Whether or not illegal aliens are doing jobs Americans won’t do, they’re certainly getting benefits Americans don’t get. This is the finding of a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report stating that a whopping 70 percent of illegal-immigrant households with children receive handouts via a government program. The rate for immigrant households with children overall (both legal and illegal) is 57 percent, versus only 39 percent for such native households.

This puts the lie to open-border advocates’ claim that immigration is a net plus for our nation. While this might have been true prior to the nanny state’s rise, when immigrants had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, today’s statist, entitlement culture has changed that equation. As pressing one for English and Mexican flags waved in street protests evidence, many today come here not to assimilate but because “America, land of the free” has come to mean free stuff for non-Americans.

Read the rest here.
April 9, 2011

Socialized Medicine Director Dies After Waiting Nine Months for Operation

By Selwyn Duke

It’s a bit like a supermarket manager dying of starvation or a bottled-water distributor dying of thirst: In the U.K., a former National Health Service (NHS) director died because she was forced to wait for medical care — at her own hospital. The Daily Mail reports:

Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust — the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

He said: "I don't really know why she died. I did not get a reason from the hospital. We all want to know for closure. She got weaker and weaker as she waited and operations were put off."

Not to be cruel, but the reason is simple.

It’s called government-run health care.

Read the rest here.
March 28, 2011

Yes, Violence Can be the Answer

By Selwyn Duke

It was the body slam heard around the world. When some Australian schoolboys decided to videotape themselves bullying 15-year old Casey Heynes, one of them got more than he bargained for. Casey, who had been pushed around and humiliated for years, responded to a punch in his face and other attempted blows by hoisting his tormentor WWE style and introducing him to the pavement. The result was a video that went viral in a way the bullies had never imagined and for a reason they certainly had never hoped: Casey has become a hero worldwide.

That is, a hero to everyone except the “experts.” Ah, the experts, uncommon people you can rely on for all-too-common senselessness. As The Sydney Morning Herald writes:

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