May Day 2010. A Nation Mugged

(Click here to learn more about this all-American celebration!)

Shut up and give us your money America. That way no one gets hurt, see. Now repeat after us:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of Amexica

And to the welfare for which it stands

One nation, under fire

Easily divisible

With benefits and social justice

For whomever we deem worthy"

and now en Espanol:

"Prometo lealtad a la bandera de Estados Unidos de Amexica

Y al bienestar para que se para

Una nación, bajo despide

Fácilmente divisible

Con beneficios y justicia social Para quienquiera nosotros creemos digno"

A joyous May Day America. May you live to see another Fourth of July.

Cheers,

Charlie

Regulating the Monkeys

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” James Madison - Federalist No. 51

Recent revelations that instead of fulfilling their mission--overseeing the exchange of securities to protect investors--senior officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission were instead flogging their dolphins as the United States’ financial infrastructure crumbled, is a surprise to exactly no one. Nero fiddled, the SEC diddled.

The colossal failure of the U.S.’s existing financial regulatory apparatus is well documented. In the second of his three-part series about the mortgage crisis in America, Jerry O’Connor, President of the National Bank of Waupun sums up the matter concisely:

“Interestingly the banking regulators failed to identify this huge [housing] bubble growing. Neither did they spread the cautions that the Washington/Wall Street mortgage models could end in the level of calamity we have seen.

The Securities Regulators did not see the Credit Default Swap as a security product, but then again the Insurance Regulators did not think it was an insurance product. The banks and other investors looked at this product as a risk management tool, without knowing if the companies standing behind it were solid enough to face a crisis. The Federal Reserve never saw this coming.

In the end, the new “cocktail investment offering” [Mortgage Backed Securities] that ultimately fueled an economic tsunami went completely unregulated. How could this happen?

The entire government apparatus that is supposed to protect the public was AWOL.”

Indeed. Now at least we know what they were doing while AWOL. (A Google search for euphemisms for pleasuring oneself produced the following gems: “Oliver's Twist”,
”Challenging Alexander Pushkin to a one-handed duel”, “Conjugating the verb”, “Roughing up the suspect”, “Boxing the Clown”, and of course the perennial, “Spank the Monkey”. This seems a splendid opportunity to add to this list, so by all means feel free!)

Predictably, the current leadership in Washington’s response to this farce of epic proportions is both Leftist and ham-fisted (another one for the list?). They would weed out age-old human depravity and fecklessness through increased government regulation. In this we are reminded of the American Left’s incessant attempts to bolster gun control legislation, oblivious to the fact that outlaws with guns care not a whit about their silly rules, existing or intended. “Guns don’t kill people,” argue the Second Ammendmenteers, “people kill people.” In the current financial crisis we might adapt that slogan to “Existing Regulations don’t fail to monitor wrongdoing in the financial sector, porn-surfing, masturbating SEC officials do.”

The fault here is not the machine, but the quality of the individuals operating it.

We find ourselves pondering, yet again, whether the ignorance of Congress and the Administration is genuine or willful as they push for ever more authority over the financial industry. Mr. Emanuel’s infamous “never let a good crisis go to waste” axiom resounds cacophonously. The Wall Street watchmen fell asleep at their posts. Now the collectivist wolves prowl the farm unopposed and shall do as they please.

As we have noted before (ad nauseam!), the belief that basic human failings—greed, lust, sloth, fecklessness, incompetence etc. etc. etc.—can be regulated out of human institutions by the power of government is both hilarious and horrifying, for history has shown repeatedly that, when put into practice, this belief ultimately results in cultural devastation, mass destitution, and mountains of human corpses.

A buzz-kill for even the most agile of porn-surfers.

Cheers,

Charlie

Earth Day Done Right

This ought to crank off the old eco-wind bags, eh? Brilliant! Click here to learn more.

For your further edification, please peruse our past slanders of this Marxist sham of a holiday and the wretched movement that spawned it:

• Earth Day - The New Religions Holy Day of Obligation
• Earth Day - At Least Marx Had Integrity
• Reading by the Light of Perverted Science
• The Rationale of Madness

Cheers,

Charlie

Only in America

UPDATE: Lefties hate that the Tea Parties are Peaceful

The animals bellow and scurry about the barnyard for no apparent reason. Farmhands shake their heads and laugh. Hours later, they join the panic as a force five tornado bears down upon the farm.

American Tea partiers bellow and scurry about the country for no apparent reason. The sophisticated shake their heads and laugh. Years later, will they join the panic as the force of unfettered government bears down upon every aspect of their lives?

Some prefer not to leave such questions to chance.

There’s much to be said for the animalian ability to detect threats long before they are apparent to others. By some fluke of nature, Americans—some Americans—have always demonstrated a similar sixth sense where their liberty is concerned.

Fresh off the boat from England, we were not a little awestruck as we experienced this phenomenon firsthand at our first ever Tea Party in Madison, Wisconsin this past Thursday, April 15.

First impressions were myriad but chief among them was the atmosphere of the event, more church social than protest: Mums and Dads pushing strollers; grandmums and granddads pushing walkers, and no one pushing methamphetamines; words most commonly heard were “hello”, “excuse me”, and polite solicitations to support this candidate or that, oppose this bit of asinine legislation or that; other than the occasional “HELL NO” we heard not a single foul word, detected no presence of alcohol, and saw not one piece of litter; there was no evidence of racism (the only sign even addressing the issue paraphrased Dr. King, “It’s not the color of his skin. It’s the content of his policies.” Brilliant!); and though motivated by anger, there was nothing seen or felt that could be identified as hatred…

… just ask the “Tea Party crashers” who attended.

Despite their best efforts, the Lefty infiltrators provoked little but amusement amongst the some 10 to 12,000 assembled. Personally we saw two groups attempting provocation. The first comprised four or five sumptuous vixens carrying signs from Planned Parenthood, one of which read, “Keep Your Tea Bags Off of My Body.” (By the looks of her, she’d had quite a few there already.) They made their way through the crowd, their boy-toy lackey in tow video taping every second in the hopes that some frothing, Jesus-soaked right-winger would rip the sign from their hands and beat them to the ground with it, just in time for the five o’clock news. No such luck. A few heckles, a number of disapproving glances, nothing more. They left, unassaulted and disappointed.

The second group bore signs supporting Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin.) Again, disinterest and amusement was the general reaction. As they withdrew from the crowd, however, a young male Feingold supporter – festooned in face piercings and heavy leather jacket (it was 75 degrees) – attempted to provoke an elderly and much larger man than he into fisticuffs. The man smiled and waved the young agitator onward toward the back of the rally and back home to his bong. We caught a glimpse of this young man; his eyes, pale blue and small, burning with rage and contempt. At who or what we wondered? What exactly about this gathering did he find so noxious and outrageous?

There were no other infiltrations that we detected other than a truck which drove round the perimeter of the State Capitol where the event took place, honking its horn incessantly. One of the event speakers--a black man by Jiminy!-- Pastor David King, referenced the truck and pointed out that it bore a sign reading, I am my brother’s keeper.

“They don’t want to be their brother’s keeper,” he declared. “They want to be their brother’s master.”

Progressivism in sum. The crowd roared.

You would not and will not experience anything like these Tea Parties in Europe or England, or anywhere else in the world. One-off protests, demonstrations, and riots in response to offenses of the state, real or perceived, are not uncommon. But a civil, sustained, growing movement like this requires more than outrage, it requires love. A love you will find only in America.

Greater than the Tea Partiers’ anger over stimulus legislation, health care reform, a legion of czars, the castration of American defenses etc. being jammed down the national throat, with the very real threat of more to come, is their love of liberty, limited government, and economic freedom. The same love that moved Americans 234 years ago to rally around a Declaration that angrily denounced a tone-deaf king, but far more importantly, articulated a radical love of life and principles worth fighting and dying for.

This is what fuels the Tea Party movement. This is what characterizes their rallies. This is what heightens their senses so. And this is what President Obama and other Democrat officials scoff at to their own peril.

Cheers,

Charlie

What are you doing next Thursday?

Mr. Beck, the Christian Left, and the reigning sin of our age

By way of update: We give you Lady Malkin's - "The Pfelger-ization of the Catholic Church"

Mr. Glenn Beck is in no need of our defence. Suffice to say that, as regards “social justice” as defined by the Left, we concur with him entirely. Indeed, we have written similarly and extensively on many occasions ourselves. Here then, we write not to echo or attempt to add to Mr. Beck’s political analysis of “social justice” which is more than spot on; but to complement it with analysis of what we consider the fundamental theological flaw of the Left’s understanding of “social justice.”

One thing church-going advocates of justice Left or Right ought agree upon is that poverty is the result of immoral behavior. If we are to identify, condemn and root out such behavior among the rich and powerful, are we not obligated to do the same among the poor and powerless? The answer – presuming one is genuinely interested in justice – is “yes.” If a rich, white CEO is misleading board members to justify his preposterous salary to the detriment of the company he is leading, he ought be rebuked. If a poor, unmarried, black teen age girl is delivering her second severely pre-mature child at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to Medicaid (i.e. tax payers), she ought be rebuked. This would be justice.

Behavior aloof or antagonistic to human dignity – be it directed outwardly or inwardly – is first and foremost an offense against God (i.e. Sin) and is therefore requisite of rebuke. Such rebuke is intended not to establish that the non-sinner is morally superior to the sinner in a particular instance, but to educate him to the error of his ways – as would a friend, a sibling, a spouse, a parent - and guide him back to the path to God. To believers this is true compassion, for the most loving and important act a soul can perform for another is that which brings them closer to God.

The Christian Left rejects all of this. Thoroughly secularized and steeped-in the Progressive mind-set, they have removed the spiritual dynamic from all understanding of human behavior. All that matters is the material: the level of income, the condition of the housing, the access to public amenities. It is forbidden to analyze to what extent “those less fortunate” are responsible for their own misfortune. To do so, we are told in no uncertain terms, is to show a “lack of compassion”, a “failing to understand”, “insensitivity” and, of course, in cases where the unfortunate are members of ethnic minorities, “racism.”

Is it any wonder then that in a nation that gives $300 billion a year in charity, and billions more through tax-funded government poverty programs, poverty persists? Indeed, many on the Left insist it is growing, as “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” If a man is never rebuked for picking the scab off his wound he will continue to bleed. If the human family forbids itself from rebuking the devastating effects of certain behaviors, that family will continue being devastated.

And when people are forced by law to fund programs that merely encourage and enable destructive behavior by masking their effects, we are hastening that destruction, more deeply embedding it into the culture, ensuring it will continue for generations to come, and - to those of faith – institutionalizing a grave sin against God and man. Thus Sister Angelica’s charge that “misplaced compassion” comprises the “reigning sin of our age.”

Gads. Are we suggesting then that social justice as defined by the Left is immoral? Yes. Not only because it perpetuates poverty, destroys lives and hope, greatly diminishes human achievement, dishonors the fruits of human labor, and breeds dependency that atrophies the human spirit, but most significantly because it eases men off the path to truth – God – which makes everyone poorer in the most absolute sense of the word.

On the occasion of this blessed Easter, let us pray that Reason, enlightened by God Almighty, be resurrected in the minds and hearts of all mankind so that true compassion and true justice once again be made the object of our ambition to virtue.

Cheers,

Charlie