A Portly Politico Two-Minute Update: Personal Responsibility in the African-American Community

As some of you may know, radio talk show personality Rush Limbaugh has been under more scrutiny than usual from the Left lately because of his bid to buy the St. Louis Rams with a group of other investors. Race-baiters of all stripes are coming out of the woodworks to criticize Limbaugh for past statements that are allegedly racist.

I'm not going to comment on whether or not Limbaugh has or has not said racist things. Instead, I want to share a great article by LZ Granderson in which he argues that, regardless of whether or not Limbaugh is racist, the African-American community has to take stock of its own failures.

Here's a key passage from the article:

Limbaugh may be a racist, but he is not the reason there are more black men in prison than in college. We are.

Our issues did not germinate in a vacuum, but I believe the best way to get out of our socioeconomical malaise is to spend less time looking at what white people like Limbaugh are supposedly doing to us and more time looking at what we're definitely doing to ourselves. More time charting a new course based on personal responsibility, not victimhood and the retelling of stories, because let me tell you, some of those stories have been touched up so many times it's hard to know what's true anyway.

You can read Granderson's article here: "Commentary: Don't blame Limbaugh for our faults."

A Portly Politico Video Update: Glenn Beck blames godlessness for America

I found this video on a website called www.personalliberty.com. The site itself can be a bit overboard sometimes (when I took a poll on the site, I was sent e-mails about a book giving tips for surviving the downfall of civilization after an EMP terrorist attack), but this video is incredible. I recently read Glenn Beck's Common Sense (see another recent post for more--and be on the lookout for a review in the near future) and I am now convinced that, despite his occasional emotional breakdowns and outbursts, he has one of the clearest, most powerful visions for what Americans need to be doing right now to rally against an out-of-control, increasingly totalitarian government.

You can find the video here: Glenn Beck blames godlessness for America’s problems

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A Portly Politico Two-Minute Update: The Nobel Piece of Crap Prize

Shock and awe isn't just a term that applies to Iraq anymore. Now that phrase, minus the "awe" part, works for today's announcement that President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I thought it was bad when Al Gore won the signature prize for "raising awareness" about global warming/cooling/climate change/lack of climate change, but now this? Evidently Obama was nominated after being President for only two weeks. Heck, I didn't even know that he had been nominated. Now he's walking home with what once was the greatest honor in the Nobel pantheon. Nobody has cared about the Nobel Physics winner since Einstein. Everyone, however, loves a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The stated reason that Obama won the prize is that he has set a new tenor for global cooperation and is attempting to ease tensions between the United States and the Islamic world. I'm willing to concede that he has a set a new tone for foreign relations, albeit an unrealistically idealist one, but "setting the tone" and actually doing something are entirely different things.

Another point--how are we gauging this "new tenor" of international relations, anyway? Maybe Europeans don't automatically think that we're all imperialistic pigs who love to spend money and watch television anymore, but so what? None of Obama's foreign policy initiatives have borne fruit yet. They may very well in time, although I find that unlikely except in a few instances. If nothing else, awarding a rookie president with less than a year of experience in office with the most distinguished prize in the Nobel family is premature. And that's the best case scenario. At worst, this smacks of just another feather in the cap of the Obama ego machine. Fortunately, we've all come to our senses, even if we did a year too late.

Even readers on MSNBC.com, who tend to be more liberal than not, are overwhelmingly outraged, or at least perplexed, by Obama's win. An unofficial MSNBC poll with comments demonstrates these feelings. You can see it here: Poll: "Is President Obama deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize?"

Source: "Obama: Nobel Peace Prize 'a call to action'"

The Portly Politico Returns!

Hello loyal readers (meaning my girlfriend and my old roommate from college)!

After a hiatus of slightly over two months, The Portly Politico is back! I just finished Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, which blew all of my preconceived notions of what a book by a conservative pundit can be. In conjunction with that reading, I will be writing an entry in the next few days concerning the potential for a viable third party to arise, which is something Beck devotes a significant amount of space discussing.

I have also started work as the Cultural Coordinator for the City of Sumter, South Carolina, where I manage the Sumter Opera House. Working in local government is a great experience. I know I talk a lot here about the problems with government spending and expansion, but local government is forced to think like a business: it has to be lean and efficient, and it must provide quality service to the public, and we do that everyday in Sumter. We avoid the sluggishness of the federal government and we don't go around raising taxes willy-nilly (and, of course, we can't print more money, either). In fact, the only rate increase instituted since the recession began last year was charging $8 a month for garbage pickup, a service that was provided free-of-charge previously.

One last update: Nikki Haley tore up the competition at the first Republican gubernatorial debate that was held recently at the Newberry Opera House. You can see a great clip here (be sure to turn up the volume--it's a very quiet clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqa4w-NUq1k

It's great to be back!

--The P. P.

A Portly Politico Two-Minute Update: Talk Radio

I neglected to mention in my last post that, despite having listened to very little talk radio lately, I recently called in to a talk radio program for the first time ever. I was very tempted to say, "Hey, Keven, first time caller, long-time listener." The program was hosted by Keven Cohen and the topic was space exploration because it was the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing. I just happened to be driving through Columbia when the show began and I knew I had to call in.

My main point was that the United States should attempt to establish lunar colonies--or at the very least another moon landing--before China has a chance to get to the moon, mainly because the United States will make sure that the moon remains open for the whole world to visit, to enjoy, and to business upon. I also argued that the moon is a possession of humanity and should therefore be treated unilaterally.

One point I wish I had made was that the future of lunar exploration might lie with private enterprise. Space exploration requires huge resources and coordination, but if commercial value could be demonstrated on the moon, on Mars, or beyond, private corporations might pick up some of the slack for the government. In times like these it might seem questionable to spend money on the space program, so projects like the Google Lunar X Prize might hold the key to future private ventures into space.

Corporations aren't the only entities that can get involved. Non-profit organizations could make substantial contributions to additional research.

Regardless, I have written an essay on lunar exploration that I have never published, so I might run it as a four-part series over the next few days. Stay tuned for more.

Vacation Time (Part II)!

Well, I have been fairly deficient the past few weeks in updating this little blog. Even my last blog entry on the Fourth was pretty much a cop-out. Speaking of which, here are my reasons for being so delinquent in my updating duties:

1.) The week after Independence Day I was in Fripp Island, South Carolina, for a few days before heading up to Banaslam in Cornelius, North Carolina at D. Rowland's place. My girlfriend and I stopped in Beaufort, South Carolina on our way to the beach where I picked up the twice-monthly The Lowcountry, which included a fantastic article about the recent Mark Sanford affair. The author, Margaret Evans, places Sanford in a very tragic--and very human--aspect, pointing out his honesty, however belated, during his unusually sincere press conference. You can find it here: "The Bigger They Are..."

2.) I've had three interviews at two different employers, both in Sumter, South Carolina. I have had two interviews with the City of Sumter for a position there as their Cultural Coordinator (more on that later) and had a second interview with Thomas Sumter Academy, a private school, for a teaching position in English and History. Therefore, I've been spending a good bit of time traveling to and from Aiken, Florence, and Sumter, as well as doing research for these positions (these days, you can never be too prepared).

3.) I've been playing a lot of games on Steam, especially Half-Life 2 and some unique, five dollar games that I have ordered from Steam--Chains, a pretty colorful, highly-original puzzle game, and Blueberry Garden, a whimsical but subtly sinister game about a living and temporarily breathing garden suffering from a mysterious peril.

4.) I am exercising! My girlfriend and I walk three miles a day and we have--over my objections--started to jog lightly. Weight loss, here I come! Maybe I'll have to change the name of this blog....

5.) Despite all of my traveling, I actually haven't been able to listen to news talk radio that often. I only really listen in the car alone, so for about a week or a week-and-a-half I didn't get hardly any news from my usual source; ergo, I have fallen woefully behind on the current events of the day.

All that being the case, I do have a quick topic to discuss. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested the other day for ambiguous reasons. He arrived back from a trip and basically had to break into his own house. The issue is that Professor Gates is black, and he and others are saying that the Cambridge police department is racist.

Yeah, yeah--this is the same old song and dance. The arresting officer probably was motivated by race when he (allegedly) treated the professor roughly. Of course, the professor was probably being a smug, elitist punk when he (allegedly) talked down to the officer. They were probably both at fault.

I'm no big fan of cops, although one of them was very nice to let me off with a warning on my way to the beach the other week (and I was going fifteen over--thank you Officer DeLoach of Allendale). I recognize that they are necessary in our society to maintain order--the thin blue line and what-not--but police organizations can harbor some fairly dangerous and even racist contempt for the people they are charged to protect. I suppose this is the eternal problem facing police, who must constantly protect citizens that don't entirely appreciate them and who they don't entirely respect.

In fact, I don't even care if this arrest was racially motivated or not. Here's what upsets me: the way AP writer Jesse Washington covers the arrest in this piece: "Scholar's arrest is a signpost on the road to equality." Read the opening paragraphs: Washington is essentially arguing that because Professor Gates is well-educated and distinguished, he should be treated better than others who commit crimes. On the surface his argument is that because Professor Gates, a well-known African-American scholar, is treated poorly by the police, it just goes to show how much more poorly regular African-American men are treated by police.

That's not the point I see at all. I am enraged at the assumption that a Harvard professor deserves better treatment than others. Yeah, a lot of cops are probably anti-intellectual as well as racist. That doesn't matter. Professors contribute a great deal to society; they also sit on their butts quite a bit, too, especially the established ones. And honorary degrees, of which Professor Gates has over fifty, Washington tells us (probably due some extent to the fact that Professor Gates is a pioneering black scholar) are purely symbolic.

I'm not the only one. Dr. Boyce Watkins, an African-American, expresses some similar sentiments. I encourage you to read his article here: "Consider this before crying 'racial profiling.'" Maybe he has more cache than I since, in this color-blind society of ours, he's black.

Yes, there are plenty of white people who do despicable things to blacks and other minorities. Yes, there are a lot of elitist, ivory tower types in our universities. There are also tons of race-baiters out there who are all too ready to play the race card. In this instance, Professor Gates is probably right to do so, but he shouldn't expect better treatment because he's a distinguished professor at Harvard.

And, c'mon--how many skin-headed cops are really going to know a professor by sight? I don't know what Bernard Bailyn looks like, and I studied history at the graduate level and read several of his books.

So, yeah--welcome back.

Happy Independence Day!

Hey everyone!

Happy Independence Day! The Fourth of July really is a time for celebration. It's a time to gather with friends and family, eat some barbecue, and--if you're in my family--debate politics. I know, I know--in polite (read: Southern) society you're supposed to avoid three topics at the dinner table: sex, politics, and religion. Well, we somehow manage to break the rule as it pertains to the second of those three items.

Of course, this holiday probably won't be so contentious since my left-leaning brother and sister-in-law will not be present, which also means it won't be as fun. My younger brother's ultra-conservatism and my socially conservative pseudo-conservatism usually butt heads with them, and while things can get a little heated, it's all in good fun. We might leave the table without having changed any minds, but there's still a vigorous, if occasionally heated, exchange of ideas.

Debate is one of the things that makes this country so great. It's also something that we as Americans need to be careful about. My family debates politics a great deal, but sometimes we might cross the line in our passionate defenses of our viewpoints. So in the spirit of magnanimity and reasonable discourse, let me issue an apology to my older brother and sister-in-law, in the event that I have ever offended you while defending any of my positions. I am not apologizing for what I believe, but instead for those times when I may have gone overboard.

And we all go overboard sometimes. That's okay every now and then, but we need to maintain a civil level of discourse as often as possible. Getting into arguments around the dinner table with close friends and family is one thing; doing it on national television is another. Conservatives and liberals alike are guilty of incivility in our national discourse. While conservatives tend to get a bad rap because of talk radio and confrontational interviewers like Bill O'Reilly, I would dare say that the most vicious, unfounded attacks come from the Left. Bill O'Reilly might yell at and talk over his guests, but it's usually because he's frustrated with liberal double-speak and the unwillingness of his guest to say what they really mean. Sometimes you have to get a little rough to get to the truth.

I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives out there who call President Barack Obama names or who wish aloud that Michael Moore was dead, but the shrill, non-stop hatred coming from liberals is staggering. It's also extremely hypocritical. Hate speech legislation and university hate speech codes are almost exclusively leftist measures that, ironically, limit free speech. I'll admit--conservatives and Republicans take a pretty unpopular stance on these kinds of things. We tend to believe that people should be able to say what they think and and believe, even if it is repulsive. That's why we let liberals get away with so much. Ever wondered why liberal college kids weren't tossed in prisons in droves for saying such asinine things as "Bush lied, kids died"? It's because their right to say those things, regardless of how slanderous or treasonous they were, is protected in the First Amendment.

What about when the shoe is on the foot? Everyone hates the Ku Klux Klan and their message. It's morally reprehensible and offensive--much like anti-Bush protestors (I'm not trying to imply moral equivalency--the KKK is far worse than a handful of misguided New York Times columnists). But just because we disagree with what they say does not mean they lose their rights to say it. Liberals, for all of their fawning over the ACLU and the First Amendment, have a hard time grasping that simple constitutional truth.

Free speech is for everyone. Our Founding Fathers intended it that way. Also, I'm pretty Thomas Jefferson would have loved blogging.

Happy Independence Day!

A Portly Politico Two-Minute Update: A Message from Mark Sanford

Governor Mark Sanford regularly sends out an e-mail to those who are on a mailing list, I believe as part of www.sanfordforgovernor.net. The governor writes short e-mails to his supporters on a regular basis, informing them about certain issues being debated in the General Assembly or about up-and-coming politicians (I found out about Nikki Haley because Sanford sent out an e-mail linking to another blogger's post about her).

For those of you that do not receive these messages, or in case you missed the governor's speech last week about his marital indisgressions, I am including the full text of Governor Sanford's e-mail here. You can also find it at www.governorsanford.com. More commentary to come.

A Message from Mark

Dear Friends,

I write to apologize and ask for your forgiveness.

Well beyond the personal consequences within my own family, I know that at so many different levels my actions have upset, offended and disappointed friends and supporters and for this I am most sorry. As I mentioned in last week's press conference, I've always believed God's laws were there to protect us from ourselves, and what has transpired over this last week vividly illustrates the damage that comes personally, and to those you love and respect, in doing otherwise.

So in the aftermath of this failure I want to not only apologize, but to commit to growing personally and spiritually. Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign - as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise - that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes - but that if my spirit wasn't right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Their belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one - and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.

They have also made the point that a good part of life is about scripts - that the idea of redemption isn't something that Marshall, Landon, Bolton and Blake should just read about, it's something they should see. Accordingly, they suggested that there was a very different life script that would be lived and learned by our boys, and thousands like them, if this story simply ended with scandal and then the end of office - versus a fall from grace and then renewal and rebuilding and growth in its aftermath.

I won't belabor all these points, but I did want to write as expressed earlier to say that I'm sorry and that more than anything I personally ask for your prayers for me, Jenny, the boys and so many others who have been impacted by what I have done.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Take care.

Mark

A Portly Politico Two-Minute Update: Effective Health Care Plan - Larry Kudlow

I just read an excellent piece by economist Larry Kudlow discussing an alternative to President Barack Obama's disastrous socialized health care plan. You can read his article for more details (link at the end of this post).

Kudlow makes two major arguments in this piece. First, he lays out in brief a cost-effective way to provide affordable health care to the tens of millions of Americans who legitimately need it (he also points out that several million Americans who qualify for Medicaid simply haven't signed up for it yet). Second, he points out the disastrous consequences government-run health care, arguing that people spend their own money the most wisely.

It's a classic point straight out of Milton Friedman. Imagine if you are given $1000 that belongs to someone else and are told to spend that money for the anonymous person. How would you spend that money, knowing that it was given to you without doing anything to deserve it and knowing that you will never have to face the mystery money-giver in person? You might be able to invest it, but chances are you're going to squander a good bit of it.

Now imagine it's your own $1000. You had to work for it. You know exactly what you can and cannot do with that money. You know your own needs and desires better than anyone else. Chances are you're going to spend that $1000 pretty efficiently. Yeah, you might "waste" it on something you don't need, but at least you had a say in the matter, right?

As Kudlow witheringly points out, the Democratic Party wants to control the American health care system, plain and simple. He offers a viable alternative to socialized health care, an alternative that won't break the bank, will cost a fraction of Obama's current plan, and, most importantly, will provide health care benefits to the Americans who actually need it. The only reason the Democrats would object to such a reasonable alternative is because they don't really care about the uninsured in the first place. They just want the government to have more power and more influence.

Conservatives do care. We aren't just monsters who want to leave the uninsured, well, uninsured. Our health care system is in pretty bad shape financially and health care has become prohibitively expensive for those who lack insurance. I myself have been screwed over by high health care costs, as my last job did not provide a group health plan. Buying health insurance privately is ridiculously expensive, and cheap plans have high deductibles and basically cover catastrophic events.

Conservatives aren't opposed to change. We just oppose change that is going to lead to government largesse, inefficiency, and monopoly.

Source: "We Don't Need Big-Bang Health-Care Reform" at National Review Online.

Transformers 2: Conservatives in Disguise?

Earlier today I saw Michael Bay's highly-anticipated (and critically-panned) Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Prior to seeing the movie, I had no intention of writing a blog about it. Although films are occasional inspirations for my essays (see my article about the lack of strong African-American fathers, which I wrote after seeing Boyz n the Hood), I never imagined that Transformers 2 would be the subject of one of my blog entries because I don't write straight-up reviews. Honestly, I figured it would be exactly what it is: a steady stream of explosions, robots, and mass destruction.

What I didn't count on was that it would only be what I expected 99% of the time. That other 1% is the focus of this essay. Like the first Transformers film, Transformers 2 spent a great deal of time covering the U.S. military and its interactions with and against the various transforming automatons. Generally speaking, the soldiers are characterized as normal and basically decent--they want to do what is best for their country and they want to protect the weak and innocent, but they will follow the civilian authority of the Constitution.

In Transformers 2, however, I noticed a more overt, though still very, very subtle, endorsement of conservative politics--or, at the very least, a critique of modern liberalism. I don't want to read too much into this (well, actually, I do), but there are several moments during the movie when the misinformed meddler, the entity trying to put the kibosh on the Autobot-military alliance, is a mealy-mouthed government bean-counter who sees the Autobots as an alien menace that constitutes a risk to national security. Now, sure, action movies are overflowing with literal-minded government stooges and opportunistic politicians who are always putting up a wall of red tape that is harder to break than the concrete bunker our hero just crashed through on his motorcycle. The key difference in Transformers 2, however, is that the government stooge in question is acting under direct orders from the president, who is explicitly identified as... Barack Obama (one news report states that "President Obama has been relocated" to a bunker somewhere in the Midwest).

Not evidence enough? At one point, this pencil-pusher makes a point straight out of the Obama foreign policy playbook: let's try to negotiate with the bad guys. Maybe we can talk out our differences and everyone can live in peace. When the bureaucratic boob said that, I almost fell out of my seat. I don't know if Michael Bay or the writers of Transformers 2 were intentionally making this point, but for this chubby conservative the implications were loud and clear: Obama and other liberals who demand negotiations before resorting to force against overtly hostile, dangerous opponents are fatally off base and out-of-touch. The president's puppet makes the point that the United States should not be involved in the civil war of an alien race in the first place, but that doesn't change the fact that it is anyway. The United States, the filmmakers seem to be suggesting, has a responsibility to aid the Autobots against the new Decepticon menace, whether it likes that obligation or not, and the proposed policies of Obama and other liberals in foreign relations are potentially devastating.

Besides a subtle endorsement of a neoconservative foreign policy--or at least a more realistic approach to foreign threats--Transformers 2 is, as I have mentioned, heavily pro-military. The film depicts soldiers as law- and order-abiding citizens who, even if they don't like it, abide by civilian authority. This is a refreshing change from the usual Hollywood fare, which casts soldiers in the light of threats to democracy and as right-wing gun nuts who want nothing more than to seize control of the government themselves. While we should have a healthy wariness of the military as a potentially repressive arm of the federal government--a wariness that dates back to colonial America and that is most evident in the writings of Thomas Jefferson--Transformers 2 makes it clear that the U.S. military is a military of dedicated civilian volunteers who value and fight for freedom. They are not professionals who ride roughshod over the freedoms of others, be they Americans or foreigners. In fact, the U.S. military works closely with several Middle Eastern governments in the film, including the Egyptian and Jordanian militaries. In one scene, when a Jordanian helicopter is grounded by a Decepticon, American soldiers aid the fallen foreigners. This is not the unilateral, oppressive, quagmired military we hear so much about in the media; this is a dynamic, humane force made up of regular, freedom-loving Americans.

This brings me to one final point, a point I've been mulling over for awhile. We are constantly told that wars are started by the elite and fought by the poor; that wars are little more than opportunistic struggles or, even worse, the effect of some perceived slight or random occurrence; that war is rarely right or even necessary. In different times and in different places, many of these assumptions were true. Wars in the past were started by absolute monarchs or power-hungry tyrants, while they were fought by loyal vassals or downtrodden peasants.

In the United States, however, this is not the case. We live in a society where the people, at least in theory and, cynics aside, very much in practice, have a say in the functioning of government. Whatever slogan-spouting liberals will tell you, their bumper-sticker philosophy is severely flawed and misinformed. If the United States goes to war against a hostile power or terrorist group, it is because the people have given their approval. Foreign policy is, admittedly, concentrated in the executive branch of the government, which means that the president and the Secretary of State have a great deal of influence in deciding its direction. Any president hoping to keep his office, however, is going to be careful in how he deals with foreign policy.

Therefore, the traditional criticisms levelled against war are at best incomplete and at worst obsolete, at least when applied to the United States. There is still a great deal of debate about whether or not the United States should be the world's police officer; regardless, wars are not foisted on unwitting dupes by a greedy elite in America.

This claim is a bold one, but I stand by it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been fought and would not have endured so long without significant support from the American people. Now that support is beginning to wane, serious questions are being asked about America's future role in those countries, but we are seeing a huge amount of popular outpouring for the people of Iran, who are currently struggling against their sham of a government. President Obama's "let's-talk-it-out" approach to foreign policy is not enough when facing a regime of authoritarian thugs.