Pulitzer Level Journalism

Traditionalists that we are, we still get the local newspaper. For years I have been ready to dispense with it but my wife insists that we need it for local "news" and coupons. I think even she may be almost ready to make the jump to on-line only.

Today's front page had the banner headline"Magic in the Air" and the whole section was filled with long articles about fantasy games, magic, etc. Really? 

Yesterday Justice Scalia, who had an enormous impact on the Supreme Court, died and his death is setting off a huge political collision with the future of our country at stake. North Korea sent a missile into space and overflew the Super Bowl with a satellite and oh, it has nuclear weapons - nothing to be worried about there! Oregon's PERS debt crisis has ballooned to $19 billion and the Legislature is paying absolutely no attention to it. Yup, a dead news cycle with nothing to report. Let the good times roll! 

We are not a serious people. At least that's what the publishers of this newspaper think. Sadly, they may be right. 

Why It's All Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Cal Thomas laments in Townhall this morning that this isn't the America he grew up in. No question about it, but why is that so? Charles Murray provides as clear and concise an answer as I have read anywhere and it is well worth reading. 

He first quotes Samuel Huntington who said that our two unique attributes distinguishing Americans from the rest of the world are our Anglo Protestant heritage and the idea that this country is unique. The former is gradually disappearing as other Christian traditions and other religions have settled here, plus the increasing number that have abandoned religion altogether. Unfortunately, the second attribute, which Murray refers to the "American Creed," has been under sustained attack for 50 years and is unraveling as well. 

The American Creed can be summarized thusly:


Its three core values may be summarized as egalitarianism, liberty and individualism. From these flow other familiar aspects of the national creed that observers have long identified: equality before the law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and association, self-reliance, limited government, free-market economics, decentralized and devolved political authority.

It does not take long analyzing any one of these threads of the American Creed to understand why our social fabric is coming apart at the seams. Take egalitarianism or lack of class consciousness. 

Murray writes that:

"Historically, one of the most widely acknowledged aspects of American exceptionalism was our lack of class consciousness. Even Marx and Engels recognized it. This was egalitarianism American style. Yes, America had rich people and poor people, but that didn’t mean that the rich were better than anyone else."

Not so much any more:

"The members of the new upper class are seldom attracted to the films, TV shows and music that are most popular in mainstream America. They have a distinctive culture in the food they eat, the way they take care of their health, their child-rearing practices, the vacations they take, the books they read, the websites they visit and their taste in beer. You name it, the new upper class has its own way of doing it.

Another characteristic of the new upper class—and something new under the American sun—is their easy acceptance of being members of an upper class and their condescension toward ordinary Americans. Try using “redneck” in a conversation with your highly educated friends and see if it triggers any of the nervousness that accompanies other ethnic slurs. Refer to “flyover country” and consider the implications when no one asks, “What does that mean?” Or I can send you to chat with a friend in Washington, D.C., who bought a weekend place in West Virginia. He will tell you about the contempt for his new neighbors that he has encountered in the elite precincts of the nation’s capital."

And the reaction from those outside the new upper class? In short, The Donald! Yes, Trump is the embodiment of a visceral reaction by the rest of the country:

"For its part, mainstream America is fully aware of this condescension and contempt and is understandably irritated by it. American egalitarianism is on its last legs."

Murray goes on to review similar treatment of each of the constituent threads of the American Creed with equal care and concludes that while all is not lost yet, we are rapidly on the way to becoming just another nation among many, totally detached from our historic soul. That country will not the place of my birth and my heritage.

www.aei.org/publication/trumps-america/?utm_source=paramount&utm_medium=email&utm_content=AEITHISWEEK&utm_campaign=Weekly021216

Products of Conception

Is human worth intrinsic or is it assigned by others? That's the question examined in an excellent piece by Mike Adams in Townhall today.

Adams, a professor at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington, was at Oregon State University on a panel debating abortion. A student asked him:


“Dr. Adams, you mentioned that dead things do not grow. But then how can you explain how vegetarians will eat plants, which grow, but will refuse to eat animals. And doesn’t self-awareness matter to define what human life is in terms of personhood?”

In other words, it is the preference of the eater that assigns value to what is being eaten (or not) and the same principle applies to abortion, e.g. - you like babies so you keep yours and I find a baby an inconvenient truth so I dispose of it. 

Adams replied with a brilliant question in return:

“Let’s just say, heaven forbid, that on the way home this evening you were involved in some sort of a car accident and you went into a coma. It’s a reversible coma and you’re going to be in that coma for months, if not years. In the process of being in that coma fortunately your brain is repairing itself. Eventually, you’re going to come out of the coma. When you do, you’re not going to have any memories. You’re not going to know how to read or write or speak. You’re going to have to be taught to do all of those things. Do I have a right to kill you while you’re in the coma?”

To which the student replied, "Not necessarily." Sigh. Of such thinking come the Hitlers, Stalins, and ISILs of the world.

Adams disposed of the question and took the audience with him when he came back with this:

“I respect your opinion but let me answer the question. I don’t have a right to kill you. Absolutely not! Because you’re valuable … because you still have your basic human nature. And, guess what? I just described accurately the condition of the unborn. When they are born, they’ll develop all of those things. And they’ll have to be taught to do them. But they’re just as valuable as you. And just as I shouldn’t kill you I shouldn’t kill them either. That’s my answer.”

A good answer and the answer of the Declaration of Independence, which says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... "

It is unthinking moral relativism that is at the root of the bad thinking of so many college students and entirely too many adults and allows them to so casually look at abortion as an option, indeed a "right" and a host of other equally poisonous thoughts. 

Adams offers two takeaways from this interchange:

1. We sometimes deal with people whose hearts are so hard that they cannot be persuaded by logic or by the glaring deficiencies in their own reasoning. 
2. When we respond to such people with respect and focus on their inherent worth as       human beings, we bolster our credibility with people who are sitting on the fence while listening to the exchange.

Kudos to Adams for engaging, but the same is true for the rest of us. To be truly civilized, a society must recognize and cherish the inherent worth of human beings. To the extent that it does not, it is on its way back to savagery and the barbaric law of the jungle. 

townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2016/02/12/our-reversible-moral-coma-n2118156

It Ain't French's

 A lot of people including me like mustard on hotdogs but the news from the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, wasn't about the bright yellow condiment. 

Clapper said that ISIS has learned to manufacture and has used mustard gas in both Syria and Iraq. The gas is a blistering agent and was used by both sides in WW I and thereafter banned because the injuries from unprotected exposure are horrendous, leading to permanent maiming or death - too hideous to post a picture here or for the Western countries to stomach.  

Europe is waking up to the fact that by embracing Middle East refugees with open arms and without common sense, the bad guys are among them. There is also no question that ISIS has infiltrated into the U.S. because of our our porous borders and now the President wants to potentially bring in even more amongst refugees from Syria. The odds are growing that the West will again see mustard gas turn people into beings like those in The Night of the Living Dead, except this time it will be civilians. I pray that our delusional leaders will be gone before then and replaced with leaders who will do whatever it takes to prevent this from happening. 

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/02/09/u-s-intel-chief-islamic-state-produced-deployed-chemical-weapons/

Passing Strange

It seems just a mite hypocritical that the fact that the first Hispanic ever to win an American Presidential primary goes unremarked by the news media while two elderly white folks running on the Democratic ticket castigate Republicans with a straight face for being racist and this line is uncritically repeated by the same media. 

www.nationalreview.com/article/430812/ted-cruz-marco-rubio-latino-pioneers-progressive-media-ignores