Messages of Tolerance and Sensitivityby
Vin Suprynowicz Channel-hopping on election night, you couldn’t help but notice the similar expressions on the faces of so many of the anchors, or correspondents, or whatever the networks now call their professional spokesmodelreaderpersons. From Katie Couric to Diane Sawyer, they were all beaming like cats who had just swallowed the canary. No, that’s not quite right. To be accurate, that glow, that inability to conceal a blush and a smile, reminded me of the look of a young newlywed joyfully informing her friends that the new hubby has got her in a family way. They could hardly contain their joy as they ballyhooed the “historic” election of Barack Obama. That’s fine, except that, so far as I can determine, these people still identify their profession as “journalist,” that group of ink-stained reprobates on whom the public relies for a certain level of objectivism – even cynicism, when appropriate – when probing and relaying the fatuous mouthings of the political class. But only when those in power try to stand in the path of the great and noble rush to socialism, of course. Think “Saturday Night Live” will be making fun of Barack and Michelle next week? Next month? Oh, please. Based on past performance, eighteen months from now they’ll still be milking their parodies of John McCain, George Bush, and Sarah Palin, like octogenarian burlesque performers trying to get the little dogs in the faded tutus to jump through the hoops one more time. After all, the devil will still be the devil, and the messiah will still be the messiah. Medieval morality plays didn’t occasionally make Satan the good guy, just for variety. For the election process to work properly, the public needed to be informed. For that to happen, it was the job of this gang to challenge BOTH presidential candidates, and their running mates, on their backgrounds, their underlying economic philosophies, and their plans. Those who have chosen a candidate and decided to promote his candidacy are at least ethically bound to so declare, and to no longer pretend, at that point, to “report” the race as objective observers. Because it’s so hard to think of the follow-up question that might catch a politician in a lie or an evasion, isn’t it, when you’re nodding your head and gazing up at him with an expression that reveals to the whole world that he’s just made you wet your panties. Ninety percent of the American news media did not merely “fail” at this task in 2004. They committed professional suicide. Our trust in them, previously merely misplaced, is now essentially gone. It’s fun to shriek with glee at the beautifulness of your favorite pop star. But as grown-ups, we generally know better than to put the cutest member of The Partridge Family in a position where he can decide in how many ways the federal government shall defy the constitution, come Jan. 20. Sue Lowden, who used to be state senator and who now runs the Nevada Republican Party, once attempted to grant Nevada parents greater freedom to decide whether their children should be required to receive mandatory vaccinations – many of which are neither as safe nor as effective as claimed, explaining why we still see disease outbreaks among vaccinated children, and why we have a national vaccine injury compensation fund. The Democrats and their union backers wanted to get Sue Lowden out of the state senate, where she was blocking their plans for higher taxes to fund gold-gilt union benefits. So they ran a sleazy campaign against her, pouring money into mail pieces which claimed she was “in favor of childhood disease.” It worked, so the same gang was back this year, targeting state Senator Bob Beers for proposing a system through which schoolteachers with concealed weapons permits could volunteer to take special extra training and get certified to carry sidearms in school – a system which has allowed Israeli schools, under constant siege by ruthless Palestinian terrorists, to maintain a lower student death rate at the hands of armed assailants than American schools. The sleazy Democratic mailers accused Sen. Beers of wanting to fill the kindergartens with handguns, with no attempt to explain what the debate was really about. It worked again. Sen. Beers was defeated Tuesday by a PR flack who’d been in hiding for months, a woman who previously represented an outfit called PurchasePro, which got into a little legal trouble over loan fraud. This will make it virtually impossible to change Nevada’s government schools into anything but “gun-free” killing zone in the foreseeable future. If, heaven forfend, some crazed shooter should now murder children in a Nevada public school, because no adult who works there is authorized to have a gun to defend them, will Democrat Allison Copening step forward and accept the blame for what she has done, eagerly kneeling down to lap up the blood of the children she has allowed to go undefended, rubbing it over her body in penance? I’m sure she will, since Democrats and other statists always take personal responsibility when they devour another of our freedoms. Aren’t you? Meantime, in the local Clark County School Board races, voters opted Tuesday to reject the candidacies of experienced, well-informed reformers (former high-school principal) Ronan Matthew and (current school administrator) Edward Goldman, in favor of candidates backed by and thus virtually guaranteed to do the bidding of the teachers union, those victors being the union-coached but quasi-literate Deanna Wright, and the current head of the District’s “Diversity” office (I kid you not), Linda E. Young, who ranks “knowledge of the subject matter” only the seventh or eighth most important criterion for choosing teachers, far behind such touchy-feely stuff as “the ability to form a good relationship with the child.” For six years, I’ve been voting at the Ernest May Elementary School, at Torrey Pines and Mallard. For six years, I’ve walked past a laminated sign pinned to the bulletin board in the foyer outside that school’s little cafeteria and “Multi-Purpose Room,” where voting machines are set up. The sign warns children that “Absolutley” no food may be taken from the cafeteria. In the past six years, I presume scores of “professional educators” chosen according to Ms. Young’s dysfunctional criteria have walked past that sign thousands of times. Not a one of them has ever said, “Hey, we’re supposed to be EDUCATING young people, here. How about setting a good example? Don’t you think we should exchange that sign for one that spells ‘Absolutely’ in the more traditional manner?” Having been raised a Democrat, I know how Democrats pride themselves on their tolerance and sensitivity – especially toward those who have different views, because they belong to different cultures. Among the messages of tolerance and sensitivity I received from Democrats during the final days before the Nov. 4 election were the following: “Dude, you are a nut job dragging us all down into the sewer. Just shut up, sit down, you do not know what you are talking about. “– Garry Petrie” Joseph Winter wrote in on Nov. 2: “You go ahead and do that, Vin.” (vote for McCain-Palin, presumably.) “The rest of us pinkos will be busying (sic) running every branch of government and redistributing your juicy assistant editor paycheck.” That’s perhaps the one refreshing thing about this race. The socialists are at least out of the closet, admitting precisely what they intend. Though I fear my “household income” still falls well below even the lowest “new confiscation line” set by Socialist-Elect Obama … so far. “Hey Vin, Look in the mirror if you want to see a real dirtbag. I can’t wait until tomorrow night when the ‘communist sympathizer’ kicks your ass – and the ass of everyone who thinks like you. “Welcome to the 21st century. Asshole. “Sincerely, – Jim Capatelli” Numerous correspondents ridiculed my Nov. 2 reference to Barack Obama as a “communist sympathizer.” Once again: The mentor at whose knee Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii, the man to whom he refers in his book Dreams from My Father simply as “Frank,” was in fact communist poet Frank Marshall Davis, a registered member of the Communist Party USA. The “father” mentioned in Dreams from My Father was Nairobi collectivist Barack Hussein Obama Sr., who favored government seizure of the farms of a racial minority (white people) and who enthusiastically wrote “There is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.” The son, Sen. Obama, launched his presidential campaign with an intimate little get-together among friends at the home of his close associate William Ayers, the unrepentant Weathermen co-founder who participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972 – all according to Ayers’ own 2001 book, Fugitive Days. The main reason Ayers and his buddies never killed anyone is that his best friend and his girlfriend managed to blow themselves up while constructing a nail bomb in Greenwich Village in the early 1970s. Ayers told Chicago magazine in 2001 he wishes he’d blown up more stuff. And the closest thing to a “real job” Barack Obama ever had was training people to become “community organizers,” employing specific doctrines and methods developed by the infamous Saul “The Red” Alinsky, who was not so named because he had orange hair. Despite his tax and socialized medicine schemes (he has told supporters he needs to start slow; he can’t get us to “single payer” immediately), his extremist desire to ban and confiscate all non-police handguns and effective ammunition, and even his surprisingly well-reported “spread the wealth around” comments, I doubt Sen. (now President-elect) Obama IS a communist. But there is no stable “mix” between property rights and forced redistribution. The thieving class will always vote themselves more. Sen. Obama’s instincts, training, and associations will lead him to drive us further in that direction. In newspapering we only write what we can demonstrate, and I felt on far safer ground simply observing there is little doubt from his own writings and choice of friends that Barack Obama feels great “sympathy” towards the political and economic doctrines of his father, of Frank Marshall Davis, of William Ayres, and of Saul “The Red” Alinsky. He is, thus, demonstrably, “a communist sympathizer.” Since Democrats just make stuff up and expect it to all be forgotten after election day, they seem to believe such descriptors are “just nasty name-calling.” In fact, if the press were doing its job, the New York Times would also admit some of the major influences in Sen. Obama’s life have been Communists and communist sympathizers. But then, the Times still wants to deny what even the Soviets have long since admitted that Nixon and McCarthy were right, the Roosevelt-Truman State Departments were indeed riddled with Soviet spies, and the Rosenbergs were guilty. Others asked if I “knew what I was saying” when I mentioned Sarah Palin may be one of the few politicians in the late campaign (Ron Paul and Bob Barr being two others, among not many) who does NOT believe National Socialism could still work, if just given a fair chance. “Doesn’t he know National Socialism is just another word for Nazi-ism”? they shrieked. Um … duh. Under a fascist or “national socialist” economic system, bankers and business owners of the “junker” class are allowed to retain nominal title to their enterprises, but those firms are really run under the direct and close supervision of government bureaucrats and regulators. This fall’s “Big Bank Bailout,” which will result in the federal government actually owning shares in the banks (a giant step beyond the kind of regulatory arm-twisting which already forced banks to make unwise loans under the “Community Redevelopment Act”) is a textbook example of such a move toward central planning. This step was backed by George W. Bush, John McCain, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. Do I mean to say all these people are willing to try the economic system known as “fascism, or national socialism”? Yes. Duh. On Being a ‘Bad Sport’ One particularly brilliant legal mind writes in, in response to a recent column:
Wrong, Fan of Big Government. Hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of illegal immigrant children attend “public schools” in the United States, at no direct cost to the children or their parents. These institutions are funded with tax dollars, INCLUDING vast sums of FEDERAL tax dollars. Not only are the so-called “public schools” (they’re really socialist youth propaganda camps, where little “education” beyond sixth grade level ever occurs) classic redistributive welfare programs, even serving free MEALS to “the poor,” they are likely our LARGEST source of redistributive “welfare benefits.” And local school officials in cities including Las Vegas WON’T EVEN ATTEMPT, as a matter of policy, to determine the number of illegal inmates they succor. Though they certainly know – from the number of kids in largely useless “bilingual” and “English Language Learning” classes – that’s it’s more than 25 percent of the student body in many Southwestern cities. And we haven’t even gotten STARTED on the cost to taxpayers of de facto “free” care for illegals in the emergency rooms and maternity wards of our public hospitals, running into the billions of dollars in the states of Arizona and Nevada alone. To merely state this “threatens hospitals with bankruptcy” doesn’t quite capture the extent of the hemorrhage. They WOULD be bankrupt if citizen taxpayers weren’t considered a bottomless well of funds to prop them up. How on earth is this “not tax-funded welfare” – with no “five-year waiting period,” bub – especially when hospital administrators in fear of lawsuits (what if that tummyache turns out to be appendicitis?) interpret a federal law barring them from turning away anyone in need of EMERGENCY care, as a mandate to allow their ERs to clog with illegal aliens seeking ANY kind of care, at all? And what about Socialist-Elect Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as “Aunti Zeituni” in Obama’s memoir, currently living in public housing in Boston, as revealed by The AP rather late in the race – long after they’d done their massive exposes on Sarah Palin’s wardrobe costs and her daughter’s oh-so-relevant pregnancy, long after half of Americans had already cast their early ballots – on Nov. 1? How did that happen? Is our brave anonymous correspondent saying public housing isn’t “a welfare program,” and federally subsidized to boot? I thought illegal immigrants were “barred”! My fellow Libertarians say we should open the borders “and then we can get rid of all these freebies.” How about we do it the other way around? Liar. Finally, one “FastTracker” also wrote in on Nov. 2:
To which I replied: Funny, isn’t that what Americans just did, on November 4th? Sen. John McCain was gracious in defeat Tuesday night, urging his fellow Americans to now unite in their support of his fellow senator, Barack Obama, chosen by the voters to be “the next president of the country we both love.” In these gracious remarks, Sen. McCain made clear why he lost the election. One is tempted to say “why he and his party” lost the election. But unfortunately, his concession remarks also revealed what some pundits have been saying for months: John McCain has no party. So far as Sen. McCain is concerned, he was pleased to submit his résumé in application for The Big Job. He received a fair series of interviews; the election went to the better orator with the better turn-out-the-vote organization, and thus he could in good conscience shake hands when the job went to someone else: Better luck next time, old fellow. Sen. McCain did not merely “do a poor job” articulating the philosophy of expansive liberty and limited government. He failed to articulate it at all, because he is not an adherent of this philosophy, and could thus play no role in calling forth the forces of freedom to do battle on behalf of this philosophy, as articulated down through the centuries by Jefferson, Bastiat, Nock, von Mises, Hayek, R.A. Taft, Rand, Goldwater, Ron Paul, et al. Those who suffered a year’s worth of frustration waiting for John McCain to sound that rallying cry – which he never did, in any believable manner – are now criticized for acting “bitter” about the Nov. 4 results. We are expected to act like the losing team after a sporting contest, lining up to shake hands with the victors. The problem is, socialism is not a game played on a 60-minute clock within the white “out-of-bounds” markers, where you’re free to come back and try again, with the scoreboard set back to zero-zero, next season. In the 20th century, socialism – which comes in many forms, but always involves the use of armed force or the threat of force to seize the wealth from the productive class and redistribute it to the less creative, the less innovative, the less industrious – murdered millions, and impoverished hundreds of millions more. The socialists never enter the next round with the scoreboard “reset to zero” – they consolidate the gains of 1912 and 1932 and 1964 and 2008, digest their new powers and all the wealth they’ve seized from their victims, and then – swollen with all they have seized – ask “Play again?” For nearly 100 years, our battles have all been holding actions and “fighting retreats” before the expanding forces of government tyranny. But we’re supposed to smile, fund the opposition with our confiscated earnings, and be good sports about it. Since they can tantalize the ill-schooled masses with promises of “free stuff, seized from the greedy rich,” the socialists nearly always defeat us. Even during our temporary “victories” – the Reagan years, for instance – the rhetoric may swing our way, but the power and grasp and size of the state continue to grow. Yet that is not enough for them. Oh no. They proceed to get quite irate if we fail to shake hands and join with them in celebrating their latest victory against the outnumbered forces of freedom! We’re not being “good sports” about it!
They ridicule us, saying, “What do you mean, ‘socialism’? We already have Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Are you calling those wonderful programs ‘socialism’?” Of course I am. And the government schools – the youth propaganda camps where new little legions of socialists are bred – those are socialist programs, as well. With Jefferson, we have pledged eternal enmity to these ongoing crimes against human energy, ingenuity, and decency. This is not “a game.” With these forces of darkness, which will eventually ruin this once-proud nation, casting us broken and bankrupt on the mercy of the enemies of freedom, we do not shake hands. We nearly always lose. But while we breathe, we fight. November 10, 2008 Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow. Copyright © 2008 Vin Suprynowicz
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