Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Importance of Human Life

My belief is that every life is precious, from the unborn child in the womb to the disabled child, to the poor mother, to the mentally ill, to the elderly. All life is precious. We must do what we can to protect human life which is a gift.

And this brings me to one of many reasons I can never be a leftist. Leftist policies result in the destruction of human life. Whether their foreign policy ideas to their point of view on health care which the demand include abortion on demand, the common denominator is destruction of human life.

You look at the promotion of Planned Parenthood clinics on practically every city block in black and Latino areas, yet there are nearly no clinics in the "good" areas that are primarily Caucasian. Millions of black babies have been aborted but this is not enough for these people. Instead of common sense solutions, such as teaching children in school to NOT have sex outside of a serious relationship, they actually encourage this behavior, which results in pregnancies and many of these unplanned pregnancies result in abortions. I personally hate abortion, but on the other hand, I don't want women dying in illegal abortions. We really need to work towards a change in the Black and Latino cultures so that girls and boys have a moral backbone and aren't engaging in casual sexual relationships that result in unwanted pregnancies but liberals would never agree to such a thing. Because they want to keep from offending young people by encouraging them to not have casual sexual relations, they doom the community to countless abortions.

Now we will move onto wars. "Progressives" love to say that conservatives are warmongers. And granted, there are some conservatives who are. There are some conservatives who don't care about killing people who are different. This is unfortunate. But the good news is my experience, is that these people are in the minority.

But what the liberals never want to talk about, is that their policies CREATE and LEAD to wars. That is what they never want to face. President Jimmy Carter's leftist, weak, insane foreign policy is fully responsible for the situation we face today in Iran. Carter has the blood of millions of Persians and others on his hands. How could this be, you might say. The Shah of Iran, while flawed and imperfect was a United States ally. The Shah was FAR, FAR better than the Ayatollah. The CIA, during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, betrayed the Shah and allowed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to step in and overthrow him. Despite many opportunities to assassinate the Ayatollah, he refused to do so. He, like many Leftists at the time, viewed the Ayatollah as someone who would bring justice to the Persians who had been suffering under the Shah. And the fact is, the Shah and his men did commit many horrible abuses of human rights. And because of those human rights abuses, the leftists believed that the Ayatollah as a saint. He was praised in liberal publications such as the New York Times, the euro-progressives supported him. Because of course, anyone who hated America and the Shah was perfect in their eyes.

Fast forward 30 years. Tens of millions of people, including millions of children, have been killed by the Islamic regime. These are people who were killed in the Iran Iraq War. These are people killed outright, for disagreeing with the regime. So, the question is, who should have been supported. The Shah, who killed a few thousand people or the Islamic regime that has been responsible for, directly or indirectly for the deaths of millions. The Islamic regime which has stated that they are willing to bring about the deaths of every man, woman and child in Iran, in order to bring about "victory for Allah." Whatever that means. They are insane religious fanatics. They could have easily been stopped. The deaths of a few HUNDRED people could have saved the lives of MILLIONS of people. Yet the international left would prefer the option that results in the deaths of millions. Today we are looking at the strong prospect of a war with Iran, brought about by the failure of Jimmy Carter to order the CIA to kill a relative handful of people. The deaths of the Ayatollah and his circle would have saved us from this situation. But no, we can't do something like that, because that projects America's strength and in the mind of the left wing wackos, that is unacceptable.

That is the real problem with progressives. They never look at the long term effects of the policies they promote. They are missing the ability to see the long term results of their actions and their positions. They are missing the ability to predict consequences for their, for the most part, foolish and naive policies.

Friday, May 7, 2010

A Reason I support Israel

I feel there are many reasons to support Israel, from its human rights record, to the fact that it is the only non-racist, non-apartheid state in the Middle East, the list goes on and on.

But one of these reasons is very simple. Israel is the canary in the cole mine. Israel is the front line in the war the West is fighting with Islamic extremists. There are some people, who are either misinformed, leftists or both, that believe that groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah only hate Israel and would sit around and be good citizens if God forbid, Israel fell. This is the furthest thing from the truth. Our enemies, would be emboldened and they would start on their next target, which would probably be Europe. From there, they would seek to force the world to become Islamic. There is no appeasing these people. Their goal is an Islamic caliphate. In Islam, the caliphate is a religious and military leader of the Muslim world. Very similar to the pope, but different in that he is not only a religious leader but a military leader as well. This position started with the death of Muhammad and continued up until the early 20th century, when it was abolished and Turkey, the home of the last Caliphate, was declared a secular republic.

Anyway, over 1200 years ago, before the advent of Islam Jews, Christians and Pagans all lived together in what is now known as the Islamic world. Was everything always perfect. No. Absolutely not. There was a lot of fighting, it was the seventh century after all. There were tribes. Some were Jews, some were Christian, some were Pagans. Wars went on between clans, there were alliances, kingdoms rose and fell. However, what we now know as jihad was not a developed concept. In the Middle East, outside of the Christians, there wasn't the heavy (there was some) anti-semtism. Many of the Pagans and Persians were allied with the Jews. Many of the Christians were allied with the Byzantine empire. But every tribe had its own priorities. In fact, one of the kings of Persia was a Jew. One of the kings in what is now Syria was a Jew. While there was fighting between the various tribes, there wasn't this complete, pervasive racism and hatred that we see today against Jews, Christians and other "infidels." Medina was a JEWISH city, before Muslims stole the land. In fact, when Muhammad was persecuted in Mecca, which was a pagan city, Jews were the only people who gave him and the early Muslims shelter.

Anyway, Muhammad came and first fought certain Jewish tribes. And then when these were destroyed or subjugated he moved onto the Christians. These tribes were subjugated by the Muslims and then the other tribes fell. This fall was do to the fact that the other tribes didn't unify, band together and fight the Muslims. Due to their far superior numbers they could have defeated them. Even after the Muslims had conquered the Arabian peninsula, things were still not too late. If the remaining Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus and Pagans had joined together, they could have handled the problem. But everyone thought, well they are just angry with the Jews and some Christians. Who cares. The problem has nothing to do with us. In fact we have a shiny peace agreement with them. Which, in the end ended up being worthless. Absolutely worthless. The Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, spoke positively of Africans and then his followers when into Africa and killed over 100 million defenseless Africans, not to mention the hundreds of millions of Hindus, Jews, Pagans and Christians that were killed in cold blood by these people. None of these groups thought to unite. I can imagine, they probably thought, "the Jews deserve their fate." We aren't Jews so we don't have to worry about what they are doing or something similar.We can't bring the hundreds of millions of innocents that were killed at the hands of Muslim jihadists back, but what we can do, is learn from the mistakes of the past.

And, like many things, the instigator started with the Jews. What starts with the Jews NEVER ends with the Jews. So, the failure of some Christian, Jewish and Pagan tribes to join against the Muslims and destroy them, which they could have done so as their numbers were far greater than the early Muslims, resulted in hundreds of millions being slaughtered.

Does this mean every Muslim is bad. No, absolutely not. It means that certain Muslims, the ones that carried out these acts are bad however.

Today, we have a repeat of this situation. We have extremists, terrorists, racists, who say they want to "wipe Israel off the map." However, due to the enormous advances in technology between the seventh century and today, it would not take over a thousand years to kill hundreds of millions of innocents. It would only take a few well placed nuclear blasts. Blasts which the perpetrators believe will ensure them a place in heaven, which is the thread which links the earliest jihadists to the present day ones. In the seventh century, the goal was a global caliphate and today, the Islamic jihadists have as their goal, a global caliphate. In other words, the entire world living under Islamic, called Shariah, law, subject to the whims of the Caliphate. So while in the past we didn't unite to defeat the evil which eventually cost the lives of so many of our brothers in sisters, today we must unite and defeat this evil and the extremist ideology that spawned it once and forever.

The Republican Party and Gays

I am a staunch conservative, but one thing I disagree with some of my fellow conservatives is when it comes to gays. Frankly, I don't care what a person does behind closed doors. Just as long as they are with a consenting adult, I could care less. I think that the party spends too much time talking about gays and instead needs to focus on the real issues -- terrorism, growing size of government, deficits, etc.

Having said that, I don't believe in gay marriage, simply because I don't want this taught in schools and many of the organizations pushing gay marriage want it, once it is passed, to be taught in schools. And I consider that offensive and obscene. For the record, I'm against any kind of straight sexual education as well. I consider that offensive and obscene as well. Children should be going to their parents for sexual information, not getting it from some school teacher or official. It would be one thing if the sexual education that children were being taught was factual. But it is not. It is politically correct nonsense. All sexual choices are not the same. The choice of a girl to sleep with 10 boys in high school is not on the same moral level as a girl deciding to wait until she is in a committed relationship.

I also disagree with the whole idea of forcing churches to perform marriages for gays. Personally, I don't care if someone wants to affirm their relationship, but no priest should be forced to marry anyone they don't want to marry.

I think where gays go wrong is flaunting their sexuality all over the place. This turns the general public off. What they should do is reach out to people, show them that they are normal people and deserve rights and handle it through talking. But these loud protests, with naked people and offensive banners are not the way forward. Again, as I said before, I don't care less what a person is doing in private or with whom they are doing this with, provided that the participants are consenting adults.

If there were a bill to give gays more rights, without at the same time violating the above two principals, I wouldn't oppose it. But when certain gay groups, insist on violating these two principals, I must oppose them.

Teachers Unions, the Black Community and Education

Anyone wondering whether Leftist ideas work need not look further than their nearest ghetto. Black "leaders" keep on talking about how blacks are being oppressed, but they are 100% wrong as to the source.

Our condition is not due to "oppression from the white man," "the Jew," "the Uncle Tom" or any other convenient target who has not paid off Al Sharpton or any one of the other failed black "leaders." The real source is the Teachers Unions and other Leftist organizations who have taken the black community away from God, the Church and self reliance and systematically taught us to instead, rely on the government. This is something which has failed time and time again.


Let's take schools as just one example of this. We have nearly 50% of black children dropping out of schools. We have many of the children graduating these schools completely unprepared for life. Many of them are not in fact not prepared to enter the work force. They are a product of teachers and school administrators who are failing their students. Who graduate children who may know all about gay marriage, Harvey Milk, condoms and every other pet subject of the left but don't know the basics. They don't know Algebra. They haven't read our Constitution. They have a 6th Grade literacy level, or worse. In most cases they are not educated to the point where they can take a book of average complexity, read it and understand it. That is the problem. There are some teachers who try to teach children, try to do their best, but they are bogged down in a million and one useless regulations from the state and federal government regarding teaching. These restrictions are lobbied for, in most part, by Teachers Unions and other Leftist organizations. And that is a major problem. Things are so bad that my late grandparents, who went to school in the early 20th century and left after the fourth grade to work on the family farm, had a higher literacy rate than many college graduates. Failed ideas, such as sight reading where a child is expected to memorize words instead of actually being able to sound them out and understand them, a technology which is a complete and utter failure, are pushed heavily by the Teachers Unions, despite the fact that sight reading is a proven failure.

And then, we look at sex ed. This is the most useless subject ever. Trust me, teenagers do not need to learn from schools about various sexual positions and techniques. If someone is interested, they can learn from their friends. In fact, the way sex ed is done today it is actually destructive. This is very old fashioned, but my belief is that young people should not be having sex. Period. End of story. When I was in high school, I did not have sex. I am not an ugly guy. But I made the decision that I was not going to have sex, get a girl pregnant and ruin my life like so many young black men do. I love children, don't get me wrong. But they need a stable family environment and married parents, a mother and father. And a teenager is not able to provide this kind of environment. There are some wonderful people who were raised by their mother. Their are some wonderful teenage parents who put everything together, despite the bumps in the road. But it doesn't change the fact that sex is best in a monogamous, committed relationship, ideally marriage.

Yet, in the average Sex Ed class, children are not being taught these basic, key, core values. They are instead being taught that they are sexual creatures, and whatever kind of sex they decide to do is OK. Don't want the baby? Have an abortion. Whatever sexual perversion you feel like is OK. Parent's say no. Report them to us because they are obviously "stifling your sexual freedom." Having been a teenager, I can tell you first hand, that it is possible to control yourself. You do not have to run around and have sex with 10 different girls or guys, if you are a girl. You can be responsible. You can make responsible choices. And when you get older and are in a committed relationship at the very least, or marriage, it will be wonderful exploring this part of you with someone you really care about. But this is not what children are being taught and that is the problem. They are being taught everything but this simple truth.

As Dr. Mirriam Grossman, the brilliant psychiatrist points out, condoms don't protect from every sexually transmitted diseases. There are some activities, for example, Anal, that are much, much more likely to transmit these infections than other activities. And 25% of young people are infected with these kinds of diseases. And I'm not even covering the psychological wounds that come along with this kind of behavior. Too many psychologists and psychiatrists, many of whom are leftists, go along with the politically correct line, that girls are just like boys. In fact, if a girl or boy wants to random, causal sex with a different person every other night this is "normal experimentation." Nothing could be further from the truth. This kind of activity has real consequences. Young people who engage in this kind of activity are far less happy than young people who abstain. And when these teenagers get depressed, too often this is misdiagnosed as some major psychiatric condition, when in fact, it is the natural result of engaging in this kind of behavior. Sometimes some of these psychological wounds can heal if a person simply stops engaging in this kind of lifestyle and instead does something constructive.

And you can see the results of this kind of education all over the black community. Back in the days of Jim Crow laws, things were horrible. There was overt discrimination, blacks were oppressed, it was simply awful and unacceptable. But despite all this oppression, most black children were being born in two parent families, they were graduating high school, they were working hard and trying to overcome the racism inherent in that system. Today, we have most black children being born out of wedlock.

In order to solve these problems, we need real school choice. We need to be able to take black children out of these failing Leftist schools and put them in schools where they will get real values. A real education. Not a fake education. Then they will have a much better chance to succeed.

Obama's failure on Jobs

It never ceases to amaze me how left wing politicians can't spot the obvious economic laws which drive a country. They are so simple and easy to grasp if one simply observes, I can't help but wonder about the extremely low level of intelligence of the "very best people" in our government.

The complete lack of an ability to observe in so many graduates of our Universities is frankly depressing. They graduate as loyal foot soldiers for Greenpeace, AFL-CIO or some other left wing organization, but when it comes to common sense, especially among too many of our economics and history Phds, they are lacking in these skills.

Let's take the economy. Jobs and the economy are actually very easy to understand. Factors leading to job growth are actually very simple. You reduce taxes and regulations, it is easier for small companies, which make up the bulk of new job growth, to add new jobs. If you create more regulation, if you force people to buy their employees health care or force them to pay more taxes, obviously they won't hire more people. They don't have limitless amounts of money and these things cost money. This isn't hard to understand. Yet it is so difficult for our President and his other useful idiot leftists who have gone to all the best schools, are part of all the "best" organizations, yet can't spot the obvious.

The excuses that politicians make, are frankly, specious. They seem to make sense but are lies. I hear all of this imaginary concern from the Left about poor people, and how people are struggling. Well, the solution to that, as I have said in earlier blogs, is to cut regulation, deep business tax cuts, so that money is freed up to hire new employees. Cut welfare and other programs that allow able bodied people to live off the government without doing anything. Get these people trained for jobs. As companies have more capital, they will increase hiring, including hiring for entry level positions. Gradually these people, if they work hard and apply themselves, will move out of poverty. This is the real solution. Not another government program. Not another government handout.