Why Protect Me from Me?

One thing that the government has been aggressively doing during my lifetime really drives me nuts this is so pernicious and has such far reaching effects that if they were stopped, life would improve almost immediately.

Why does the government see to protect me from me, I don’t mean in the sense of protecting me from lousy drivers or protecting me from foreign crazies with suicide belts, I mean protecting me from making choices that the people in the government have decided are “bad”.

It seems that this trend started with seat belt laws. Who could argue against seat belt laws? They are the height of reasonable, wear one and you are much more likely to survive an accident. At a recent driver safety class to reduce the cost of car insurance, the instructor asked if anyone opposed the seat belt law I raised my hand, and everyone in the room looked at me as if I were a nut. The idea of wearing a seat belt is fine with me, I wear them now by force of habit, and would wear one almost all the time if it weren’t a law. That isn’t the point. The point is that when the government seeks to protect me from me when does it stop?

On the first point, if every societal ill could be cured by enacting a law there would be no murders so merely waving around legislation doesn’t solve a problem, and often produce unintended consequences. When the government takes away my choice of protecting myself by wearing a seat belt or a helmet on a motorcycle what it’s really saying is that I cannot be trusted to make that choice or that the costs to the government will be too high if I am injured or die. My question is this: who put the government in charge of whether I live or die by my own actions? I can understand that the government is supposed to protect our right to live, but what happened to the other two in that formulation, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Since the seat belt laws were enacted we have seen attempts to ban trans fats, helmet laws, laws against caffeinated carbonated beverages and a whole panoply of other pop science shibboleths that one lobbying group or another seeks to have banned to protect me from me in the interest of public health.

Part of the problem with these nanny state laws is that are invariably founded on some form of study. I have nothing against science, I have nothing against studies, except this. Sometimes they are wrong. If a law is founded on the study and the study is later proven to be wrong, or even pointing to the wrong culprit for the perceived ill that is then legislated into oblivion does the law then get repealed? I a perfect world that might be so, but we all know that isn’t so. The law remains on the books until the popular will and the legislature can be forced to repeal it. There are many examples of studies that have proven false just over the past few decades and the laws based upon them are not repealed so we are stuck with the consequences of these laws. I don’t argue against the studies, I argue against A) jumping the gun on the science behind the studies often times scientists will repeat, vary and experiment with others’ results seeking to prove part or all of their peers findings this process can lead to new truths and more information that would be necessary before drawing conclusions. Activists on seeing a small short term finding of one study seem to conclude that the sky is falling because an acorn fell on their head. B) where the harm being legislated is going to protect people from themselves (a victimless crime if ever there was one) those laws should rarely if ever be enacted.

The case must be made

Articles from just today contain some very depressing reading. We have the idiot who believes that the internet is a right (FCC Commissioner Clyburn) http://www.theblaze.com/stories/free-internet-a-civil-right-for-every-nappy-headed-child-fcc-commissioner-clyburn/
We have Democrats in the lame duck congress trying to flout the expressed will of the people with an omnibus environmental bill to include Cap and Trade.

This against the backdrop of an economic collapse, a global bailout by the US of other economies, a constant threat from militant Islam, a slow deterioration of our culture at home.

The case must simply be made and remade, the arguments and explanations must be restated and reiterated to get the point across to people too obtuse to understand even basic points about our culture.

I will be blogging about some basics, starting with what has annoyed me today. The FCC commissioner and her view of the basic “right” to internet.

I’d like to think…

My latest pet peeve is the expression “I’d like to think…” As an expression it is virtually meaningless pap, it states that whatever follows it is what a person wishes were true even though they are aware it isn’t so. It’s emblematic of Utopian thinking and is totally worthless PC tripe.

The best response I have found is “Thats nice, I would like to think you are capable of actually thinking, so prove me right and telling me what you think instead of what you would like to think.”

Inflation Bomb with a Dead Man Switch

So the solution to too much regulation is to create more regulation, the solution to too much debt is to spend more and the solution to an unpopular congress is to screw up the country so badly with delayed effective date regulations so that your successors are holding the bag when the regulations hit the fan.

I must admit that with the writing on the wall the new congress to take office in 2011 will blamed for all the ills facing the country.  I can only hope that the new congress will try to repeal some of this irresponsible spending and regulation and I can only hope they try to cut taxes and eliminate the “uncertainty” in the market.

If the new congress succeeds, the 2010 congress has left a nasty surprise for them, an inflation bomb.  The worst part about this bomb is that it is equipped with a dead man switch, the type of switch that will prevent a bomb from exploding as long as the detonator is held down. Once the current crop of politicos is gone, the “uncertainty” in the market will decline,  the money will flow and the inflationary spiral will begin.

Once money starts to circulate again, it will become worthless due to the inflationary pressure of printing money to paper over the spending that started with TARP.

The news media will have a field day, reassigning blame to the conservatives and tea party candidates. Is there a solution to this kind of problem in the world of a deceptive liberal media with a short memory?  The only thing I can think of is that those of us who align with the party of the elephant demonstrate why that is our mascot and we remember what started this mess.

Limited information flow

I have recently heard it said that by removing a leftist from my sources of information that I was limiting the flow of information I was getting.

Upon reflection, that may be right, but given that the leftist arguments are invariably the same and come from so many sources I don’t care for any more leftist nonsense.

Leftist “thinkers” tend to assume that right leaning folks simply haven’t heard their message or that we are too stupid to understand their message. The truth is quite the reverse, we have heard the message (emotional, moralistic arguments with little logical or long term analysis embedded therein) and found it unpersuasive.

The truth is the leftist who cuts off a right leaning source of information is truly cutting down their information flow, since there are very few right leaning sources of information. Talk radio, some on twitter is about it. Fox News may have a few conservative opinion leaders, but they have just as many left leaning reporters. David Shuster of MSNBC got his start there, Greta VanSusternen, Geraldo and Sheppard Smith are so left leaning they cause my TV set to list in that direction.

In truth, cutting off a liberal or leftist stream is akin to cutting back unneccessarily cumulative chatter, I don’t need to hear 10,000 times to know that the left hates George W. Bush and that they think Barack Obama is better when just hearing it once or twice will tell me what I need to know.

So, NY Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and pretty much all the local and national newspapers and TV station news will advocate the same party line, conservative bad, leftist good or normal.

If there is a political scandal and no name is given to the perp, you can bet the entire estate on the fact that when the politician perp is research the result will indicate a D by his name.

If it’s a republican scandal, Republican R will be right up there in the headline.

So, cutting off one leftist ninny out of my informational input really doesn’t much diminish the shrill leftist screaming in my ears. But I guess it’s a start.

Barack “Tommy” Obama

Barack, put on your eyeshades, put in your ear plugs, you know where to put the cork!

“Do you know what I think would actually make a difference,” Obama said. “If everybody here — excuse all the members of the press who are here — if everybody turned off your CNN, your Fox, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics. The topic is politics.”

Priceless

Eight hour Flight aboard Airforce One to Coppenhagen to bring the Olympics to Chicago, round trip Price Tag $904,388

Bringing along the ball and chain on a separate flight. Price $904,388

Coming home with egg on your face… Priceless

The Argument is Never Over

I am always concerned when I hear “the argument is over”, “we must come together”, “there is a consensus of scientific opinion that…” “there is no time for further bickering”.

The devil is always in the details… Unity behind what standard? Unity behind what ideas? Do you mean to say we can’t voice our opposition anymore? You don’t want us to object if you are headed for a precipice while driving the bus on which we are passengers?

Liberals always preach unity and bipartisanship, I don’t see the value in bipartisanship. I see a value in a well reasoned debate where one side wins at the ballot box and the other side loses. I don’t see a value in one side censoring itself and being timid about presenting it’s ideas while the other side shrieks, rants and raves that “Bush lied, People died!”

Lately, I have been seeing the same concept being presented by non-politician liberal pundits. I find it amusing, but I understand how they feel. They are feeling the lash from their harder left brethren and they are wondering why their political figures aren’t as radical when in power as they are.

I have the same view. I’d rather see political figures take the fight to the other side, more like Joe Wilson and call a liar a liar no matter when or where it occurs.

I don’t want to see unity among our political parties, they may “collectively” decide to do something that is destructive to our country.

This opinion is the same as the problem I have with one world government advocates. “if you have one world government that legislates you into non-existence, where will you go?” the corolary if you have only one political party and they do things that you oppose who will you support?

The arguing bickering and debate should never end. Yes it’s a slow system, reluctant to act and always unsure if it’s right, but it’s the best system on earth, and let’s not be too quick to change it.

Schoolhouse Barack

As a father of school age children I find it contemptible that the president will be addressing them on the first day of school. What he says may be completely innocuous and innocent, but that isn’t the point. The main point is … THAT ISN’T HIS JOB.

All he can hope to accomplish is to bore most children, impress obama drone liberal teachers with his sensitivity to their “plight” as teachers and make conservative parents angry. I am appalled that the White House even came up with a proposed lesson plan. Don’t they have better things on which to spend the White House budget?

I am sure I join a chorus of conservatives who vary between annoyed and outraged at this remarkable hubris on the part of what I am becoming convinced is our Narcissist in Chief. There simply is no upside to this for him if he isn’t stoking his ego and irritating his political foes.

I sometimes wonder if leftists can even begin to see views of their political opponents on any issue or if they have even read the constitution. The president has some clearly delineated constitutional duties. Pontificating to school children isn’t one of them.

Perspective Shock.

It is simply unimaginable to the left that there are any rational minds opposing them. The majority of news channels, newspapers, entertainment channels, and pretty much anything out of Hollywood comes from the single viewpoint of the left. It is very probable that a person can go throughout their early years and reach their twenties without ever hearing a conservative point of view.

Oh, they might hear the isolated pundit or candidate argue for a responsible stance, but it is unlikely that they would ever really be engaged by a conservative explaining their views. The propensity to scream and name call their ideological opponents makes it even less likely that a non-pundit conservative would stick their neck out and confront a leftist idea that really needs to be challenged.

So, when a leftist encounters a conservative on Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other fine conservative talkers and writers, they are shocked to hear a viewpoint that disagrees with what they have been spoon fed for years. They may disagree or simply not understand the new viewpoint to which they are being exposed, but they don’t think it’s reasonable to disagree with everything they have always heard. So ideas such as the Orwellian Fairness Doctorine or Net Neutrality appeal to them.

The rank and file leftist simply doesn’t realize that by shutting down conservative voices they are crushing the diversity that they really need, diversity of thought.