America's Coming Race War, Courtesy of the Democrat Party...

Sometimes it’s hard to know what exactly to write.  I don’t mean in general staring off into space or watching the clouds in your coffee kind of stuff, I mean when you see something so extraordinarily evil that you’re left speechless.

That happened to me a few weeks ago when I saw the video of a white female student being brutally beaten by a black female student in Missouri.  As you’ve no doubt seen, the black girl beats the white girl into unconsciousness and repeatedly slams her head into the concrete.  The victim went into convulsions and as of this writing is in critical condition in the hospital.

There are two primary questions I had after watching this video.  The first was why does no one try and stop the attacker when there are a dozen people around the fight, including at least one person recording a video?  The second was what kind of an upbringing would someone have to have to make them act this way? These two unanswerable questions melded into a third, which was, why do we see so many videos of blacks acting violently?  Beating white people.  Beating other black people. Attacking restaurant employees.  Attacking cops. Pushing people in front of subway trains. And the list goes on. And on. And on.

On the day I saw this video I happened to be reading a book called Empire by Niall Ferguson.  I was at the point where he is comparing the actions of the British – which is the empire to which the title refers – and the Japanese in their early 20^th century empire. In particular he discusses the Rape of Nanking, one of the most brutal and disgusting displays of savagery ever chronicled. He doesn’t pretend the British were never brutal. In fact they were and he discusses it. But he makes the distinction between the British killing opponents during battles – sometimes including unarmed women and children while peacefully protesting – or the deaths of prisoners from incompetent logistics management and the brutal, intentional infliction of pain and torture on civilians and POWs alike.  There were literally contests to see who could kill more people or do so more quickly or brutally. 

Such abuse was never limited to the Japanese of course.  The Germans were equally as evil during WWII.  Like the Japanese, their killing beyond the battlefield, more often than not was a mix of cruelty, sadism, depravity, and systemized murder.  Such evil has been endemic through much of human history.  One of the reasons the Spanish were able to so easily subdue the great Aztec empire was because so many of its neighbors were enthusiastic about ridding themselves of the cruel, murderous empire where captured enemies would frequently die horrifying, brutal deaths. More recently the Rwandan genocide, the brutality by ISIS, the execution thousands of Nigerian Christians my Muslims and the October 7^th attacks by Hamas demonstrate that man can be a savage instrument of evil.

Since the moment Cain slew Able history is full of violence. But this seems to be different.  Not different in that it’s unique in history, but that it’s unique in American history.  What I mean by that is that it’s a perfect storm of Democrat malevolence.

That storm has three components.  The first is what seems to have become the primary plank of the Democrat party. White racism. Prior to Barack Obama America’s race relations had been largely improving for 40 years. With his the “police acted stupidly” comment things got off on the wrong foot, and after the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown things went south quickly.  Then the 2020 death of George Floyd sent race relations into a tailspin. With the riots and the shilling for BLM by everyone from the NFL to Microsoft to Congressional Democrats, things took a decidedly bad turn. Suddenly we were told systemic racism was to be found everywhere from law enforcement to math to punctuality to proper English. At the same time we had the Pentagon, the White House and practically every news organization in the country telling us that white nationalism is the single biggest threat to the country and that blacks were in constant danger. The left has done to whites what the Nazis did to the Jews, what the Japanese did to the Chinese and what the Hutu did to the Tutsi… dehumanize them, make them into the Other, the ones towards whom no humanity need be shown. Once that mindset is absorbed, there are no limitations on what can be done to members of the target group. 

The second is that black Americans have been told by Democrats that they cannot succeed.  That regardless of what they do they are incapable of success in America because of white oppression. As such, the rules need to be changed for them, most critically, the elimination of consequences for crimes. Essentially the argument is, given that blacks cannot find success when they behave properly, society can’t punish them for behaving improperly.    

The third is the collapse of the black family.  Today more than 70% of black babies are born to unwed mothers.  That leaves a single mother, often on welfare, to raise the children. And children in fatherless homes are far more likely to be criminals. 

The outcome of this perfect storm is significant proportion of the black population hate white people, have little belief they have a vested interest in civilized society and there’s no one at home to teach them right from wrong. With little reason to have self-respect and with even less reason to respect others, too many black Americans are simply acting out as a child would, with no filters, no self-control, no empathy and no real remorse.  That’s a recipe for disaster for society.

If America is coming apart at the seams, it’s not because of any “systemic racism”, but rather because Democrats have seen fit to weaponize blacks. And not just against whites, but against the very fabric of America. This plays itself out in major cities across the country where most black Americans live and dominate the politics. Indeed, black mayors (most of whom are Democrats) run almost every one of America’s largest and most important cities:  Washington, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and New Orleans among others. Virtually every one of them is like living in a relative war zone compared to much of the rest of the country. The ironic thing about all of this is that the biggest victims of this black despondency and disconnect with civilized society are fellow blacks, because the animating factors of alienation and desolation know no bounds, color or otherwise. 

This is not a sustainable model. A nation divided by race cannot survive. Americans fought a war then passed civil rights laws a century later to stop that. But here we are with significant portion of America’s population looking into life’s kaleidoscope and seeing nothing but a fatalistic cacophony where they have no agency, nothing matters and thus nothing has any value, including their lives and those of others.

What we saw on that video is the epitome of the race war Charles Manson tried to launch but failed.  Sadly for Americans of all hues, a half a century later the Democrats are making his dream a reality.

What We are Seeing in the Streets and on Campuses is not Fringe...

Like most Americans, I was of course shocked by the vicious inhumanity that the coward terrorist group Hamas carried out in Israel three weeks ago. Unfortunately, organized evil is neither unique nor surprising. The Nazis were equally evil across Europe, as were the Japanese at Nanking and Stalin with Ukraine and Mao with his own people. Sadly, evil happens, devils exist and thankfully they are rarely celebrated.

But rarely doesn’t mean never, and the most shocking thing was not the evil perpetrated, but rather the extraordinary support it has received. Not only is Hamas’s evil finding exuberant support in places like Iran and Qatar where you might expect it, but there were tens of thousands of Muslims – and their liberal comrades – in places like New York, Detroit, and Washington out en masse vocally demonstrating their support for these monsters.  And it wasn’t just on the streets, in places like Harvard and Yale and NYU you had students and professors and organizations blaming Israel for Hamas’s inhumanity.  Even as the full extent of the carnage emerged, days after the world was able to see the barbarity of what the savages carried out, the rallies in support not only didn’t diminish, they seemed to grow.  I couldn’t help wonder what that portends for our future. 

As an American I shook my head, stunned as I watched the scenes play out. I wondered how so many people, with smiles on their non hidden faces, could cheer such evil.  How supposedly intelligent people could put their names in support of such barbarism.  My reaction to a few posts on Twitter was “Send them to Gaza”. Not that it was going to happen, but it’s one thing to cheer the beheading of babies and raping of women from five thousand miles away, it’s another thing to do so when there’s a realistic possibility of the IDF ending you.

Of course that’s not going to happen, but then I wondered to myself, what is wrong with these people and why are they allowed to do this? Before the words even formed in my head I answered my own question:  Free speech… that extraordinary thing we have which most Muslim countries don’t.

All of that led my brain to a quote that is often falsely attributed to Winston Churchill:  “When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned with minority rights, when they are in the majority there are no minority rights.” The British Bulldog may not have said that, but a look at a map of nations with Sharia law suggests the reality of it.

“But we don’t live in one of those countries” you might say, “these people are just fringe wackos.” Not so much. A 2015 poll of Muslims in America showed the following: “More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.” It also found “nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, ‘It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.’” and “Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.” Anyone watching the thousands of protesters in Atlanta, Chicago, and Tampa could easily see that it’s likely the numbers listed above have only grown worse – from a free republic’s perspective.

Now, support for Sharia doesn’t necessarily equate to support for the actions Hamas took last week, but a Venn Diagram would likely demonstrate a great deal of overlap. 

But then you say, “Muslims are barely 1% of the population, this can’t be a threat.” Maybe, but think about this: trans people are far fewer yet today we find ourselves in the midst of national fights about bathrooms, sports and the “medical” butchering of children. Interestingly, most of the people who support the LBGTQXYZ123 agenda also support “Palestine”, where many would likely be thrown off the top of buildings were they to actually go there.

So the question becomes, how does a pluralistic, secular state that puts value on individual liberty deal with vile ideas that are repugnant to the basic elements of the culture and those who espouse them? Is the Constitution a suicide pact that allows those who object to its foundational principles to use the document’s freedoms to take power in order to eliminate it?

In his autobiography Malcom X talks about being invited to speak at Harvard and other prestigious universities, this at the time he was spewing much of his pre enlightened anti-white racist venom. He marvels that while he was invited to speak and said things that most of the audience disagreed with, they were always courteous and usually engaged in a healthy, respectful dialogue. Contrast that with today’s conservative speakers such as Heather MacDonald, Ann Coulter or Ben Shapiro who have had events cancelled or found themselves drowned out and threatened by leftists who equate speech they don’t like with violence. Not surprisingly, a recent poll showed that 66% of college students find this acceptable while another showed that 65% of Democrats supported censoring “misinformation”.

Now, maybe this vile and public championing of hate will be a tipping point where the Democrat coalition fractures as the various victim classes it has nurtured twist themselves into pretzels trying to be good team players. I doubt it, because Democrats in toto hate America, hate freedom and most of all hate Donald Trump & MAGA and put power above everything else.

Nonetheless, what we saw over the last week causes one to stand up and take notice about those who would use our freedoms to end them for everyone else. The adage of “One man, one vote, one time.” refers to the idea of someone or some group using the democratic norms of a nation to win an election then use that victory to eviscerate freedom. Think Hitler in Germany, Chavez in Venezuela, or Erdogan in Turkey. If we’ve learned anything since the reign of Barack Obama it’s that America is not immune to the danger of political parties weaponizing government for their own purposes. Given that the people cheering on the butchers of Hamas are a core part of the Democrat coalition, we should not be too quick to dismiss them as fringe… we could all live to regret it.  

Never Tell A Leftist They Hate America...

Never tell a leftist they hate America.  They will correct you every time.  They don’t hate America they’ll tell you, they just want to improve it.  They just want to help make it better.  They just want America to live up to her ideals.

No, it’s not America per se that they hate, but rather the things that made America so spectacular in the first place.  Free enterprise.  Limited government. Federalism. Separation of Powers.   Individual freedom.

But, while they don’t hate America, it is, according to them, racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric, intolerant and more. In addition, the Constitution is an outdated document written by old racist white guys and needs to be reimagined.

So, OK, sure, I’ll buy that leftists don’t technically hate America. And apparently they don’t, because even when they have Hollywood or Silicon Valley or Wall Street type money and could live anywhere in the world… big surprise, they never actually leave!

When I tell leftists that America is the greatest nation that’s ever existed it seems to send them over some sort of cliff. They often get angry and look at me as if I just told them I the earth is flat.  But the funny thing is, when I ask what nation is better or empire was better… crickets.  They immediately launch into a polemic about how America is racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnocentric etc. It’s ripe with inequality, inequity and is run by rich white men.  And not to be forgotten, its Constitution is an outdated document written by old white racist guys and as such, shouldn’t control our lives today. 

Then I suggest that even if it were the case that America was the hellscape they suggest, where should we go to escape it?  Again, crickets. 

Despite the fact that the leftist snowflakes can’t point to a single place on earth or in history that is or was superior to the United States, that had a more successful combination of prosperity and freedom than the US, they most certainly have an endless supply of ways to improve it:

• Bans on hate speech, which they define as anything that hurts anyone’s feelings.
• Defund the police.
• Pack the Supreme Court.
• Disband the INS.
• $15 minimum wage.
• Demonize the Founding Fathers.
• Eliminate the Electoral College.
• Cancel anyone who ever uttered an opinion that doesn’t comport with the currently favored position on any given subject.
• Eliminate bail requirements & sentencing minimums.
• Participation trophies.
• Eliminate academic requirements and standardized testing for entrance into college.
• Universal healthcare
• Free college tuition
• Green energy mandates and subsidies
• Eliminate fossil fuels
• Repeal the Second Amendment
• Eliminate capitalism.
• Eliminate the binary gender construct
• Make the Pentagon the bleeding edge for social experiments
• Tax the rich
• Forgive student debt
• Mandate vaccinations

And the list goes on, and on, and on. It literally never stops.  Griswold v. Connecticut begat Roe vs. Wade which begat partial birth abortion.  Gay rights turned into civil unions turned into gay marriage.  Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act turned into coerced lax lending standards which turned into the housing crash.  And the Americans with Disabilities Act started out as compassion for the handicapped and mutated into a vehicle for extortion of small businesses by a cabal of pernicious lawyers. Removing the Confederate Battle Flag from state flags led to pulling down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas to cancelling Dr. Seuss & Aunt Jemima. 

At exactly what point will America cease to be the racist sexist hellhole that the left tells us it is?   Must the military perfectly reflect the hue and sex of America itself?  Must corporate executives be promoted based on their socioeconomic heritage?  What else needs to be reflective of the demographics of the American populace?  How about the NBA & the NFL? Black men make up 74% of the NBA and 70% of the NFL.  Do we fire 90% of them to hire more white men and women of every race?  Would that make the games more competitive, more exciting?  Probably not.  Or how about nurses? 93% of nurses are women.  Should 40% of them be fired in order to hire men to make the industry reflective of the rest of the country? Would that make healthcare better or patients happier and safer? Unlikely.  And this could go on endlessly for every area of the economy: Ditch diggers.  Sanitation workers.  Teachers.  Barbers.  Rap artists. Surgeons. Lawyers.   

The bottom line is the left knows how to do one thing well, and that is destroy what someone else built.  We’ve seen that play out across America time and again.  From the burnt husks of Detroit and Washington that rotted for decades following the riots of the 1960’s to turning once great American cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles into giant homeless camps strewn with needles and feces to the economic devastation wrought in cities like Minneapolis and Portland and Seattle from a year of “mostly peaceful protests”.  When the left comes to power in successful cities the march to a real hellscape begins.  And it’s not just cities.  The left broke the Boy Scouts, they destroyed the NFL as a truly national form of entertainment, they’ve ruined Disney and Marvel and they are in the process of destroying women’s sports. Dennis Prager often says “The Left destroys everything it touches” and he’s right.  The left has never built a nation millions of people risk their lives to enter.  The left has never built a society where freedom of thought, speech and the press have thrived.  The left has never built an economic juggernaut founded on free markets or anything else. 

The left can do nothing more than take advantage of the freedom and prosperity that others have created and throw stones at it for its imperfections.  Voltaire was prescient when he observed “Perfect is the enemy of the good”.  America is no doubt imperfect.  It is flawed and sometimes unfair and often inequitable… but mankind is all of his creations are.  The reality is, the United States is by far the greatest nation God has seen fit to grace man with and while it will continue to be imperfect until the end of days, it is nothing like the racist, fascist hellscape the left makes it out to be.  But of course none of that matters because for the left, building something great is never a necessity, in fact, it’s never even a consideration.  Why bother trying to build anything when it’s so much easier to throw stones at those who are too busy actually building things to notice they’re being targeted for their imperfections by those who don’t have the courage to try.  

I’m not sure what the textbook definition of hate of county might be, but everything the left does and says most certainly looks like it.  There’s an old saying: “If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” Replace duck with hate and you have America’s left:  too cowardly risk doing anything but more than willing to demonize those who aren’t.     

Why America is on the Brink of Civil War...

If you’d have asked me even six months ago what the chances of the United States being on the verge of a civil war I would have said probably under 1%. Today I think that number is much closer to 25% and maybe even higher.

Why is that? Simple. Democrats, media and academia…

I grew up on the Navy base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was a small base but there were a million things to do. Horseback riding, year round sports, a bowling alley, four pools that I can remember, game rooms, gyms, motocross, hiking, scuba diving, surfing, half a dozen outdoor movie theaters – it almost never rained! - karate tournaments and spectacular parades and midways for 4th of July. Cable TV hadn’t reached us and of course the Internet hadn’t been invented so we spent our time actually doing things… I loved virtually every minute of it, but despite being in something close to nirvana, there were people who hated it and were miserable.  We find what we're looking for.   

We often get out of life what we are expecting... are you a glass half full or a glass half empty person?  This question explains why America is at the brink of civil war.

We look around and see people burning down our cities, destroying public and private property, disrupting life for millions of Americans who are simply trying to go to work, eat their lunch or shop at a mall. We see people chanting “F the Police”, “No justice, No Peace” holding up “Black Lives Mater” signs and calling everyone and anyone who doesn’t agree with them racists. We see in New York, LA and countless other cities thugs shooting cops, beating civilians and feeling entitled to do so the whole time.

How did we get here? Very simple. We’ve had decades of the Democrat / Media / Academia Industrial Complex telling Americans that the country is racist. That Republicans don’t care about the poor. That Christians are homophobic. That whites have privilege. That America is rife with systematic racism. That cops hunt down and kill unarmed innocent black males with impunity. And of course that if you are a person of color you have no control over your life and the system will not allow you to succeed, regardless of the hard work you put in, the education you achieve or the virtuous life you lead.  In essence they have been proffering the notion that not only is the glass half empty... but that the other guy took your glass and poured half your water into his glass and then poisoned what's left in yours.  

It is upon this decade’s long backdrop of despicable lies that the same group, along with the Obama holdovers in DOJ, has spent the last four years telling us that Donald Trump is a racist bigot. That Donald Trump was bought and paid for by Russia. That Donald Trump is guilty of abuse of power with respect to Ukraine. That Donald Trump is a power hungry fascist who seeks to make himself king by stealing the election and disenfranchising minority voters.

Of course, none of those things are true. None of them. But that has not stopped the media, academia and the Democrats from shilling each of them, repeatedly. And the result is, you have young people – mostly young, but not all by any stretch – who today see exactly what they have been told to see, exactly what they expect to see. If you are told that you can’t succeed regardless of the life you lead, regardless of the hard work you do, then it’s not unexpected that you would want to tear down the system that has boxed you in.

The fact that all of the bile that the Democrats have been spewing for decades is not true is of no consequence. The fact that the media blatantly paints a picture that is demonstrably false 24 hours a day, seven days a week is of no consequence. The fact that leftist hack academics have rewritten American history through the perspective of their 21st century woke lenses, is of no consequence. The only thing that is of consequence is power… Democrat power. Nothing else matters. As such, if burning down cities is the cost of power, so be it. If putting targets on the backs of police is the cost of power, so be it. If undermining the basic elements of common courtesy, politeness and civic order are the cost of power, so be it. If destroying the life's work of shopkeepers and the jobs of workers trying to provide for their families are the cost of power, so be it.

What you are seeing in the streets is not protest, peaceful or otherwise. What America is experiencing is the beginning of a civil war, only one side has not yet awoken to the fact that it is involved in one. Civil wars don’t have to last long nor be bloody, but they can be, and this one might be. But it doesn’t have to be. Stopping it will take no only a firm response by police and the government, but more importantly in the long run, it means expunging from academia the anti-American fascists who have been rewriting American history as a march through hate and oppression and racism. It means discrediting and marginalizing the manipulative media cabal that proffers the “blame America first” or “America is racist” fictions as they seek to drive up temperatures. Finally it will take a party, whether it’s the GOP or some new entity, that finally stands up for the United States and embraces its history, both good and bad. They must be willing to recognize that America is indeed an imperfect place, as it has been since its founding, but that it gets better decade after decade and has done more to advance the condition of mankind than any nation in human history. They must know and be willing to say that the United States is the greatest nation in the history of human civilization and that there is more freedom here, more opportunities here and more prosperity here than anywhere on the planet. That with hard work one can make a better life for himself, for his family and his community.

Imagine what a country could do if those were the ideas that young people were being exposed to every day. Imagine if they expected to succeed… if they expected to be treated fairly… if they had gratitude for our freedoms and what others sacrificed to give it to them. Imagine they understood they are living in a time and place most people in history would have traded their souls for and millions of people risk their lives for every year.

Tell young people their lives aren't theirs, they can't succeed and racism is everywhere and they will believe it find it around every corner.  Tell them racism and other evils exist, but they live in the land of opportunity and their success is in their hands and they will succeed despite the roadblocks.   Couple that glass half full on steroids mindset with America’s bounty and the opportunities are infinite.

Donald Trump, Name Calling and Losing Real Friends Over Facebook

I started writing my blog in 2009, the year our first black president was sworn into office. Although I had written pieces previously over the previous eight years, it was not until fall of 2009 that I put pen to paper regularly. Did I mention that when I started we had our first black president?

I mention the fact that Barack Obama is black because for most of the eight years I’ve been writing I’ve been called racist. Never to my face, sometimes on Facebook and not infrequently in the larger sense as someone who supports the Constitution and advocates small government.

In all honesty I’ve probably lost half a dozen friends via Facebook over that exact point. These weren’t just “Facebook friends” but rather people I’ve known for years or even decades, people I’ve worked closely with and some with whom I’ve shared Christmas dinner. Each time it was over an issue that is near and dear to the left such as gay marriage, Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter or some similar issue.

In each case I tried to make my arguments focusing on the facts… slippery slopes, rates of unwed motherhood, government incompetence – such as with Solyndra - economics, etc. Each time while things might start out cordial enough, eventually, because I could not be swayed to my “friend’s” position I was called a racist, sexist, homophobe etc. I was suddenly labeled a hater of whatever group was impacted by the policy we might have been discussing, despite evidence to the contrary! The thing is, it didn’t seem to matter at all what I actually said, the words I actually wrote… if I didn’t agree with the other person’s point of view they seemed to have no problem slapping their label on me and feeling victorious.

It makes you think… if people I know well, people who’ve know me for years and worked with me and socialized with me can suddenly feel comfortable applying these labels to me – albeit on Facebook – because I’ve written about conservative, Constitutional positions – never, ever because of something I’ve actually ever said or done – what kind of debate is even possible? Particularly when some of the people I respect the most and quote most frequently are themselves black such as Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele.

Now we have a white president… but apparently I’m still a racist. Even though there were LOTS of things about Donald Trump I disliked and wrote about, the fact that I actually voted for the guy makes me racist. Interestingly, had I voted for the other white person on the ticket I’d have apparently no longer been a racist…

The funny thing is, the fact that there were two white people to choose from actually drives home the fact that my vote didn’t have any more to do with race than it did when I voted against Barack Obama. I voted against Barack Obama and railed against his policies for eight years not because he’s black, but because he’s a statist. Coincidentally, I voted against Hillary Clinton because she’s a statist. I opposed Barack Obama from day one because he is a progressive who seeks to diminish the United States on the world stage and destroy capitalism and eviscerate freedom. Coincidentally I opposed Hillary Clinton because she is a progressive who seeks to destroy capitalism and eviscerate freedom. Apparently, none of those things matter… once the left has decided their position they feel confident enough that they can label any dissenters as some version of “ist” with little regard for the actual facts.

Of course that’s the point… with the left, reality and facts rarely matter. Whether it’s the connection between unwed mothers and crime, or between a higher minimum wage and higher unemployment among the unskilled workers, or between increased regulation and lower GDP growth. the only important thing is what politicians say and who they offer the most goodies to, it’s never what actually happens. And it holds true not only in politics, but in real life as well. And sometimes it’s more than just losing a couple of friends. Remember a few years ago when the left wanted New York-Presbyterian Hospital to refuse a $100 million donation because it came from the Koch brothers?

Will we ever get back to a point where political discussions are separate from individual emotions and passions and we can focus on facts rather than name calling? With the media in general and social media in particular fanning the flames of narcissism, unwarranted self esteem and the primacy of the “right” to be free from offense over individual freedom and limited government, don’t expect a turnaround anytime soon. But at least with Trump there is a glimmer of hope. He may be a lot of things, but something he's not is a socialist who loves regulation and high taxes. Those three things alone will be a 180 degree change from what we’ve had for the last eight years. One wonders if the economy finally pulls itself out of the 1.5% malaise it’s been in since Barack Obama became president and starts to actually grow to its potential, how many of today’s lefties will start separating fact from fiction when they see incomes rising, opportunities increasing and having a bit extra in their pockets at the end of the month?  There may be hope... After all, Ronald Reagan who was much vilified by the left finished his second term with an approval rating of almost 65%.

My rather lopsided love/hate relationship with Barack Obama…

Some time ago I was talking with a guy I know and the issue of politics came up followed soon thereafter by the mention of Barack Obama. I instantly said “I hate that guy!” Afterward I wondered if that was really an accurate statement… after some introspection I have to admit, it's kinda true.

I know in a world of political correctness I should maybe not say that… but I feel as if I must, if for no other reason that explain why. Although I don’t actually know Barack Obama personally, that is exactly how I feel. On a personal level he might be a great guy. He’s certainly personable, he might be a great guy to have a beer with, he appears to be a good father and he would probably make a great guest on SportsCenter. Nonetheless, the dictionary defines hate thus: “To dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest.” That seems about right.

How is it even possible that I might have such a strong feeling towards someone I’ve never met? Charlie Rangel and MSNBC and the rest of the fabulists - about all things conservative and Tea Party related - would suggest it’s because he’s black, obviously. That’s their right, but nothing could be farther from the truth. While I despise Barack Obama, it has nothing to do with his skin color. Frankly I feel exactly the same about Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi as well… and the last time I checked neither of them was black.

No, I hate Barack Obama because it is his goal is to destroy that thing I hold most dear: the United States. The United States is indeed an imperfect place, but so too is every other place on this planet. It has however created more prosperity and improved the condition of man more than any other nation in human history. And the biggest part of that success was the driven by the free market system – imperfect as it may be – and its companion individual freedoms.

The United States is not just a geographic land mass sitting between two oceans. There are 200 plus other countries around the world that can be defined by lines on a map. None of them is anything like the United States. They may share some traits with us, but America is a different animal altogether. While you may very well hear someone saying they want to move to France or Germany, you don’t hear them saying “I want to become French” or “I want to become German”. They can move to France, they can become a French citizen… but they can’t become “French”. That has never been the case with the United States. For centuries people have dreamed of coming to America and becoming an American. That is because for most of our history the world understood that America was a place where, regardless of where you came from or what you started with, with hard work, they could achieve spectacular success, however they wanted to define it. For outsiders looking in and those born here, the American Dream was something of consequence, something to strive for, something worth sacrificing for. People like Cyrus McCormick, Andrew Carnegie, Levi Strauss and Madam C. J. Walker knew it long ago while people like Sara Blakely, Daymond John, John Schnatter, Cesar Millan and Mark Cuban know it today.

Unfortunately Barack Obama doesn’t understand any of that. While he talks about an American Dream, his American Dream is one where the nanny state of government swaddles the nation, suckles the citizens, gets to decide who wins and who loses in virtually everything, gets to arbitrarily define the rules, and gets to keep its thumb on every scale. At its foundations that is a misunderstanding of what made America more than just a geographic entity in the first place. America is not great because of government, it is great because of its freedom… economic and otherwise. America was not made great by agencies like the ICC or the SEC or the FDA, the IRS, the EPA or even NASA for that matter. No, America was made great by companies like GE and Ford and Carnegie Steel and International Harvester and Standard Oil and Rockwell, and Intel and IBM and Merck and Kelloggs and J.P Morgan and Sears and Delta Airlines and Microsoft and Disney and Turner and millions of other companies started by entrepreneurs and investors who risked much, and sometimes everything to do something worth doing and earn a profit while doing it.

But Barack Obama doesn’t understand that. He fundamentally misunderstands how and why businesses function – and truth be told… so do most liberals. He believes that businesses exist to provide jobs to employees. He believes businesses exist to provide tax revenue to the government. He believes that businesses exist to further his social agenda. He simply doesn’t understand that while businesses may do any or all of those things, in a free market businesses exist to generate profits for entrepreneurs and investors.

It is that disconnect that makes Barack Obama worthy of being hated. Not because he misunderstands the basic element of free market economics, but because he feels it’s his right to use the police power of the United States to wreck the most prosperous and powerful economic ecosystem the world has ever seen. From green energy boondoggles to stultifying regulation to excessive taxes to seemingly boundless spending on social programs, Barack Obama is systematically strangling the goose that has laid the golden eggs for over 200 years.

If you think the word hate is too strong, what else might you call it when you see a man who is leading the charge to push the United States into an economic tailspin from which we might never recover? America becoming an economic basket case the likes of Greece or Detroit would create a worldwide catastrophe, economic and otherwise that would destroy the lives of hundreds of millions of people, both at home and abroad. A man who is working to inflict that level of destruction on a nation is indeed worthy of being hated.

That doesn’t mean that I wish him ill however. On the contrary, I hope he lives another 50 years after he leaves office. If we’re lucky that will be long enough to allow him to observe how his imperious anti capitalist reign caused (hopefully) a reawakening of the American people to the fragility of freedom and prosperity, resulting in a wholesale dismantling of the regulatory leviathan he has championed. Now that would be a great reason to love him.

How Conservatives can win in a world of "Low Information Voters"

How did Barack Obama win reelection despite 8 million fewer people working and a doubling of gas prices since he took office? Despite a flatlining GDP, $6 trillion in new debt, and the disastrous Benghazi? How is it possible that given his abject failure voters could give Barack Obama a second term? Easy… Republicans hate everyone.

This point was crystallized this week when Mary Katherine Ham got into a dustup with Juan Williams over the issue of gun control. Ham made the cogent point that Chicago, with some of the strongest gun control laws in the country is anything but a “promise land” of tranquility. Williams responded with the absurd notion that because Virginia has much weaker gun regulations than DC, the lives of people who live in DC are somehow less valuable.

As nonsensical as William’s argument (if you can call it that) was, its demonizing of Virginians as not valuing the lives of DC residents was not unusual. That is exactly how Barack Obama won reelection and how we’ve gotten ourselves into this quagmire of a bloated mommy state with trillions of dollars flowing to the “needy” and tens of thousands of pages of regulations seeking to “protect” citizens. Conservatives and the GOP have been participating in different conversations than liberals for decades. While conservatives seek to engage in conversations about finding solutions for problems, liberals ignore them and steam ahead building their progressive utopia, regardless of the impact on the actual problems themselves.

The conversation between Ham and Williams provides a clear demonstration of the tactic. Data clearly show that jurisdictions with the most restrictive gun laws not only don’t show lower rates of gun violence, but typically have more gun violence. The conclusion that one might draw from this is that fewer gun laws mean more saved lives. You can disagree with the conclusion or argue about a lack of causation or you can suggest some other alternative explanation for the data. But that’s rarely what liberals do. Instead they suggest that if you’re against more gun laws you don’t want to protect children.

The same construct holds true for virtually every issue in politics:

• You oppose Barack Obama you’re a racist.
• You oppose increasing spending on education you don’t’ care about children.
• You oppose wind farms and electric cars you don’t care about the environment.
• You want borders enforced you hate Hispanics.
• You want lower taxes you hate poor people.
• You don’t support gay marriage you’re a homophobe.
• You want Obamacare repealed you’re a greedy SOB who doesn’t care about children with cancer or the elderly needing medicines.
• If you oppose increasing the minimum wage you don’t care about the poor.

And the list goes on. This is the liberal modus operandi: Demagoguery. Rather than engage in thoughtful discussions on the goals and efficacy of government regulations, they seek to demonize their opponents and in the process marginalize then sideline them.

Mitt Romney was just the latest causality of this Democratic pseudo defamation machine… He’s rich and wants lower taxes, therefore he hates poor people. Nevermind he created thousands of entry level jobs that gave poor people an income.

Before him Rudy Giuliani was called racist because of his crackdown on crime in New York City. Nevermind that he saved the lives of thousands of young black men by making the streets safer for everyone.

Ronald Reagan was constantly pilloried for everything from wanting to starve children to being a war monger. Nevermind he created a staggering level of economic growth that provided incomes to parents of millions of children, and that he won the Cold War.

The worst part of this liberal tactic is that it’s almost impossible to refute. Data rarely works to sway the argument. You saw that in William’s rejoinder to Ham. He had no interest in engaging on the facts. You also see it in the painting of the Tea Party movement as racist. Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 for proof of the claim that Tea Partiers had spit on black members of congress. Despite thousands of phone cameras rolling nobody came forward. Nonetheless the meme of Tea Party racism continues, even in the face of explicit proof to the opposite. Once the left makes an assertion and the sycophants in the media get hold of it, it’s almost impossible to reverse.

Liberals have been seeking to delegitimize conservatives for half a century. Unfortunately it’s been a largely successful strategy, as can be seen by the growth of government regulation and spending under both Democrat and GOP administrations. As such, liberals have no intention of abandoning it any time soon.

Given that playing field, in order to achieve success conservatives are going to have to face those falsehoods head on. At the most basic level they must make the point, repeatedly, that their policies of limited government and fiscal restraint seek to help all Americans, not just particular groups. More importantly however, conservatives must be willing to go toe to toe with Democrats who seek to delegitimize them as haters of one sort or another. They must be willing to stand up and state clearly “I reject the basic premise of your argument” and clearly articulate that opposition to Democrat’s nanny state policies does not suggest that they hate anybody. Rather, by reducing government entanglement in our lives, conservative policies seek to help everyone and anyone succeed.

In a universe of “low information voters” the only recipe for success is for conservatives to stay laser focused on the idea that limited government helps drive prosperity, which helps everyone. Period. That’s it. There's nothing else.  In a cacophony of issues we must narrow the focus to the only ones that count: freedom and prosperity, because once they're gone, nothing else matters.  Conservatives must learn to compellingly deflect the “hate” label and focus attention on how freedom drives prosperity and prosperity makes everything else possible. By explicitly refuting those “hate” labels they can narrow the spectrum of discussion to the consequences of government policies. They should be under no illusion that doing so will change the votes of dyed in the wool liberals. It may however catch the attention of a sufficient number of those "low information voters" to sway the next two elections red and save the country from our impending Greece like collapse.