The big questions now surrounding Barack Obama’s triumvirate of
scandals is “How much did he know?” and “When did he know it?” Former
presidential advisor David Axelrod made the point that the government is
“so vast” that the president can’t possibly know all that transpires.
Of course, this is one of the best arguments against big government a
leftist ever put forth, yet the truth is that Axelrod is right. But this
brings us to an important, and usually ignored, point.
Obama knew what his underlings were (or should have known) when he picked them up.
My phraseology references an old American Indian tale about a little
boy who, after doing a rattlesnake a series of good turns, was
nonetheless bitten by the serpent when the charitable endeavors were
complete. When the lad registered shock and asked why the snake would do
such a thing, the rattler replied, “You knew what I was when you picked
me up.”
Often a phenomenon of bad marriages, “selective deafness” is
when one hears only what is convenient. The same failing manifests itself in government
when politicians and judges hear the Constitution talk only when it sings their
tune. Worse still, sometimes these people behave as if the document says things
it doesn’t. This is the equivalent of hearing things.
Sometimes a reaction can be worse than an action, even when that
action is very, very diabolical. Some would argue that this was the case
with 9/11, with the resultant long-term loss of freedom, misguided
military ventures, and no serious effort whatsoever to seal a porous
back door to America.
The
Boston Marathon bombing also may prove to be a case in which reaction
surpasses action in damage. After all, what good is a doctor’s treatment
if his diagnosis and prescription
are wrong, if he claims that what’s healthy is Hell-sent and portrays
poison as palliative? And what good are our diagnoses and prescriptions
relating to terrorism if we demonize the realists and sanitize the
terrorists? When our physicians will not, or cannot, heal themselves, is
the greater danger posed by those who proudly spread the disease in the
name of one evil cause or those who offer a faux cure in the name of
another?
If an argument falls in a forest of confusion and nobody
hears it, does it make an impact?
In a segment with Megyn Kelly on the Wednesday edition of
the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly lamented
how traditionalists don’t have a “compelling argument” on the faux-marriage
issue and that all we can do is “thump the Bible.” But if theistic thumping is
all O’Reilly hears, he needs an ear for something other than the mainstream
media.
With cultural
defenders such as some of our conservatives, who needs liberals? One could draw
this conclusion when observing the Proposition 8 case currently before the
Supreme Court.
So far we
have we heard arguments about the “sociological” impact of faux marriage and,
from pro-marriage (conservative) lawyer Charles Cooper, about awaiting
“additional information from the jurisdictions where this experiment is still
maturing,” as if the case is just a matter of whether the Court should be an
agent of social engineering at this time and in this instance. Justice Anthony
Kennedy, who could be the swing vote in the case, weighed
in on both sides of the debate, saying, “There’s substance to the point
that sociological information is new. We have 5 years of information to weigh against
2,000 years of history or more.” But he also claimed that California’s “40,000
children with same-sex parents…want their parents to have full recognition and
full status” and asked Cooper, “The voice of those children is important in
this case, don’t you think?” My answer?
If I were a governor, the first thing I’d do is scrutinize
the school curriculum in my state. For the teachings in the schools today will
be the ideology of tomorrow, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln.
I’d review as much of the material as I could myself, and if
the volume was too great, I’d appoint like-minded traditionalists to help with
the task. But gone would be the revisionist history, radical environmentalism,
feminism, multiculturalism, politically correct teaching models, and most other
pseudo-intellectual “innovations” of the last century. Tradition would be
resurrected and exalted, the classics would be taught, and the moral supremacy of
the old Western civilization emphasized. I would be mindful of G.K.
Chesterton’s words: “It ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the
youngest children, the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the
baby. But in a school today the baby has to submit to a system that is younger
than himself.”
If laughter really is the best medicine, it’s no wonder race
relations are in a state of ill health.
Many years ago I spent quite a bit of time with a Zambian
friend. He remarked one day that he found America’s hang-up with racial humor a
bit strange, as racial jokes were not at all off limits in his country. And
call it my one concession to multiculturalism, but neither were they off limits
in our relationship. We would occasionally engage in innocent racial humor just
as we would any other kind of jesting — and no hate-speech charges were contemplated.
The world is laughing at us. It has come to light that the
Obama administration has allowed hundreds of Chinese nationals — who are
closely associated with the Chinese Liberation Army — to work in a sensitive
area of NASA's Langley Research Center. What could possibly go wrong?
Here’s what: one of these nationals, Bo Jiang, was arrested
on Monday at Dulles International Airport for apparently attempting to take
sensitive information out of the US. Don’t give our security apparatus too much
of a slap on the back for apprehending him, though, as Jiang had previously
succeeded in leaving the country with a laptop containing sensitive
information.
When your article inspires a big-city mayor to refer your
case to a "human-relations commission," you know you've hit a nerve.
And when that article is the recent "Being White in Philly" piece by liberal
Robert Huber, you know it doesn't take much truth to hit that nerve.
That's the scary part. Huber's article contains mostly tepid
examples of whites' negative experiences with blacks and primarily black
neighborhoods, such as a Philadelphia resident whose grill was stolen from her
backyard but "blames herself" for not fencing it in. Its tone is
basically apologetic, absolving a drug dealer of responsibility because he was
just "trying to get by" and describing the US' racial history as
"horrible and daunting." Yet this wasn't good enough for Philadelphia
mayor Michael Nutter and his comrades. They still want Huber silenced.
With the election of Pope Francis, there has been an almost
"catholic" attempt to determine if he is liberal or conservative. CBS
claims
he is a "staunch conservative" based on the fact that, as
correspondent Allen Pizzey put it, he "opposes abortion, supports
celibacy, and called gay adoption discrimination against children," not to
mention his opposition to faux marriage. Tingle Central's Chris Matthews said
that the new pontiff is economically "progressive," which, if we were
to be informed by actual
statistics, should mean he wouldn't give one red cent to anybody. But none
of these analysts will peg the pope because they're using the provisional to
understand a man defined by an institution based in the perpetual. And the
reality is this: the terms "liberal," "conservative," and
"moderate" are, in the truest sense, meaningless in Catholic circles.
And understanding why holds a lesson for all of us.
Recent Comments