Right Minded Online

(The following column first appeared in the Lebanon Democrat on July 1, 2005. It’s a story that’s well worth repeating.)

On July 4, 1776, fifty-six men from each of the original thirteen colonies signed the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is a relatively brief document that was drafted by Thomas Jefferson. It formally marked the dissolution of ties between the colonies and King George III, and lists twenty-seven separate grievances against the British monarchy.

What about the signers? Most of us know about John Hancock and his famous signature. Some of the signers, such as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, are still household names in American history. Others are more obscure.

Nine of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers, and two were cousins. One was an orphan. The average age of the signers was 45. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate at 70. The youngest was Thomas Lynch, Jr. of South Carolina at 27.

Eighteen of the signers were merchants or businessmen, fourteen were farmers, and four were doctors. Twenty-two were attorneys — although William Hooper of North Carolina was disbarred when he spoke out against the King of England — and nine were judges. Stephen Hopkins had been the governor of Rhode Island. Forty-two signers had served in their colonial legislatures.

John Witherspoon of New Jersey was the only active clergyman to attend. Almost all the signers were Protestants. Charles Carroll of Maryland was the sole Catholic.

Seven of the signers were educated at Harvard, four at Yale, four at William & Mary, and three at Princeton. Witherspoon was the president of Princeton, and George Wythe was a professor at William & Mary. His students included the Declaration’s drafter, Thomas Jefferson.

Seventeen signers fought in the American Revolution. Thomas Nelson was a colonel in the Second Virginia Regiment, then commanded Virginia military forces at the Battle of Yorktown. William Whipple served with the New Hampshire militia and was a commanding officer at Saratoga. Oliver Wolcott led the Connecticut regiments sent for the defense of New York, and commanded a brigade of militia that took part in the defeat of General John Burgoyne at Saratoga. Caesar Rodney was a major general in the Delaware militia. John Hancock held the same rank in the Massachusetts militia.

The British captured five signers during the war. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Middleton were captured at the Battle of Charleston in 1780. George Walton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Savannah. Richard Stockton of New Jersey never recovered from his incarceration at the hands of British Loyalists. After his capture, Stockton renounced the revolution and signed an allegiance to King George III, thereby becoming the only signer of the Declaration to betray the cause. He died in 1781.

Thomas McKean of Delaware wrote John Adams that he was “hunted like a fox by the enemy — compelled to remove my family five times in a few months.” Abraham Clark of New Jersey had two of his sons captured by the British during the war.

Eleven signers had their homes and property destroyed. The home of Francis Lewis of New York was destroyed and his wife taken prisoner. John Hart’s farm and mills were also destroyed when the British invaded New Jersey, and his health was irrevocably damaged while fleeing capture. Carter Braxton and Nelson, both of Virginia, lent large sums of their personal fortunes to support the war effort, and were never repaid.

Fifteen of the signers participated in their state constitutional conventions, and six (Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson, and George Reed) signed the U.S. Constitution.

After the Revolution, thirteen signers went on to become governors. Eighteen served in their state legislatures. Sixteen became state and federal judges. Seven became members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Six were elected to the U.S. Senate. James Wilson and Samuel Chase became Supreme Court justices. Jefferson, Adams, and Elbridge Gerry each became vice president. Adams and Jefferson later became president.

Five signers played major roles in establishing colleges and universities: Franklin (University of Pennsylvania), Jefferson (University of Virginia), Benjamin Rush (Dickinson College), Lewis Morris (New York University), and George Walton (University of Georgia).

Adams, Jefferson, and Carroll were the longest surviving signers. In one of the greatest ironies in American history, Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll was the last signer to die (in 1832, at the age of 95).

As an aside, there’s no doubt that if the Declaration of Independence were written today, it would be declared unconstitutional by the secular left. Consider that our founding document contains the following phrases: “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world,” and “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

Indeed, if a court can declare the phrase “under God” unconstitutional, what would it say of our founding document?

Regardless, the United States of America is a free and sovereign nation because of the courage and sacrifice of a relatively small group of mostly Christian men, their families, and those who fought and won a seemingly impossible war to secure an independence that we have preserved for 229 years.

I’ve long had the sick feeling that Mae Beavers was in her last term in the Tennessee General Assembly. That fear was confirmed last week when she announced that she would not seek re-election, and that she will instead run for Wilson County Mayor. At least we wouldn’t be losing her totally. But the State Senate will lose its most principled conservative.

Senator Beavers spent 8 years in the State House of Representatives, first winning election in 1994. She made a name for herself during the infamous years of Governor Don Sundquist’s second term. Beginning in 1999, the trinity of Governor Sundquist, then-Senator Bob Rochelle, and, later, then-Speaker of the House Jimmy Naifeh began a four-year full-court press trying to stick Tennesseans with an income tax.

Mae Beavers opposed the income tax from the outset, and, unlike many of her peers, stuck to her opposition. A frequent guest on Nashville talk shows hosted by conservatives Steve Gill and Phil Valentine, then-Representative Beavers became not only a critic of the income tax, but an outspoken one, and that’s how her name spread beyond District 57.

The odd thing about those years was that the Tennessee GOP was largely devoid of any male elected conservative leadership. The state’s most prominent Republican, Don Sundquist, was firmly in the tank for an income tax just weeks after his second inauguration, this coming after he campaigned against an income tax. Elected conservative leadership thus came from then-Senator Marsha Blackburn, and Representatives Mae Beavers, Donna Rowland, and Diane Black, while the male GOP caucus members were either cowering in their opposition or acquiescing to the income tax.

When the income tax ultimately failed to pass during the 2002 legislative session, conservatives claimed victory. Don Sundquist was on his way out, and, after Mae Beavers announced that she would challenge Bob Rochelle for the Senate in District 17, Rochelle bailed out, leaving Beavers to face off against an unknown Democrat challenger, Sherry Fisher, from Carthage. Mae Beavers won election to the Senate with 52% of the vote. What made her victory especially remarkable was that District 17 had heretofore been the Democrats’ turf. District 17 is Al Gore country, after all.

Mae Beavers won by simply being conservative: low taxes, limited government, pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment. That she had consistently voted conservative made her a credible conservative candidate. Not only did she articulate conservatism on the campaign trail, she voted that way in the General Assembly. (It’s what I call “principled conservatism.”)

Senator Beavers continued doing the things that had made her a conservative icon while in the House. She voted against budgets that exceeded the Copeland Cap, noting that it doesn’t make sense to vote against overriding the Copeland Cap, and then vote for a budget that overrides the Copeland Cap. She attempted to phase out the state’s sales tax on food, but couldn’t get her bill past the Democrats. She consistently made efforts to advance gun ownership rights. She defended the unborn.

Mae Beavers had illustrated that conservatives can win in yellow dog Democrat districts by winning them over as conservatives, and not by trying to out-Democrat the Democrats. This is how Ronald Reagan won landslides in 1980 and 1984. It really does work.

While serving her first term as a State Senator, Mae Beavers overcame a bout with cancer, and managed to still serve the voters of District 17 while taking chemotherapy. When 2006 rolled around, she was recovered and ready to run for re-election. That’s when Bob Rochelle announced that he would challenge Senator Beavers for his old Senate seat. By now, Senator Beavers was well-regarded for her principled conservatism. Voters knew that what Senator Beavers promised on the campaign trail, she would deliver in the Senate. And so she easily won re-election, this time getting 58% of the vote.

One of the frustrating things for conservatives is watching good conservatives go to Nashville, or go to Washington, D.C., get sucked into the political machine, and lose their conservatism. Don Sundquist is a prime example of an elected conservative gone bad.

Senator Beavers never went bad, never got corrupted by “the system.” She’s every bit as conservative now as the first day she set foot in the State Capitol in 1995. I wish she had run for governor, but I understand why she wants to spend her time here in Wilson County. Politics is often a cutthroat business that can easily corrupt elected leaders if they aren’t careful. By the time she leaves the Senate, Mae Beavers will have served the people of Wilson County (as well as the other counties in her district) for 16 years.

I’ll miss having her as my state senator, but should she become our next county mayor, the voters and taxpayers of Wilson County will be very well served by one of the most principle conservatives we’ll ever see in elected politics.

Two weeks ago, an 88-year-old man named James von Brunn shot and killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. He was critically wounded himself, thwarting his ability to make further attacks.

We have learned a great deal about James von Brunn in the days following his attack. He embodied an extreme hatred of Jews, blaming them for a host of devious conspiracies, and also believed the Holocaust was a hoax.

It didn’t take long for the mainstream press to write von Brunn off as a right-wing extremist in the same mold as Timothy McVeigh. But a closer look at von Brunn’s beliefs and attitudes shows that he shared many views that are held by members of the far left.

For example, the FBI believes that the offices of the Weekly Standard, a conservative publication, were next on von Brunn’s hit list. Mr. von Brunn’s published rants included attacks on neo-conservatives, Bill O’Reilly, and both Presidents Bush. He also believed President Bush was in on the 9/11 terrorist attacks — a view that is held by many on the fringe left.

In no way can von Brunn be categorized as a right-winger. He also can’t be categorized exclusively as a left-winger. Simply stated, he’s just plain nuts.

But that didn’t stop the mainstream press from labeling von Brunn as a right-wing extremist. Here’s a smattering of comments regarding von Brunn made by mainstream journalists and media talkers:

Deborah Lauter (NBC): ”Clearly Obama’s election has fueled the right-wing extremist movement.”

Chris Matthews (MSNBC): “This is a political action by a far-right extremist.”

Anderson Cooper (CNN): “The rise of hate groups in the United States of right-wing extremists.”

Keith Olbermann (MSNBC): “Right-wing religious-based domestic terrorism.”

Campbell Brown (CNN): ”Right-wing extremism.”

Joan Walsh (Salon.com): ”There is a rising climate of right-wing hate, a lot of it directed at Obama.”

Indeed, the truth did not preclude the mainstream press from casting James von Brunn as a right-wing extremist. It fit the template the media have for angry, racist right-wingers.

Just before the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, a famous liberal made an anti-Semitic statement of his own. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who pastored Barack Obama for 20 years in Chicago, complained during an interview that “Them Jews ain’t going to let [Obama] talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office.”

You didn’t hear much about this from the mainstream press, though. You didn’t hear the media types castigate Reverend Wright as a left-wing extremist. You didn’t hear them blame the far left for fostering a climate of hate. Granted, Reverend Wright didn’t shoot anyone, but he does clearly embody anti-Semitic views, the same as James von Brunn.

Indeed, most of the anti-Semitism, anti-Israeli attitudes that exist today are embodied by leftists. Jimmy Carter is a frequent critic of Israel, for example. And last year, Jesse Jackson warned that “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades remain strong, but they’re going to lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.”

On the other hand, conservatives and Republicans are frequent supporters of Israel, which may illustrate why von Brunn ripped neo-conservatives and both Presidents Bush.

Remember that back in April, a report on right-wing extremism was leaked by the Department of Homeland Security. In that report, the DHS defined right-wing extremism in the United States as ”those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

James von Brunn fits some of those descriptions, but, again, in no way can he be classified as a right-wing extremist. He is simply an evil individual who is motivated primarily by his hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, the mainstream press is so politicized that many journalists have become nothing more than left-wing activists. And so they cherry-picked what they wanted from James von Brunn, molded his extreme views into their template of the racist Republican, and attempted to hold him up as an example of right-wing extremism.

It’s a classic example of journalistic malpractice.

Back in April, while making a stop in Turkey during one of his World Apology Tours, President Obama remarked that we Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Muslim nation, but rather, a nation of citizens who are, uh, bound by a set of values.”

This was not the first time Barack Obama has denied America’s Christian heritage, nor is President Obama the first leftist to do so. Civil libertarians (ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State) routinely deny the prominent role Christianity played during our founding and throughout our history. Playing down our Christian heritage helps them advance the myth of separation of church and state, as civil libertarians routinely comb the countryside looking for vestiges of Christianity to declare unconstitutional and scrub clean.

In response, Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) has introduced H.Res. 397, which affirms our Christian heritage. The bill contains considerable documentation on the importance Christianity has played in our development as a nation. It would also establish the first week of May as America’s Spiritual Heritage Week.

Here are few excerpts from the text of H.Res. 397:

Political scientists have documented that the most frequently cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible.

The first act of America’s first Congress in 1774 was to ask a minister to open with prayer and to lead Congress in the reading of 4 chapters of the Bible.

Congress regularly attended church and Divine service together en masse.

Throughout the American Founding, Congress frequently appropriated money for missionaries and for religious instruction, a practice that Congress repeated for decades after the passage of the Constitution and the First Amendment.

In 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence with its 4 direct religious acknowledgments referring to God as the Creator, the Lawgiver, the Judge, and the Protector.

Upon approving the Declaration of Independence, John Adams declared that the Fourth of July “ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”

Four days after approving the Declaration, the Liberty Bell was rung. The Liberty Bell was named for the Biblical inscription from Leviticus 25:10 emblazoned around it: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof.”

In 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of “Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches,” announced that they “desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by their encouragement” and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported “into the different ports of the States of the Union.”

In 1782, Congress pursued a plan to print a Bible that would be “a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools” and therefore approved the production of the first English language Bible printed in America that contained the congressional endorsement that “the United States in Congress assembled…recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.”

Also in 1782, Congress adopted (and has reaffirmed on numerous subsequent occasions) the National Seal with its Latin motto “Annuit Coeptis,” meaning “God has favored our undertakings,” along with the eye of Providence in a triangle over a pyramid. The eye and the motto “allude to the many signal interpositions of Providence in favor of the American cause.”

The 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the Revolution and established America as an independent nation begins with the appellation “In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.”

In 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin declared, “God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? … Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.”

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention concluded their work by in effect placing a religious punctuation mark at the end of the Constitution in the Attestation Clause, noting not only that they had completed the work with “the unanimous consent of the States present” but they had done so “in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.”

James Madison declared that he saw the finished Constitution as a product of “the finger of that Almighty Hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution.” George Washington viewed it as “little short of a miracle.” Benjamin Franklin believed that its writing had been “influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler, in Whom all inferior spirits live, and move, and have their being.”

From 1787 to 1788, State conventions to ratify the United States Constitution not only began with prayer but even met in church buildings.

In 1795, during construction of the Capitol, a practice was instituted whereby “public worship is now regularly administered at the Capitol, every Sunday morning, at 11 o’clock.”

In 1789, the first U.S. Congress, the Congress that framed the Bill of Rights (including the First Amendment), appropriated federal funds to pay chaplains to pray at the opening of all sessions, a practice that has continued to this day, with Congress not only funding its congressional chaplains but also the salaries and operations of more than 4,500 military chaplains.

In 1789, Congress, in the midst of framing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, passed the first federal law regarding education, declaring that “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

In 1789, on the same day that Congress finished drafting the First Amendment, it requested President Washington to declare a national day of prayer and thanksgiving, resulting in the first federal official Thanksgiving proclamation that declared “it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

These are just a smattering of the examples set forth in H.Res. 397 that attest to our Christian heritage. To proclaim otherwise is to simply ignore the history of the United States, and to deny the hand of Divine Providence that has enabled us to blossom into the freest, wealthiest, and most generous collection of individuals ever to exist.

For the first time since Gallup began tracking public opinion on abortion back in 1995, a majority of Americans view themselves as pro-life. The poll, conducted last month, reveals that 51% of Americans consider themselves pro-life, up from 33% just 14 years ago when Gallup began tracking abortion views. Conversely, 42% of Americans identify themselves as pro-choice, down from 56% in 1995.

Digging a little deeper, 53% of respondents believe abortion should be legal under certain circumstances. Twenty-three percent believe abortion should be completely illegal, and 22% believe it should be legal under all circumstances.

Pro-life women outnumber pro-choice women 49% to 44%. Pro-life men outnumber pro-choice men 54% to 39%.

There are several reasons for the conservative shift on abortion.

First, President Obama, the most abortion-minded president we’ve ever had, has overreached in his pro-abortion policies. A Gallup poll conducted earlier this year found that 58% of Americans opposed scrapping the Mexico City Policy, meaning that most Americans oppose having their tax dollars used to promote and perform abortion overseas.

Second, pro-lifers have waged an aggressive campaign against the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would lift virtually all limits on abortion. FOCA, which has the support of President Obama, would put an end to parental consent, conscience clauses, 24-hour waiting periods, and a return of the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion.

Third, ultrasounds put a face on unborn human life. Pro-life organizations such as Focus on the Family have placed ultrasound machines in a number of crisis pregnancy centers. Mothers who see ultrasound images of their unborn children are far more likely to choose life than those who don’t. People don’t need medical degrees to recognize human life when they see it.

Finally, women and men who have been hurt by abortion are speaking out. Maria Vitale of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation explains, ”Each abortion leads to two victims – the baby who dies and the mother who’s wounded. Women who regret their abortions are speaking out, talking about the pain, both emotional and physical, that resulted from their abortions. They trace drug addiction, alcohol abuse, eating disorders and sleep disorders to the abortions of their past. Men, too, are grieving and opening up about the devastation abortion has caused in their lives. There is nothing quite so powerful as the complaint of a dissatisfied customer, and the abortion industry has a number of former clients expressing buyer’s remorse.”

Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, there have been approximately 50 million legal abortions performed in the U.S. According to the Center for Disease Control, the number of abortions peaked in 1990 at more than 1.4 million. Last year, that figure was around 800,000, indicating a significant decrease in the demand for abortion. As a result, many abortion clinics have permanently shut their doors.

Unfortunately, America’s pro-life shift has not played out at the ballot box. The last election produced an increase in the Democrats’ majorities in both chambers of Congress, and the election of Barack Obama. When he was an Illinois state senator, President Obama opposed legislation that would have made it illegal to kill abortion survivors — a practice that can only be called infanticide.

Unfortunately, the Republicans did not make abortion a major election-year issue. President Obama’s far-left views on abortion are shared by only a handful of Americans, yet the McCain campaign and the GOP did not expose our current president’s views when they had the opportunity.

While delivering the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame last month, President Obama remarked, ”That’s when we begin to say, ‘Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman.’ So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies. Let’s make adoption more available. Let’s provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term.”

This is typical Obamaspeak. Sometimes one just has to conclude that he means the opposite of what he says. President Obama wants to reduce the number of abortions, yet he supports legislation that would make abortions easier to obtain, and would also legalize partial-birth abortion.

So one has to ask, if there is nothing wrong with abortion, why would President Obama want to reduce the number of abortions? Could it be that President Obama does understand the evil of killing the unborn? Could it be that even our abortion-minded president wants to reduce the number of abortions for the same reason that we want to reduce heart disease, cancer, AIDS, automobile accidents, homicides, and all the other contributors to premature death?

Last week while giving a speech at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, President Obama noted that Buchenwald “teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others’ suffering is not our problem, and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests.”

Indeed, and that is why we pro-lifers must never give up fighting against the mass killing of the unborn.

A group calling itself ecoAmerica believes global warming alarmists need to adopt a new lingo in order to sell more Americans on the global warming hoax.

Instead of dire warnings about global warming, the firm advises that global warming hucksters instead talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.”

It also advises that we drop discussions of carbon dioxide and instead say “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.”

Don’t confuse people with cap and trade. Use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for several years in order to find new ways to frame global warming issues and build public support for environmental legislation. The research parallels marketing studies by oil companies, utilities, and coal mining interests that are trying to “green” their image with consumers and influence public policy.

There is a reason global warming alarmists are searching for a new lingo. The American public is catching on to the fact that global warming is a hoax. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in January found that global warming ranked dead last among 20 voter concerns.

“We know why it’s lowest,” said Robert Perkowitz of ecoAmerica. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”

Here’s another recommendation from ecoAmerica: “energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.”

It’s also time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”

Also, global warming hucksters are to use inspirational American lingo such as freedom, prosperity, independence, and self-sufficiency. This is really ironic, since the global warming hoax is designed to produce just the opposite. Remember, global warming is simply a mechanism leftists are using to grow government, raise taxes, and micromanage our lives. Doing so will place limits on our freedom, prosperity, independence, and self-sufficiency, so these people actually mean the opposite of what they say. (According to the Heritage Foundation, cap and trade will reduce the nation’s GDP by $7.4 trillion, raise electricity rates by 90%, and raise gasoline prices by 74%.)

Finally, Mr. Perkowitz agrees that we should drop “global warming” in favor of “climate change.”

This tells you everything you need to know about global warming. It is a political issue, not a scientific one. Science actually refutes global warming. After all, the earth hasn’t warmed in more than a decade. And dire climate predictions made several decades in advance simply aren’t credible, because meteorologists cannot reliably predict the weather beyond a week or so.

Scientific issues don’t require a change in lingo in order influence public opinion. That’s strictly politics. Science is what it is, and scientific terms are what they are. They don’t need massaging.

Aside from the political aspects of global warming, it has also become a tidy profit-making machine for those who promote the latest fad of “going green.”

In a recent hearing on cap and trade legislation before the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn had the enviable pleasure of questioning Al Gore about his financial stake in the global warming hoax.

Al Gore is a partner in the firm Kleiner Perkins, which has invested about $1 billion in some 40 companies that would benefit from cap and trade legislation, which is the primary global warming bill being considered by the U.S. Congress.

Congresswoman Blackburn asked the reasonable question “Is the legislation that we are discussing here today, is that something that you are personally going to benefit from?”

Al Gore was indignant. “I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us. And I have invested in it, but every penny I have made I have put into a non-profit alliance for climate protection to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 33 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.”

Actually, Mr. Gore, that is exactly what we do believe. To quote Tennessee political analyst, radio personality, and blogger Terry Frank, “Gore has profited handsomely, as we know he went from a paltry millionaire to a 100-millionaire very quickly. He didn’t grow the portfolio by giving it all away.”

If only I had been there to ask a question of my own we could have really gotten to the nuts-and-bolts of Al Gore’s enviro-hypocrisy: Mr. Gore, if human activity and over-consumption are detroying the environment, and if you are demanding that we all cut back on our energy use, why do you insist on flying all over the planet, and why does your Belle Meade home use 20 times the energy as the average family dwelling?

Until we see enviro-hypocrites like Al Gore and other leftists who demand sacrifices from the rest of us make sacrifices of their own in order to save our planet-in-peril, believe me, dear readers, we have absolutely nothing to fear environmentally, but everything to fear politically.

Last November, the American electorate voted to increase Democrat majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate while sending a leftist to the White House.

The results have been predictable. The bills are about to start pouring in.

Not only are Democrats obsessed with raising taxes, but their incessant meddling in the private sector will also inevitably increase the cost of living in the long run.

In the most recent example, President Obama has assumed the role of car-designer-in-chief. He is leading the way for much stricter mileage standards for automobiles. By 2016, he wants the average motor vehicle to get 35.5 miles per gallon. This will add as much as $1,300 to the cost of each new vehicle.

Even though he has absolutely no constitutional authority to make these kinds of demands, he’s doing it anyway, and no one has the will to stop him. The left has for years been trying to get us to drive tin can automobiles, using the global warming hoax as a wedge between us and our gas guzzlers.

Liberalism succeeds only by convincing individuals to act against their own self-interest. And if liberals can’t convince us, they’ll use the power of government to force us. In this case, Americans will be forced into buying a bunch of cars we don’t want.

Of course, according to President Obama, the increase in cost will be offset by the decrease in the demand for gasoline — about $2,800 during the life of each vehicle. That is, until the federal government decides to raise the fuel tax. You see, Americans currently pay 18.4 cents to the federal government per gallon of gasoline. If we increase our gas mileage, we’ll be buying fewer gallons of gas, which will mean less revenue going to Washington. So Congress will end up raising the gas tax in order to make up the difference.

Back in February, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggested that the government tax motorists not on how much gas they buy, but by how many miles they drive. This has already been proposed in several states, and if it were to become law at the federal level, then it wouldn’t matter how much money you save on gas. The government would still manage to pick your pocket.

Even though President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are spending piles of money they don’t have, President Obama is still planning on government taking over the health care industry. Government is already broke, and is going another $1.8 trillion in debt this fiscal year alone, but that’s not stopping Obama. Where’s he going to get the money for a massive government health care program that will cost an estimated $1.5 trillion over ten years? By raising taxes, of course.

Democrats in Congress are mulling over limiting the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits. This is really ironic, given that Democrats are supposed to be all about health care. Employer-provided health benefits are tax-free for a reason: to make it easier to afford health coverage. Thus, limiting the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits will make it more difficult for consumers to afford their premiums. This makes no sense, unless you understand that the current Democrat leaders really aren’t about health care. They’re about government-run health care.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus says there are no easy options. Of course there are. Just get government to stop meddling in our lives and stop spending money it doesn’t have.

The federal government is broke, and yet President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are still proposing program after program. Right now, given the size of the national debt and the amount of revenue that is collected each year, the federal government is today collecting money it spent about four years ago. On top of that, government is currently borrowing nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends.

The federal debt currently stands at $11.3 trillion, and increases by about $5 billion every day. Given past revenue figures, the federal government is today collecting revenue that was actually spent in 2005. And given President Obama’s budget forecast, we are spending money today that won’t be collected until 2013 or 2014. By then, the federal debt will be nearly $16 trillion.

When President Obama isn’t tinkering with the automobile industry, or the health care industry, or the banking industry, he’s messing around with the credit card industry.

During his weekly radio address on May 9, he remarked, “Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe. But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties, and hidden fees that have become all too common.”

Yes, he actually said that. Americans have a responsibility to live within their means. Apparently, Congress and the President don’t.

We also have a right to not get ripped off by sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties, and hidden fees by credit card companies. But we do apparently have a right to get ripped off by tax hikes and all the other means government uses to separate the American taxpayer from his paycheck.

Had Carrie Prejean won last month’s Miss USA pageant, she likely wouldn’t be as famous as she is for not winning it. Prejean, representing the state of California, has gotten a lot more airtime than the eventual winner. I honestly can’t name the winner. I could look it up, but it doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is that Miss Prejean was confronted during the April 20 pageant with a politically-charged question regarding same-sex marriage. Her answer shocked the amazingly thin-skinned entertainment world: “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

The audience responded with some boos, but mostly cheers. Regardless, her fate was sealed at that moment. She would not win.

Prejean later told NBC, “I knew at that moment, after I’d answered the question, I knew that I was not going to win because of my answer – because I had spoken from my heart, from my beliefs, and for my God.”

Pageant judge Perez Hilton, a gay-rights activist who proclaims himself “queen of all media,” called the answer “the worst answer in pageant history.”

In a video blog on his website, Hilton remarked, “She lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage, she lost because she’s a dumb b****!”

That, in a nutshell, is the kind of ”tolerance” same-sex marriage supporters have become famous for.

Similarly, Scott Ihrig, a gay man who attended the pageant with his partner, remarked “It’s ugly. I think it’s ridiculous that she got first runner-up. That is not the value of 95 percent of the people in this audience. Look around this audience and tell me how many gay men there are.”

Oddly, Miss Prejean’s view of marriage is identical to that of a more noted leftist: President Barack Obama. During his forum with Pastor Rick Warren last year, the soon-to-be president was asked to define marriage. Here’s what he said: ”I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

Carrie Prejean’s view of marriage is also consistent with the majority of Americans. To date, constitutional amendments limiting marriage to one man and one woman have been on the ballot in 29 states, and the voters in every single state have approved them, including the state of California, which isn’t exactly known for its conservatism.

In the last 4 weeks, Prejean and her family have been hounded by the media and gay-rights activist, even receiving a death threat, but have also been buoyed by fellow Christians.

Her pastor, Miles McPherson of the Rock Church in San Diego, went on The O’Reilly Factor two weeks ago to discuss the post-pageant fallout. ”She honored her God,” he remarked, “and that strength is what’s keeping her going today, and she’s not going to back down.”

McPherson noted that a lot of people support Prejean, but are being quiet about it. “People are scared to stand up. Everyone is so intimidated to say anything against the gay agenda. We don’t have the freedom of speech anymore.”

Bill O’Reilly called the backlash against Carrie Prejean “a shocking display of hatred and un-American sentiment. This woman is an American citizen and does not deserve to have her life ruined.”

Prejean has stood by her comments. “I wouldn’t have answered differently,” she told The Today Show’s Matt Lauer. “It’s not about being politically correct. For me, it was being Biblically correct. When I’m asked a specific question, I’m going to give a specific answer. I’m not going to stand in the middle. I’m going to take one side or the other. I was true to myself, and I know now I can go out and speak to young people about standing up for what you believe in and never compromising anything, for anyone or anything, even if it is the crown of Miss USA.”

In an interview with Fox News, she described what happened to her as a spiritual test. “This happened for a reason. By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith.”

It inevitably cost her the crown she had wanted so dearly, but Carrie Prejean no doubt fared much better in the eyes of the greatest judge of all.

Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP presidential candidate, is credited with launching the modern conservative movement with his candidacy that year. Even though Goldwater lost the election, an up-and-coming politician named Ronald Reagan began shaping those conservative ideas into the platform that launched him to high office 16 years later.

But the ideas espoused by conservatives are not that new. Simply stated, conservatism is rooted in the concept of individual liberty. A full half-century before Goldwater’s unsuccessful run for president, a Massachusetts politician named Calvin Coolidge articulated those ideas in a speech “Have Faith in Massachusetts” that he delivered on January 7, 1914.

Even though the term “conservatism” didn’t really exist back then, you can trace the concepts of conservatism all the way back to the Declaration of Independence, which states that we are endowed by our Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thus, if you’ve ever wondered (or hoped) that conservatism might go the way of the Edsel, not to worry. As long as the ideals of our founding document remain a part of the American culture, conservatism will remain alive and well.

With that in mind, here’s some of what Calvin Coolidge had to say 95 years ago: “The suspension of one man’s dividends is the suspension of another man’s pay envelope.”

This is more or less a definition of trickle-down economics that provided the basis for the Reagan tax cuts that sparked a sustained period of economic growth in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Coolidge also observed that “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.”

The future president also noted that “Courts are established, not to determine the popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and enforce rights.”

This is completely opposite the view held by many on the left today that courts exist to adjudicate causes such as abortion and same-sex marriage, rather than make objective rulings based on the Constitution.

Coolidge further articulated that “The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve.”

He similarly observed “Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self government means self support.”

Indeed, the message we hear today from the Democrat Party is completely opposite, that we should look to government to solve our problems, ensure our livelihood, and guarantee our happiness.

Coolidge: “Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated.” “…[I]t may be that the fostering and protection of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation on which to build the prosperity of the whole people. Large profits mean large pay rolls. But profits must be the result of service performed. In no land are there so many and such large aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do they perform larger service; in no land will the work of a day bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare.”

We instead live in an age today where government has replaced the concept of equal opportunty with equal outcome. Politicians seek equal outcome by pillaging aggregations of wealth through punative, confiscatory taxation, such as the ”windfall profits tax” Democrats have threatened to impose on oil companies.

Coolidge: “Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that.”

Compare this to Michelle Obama, who, a year ago, instructed a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”

Calvin Coolidge wisely instructed his audience “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

And, finally, “Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of man.”

You won’t find a major party candidate, at least on a national level, who is willing to articulate conservatism the way Calvin Coolidge articulated it nearly a hundred years ago. It’s not that conservatism has gone out of style. As long as the concept of individual liberty remains alive, conservatism will be relevant. Unfortunately, politicians today pander to the American voter, promising government largess and government solutions to almost every problem imaginable.

I guess I’m like most middle class Americans my age. I’m infatuated with gadgets. Technology really is awesome. Over time, I have acquired the usual suspects. There’s the cell phone with a built-in digital camera (so inexpensive now I got two free from our provider). I love music, and especially enjoy the iPod I got for Christmas. Laptops finally came down enough where I bought one four years ago, and when it blew up, I bought another one last year. There’s the digital camera/camcorder, which has been quite handy, because I also enjoy photography. And let’s not forget the satellite radio. The service and the radio were both dirt-cheap. (XM carries all Major League Baseball games, which is handy when you’re a Philadelphia Phillies fan living in Tennessee.)

In our home you will find those things you can find in just about everybody else’s home these days: televisions, DVD players, PC’s, an Xbox, etc. We’re definitely not unusual. Again, the stuff is cheap and plentiful.

I guess I’m not unlike other people who rely on technology for the convenience those little gadgets provide, and for the amazing things they can do. (Man, the iPod has to be the greatest invention ever, including the wheel and sliced bread.) And, fortunately, you don’t have to be wealthy to get the newest technology.

All that aside, it’s a little bothersome that cell phones and e-mail, and all those other things that entertain us and occupy our time seem to have slowly replaced our relationships with each other. Now, instead of going into someone’s office at work, we just shoot an e-mail, even though that person may be only twenty steps away. We learn how our other family members’ days went not at the dinner table, but over the cell phone. We spend time tinkering with our gadgets rather than interacting with other people. I’m just as guilty as everyone else.

And how many times have you tried to enjoy dinner at a restaurant, only to be distracted by someone’s obnoxious ring tone two tables away, followed by that person’s loud, detailed conversation right in the middle of the main course?

Gadgets are great, but gadgets are not people. You can’t have a relationship with a piece of electronics.

There are times when I do want to shove it all aside and go into retreat like Henry David Thoreau — just escape somewhere with a few good books. Of course, most of us have families and can’t very well abdicate our responsibilities by going the way of Thoreau. But there are times when I long to take a couple of days, leave the gadgets behind, and take my family off to the mountains for trail-blazing and lying under the stars. Imagine a few days without gadgets — no cell phones, or digital cameras, laptops, and even no iPods. Instead, there would be just the important people in our lives with no distractions.

Truth be known, my son would much rather go outside with me and throw around a $5 football than play with his Xbox. Similarly, I’d rather light up a fire out back some cool autumn evening, roast something gooey on a stick and read stories than sit around and watch some mundane TV show.

I enjoy reading early American history. I am fascinated by pioneers who went into uninhabited wilderness, cleared the land, built cabins, plowed fields, and started communities — all without the benefit of the machinery we use today. There’s a certain romance to that which I’ll never experience, which may be a blessing. I’m really a wimp when it comes to manual labor. To me, tilling the garden and spreading mulch are real accomplishments. But still, there’s a part of me that — impossibly — longs to experience those times before modern machinery. Those were much harder times for sure, but they were also times when all people had were each other, when families sat around lanterns or candles or fireplaces and read the Bible and entertained themselves without the aid of electronics. They were resilient.

We, on the other hand, are rendered helpless when the electricity goes out, or when we lose our wireless connections, our satellite signals, or the bars on our cell phones.

And so, I do want to escape for a couple of days to my own Walden Pond, take my family with me, and suck the marrow out of life. We’d go armed with no electronics, just a tent, some sleeping bags, a football, some fishing rods, and a book or two. Everything would be reduced to just the three of us, God, and our primitive surroundings. Doing so wouldn’t permanently disconnect us from our present-day responsibilities, but at least we wouldn’t forget how to relate to each other.

Despite the national election results in 2006 and 2008, conservatism is alive and well in the United States. The Tea Parties of April 15 proved it. The tax day demonstrations, organized and advertised on a grass-roots level, were very well-attended, and are proof that many Americans aren’t buying the fawning admiration being heaped on the Obama administration by the mainstream press.

Mainstream conservatives are infuriated by the generational theft being foisted on future taxpayers who haven’t even been born yet, the rapid expansion of government, the explosive growth in the federal deficit, and the nationalization of the private sector.

On April 7, just eight days before the planned Tea Parties, the Department of Homeland Security issued a perfectly-timed ten-page memorandum warning of potential right-wing extremism. (A copy of this memorandum can be found at http://wnd.com/images/dhs-rightwing-extremism.pdf.)

Remember, Americans were warned of potential violence by right-wing extremists on Inauguration Day, but we ended up not hearing a peep. Despite this, the DHS now warns that “Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.”

The term “right-wing extremist” conjures up stereotypical images of machine-gun-wielding Grizzly Adams-types who live in remote cabins in Montana, refuse to pay their taxes, build explosives, and call for the overthrow of the U.S. government. Granted, such individuals do exist, and right-wing extremists have committed a smattering of crimes over the years, but given the acts of terrorism committed by, say, Islamic militants, it’s odd that the Obama administration would elevate the largely-phantom threat posed by right-wing extremists.

Traditional stereotypes notwithstanding, the DHS memorandum more or less expands the definition of right-wing extremist to cover mainstream conservatives.

Indeed, the DHS defines right-wing extremism in the United States as ”those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

So if you were a Tea Party attendee who opposes the federal government’s usurpation of state or local authority, you could become a right-wing extremist. By this definition, the Framers were right-wing extremists. The Framers, after all, gave us a Constitution that delegated limited, specific powers to the federal government, and broad powers to the states and to the people.

If you oppose abortion or illegal immigration, you might also become a right-wing extremist, according to the DHS.

If you are a military veteran, you could become the next Timothy McVeigh. According to the memorandum, “DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists — including lone wolves or small terrorist cells — to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.”

If you believe in Biblical end-times prophecies, you could become a right-wing extremist. According to the DHS, “Antigovernment conspiracy theories and ‘end times’ prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.”

If you support the Second Amendment, or recently bought a firearm, you could become a right-wing extremist. According to the DHS, “Many rightwing extremist groups perceive recent gun control legislation as a threat to their right to bear arms and in response have increased weapons and ammunition stockpiling, as well as renewed participation in paramilitary training exercises. Such activity, combined with a heightened level of extremist paranoia, has the potential to facilitate criminal activity and violence.”

And if you fear the loss of American sovereignty, you could become a right-wing extremist. Again, the DHS: “Rightwing extremist paranoia of foreign regimes could escalate or be magnified in the event of an economic crisis or military confrontation, harkening back to the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theories of the 1990s. The dissolution of Communist countries in Eastern Europe and the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s led some rightwing extremists to believe that a ‘New World Order’ would bring about a world government that would usurp the sovereignty of the United States and its Constitution, thus infringing upon their liberty.”

So the Obama administration is attempting to marginalize mainstream conservatives by setting them up as straw men and targeting them for possible violence. Those who adhere to the concept of limited government and oppose the expansion of the federal government and those who are pro-life and oppose illegal immigration have been so labeled. Military veterans and “Left Behind” readers have been labeled. Gun-rights supporters and those who fear the loss of American sovereignty are also targets of the DHS memorandum. These are positions held to a large degree by mainstream conservatives, which means that the Obama administration is warning that your typical Tea Party attendee has the potential to become a right-wing extremist.

Sales of Ayn Rand’s 1957 masterpiece Atlas Shrugged are skyrocketing. No, there hasn’t been some hyped-up re-release of the novel. There is renewed interest in Rand’s seminal work because we are living it.

When Atlas Shrugged was first published, the initial print run was 100,000 copies. Bookstore sales reached an all-time high last year with about 200,000 copies sold, which is amazing given that the book is heavier than some small automobiles. (My copy runs 1,168 pages.) But there has been such a renewed interest in the book that the fifty-two-year-old classic reached #33 among Amazon.com’s top-selling books back on January 13.

The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights reports that sales through the first 7 weeks of 2009 are almost triple the sales during the same period last year. Yaron Brook of the ARCIR explains that “Americans are flocking to buy and read Atlas Shrugged because there are uncanny similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day. Americans are rightfully concerned about the economic crisis and government’s increasing intervention and attempts to control the economy. Ayn Rand understood and identified the deeper causes of the crisis we’re facing, and she offered, in Atlas Shrugged, a principled and practical solution consistent with American values.”

Indeed, Ayn Rand didn’t produce Atlas Shrugged as some sort of prophecy. She instead wrote it for future generations to prevent a similar plot from actually playing out. She knew the book would have a greater impact in the future than at the time it was written. She was right on the money.

Right Minded provided a brief synopsis of the literary monolith back on March 10. As a refresher, in Atlas Shrugged, government creeps into the private sector in order to punish the achievers in the name of “equality.” As a result, the economy goes into recession, and government, in an effort to “do something,” increases its role. (Rand called them ‘looters.’) The more the looters interfere, the worse the economy gets, and the worse the economy gets, the more the looters interfere until the entire economy collapses, and the achievers, tired of being punished for achieving, pull out of society altogether.

Like Ayn Rand’s fictional society, we are living in an era when personal initiative is discouraged in favor of government dependence, when achievement and wealth are scolded and punished, and when the entrepreneurs who actually create jobs and drive the economy are told they will have to be the ones to sacrifice. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt is the leader of the protagonists, the achiever among achievers. He works for an automobile company in Wisconsin when that company decides to impose socialism on itself. Galt, having designed a motor that runs on static electricity, takes his invention and walks out promising to “stop the engine of the world.” The company, meanwhile, follows the concept “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” to the letter. Predictably, the company fails, leaving the local economy in ruin long before the national economy collapses.

As the plot unfolds, the achievers one-by-one disappear from society, joining Galt’s secret world in the Colorado mountains where they set up a free market of their own and their talents and efforts are once again rewarded. Government, undeterred by the disaster it has created, continually increases its control of the private sector until the economy is left in ruin, and, the novel implicitly suggests, the government, too, is left in ruin.

Indeed, lines between the government and private sector are being crossed now that have never been crossed before in the United States. We have, for example, seen the federal government take 80% ownership of AIG. We have seen the President of the United States more or less fire the CEO of a major automobile manufacturer. And we are seeing the President and Congress tinker with the idea of compensation caps on bank executives. This is the kind of nationalization and central planning Rand warned against in Atlas Shrugged, and is now coming to life in the United States in 2009.

Hopefully enough Americans will awaken to this reality by next November. Otherwise, we’ll continue to flip through the pages of Atlas Shrugged, comparing the plot of the story with the headlines of the day, taking note of how eerily similar the plot and the headlines follow each other. And we’ll wonder how much more abuse Atlas can take before he simply decides to shrug.

I’ve been taking the family to Greer Stadium for six years now. Last Thursday night, however, was our first time to attend opening night with the Nashville Sounds.

The Sounds are under new ownership this year. Resigned to the fact that they are not going to get their new downtown ballpark, the Sounds have decided to make the best of life at Greer Stadium, and therefore invested $2.5 million in its renovation. The place looks brand new.

Among the upgrades, the guitar-shaped scoreboard in left field received a fresh coat of paint and a new set of light bulbs, which was especially needed, because last year the score could be 0-0, or it could be 8-2, or maybe 6-4. You could never tell the difference.

The drab white shell of last year’s Greer Stadium has been replaced by a fresh coat of gray, and trimmed in the team’s red and yellow colors. The seats have been replaced. A new ticket office sits at the north end of the stadium. The Pro Shop that used to be located behind the home plate seats has been moved to the main concession area, and a new concession booth has been put in its place. This means that fans no longer have to miss any of the game if they want concessions. Several of the bathrooms have been remodeled. The field is as well-manicured as that of any major league stadium. And, judging by the signs that adorn the outfield wall, the Sounds have attracted several new sponsors.

To spend $2.5 million renovating Greer Stadium is remarkable. First, the ballpark is 32-years-old, which is considered ancient given the rush to build new stadiums in both major and minor league cities. It was in bad shape by the end of last year. It seemed as though the previous ownership, counting on their new downtown digs, had simply let Greer Stadium revert to a former state of wilderness. There are structures at Pompeii in better shape than Greer Stadium was just a few months ago. It’s still a rickety old ballpark, but it’s a rickety old ballpark with character, color, and nostalgia that continues to serve its purpose well.

Aside from the renovations, Greer Stadium is far more accessible to fans than if it were located downtown. It’s only 20 minutes from Mt. Juliet. You can still park there for free, which you absolutely could not do at a downtown location. You can find a seat right behind the dugout for $10 — a tiny fraction of what a similar seat would cost at a major league park. Autographs are much easier to get, as most minor leaguers have not had the chance yet to become snobby major leaguers, even though you will see a number of players at Greer Stadium who have some major league experience. Some are on the way up. Others are on the way down.

At major league ballparks, concessions cost you an arm and a leg. The Sounds only charge you an arm. The Sounds make a great effort to involve the fans in their between-inning shenanigans, and Terry Cashman’s “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke” sounds terrific on the new sound system. (For some reason I’ll never understand, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” has become a crowd favorite. Really, Neil Diamond at a baseball game? Are you kidding me?)

So give me a spiffy 32-year-old Greer Stadium over a new ballpark any day. I could spend the whole summer there, literally.

Last year, for example, I had the following exchange with a Sounds’ usher.

“Do you get to work every game?”

“Yeah.”

“When I retire in 18 years, I want to come down here and do what you do. It’s my dream job.”

I felt like a little kid talking to a fireman. Of course, I’m not a kid, and a ballpark usher isn’t a fireman. He looked at me as though I had green hair.

“Eighteen years is a long time. A lot can happen between now and then.”

“Sheesh,” I thought. “Thanks for throwing my dream under the bus.”

Really, though. What better way to spend a summer in retirement than coming to the ballpark for 72 games from April through August? I even have a competitive advantage over other potential ushers who might have the same idea. I’ll do it for free, just to get in the gate. Granted, it’s not the most ambitious job in the world, unless I do it until I’m a hundred, and then maybe I’ll get in the Guiness Book of World Records. By then Greer Stadium will be on the National Register of Historic Places.

“Pssst,” the fans will whisper to each other. “See that old usher up there?”

“The one that’s shriveled up like a prune?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“What about him?”

“They say he’s actually older than the ballpark.”

“No way!”

“Yeah. He’s worked over 3,000 straight games without missing a day.”

“Wow! He must really love baseball.”

I have to give credit to Govenor Phil Bredesen. When he campaigned for re-election in 2006, he insisted that he would not pursue a state income tax. Of course, that’s what Don Sundquist said when he was running for re-election in 1998, and we Tennesseans have a track record of getting burned by second-term governors running against a state income tax.

Governor Bredesen has stuck to his promise, even though the state budget is in worse shape now than it was eight years ago when a failure to pass a state income tax meant certain Armageddon.

The state government is expecting about $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money over the next two years, although only a small portion of that money can actually be used to plug holes in the budget. The rest will have to come from — are you ready for this? — cuts in the budget. No, we aren’t talking about cuts in proposed increases. We are talking about cuts, as in spending less money next year than this year.

Governor Bredesen says a total of about $750 million in cuts will have to be made by 2011 in order to keep the budget balanced. Under his proposed budget that would take effect on July 1, the state government would have to get by on $29.34 billion, which is about $430 million less than the current year budget. That’s a cut of about 1.4%.

Folks, this almost never happens in government. Regardless of the state of the economy, government is never forced to do with less. Lawmakers would much prefer to force the taxpayers to do with less than government. But there are no calls for higher taxes (so far). The state government is going to bite the bullet this time.

The education budget will be spared. The remaining departments will see their budgets reduced by an average of 12 percent — cuts that will be phased in over three years. The federal stimulus money will help the state government avoid what would have been 1,700 layoffs. Instead, there will only be 80, although more may become necessary in future years.

Says Governor Bredesen, “It is important to me not to leave my successor — or the next General Assembly — a budgetary cliff to fall off.”

Elizabeth, this is the big one.

Really, how refreshing is that? While the national government is spending our children’s future earnings as fast as they possibly can, Governor Bredesen is determined to clean up messes that happen on his own watch. If only that kind of responsibility and pragmatism would rub off on our politicians in Washington.

Furthermore, Governor Bredesen is warning local governments and school districts to avoid getting hooked on the stimulus money, reminding them that ”You have a windfall for the next two years. If you create obligations with it that go beyond two years, do not look for the state to bail you out.”

Tennesseans really do benefit from operating with a relatively small state government and light tax burden. We have also benefited by fighting off the attempt to enact a state income tax during Governor Sundquist’s second term. Had we given in to the demands of income tax advocates then, our tax burden would be heavier, our government would be larger, and next year’s budget shortfall would likely be deeper.

Take California, for example, which relies heavily on an income tax (and every other tax you can think of). Their budget deficit is a whopping $42 billion — larger than the entire Tennessee state budget. Given that state expenditures ran $145 billion in 2008, that’s a shortfall of 29 percent. It’s gotten so bad that the governor is threatening to furlough 20,000 state employees.

In New York, which also relies heavily on an income tax, the budget deficit has grown to $16 billion, and lawmakers are responding by following the path of least resistance: trying to raise taxes on the rich.

In Tennessee, which does not have a state income tax (thank you, Mae Beavers, Phil Valentine, fellow protesters, et al), our budget problems are minuscule, especially when compared to other states, and most especially the federal government, where President Obama’s proposed $3.6 trillion budget for FY2010 leaves a budget deficit of $1.2 trillion.

Stopping the state income tax dead in its tracks back in 2002 helped guarantee future fiscal restraint. Only now, with the U.S. economy in recession and tax receipts dropping, are we Tennesseans fully coming to realize the fruits of having a relatively small government and low tax burden. Indeed, conservatism works every time it’s tried.

By now you’ve been treated to the outrage over bonuses that executives at AIG were supposed to have received as part of their compensation. AIG was one of those companies that was bailed out by the federal government under the guise of economic stimulus. Democrats (and some Republicans, too, unfortunately) are outraged that a company that was bailed out by taxpayer dollars would shell out $165 million worth of bonuses to its employees.

To set the table, the AIG Bonus Crisis of 2009 began when the financial giant received $170 billion in federal bailout money. As a result, the federal government now owns 80% of AIG. When it was recently made public that AIG was in the process of sending out bonus checks, Democrats in Congress and President Obama pretended to be outraged that taxpayer money was being used for fat cat bonuses.

Well, here are the facts: AIG disclosed its retention bonuses more than a year ago, and the amount of the bonuses had already been widely reported. This was before the bailout money was ever made available. In other words, Democrats are expressing outrage over private sector bonuses that were to be paid with private sector earnings. The taxpayers were never on the hook for these bonuses.

Fact #2: One of the leading critics of the AIG bonuses is Senator Christopher Dodd. On March 16, Senator Dodd floated the idea of taxing the bonuses at 90% so Congress could recoup as much of that money as possible on behalf of us beleaguered taxpayers. But it turns out that Senator Dodd was for the bonuses before he was against them. You see, Senator Dodd successfully inserted an amendment into last month’s trillion-dollar economic stimulus package that provided for an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempted the very AIG bonuses Senator Dodd now wants to tax into oblivion.

Fact #3: The AIG bonuses amount to less than 0.1% of the AIG bailout, which, in turn, is just a small fraction of the amount spent by Congress to bail out other companies and “stimulate the economy.” Why all the focus on $165 million in bonuses that were not paid for by the taxpayers, when Congress is throwing trillions of dollars to the wind expanding government to supposedly “stimulate the economy?” It’s simple. Congress and President Obama are desperate to get the spotlight off themselves and their irrational fiscal recklessness.

To illustrate just how classless our elected leaders have become, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley (a Republican, no less) crassly remarked “I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe [AIG executives] ought to be removed, but I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

Our elected leaders aren’t the only ones who are targeting AIG employees, however. One executive, James Haas, found the media camped outside his home in Fairfield, Connecticut soon after news of the bonuses broke. He said he had even received death threats. It has gotten so bad that AIG told its employees to avoid wearing anything that says “AIG,” among several security measures. When AIG CEO Edward Liddy was dragged before Congress as part of the Democrats’ charade, he was confronted by leftists who were demanding jail time for Mr. Liddy.

While the Obama administration and Democrats hammer AIG for giving out large bonuses to its employees, they don’t have a problem with AIG giving out large bonuses to politicians. President Obama received $101,332 from AIG  in the form of political contributions. Senator Dodd tops even that, having received $281,400 in campaign contributions from AIG. Where’s the outrage over that?

Going back to Fannie Mae and Freddic Mac, Democrats have tinkered with the private sector just enough to produce chaos, and they then have stepped in to increase the role of government to ostensibly quell the chaos. By proclaiming, “See, the free market doesn’t work,” they have fabricated the excuse they need to do things like take over 80% of AIG.

When it became time for the AIG bonuses to actually be paid out, it made the news, and the Democrats, in order to save face, siezed the opportunity to excoriate the private sector. They portrayed themselves as the noble champions of the little guy, stepping in at the last second to prevent AIG executives from pilfering taxpayer dollars and lining their own pockets.

The entire drama stirred up by Democrats has been a lie from the very beginning. They are playing the American public for fools, all the while making scapegoats out of private citizens, maligning their reputations, and confiscating what they have rightfully earned.

I first became a college basketball junkie during the 1981-1982 season. I was living in West Tennessee at the time, we got all our news out of Memphis, and the Memphis State Tigers, as they were known then, were on the ascendancy. That spring I was first exposed to the Big Dance, March Madness, Bracketology, otherwise known as the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.

The Tigers made it to the Sweet 16 that year, and the next year, and the next, and finally punched their way to the Final Four in 1985. By then, I was locked in as a Tiger fan for life, and would eventually attend Memphis State and graduate in 1994. (My claim to fame is that I had a world history class with Penny Hardaway. I should have gotten his autograph when I had the chance.) In other words, not every Tennessean bleeds orange, although, living where I do, I am but one blue dot in an orange world.

The NCAA tournament is perhaps the most popular sporting event in the country. The Super Bowl draws a larger audience, but that’s only one game. March Madness consists of 64 games played during a three-week period that involves, in theory, the best 65 college basketball teams in the nation.

One of the reasons the tournament has become so popular is that fans can easily get involved. Anyone can fill out a set of brackets. There’s a science behind it. You can even go online and participate in various pools. During the first four days of the tournament, there are 48 games. It’s wall-to-wall hoops from morning to night. There’s hardly time to sleep.

College basketball is one of the most exciting sports on the planet, far more exciting than the NBA, and far more unpredictable than college football. Every tournament provides an endless highlight reel. Usually the better team wins. But sometimes a Cinderella team bursts onto the scene and beats a team or two it wasn’t supposed to. (Last year, Belmont University very nearly toppled the Duke Blue Devils.) Some of the games are blowouts. Others aren’t decided until the last second or two, like when the Memphis Tigers handed away the national championship to Kansas a year ago, leaving Right Minded emotionally scarred to this day.

March Madness provides a much-needed diversion from politics, which can be down-right depressing at times. Still, I can’t help but compare March Madness to our political world. March Madness is a conservative’s dream. There are clear winners, and the winners are actually rewarded for their achievement, while losers must deal with the sting of defeat. Believe me, the farther along you get in the tournament, the more it hurts when you lose.

We live in a nation that is currently governed exclusively by liberals. As such, hard work doesn’t pay off as it used to, achievement is chastised, and wealth is looted and pillaged. Losers are “rewarded” with government dependence at the expense of the winners.

Those of us who make achievement a priority look at those who have already achieved and try to learn from them. Liberals, on the other hand, look at achievers and seek to punish them. This is how they “reward” the losers. It’s called class warfare, the politics of envy.

Many Americans hang on President Obama’s every word. They love it when he talks about punishing the wealthy, when he talks about “fairness,” when he scolds the achievers and demands that they be the ones to sacrifice.

Yet sports fans from across the entire political spectrum are captivated by March Madness, even though the tournament is antithetical to liberalism. There is no room for lofty oration, because words don’t win basketball games. There is no such thing as “fairness,” because the team with the most points at the final buzzer is always the winner. Whereas the politics of envy dictates that winners must be punished, everybody loves a winner on the basketball court. Whereas liberals have largely removed the incentives that encourage hard work and achievement in the free market, hard work and achievement pave the path to the Final Four.

Given that President Obama and the Democrats have done everything in their power to destroy wealth, the topsy-turvy world of college basketball seems stable and sane compared to the political world of 2009. Indeed, the real March Madness is what’s going on in Congress right now. (It’s a good thing Congress doesn’t run the NCAA.)

One of the things I’ve learned after years of watching sports is that the sports media are just like the rest of the media. They believe they are smarter than everyone else, yet they also have their own biases, which they can sometimes barely conceal. But at the end of the day, even after the most intelligent analyses, the sports media don’t know any better than the rest of us the eventual makeup of the Final Four. My eleven-year-old can fill out a set of brackets, and be no less accurate than the best sports analysts in the country. That’s because college basketball is so unpredictable.

By now, the field of 65 has been reduced to 16. Your brackets are hanging on the refrigerator door. You’ve circled the winners and marked out the losers. You’re so involved in the tournament that not even your 401(k) statement can depress you. Hopefully, your Final Four are still intact. Hopefully, you were wise enough to pencil in the Memphis Tigers as one of them.

Renowned atmospheric scientist Prince Charles of Wales has changed his long-term weather forecast. Last May, some ten months ago, Prince Charles warned that the world faced a series of natural disasters within 18 months unless urgent action were taken to save the rainforests.

Under Prince Charles’ original D-Day forecast, we would currently have only eight months to go before time ran out. But last week he extended the doomsday clock after declaring that we now have less than 100 months to act to save the planet from irreversible damage due to climate change. So something is going on that has extended our life expectancy by 92 months. I don’t know what it is, but I sure am thankful for it.

This is perhaps the global warming hoax’s biggest credibility problem: weather forecasts that are made years, even decades in advance.

Let’s say your local meteorologist forecasts 4 inches of snow the next day. You make the special effort to run to the grocery store to buy your milk and bread, fill up the car, and prepare to hunker down.

But the snow never materializes. You are angry with the weatherman because you took action based on his forecast that turned out to be in vain. And so he has a little less credibility the next time he puts out a snow forecast.

The problem with global warming hucksters is that their forecasts are usually made so far in advance that they enjoy immunity from verification.

For example, last month we got our annual “Global Warming Worse Than Previously Feared” headline when the AFP reported that “recent climate studies suggest that [a previous report] significantly underestimates the potential severity of global warming over the next 100 years, a senior member of the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] warned.”

Not to be outdone, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a 991-year weather forecast back in January, warning that even if carbon emissions can somehow be halted, temperatures around the globe will remain high until at least the year 3000.

This is the type of forecast that we are expected to build public policy on that would cost trillions of dollars of taxpayer money and untold losses of individual liberty. Remember, the left wants to use global warming as an excuse to regulate our thermostats, regulate what and how much we drive, and, in some cases, regulate the size of our families.

But none of us will be around in 2109, and certainly not in 3000, to see if these forecasts actually play out. The media report such dire warnings as fact, even though weather forecasts don’t become fact or fiction until they are compared to actual observations. Nor do the media bother to go back to see how shorter-term forecasts issued by global warming hucksters have fared.

For example, no one in the media bothered to question Prince Charles about last year’s 18-month warning, nor what had prompted him to extend his forecast of planetary Armageddon from November, 2009 all the way out to July, 2017, when his 100-month forecast is supposed to come to fruition.

That’s because there is no science in global warming. It’s strictly political, with politicians masquerading as scientists, putting forth the lie that there is a consensus among scientists about global warming, when nothing could be further from the truth.

We have been warned about global warming since 1988, when the hoax first landed on the front pages. In 21 years, you would expect to see results. But we haven’t. The earth hasn’t warmed since 1998, when it peaked. The global temperature dropped dramatically in 2007, and even further in 2008, when it fell back to 1980 levels.

And the University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center showed in January, using satellite data, that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. And measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5% since 1980.

If liberals were truly concerned about the environment, they would be hailing this as good news and proclaiming that we don’t need to do anything, after all. But they are pushing global warming harder than ever, which illustrates that facts and scientific data don’t really matter. They want to regulate our lives, and the sooner, the better.

Now, if meteorologists today cannot reliably predict the weather beyond next week, how can we expect scientists to reliably predict the weather 8 months from now, or 100 months, or 100 years, or 991 years? They can’t. Yet we are expected by liberal politicians to turn our freedoms and our paychecks over to them in order to save the planet based on forecasts that none of us will be around to see to their end date.

Indeed, if the global warming hoax is ever written into public policy — and we are starting to see that it is – it will cost us a great deal more than just milk and bread. It will cost us, our children, their children, and so on, and it will cost us untold wealth and individual liberty.

And what if, 100 months from now, we see that nothing has changed? The ice caps are still in place, sea levels haven’t risen, the coastline hasn’t been flooded, global temperatures are where they are today, and the world hasn’t been wracked by an increase in natural disasters.

Do we finally conclude that global warming hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen? Do we finally roll back all the silly liberal policies enacted in order to save the planet? Or will we be expected to continue to believe that in just ten more years, or a hundred, or a thousand, that the ravages of climate change will be irreversible if we don’t act soon?

According to Politico, President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has consorted with top Democratic operatives, including regular CNN contributors James Carville and Paul Begala, to pillory Rush Limbaugh and make him the face of the Republican Party. The mainstream press, which has become more or less an arm of the Democrat Party, has been fully complicit.

It all began several weeks ago when Rush Limbaugh remarked that he wants the President’s economic policies to fail because he thinks they will harm the country, and Limbaugh instead wants the country to succeed.

The American left, including the Obama White House, has been following Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals #12 in an attempt to marginalize the Voice of Conservatism, the Maha Rushie. It states “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”

Nice try, Alinsky-ites, but it isn’t working, for at least two reasons.

1. The left didn’t make Rush Limbaugh, and so the left can’t break him. Rush Limbaugh has 20 million listeners. Even after the left’s best effort to marginalize El Rushbo, he still has 20 million listeners.

2. Rush Limbaugh is a private citizen. He cannot be impeached or voted out of office. His power comes not via the authority of government, but the persuasion of superior ideas. He cannot pass or veto legislation. He cannot appropriate taxpayer money. He cannot raise your taxes or lower them. He works behind a microphone. The only way you can strip the Maha Rushie of his “power” is to convince those 20 million listeners not to listen.

The left fears Rush Limbaugh because for 20 years liberals have been wholly unable to duplicate his success with one of their own. That’s because liberals cannot compete in the arena of ideas with conservatives. This is why liberals run to the courts to have their ideas adjudicated into law. They can’t even sell their ideas at the ballot box (i.e., same-sex marriage).

The reason is simple. America was founded on the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those are also the basic tenets of conservatism. All three are currently under assault from liberals. The left does not honor the right to life (abortion, for example).

Liberals continually endeavor to strip Americans of their liberty by growing government and raising taxes. Every time they succeed at either, it comes at the expense of individual liberty and economic freedom.

And every poll that’s conducted on personal happiness shows that conservatives, as a whole, are far happier than liberals, and it doesn’t matter who’s in power. Liberals cleaned up on Election Day, and they’re still just as angry as ever. Just look at the anti-Proposition 8 mob in California. So if liberals are unhappy, then you should be unhappy, too. When they speak of “equality,” what they really mean is the equal distribution of misery.

Rush Limbaugh tells the truth about the Obama administration by showing that the President usually means the opposite of what he says. President Obama talks about the need for personal responsibility while overseeing the most reckless waste of taxpayer money in the history of our great nation (the stimulus/bailout package). He talks about the need for deficit reduction while overseeing, by far, the largest deficit in our history. He talks about tax cuts while at the same time proposing to raise taxes on the wealthy and small businesses. He talks about the need for job creation while at the same time punishing wealth, which is the very means of job creation. He proclaims that there are no earmarks in bills that are laden with them.

We’re living in the world of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, where government creeps into the private sector in order to punish the achievers in the name of “equality.” As a result, the economy goes into recession, and government, in an effort to “do something,” increases its role. (Rand called them “looters.”) The more the looters interfere, the worse the economy gets, and the worse the economy gets, the more the looters interfere until the entire economy collapses, and the achievers, tired of being punished for achieving, pull out of society altogether.

Like Ayn Rand’s fictional society, we are living in an era when personal initiative is discouraged in favor of government dependence, when achievement and wealth are scolded and punished, and when the entrepreneurs who actually create jobs and drive the economy are told they will have to be the ones to sacrifice. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt is the leader of the protagonists, THE achiever among achievers. At one point in the novel, he preempts the radio airwaves just as the government is about to give a major, highly-advertised speech. Galt speaks for three hours ripping the looters, and he ends up more or less having Rule #12 applied to him. He is kidnapped by government force and the bureaucrats who are in power try to persuade him — even resorting to torture — to carry their water. He refuses, and is eventually rescued by his friends.

Granted, the Obama White House probably won’t be kidnapping Rush Limbaugh, but they will do everything they can to silence him by reimplementing the grossly misnamed Fairness Doctrine. Since liberals cannot compete in the arena of ideas, government mandates are their only weapon against the Voice of Conservatism. This is simply how liberals operate.

Because conservatives place such great value in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and because Barack Obama is undermining all three pillars, Rush is right in wanting him to fail.

Twenty-eight years ago, an 11-year-old boy took his first at bat as a Little Leaguer. He had gotten a late start in organized sports, most of his teammates having started years earlier.

He was so nervous that he just hoped he would get walked. The boy certainly didn’t want to strike out and look like a fool. Sure enough, he took four straight pitches. They were all balls. Relieved, he tossed his bat aside and jogged down to first base.

That was me back in the spring of 1981. I played Little League for two years, and would have played more, but a move to a different town effectively ended my brief stint in organized sports. I never got back into it.

I was never really that good at sports growing up. I enjoyed sports, but was small for my age and didn’t play with a great deal of confidence. Fortunately, my coaches had greater confidence in me than I did. They made me the first baseman my second year, which left me as surprised as anyone.

Little League has changed considerably in the last 28 years. Back then, there were a lot fewer adults at the games. We lived in a small town, and we would often just hop on our bikes, ride to the ballpark, play our game, then come back home and tell our parents how we did.

For most of us, the only equipment we owned were a glove and pair of cleats. Bats and batting helmets were provided. Nowadays, you won’t find a player without a large stash of equipment of his own.

Back then, we learned to play baseball in someone’s backyard pretty much every day of the summer.

Today, there are a plethora of professionally-run clinics, camps, and personal coaches.

No, I’m not saying baseball was better back in the day. It’s just different now.

One aspect of the game that has deteriorated, unfortunately, is the attitude of some of the adults who show up to the ballpark.

I’ve been coaching Little League for seven years now, and in that time, I’ve seen just about everything. For the first time ever, I began the practice season this year with a meeting with the parents in order to put some ground rules into place.

First, my assistant and I are the coaches. Coaching is one of those things that invites armchair quarterbacks. My philosophy is simple. If you want to coach a team, fill out an application and jump through all the hoops the league asks of you. But don’t try to coach my team. We don’t know everything, and we will make mistakes, but we are also going to do things our way. Don’t tell us how to do it.

Second, many parents see things in terms of their son, and their son only. The coach has the benefit of seeing the entire team as a whole and how each player fits into the team. Since we have more players (12) than positions (9), three players have to sit out each inning. Some players will sit out more than others. Some won’t sit out at all. No one can sit out more than one inning consecutively, so everyone gets to play at least half of each game. If you want more playing time, you have to earn it.

A coach owes it to his team to win as many games as possible. That may sound harsh for a coach of 11- and 12-year-olds, but that is how the game is played. If a coach doesn’t make winning a primary objective, someone else should be coaching.

This is common sense for most people (but not everyone), but please don’t yell at the players on either team, the coaches of either team, or the umpires. We welcome parents to cheer for their sons and their teams, but we are here for them, and not the other way around.

Finally, boys, don’t walk up to the plate doing what I did. We go up to bat with the objective of hitting the ball hard somewhere. I’ve told my players what I did as an 11-year-old. I’ve told them not to be like me. I want to instill in their minds that we do not fear striking out. The best players in the world strike out occasionally. Nothing bad happens when you swing and miss at a good pitch. I have never, nor will ever, fuss at a kid for swinging and missing at a good pitch. The last thing I want to see is a player stand at the plate with a bat in his hands and watch good pitches go by.

So don’t be afraid to swing the bat, boys. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to take a risk, because you will sometimes succeed.

Back in 1971, The Who recorded a song called “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It’s about a political movement that promises change, but in the end, the new regime simply gives more of the same.

Here we are 38 years later, and Pete Townshend might as well have been writing about Barack Obama, the candidate who was supposed to embody hope and change.

President Obama recently scored his first major political victory with the passage of what was supposed to be an economic stimulus bill, but in the end, he and the Democrats have simply saddled the taxpayers with more pork and more debt. Indeed, the “era of responsibility” has quickly morphed into the era of recklessness.

The 1,434-page stimulus bill costs somewhere around $790 billion. However, the Congressional Budget Office put the ten-year price tag at $3.27 trillion ($2.527 trillion in spending with another $744 billion in debt servicing). To put that into perspective, during the entire eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, the national debt increased by nearly $5 trillion. Less than 4 weeks into his presidency, Barack Obama has tacked on another $3.27 trillion with one stroke of a pen, because the money that is appropriated in the so-called stimulus bill is money we do not have.

President Obama has touted infrastructure as a major component of economic stimulus, yet only 8% of the so-called stimulus bill is designated for infrastructure.

Thirty-five percent of the stimulus is targeted toward tax cuts. Tax cuts are always a good thing, but in the final version of the bill, the per-couple tax savings was pared down from $1,000 to $800. Congress could have simply suspended payroll taxes for an entire year for about the same amount as the cost of the so-called stimulus bill. The taxpayers would have realized an immediate savings, and that money would have immediately found its way into the economy.

Instead, despite the rush to get the so-called stimulus bill passed, only 7% of the money is authorized to be spent during the current fiscal year. That doesn’t do a whole lot to jolt the economy in the near-term.

Now, what about the remaining 57% of the money to be spent on “stimulating the economy?” Here’s a partial list:

- $100 million to the Milwaukee Public School District to build new schools (despite having 15 existing vacant schools due to falling enrollment)

- $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient

- A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film

- $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program

- $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaking ship

- $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters

- $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters

- $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees

- $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s

- $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs

- $125 million for the Washington sewer system

- $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities

- $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which already has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion

- $75 million for “smoking cessation activities”

- $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges

- $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI

- $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction

- $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River

- $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas

- $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings

- $500 million for state and local fire stations

- $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands

- $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs

- $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service

- $412 million for CDC buildings and property

- $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland

- $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service

- $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration

- $850 million for Amtrak

- $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint

- $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies

- $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems

- $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations

Despite the promise of change, Washington is still taking care of Washington first. And Congress is still infested with Washington insiders who believe they can spend our money more wisely that we can.

And so, to quote Pete Townshend, “I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution/Take a bow for the new revolution/Smile and grin at the change all around/Pick up my guitar and play/Just like yesterday/Then I’ll get on my knees and pray/We don’t get fooled again.”