Right Minded Online

The Democratic Party proclaims itself to be the party of the people, the party of the poor, the party of civil rights and minorities, the party of diversity, and the party of affirmative action. Yet a cursory glance at its leaders shows the Democratic Party to also be the party of the great white hope. The chairman of the DNC is a white man (Howard Dean), the House Minority Leader is a white woman (Nancy Pelosi), the Senate Minority Leader is a white man (Harry Reid), the patron saint of the Democratic Party is a white man (Bill Clinton), and the presidential ticket the Democrats served up in 2004 consisted of two rich white guys (John Kerry and John Edwards).

The problem with claiming to be tolerant, and demanding that others do the same, is that you put yourself in the position of having to tolerate everything without being able to criticize anything or anyone. Even criticizing someone for being intolerant is still a display of one’s own intolerance, even if the only thing that person is intolerant of is other people’s intolerance. Thus, if you’re going to be truly tolerance, you have to tolerate other people’s intolerance, or the whole thing’s a joke.

Likewise, showing indignation toward others who make moral judgements is also a pitfall. By exclaiming “How dare you make moral judgements,” a person, in essence, makes moral judgements about those who make moral judgements.

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” — Proverbs 24:10 (NKJV)

It’s a legitimate to question when our troops are coming home from Iraq. If I could wave my wand, they’d depart for home today and leave behind a peaceful, stable Iraq. That will someday come to pass, and the sooner, the better. At the same time, however, why are we not demanding that our troops in Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy, Bosnia, and everywhere else they’re deployed also be sent home ASAP? After all, we’ve had troops stationed in the nations that were our enemies in World War II for more than six decades now, with no end of their deployment in sight. Why the inconsistency?

Answer: Because George W. Bush didn’t send troops to all those places — only Iraq.

I am going on a limb here and making the prediction that someday, perhaps soon, or perhaps years from now, there will be a movement on the fringe left to deny that 9/11 ever happened. Just as there are anti-Semites who deny the Holocaust, despite the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, there will be those who will try the same with 9/11.

I keep hearing the Bush-haters claim that we’re living in a police state — that the administration is censoring the President’s critics and silencing opposition. But if that’s really the case, why is criticism of President Bush still as thick as it’s ever been? If we really are living in a police state, why aren’t all these people locked up or lying in some mass grave?

It’s time once again to clean out my closet of random ideas, many of which would have made good column themes had I taken he time to develop them. Rather than let them “wither on the vine,” I’ve decided to corral another set of ideas into a column of their own.

Only when I started assistant coaching my son’s baseball team did I realize how many adults never grew out of adolescence.

It’s ironic that the left is so sympathetic toward militant Islamists, because they violate every major commandment of the left. Islamic nations are not religiously or culturally diverse. There is no separation of church and state. They are very intolerant. Women’s rights are foreign concepts. And they execute people over there.

In some ways, I feel sorry for adults who say “I wish I could be a teenager again,” and mean it. For me, those years represented uncertainty and self-doubt. There’s no way I’d go back, because I’d have to give up everything I’ve learned and experienced since then. If I were to view my own teenage years as the pinnacle of my life, I’d have to ask myself where I went wrong as an adult.

The top income tax bracket in the United States is 35%, yet you will find liberals who lament that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. Who gets to arbitrarily decide when someone else is paying his or her fair share? Is it 50%, 60%, 70%? Even God only asks for a tenth.

The most innately joyful and hopeful people I know are those with relatively modest means. Those people who bind themselves to God and their families and eschew material enrichment often live fuller, more meaningful lives than those with far greater financial means.

You can tell a great deal about the character of a person by the way he treats those who can do nothing for him.

The best way a government can insure a low crime rate is to allow citizens to arm themselves. Gun control punishes only those who abide by the law. Criminals are what they are because they break the law. How can they be expected to abide by gun control laws?

Meteorologists are often taken with a grain of salt by those who remember the last busted snow forecast. Yet environmentalists are stricken with panic and governments form public policy on grim weather forecasts made decades in advance by global warming alarmists.

Roger Clemens made $18,000,000 to pitch for the Houston Astros last year. He worked 32 games and pitched 211 1/3 innings during the regular season. That comes out to $562,500 per game, $85,174 per inning, and $28,391 per out.

Can you name the last five Heisman Trophy winners? What about the last five Miss Americas? The five wealthiest Americans? Now, name five teachers who had a positive influence on you as a child. What about five people who have befriended you unconditionally? It’s much easier to do. That’s because we remember those who have impacted our lives far better than those who simply earn awards and achieve wealth. Society would benefit greatly if its members would cease paying homage to stardom and focus on more lasting influences.

Those who complain they don’t earn a “living wage” are somehow all alive. There is an easier way to earn a “living wage” than waiting on the government to pass some law mandating it. Just go find a job that already pays one.

It has been said that Sunday morning at 11:00 is the most segregated hour in America, and it’s probably true. One of my longings as a Christian is for blacks and whites to worship together more often — that there would be more interracial churches than there currently are. I honestly don’t understand why worship is still so segregated. Perhaps our cultural differences are the largest inhibitors, but maybe I’ll see the day when those barriers, too, are eroded. I don’t blame anyone for the current state of worship. I just wish it weren’t so.

1. One of the criticisms abortion-rights advocates make against right-to-lifers is our apparent hypocrisy of opposing abortion while, for the most part, supporting capital punishment. It’s a legitimate question, I admit, so forgive me if I’m unable to overcome my apparent hypocrisy. I do support the death penalty, in theory, although my support of the death penalty as it is practiced is somewhat more tepid given the decades-long appeals process that the current system allows. But I digress. My point is this: I’d rather be guilty of hypocrisy for opposing abortion and supporting capital punishment that be guilty of hypocrisy for supporting abortion and opposing capital punishment. I find it much more difficult to reconcile the latter hypocrisy than the former, because, in the end, the left has it in for the unborn and people with feeding tubes, but if you’re a convicted murderer or a terrorist, you’re generally safe with the Democrats.

Assuming Samuel Alito is ultimately confirmed to the court, the left’s final undoing would be for one of the Supreme Court’s liberal justices to leave the bench within the next two years, and for George W. Bush to then nominate a third constructionist to the high court. That would make the majority of the Supreme Court constructionist. If you think the left is unhinged now, you’ve seen nothing. This scenario would finally drive liberals over a cliff. They would spontaneously combust, because a constructionist majority on the high court would be D-Day for liberalism in America, and the left knows it. That’s how close we are.

Even though militant Islamists killed nearly three times the number of people on 9/11 than the natural phenomenon known as “Hurricane Katrina” and its effects killed six weeks ago, the left is far more outraged at President Bush over Hurricane Katrina than at the terrorists who killed our fellow countrymen. (Come to think of it, they blame President Bush for 9/11, too.)

As happens from time-to-time, I’ve accumulated a surplus of op/ed fodder that needs to be cleaned out. It’s a shame, but not every worthwhile idea gets churned into a column. So here’s what’s in the inbox:

My brother recently posed this thought: “I am for a balanced budget. I am for smaller government. I am for free speech. I am for states’ rights. Can anyone tell me who actually represents me in Washington?” My answer, unfortunately, is nobody. With free-spending Republicans like the ones we’ve got in Washington these days, who needs Democrats anymore?

Why is it that the same people who criticized income tax protesters for taking their kids down to the State Capitol were the ones who used children and seniors as pawns in the attempt to win a sales tax increase in Davidson County last month?

On September 8, the United Food and Commercial Workers hired a group of non-union temporary workers to protest outside one Nevada Wal-Mart. Noted the Las Vegas Weekly, “They’re making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it’s 104 F, and they’re protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.” By the way, the average Nevada Wal-Mart employee earns $10.17 an hour.

Fellow blogger and serviceman Lance Frizzell recently noted that the press accounts of 10,000 dead in New Orleans were off by, oh, a factor of ten or so. Remember that the American media brings that level of accuracy to the war in Iraq every single day.

When it was realized that hurricane relief would be needed right here in Tennessee, who did the Red Cross turn to? Did it ask the ACLU to open its office space to refugees? Americans United for Separation of Church and State? Of course not. The Red Cross turned to the church, primarily the Christian church, because the Red Cross knew we’d be available and eager to help. It’s just like liberals, who demand that our society do everything it can to “help the poor,” to attack those who actually carry out what they say needs to be done.

Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, an organization that promotes a state income tax, sent out an e-mail urging its supporters to contact the governor’s office after he declared his opposition to a state income tax would extend into a second term. TFT’s effort produced two phone calls and 26 e-mails. The governor’s office received more phone calls and e-mails complaining that “American Idol” didn’t schedule tryouts in Nashville. That’s just how popular a state income tax is in Tennessee.

When Walter Cronkite told a recent audience at the University of Southern California that “We [as a nation] are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders,” he illustrated just how liberals view average Americans. In short, conservatives trust the voters. Liberals only trust the courts. That’s why conservatives win elections.

If, God willing, Roe v. Wade were ever overturned, it would not automatically outlaw abortion. The power to make laws restricting or enforcing abortion rights would return to individual states. Some would outlaw abortion, some would allow it with some restrictions, some would enable it with few, if any, restrictions.

Following Hurricane Katrina, a neighborhood association in New Orleans had to act as law enforcement as the police force was unable to protect its citizens. According to Reuters, “Citizens organized armed patrols and checked on the elderly. They slept on their porches with loaded shotguns and bolted awake when intruders stumbled on the aluminum cans they had scattered on the sidewalk.” That’s precisely why we have a Second Amendment. After all, if you’ve got a piece, you’ve got peace.

Anglican bishops in the Church of England are asking Christian leaders to apologize for the war in Iraq. Didn’t we start a new country in order to get away from these folks?

I think I have finally figured out why “safe-sex” liberals get so agitated over the undeniable truth that “abstinence works every time it’s tried.” First, it’s an absolute statement, and liberals generally don’t react well to absolutes (moral or otherwise). And second, “safe-sex” liberals view abstinence as a restriction on personal freedom, ignoring the freedom from unwanted consequences that abstinence provides.

Why is it that the same people who criticized income tax protesters for taking their kids down to the State Capitol were the ones who used “children and seniors” as pawns in the attempt to win a sales tax increase in Davidson County last month?

It’s been some time since my last collection of random ideas. Since there is far too much subject matter to write a column on everything, the ideas eventually pile up. Rather than discard a bunch of good ideas, here are some gold nuggets that would have made good columns, but never made the cut.

Back in 2000, Democrats complained that the butterfly punch cards were too complicated for their voters. In 2004, Democrats complained that the electronic machines used in Ohio (and elsewhere) were owned by Republicans who hacked in and rigged the numbers. So the voting process has replaced talk radio as the fall guy for liberalism’s failure at the ballot box.

The left makes fun of Bible-believing Christians for their rigidity. Yet liberals have an orthodoxy of their own that is equally unbending. Look no further than the judicial battle underway in the U.S. Senate and the Democrats’ lockstep opposition to any judge who offends that orthodoxy.

The revelation of Mark Felt as “Deep Throat” has illuminated the mainstream media’s bias and the Democratic Party’s hypocrisy. To them, Mark Felt is a hero because of his contribution to a Republican president’s downfall. Contrast this with the disdain the press and Democrats have shown toward Ken Starr, Paula Jones, and the various women who have come forward to accuse Bill Clinton.

Liberals seem almost gleeful when the U.S. troop death count rises, or when America is dealt a rare setback in the War on Terrorism, then bristle whenever their patriotism is questioned. Well, if you find satisfaction when bad things happen to your country or your fellow countrymen, then you are unpatriotic.

Why don’t liberals who disdain America flee to one of the despotic regimes with which they sympathize?

The latest crusade of the left surrounds the right of pharmacists to refuse dispensing drugs that violate their conscience (i.e., the abortion pill). The left doesn’t believe pharmacists should have that right. It gets in the way of their orthodoxy, after all. But, I ask, if women should have the “right to choose,” shouldn’t pharmacists?

I love it when a liberal accuses me of being closed-minded. I do admit that on many things, I am closed-minded. But when I point out his or her wholesale, closed-minded rejection of my point-of-view, it usually shuts off further debate.

Newsweek typified media bias and misinformation with the following recent poll question: “Do you the think the federal government should lift restrictions on stem cell research?” Fact: There are no restrictions on stem cell research.

Speaking of Newsweek, the turmoil over its misreporting of Koran desecration as Guantanamo Bay has taken too many eyes off the ball. With regard to the deadly Middle East riots that followed, those on the left blame the Bush Administration, while those on the right blame Newsweek. They’re both wrong. The riots are the fault of those who perpetrated them. It’s that simple.

Back in May, a Christian pastor who worked in Saudi Arabia during the 1990’s informed Cybercast News Service that it was widely known among underground Christians there that Bibles were confiscated, and sometimes shredded by Saudi customs officials at ports of entry. So why isn’t Bible desecration reported by the mainstream press with equal vigor? Because Christians don’t riot and become violent toward others when it happens.

On the last day of session, Representative Joey Hensley put forth an amendment to pull $100 million out of the “safety net” set aside for those about to be dropped from TennCare, and put that money into TennCare itself. The House defeated the amendment 66-23. Had it passed, that $100 million would have drawn $180 million more in federal matching funds. But since the “safety net” is outside the TennCare program, there are no matching funds available. The mainstream press hasn’t even noticed.

Finally, the AARP opposes Social Security reform because “Personal accounts come with a host of risks. The stock market goes down as well as up, and sometimes it stays down for quite awhile.” Yet the AARP also encourages its members to participate in the AARP Investment Program, where it offers “A wide selection with a family of 38 mutual funds.” Furthermore, the AARP lists investment income of $60,326,000 in 2003, and $46,270,000 in 2002. Thus, the AARP makes a profit from its own investments, but would deny others the same opportunity.

It’s time once again to empty the cache of random ideas from the right — a collection of thoughts that for various reasons never matured into full column-hood, but are too valuable to simply be discarded.

When Democrats scratch their heads wondering why the working class sometimes votes Republican, they reveal their disbelief than individuals can actually be motivated by something other than jealousy and class envy.

How many times have you heard a liberal tell the religious right to “stay out of my bedroom?” Fine, how about if we let privacy beget privacy? I’ll stay out of your bedroom, and you can keep your hands off my paycheck.

To a liberal, a law-abiding citizen who exercises his Second Amendment right by purchasing a firearm is deserving of scorn and ridicule, but a criminal who uses a firearm to commit a crime is someone who requires understanding and rehabilitation.

Bill Clinton recently benefited from prompt heart surgery in a system that he attempted to replace with a Canadian-like socialist health care monolith. Had he been successful in doing so, he would have had to wait several months, if not years, to receive the surgery that probably saved his life.

A bad day on the baseball field is still better than a good day at work.

Whenever a politician uses the phrase “for the children,” go ahead and insert the word “government” in place of “children.” This is because anything that is supposedly for the children is really for the government, and any politician who says he or she is looking out for our children’s future is really looking out for government’s future.

It’s only a matter of time before the hypersensitive icons of political correctness start demanding that we replace the meteorological phrase “Indian summer” with “Native American summer.”

Why do we teach our children that if they are hit at school, they shouldn’t defend themselves? There are few things I’d rather do than get into a fistfight, but if someone physically attacks me, I’ll do everything possible to defend myself rather than stand there and get pummeled. I believe most people would instinctively react the same way. We should allow children the same option.

When listening to Christian radio, I sometimes wonder what the lyrics have to do with Christianity. It is obvious that some artists parade under the “Christian” label for notoriety while offering music that is blatantly secular.

Most of us carry memories of our grade-school teachers well into adulthood. We easily recall those who treated us unjustly, and those who either encouraged or inspired us. The turning point for me as a student came early in the 11th grade when my English teacher told me I was a good writer. And because my American History teacher the following year was such a marvelous lecturer, I began pursuing additional knowledge through reading that to this day has not abated. Teachers really do matter — both the bad and the good.

A little nonconformity never hurt anybody.

To borrow a pearl of wisdom from Dave Ramsey, many people drive themselves far into debt because they buy things they don’t want, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t like.

When Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners broke the single-season record for base hits this year, it renewed debate on whether seasonal records set during the current 162-game schedule should be separated from those set during the old 154-game schedule by the proverbial asterisk. Leave it alone. Baseball record books are already filled with statistics parsed every conceivable way. Why obfuscate things further?

Do liberals have an exit strategy for the War on Poverty?

Rather than debate evolution on religious or scientific turf which in the end changes very few minds, creationists should concede the argument to their counterparts, and then be quick to note that conservatism represents the pinnacle of Darwinian evolution.

The left seems to report the rising number of American casualties in Iraq almost gleefully. It cannot get past the politics of the War on Terrorism and see that our service members are sacrificing their lives for the same reason they always have: so that others may live and enjoy liberty. Indeed, politics really is the religion of the Democratic Party.

Here’s an old Soviet joke: What is socialism? It’s the longest road from capitalism to capitalism.

I have to shake my head when I hear someone protest “Israel’s occupation of Muslim land.” The Muslim world covers at least 34 nations across northern Africa and the Middle East, comprising more than 8,000,000 square miles. Israel’s land area is approximately 8,000 square miles. To put it another way, the Muslim world covers an area more than twice the size of the United States. Israel is smaller than New Hampshire.

It is true that there are more Americans without health insurance than ever before. But there are also more Americans — almost 250 million, in fact — with health coverage than ever before. That’s because there are more Americans than ever before.

From time-to-time, I like to do columns composed not of one general theme, but a collection of random ideas from the right. Most articles I write sprout from a single idea, but not all ideas develop into full columnhood. Below are themes of articles that never made it into print by themselves, but are still too valuable to me to simply be discarded:

The older I become, the more I realize the value of sage advice. But I have also put into place a few personal barriers to ward off unwanted input. I never take financial advice from someone who’s up to his eyeballs in debt, I never take parental advice from someone who’s not a parent, and I never take marital advice from someone who’s not married.

Most of the social ills we face, whether it be abortion, poverty, crime, divorce, drugs, or whatever, can trace its cause back to the failure of men to be husbands and fathers. I have little respect for adult males who abdicate their responsibilities to their female companions, and who abandon their children to the care of single mothers and the vicissitudes of the world without their protection.

Never think your vote doesn’t count. In the 2000 presidential election, there were 105,405,100 popular votes cast. George W. Bush won that election by one electoral vote over the minimum. Races in the five closest states had a combined margin of victory of 16,889. That’s 55 electoral votes decided by a number of voters that is roughly equal to the population of Mt. Juliet.

According to the Republican National Committee, there were 59 million evangelicals eligible to vote in 2000. Yet only 35 million of them were registered to vote, and of those, only 15 million bothered to vote at all. Thus, barely one-quarter of evangelicals who could have voted ultimately did. To all the non-voting evangelicals who lament the moral degeneracy of our nation, I can only say that you have allowed it to happen.

I’m completely against human cloning, but rather than engage in debate that will likely change no one’s mind, I say we just threaten to repopulate the world with clones of Robert Bork, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Jerry Falwell, Bill O’Reilly, Antonin Scalia, Pat Robertson, the entire Bush family, and all the other right-wing icons that liberals hate. That would bring them to the anti-cloning side faster than you could say “chromosome.”

You can always tell you’ve won an argument with a liberal when he starts calling you names.

George Soros says he just might spend his entire $7 billion fortune to defeat President George W. Bush. Thank goodness campaign finance reform got the money out of politics.

Environmentalists acknowledge the science in the film “The Day After Tomorrow” is fiction, but on the other hand ask that we take it seriously enough to “persuade governments to take action now.” This suggests to me that only in liberal minds does fiction beget reality.

If the government gave me the choice today of opting out of Social Security, even if I had to forfeit my 17 years of contributions, I’d do it in a second. That’s how confident I am that even with my limited investment knowledge, I can do a far better job of planning for my retirement that the government.

Every child needs a mother and a father. There is simply no other arrangement that’s on equal footing.

According to the Census Bureau, males comprise 49.1% of the U.S. population. This constitutes us as a minority group, does it not?

Why is it that Hollywood finds it so difficult to produce a children’s movie without a few gratuitous expletives? There are several films we have wanted to watch with our son, but one or two uses of “d—” or “h—,” or Christ’s name being tossed around as an expletive has turned us away. I don’t know if the film industry realizes it, but it does make a financial sacrifice by turning films that could easily be rated “G” into “PG” fare.

What exactly is a “neo-con?” Other than being the short form of “neo-conservative,” I don’t know what a “neo-con” is. But if “conservative” is bad, then a “neo-con” must be doubly sinister.

The economy is not zero-sum. Many individuals incorrectly believe the market follows some law of conservation, where wealth can be neither created nor destroyed. This is wrong. Capitalism allows individuals to create wealth. Liberalism/socialism destroys it.

One of the left’s greatest ironies is that it claims to epitomize compassion. After all, liberals commonly favor the “right-to-die” concepts of euthanasia and assisted-suicide, while being rabidly intolerant of the motto “choose life.”

No oppressed society has ever negotiated itself out from underneath tyranny. To now believe that the United Nations could have prevailed over terrorists and the tyrannical regimes that support them through negotiation is an absurd placement of diplomatic faith in that useless organization.