Obama's Recent Foreign Policy Embarrassments and the Self-Delusion They're Based Upon

Why is Putin so bold? Has he not seen Obama being depicted in the manner of an Eastern Orthodox Saint?

Because counting through all the foreign policy embarrassments in Obama's six years as president would fill a good-sized book.

From The NRO piece by Charles Krauthammer:

Barack Obama’s 949-word response on Monday to a question about foreign-policy weakness showed the president at his worst: defensive, irritable, contradictory, and at times detached from reality. It began with a complaint about negative coverage on Fox News, when, in fact, it was the New York Times front page that featured Obama’s foreign-policy failures, most recently the inability to conclude a trade agreement with Japan and the collapse of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East negotiations. 

Add to this the collapse of not one but two Geneva conferences on Syria, American helplessness in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine, and the Saudi king’s humiliating dismissal of Obama within two hours of talks — no dinner — after Obama made a special 2,300-mile diversion from Europe to see him, and you have an impressive litany of serial embarrassments.

Obama has lost popularity in foreign circles mainly for betraying allies. People and countries who hate you, do not change their views simply because you say "I'm a coward, and I never really liked Israel/Mubarak/Ukraine/Iraq/Honduras all that much anyway."

Does Obama really believe that such an attitude gains him friends in Iran, or China, or Russia? Does he believe that radical Muslims-- such as those in al Qaeda or Hamas-- will suddenly decide  that since America now has a president who is half-African-American and is acting 'nice' that they'll change their minds? These groups believe that America and the West are an evil worthy of both wholsesale murder and the sacrificing of their own lives to defeat. Can anyone truly believe that they'll be so easily persuaded by weakness and an American subtlety of race?

I hate to break this to people, but the rest of the world is not impressed that a half-African-American is president, and it's ridiculous to set foreign policy around the premise that enemies will change their beliefs because of a skin color and a Muslim-sounding name.

Obama’s first rhetorical defense, as usual, was to attack a straw man: “Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” 

Everybody? Wasn’t it you, Mr. President, who decided to attack Libya under the grand Obama doctrine of “responsibility to protect” (helpless civilians) — every syllable of which you totally contradicted as 150,000 were being slaughtered in Syria? 

And wasn’t attacking Syria for having crossed your own chemical-weapons red line also your idea? Before, of course, you retreated abjectly, thereby marginalizing yourself and exposing the United States to general ridicule.

Hey Krauthammer, stop talking about such things. That whole red line thing was several news cycles ago, and I'm sure any fallout from it is long since dissipated in the world... Uh, right?

But the worst aspect of Obama's foreign policy is correctly pointed out by Krauthammer:

Or does Obama really believe that Putin’s thinking [or, I would argue, the leader of any other country such as North Korea, China, Iran, etc.] would be altered less by anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons in Ukrainian hands than by the State Department’s comical #UnitedforUkraine Twitter campaign? 

Obama appears to think so. Which is the source of so much allied anxiety: Obama really seems to believe that his foreign policy is succeeding. 

Ukraine has already been written off. But Eastern Europe need not worry. Obama understands containment. He recently dispatched 150 American ground troops to Poland and each of the Baltic states. You read correctly: 150. Each. [emphasis mine]

Yup. Obama really believes that his foreign policy is working. In much the same way that Obama believes that ObamaCare can work, and that shoving money into the pockets of thieves, such as Solyndra execs, saves the environment. All are based on an inability to recognize obvious reality. But where does this inability come from?

Obama's Leftist ideals and fragile ego are two key foundations that shape this administration. This presidency is based upon the core beliefs that American Leftism works, and that Obama is extraordinary. As both of these ideas continue to be proven incorrect, reassurance is given to both the American people and the Obama Administration with delusion, the invention of uber-powerful enemies to thwart him (Bush, Fox News, the Koch brothers, phantom racism permeating our culture, etc.), (self-)deceptive analyses, and outright lies.

This tragic cycle of narcissistic reassurance would be pitiable if Obama wasn't president. As it is, the situation is terribly dangerous to our allies, to the American economy, and ultimately to the American people.

It's quite sad-- and not a little ridiculous-- that we have to sit here and watch this pathetic form of '70s reassurance therapy unfold around us as the basis of actual presidential policies.

Poverty Rate Has Climbed then Remained Steady Under Obama

"Look, I can conjure light with my hands, but I cannot solve all of the poor's problems because of greed, Republicans, Israel, racism, Bush, and some obscure YouTube video. Otherwise folks everywhere would be living the good life."

But no one much cares. Obama and the Democrats now make their appeals to the middle-class, because they believe the poor are in their back pocket-- especially with the voting irregularities in poor districts. So give them bread (SNAP) and circuses, and forget them. Now the Dems can concentrate on bringing the middle-class under their heel-- I mean in the federal government's fold-- with ObamaCare and EPA regulations which will cause the costs of electricity to go through the roof, thus increasing production and transportation costs for goods you find at the store.

Oh, and what's a gallon of gas going for today? That used to be an issue when Bush was president, but I guess now we just have to be stifle oil refineries' output to fight global warming.

From the NRO piece by Mona Charen:

The great advantage of being a liberal/progressive in America is that you are always judged on your intentions (or stated intentions) and not on results. While the pundits are swooning for Piketty and Warren, may we have even a moment’s pause to consider how well Obama’s brand of progressivism has done for the poor and middle class? 

Poverty has increased under Mr. Obama’s watch. It ticked up during the recession, which is to be expected and was obviously not a result of Obama’s policies. But after the recession ended, and after the first much-vaunted “recovery summer” (2010) and then the second (2011), poverty continued to climb. The poverty rate has now been stuck at 15 percent for three consecutive years. This is a 50-year high. Enrollment in the food-stamp program (SNAP) has increased by 39 percent. 

So there are more Americans living in poverty under President Obama than under his predecessor. If he were a Republican, this reality would be widely acknowledged. It’s better to be a Democrat.  

Now, how is the class to whom the president so frequently panders doing? Jeffrey Anderson of The Weekly Standard looked at Census Bureau data and found that typical American household income has not only dropped during Obama’s tenure, it has declined more since the end of the Great Recession than it did during the downturn. Real inflation-adjusted income for the median household fell 1.8 percent during the recession. It fell 4.4 percent during the recovery.

Obamanomics' redistribution in action! But holding Obama accountable to the consequences of his policies is unfair and racist... or something. Besides Obama is a complete success. Just ask Obama cheerleader Matt Yglesias.

 Democrats know only one song, and it goes: Let’s make more people dependent upon government. They’re crooning it vapidly now in anticipation of an Elizabeth Warren candidacy or a Piketty tax in which the treasures of the George Soroses and Warren Buffetts of the world (oh, sorry, my mistake; they’re actually drooling over the fortunes of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson) will be widely distributed. 

But redistribution doesn’t bring prosperity. Look around you. Obama has raised taxes on the rich several times (some taxes are buried in Obamacare). We spend seven of every ten federal dollars on sending checks to the poor and the middle class. Under Obama, the disability rolls have exploded, removing people from the world of work. Labor-force participation rates have declined steeply, and while the administration has blamed Baby Boom retirements, the percentage of adults age 25–54 in the workforce has declined as well. More than twice as many people have joined the ranks of the disabled under SSDI as have gotten jobs since 2009. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, SSDI may be out of funds as early as 2015. 

About 25 percent of the poor in America are working. Only about 2.9 percent work full time. Government largesse can keep people from destitution, but it cannot provide a ladder out of poverty. Only jobs can do that. [emphasis mine]

But hey, let's remember that only racists call for jobs to be created for the poor. And also remember job creation is all just a capitalist plot to get a cheap labor force. The only true freedom from capitalist serfdom is to be dependent on the government's largesse. Everyone knows that...

Russia Calls America and the West Godless

Americans are godless? Nonsense!

Yeah, it's come to this.

From The Washington Times:

At the height of the Cold War, it was common for American conservatives to label the officially atheist Soviet Union a “godless nation.” 

More than two decades on, history has come full circle, as the Kremlin and its allies in the Russian Orthodox Church hurl the same allegation at the West. 

Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a recent keynote speech. “Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”  

[...]   

Mr. Putin’s views of the West were echoed this month by Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow, the leader of the Orthodox Church, who accused Western countries of engaging in the “spiritual disarmament” of their people.
In particular, Patriarch Kirill criticized laws in several European countries that prevent believers from displaying religious symbols, including crosses on necklaces, at work.  

“The general political direction of the [Western political] elite bears, without doubt, an anti-Christian and anti-religious character,” the patriarch said in comments aired on state-controlled television. 

“We have been through an epoch of atheism, and we know what it is to live without God,” Patriarch Kirill said. “We want to shout to the whole world, ‘Stop!’” 

Other figures within the Orthodox Church have gone further in criticizing the West. Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, a church spokesman, suggested that the modern-day West is no better for a Christian believer than the Soviet Union. 

Soviet authorities executed some 200,000 clergy and believers from 1917 to 1937, according to a 1995 presidential committee report. Thousands of churches were destroyed, and those that survived were turned into warehouses, garages or museums of atheism. 

“The separation of the secular and the religious is a fatal mistake by the West,” the Rev. Chaplin said. “It is a monstrous phenomenon that has occurred only in Western civilization and will kill the West, both politically and morally.”

I wish I could disagree with them about more of what they say, but...

I certainly don't agree with their idea that Russia holds the keys to spiritual enlightenment in the future. Plus, the free exercise clause in the Constitution, from which the concept of separation of church and state was derived, is meant to stop the state from controlling religious beliefs. Clearly, when the state runs the church (as is happening more and more in Russia), then the church becomes merely a figurehead to support the state. I firmly believe that the government derives moral authority from the people, and that people are not made more moral by government.

However, as the American Left has become increasingly Marxist (or socialist, or "progressive," or advocating for "social justice," or whatever water-down label you wish to assign), it is inevitable that attacks on religious belief and religious traditions increase. Marxism demands that only it's "truth" can exist and that all other beliefs must be wiped away. American and Western Lefties are gleefully doing utmost to do just that.

As with most of the Russian proclamations recently, this idea contains a kernel of truth that's then twisted into elevating Russia and denigrating its foes. Russia's been doing this for quite some time, of course. The problem now is that Russia's getting much better at it.

Pat Archbold has the Best Analysis of the Roots of "Duck Dynasty" Flap So Far

I've been busy and haven't really chimed in on the whole "Duck Dynasty" mess because (a) I don't watch the show and (b) the whole thing isn't a Constitutional battle as people are making it out to be. Robertson has every right to say what he did, and A&E has every right to enforce their own restriction on what their employees say. Likewise the American public has every right to tell A&E and that they're bumbling buffoons-- as their mostly crappy lineup clearly shows-- and that they are currently cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Roberton, or whoever arranged the interview that causing this flap, was foolish to allow himself to be interviewed by GQ. It's clear that the magazine only wanted to deride him, make him seems a hypocrite, and show him as a foolish backwoods idiot-- a view that the Leftist elite hold of all Americans not living in the upscale sections of New York, Chicago, L.A. San Francisco, D.C and the Eastern seaboard.

Yet, as Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register aptly points out, holding the Robertsons and their friends up to ridicule has been the point of the show from the very beginning.

From Pat Archbold's piece (h/t Donald Douglas at American Power):

To understand the why, we have to go back to the beginning. Duck Dynasty is not the show that they wanted, it is the show that got away from them. 

It seems what the producers intended and what A&E envisioned with the show is much different than the show that they ended up with, but they didn't do anything about it because it was so wildly popular and so wildly profitable. But even with all the money, they have never really been comfortable with what happened. 

This is what happened. The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. "Look at them," we were supposed to say. "Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don't fit in? HAHAHA"  

When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson's to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin' to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson's look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites. 

They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them. 

A&E wanted us to point fingers at them and laugh at them. But something else happened entirely. Millions upon millions of people tuned in, not to laugh at them, but to laugh with them.  

And then we pointed at them. We pointed at them and said things like, "I wish my family was more like them. I wish we prayed together as a family. I wish we were together like the Robertsons." 

By the time this all happened, A&E had a conundrum. They knew who the Robertsons were and what they believe and they still held it in disdain. But they really liked the money. Really liked the money. So they lived with it. 

But the progressives whose bank accounts were not growing fatter because of these backward rubes were never inclined to look the other way. They hate the show and they really hate the response to the show. They want it destroyed. 

Many magazines and interviewers have tried to get the Robertsons to trip up so they could pounce. When Phil backed the Christian viewpoint on homosexuality and added some personal asides about how he just couldn't understand it, they had their moment. 

I suspect that the folks at A&E, who always disliked the positive Christian message in the show of which Phil is the primary proponent, saw their chance. They want to keep the cash but dial down the Christianity. With Phil out, perhaps they could get the show they always wanted. 

I suspect that the Robertsons are more principled than that and A&E will end up disappointed on many levels. The Roberstons are who they are and I suspect the money means a great deal more to A&E than it does to them. 

It will be interesting to see whether A&E likes the money more than they hate the Christianity. I wouldn't be surprised if the hate wins.

The real story is how much the Left hates people like the Robertsons. They hate them with a white-hot intensity that is matched only by their conviction that their Marx-based beliefs (which are always atheistic-- no matter what ill-informed or foolish theists might think or say) taught to them by college professors, Hollywood, trendy writers, magazines, and the talking heads of news shows is the "Truth." Yes, capital T.

Indeed Leftist thought, which was responsible for the majority and the certainly the bloodiest of the 20th Century genocides, demands this hatred. Marxist thought demands genocide, a wiping clean of competing political, ethical, and economic thought through murder.

And genocide, of course, can only be accomplished with an intense hatred of those butchered. It's a hatred borne of disdain toward the victim, often buoyed by jealousy, and absolved by the "hope" that the world will be a better place once the victims have been expunged from the Earth.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the Robertsons will be killed by A&E or that America will soon be awash in blood.

What I am saying is that the Left's very political essence is based in hatred, envy, a demand for conformity, and an egotistical disdain for those who hold differing views. Keep this in mind in the coming debates regarding ObamaCare and Obama's coming regulatory nightmares. Watch as hard working Americans, the seriously ill, the religious (exempting Muslims, of course), and the elderly become demonized.

Capitalism Relieves Poverty-- It's Pretty Obvious Stuff

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Is this a surprise to anyone with half-a-brain and a sense of history? People were starving to death in the capital cities of London and Paris in the early 1800s. Does anyone remember Dickens' work? He wasn't just making stuff up.

From James Pethokoukis at American Enterprise Institute (and the source of the above graphic):

The above chart is from Gapminder and shows China’s per capita income growth since 1800 vs. that of the US and the UK. What happened to China toward the end of the 20th century? Well, it started doing what America and Britain began doing some 200 years earlier. China started embracing what Bono calls entrepreneurial capitalism. Or as economist Deirdre McCloskey puts it:

The Big Economic Story of our times has not been the Great Recession of 2007–2009, unpleasant though it was. … The Big Economic Story of our own times is that the Chinese in 1978 and then the Indians in 1991 adopted liberal ideas in the economy, and came to attribute a dignity and a liberty to the bourgeoisie formerly denied. And then China and India exploded in economic growth. … And contrary to the usual declarations of the economists since Adam Smith or Karl Marx, the Biggest Economic Story was not caused by trade or investment or exploitation. It was caused by ideas. The idea of bourgeois dignity and liberty led to a rise of real income per head in 2010 prices from about $3 a day in 1800 worldwide to over $100 in places that have accepted the Bourgeois Deal and its creative destruction.

Modern Western people have a very hard time wrapping their minds around what real poverty is. Here's a clue, obesity is not a problem for those living below the poverty line for most societies throughout history.

But it's become politically popular, once again, to indulge in class warfare. This means attacks against capitalism and the raising up of the ridiculously failed and murderous Marxist belief systems. Ain't life grand?

Obama to Grads: Reject Voices Warning of Government Tyranny

"Americans are too good to indulge in  tyranny. That's something for the lesser peoples."

Because there's no such thing in America-- and it's impossible or something. And as usual Obama uses the ideas of America and the federal government interchangeably... because, you know, they're the same thing.

From Real Clear Politics:

U.S. President Barack Obama gives the commencement address to the graduating class of The Ohio State University at Ohio Stadium on May 5, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn't want to. But we don't think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.

It's classic "Obama drivel"-- straw man arguments against caricatures of what he's opposing coupled with lies whose falsehoods are proven by his own actions.

First the straw man argument: "You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted." Yup. These mysterious voices that warn of tyranny are basically coming from anarchists who believe that there should be no government.

What is so amusing in this statement is that clearly Obama can't be referring to the government that preceded him. After all, a fair amount of the Constitution is designed to create roadblocks in the government, and the Bill of Rights is designed to protect individual rights from government tyranny by Americans. I guess that these anarchist voices warning of tyranny must be coming from people like James Madison and the Founders.

But don't worry we have liars like Obama to trust. Which of course brings us the second portion of "Obama drivel"the lies whose falsehoods are proven by his own actions portion. Obama actually has the temerity to say: "We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn't want to... And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government."

Really? This coming from the man who pushed for and signed ObamaCare into law. This coming from the man who has pushed America to record levels of food stamp usage and disability claims.  This coming from the man who has sought to make our medical records available to the IRS, and various forms of federal law enforcement. This guy has been telling for four years that government can handle our health care, health insurance, save the planet from global warming and rising seas, and give us free food and free money when we're "disabled," and he's matched it with incredibly expensive governmental action. Yeah, this guy has the temerity to say that.

We also get that overwhelming arrogance that the Left and Obama love to display. I mean, tyranny is a problem that can't happen in America-- because we're too smart or something. Or because this abstraction called democracy is ours.

According to Obama, tyranny is for what he must consider to be "lesser" peoples, I guess. The Chinese and Russians and North Koreans and Greeks who in ancient times killed many citizens due to popular demand-- generals, philosophers, etc. Yup, Mexico, Central and South America, which has faced tyranny numerous times, and continues to do so, is full of non-Americans who don't understand that their democracies is theirs. They don't understand that that it's not about what their government can do for them, it's about what can be done by them, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. The fools! If only they could be more like us!

This American Leftist declaration that tyranny can't happen here in America because we're just too good for it is both insulting and dangerous.

Such arrogance. I can't decide if Obama speaks this way because he's foolish enough to actually believe it, or whether he thinks he's pandering to the crowd. Obama's life has been made up of pandering and conforming himself to other people's-- mostly white people by the way-- idea of what he should be. So maybe the second is more likely.

The Founders were under no illusion of Americans being incapable of tyranny. I mean read the freakin' Constitution, not some Leftist analysis of a "living document," but the actual words. Yet this exact and very dangerous illusion is precisely what the "light-bringer" is telling our grads.

And Obama's supposed to be some kind of Constitutional scholar. Well, that's a scary thought.

Terrorist Bombs Explode During Boston Marathon; Members of Left Media Immediately Implicate American Right

Never let a crisis-- nor a tragedy-- go to waste.

While police, rightfully, remain tight-lipped about who the suspect of the Boston Marathon Bombing might be, within mere hours the Left media has gone into overdrive blaming "waterer[s] of the tree of liberty and the like," for the attack.

From Dana Loesch writing at Red State:

The practice of journalism as an objective excercise[sic] is dead. It has been for some time, if it ever existed.

Not hours after the bombings did these vultures begin spinning:
Charles Pierce at Esquire:

BOSTON — This is just breaking, but at least two explosions occurred in downtown Boston near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Several people were injured and two have been reported dead. There are reports of people missing limbs. Obviously, nobody knows anything yet, but I would caution folks jumping to conclusions about foreign terrorism to remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like.

Peter Bergen at CNN targets “right wing groups”:

Huffington Post blogger and Al Sharpton radio producer Nida Khan:

Here’s a superintendent of Wisconsin schools – included not because he’s media, but because this man is in charge of shaping young minds. Haven’t they already had a scandal?

Chris Matthews chimed in: video. So did Youtube-demoted Cenk Uygur.
Nick Kristof of the New York Times:

This isn’t journalism. This is speculation. It’s hackneyed. It’s malicious, unprofessional, and dangerous. The lack of professionalism demonstrated by the above should be enough to shame them forever from the profession, but the profession now thrives on tabloid-level “reporting.”

After a tragedy the normal person responds by falling to their knees in prayer. The compassionate person responds with concern for the affected. The professional reports the facts and differentiates between speculation and confirmation.

While Loesch blames the lack of professionalism-- a not altogether incorrect response-- the problem goes much deeper than that. These people really and truly believe that the American Right is just that one step away from declaring a dictatorship of the "American Taliban" in this country. Frankly, they're victims of their own propaganda, deceivers who have been able to deceive themselves along with low information voters.

By downplaying the numerous terrorist threats attempted and perpetrated by both the Islamists (9/11, the shoe bomber, the Portland Ore. Christmas tree lighting bomber, etc.) and the hard Left (Weather Underground, Unabomber, Occupy members plots to destroy bridges in Cleveland, the Washington DC shooting at the Family Research Center, etc.), they have created a distorted view of reality that they truly believe. It provides the excuse for some of the appalling vitriol, death threats over twitter, and the occasional plot or act of domestic terrorism.

Their intentional divisiveness often overshadows the simple fact that the Left media continues to exist and thrive in a fictitious modern world of Jim Crow-era racism and unrealized fears of a patriot terrorist movement, a la the deplorable White Supremacist Turner Diaries (no link to trash like that will be given).

While we Americans should be united in shock and sorrow over this senseless act of terrorism, the Left continues to reflexively divide and blame due to both their "blame-the-opponent" mentality-- something baked into the essence of their political philosophy, and as victims of their own propaganda.

This was a violent attack against the innocent on American soil. As Americans, we should be united in grief and outrage. We should then crave for the truth regarding this inexcusable attack and demand that justice be done. Instead we are treated to malicious speculation, pre-calculated political attacks, and grievance mongering within moments of the explosions. It is pathetic, without human compassion, and disgusting.

How far we have fallen in such a short time.

The Raids of Cyprus' Bank Accounts Could Never Happen Here, Right?

A bank run in 1931

An interesting editorial from Investors Business Daily. Check it out.

From the editorial:

Markets tumbled after Cyprus and the EU said they might tax private bank accounts to pay for a bailout. Arbitrary property grabs are a new low and a bad precedent in this crisis. Worse still, it can happen here.

As bad as tumbling markets around the world are, they seem to be the only signal strong enough to catch the attention of Europe's otherwise unaccountable bureaucrats who have long since learned to ignore street riots.

As stocks fell from Tokyo to New York, Europe's leaders are scrambling to say they had nothing to do with the cause — the shutdown of all Cyprus banks and ATMs for at least three days and the expropriation of a large chunk of each now-captive account, as a "tax" to pay for Cyprus' $13 billion EU bailout, Europe's fifth.

Cyprus Prime Minister Nicos Anastasiades bitterly asserted he had been "blackmailed" by the EU and the International Monetary Fund to go along with the idea on Saturday, or there'd be no bailout. Cyprus' central bank chief Panicos Demetriades said the same thing.

Aside from the fact that no fiscally responsible country should need a bailout and the roots of Cyprus' financial crisis is based on long-term big-spending government and low-information voters, the bank shutdown nevertheless sets an ugly precedent rooted in the growing arrogance of EU power.

[...] 

Oh sure, the rationale was that most of the depositors were shady foreigners, particularly from Russia, laundering money. But the photos of Cypriots banging on bank doors and protesting, much as the people of Argentina did when the same thing happened to them in 2002, tells a different story of human suffering.

The expropriation of the tiny country's savings may have seemed like an easy test case for the EU because the population is small and some of the depositors are rich and unsympathetic, but the blowback will hit savings and investment — and future economic growth — all over Europe.

Worse still, it could catch on here.

Already Congressional Democrats are plotting the expropriation of Americans' private 401(k) and IRA retirement savings accounts in favor of "a guaranteed income." If bank accounts can be casually expropriated in Cyprus to pay for big-spending governments and bailouts, there is no reason a nice slice of the $19 trillion in retirement accounts can't get the same treatment.
 

I've been concerned about this possibility for some times. History has shown that very often the economic policies Obama advocates and pushes so fervently results in the confiscation of the public's retirement plans, savings accounts, IRAs etc. It is generally crouched in terms of the government "guaranteeing the investment." This is not much different than Obama's public rationale for bailing out and then running GM. Do we remember Obama's televised speech about how your GM car, financial plan, etc. was even safer now that it has government backing? A similar speech would be trotted out and delivered in a similar manner as the government raids citizens' retirement funds, turning private investment into another social security-like ponzi scheme.

This has happened with alarming frequency in South American countries, Argentina being the easiest example to look up. Unfortunately most people are ignorant of other countries' domestic policies. Worse, many who are aware of such failed foreign policies believe that the reason that the policies failed was not because of the obvious economic stupidity of the policies themselves, but insultingly because of the "inferiority"of the foreign people.

Every person I know who has voiced this opinion to me, and there's been more than a few, is on the American political Left. The thinking is not unlike the basic meme circulating among the Left now, especially at the university level and in the occasional newspaper editorial, that the reason the USSR failed was because it was run by a "peasant people" and not to the unworkability of Marxist theory.

Both are rather raw examples of the basic parochial and elitist underpinnings of Socialist and Marxist doctrine. An absolute belief that normal people are too stupid, too ignorant, too uneducated, and too peasant-like to take of themselves is at the core of the theory. Why else would Marxism require a police state to be built to morally and economically better the people (and to kill off the irredeemable)? Why the need for the modern American nanny states? Because the politicians who propose these policies believe that the average person can be responsible enough to make their own decisions?

So should these raids on private property occur here, remember that as the American political class takes your money to pay for their historically failed policies, government paid vacations, and other perks of office, their attitude will be of smug paternalism. And as they calmly inform us that our retirement funds are now "guaranteed" by the federal government with as much warmth as they and their speech writers and their acting coaches can fake, that they see us as little more than children unable to understand the complexity of a modern economy.

Does this attitude sound a little familiar? cough *Pelosi regarding the Tea Party* cough *Bloomberg and sodas and pain medications*

Why Obama Won: The Hard Answer is the American Cultural Divide

It's been nagging at me since the results. How on earth was Obama re-elected?

We have a dismal economy, historically high gas prices, 200+ Mexicans killed by Obama's gun walking scheme, historically long high unemployment, an unpopular and ruinous law in ObamaCare, our overseas embassies are under assault, and the president in charge lies about the attacks and then blames an American who made a film on YouTube. How do you put a proven loser and liar back in the presidency-- even by a razor-thin margin?

The answer is two-fold. First let's look at Charles Hurt's Opinion piece "Obama victory means four more years with no hope of change" from The Washington Times:

All that for nothing. It was the billion-dollar election that did not decide one single damned thing.

Republicans control the House. Democrats control the Senate. And the White House remains in Democratic hands with absolutely no mandate whatsoever.

Another four years with no hope of change.

In this environment with this economy and all the gravely important matters pressing against the very existence of this country, it should have been a tsunami election. It should have been a landslide that sent President Obama into the dust heap of failed presidencies. Instead, the election was about Big Bird.

It was the rape election. The contraception election. The binders full of women election.

It was about who was born where and whether she really could claim to be a Cherokee Indian.

It was about former President George W. Bush. And it was about gay marriage.

It was about the 1 percent and the 99 percent and the 47 percent.

It was about dancing freaking horses, for crying out loud!

Just about the only thing the election wasn’t about was the economy, which everyone agrees was the only thing voters actually cared about. People tend to really care about the economy when real unemployment reaches double digits, welfare rolls fatten by one-third, politicians rack up $16 trillion in national debt and the largest tax hike in the history of the world looms just weeks away.

Yet that obviously is not what decided this election. Politicians were too busy talking all about Big Bird, rape and dancing horses.

The most disturbing issue of the election was how President Obama managed to win re-election in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan by talking about the highly unpopular bailout of General Motors. By taking billions of dollars in hard-earned money from taxpayers during a deep recession and giving it to a couple of huge companies, Mr. Obama managed to buy the votes he needed to eke out re-election. Taxpayers remain on the hook to the tune of $25 billion.

[...]
 

What happened Tuesday night is the same thing that has been happening for decades in America. Politicians deploy all this highly precise technology to slice and dice voters into little micro-groups and then talk to them all about dancing horses or Big Bird.

The result is you have all these states vote for one side and all these other states vote for the other side and it all comes down to Florida and Ohio. You could have given me a lot less than a billion dollars and I could have told you that.

Hurt is quite correct when he says that Obama and the Democrats correctly defined what would be the places that were really needed to win. It wasn't merely Ohio and Florida, it was the specific counties, the specific neighborhoods in these states. They found them, focus-grouped them, then lied to them in the manner workshopped to be most convincing. And if they didn't lie, they talked about Big Bird and dancing horses. A fair push from unions and possible voter fraud never hurts either.

But this begs the question, how did it come to this? How is it that we knew this would be a close election, despite the economic and international chaos wrought by an ideologue, amateur president? How is that despite the fact that blue states were littered with Romney signs, that blue states remained blue in the presidential election? Why did people in these blue states not change their mind as their leader has demonstrated precious little leadership qualities in the last four years?

The answer is cultural. The hard answer is America is not the country that people once felt it to be: a politically middle-of-the-road, common sense nation. It's no longer a nation that uniformly takes pride in its people and culture, who celebrate in its historical accomplishments.

Gone are the days of Yankee Doodle Dandy, when a Democrat like George M. Cohan could wave the flag with pride and say "I'm just an average guy who knows what average guys wants to see." Now Democrats are people who revel in suffering under the burden of perceived oppression.

Elizabeth Warren celebrates the fact that a woman of color like herself (let's not let a little thing like factual family history get in the way of such claims) can prosper against the evil tyranny that is the United States. When Michelle Obama said that her husband being elected was the first time she was proud of America she meant it. As the Obamas listened to Rev. Wright scream "Goddamn America!" they nodded in agreement. This is the culture of the Left that the Democrats have embraced.

One can argue about the hypocritical and self-defeating values that they embrace-- victimhood hands over power to their perceived oppressors, just as begging for money gives power to those you beg from no matter if you raise your begging upon the "pedestal" of "social justice"-- but all of that is moot. This is what the Left possesses. And that's it. Paradoxically, they find cohesion with economic and racial division. It was no slip of the tongue for Obama to declare with deadpan seriousness that "voting is the best revenge." People on the Right asked exactly who voters were getting revenge against not knowing that it was against, not Romney, but against specifically them and all they believe and they represent. Culture wars are the Left's bread and butter, and social conflict their only course of action. George M. Cohan's Democratic Party is dead.

Yes, this fragile framework of oppression and hate is a dead-end. It cannot continue indefinitely and would ultimately lead to frightful violence as it has in the past and continues to do so in central Africa, and parts of South America and Asia (such as Sri Lanka). But, and it pains me to say this, that doesn't matter. It has worked in this election. And this is what we're left with.

 Next let's look at Michael Barone's article "Two Americas" from the NRO. Read the whole piece at the link, but here's a lot of it:

But whether Barack Obama is elected to a second term or Mitt Romney is elected the 45th president, the contours of their support during this fiercely fought campaign show that we live in two Americas.

The culturally cohesive America of the 1950s that some of us remember, usually glossing over racial segregation and the civil-rights movement, is no longer with us and hasn’t been for some time.

That was an America of universal media, in which everyone watched one of three similar TV channels and newscasts every night. Radio, 1930s and 1940s movies, and 1950s and early-1960s television painted a reasonably true picture of what was typically American.
That’s not the America we live in now. Niche media has replaced universal media.

One America listens to Rush Limbaugh, the other to NPR. Each America has its favorite cable news channel. As for entertainment, Americans have 100-plus cable channels to choose from, and the Internet provides many more options.

Bill Bishop highlighted the political consequences of this in his 2008 book, The Big Sort. He noted that in 1976 only 27 percent of voters lived in counties carried by one presidential candidate by 20 percent or more. In 2004, nearly twice as many, 48 percent, lived in these landslide counties. That percentage may be even higher this year.

We’re more affluent than we were in the 1950s (if you don’t think so, try doing without your air conditioning, microwaves, smartphones, and Internet connections). And we have used this affluence to seal ourselves off in the America of our choosing while trying to ignore the other America.

We tend to choose the America that is culturally congenial. Most people in the San Francisco Bay area wouldn’t consider living in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, even for much better money. Most metroplexers would never relocate to the Bay Area.

There are plenty of smart and creative and successful people in both Americas. But they don’t like to mix with each other these days.

They especially don’t like to talk about politics and the cultural issues that, despite the prominence of economic concerns today, have largely determined our political allegiances over the last two decades.

One America tends to be traditionally religious, personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs, and suspicious of government. The other tends to be secular or only mildly religious, less charitable, skeptical of business, and supportive of government as an instrument to advance liberal causes.

The more conservative America tends to be relatively cohesive. Evangelical Protestants and white Catholics make common cause; the 17th-century religious wars are over. Southern or northern accents don’t much matter.

That’s typical of the Republican party, which has always had core support from people who are seen as typical Americans but are not by themselves a majority in our always diverse country.

The more liberal America tends to be diverse. Like Obama’s 2008 coalition, it includes many at the top and at the bottom of the economic ladder.

That’s typical of the Democratic party, a coalition of disparate groups — immigrant Catholics and white southerners long ago, blacks and gentry liberals today.

[...]

Americans have faced this before. This has been a culturally diverse land from its colonial beginnings. The mid-20th-century cultural cohesiveness was the exception, not the rule.

We used to get along by leaving each other alone. The Founders established a limited government, neutral on religion, allowing states, localities, and voluntary associations to do much of society’s work. Even that didn’t always work: We had a Civil War.

This is the divided America of today. We've been living in it for a while, blissfully ignorant and underestimating the cultural divide. It wasn't until this election that this issue really came to a head. People in blue states chose Obama, not because of his demonstrated incompetence, but because he's one of their own. He demonstrates their values, voices their hatred of traditional America, treats Red America with the contempt they believe that it deserves. Revenge indeed.

Don't believe me? That anger is expressed daily on Twitter. Why were celebrities viciously assaulted and threatened when they exercised their right to disagree and vote for Romney (a quick sampling of cooments directed at Stacy Dash following her expression of pride in Romney's campaign after the loss: "die slow ho" "drink bleach and die. You're an uninformed, unemployed, has-been diva with a bad publicist" "Kill yo self BITCH" "Stacey Dash must die." "Die little hoe.")? Why are conservative blacks (or people perceived to be conservative) knocked to the ground by black and white Democrats and called "nigger" like Kenneth Gladney? Why did the Missouri NAACP support Gladney's attackers?

They blamed Bush for not responding to Katrina because they saw him as Obama's anti-thesis, a petty and vindictive man who didn't care about others. This isn't considered to be a bad trait, mind you, simply the hard "truth." Remember Kanye said "George Bush hates Black people!"

Why would the Left think this? Because they see their beliefs as universal truths. Their hatred focused at the other (the mainstay of community organizing), incorporated in the banner of the Right, is not perceived as a weakness nor as bigotry, but as a universal truth as taught by Engels and Marx. You see, no matter how we on the Right may think, they are sure that we will act according their "truth." 

This is the same trap (both Engels and Marx fell into it) that allows bigotry to thrive in the face of millions of exceptions to the bigot's perceived "rule." I've long made the comment that what America sees as racism, is often generally considered truth in the rest of the world. "Of course those people [whatever social, racial class they may be] are inferior to us. I mean just look at them!" Does this sound familiar? Like something off of the TV or in a movie, or perhaps a celebrity interview? Of course the country people/Southerners are a bunch of inbred bigots/idiots/rednecks/hillbillies. Why just look at them.

And since they know the truth, we must be behaving according to their laws, even if we appear not to. That's why they see the Right as so devious. Charitable acts, belief in morality and religion... it's all just a ruse to hold power. Romney gave millions to charity, but people who have given next to nothing confidently declare that he hates poor people and support a man whose policies guarantee an increase in poverty and misery. In their minds Romney is devious and immoral, while they're just honest. Belief in their universal truths demands this interpretation.

The Republicans ran a safe campaign. They kept it reasonably positive, picked a moderate, ran against Obama's record. And they almost pulled it off.

But they didn't and now reality must be faced. It smacked us in the head in this election. Breitbart was right about this being a cultural war-- and the Right lost. No more juvenile denials, no more bubbles. We live in a divided America now. Blue and red. Make no mistake about this. This election wasn't about any issues. It's useless to blame Sandy, Benghazi, the 47% comment, etc. None of that really mattered. People voted because of how they see themselves and then backed the candidate who most closely represented their values and beliefs-- no matter how horrifying those beliefs may be. It's ridiculous, self-defeating and petty. But it's true. Plus a little free stuff like phones and pizza in battleground states never hurts.

Where do we go from here? It doesn't matter. Obama's policies cannot work, but he won't back down from them. They will fail. And the resulting political chaos will bring about a new political reality. The blue and red America of today will shift in ways impossible to predict.

But what comes next for now? High unemployment, shrinking incomes, higher taxes, worse medical care, an anemic economy, a higher poverty rate, more homeless, a weaker dollar, lower life expectancy, blame shifting, more hate, more division. In all, a substantially weaker America.

Hunker down. There are tough years to come.

This Election: A Battle for the Defining Political Problem of the Early 21st Century

An excellent piece from Janet Daley at The Telegraph (h/t Anne Leary at Backyard Conservative)

From Daley:

"Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

"What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

"Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements. You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. This is the defining political problem of the early 21st century."

It has astonished me that American people can look to the economic events in Europe and, in any seriousness, suggest that we follow their lead. Although I know that the Left and academia suffer from an acute case of European envy, I have still never understood why we would possibly want to follow their example of socialist-democracies that cannot sustain themselves. This unsustainability was reasonably obvious prior to the economic crisis of recent years.

A real representative democracy must have liberty, and liberty is difficult if not impossible to maintain when the majority of the populace is bribed with ridiculous goodies (the police and fire departments, reasonable amounts of social safety nets, etc. not counting as goodies). To be dependent upon those goodies, is to be controlled by them. Votes become guaranteed when peoples livelihoods are controlled by State distributed funds. When votes are guaranteed by controls over peoples incomes, then the democracy is, in many senses, an illusion.

I have never been worried about Obama's policies working and "fundamentally transforming America" simply because his policies can never work. Democratic socialist societies cannot last, and the meager lifespans they have can only work by either outside monies (foreign markets, tourism, etc.) or with some form of patronage (the USSR supporting North Korea, Cuba, Romania, etc.). What large population, liquid money market could America export its goods to? What country could give money to support its population?

It's sort of funny that Obama talked about the GOP agenda being outdated, even as Obama doubles down on the historically proven wrong side of "the defining political problems of the 21st century."

Thomas Sowell: Misleading Political Labels

Thomas Sowell has an interesting essay about the terms "liberal" and "conservative." Check it out.

From Sowell:

"Among the many words that don’t mean what they say, but which too many of us accept as if they did, are those staples of political discussion, 'liberals' and 'conservatives.'

"Most liberals are not liberal and most conservatives are not conservative. We might be better off just calling them X and Y, instead of imagining that we are really describing their philosophies. Moreover, like most confusion, it has consequences.

"The late liberal professor Tony Judt of New York University gave this definition of liberals: 'A liberal is someone who opposes interference in the affairs of others: who is tolerant of dissenting attitudes and unconventional behavior.'

"According to Professor Judt, liberals favor 'keeping other people out of our lives, leaving individuals the maximum space in which to live and flourish as they choose.'

[...]

"Communities that have had overwhelmingly liberal elected officials for decades abound in nanny-state regulations, micromanaging everything from home-building to garbage collection. San Francisco is a classic example. Among its innumerable micromanaging laws is one recently passed requiring that gas stations remove the little levers that allow motorists to pump gas into their cars without having to hold the nozzle.

"Liberals are usually willing to let people violate the traditional standards of the larger society but crack down on those who dare to violate liberals’ own notions and fetishes.

[...]

"As for conservatism, it has no specific political meaning, because everything depends on what you are trying to conserve. In the last days of the Soviet Union, those who were trying to maintain the Communist system were widely-- and correctly-- described as "conservatives," though they had nothing in common with such conservatives as William F. Buckley or Milton Friedman.

"Professor Friedman for years fought a losing battle against being labeled a conservative. He considered himself a liberal in the original sense of the word and wrote a book titled 'The Tyranny of the Status Quo.' Friedman proposed radical changes in things ranging from the public schools to the Federal Reserve System.

"But he is remembered today as one of the great conservatives of our time. Great, yes. But conservative? It depends on what you mean by conservative.

"Conservatism, in its original meaning, would require preserving the welfare state and widespread government intervention in the economy. Neither Milton Friedman nor most of the other people designated as conservatives today want that."

Sowell is quite right about confusion having consequences. I've had many arguments with people over political labels, and very often people bring up conservatives in other countries as being somehow equivalent to conservatives in the US. My favorite is a person brought up old school conservative Soviets as being equivalent to American conservatives (a confusion Sowell directly mentions). Additionally one of my undergraduate Poli Sci professors had an entire Marxist world history based solely on the battle between conservatives and progressives. He was thus was able to equate Ronald Reagan with Oliver Cromwell. Of course that comparison is foolish on every level, but even held to the prof.'s own standards this was nonsense. Cromwell was actively attacking Charles I and set up the short-lived Commonwealth of England-- truly the acts of someone devoted to the status quo.

Battling the Claims of Islamaphobia, and the Left's Fickle Favors

Check out Jonah Goldberg's short piece at the National Review Online (h/t Anne Leary at Backyard Conservative).

From Goldberg's article:

"According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims increased by a staggering 1,600 percent in 2001. That sounds serious! But wait, the increase is a math mirage. There were 28 anti-Islamic incidents in 2000. That number climbed to 481 the year a bunch of Muslim terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam on Sept. 11.

"Regardless, 2001 was the zenith or, looked at through the prism of our national shame, the nadir of the much-discussed anti-Muslim backlash in the United States — and civil libertarians and Muslim activists insisted it was 1930s Germany all over again. The following year, the number of anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents (overwhelmingly, nonviolent vandalism and nasty words) dropped to 155. In 2003, there were 149 such incidents. And the number has hovered around the mid-100s or lower ever since.

"Sure, even one hate crime is too many. But does that sound like an anti-Muslim backlash to you?

"Let’s put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel, probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more.

"In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim incidents by at least 6 to 1. Why aren’t we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

"Because there isn’t one. And there isn’t an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don’t like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies, or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times — never mind left-wing blogs — you’ll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the 'Taliban wing of the Republican party') than you will toward Muslims [emphasis mine]."

Not a bad bit of work from Goldberg. However I have to add that America doesn't talk about an anti-Jewish climate in the US because there is no political gain in it for the Democrats and the Left-friendly portions of the media.

The Left champions those they perceive as victims. Marxism, a theory inextricably based on class conflict and revolution, requires such a narrow oppressed/oppressor focus. The watered down theory of Marxism, mainstream Socialism, retains its oppressed/oppressor and revolutionist nature. Succeeding therefore disqualifies a people, however arbitrarily perceived and projected upon by the Left, from the Left's good graces.

During the formation of Israel, Jews enjoyed wide support by the American Left. The Jewish people had been devastated, in the truest sense of the word, by the Holocaust and were poster children for the Left's good graces. Yet, as Israel succeeded in defending itself from the Arab nations surrounding it, as it established itself as a viable and prosperous country, the Left's view changed. Suddenly the terrorist activities of the PLO became understandable to the Left, perversely evolving into legitimate and laudable.

By succeeding and prospering, Israel managed to price themselves right out of the Left's good graces. And by extension, real or not, American Jews are no longer favored by the Left's media and Jewish hate crimes are not hidden away, but are considered to be not a big a deal. After all, the thought goes, Israel brings such actions upon Jews by oppressing the Palestinians. Should the Palestinian leadership succeed in their bid to wipe Israel from the face of the map, I'm sure the Left would suddenly be very sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. After all, the Jewish people could then be used to, once again, demonstrate how compassionate and charitable the Left is.

Goldberg should also be commended for devoting the right amount of time to the accusations. The American Left has used the strategy of crying "racist" to control an issue (see the infamous Journolist for some of the most blatant examples). By forcing conservatives to sputter and defend themselves from the charge, the Left takes control of the debate. Goldberg briefly smacks down Time and the Left's strategic but still atrocious accusation, and then moves on. That's the correct response.

Soccer: A Socialist Sport? Give Me a Break...

Oddly, certain elements of the American Right have suddenly begun leveling attacks against soccer during the World Cup. I'm not talking about conservative pundits saying they find the sport boring (that's certainly their prerogative... I personally find college baseball tediously unwatchable), or the constant horn blaring annoying. Soccer's a game. Take it or leave it. Some people don't like tennis, or hockey, or (God forbid) American football, or baseball, or bowling, or water polo. So what? It's a matter of taste, so who cares?

No, I'm not talking about anything that simple. I'm talking about straight up attacks on the sport, of which C. Edmund Wright's American Thinker article "Soccer: The Perfect Socialist Sport" is an example. To be perfectly up front and fair, I suppose I should state that I am a soccer a fan. I played the sport for seven years, coached it for four, and continue to watch it now. Back in the day when no English-language American channels would show soccer games, I would watch the Mexican leagues on the Spanish-language stations and still occasionally do so now. With that disclaimer in place, I have to say that, as a conservative, I found the logical stretches and paranoid contentions in Wright's article to be utterly embarrassing.

I thought I might address Wright's idiocy one selected paragraph at a time.

From Wright's article:

"The world's most popular sport? Puh-leeze. This is like saying that dirt is more popular than gold simply because there is more of it. Last time I checked, soccer was very popular where starvation, archery, and badminton were the alternative activities. Where soccer has to compete with the NFL, college football, and basketball -- not to mention WWE, the X Games, cheerleading contests, and cage-fighting -- not so much."

Hmm. I have to admit that it's a brave decision for a writer to begin his argument by first fully displaying a total lack of understanding about the subject matter-- in this case other cultures' sporting tastes. It's brave, but probably just about the stupidest strategy I've ever seen.

Badminton is a particularly big in China and other nations that have significant Chinese populations such as Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, etc. and soccer is passably popular there; archery is particularly big in South Korea another nation that does indeed like soccer, but is hardly a country unexposed to American sports. While China and South Korea are no slouches in the world of soccer, both are hardly nations popularly known for their rabid soccer zeal. Indeed, Wright's assertion that soccer is only popular in poor, culturally deprived, third-world nations ("soccer was very popular where starvation, archery, and badminton were the alternative activities"-- at attempt at pithiness, I suppose) doesn't stand up under even the most casual scrutiny. A short list of countries well known for their love (often obsession) of the game disproves his claim immediately. Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands... Is this a list of countries where the alternative to soccer is "starvation, archery, and badminton?" Puh-leeze yourself, Wright...

Come to think of it, in which country does soccer compete with "the NFL, college football, and basketball -- not to mention WWE, the X Games, cheerleading contests, and cage-fighting?" Oh, right... America. So the basis of Wright's opening argument is that since soccer is not terribly popular in the USA (despite the fact that most major colleges field a men's and women's team and several professional soccer leagues currently exist in the US) that soccer is a social equivalent to dirt. Good argument there... That's some a top-notch intellect on display I see...

But Wright seems determined to contribute mightily to the idea that American conservatives are an ugly, ignorant, and paranoid rabble with his next point:

"At its heart, soccer is the perfect socialist sport. That's why it will never catch on among Americans the way football or basketball has -- regardless of how hard ESPN or ESPN Deportes tries to force feed it to us. Soccer is a redistributive dreamer's delight, with most of the potential risk-reward strategy of the sport removed by rule. It is a self-esteem cornucopia, where a blistering rout of, say, 2-0 seems so close in the score book. No one's feelings get hurt at 2-0. And on and on the socialist feel goes."

Does Wright not understand how idiotic this sounds? So ESPN and ESPN Deportes is forcing soccer upon us as a part of socialist propaganda? It is so farcical that I really wonder if I should even reply to this lunacy... but I'll go ahead and do so.

Exactly when, outside of the World Cup, has ESPN ever forced soccer upon us? As I said before, I used to watch soccer on the local Spanish language television stations in L.A. because there was no soccer to be seen elsewhere. This was when ESPN was running the Gaelic games like hurling and that hand ball game that's basically hurling with a volleyball and without the stick. Today, Fox Sports has a channel devoted to soccer (FSC the Fox Soccer Channel) and ESPN has no equivalent that I know of (it goes without saying that ESPN Deportes doesn't count, since soccer is incredibly popular in Mexico and Latin American countries, so why on earth would it make any business sense to not run soccer?). According by Wright's own logic, shouldn't Fox be the network that stands accused of intentionally force feeding us socialist propaganda through the sport of soccer? Strangely, Wright fails to mention Fox... I wonder why?

But what about Wright's assertion that soccer is a "redistributive dreamer's delight?" Surely Wright should back up such an accusation by citing clear evidence from of a history of soccer that shows a socialist influence. Was the sport started by Lenin to demonstrate the futility of individual effort or some such thing? Did Marx invent the game to promote his idea of tyrannical economic redistribution?

Well, Wright provides no historical evidence of this. Whether this is due to ignorance, laziness, or an intentional omission matters little. The original rules of the game which were officially drawn up in 1863 and credited to Ebenezer Cobb Moreley can be found here. Little seems to be known about E.C. Morley. The upshot of the limited information about his life can be found here, and can pretty much be summarized by saying: "Ebenezer Cobb Morley was born in Hull in 1831. He moved to London where he worked as a solicitor. He was a keen sportsman and established Barnes Football Club in 1858." [...] "Morley also established the Barnes and Mortlake Regatta [is rowing another socialist sport?] for which he was also secretary (1862-80). He served on the Surrey County Council for Barnes (1903-19) and was a Justice of the Peace. Ebenezer Cobb Morley died in 1924."

The upshot of how soccer (football in this case) came to be founded is briefly summarized. "Morley became captain of the club [Barnes Football Club] and in 1863 he wrote a letter to Bell's Life newspaper proposing a governing body for football. This letter resulted in a meeting taking place at the Freeman's Tavern in London in October, 1863. The clubs represented at the meeting included Barnes, Blackheath, Perceval House, Kensington School, the War Office, Crystal Palace, Forest (later known as the Wanderers), the Crusaders and No Names of Kilburn. Charterhouse also sent an observer to the meeting.

"The Football Association was established at this meeting. The aim of the FA was to establish a single unifying code for football. As Percy Young, has pointed out, that the FA was a group of men from the upper echelons of British society: 'Men of prejudice, seeing themselves as patricians, heirs to the doctrine of leadership and so law-givers by at least semi-divine right.'"

I like that last line... I mean, that meeting sounds like a real socialist/red nightmare there, doesn't it?

A savvy skeptic might say that while there's no evidence of soccer's alleged socialist leanings from its inception, what about now under the modern rules? I mean the rules have changed greatly since 1863, right? Okay then. Let's look at the evidence as provided by Wright.

Let's first look at the "evidence" from the paragraph I quoted above. Let's see... Soccer has "most of the potential risk-reward strategy of the sport removed by rule." I'm not sure what he means there. I mean, people do win games and tournaments. Is Wright speaking strategically? I have no idea... so let's move on and maybe Wright will explain later.

Let's see, Wright claims that soccer "is a self-esteem cornucopia, where a blistering rout of, say, 2-0 seems so close in the score book. No one's feelings get hurt at 2-0. And on and on the socialist feel goes." Firstly, I didn't know that saving peoples feelings from being hurt was a tenet of socialism. Silly me. I thought socialism was an economic theory with its roots in Marx and Hegel. When will I ever learn-- or did Marx write about saving people's feelings in between predicting/promising death to the bourgeoisie? Secondly, how can Wright possibly say that no one's feelings get hurt when a team loses? I guess the various idiotic incidents of soccer violence that occurs in other countries-- such as fan deaths soccer goalies being threatened, physically assaulted, and sometimes killed for own goals by rabid fans (recent examples here here here-- gathered by a single google search) is due to this feel good mentality of this "self-esteem cornucopia" that Wright describes. Such incidents happen because... no one's feelings got hurt by a loss or something. Maybe it was the lack of competitive spirit that led to these violent happenings...

Wright's obvious lack of understanding of soccer is demonstrated in other ways. First of all a 2-0 score is not "a blistering rout" as Wright suggests. Sure, there's a nice cushion provided by that second goal lead, but this cushion is probably less stable than an equivalent score of 14-0 in American football. And would a 14-0 score between the Cowboys and Steelers be considered a blistering rout? Not by a long shot. But let us mistakenly assume for a moment that 2-0 is a rout. Well, then those of us familiar with the sport would recognize it as such, no matter what it looks like in a score book. No matter the sport, the only time a rout doesn't look like a rout is when people are unfamiliar with the sport. A loss by five seconds in an Olympic level 100 meter dash sure sounds close, doesn't it? After all, it's only five itty-bitty seconds in a record book. That's not a very long at all in games such as baseball. Is the 100m dash, therefore, a sport designed to promote non-competitiveness and socialism?

Wright goes on:

"Consider other ways in which it is the quintessential socialist sport:

"Soccer is biggest where the 'national teams' are the main sports focus of a nation. Hey, you can't get much more socialist than that. And everyone on every street and in every town pulls for the same team. Wow. Isn't that exciting? Whom do you pull for? Oh yeah, the national team."

Huh. Perhaps Wright should explain exactly when national pride and national identity became a hallmark of socialism? So, I guess the 1980 US Hockey team's victory, "The Miracle on Ice," was actually a great moment in socialist history. Who knew? I guess every moment that we identify ourselves as Americans and root for our countrymen during an Olympic sport, we've actually turned socialist. Well, I guess I'll just have to start rooting against Americans from now on. You suck Nastia Liukin, Kerri Strug, and The Dream Team! I suppose Wright believes that now I should feel like a real conservative...

Oh, and never mind the fact that most countries that enjoys soccer have various forms of profesional soccer leagues within their borders. Soccer is hardly a sport played merely by national teams.

And now the biggest "what in the hell is Wright talking about?" moment:

"And let's not forget the off-sides rule. Without getting buried in minutiae, suffice it to say that off-sides in soccer is like making the bomb illegal in football or the fast break illegal in basketball. This is a socialist sport. We can't be having any risk-reward equations here. You see, in soccer, it's not fair that you might take a chance to weaken your defense in order to spring a man deep downfield behind the defense. That would be unfair in a free-market, venture-capital-type way. No, no, no! You must let the defense be behind you. You cannot beat them downfield until you have the ball. That would be unfair and, no doubt, mean-spirited.

"So ingrained is this into the soccer psyche that many of the world's best defenses employ what they call 'the off-sides trap.' In other words, they use the socialist rules to the hilt. Here, a defenseman gets beaten downfield on purpose to get a call against his opponent.

"It's a lot like using high tax rates and the IRS to keep everyone's financial strata the same."

Now I've never been a fan of people who use sports as a sober metaphor for life, and I snicker every time at FIFA's advertising blitz shouting that soccer can change the world. But Wright's analogy wins the gold medal for stupidity.

Wright is saying that soccer's concept of off-sides is what?! It's amusing that Wright doesn't want to get "buried in minutiae" when talking about the concept of off-sides. Here's a quickie explanation of what off-sides in soccer is: at the time the ball is kicked to the offensive player, the receiving player must have two opposing players between him and the goal (the goalie would count as one). Why that's just like the IRS taking all your money, or a class struggle... or something.

Comparing apples and oranges is always a fool's game as Wright amply demonstrates. Still it is even more foolish, not sufficient, for Wright to say that the off-sides rule is "like making the bomb illegal in football." How on earth is the bomb in football anything like being off-sides in soccer? Seriously. It would be more appropriate to say that the off-sides rule is like making American football teams line up on sides before a play begins. How about if we allow wide receivers to just stand in the other team's end zone at all times and receive passes? Would that be sufficiently non-socialist for Wright? Heck, why is holding illeagal in football? Why are there rules to restrict the individual player at all? While we're at it, how about if we just allow the defensive linemen to clobber the quarterback whenever-- before the play, after the play, when the QB is walking onto the field... I mean sure it wouldn't be fair, but I guess Wright contends that fairness is an exclusively socialist virtue (along with national pride apparently).

Once again we are subjected to Wright's "risk-reward" concept, but at least this time he offers an explanation of it within soccer, although his example demonstrates a complete ignorance of the game. "This is a socialist sport. We can't be having any risk-reward equations here. You see, in soccer, it's not fair that you might take a chance to weaken your defense in order to spring a man deep downfield behind the defense." Has this moron never heard of defensive runs? Has he no concept of fullbacks (the defense) pushing forward into space to overwhelm the opponents' defense? Has he no idea about how the different line-ups (offensive-minded and defensive-minded) that are based around cost/benefit (risk-reward in Wright's language). There are plenty of other examples, but why should I explain the game. Like all games not based purely on chance, soccer is full of risks and potential rewards. It is absolutely idiotic to contend otherwise.

Oh right, now the off-sides trap nonsense. Wright says "the world's best defenses employ what they call 'the off-sides trap.' In other words, they use the socialist rules to the hilt. Here, a defenseman gets beaten downfield on purpose to get a call against his opponent." Are we supposed to be impressed that Wright knows the phrase off-sides trap? Too bad he has no clue about how it actually works above an AYSO level of play. A defender does not allow himself to be beaten, the defender stays forward forcing his offensive opponent to time a forward run in relation the offensive player's team mate's pass. It sounds much more complicated then it is. Incidentally, the off-sides trap is an example of risk-reward-- the defense risks being in a disadvantageous position to force the offense to be precise.

There's absolutely no reason for me to address the idiocy of bringing in the IRS and taxation into this. How about if Wright explains the U.S. tax codes in terms that involve the Miguel Cotto vs. Yuri Foreman boxing match?

So let's break the argument to it's essential evidence and review why Wright thinks soccer is a socialist sport-- there's an off-sides rule and soccer's a low scoring game. Hockey has an off-sides rule and it's a pretty low scoring game too. Do you think that makes hockey fascist?

And just to add a sense of unintentional irony, Wright then writes:

"And no liberal or socialist sport would be complete without a generous dose of self-importance, arrogance, and snobbery among its followers. I mean, it's bad enough that we have to see the kids running around in almost soft-porn thigh-highs and sandals every Saturday as they pile out of mini-vans at every Shoney's, Applebee's, and Hampton Inn everywhere. But it's the 'yeah, but it's the worlds most popular sport' attitude that really gets to me."

I do wonder where Wright can possibly dredge up the nerve to criticize others for self-importance, arrogance, and snobbery. Let's see in this very article Wright has stated that soccer is popular only in third-rate countries that face starvation, that because soccer is not terribly popular in the U.S. it is "dirt," all the while demonstrating an absolute and vapid ignorance of the game that he attempts to pithily smear. And why bring up "kids running around in almost soft-porn thigh-highs and sandals every Saturday as they pile out of mini-vans?" What does that have to do with anything?

If I didn't know better (and I do), I would idly wonder if Wright was a plant-- a Leftist writer intentionally trying to make the Right seem like ignorant fools. I mean, look what Wright manages to do in this essay. First he has claimed that fairness, national pride, and patriotism are all principles of socialism. Wright weaves in paranoia by asserting that ESPN is trying to indoctrinate us with socialistic principles through soccer. He claims soccer is "the quintessential socialist sport" simply by arbitrarily assigning qualities to it that soccer does not possess, and then indulging in analogies that either make absolutely no sense or are such a logical stretch that he makes MoveOn.org's people seem perfectly rational by comparison. And Wright manages to do this all the while feigning expertise in a sport he demonstrates next to no knowledge in (pseudo-intellectualism anyone?), and, just as a bonus, manages to pepper in needless insults to foreign countries throughout... Quite an accomplishment for such a short essay really.

Look, no one needs to like soccer. But to criticize it in this way, Wright should at least have an inkling of understanding about it. Wright demonstrates the same sort of self-righteous idiocy that those on the Left display when they they declare that if you don't like soccer, you're a racist. And that's really where all this comes in. Wright wants to insert himself into a conversation between Glenn Beck (not a fan of soccer) and various Leftist bloggers who contend that Beck is a racist for not liking soccer. While addressing this barbed idiocy from the Left is, I suppose, legitimate-- with a health care "reform" law that needs to be repealed, Cap & Tax on the plate, along with a Value Added Tax waiting in the wings (among other issues), all in addition to suicidal federal spending, one would think that there are currently more important issues to address.