The Prosperity-hater-in-chief

The MEC's excuse for nixing the Keystone XL pipeline is classic MEC: coming up with a lame way to try to shift the responsibility to Congressional Pubs

The advanced stage of our cultural rot - today's edition

Moms and dads, don't let your daughters anywhere near the Girl Scouts.

The set of principles that uplifts and humanizes

LITD is not ready to officially endorse a Pub prez candidate, but since the race seems to have winnowed the field to two viable candidates (an apparent likelihood that does not please LITD at all), it's worth noting that only one of them talks like this.

The same set of factors and options

European countries aren't the only astronomically leveraged nations with no rosy options. (They can raise taxes, which chokes economic growth, impose austerity plans, which choke economic growth, print money, which diminishes the value of every unit printed, or default on their sovereign debt, which blows up the whole world, financially speaking.) Japan is in the same boat. Right now, it looks as if they are going with doubled sales taxes as the remedy du jour.

I was going to include the United States in this group of nations, but it seems to me that, even though the US has had the grip of totalitarian socialism around its throat for three years, still has a unique degree of experience with, and an intellectual tradition of, the atoundingly fast-acting restorative powers of economic freedom, and therefore is better positioned, if we can pry our country loose from that grip, to bounce back.

But that's a big "if" and we may well be swirling the drain with the rest of the nations who have foolishly behaved as if the money didn't actually have to come from anywhere.

Where the state's parsing of individual citizens' feelings and motives leads

. . . to developments like North Korean "criticism sessions" for those the state deems to not have mourned Kim Jong Il's death with sufficient grief.

It's on purpose - today's edition

The United States has slipped into tenth place in the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Frreedom, behind Chile and Canada, among others.

Saddening, but not surprising, given that we are ruled by a tyrant with a Marxist-Leninst's understanding of economics.

Dog vomit in a designer dress

Matthew Continetti at the Weekly Standard on Valerie Jarrett. In the zeal that is equal parts Marxist ideology and a narcissistic sense that she and Mr. and Mrs. MEC are the figureheads - like a triumvirate - of the grand transformative mission, she has been the driving force behind such harebrained moves as the MEC going to Copenhagen to try to get the Olympics for Chicago, the subsidies for Solyndra, and bring Communist Van Jones into the regime.

The bear finally makes it plain

Russia's outgoing NATO ambassador says that any attack on Teheran would be an attack on Moscow. He also warns the West not to try to topple the Assad regime in Syria.

The wickedness and the rottenness of green

Of course, we know about the lavish hospitality laid out at the UN summits, and we know about the Climategate e-mails, and we've been learning about the cronyism behind such failed play-like companies as Solyndra. Well, per CBS, there is a slew of additional such outfits about to go kabust - and vaporize your tax dollars into thin air. You worked hard for that money - at a real place of business. It's gone, pal. But the MEC still has his campaign war chest.

Doesn't appear that they're getting their continent-wide crisis resolved

Standard & Poor downgrades the credit ratings of nine Eurozone countries.

It doesn't rise to the level of an atrocity

Two pieces that speak for my take on the Marines-peeing-on-Taliban-bodies dust-up:

Michael Ledeen at PJ Media and Bookworm Room.

This over-the-top reaction by Panetta and Hillary is not constructive.

Let's be clear about why we want him gone

I would imagine there will be some discussion of Kevin Williamson's piece at NRO today about the divide on the right about the Most Equal Comrade's motives for governing as he has.

I generally like Williamson's work. He's a great writer and generally a thinker of great clarity and precision. Still, he sets up a juxtaposition in this piece that is based on faulty terminology. He says that one group on the right basically sides with Romney's view that the MEC is "not a bad guy, just in over his head." Accurate enough so far, but then he says the other group "hates" the MEC and thinks he's "evil." I contend that this group's common view is that the MEC is a radical socialist without a patriotic bone in his body. Some might hate him for that, but most probably don't attach that degree of vitriol to their alarm over him. They just want him removed from his current office and his ability to exert influence on the direction of America.

What makes Williamson's article so frustrating is that he does acknowledge what the left, as enshrined by the Democratic party, is all about. He examines its cultural, economic and national-security biases and draws accurate conclusions: the left is driven by a deep and visceral hatred of basic human freedom and dignity.

But then he advises what he sees as the prudent course: electing a vanilla president (Romney; Williamson's characterization) and keeping mum about just how abrupt a reversal of America's current course the right intends to orchestrate. It's an oddly sterile type of splitting the difference. Proceed politically because you are driven by alarm at the peril in which Western civilization has been placed, but then govern as if it's just another session of Congress and executive administration, replete with all the routine deal-making and hedging one's words and actions with an eye toward "realistically" possible floor votes.

In short, I don't really accept his premise. To say that the MEC is just a garden-variety liberal Democrat and not a hate-worthy evil figure is to obscure the reality that liberal Democrats, at least going back to the early 70s, when the radicals came back into the fold (and infiltrated such fields as law, education, journalism and the arts), but in some ways going back to the era of Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson, have been freedom-hating radicals.

The disease has been present for decades. It's now in an advanced stage, not different in kind from what it had been. And the remedy is championing freedom, not in a technocratic, everything-will-be-okay-by-the-way-where-are-you-going-for-lunch kind of way, but with the sense of alarm appropriate to our current juncture.

This news item - and the photograph that goes with it - speaks volumes, on so many levels, about the state of our world

Mr. and Mrs. Ahmadinejad at Daniel Ortega's swearing-in for his latest term as Nicaraguan president.

I like the comment that says, "How do we know it's not her stunt double?"

How did we wind up at this juncture once again?

Real Clear Politics likes to juxtapose divergent columns about the same topic to illustrate to someone cursorily glancing at the entire rundown of headlines the breadth of opinion on the subject in the pundit world. Usually these contrasting pieces come from left and right - maybe a Victor Davis Hanson piece at NRO followed by a Paul Krugman piece at the NYT, for example.

Today, I was struck by the fact that such a RCP juxtaposition was between two divergent views on the right. There's Peter Ferrara's American Spectator piece arguing that Mitt is yet another embodiment of the Reasonable Gentleman / RINO / Establishment / starched-shirt-corporate-puke force that has sapped the Republican Party's natural energy for decades - and is therefore unelectable. The very next piece available for clicking is Jonathan Tobin's Commentary piece entitled "Conservatives Must Make Their Peace with Romney." (Regular LITD readers should be able to accurately guess that LITD agrees with the Ferrara view of the matter, although Tobin makes the excellent point that the remaining Pub prez contenders are making an unfortunate mistake by harping on the Bain-Capital-threw-people-out-of-work meme. Bain Capital showed its clients a return on their investments, which was what it was in business to do.)

The big question - the biggest of all - is, how does the GOP wind up at this juncture nearly every damn time? Whether they get elected or defeated, Pub prez candidates are routinely (with the exception of every conservative's towering hero, Dutch) the most white-bread, vanilla, reach-across-the-aisle-to-get-things-done-for-the-American-people figures among those running.

This scenario is an exquisite demonstration of the fact that culture comes before politics or economics. There is something in the makeup of a society that is so awash in prosperity, comfort, convenience and tachnological advancement, so removed from a sense of immediate danger (witness how quickly we went back to sleep after 9/11) that makes grandiose schemes, there-I-fixed-it wonkery, or, for that swath of the society that subscribes to a hard-left worldview, cries for "social justice" and "fairness" more appealing than simple truths that reality has proven time and time again.

While books, magazines and think-tank papers are churned out with regularity, the basic conservative message is fiarly easy to state:

1.) Economic freedom is inseparable from any other kind of freedom, and the state has no place in economic activity.

2.) The family structure that has been recognized the world over for thousands of years - a husband, wife and their children - is the societal unit where character is formed, and therefore must be upheld by public policy

3.) Men and women are fundamentally different

4.) People ought to form and foster civic institutions that build on the character-shaping function of the family. Churches and synagogues are foremost among these.

5.) War is a constant of the human condition, so we need a foreign policy and national-security stucture that reflects this fact.

There. That's about it.

Why is it so hard for this message to get through on a national level?

Foodie that I am, this phenomenon reminds me of our culture's seeming need to mess with recipes and time-honored foodstuffs in order to satiate our craving for novelty. We can't just have pizza pies that at least in the way they're marketed harken back to old Naples anymore; now they must have cheese-stuffed rims, or sport pineapples or barbecued chicken. We don't just eat sandwiches anymore; we load "flatbread" and "wraps" with all manner of ingredients, whether they make any thematic sense or not.

Similarly, we crave ever new forms of political razzle-dazzle that, as often as not, advance no ideology, good or bad. Zingers in debates, or emotion-triggering TV ads, or suspense surrounding endorsements suck the oxygen out of the polemical space which ought to be devoted to sharp and clear battling between worldviews that have been formed with the most rigor those asserting them could muster.

That would require a level of maturity I don't think we can collectively summon anymore.

Sorry, but I'm busy that day

So the community college where I'm adjunct faculty is hosting a free-and-open-to-the-public lunchtime event on MLK Day which will consist of people forming small groups called "diversity circles." The objectives are to "identify areas of mutual agreement and develop shared understandings" and "generat[e] conversations about overcoming stereotypes, intolerance, racism, and prejudice as well as for building stronger, more inclusive communities.”

The press release quotes a "local expert on diversity circles" as saying there is no intent to arrive at a consensus, but rather to "uncover areas of mutual agreement or common concern.”

This is totalitarianism's smiley face on full display. Come on in! Have a seat! We're "inclusive" here! Freedom-haters have become quite adept over the last few decades at presenting their agenda in such a way that any objection looks like heartlessness and bigotry. Against free school meals? You want to see children starve! Against appeasing rogue states? You want to see villages bombed! Against CAFE standards and subsidized solar panels (and carbon taxes on airlines - see post below)? You want to foul the air and water and heat up the "planet"! And now it's time to have the notion of a "welcoming community" thrust in our faces.

Who the hell is not welcoming and inclusive? All these young engineers being brought to town by the multinational corporation headquartered here - do they have a problem with each other? Does anybody else have a problem with them? Of course not. And how about basic racial bigotry? When was the last reported incident of that around here? Maybe 1968?

Ah, but some people come right out and express concern about things like the encroachment of sharia law, or the attempt to change the definitions of the terms "marriage" and "family," or giving a pass to people who enter the United States illegally and set up residence here. People with such backward notions need to be straightened out, clearly.

No consensus, my tail end. The readily discernible consensus is that Chistian teaching, concern for national security, and the assertion that there are some definite cultural pillars in our society that must be preserved if Western civilization is to survive are dangerous notions.

This is the nicey-nice side of the same mindset that brought us "hate crimes." It is the leviathan state's attempt to get inside the heads of free and sovereign citizens and parse their motives and their habits of thought.

Can you imagine how gooey and embarrassing participation in a "diversity circle" would be? All these pious, feelings-oriented deniers of their own human nature trying to out-include each other, trying to fabricate distances between themselves and their neighbors and associates just to have something to discuss during the tedious hour and a half.

As I say, I'm adjunct, so except when I stop by campus to check my cubby hole in the faculty mailroom, I'm generally only there on the evenings that my class convenes. It's sometimes easy to forget that my school is an instution in good standing in the post-American indoctrination machine.

The high cost of limiting economic freedom in the name of a "crisis" that doesn't even exist

Have you been planning a trip to Europe? Already created a budget? You'll need to make some alterations now that the European Union has expanded its Emissions Trading scheme to include air travel.