An Abomination

I'm pretty jaded at my age, but Glenn Beck stating he's going to reclaim the civil rights movement on the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream speech" blows my mind.  Beck believes the civil rights movement has become "an abomination."  I almost vomited in my morning coffee when I read that whopper.  A delusional, divisive, white Mormon is going to redeem the civil rights movement?  How, by claiming it for white people?  The man's stupidity is only outdone by his audacity.  How many black people do you think you'll see at his rally?

High on Hayek

Too many conservatives confuse Hayek's insight that the government can never have enough information to properly fix prices with the proposition that the government can never successfully intervene in the economy.  The latter proposition simply isn't true.  There are many reasons to be wary of government intervention, but it is not a given that such intervention is bad.

Failure's Success

The Economist grudgingly admits in its latest issue that Obama's government takeover of GM worked.  The allegedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that Obama's stimulus package saved jobs and prevented the economy from contracting.  Yet ideologically straight jacketed conservatives, who offer no economic prescriptions except the exact same ones that got us into this mess, oppose any new form of stimulus or government intervention in the economy.  The economic indicators of late, which reflect the fact that Obama's stimulus is wearing out, do not bode well for the U.S. economy.  Yet any hope of a new stimulus bill, or any creative solution to this crisis, does not exist.  All we get are the same tired mantras from the opposition about cutting taxes, deficits, and the role of government.  The exact same rigid ideologies we were battered with as we careened into this current crash.    

Hallowed Bullshit

Just who consecrated Ground Zero?  What do you really mean when you say it's hallowed, sacred ground?  Aren't you just really saying it's an exclusive Christian cemetery and everyone else can go fuck themselves?  How can a concept like hallowed sacred ground even be intelligible without the prism of religion?  How can you argue with a straight face that this really isn't about religion but is about sensitivity to sacred ground?  The hallowed and the sacred are meaningless outside the religious context. 

Sensitivity and the Constitution

Apparently sensitivity is the new arbiter of Constitutional rights.  The opponents of the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque claim they aren't religious bigots who oppose religious freedom and private property rights.  They're just sensitive to the feelings of an abstraction known as the 9/11 families, who allegedly are offended by the proposed building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero.  As a New York gubernatorial candidate put it, "it's not about religious freedom, it's about ideology."  (I paraphrase). This was in the context of proposing to seize the land where the Cordoba Institute wants to build its community center using eminent domain.  This is quite a contortion on how Constitutional rights are usually protected by our courts.  Normally the courts enforce the free exercise of religion and private property rights against those who are offended by them.

Allowing for sensitivity to be the arbiter of constitutional rights means shredding the Constitution.  If I'm offended by you carrying a gun in a bar in Arizona, can I now tell you to go elsewhere?  If I don't like what you write, can I now tell you to print it elsewhere?  Likewise with due process, equal protection, universal suffrage etc etc.  If you don't understand the fundamental fact that the Bill of Rights protects the minority from what offends the majority then you don't understand our Constitution. You know nothing about the Know Nothings, as has been said.  I don't buy for one minute that this is not about Constitutional freedoms and is really all about people's feelings.  The fascist overtones to this whole debate are disturbing.