In the past decade, there has been a spate of books with titles of the year, their authors believe, was seminal in national or world history.  Perhaps, their attention to the significance of dates is in response to the trend in the 1970s to de-emphasize dates in studying the events of the past.  On book, April 1865, even goes so far as to define one particular month as significant.  Other important years become books include 1066*, 1421, 1434, 1453, 1776 and 1948**.

Last year, Charles Freeman came along with A.D. 381, suggesting that events of that year led to the dawn of the Dark Ages.  And while Freeman makes a strong case that Roman Emperor Theodosius’ decree defining Christian orthodoxy and so ending a spirited debate on divinity and the trinity, he spends fare more time discussing events in previous years (and subsequent ones) to convince that 381 was indeed as seminal as he claims.

That said, he distills a lot of information to make an important point about the end of debate and the decline (and eventual collapse) of the Roman Empire:

The tragedy of Thoedosius’ (sic) imposition and its aftermath lay in the elimination of discussion, not only of spiritual matters but across the whole spectrum of human knowledge.  ‘Pagan’ thinkers shared with many Christians a belief that freedom of debate was an essential part of a healthy society.  The Nicene debates themselves show that intellectual progress was being made, because the participants were continually revising their positions in response to each other.  From 381 onwards, Theodosius and his successors eliminated the tradition of free speech.  By deriding the opponents of Nicaea as ‘demented heretics’ and threatening them with the weight of the law and eternal punishment, they destroyed the possibilities of continuing debate.”

Emphasis added.

Deriding opponents?   Hmm. . . . . where else do we see that going on?  Eliminating discussion, you know like that leader telling us “the time for talk is through,” that Democrat who told us that he doesn’t want certain folks doing a lot of talking.

Like those Romans who brought us the Dark Ages, Obama and his Democrats have derided their opponents so as to discredit their opinions and speak longingly of silencing us as well.  Let’s hope they don’t succeed, lest history repeat itself.

* (more…)

Seems like most people are getting pretty good health care after all: Life expectancy in US up, deaths not, CDC says.

I expect Yahoo! to pull this from its top headlines any moment now.

And one of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.

President Barack Obama
The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (March 2009)

New White House Strategy: Blame Everybody Else

Matthew Continetti, The Weekly Standard

RELATED:  Democrats: We Can’t Pass Health Care Because of Those Damn Republicans

Last night, I took my health insurance broker out for a steak dinner with all the trimmings, including a bottle of wine, at a restaurant that was, well, not cheap in Beverly Hills.  You see, before he became my insurance broker, he was just a friend, a fellow graduate of America’s finest liberal arts’ college and an all-around nice guy.

A few months ago, upset that the premiums on my HMO had skyrocketed (I was paying almost $6,000 a year for health insurance), I asked him if he could get me a cheaper plan which gave me more choices.  And perhaps as a bit of rhetorical flourish, I offered to buy him a dinner worth the cost of the difference in my monthly premium.

And I’m a man of my word.

He helped me navigate through the complexity of the many competing plans to find one more appropriate for a healthy guy like myself than the one I had purchased without fully knowing the choices available to me.  (In a later post, if there’s interest, I can explain how I got stuck in the high-paying HMO.)

Thanks to his knowledge of the industry (far greater than my own), I was able to make an informed choice, taking a different plan with different benefits at a different carrier at a much lower price (the full cost of the dinner for both of us, including tip,was roughly equivalent to my monthly savings).

Up until recently, I simply did not know the choices available to the average American.  From my conversations with others, I gather they are as much in the dark as I once was.  Based on what I read in the press, I had simply assumed it would be difficult for me, as an individual, to get health care coverage.

What is needed in the current debate is what I needed in my search for a better plan more appropriate to my needs:  better information.  (more…)

. . . but Democrats get a pass when they so describe “opponents of the Democratic agenda.”

Just like his one-time House colleague, Ma’am Barbara Boxer, the unhappy Barney Frank, first elected to Congress in 1980 (and only once, as an adult, having a job outside the public sector) prefers demeaning his constituents to acknowledging the sincerity of their concerns.

Barney, Barney, Barney, you of all people to get upset when someone yells at you.  Oh, Barney, people are upset.  Have you ever consider how your actions in Congress might contribute to this?  You should take heed to your Connecticut colleague who understands why people might be angry about what you guys are trying to do in Washington.

A man, who accuses Republicans of being racist, questions his constituents’ thoughtfulness!?!?  And then he asks, “What’s the matter with y’all?”  A question he might better ask himself.

Via JammieWearingFool who writes:

Even in the bluest of blue states the angry mob is keeping the heat on the mealy-mouthed Democrats. Tonight Barney Frank got an earful in South Dartmouth, MA. True to form he insults his constituents.

Maybe Republicans in the Bay State can find an entrepreneur to ran against this means-spirited man and remove this partisan from the public eye.

(H/t:  Glenn and Hot Air.)

Looks like Ma’am Boxer’s going to have an opponent with deep pockets:

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina inched closer Tuesday toward a run for U.S. Senate next year, filing paperwork that will allow her to begin raising money for polling, political consultants and other preparations as she nears a formal decision in the next several weeks.

Fiorina, a Republican who served as a top surrogate to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, has strongly signaled that she will challenge three-term Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010. On Tuesday, she announced that she has filed forms with the IRS to create a political bank account, which she is calling “Carly for California.”

My advice to Ms. Fiorina:  Keep Ma’am on the defensive.  Remember, Ma’am’s going to play the game she played in ’92 and ’98, going into the gutter to attack her Republican opponents.  Don’t play the game on her terms.  Play her game, stay on offense and force her to play defense, keep asking her why a woman with a near three-decade career in Washington prefers sliming her opponent to defending her record.  Make sure to ask Ma’am what she’s done for the Golden State–and why she would rather insult her constituents than meet with them.

Remember, Ms. Fiorina, you’re not the issue; Ma’am is.  She’s been in Washington 27 years.  In her 17 years in the Senate, things haven’t improved in the Golden State.  And people, even here in liberal California, aren’t particularly happy with the political class today.

And let me know what I can do to help.  It will be a good day for California and a better day for the United States when a woman like you replaces a mean-spirited Ma’am like Barbara Boxer.

Oh, happy day, oh happy, happy.  Where do I send my check?

Watching how much Senator Arlen Specter (Opportunist-Pennsylvania) has had to contort himself into a card-carrying left-winger in order to please his new bosses in the Democratic Party so as to better win its nomination for next fall’s general election contest.  He has flip-flopped on “card check” and now spouts the left-wing line on those speaking out against Obamacare (saying they don’t represent America) at town hall meetings across the Keystone State (even though this view flies in the face of reality).

Those who have taken the time to talk to people attending Pennsylvania town halls have found such protesters to be quite a diverse lot, mostly concerned citizens who came there on their own steam (and their own dime).

At an age when most men are content to retire from public life to devote themselves to their passions spend time with their families, Specter seems particularly desperate to stay in the Senate, as if his life’s meaning revolves around remaining in the public eye, even if the only interest he is advancing is stroking his own ego.

Given his swift shift to the far left these past few months, he seems to be saying in his desperation that he really needs this job, so what better theme song for his campaign that “I Hope I Get it” from A Chorus Line:

The primary difference is that many of these actor/dancer/singers believed in something beyond themselves.

It’s funny how these supposed champions of the Enlightenment can’t grasp that people can disagree with them for honest reasons.

Jonah Goldberg

It seems a standard fallback position for defenders of the President to resort to the argument he first used in the early days of Administration when facing resistance from elected Republicans to the “so-called stimulus.”  They merely repeat the mantra that he won.

To be sure, he did win.  But, if his victory means he is entitled to win passage of all his legislative initiatives, well, then, let’s first have all these folks apologize for blocking George W. Bush’s proposals in 2005-06 and move immediately to confirm all the federal judges he nominated.

Just because a candidate wins election doesn’t mean the majority (or plurality, in some cases) who backed him favors every policy he puts forward.  And anyway, in our republican form of government, the legislature must first approve said policies.

Many Democrats are balking at the president’s latest proposals because they recognize that the American people don’t show the same enthusiasm for Obama’s policies as they once did for Obama the candidate.  In order to generate that enthusiasm, he distinguished himself from the freespending Republican incumbent.

Yes, he proposed new spending schemes, but did so in the context of a “net spending cut.”  He was going to pay for new programs by cutting existing ones.  But, when he assumed office, he proposed new federal programs while increasing the outlays for existing ones.  Obama’s ability to win over wavering independent voters was contingent on his commitment to reining in federal spending (that he continues to talk about holding the line of federal spending shows that he still recognizes the power of this notion).

In short, he convinced a majority of the American people to back his candidacy by making clear that the change advocated was not radical and the spending increases he proposed would be paid for with spending cuts.  That he has not delivered on those promises show his current actions at odds with his electoral mandate.  They show as well why he is losing favor with the American people.

With a recent Gallup poll showing that conservatives outnumber liberals in every state, even the President’s Illinois and socialist Bernie Sanders’ Vermont, it is clear, to paraphrase Mark Twain, that reports of the death of the conservative movement are premature.

And while some may say we need a leader to begin anew, the signs of the revitalization of conservatism are everywhere.  Many (if not most) of those gathering in public squares and congressional town halls to take issue with the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul may not identify as conservatives.  But, by the very questions they raise, they stand up for a basic tenet of American conservatism:  distrust of big government.

Poll after poll show the American people continue to oppose ever increasing government spending, with a July Gallup survey showing that the primary reason for “disapproval of the president’s economic policies was, literally, ‘spending too much.’“  In short, conservative ideas continue to resonate.  We don’t need a leader to galvanize our base (but we will need leaders to defeat increasingly unpopular spendthrift Democratic politicians).

That the issues continue to rally the right (that Gallup survey showed that 65% of those who disapproved of Obama did so because of issues*) shows the contrast between the revitalized conservative movement and the fading appeal of the movement which propelled the President to power.  Obama’s movement was little more than a personality cult built on his image.  The “Tea Parties” and the spontaneous expressions of opposition to Obamacare grow out of an idea, the same one that motivated patriots in thirteen British colonies to take first to the streets and harbors, then to arms, in the 1770s:  freedom.

In recent years, the left was first united in opposition to George W. Bush, then in support of his successor.  We conservatives (and libertarians) have long been drawn to an idea.  Had George W. Bush and congressional Republicans understood the importance of small-government principles to their conservative base, the former may have left office with higher approval ratings and many of the latter might still be in office.

———-

*Whereas only 17% of those who approved his performance cited “issues” as the reason for their support.

According to Michael Barone,  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “is not going to conduct in-person town meetings in Nevada during the August recess.“  Read the whole thing as Barone takes apart Reid’s lame excuse for avoiding his constituents.

This seems to be a pattern among all too many Democrats, attack those protesting the legislation you propose, but don’t deign to meet with them to learn why they’re so upset with Democratic plans to overhaul the health care system with which most Americans are pretty happy.

They could learn from one of their number, Connecticut Congressman Chris Murphy.  That good man (and yes, he’s a Democrat) understands says “people have a right to be concerned, even angry about” the issues he and his colleagues are addressing in Washington.  But, unlike Mr. Reid and Ma’am Boxer, he believes it’s “productive” when he talks “to my constituents in an unfiltered way.”

A better attitude to have than calling your constituents names or misrepresenting the motives for taking to streets and townhalls to protest an increased federal role in the health care.

Remember the daily, almost hourly, updates we got back in 2005 when Cindy Sheehan protested the War in Iraq outside then-President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch?

Well, according to Byron York:

She’s still protesting the war, and on Monday she announced plans to demonstrate at Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama will be vacationing.

And it doesn’t seem the media are paying much attention.  York sums it up:

But her days are over. The people who most fervently supported her have moved on.

Not too long ago, some observers worried that Barack Obama would come under increasing pressure from the Left to leave both Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, it seems those worries were unfounded. For many liberal activists, opposing the war was really about opposing George W. Bush. When Bush disappeared, so did their anti-war passion.

When I first considered blogging, before I had even heard of GayPatriot (indeed before this blog even existed), I ran through countless potential blogging monikers for myself from AmericanCamus to something from a favorite flick.

As I was pondering the perfect name for a website, I discovered a fledging blog called GayPatriot, wrote the eponymous solo blogger to congratulate him on a post taking Log Cabin to task for failing to endorse W’s reelection.  We exchanged e-mails, instant messages and the next thing I knew, he invited me to join him here.  I still agonized over my own moniker, so finally just settled on GayPatriotWest.

I’d always wanted something a little more descriptive, saying something about my passions.  In the intervening years, other ideas came to me, many involving the topic of my dissertation.  No one name really called out to me.  Nothing really worked.

So, I decided to go with my own name.

I realized that when I was first searching for a moniker, I wanted to describe myself without revealing myself.  I had intended to maintain my anonymity because my public political identification could compromise (if not destroy) any chance I had of breaking into the entertainment industry.  (And it’s hard enough breaking into the industry as it is.)  Still, barely two months after I started blogging, when interviewed by a reporter from a Boston gay paper, I agreed to let him use my name in the article.

I had crossed a personal Rubicon.  If this would make it more difficult for me to succeed in Hollywood, then so be it.  And anyway, I was getting tired of remaining silent when friends and acquaintances discussed politics.

From then on, having the moniker GayPatriotWest served primarily as a means to identify myself as the blogger at GayPatriot who lives on the West Coast.

I had thought I might have something particularly profound to say about the importance of blogging under your own name and not hiding behind a fabricated moniker.

I suppose the most profound thing I can say in this.  Both Bruce and I have been subject to mean-spirited personal attacks on left-wing blogs, in our very comments section and oftentimes in our e-mail by those who hide behind a cloak of anonymity.

While we don’t engage in such vituperative attacks, we do take issue with a great number of people, including leaders in the gay community.  It didn’t seem right to criticize them while not disclosing our own identities.  I’m not ashamed of who I am, an American, a Republican, a gay man, a lover of myth, legend and history, a film buff and a Tolkien geek who loves Beowulf who is devoted to his nephews and nieces.  And so many other things.

One simple moniker couldn’t describe all that without leaving something out.  Perhaps my name contains multitudes.

This will be my last post as GayPatriotWest.

As may of you know, I have long been considering changing my blog moniker, even announcing the immanence of this change earlier this year when I settled on the new name (by which I would sign my posts).

Me being me, I didn’t want to just switch from one moniker to another, but, well, also wanted to explain why I was making the change.  I kept putting off the change so I could craft the perfect explanation.  So, tomorrow, with my next post, I’ll do just that.  (In the post linked above, I explained the origins of this soon-to-be-retired moniker.)

(I may update this post should I find it necessary.)

In the 1990s, when I was President of the Log Cabin Republican Club of Northern Virginia, I used to appear regularly at Republican events across the region (and in the District of Columbia).  While I would identify our group as an organization of gay Republicans and would occasionally bring a date, getting one date’s permission in 1998 to introduce him to the then-Lieutenant Governor of Virginia (current father-in-law to W’s daughter) as my boyfriend.

Beyond that, I did little to advertise my sexuality.  I found it best to let them know I was gay and show that I was otherwise just a regular Republican.  I didn’t think it helped promote social acceptance of gay peopl by being “in your face” about it.

This is why I don’t have much truck with those who stage certain stunts into order to make a statement.  On Saturday, in response to two gay men being arrested last month for kissing on property owned by the Church of the Latter Days Saints in downtown Salt Lake City (as well as similar incidents in Texas), gay groups across the nation organized kiss-ins in cities across the nation:

Twenty-two people, many of them strangers to one another, gathered under the scorching sun on Washington’s National Mall to participate in the national smooch. They were gay and straight, couples and singles of all ages, with placards that read “Equal Opportunity Kisser” and “A Kiss is a Not a Crime.”

Do you interpret this as I do? That some of the couples doing the public smooching included individuals who didn’t know one another?  Hardly a public display of spontaneous affection that.

While the AP article dwells (and dwells and dwells) on how the arrests hurts the Mormon church’s image (despite the absence of evidence that the Texas arrests were linked to Mormons), I wonder how such stunts stymie the social advancement of gay people.  People will wonder why we need so advertise our sexuality.  (The media does seem obsessed with maligning Mormons.)

It’s one thing to walk hand in hand with the person you love.  Or to in a moment of passion, kiss him, even if in a public place.  But, a staged kiss-in does more harm than good.

If such folks really think such kiss-ins will improve our image, I suggest they try them in front of a mosque or church in the African-American community.

(Oh, and, in the article linked above, the AP reporter leads off with an error by saying Prop 8 “banned gay marriage in California.”  It did no such thing; it merely prevented the state from recognizing it.)

Sometimes, our readers do a better job of defending us than we do ourselves.

When a critic contended that those protesting the President’s plans to overhaul our health care system were mere stooges of the insurance companies (and not grassroots protesters), North Dallas Thirty took issue with him (far more succinctly and much more to the point than I):

. . . he believes that the only way people would oppose Obama is if they were paid to do so. He simply cannot even entertain the possibility that people could disagree with Obama.

While I might quibble with a term NDXXX used in the part (of his comment) I did not quote, he’s really onto something here.

All too many on the left (and even a good number on the right) are simply astounded at the intensity of the spontaneous protests against a bigger and more intrusive national government.  We Americans may have not seen anything like this since the ’70s, the 1770s, that is.

It’s simply amazing that some of our readers as well as those who work in the liberal media and write for left-wing blogs refuse to accept that their fellow Americans could have principled objections to and genuine concerns about Obama’s big-government policies, particularly given the failure of so many statist schemes to improve the economy as well as the delivery of a great variety of services, including health care.

Even Obama’s campaign rhetoric suggested some sympathy for those favoring smaller government.  If he could understand those concerns in his campaign, why can’t his supporters understand then now that he’s in office?

FROM THE COMMENTS:  ThatGayConservative writes:

These folks have paid rent-a-mobs so they assume everybody else does it too. Still waiting for somebody to provide evidence of the insurance companies paying folks to oppose Chairman Obama. Should be just as easy as finding ads on CraigsList, right?

Citizens in the 29th District of New York should pay attention to this video (hat tip Washington Times):

On the heels of the president of the United States saying he doesn’t want to hear from those who oppose his Stalinist plans, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives calling those “well-dressed” people who stand up against the statist take-over of the health care industry Nazis, comes now a Representative who intends and brags that he’s going to vote against what his constituency wants.

To give the hapless Congressman a break, I think his reiteration, that he “will vote against their opinion” is probably what he meant to say when he at first said he “will vote adamantly against the interests” of his district. But isn’t that bad enough?

I guess it’s for the “right wing” people of Canandaigua and Hornell to decide. One-term Congressman? Looks like it to me!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Remember back to those halcyon days of 2005, when, in the wake of George W. Bush’s historic reelection (never before in U.S. history had the son of an President won a majority of the popular vote in his own bid for the White House or been elected to a second term) and those protesting his policies showed such civility and respect, unlike, say, the gun-toting loonies who gather today to protest his successor’s statist solutions to all manner of problems.

Back then, it was only grannies and others who had never previously protested along with a diverse group of everyday folk who took to the streets on their own steam to take issue with an out-of-touch Administration:

In the crowd: young activists, nuns whose anti-war activism dates to Vietnam, parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for the first time to protest.

Connie McCroskey, 58, came from Des Moines, Iowa, with two of her daughters, both in their 20s, for the family’s first demonstration. McCroskey, whose father fought in World War II, said she never would have dared protest during the Vietnam War.

But, today, save the AP’s Erica Werner (and a few others), when the MSM turns their attention to the rallies, they focus not on the grannies (of whom they are very, very, very, very many) protesting the President’s proposed healthcare overhaul) and others taking to the streets for the first time, but the loony-toon-toons, of whom there are a few.

As anybody who has ever participated in a political organization or cause can tell you, there are always a handful of loony-toon-toons.

Back in 1995, when I took the environmental activist Democrat I was dating to a Republican event, he commented how the make-up was exactly like that of liberal events he had attended, a diverse mix of folk, with a share of, well, crackpots.  We didn’t do a scientific survey so could not determine whether my side or his had a greater percentage of crackpots, but they were there–and very often, the friendliest of the lot.

Had the media covered the 2005 anti-Iraq War rallies as they cover the anti-Obamacare rallies, they would have written much about the socialist ideology of the sponsoring organization, pointing out that many left-wing groups were bussing in their acolytes and showing, not bespectacled grannies in comfortable clothes wearing sensible hats to protect them from the sun, but angry leftists with hateful T-shirts, hoisting colorful placards depicting the then-President as Hilter and his supporters as goose-stepping Nazis.

Note how in this transcript of former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s exchange on NBC’s Meet the Press with Rachel Maddow and David Gregory, the latter presses the Republican to repudiate the Nazi imagery at a Tea Party rally, but Gregory and she fail to answer whether they repudiated “it when MoveOn.org did it to George Bush” (i.e., compared that good man to Hitler).

It will be interesting to see if anyone can come up with comments from media voices eager to link the various T-party movements to Nazi imagery demanding that Democrats repudiate left-wing groups whose members (and sometimes leaders) compared Bush to Hitler and Republicans to Nazis.

Why must Armey repudiate them? Does he belong to a group which made such a comparison? Did he encourage members of that group to do so? Did he countenance such comparisons? Did Gregory ever press any prominent Democratic activist to repudiate the antics of moveon.org or International A.N.S.W.E.R. which organized the anti-Iraq War rallies? Or the name-calling of the Bush years? Did Maddow claim a left-wing group promoted violence because of an imaginary video on its web-page?

Yes, in the course of the countless rallies and protests at various townhalls across the nation, some of the opponents of the Democrats’ health care overhaul have behaved in a boorish manner, waving signs saying “mean things” and attempting to shout down their opponents. They hurt their own cause when they behave that way.

And yet, the overwhelming majority have only done what the First Amendment to the Constitution allows us to do,”peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Despite that, all too many in the mainstream media have focused on the boorish behavior and have determined that it defines the movement. Recently, a friend of mine, a decent, civil liberal and supporter of the President, asked me if I supported the rallies, assuming they included primarily mean-spirited protesters insulting the President.  He had no idea how diverse they really were. (more…)