Only days ago, Obama gave a speech in which, rather than warn us against tyranny, he warned us against the people who go around warning us against tyranny.

The IRS revelations only get worse: From the Washington Examiner yesterday (via Ed Morrissey this morning), we learn that the IRS demanded of a pro-life group – under “perjury of the law”, the IRS staffer’s words – that it not engage in legal Planned Parenthood picketing. And required another pro-life group to furnish detailed plans on its constitutionally-protected speech activities.[1]

This is the same IRS that Obama has been beefing up to enforce Obamacare by demanding ever-greater private information of citizens.

The AP snooping scandal speaks for itself. Now from the GP comments, V the K reminds us of something Obama said in 2008:

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Video here.[2]

In these disparate data points, I see a pattern: Obama wants to be a tyrant – while pretending not to. My question is, do liberals really not see the pattern?

I know that some liberals have begun seeing it – and will, for example, condemn the IRS actions – but others don’t. The other day, I noted Julian Bond saying that he thinks conservative groups deserve the IRS harassment. The execrable Bill Maher has joined the fun there.

Obama maintains his democratic pretense by periodically declaring the goodness of his intentions. For example: yes, the other day he called the IRS actions “inexcusable”.

But a troubled President Nixon, as well as actual tyrants like Chavez and worse, also frequently declared their own goodness. So many of Obama’s other words, policies, and actions of his underlings point in a direction opposite to his self-declared goodness. Do liberals really not see? Or are they part of the pretense; de facto pro-tyranny?

—————-
[1] (I don’t know the ins and outs of these tax-exemption laws, but I thought that as long as a group would refrain from electioneering for parties/candidates, it would get a pass.)
[2] Students of history will note that the Fascists also believed in having powerful civilian, national security forces, and will be troubled by the weird applause that Obama’s liberal audience gave him for proposing it.

Speaking to students at Ohio State University on May 5, President Obama said:

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 is 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.

Obama said, in effect: Disregard people who worry about tyranny. We can have government do the things that they warn against, without it being tyranny, because we are such wonderful people – so well-intentioned – that it isn’t tyranny, when we do it.

Get it? So, when Obama has his administration lie to Americans so he can win re-election, or when he takes an increasing share of people’s incomes, or requires people to engage in private commerce that he happens to want (Obamacare mandate), or eliminates their rightful choices in the free market, or uses the IRS to obstruct his opponents and violate their privacy, or uses the Justice Department to snoop on reporters, or uses the EPA to extort fees from opponents (that progressive groups don’t have to pay – hat tip V the K), it’s not tyranny. Because it’s Obama doing it, and by his account, he can be trusted.

But the Framers of the constitution thought otherwise. They believed in checks and balances. They *were* those people who “warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.” They founded America, by “gumming up the works.”

Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that the Framers set up the United States as a republic under a limited government, precisely because they knew that all governments tend to degenerate into tyranny. Or perhaps Obama is unaware of his own party’s President Andrew Jackson, who said that “eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.”

Obama implies that people who warn us of tyranny are distrustful nihilists. Our only choice, Obama implies, is between continuing the crony-social-fascist gargoyle of a government that he now leads – and harmful anarchy. A typical Obama false choice (flowing from a typical Obama straw man), I’m pretty sure it has the Framers rolling in their graves.

So much for Obama. But there’s more! Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee recently said: (more…)

You’ve heard the news, now here’s the comment thread on your favorite gay conservative blog. Kermit Gosnell is guilty of three counts of murder re: the babies, and one count of involuntary manslaughter re: his grownup patient who died in a late-term abortion.

With outstanding cluelessness, Planned Parenthood tweeted “The jury has rightly convicted #Gosnell for his appalling crimes, ensuring no woman is victimized by him ever again.” Clueless, because – even apart from the fact that a Gosnell acquittal probably would have made PP breathe a sigh of relief – they made no mention of Gosnell’s main victims (the murdered babies).

NARAL’s statement started in a similar vein to PP, then topped PP by suggesting that conservatives are the real villains:

Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell today…Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.

Lefties!

FROM THE COMMENTS: Noting another deception in the NARAL quote, V the K says “Gosnell was not a ‘back alley butcher,’ he operated precisely the kind of ‘safe and legal’ abortion mill PP and NARAL champion; state licensed, he advertised in the yellow pages and accepted all major credit cards.”

When I wrote my first post on liberalism as more of a social phenomenon than an intellectual one, I imagined a series of posts dealing with many different implications of that idea.  So far I’ve written three other posts in the series on topics ranging from slogans to leftist intolerance and political changers to the so-called “wealth gap.”

One big topic that I haven’t explored yet–even though I’ve meant to do so since the start of the series–is the way in which liberal ideas are perpetuated on social media and elsewhere through the use of simple-minded memes.  As I considered the idea of social liberalism, one point which came to mind is that so many liberal memes might seem catchy at first glance,  but they are either responses to outlandish straw men, or they make no sense whatsoever when subjected to even the slightest bit of scrutiny.

At Legal Insurrection, Professor Jacobson has written a few posts about the role of the leftist site Upworthy in promulgating memes of both sorts, including a post this past Tuesday on the high cost of low-information voters.  And he’s not the only one to recognize the importance of simple-minded memes for the left.  For example, this post at Breitbart.com takes the idea one step further to reflect on the significance of LOLcats in politics.

What interests me at the moment, though, is that there is a whole class of liberal memes which go beyond the simple-minded to the downright pernicious: they promulgate leftist thinking in a way that seems ironic or clever or humorous, even as they blatantly acknowledge the darker goals of leftist ideology.   I stumbled across a prime example of one such meme on Facebook about two months ago when an acquaintance “shared” a meme which had been promoted by the Facebook group “Being Liberal” back in December 2011.  I’ve pasted the image below.

We’re all familiar with the common liberal tropes about “beating swords into plowshares” and the frequent lament heard on the left that “if we spent on education or social programs what we spent on the military” somehow all of society’s ills would disappear.   This meme takes that same tack, but uses “irony” to take it one step further by suggesting that the government can use the military to “win the hearts and minds of the population” and put the “locals to work” working on infrastructure politics.

By supposedly employing “irony” to make its point, therefore, it moves from the simple-minded lament about spending more on education and social programs into the territory of the pernicious by endorsing the use of the military as a means of social control.  The person who posts or re-posts the idea can feign ignorance of the pernicious implications by saying that the meme isn’t “serious” or that it is “just making a point through irony,” but it’s a point which betrays the left’s ignorance of the way free people and free markets operate.  The point of the meme is unmistakable:  all good comes through government, and we ought to use the force of government to establish a planned economy.

The Facebook page for “Being Liberal” attributes this meme to one of its readers named Terry Sebolt who wrote in and said (with the disingenuousness common on the left): “”Those were my words, but not my pic. Feel free to put it anywhere you want. I meant every word of it, and hope people enjoy the irony, regardless of credit. It was a throw away line…”

The claim may be spurious, though, as I did some internet searching and the earliest example I could find for the meme online was this appearance on Twitter from August 9, 2011.  I’ve posted a screenshot of the image below.

Regardless of the authorship, though, the claim is intended to make a point by shocking, even though those who quote the statement will try to distance themselves from its actual implications.  Those implications, though, tell us a great amount about the worldview of the left.

What’s even more amazing in the case of the person I know who re-posted this meme is that she is an immigrant from eastern Europe with a PhD in a scientific field from an American university.   She often refers to the bad days growing up in her country under a brutal dictator when everyone was suffering.  And so she moves to the U.S. and spends time in universities and decides that she’s a “liberal” and approvingly re-posts that “ironic” image.  If that’s not an example of a socially-promulgated disorder, then I’m not sure what would be.

I’ve hesitated to comment on yesterday’s Boston terror attack. Much of what could be said right now would be either obvious, or premature.

In the ‘obvious’ category: To attack masses of ordinary people trying to do something happy is singularly evil. (Some call it ‘cowardly’; but that’s not enough: It’s human evil.) Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

As to ‘premature’, I haven’t seen much real info yet on the identity or motives of the perpetrators. But hey, if you have seen something (or, as we get more news), please feel free to post it in the comments. Ditto for patterns in the Obama administration’s response.

As to patterns in the media coverage, it does seem as though some of the usual suspects want to wrongly insinuate the patriotic Right being at fault; but even there, the pattern (if any) is still forming.

As to the trial of Kermit Gosnell (who also slaughtered innocents) and its possible impacts, here are a few items of interest:

• The lamestream media has finally been forced to send reporters to the trial.
• Other unsafe/unsanitary abortion clinics are coming to light. (I thought these clinics were supposed to be better than back alleys?)
• LauraW (at Ace) puts her finger on why this matter is so sensitive for the pro-abortion Left: “As long as the belief persists among most reasonable people that the child has not been formed yet, and will not suffer, they will tolerate [abortion]…However, as soon as they understand that big, live, squealing babies are being murdered in abortion facilities, the spell is broken.”

UPDATE: As of this morning, Obama is calling the Boston attack ‘evil’ and an act of terror. Kudos – glad to see him state it clearly. Still no info, yet, on who did it.

And, so far as I know, still no comment from Obama on Gosnell. Yes, I am drawing a moral equivalency here between Gosnell and the Boston terrorist(s): both appear to have killed wantonly.

UPDATES: It looks like a pressure-cooker IED was used in Boston.

Steny Hoyer (D) says the attacks are “proof” that the ‘sequester’ budget cuts are bad, before catching himself and conceding that the paltry cuts are not “having any impact presently.”

UPDATE: The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to have slashed the domestic bombing-prevention budget by 45% in its time, while reportedly spending $200 million on Hawaiian vacations.

This will be a rambling non-post, inviting your input (even) more than usual.

First, here’s my general position on abortion. Having long believed that both total permissiveness on abortion and a total prohibition of it will lead to some horribly unjust outcomes, and that a line must be drawn somewhere even though the line will be permeable and arbitrary: I would ban late-term abortions – let’s say, I don’t think second-semester abortions should be allowed – while permitting early-term abortions – let’s say, I’d allow first-semester. (Again, I know the “semester” line is unclear and highly debatable; I simply believe that the other lines that people propose are worse.) Also, I favor counseling about the alternatives, and parental notification where the mother is a minor. Finally, I oppose publicly-funded abortions, i.e., I am against our government forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions against their conscience.

Having arrived at the above positions some time ago, I spend little time on the issue of abortion. It’s just not a top one for my interest.

But abortion may interest many of you. This is, after all, a gay conservative blog (and, as a non-conservative on certain issues, I am a guest).

So, what’s up with the Gosnell trial? It’s big right now, in Bruce’s Twitter stream. In my slower-moving way, I gather that:

1. Gosnell did some particularly shocking, immoral late-term abortions; and that
2. The media silence about the trial is shocking and repugnant in itself.

Is that the gist? Or is there more (or less) to it? Re: the media blackout – Is it a conspiracy perhaps, or just the media’s usual left-wing Herd Instinct? Has the trial been getting, say, foreign coverage?

People who have been following the trial, please feel free to inform me (and everybody) in the comments, and to express your informed opinion. I feel that, certainly on a conservative blog, this topic should get some daylight as a comment thread.

UPDATE: Wouldn’t you know, today Yahoo! is rotating a column on the Gosnell trial through its headlines, on and off. I don’t know if that means the wall of silence is cracking, or only that Yahoo! had me profiled as conservative-leaning.

UPDATE: The wall of silence is cracking. Ace has examples of Jake Tapper and Andersen Cooper both teasing some coverage to come. Naturally, and as Ace puts it, Cooper’s “entree into the story is through the prism of ‘not enough government regulation.’” Better than nothing!

It never ceases to amaze me that so many liberals fail to grasp the reality of the law of unintended consequences with respect to any piece of supposedly well-intentioned legislation.  I use the word “liberals” here rather than “leftists” because I mean to refer not to the hard-core, doctrinaire leftists, but to the garden variety liberals who continually get fooled by the left into supporting their ill-intentioned schemes.

The difference between a basic liberal and a hard-core leftist is nicely illustrated by the anecdote that opens this article about the left’s scheme to undermine American power in the world and the American way of life.  Daren Jonescu describes an acquaintance of his, a teacher, and a liberal, who was surprised to learn that the Communist Party of the U.S.A. had endorsed Obama:

When I explained that the Party’s official endorsement cited Obama’s signature policy initiatives as the surest means to achieving socialism in America, and that CPUSA leaders were actively campaigning for Obama in swing states, my colleague fell silent for a moment, and then said, matter-of-factly, “It doesn’t really bother me; I guess it might bother me if Obama were endorsing the Communist Party, but if they’re endorsing him, it doesn’t matter.”

In typical fashion, the liberal here manages to convince himself that what should be obvious is really inconsequential.

But I digress.  While it seems clear to me that the left’s aim in pursuing gun-control is to disarm the populace, liberals always buy into it because they believe the lie that gun-control will somehow reduce “gun-violence,” even though lawbreakers will always find ways to acquire guns.

In the current environment, for example, all the gun-control talk has created a run on guns, ammunition, and the magazines that the politicians are talking about outlawing.  And the liberals are flummoxed and upset about all of the guns being sold these days.  It’s a classic case of failing to understand the law of unintended consequences whenever gun-control becomes a fixation of the politicians and their agents in the media.

Of course, that is only just the beginning.  Opponents of more gun-control are always quick to point out that as the measures fail to achieve their aims, the calls for more restrictions and more confiscatory legislation will only escalate.  Conservatives recognize this, and leftists know that is their ultimate aim.  But liberals always delude themselves into perpetuating the lies of the left.

Every so often, though, they get a clue that the problem might not be as easily fixed as proponents of immediate legislative fixes would have them believe.  Consider, for instance, the title of this recent Washington Post article: “Weapons made with 3-D printers could test gun-control efforts.”

To follow the implications of that story to its logical conclusions is to recognize that one unsuccessful gun-control bill is but the first step down a slippery slope that can lead to more and more government intervention into every aspect of our lives, yet “liberals” still manage to remain in denial about that reality.

Tonight, my special guest on The GayPatriot Report will be television and film actor Adam Baldwin.  He comes from a different family tree than the “other Baldwins” — so no relation to Alec.

You may remember Adam’s roles in NBC’s “Chuck” and the “Firefly” series and movie.

Tonight, I’ll be talking guns and freedom with Adam as I know this is a big passion for him.

The GayPatriot Report airs LIVE at 9PM Eastern on The 405 Radio Network.   There will be a podcast available shortly after the show is finished.

We would be happy for callers!  The toll-free number is 877-297-8022.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

Last night before bed, caught these as the leading headlines on Yahoo!

Of the top headlines, five are related to the Connecticut shooting, only one could be considered news about the horror. The rest related to political jockeying over guns.

Instead of focusing on what happened, our friends in the legacy media have become obsessed over guns.

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds shared an exchange he caught on Facebook:

“What is the gun community going to do about this tragedy?”

“I dunno. What is the gay community going to do about Penn State?”

“Ouch”, added the blogmeiser, “But a fair response to unfair stigmatization. With the gay community, everyone would complain about smearing millions for the deviant and predatory behavior of a few.”

And such a response would be correct.  The pederast at Penn State was as representative of gay people as the shooter in Connecticut was of gun owners.

With the enactment yesterday in the Wolverine State of right-to-work legislation, freeing individual workers from the obligation to pay union dues, the unions have not reacted in a, well, dignified manner.

Take a gander at how union activists treated one conservative blogger outside the Michigan state capitol:

Via Hot Air.  The same folks knocked down a tent that Americans for Prosperity (with a permit) put up on the state capitol grounds, cheering as it collapsed with people in it.

Yet, neither AOL, Yahoo! nor the Washington Post cover this on their front pages this morning.  Here are some screen-captures of the Post’s front page:

(more…)

*crickets*

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

This is why our nation is in dire trouble.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

On Friday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution “endorsing the ‘meatless Monday’ campaign and asking residents to make a personal pledge to ditch meat for one day a week.”

In honor of that resolution, I believe we should gather for a steak dinner at a Los Angeles restaurant next Monday.  Please let me know if you’re interested so I can begin planning.

It is Sunday evening and I’ve had a very nice weekend away from the magnifying glass of politics. It has been a normal weekend: chores, laundry, dog walking & mindless television.

Sometime during the day, I started tweeting a series of ideas about where the Republican House of Representatives should go from here. My conclusion: Give Obama everything he wants.

Let’s pretend this is a parliamentary system. Let’s pretend the Democrats won and Obama was re-elected as Prime Minister. In that system, everything Obama wants would pass.

Let them have it. I’m not suggesting that Republicans of principle silence themselves and not warn about the consequences of Obama’s economic plans. Those Republicans would include Sens. Marco Rubio, Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz, Pat Toomey and Govs. Scott Walker, Susanna Martinez and Nikki Haley. Let them put their stakes of opposition forcefully and vocally in the ground.

But let the House GOP and the Senate GOP get out of the way and allow the Democrats what they want on the economy. No obstruction, perhaps a vote of “present”…. but no other sign of getting in the way.

We, as Conservatives, know that these economic policies are disaster. But Obama is right — Americans voted for higher taxes and more regulation — so let them have it.

We will win the long game. We should have allowed the economy to tank harder than it did in 2008 to begin with. And all that’s been happening since is kicking the can down the road.

So I’m in favor of a hard stop. Let the Democrats’ vision of economic “success” play itself out.

The result will be hardship the likes of which no American has faced since the 1930s. But so be it. Americans voted for it — let them have it.

Conservative policies will win in the long game.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

Reader Kurt passed this on.

At a theater last Friday in Salt Lake City, Mormon zealots portrayed the ritual murder of Barack Obama.

Oops, got that one wrong, it was Boulder, Colorado and they were portraying the ritual murder of Mitt Romney.

I post, you decide.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

“It was a weird debate,” began Jim Geraghty reflecting on last night’s Ryan-Biden match-up, “in that one candidate’s personality so totally dominated the proceedings, that your reaction to the debate will be decided almost entirely by what you think of Joe Biden when unplugged.”  Read the whole thing.

And while Joe Biden may have appeared (particularly to independent women and witty conservatives) to have lost his marbles, liberals were ecstatic, causing Hugh Hewitt to quip (as I noted previously), “The left is cheering Joe Biden’s meltdown, which is itself an indication of how far it has lost its bearings.”  He builds on this point by excerpting The Wall Street Journal’s debate summary:

But this 90 minutes wasn’t about an exchange of ideas or a debate over policies. It was a Democratic show of contempt for the opposition, an attempt to claim by repetitive assertion that Messrs. Ryan and Romney are radicals who want to destroy “the middle class.” Mr. Ryan’s cool under assault was a visual rebuttal of that claim, and we certainly know who looked more presidential.

Echoing the Journal, Jonathan S. Tobin believes Democrats were “delighted” with “Vice President Joe Biden’s obnoxious display” in large part because “the liberal base of the president’s party is so filled with anger and contempt for Republicans that they can’t abide even a show of civility from their champions.”  (Read the whole thing.)

This manic contempt was Biden’s apparently successful strategy to “throw the Obama base a lifeline” (via Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit).  What does it say about a political party that it rallies on the boorish behavior of an angry old man?

And this “from the administration that promised to bring back civility to American politics” (via Instapundit).

UPDATE:  Jennifer Rubin has a similar perspective:  ”That lefty bloggers and pundits ate up Biden’s antics is a telling commentary on how vitriolic the left in general has become.”

UP-UPDATE:  Neoneocon asks, “what does it say about the Democratic base if this is the sort of thing that gets its members’ juices flowing?“

I spent the better part of Monday driving across the Golden State, from my apartment in West Hollywood to my sister’s place in the San Francisco suburbs.  I saw a total of two Obama bumper stickers, both in the LA area and one Romney/Ryan sticker on a (very) small car with New Mexico plates in the Central Valley.  And in the East Bay, did see a Tea Party banner, offering Mr. Obama a pink slip.

Striking that in the midst of a presidential campaign, I’d see so little evidence of that campaign.

I missed the big story of the day — or what would be the big story (as in super-duper big) had it happened in a Republican administration — where “the Secretary of State’s spokesman–the diplomat’s diplomat” (to borrow John Hinderaker’s expression) used some very undiplomatic language in response to a BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hasting’s request for information about (among other things) the State Department’s failure to secure/search the American consulate in Benghazi after the terrorist attacks on the facility earlier this month.

Spokesman Phillippe Reines, “couldn’t or wouldn’t answer“, as Ann Althouse put it, Hastings’s “excellent set of questions”.  And although many have focused on Reines’s, well, intemperate response, Althouse believes

Those nasty comebacks shouldn’t be the story. They should direct us to the set of questions. Those are great questions, and the State Department will not answer them. Without answers, they feel like questions that answer themselves.

Can you imagine the coverage this story would garner had the spokesman to a Republican official responded in such a manner?  (Text of his responses in first link above.)  Within hours of the story breaking, he would have submitted his resignation.

There is a huge story in this failure to answer these questions, a story of a department in disarray.  We need to learn more about this story.  Heads should roll.  And more reporters should be asking questions.

RELATED:  John Nolte reminds us of the media overreaction when a Romney spokesman told reporters to kiss his “ass, after they started heckling Romney at the sacred site where Poland buries its war dead“.

(John also believes the administration is focusing on the film used as a pretext for the protests “to draw attention and blame away from U.S. security failures“.)

With Chicago’s murder rate surging, you’d think a city alderman would have better uses for his time than to pester a private company, yet Alderman Joe Moreno has garnered national headlines for his attempts to prevent Chick-fil-A from contributing to groups that support traditional marriage.

Even as the chicken chain’s management has “enacted workplace protections for its employees against discrimination“, Moreno wants more:

 A Chicago alderman says Chick-fil-A’s president is publicly contradicting what company executives personally assured him for months — that the fast-food chain is changing its stance on gay marriage — and he asked the company Sunday to clarify. . . .

Moreno said Chick-fil-A executives gave him a letter earlier this year saying the company’s non-profit arm, the WinShape Foundation, will not support organizations with political agendas. “We were told that these organizations included groups that politically work against the rights of gay and lesbian people,” Moreno said.

(Via HotAir headlines.)  Simply put, it is not the business of the government to police the political stands of private companies.

It is one thing for an individual not to choose to eat at the restaurant because of its management’s political stands, it’s quite another for a representative of the government to try to prevent them from taking a stand.

UPDATE:  Just caught this on Instapundit:

NEW VERB:  TO BE “CHICK-FIL-Aed”:  William McGurn astutely observes that the continuing saga of Chick-Fil-A’s skirmish with gay rights’ forces isn’t a political fight about a controversial topic, but instead part of a larger progressive agenda to silence all opposing views.   There’s one small problem that I see with the attempt to vilify CFA:  their sandwiches–oh, the essence of pickle!– are divine.

Yes, pretty much sums it up.  It is about silencing opposing views.  Does seem gay marriage advocates are quite eager to do that.  If they’re so confident in their cause, why don’t they relish the opportunity to debate it?

A federal judge for the Southern District of California is allowing a woman to proceed with her case against Avis Rent-A-Care because the company “did not give her the gay and lesbian group member price discount.”   In his ruling he cites “California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act” which “seeks to prevent any discrimination among people on the basis of listed characteristics.”  (Via Instapundit.)

The plaintiff, he wrote, “has stated a plausible claim for relief, i.e., that AVIS violated the prohibitions of the Act regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”  If she succeeds in her suit, private companies, like Avis, will no longer be able to offer discounts to members of gay and lesbian organizations.

If Avis wishes to offer discounts to members of gay and lesbian organizations as a means to promote their service, the company should be free to do so. And if this woman believes Avis is discriminating against her, she remains free to take her business elsewhere.  Avis is not the only rental car company.