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Wednesday, March 31, 2004

An Answer to Barbara Streisand
Opinion © 2004, by Guy L. Evans

On her website, Barbara Streisand has a piece called “The Myth of Bush as Hero” (3-30-04). At the end of the piece, she poses the following question:

“Isn’t leadership about accepting responsibility, anticipating the unfathomable, heeding warnings and firmly taking action?”

My answer is “no”.

The question, as it is written, asks, “Is not leadership about accepting responsibility and anticipating the unfathomable and heeding warnings and firmly taking action?”

The answer must necessarily be “no”.

The question asks whether leadership is “about” (requires?) “accepting responsibility” and “anticipating the unfathomable” and “heeding warnings” and “firmly taking action”. Taken separately, the answer would be that, yes, leadership requires “accepting responsibility” and “heeding warnings” and “firmly taking action”.

However, leadership can never require “anticipating the unfathomable”. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “unfathomable” as “impossible to comprehend”. Anticipation requires that the subject matter be comprehensible. It is impossible to anticipate anything that cannot be comprehended.

The entire question contains an impossible condition—comprehending what is impossible to comprehend. The condition is impossible to fulfill.

If it is possible to anticipate the unfathomable, then Bill Clinton is just as culpable as George W. Bush is. After all, President Clinton had eight years to anticipate the unfathomable. Also, had Al Gore been elected President and the September 11, 2001, attacks happened, then Al Gore would have been culpable, also, as would the American people, including you. We are all guilty of failing to anticipate the unfathomable.

Requiring George W. Bush to comprehend what is incomprehensible amounts to making impossible demands, then condemning him for failing. It is unfair, and demonstrates prejudice.

If it is your position that George W. Bush is not qualified to be President of the United States for failing to anticipate the unfathomable, then no one on the face of the Earth is qualified to be President of the United States, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John F. Kerry.

But, maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you can give examples of people who successfully anticipated the unfathomable. Are there any examples in your own experience?

As for me, I don’t want a President who can anticipate the unfathomable. I would consider such a person to be clearly insane.

Guy L. Evans
Aurora, Colorado

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

My Dog Barfy
Short story © 2004, by Guy L. Evans

I got tired of my dog Barfy running away every day, so I had him de-boned.

I’m sorry I did it. Now, he just lies around and slobbers.

I have to take him for a drag twice a day, and it doesn’t matter what I call him, he won’t come anyway.

Sorry, Barfy.

Guy L. Evans
Aurora, Colorado

Marathon of Folly
Opinion © 2004, by Guy L. Evans

In a brilliant piece in FrontPageMag.com, Paul Mirengoff states the following:

"The Democratic Party contains at least two core constituencies - African-Americans and feminists - whose leaders view rules as instruments of their oppression and barriers to their advancement. In fact, the centerpiece of much modern civil rights employment litigation is the attack on neutral rules that disproportionately exclude African Americans from a particular job. Examples include tests, educational requirements, and even the requirement that an employee not have been convicted of a crime. Similarly, what is the demand for affirmative action other than a demand that the normal rules for selecting employees based on merit be ignored to the extent that they interfere with desired outcomes?…

"The common thread here is something akin to cheating. No wonder these core groups, and the sophisticates who believe that rules exist only to be deconstructed, admired Clinton's intellectual gyrations on key issues and now tolerate Gore's less supple efforts."

In short, Democratic Party core constituencies view rules as instruments of their oppression and barriers to advancement, and for this reason feel that they are entitled to cheat. Paul Mirengoff, in a short bit of text, has hit on the most profound truth of modern politics. Because core constituencies of the Democratic Party view rules as instruments of oppression, they believe that all rules are designed merely to oppress and obstruct. They believe that they are entitled, and in many cases required, to defeat the rules by any means, and that committing any crime or engaging in any immoral behavior is permissible if it achieves the end of defeating the oppressive rules. They believe that criminals are victims of oppression, that terrorists are freedom fighters, and that anyone who opposes the current order is in agreement with them.

The modern Democratic Party and their core constituents are fools of the first order. The aim of the Democrats is not to build a better world, but to "deconstruct" the social order, to break every rule, to violate every trust, to discard thousands of years of history as so much trash, to level modern civilization, and to build nothing in its place. Their aim is to remove instruments of oppression and obstruction. However, the same rules that oppress and obstruct them also protect them.

The folly of this enterprise is obvious. Let's take a romp through the absurd reasoning process of the Democratic Party and their constituents.

Premises:
1) Some of the Founders were slave owners. (True)
2) Slavery is evil. (True)
3) All slave owners are evil. (False. Many slave owners used their wealth and political power to oppose slavery.)
Conclusion:
Therefore, anything they built, including the Constitution, is evil. (False. The conclusion is based on a false premise, and is therefore false.)

Slavery could not have been outlawed in the United States except by amending the Constitution. The 13th and 14th Amendments ended forever "involuntary servitude" within the jurisdiction of the United States. The U. S. Constitution, at one time an instrument of oppression, was transformed into an instrument of liberation. Simply disregarding the original intent of the framers of the Constitution could not have ended slavery.

Throwing out the Constitution because it was an instrument of oppression ignores the fact that the Constitution now protects the rights of the descendants of the people it used to oppress. The Constitution is extremely useful to minorities in modern times. Tossing it away because it was flawed, and ignoring the repairs that were made at the cost of over 600,000 lives and four years of horrific war, is absolute folly. Throwing out the Constitution means throwing out the Rule of Law.

Yet, this is exactly what the Democratic Party is up to. It is their intention to compensate for the evils of the past by overturning the current social order. One of their methods is to disregard the original intent of the very people who actually wrote the Constitution and the Amendments.

The Democratic Party should display some truth in advertising and simply call themselves the Deconstructionist Party. As I said before, the Deconstructionists are fools of the first order. If it is reasonable to disregard the original intent of the people who write the law, then it is reasonable to disregard the original intent of the judges who disregard the original intent of the framers of the law.

The absurdity is obvious: If the decisions of lawmakers are not valid, then the decisions of judges (whose authority is defined by the law) cannot be valid either.

In short, the Deconstructionists want to remove the validity of the law (and thereby remove the legitimacy of the legislative process, the very foundation of political liberty) by ignoring the reasons for which the law is enacted. In so doing, they leave themselves vulnerable to the same tactic. Fascists can handily invalidate the Deconstructionists by simply ignoring original intent. Eventually, no ideas will have any validity. When ideas lose validity, all that is left is raw power.

The Deconstruction Party (being anti-militarist health nuts) are not on Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly; they are on their own unique Marathon of Folly. The folly of deconstructing the lawful order is that the only thing that stands between the strong and weak is the Rule of Law. Take that away…

Guy L. Evans
Aurora, Colorado

[NOTE: I refer to political parties, corporations, and governments as "they" not "it" because political parties, corporations, and governments are groups of people. The people who constitute the political parties, corporations, and governments make the decisions; the institutions do not. The legal fiction of a political party, a corporation, or a government is properly referred to as "it".]

Monday, March 29, 2004

Evil, Stupid People
Commentary © 2004, by Guy L. Evans

Professor Thomas Sowell made the following observation:

“Considering how often throughout history even intelligent people have been proved to be wrong, it is amazing that there are still people who are convinced that the only reason anyone could possibly say something different from what they believe is stupidity or dishonesty.”

How true. I have encountered this non-reasoning for many years. I have even succumbed to it myself at times. However, stupidity and dishonesty are not the only reasons people will refuse to accept your point of view. Here are some others.

Pretending.
Acting is a form of pretending. Pretending often excuses the pretender from responsibility for the consequences of his behavior.

Testing.
Testing may appear to be dishonesty or stupidity if you don’t understand what the tester is seeking. People who pose tests may behave as though they do not understand your point of view. However, this is not dishonesty. For example, I have pretended not to understand someone’s point in order to coax him into giving more information.

Ignorance of an essential premise.
It is impossible to know every fact about most subjects. It is therefore possible that someone will be ignorant of an essential premise in an argument. For example, it is not generally known that the 16th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was never intended to include taxes on wages and salaries. People who argue for the repeal of the 16th Amendment may not, therefore, understand that doing so may not remove Congress’s power to tax wages and salaries.

Idealism.
Idealism may be mistaken for dishonesty or pretending. However, ideologues are not pretending; they are deadly earnest. To some degree, in the mind of the ideologue, idealism excuses him from the consequences of his behavior. Idealism may cause people to disregard inconvenient facts. For example, welfare state ideologues disregard the obvious fact that possession of property does not necessarily alleviate suffering.

Cynicism.
Cynicism and skepticism are popular. Another way to describe this is opinionated ignorance and intellectual laziness. People who doubt everything excuse themselves from having to think about anything. Denouncing everything as a fraud or worthless is an indication of ignorance.

These are some of the many reasons why people will disagree with you. I get the impression from his writings that Professor Sowell has had his fill of people who cannot be reasoned with. Ditto, Professor.

Concluding that people who disagree with you are either stupid or dishonest is laziness, chic suburban bigotry, and drawing simple conclusions to complex situations. If these same people apply this standard to themselves (which I doubt they ever do), then every time they make a mistake, draw an incorrect conclusion, forget a fact, or make any other mistake, it must be because they are evil, stupid people.

Guy L. Evans
Aurora, Colorado

Friday, March 26, 2004

Judicial Dictatorship
Opinion © 2004, by Guy L. Evans

Two court decisions are now pending that pose the very real danger of initiating an era of judicial dictatorship in the United States. One case before the U. S. Supreme Court involves asserting that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance constitute an establishment of religion, and are prohibited by the U. S. Constitution. If the reasoning is upheld by the court, then all of our currency must be destroyed. All U. S. currency contains the words “In God We Trust”. By the standard set forth in the challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance, the words “In God We Trust” constitute an establishment of religion, and are therefore prohibited.

Of course, it is absurd to assert that the words “under God” and “In God We Trust” constitute an establishment of religion. Government is not attempting to establish a State religion by the use of these words. If the court upholds the challenge, then the court will have handed down a decision that is clearly contrary to and prohibited by the U. S. Constitution.

Another case involving gay marriage is before the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The lower court has ruled that people of the same gender have the right to marry one another. The absurdity of this claim is so obvious that it defies any reasonable person’s ability to seriously address it. However.

Two or more people of the same gender cannot be married. Marriage by definition is a sexual coupling. Marriage is not a right; it is a privilege. Marriage is the religious, legal, and cultural recognition of the coupling of a man and a woman for the purposes of being a family, producing children, and for having protection from intrusion by unwanted persons into the relationship. “I’m married” means “I am not available for any type of sexual relationship.”

Two people of the same gender cannot have a sexual coupling with each other no matter how much they love each other. Nature simply doesn’t accommodate such desires. Anal sex between men is no different from anal sex between a man and a woman. It is filthy and perverse, and it cannot produce children.

In times past when the human population was declining, such activities were discouraged. Civilization needs people--lots and lots of people. Homosexual relationships don’t produce heirs. Homosexual relationships fit more into the categories of self-indulgence and self-abuse. Two or more people of the same gender cannot be bound together by marriage no matter how much they are bound by love and commitment.

If the court rules that two people of the same gender have the right to be married, that will be the first time in history that law was enacted exclusively from the bench. Such enactment is illegal. It is beyond the power of the court to enact laws.

Both of these cases illustrate the points that I discussed with Professor John Eastman of the Chapman School of Law. His reply was that when the courts exceed their powers and hand down decisions that are clearly prohibited by law, our only recourse is to impeach the individual judges and to send the matter back to the legislature.

This is cold comfort indeed. I have no knowledge that any judge has ever been impeached for handing down a decision that clearly violates the law. Add to that the unanswered question:

By what means and by what authority of law do the people overturn (render void and of no effect) any decision of any court that is clearly in violation of the law?

So far, the answer seems to be:

Well, you don’t. You can’t.

Judges know this, and so they proceed apace, implementing judicial dictatorship for the creation of a perfect society, whether the backward, unenlightened masses like it or not. We are becoming subjects, not citizens. We are losing our power to defend ourselves from illegal conduct by government.

One by one, our God given rights are being stripped from us by the courts, and we are powerless to defend ourselves. The question I now pose to the Constitutional lawyers and professors is:

How are we to defend our rights and the rights of future generations from illegal conduct of the courts?

This is no longer an academic exercise. The threat is real. Time is running out.

Guy L. Evans
Aurora, Colorado



Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Our Enemies, Ourselves
Opinion © 2004, by Guy L. Evans

See http://www.lileks.com, bleats for Monday, March 22, 2004. Note the photo of the man holding the sign that says, "I (heart) Love New York" and underneath that, "Even more without the World Trade Center." This photo was taken at the "Global Day of Action" rally in San Francisco on Saturday, March 20th, 2004. I agree with Lileks, this clown is a traitor. See http://users.lmi.net/zombie/sf_rally_march_20_2004 for more photos. You'd better sit down first.

These clowns obviously don't believe their own slogans. If America were actually a Nazi country, these useless slugs would be cowering in their basements, not hurling insults at the top officials in government. Not many people in Germany survived calling Hitler a bad person.

I said last year when the war began that people who protested the war to liberate Iraq were enemies of the United States, that they were not protesting war qua war; they were protesting American victory. The people at this rally do not disagree with me. They will tell you themselves that they are enemies of the United States. See the "Death to America" slogan.

But for those who may still be confused, the logic is simple. Think of Ali versus Frazier. Let's say that you're not rooting for Frazier, but you definitely don't want Ali to win. Well, Einstein, what are your choices? One of them will win, and the other will lose. The one who does not lose will win. Duh. Therefore, in a war between Iraq and the U. S., rooting against American victory equals rooting for victory for Saddam Hussein. Anyone who protested American victory in the war while the war was being fought was advocating in favor of victory for our enemy. Advocating victory for an enemy of the U. S. makes the advocate an enemy of the United States.

Think about this in your own life. You and your neighbor are having a huge fight. Your neighbor is planting poison ivy in your yard. Your spouse comes out to see what the noise is all about. You say, "I want to get rid of the poison ivy our neighbor is planting in our yard, and I want our neighbor to stop planting poison ivy in our yard." Your spouse says, "I don't care what happens to our neighbor. Sure, our neighbor is bad. But, dear, you're a lot worse. So, if our neighbor plants poison ivy in our yard, it's your fault. Now go apologize, and hope that we can make peace." You say, "Well, what should I do about the poison ivy?" And your spouse says, "Honey, that's your problem." Under these circumstances, your spouse has sided with your enemy. Can you spell d-i-v-o-r-c-e?

That's essentially what the anti-American-victory-anywhere-in-the-world protesters are saying. They don't want the U. S. to succeed at anything, at any time, anywhere, ever. From your point of view, people who deliberately stand in the way of your success or who wish you to fail are your enemies. Why would it be any different for the United States? People who advocate that the U. S. should not succeed in pursuing our national interests when the result would be defeat for the U. S. are enemies of the United States. Got a problem with that?

I was roundly condemned for calling fellow Americans enemies of the United States. But there was never any doubt in my mind. Now, the photographic evidence vindicates my position.

To those who condemned me, get your heads out of your over-fed, narcissistic, self-deluded, self-righteous, cowardly-lion a$$e$. And don't hand me any of your bilious crap about how you're neutral in the whole matter. The hell you are. The enemies of America want to kill you, too.

I don't take kindly to being called a Nazi, a fascist, being told that I would be a good speech writer for Adolph Hitler, that I have gone too far, or that I am too stupid to understand the matter. To my critics, I say, "Suck the snot out of my nose 'til my head caves in."

I will always leave the door open to those who wish to apologize. I am owed several apologies. I also understand that the kind of people who call you a Nazi generally don't have the self confidence to admit when they're wrong, nor do they generally display the kind of class it takes to say they're sorry. For those who reconsider, I am always willing to listen. You have the right to be heard.

In the mean time, real people are really being killed to defend you and your families from our common enemies. If you can't bear to show me any respect, then at least show some respect for these people. For once in your spoiled, unchallenged lives, show some gratitude. Your freedom to sit at home and snipe at people who take real risks was purchased at great cost in blood. You would think differently if some of it were yours.

Guy L. Evans
Aurora, Colorado



As soon as I sleep off my hangover, I'm going to get to work on this blog.

Visit:

www.hughhewitt.com
www.claremont.org
www.realclearpolitics.com

And remember, there's no future in being stupid. Take it from me.


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