Fox News Commits Ritual Suicide: What Can Be Done?

 

BUD LITE:  "I KNOW HOW TO DESTROY A WHOLE COMPANY."

FOX NEWS:  "HOLD MY BEER!"

Boys and girls once again we are witnessing successful conservatives shooting themselves in their collective foot. Though the news doesn't seem to have reached our three amigos at Bill Whittle dot com, Fox News just gave away it's cash cow, having "parted ways" with its news superstar, Tucker Carlson after surrendering to Dominion Voting Machines for 3/4 of a billion dollars and also refusing to pay Dan Bongino what he's worth.

What is it about conservatives that we fracture into insular subgroups and snipe at one another from behind rocks. What are we, Pharisees tearing at each other over the smallest deviation from perceived orthodoxy? Are we Sadducees preaching the gospel of "When you're dead that's all she wrote so godliness is determined by how much money you make." Are we Scribes - bureaucrats of the Temple of Conservatism, writing down everything to the vast confusion of the laity?

What I hope is that Fox had to pay Tucker through the nose to break him out of his contract and that Carlson can, as Rush Limbaugh did in his time, inspire a wave of collegiality and courage among fellow conservatives. Perhaps those news people and commentators among us could band together and create some kind of Conservative version of Netflix that incorporates Daily Wire, The Blaze, Bill Whittle, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Greg Gutfield and refugees from Fox. Hannity, Ingram, and company are going to suffer from the absent lead-in of Tucker Carson.

I wish we could create a combination conservative entertainment and news network that brings all the best conservative content together under a single paywall. Tucker Carlson would bring enough of a following with him to jump start a conservative version of Netflix or Amazon Prime or something like that.  Add on some of the more family oriented entertainment networks like Hallmark, Pureflix, Angel Studios and such and such a streaming service would bury the mainstream media in no time.

Ronald Reagan said that anybody that agrees with you 80% is a friend and ally. If conservatives took that advice to heart, we'd be unstoppable. As it is Revelation talks of an "image to the beast". It's beginning to look like the United States is working on carving out that image in support of a globalist socialist scheme.

To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, we must not go gentle into that rotten night. We must rage against the dying of the light that has for 2 and 1/2 centuries shined as a beacon of hope in a world ravaged by evil and hopelessness.

Tom King

The Myth of a Conservative Theocracy

The pigs are not who the media says they are.

I have no interest in a Theocracy. It's odd that so many who fear that conservative persons of faith want to establish some sort of church-run government (which is not true) and yet want to tell me how Jesus would run the nation if he were in charge (which is always some complete Marxist fantasy). All I care about is whether the government is going to abide by the First Amendment and allow me to worship as I please, assemble as I please, say what I want to say, print what I want to print and believe what I want to believe. I've only heard one party boo God at their convention. I have never had a Republican say that I could not speak openly about my faith in the public square or teach my children in a parochial school setting or challenge my right to hang up a Christmas wreath in front of my store.

We are promised freedom of religion, not required to be atheists protected by some kind of misguided freedom from religion imperative to be enforced by government. Government, constitutionally, has no say in how or where I practice my religion. It cannot stop me or a group of us who agree to do so, from offering a prayer in the public square or invoking God's name when we speak. The constitution merely says the government cannot force you to worship in my church or any church. If some of my Democrat friends had their way, I would be forced by government, as Russians were by the Soviet Union, to worship at the altar of atheism.Now THAT would be a violation of my first amendment rights.

We're treated to propaganda constantly that says evil right wing Christian corporations are going to pollute the world and then when it collapses, we'll use the ensuing chaos to seize power. We Christians just can't wait to oppress the masses, exploit women like cattle, brutally murder anyone who disagrees, and cover it all up in religion sauce.  Don't believe me?  Watch a couple of episodes of "The Handmaids Tale" on Hulu. It won Emmy's last year for tarring Christians with a Stalinesque brush. The very methods by which socialism murdered hundreds of millions of human beings in the 20th century are portrayed as something that Christian Conservatives just can't wait to get enough power to do. Leftists use this propaganda technique to hide their own sins. Even Hitler, a socialist to the core who claimed he had a better more efficient form of socialism is supposed to be a model of unbridled Christian conservatism even though he  was a vegetarian, environmentalist who was spiritual, not religious by his own claims. It's the old "I am rubber, you are glue!" tactic from second grade on an international level.

And let me make this clear - Christians despise greed as much as anyone. It's the tenth commandment on that stone tablet leftists have removed from public grounds. One cannot enforce standards against greediness by creating enough government power to protect greed. In a free-market capitalist economic system, greedy people who don't give their customers value for their money, who obstruct free trade and attempt to manipulate the system are punished in three ways. 

1. Customers stop buying their products and they stop making money and the whole bloated edifice collapses.
2. The free market and government fair trade laws punish them for their greed and mismanagement through fines, jail terms and bad bad PR.
3. If they behave criminally, then they get sued or arrested and the law steps in.

When Bears Stern and Morgan Stanley went nearly bust back in 2008-9, George W. Bush, whom I liked as a wartime president, messed up when he agreed with the Democrat Congress to bail them out with taxpayer money. Obama doubled down on it. If Bush had allowed them to collapse, small businesses and entrepreneurs would have stepped in to fill the gap and, while the economy might have taken a hit, it would have bounced back. That is if we hadn't elected a Democrat who, like FDR, hadn't meddled with the economy. The result was an 8 year recession. For many of us it was an 8 year full blown depression.

When we don't allow natural consequences to happen to these greedy people running some of the big corporations, when we protect them by bailing them out, we punish rank and file Americans to prop up bad business practices and greed. AIG should have failed along with all the rest of them. Someone leaner, faster and harder working companies would have stepped in to take over the market abandoned by these bloated behemoths. 

And contrary to the media's narrative, it wasn't conservatives that protected greedy executives' multi-million dollar bonuses and golden parachutes. It was government bailouts demanded by Democrats and Republicans who were in no way shape or form conservatives. Give me a Democrat who is a free market capitalist and I'll vote for him over any Republican who is in the tank for corporate interests. 

Unfortunately, these days when I look at the two parties, I that see one of 'em is by and large way deeper into the corporate pig trough than the other and it's name doesn't start with an R. That doesn't mean Republicans are without sin, but at least some of them are in favor of reducing the size and scope of government power. On the left side of the aisle, I can't find a single one anymore. On the right side of the aisle, it's easier to hold their feet to the fire.

Just sayin',

© 2018 by Tom King

Progressives Aren't Liberals - Really? You're Kidding Right?

Woodrow Wilson - Godfather of Progressivism

A friend recently told me he would rather be a "progressive" than a "stick in the mud".  If he's referring to conservatives as "sticks in the mud", I would challenge that idea.  Then my friend added that "progressive" didn't mean "liberal".  Well if that's true, then progressives need to work on their advertising because in common parlance "progressive", "socialist", "liberal", and "Democrat" all mean practically the same thing or at least are as closely matched as "conservative" and "Republican".

AND conservatives are NOT stuck in the mud. We were once considered liberals. When the country was founded, the founding fathers were very much liberals. It was the American Tories (conservatives) who opposed the Revolution, even serving in the British Army to put down the rebellion. The liberal authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were heavily influenced by the philosophy of noted 18th century philosopher, John Locke, and others of the time. They believed in small government and that all men are created equal. They were against setting up a "noble" class, all except a few Federalists, who thought they ought to become a ruling nobility. Thanks to Jefferson and Washington and others, the idea of creating an American noble class was shot down. 

Later in the 1800s, upper class Americans came to consider themselves a breed apart - a new nobility if you will. They seized on the ideas of Charles Darwin to try and make the case that some folk were genetically superior to others and that those traits were passed down to their progeny. They latched on to socialist ideas propounded by Marx and Engels to justify the idea of an elite ruling class and a classless society or more accurately a single class proletariat which served the collectivist state ostensibly for their own good. Of course, it was clear to these earlier "progressives" that they should rule such a collectivist state, given their genetic intellectual superiority. This was, of course, for the people's own good. 

The Democrats seized on this because it fit the Southern notion that certain folk were naturally inferior to the upper classes and that these societal elites were chosen by God to rule. Actually, most of the upper classes didn't believe in God anyway. As American theologians more and more challenged that notion of the natural superiority of any particular class, the Democrats soon openly pushed aside the notion that God had anything to do with anything anyway and became the socialist, elitist, paternalistic, and damned near atheist political party that it is to day.

Early progressives under Teddy Roosevelt were well-intentioned and actually did some good for the working class. Unfortunately, the very people who were responsible for the exploitation of working Americans seized upon the movement as a means to convince the very people they exploited to embrace socialist style collectivism as a means to achieve freedom for all workers. The slave masters simply adopted a new racket to maintain their position and profitability. It wasn't long before progressives adopted the ideas of the eugenicists and began sterilizing the "mentally feeble" and passing laws to prevent certain immigrant races from owning land, putting quotas on certain racial immigrant groups and discouraging black migration from the South to the North. Progressives built statues of Mussolini at Rockefeller Center and praised Hitler and Stalin's policies and then smoothly morphed into patriots and New Dealers and tried to pretend they'd had nothing to do with their previous "progressive" ideas once it became clear that those were the ideas had bred monsters like Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler.

Democrat/progressive/liberal propaganda links these three nebulous ideologies into a single unified whole in the public mind. Conservatives and Republicans (at least up until the age of Trump) have been defenders of the idea of decentralized, limited government, individual rights and equal opportunity for all. Just because they call themselves "progressives" doesn't make them progressive. The ideals spelled out in the Declaration and the Constitution are as progressive now as they were then. Modern so-called progressivism is, in point of fact, entirely regressive, seeking to drive society backwards to the old feudal system of a one class peasantry (Marx called them the "proletariat") ruled over by an elite class of self-identified "leaders" who live in their dachas and mansions and rule over the human hive that socialism always tries to mold a society into.

The term "liberal" has come to mean the polar opposite of what it meant during the time of the Founding Fathers. In those days liberals believed in the rights of all men and women, equal opportunity, and the elimination of rule by elites. Today "liberal" according to its own advertising means a strong central government that doles out housing, medical care, jobs and opportunity as determined by central planners and a leader class which takes care of the proletariat while the proletariat collectively serves the state.

Like I said, if that's not what liberalism means, then they need to get themselves some new PR guys. What I hear from the left is that liberalism is about feeling good because you give your responsibility for your neighbor over to the government. To me it seems that all that does is make you feel okay about walking past your injured neighbor like the Pharisees of Jesus' parable, secure in the knowledge that he can go to a dot-gov website and apply for government aid if he needs help and you don't have to be bothered about his difficulties. 

© 2017 by Tom King

Why is Conservative Media Crumbling?

Trump supporters and progressives (ah but I repeat myself) are all gleefully reporting that Glenn Beck's media empire is crumbling. He's had some layoffs and those eager to see him go away and stop making them feel guilty and stupid are celebrating.

I think Beck will probably be alright. Like any businessman, he has had to respond to changes in the market and in the political climate - particularly so in his case. Beck had the audacity to speak out against the agenda of the progressive socialist movement in America. Beck is a victim of the same phenomenon that took down PJTV, is damaging FOX News and threatening other conservative media outlets.

And the threat is named Donald J. Trump!

And I'm typical of the kind of people who are seen as threatening conservatism. I'm one of those crazy #NeverTrump guys who won't ever vote for the Donald under any circumstances. As I've repeated ad nauseum, the lesser of two evils is sometimes neither. The only problem is that as the fear of a loss of power and a rise of influence of the conservative wing of the party gripped died in the wool Republicans, many leading Republicans came over to the Donald. Even Newt Gingrich called Trump our best hope. People like me responded, "If he's our best hope, we have no hope." One by one I've canceled my subscriptions to conservative media newsletters from Gingrich, Breitbart and Drudge, all of whom seem to have gone over to the dark side. Breitbart's Trump support, however seems to be waning as it's subscriber list falls to cancellation after cancellation by disgusted conservatives. Breitbart must be spinning in his grave at his namesake website's earlier near-endorsement of Trump. Now Glenn Beck, the once great uniter of the conservative wing of the Republican Party is feeling the wrath of the Trump herd.

Glenn Beck chose sides in the Republican primary and Trump supporters are angry about that. They've projected their anger and frustration onto a hero figure who has been willing to say or do anything to pander to them in order to get their votes. These people are so frightened and angry that they are stampeding and in a stampede, the herd looks for a big noisy bull to follow. Sadly, if that bull runs off a cliff, the herd will probably follow. It's all about emotion and momentum once the stampede has begun. Anyone who gets in the way of the charging herd, either has to move fast or get trampled. More than a few conservative leaders have hoof prints on their backs right now - at least the honest ones who care more about what happens to this country than they do about how much political power the Republican Party possesses at the moment.

A friend and Trump supporter told me that "Sometimes you just have to choose a herd." For the reasons above, I don't believe that's true. I'm more of a flock kind of guy. I like to know my Shepherd is someone I can trust. If I can't trust him, I'm out of the flock. It's a Christian thing. I don't expect those for whom faith in God is "silly religious stuff" as one Trump supporter described Glenn Beck's approach to media to even begin to understand taking a stand on principle.  So here we stand in the breach and we will not be moved. We may be overwhelmed and defeated, but we will never surrender. We will never give up.

You have chosen the form of the Destructor!

Trump has done exactly what his Democrat allies like George Soros and the Clintons had hoped he would do. He's torn the conservative movement in two and probably will bring down the Republican Party to boot - ushering in the United Socialist States of America or the People's Republic of America or maybe the People's Democratic Republic of American - any version of which will being neither democratic, nor a republic, nor, for that matter will it be "of the People". Trump will likely be nominated with a minority of the votes and with 30-40% of Republicans vowing to never vote for him under any circumstances - a sure recipe for a Clinton/Sanders victory. We have chosen the form of the destructor and he is Trump!

We're seeing the rise of a new National Socialism in America, manifest in the form of so-called Progressivism. Progressivism is a deadly dangerous idea that has led to much misery and death over the past century or so. The idea of a powerful nationalist America first movement has been tried before both here and more successfully in Europe. The 2016 election looks like 1933 all over again only here in America instead of Germany.  In a bit of eerie deja vu, this year's election looks like it's going to be between Communist socialists and National socialists with the Republic being consigned to the ash heap of history as was Germany's Weimar Republic.

Over the past century, we in America were tempted to leave our constitutionally limited government model in order to create great governmental power. We created this ever more centralized power in response to real external threats. We were told we needed to centralize power, ostensibly to protect the peace, health, liberty and safety of the American People. Sadly power attracts the corruptible and in the end, neither our peace, our health, our safety and above all, our liberty will be safe from those to whom power is everything in the world worth having.

God protect us from those who want to save us.

© 2016 by Tom King

What Are Saul Alinsky's Real Rules for Radicals?

Conservative Bugbear - Leftist Saul Alinsky

And why are we using them ourselves?
How we fight is every bit as important as why we fight or even whether we win or not.  - TK

The great political debate of our times between the left and the right is fraught with lies, deception, hysteria and well-meaning fraud on both sides. What is disturbing about this is the assumption by the leadership and the movers and shakers on both sides that people are basically stupid and need to be herded about in their opinions like so many fat sheep. Both sides do it 

For instance, there is an old email running around that claims that Saul Alinsky wrote the following "8 levels of control" that must be obtained before you are able to create a socialist/communist state. The email goes on to say that the first is the most important.
  
1)       Healthcare "Control healthcare and you control the people”
2)       Poverty “Increase the Poverty level as high as possible." Poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3)       Debt “Increase the national debt to an unsustainable level." That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
4)       Gun Control “Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government." That way you are able to create a police state - total local control.
5)       Welfare “Take control of every aspect of their lives" (Food, Livestock, Housing, and Income)
6)       Education “Take control of what people read and listen to take control of what children learn in school.”
7)       Religion “Remove faith in God from the Government and school.”
8)       Class Warfare “Divide the people into the wealthy against the poor. Racially divide." This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to tax the wealthy with full support of the voting poor.
  
The email ends with this intentionally spooky statement:

     The bases are all covered!   We are ripe for the New world Order (World Communism)


It does sound familiar. It should. These "8 levels of control" are little more than a rehash of a hoax article back in the 40s called Communist Rules for Revolution. This isn't even original stuff and predates Alinsky. Alinsky had more than one set of "rules" outlined in his writing, but none were so nakedly radical as this hoax lays out. These 8 rules are nothing more than a crude attempt by ideologues on the right to link President Obama's policies to Alinsky. They probably think they are doing a service for their cause. 

They are not! One can make a clear connection between the president and the tactics of the radical left. This can be done if we compare Alinsky's actual "rules" to Obama policy, but it requires more thought to figure it out. The original author of this apparently thought we all needed help to understand how Alinsky's advice to radicals is being worked out by the current administration. There is a fatal assumption that we are too stupid to get it. I find that offensive.

Here's what Alinsky actually said. It's a primer for people seeking to capture and retain political power.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.

The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/alinsky.asp#rVShjCizoZYEBJT0.99

 Alinsky's Rules for Power Tactics:

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Alinsky was surprisingly sensitive to criticism that he wasn't ethical despite his nakedly amoral approach to politics. So he included a set of rules for the ethics of power tactics. These "ethics" are so bankrupt, it's little wonder his ethics were frequently called into question.


Alinsky's Rules to Test Whether Power Tactics are Ethical:

1. One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.
2. The judgement of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.
3. In war the end justifies almost any means.
4. Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
6. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
7. Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics.
8. The morality of means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
9. Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition to be unethical.
10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments.
11. Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace."

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.

The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/alinsky.asp#rVShjCizoZYEBJT0.99

If you want to confront Alinsky's tactics and defeat them, you need to do so with truth. When we make up things to discredit the opposition, we sink to their level and it's little wonder our side is not doing well in the great debate of our time. We cast ourselves as being on the side of morality and yet, we've grown so desperately afraid because of their perceived power (Rule 1 - Power Tactics) that we have violated our own rules of moral conduct (Rule 4), which is just what the opposition wants and needs for us to do to discredit us.

Please can we stop this? We cannot fight the enemy using his own tactics. Deception works in war, but not so much in politics where we intend to avoid killing our opponents. The Communist and Nazi states could do this with impunity because when their political war was done, they had no moral compunction about eliminating those opponents who remained. That's why the communist/socialist death toll was so horrific in the 20th century. They were just cleaning house after the victory - mopping up the battlefield so to speak.

If we are not to be like that, we must start now by being scrupulously moral as to what tactics we employ in the struggle. I cite an example here of fraud by the right. I can cite as many, if not orders of magnitude more, examples of duplicity and outright lying by our friends on the left, who are generally not as bound by the strict moral code that most conservatives espouse, that is, if Alinsky's "ethics" are any indication of the state of morality on the left.

I do not intend this as a blanket damning of anyone right or left. There are individuals who possess a powerful sense of morality and ethics on both side, who find lying, fraud and calumny reprehensible and disavow any "ally" who uses such tactics.

It is the moral left and the moral right that have the power to save this country for all of us. In order to do so, we need to turn a hose on the hothead who have lost control of themselves and will say anything, forward anything or believe anything evil of their neighbor.  We are, at least those of us on the Christian right and left, are under strict orders to love our neighbors as ourselves. It's time those of us under such orders stepped up and led our own revolution - one in which love is that with which we charge cannons, rather than the naked hatred that bombards our media, our email boxes and our Facebook pages.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King © 2014

Time to Change Tactics and Go Guerrilla

New look for conservatives.

I'm a big military history buff and when I think about conflict, even conflict of a philosophical nature, I tend to think in military terminology about a response to something I think is just plain wrong. Ellen White's landmark 1888 book, The Great Controversy, lays out the spiritual history of the world in terms of a momentous conflict between good and evil and it is hard this day and age not to see the great political world conflicts as a similar confrontation between good and evil.

In the past three decades, the political division in the United States of America between liberals and conservatives have become become more pronounced to the point that we haven't seen this level of political nastiness since 1859, right before the Civil War broke out.

Politically, conservatism is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of America in favor of a centrist, socialist bread and circuses dispensing entrenched left-wing government bureaucracy and its allies in the Democrat party. There's a reason we're losing the battle.

Bill Whittle pointed out in this week's Klavan and Whittle members-only episode on PJTV that when you look at the situation from a military standpoint, it's easy to see why we're losing.  The left has air-superiority. Over the past century, the conservatives in America have gradually allowed themselves to lose the battle for the airwaves. The left infiltrated journalism schools, bought up media outlets, TV, radio and newspaper outlets and learned from the communist party how to infiltrate and use music, films and other entertainment resources to sell their message. Conservatives allowed liberals to steal a march on us that wound up with an almost entirely leftist mainstream media by the end of the 1970s.

On the media front, there has been an insurgency led by guys like Rush Limbaugh who took a medium searching for a product and gave it one.  AM radio was dying in the 80s because FM stations did a better job of broadcasting music - less static and interference. Limbaugh proved that people would put up with a little static to hear conservative political talk while driving to and from work or taking a lunch break. Limbaugh tried a brief foray into television, but TV was too entrenched and he shut it down, sticking with what worked. Because of his success, other conservative talk shows took off and soon there were radio stations that were all talk. Then Fox News sprang up on the new cable TV alternative to over-the-air network programming and proved that conservatives preferred a more balanced news source by a rather wide margin.

Next the Internet offered independent, unsponsored writers an outlet in the form of weblogs and the new blogosphere suddenly began pouring forth information that had not been sanitized and politicized by the mainstream media. The contrast between information in the blogosphere and in the traditional news was startling. If we are to keep the conservative viewpoint any kind of force at all, we have to get that message out there in any form we can, using any media available. 

Bill Whittle's assertation that we've lost air superiority is true, but we have actually been fighting back nontraditional resources like the Internet. The blogger groups grew up and established a legitimate place for themselves in news media.  Conservative Internet-based media like PJTV, Breitbart and the Drudge Report have outstripped similar liberal net-based efforts, but the mainstream media still seems to have the power to shout down conservative opinion, at least with what Rush Limbaugh has dubbed "the low-information voter".

It's time we start thinking of the battle for the American soul as if it were a war. It is one.  So, what do you do when your enemy has air superiority?

You don't give them a target to shoot at. You have to feel bad about the public blitzkriegs people like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann have had to endure.  Every time a conservative moves to the leadership, the liberals call in air strikes.  And air strikes they are, because every time a conservative leader rears his or her head, liberal thought police like Media Matters assault the news media with talking points and they all dutifully repeat those talking points over and over and over until the American public is forced to look up from the latest episode of Jersey Shores or Dancing with the Stars and notice that the media is saying that Sarah Palin is stupid.

We are entering a phase in this conflict where a guerrilla war is what we're fighting - at least until (and if) we can take back the big guns. In reality, whether we admit it or not, it's been a guerrilla war for some time.  So how do you fight a guerrilla war.

The first thing we do is take off the brightly colored uniforms. We have to stop labeling ourselves as Tea Party or Conservative or Libertarian. We just have to lead with the awkward questions and avoid labeling the questions as "conservative".  Instead of addressing stupidity about global warming by wailing about how stupid liberals are, which identifies you immediately as one of those evil conservatives Diane Sawyer warned you about, know enough about the issue to ask questions like this one from Bill Whittle, "Oh, and which 'climate' are we protecting from change?"  The Earth has had climates that have ranged from so hot the Earth was covered with jungle to so cold the Earth was covered in ice.  Are we talking about the climate of 2013 or 1944 or 1912 or 1492 or 550 AD or even 1000 BC? Climates change. Who are we to decide which one is best.

George Carlin pointed out in one of his more spectacular rants that we can't save the planet and that it's impossibly arrogant to think we can. If mother nature doesn't like us, she'll just swat us like bugs and move on down the road. Send your friend who is concerned about global climate change, the youtube clip of that little speech of Carlin's without comment. They just love Carlin.

Whatever issue it is, the debt, the budget, entitlements or foreign policy, just stop waving the conservative, tea party or Republican flag. It only calls down the drones upon your head. Instead, use the stealth approach.  Simply make the logical argument or ask one of those questions that's hard for them to answer.  If we ask the unanswerable questions and let the public figure it out for themselves, we are harder to discredit.  The liberals are already trying to do that by posing as conservatives and trying to ask those killer questions that prove the left is right. Unfortunately, for them, what seems obvious from the perspective of their laptops perched on one of those little round tables at the university Starbuck's is not so obvious when you look at it from out in the real world. Logic, it turns out, is the conservative's friend.

Like a SEAL team working "in-country", we have to hold back on the machine gun fire and take the time to win the hearts and minds of the real people if we ever hope to at least come out ahead in all this. To do so, we may have to forgo the flags for a bit. We need to stop leading with labels and lead with logic. We have to approach with kindness and simple questions, not hostility. We have to treat those who do not understand what is going on as if they were our neighbors and share information with them in a neighborly fashion.  

It will likely come as a surprise, for some of our conservative, tea party, patriot, Republican, Libertarian compatriots that the folk we need to be reaching actually are our neighbors and that we need to treat them as we would have them treat us - with respect.
© 2013 by Tom King

Shooting Ourselves..............Why we're losing the ideological war.

Conservatism is the antithesis of the kind of ideological fanaticism that has brought so much horror and destruction to the world. The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way-this is the heart of American conservatism today. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from a willingness to learn --not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before. Ideologues fit the world to their minds; conservatives fit their minds to the world. Ideologues believe politics is only a part of life. Ideologues believe they possess an abstract, absolute truth that can compel an imperfect humanity to attain a terrestrial paradise; conservatives believe in self-- evident truths and traditional rights and duties.                                                                                                      - Rep. Thad Cotter

Conservatism's greatest enemy at this time is lodged firmly within our ranks. Today's conservatism has degenerated to a guerrilla campaign, increasingly dominated by ideological hard-liners who responds to any attack from the left by shooting a handful of our own guys first before firing back in any meaningful way.  The person next to you is always easier to hit and these guys seem to be more about shooting someone than winning the war, no matter if it's someone on their own side that they shoot.  If these guys detect any hint of ideological impurity, they're going to open fire on you.  No one is safe; not Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or even Ronald Reagan. The holier-than-thou right is, as far as I'm concerned, like having Al-Qaeda in our ranks. I rather wish they would form a third party. It might save the country yet.

We want to remember in our zeal for defending our liberties, that we NOT lose sight of who our enemies are. It's always much easier to shoot your own side first. Our friends and fellow travelers are focused on the obvious enemy to our rights and liberties.  We always are surprised by the bullet that comes from behind.  These self-proclaimed pure conservatives have a lamentable tendency to aim at the closest target when seeking blame for why they are losing the war. That's why liberals are steadily overwhelming us. They defend their own. The holier-than-thou conservative attacks his own - FIRST!. 

Which kind of army would YOU rather be in if it came to war? The conservative side has collected an element with every bit as rock hard an ideology as radical leftists. They even share many beliefs with the leftist militants like drug legalization and political isolationism. They're ready to create a modern day "Trail of Tears" in order to meet the letter of the law on immigration - marching 15 million illegal immigrants, men, women and children back across the border into poverty, drug wars and bloodshed. Many Americans would have a hard time with that on humanitarian grounds.  If we set aside our humanity, our willingness to listen to a different side of the story other than the one we think we hear at our first knee-jerk reaction, then we set aside the best principles of conservatism that Thad Cotter is talking about. I'm here to tell you that it isn't always as black and white as we suppose.  The principles of Reagan conservatism - the kind that the American people embrace - call for us to look at how things are and not how we think they ought to be.  

We've been treated to a century of progressive socialists, in the name of ideological purity, trying experiment after experiment in Marxism and failing miserably time after time. We do not need the spectacle of the radical right trying to force it's square peg ideology into a world that doesn't work that way either.

I watch us carry on bloody debates among ourselves and I can see exactly why we are losing elections despite the fact that our cause is just. We claim to hate the Islamist culture where strong men bully their way to lead a divided and bullied rabble that is constantly divided and fighting among themselves for preeminence, but when it comes right down to it, too many who wear the conservative mantle spend most of their time trying to bully their way to the top among our conservative brethren.

It's little wonder we get compared to Facism. It's not a fair comparison in general, but the special brand of heartless, iron-willed, nobody's-opinion-but-mine conservatism does bear a striking resemblance to Nazi and Islamic ideology as it turns out to be in actual practice. It's hard tor Golden Rule conservatives to get behind that sort of thing.

I recently suggested caution after a story came out about the school district in Texas that pulled the plug on a student who deviated from his graduation speech.  All I did was suggest that we might not want to tear into the Joshua School district based on hysterical stories in a conservative blog. I know that school district and they are not intolerant of religious speech.  Quite the contrary.  But by piling on them, we may make it impossible for them to allow any leeway at all in the future.  School districts have a tough enough time allowing freedom of religious expression without someone making a huge issue of it and attracting lawyers.  I'm pretty sure the only thing that will come out of this young man's "attempt to exercise his right of free speech" is that lawyers will force the district to ban all public expressions of religion including prayer at ball games and saying "under God" when pledging allegiance to the flag. 

Sometimes I think we are our own worst enemies.  We certainly know how to demoralize our own supporters.  I think the same one who is behind the progressive socialist movement is also supporting the radical right's remorseless and demoralizing attacks upon its own side.

This has been described as the "devil did it" theory of human history. I don't find that at all funny, nor will I be bullied into believing it's not true. 

You know, I really dislike bullies!

Tom King (c) 2013 

Why Santorum, Newt and Ron Paul Should Stay In.

I'm tired of not voting in the Republican Primary. For the last few decades, by the time the primaries came to Texas, the vote was moot. Everybody had already dropped out except the heir apparent. I didn't vote in the primary last time. If I had, I'd have cast a useless vote for Fred Thompson who'd already dropped out. As it is I don't feel guilty not voting. It would have been a total waste of time. The candidate was already chosen before I got my say in it.

I think all the states should do their primaries on the same day - kind of a mini-presidential election. I think it's monumentally stupid to set the tone for the selection of the presidential candidate based on Iowa, New Hampshire and a couple of other smallish states and retirement centers. So what if the candidates wouldn't be able to campaign in each state. I don't like their commercials anyway and I don't care if they actually come to my state to campaign. I can watch them on television.  This tailing out of primaries is only good for one thing - allowing the party bosses to control the primary so no one unfortunate gets nominated and so that there isn't a real battle royale at the convention.

I want a real battle royale at the convention. I'd love to have seen what the delegate split would have been going into a convention if people had been allowed to vote for whoever they wanted to from the entire field at once.  I'm sick of only having one choice. I'm in Washington state now and it's not any better here.

Up here in Washington it used to be sometime in February, but they did away with the presidential primary altogether this year, ostensibly to save money. They called the primary a beauty pageant. It's now a smoke-filled room caucus kind of deal. Nobody mentioned we were having one and unless you go to a lot of Republican party gigs,  you didn't know it was even going on.

I hope Santorum stays in it to the bitter end alongside Newt and Ron Paul.  Then I think the three of them ought to get together and threaten to wreck the country club Republican leadership's carefully orchestrated Mitt Romney coronation at the convention. I think they should speak very openly about this strategy and let the votes fall where they may in the rest of the primaries. It's the only way conservatives will have any sort of significant voice at the convention.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

How I Came to Vote Republican

The first presidential candidate I voted for was George McGovern. I didn't vote for him because I particularly like him. I voted for him because I distrusted Richard Nixon and didn't think he should win by a landslide. He did anyway and proved he was a sneaky bugger in short order.

I next voted for James Earl Carter in 1976 because he was a Washington outsider and I didn't like the way Ford was given the nomination for the Republicans.  I figured Carter for an honest man and a Christian.  I was 22 years old.

Something I overheard standing in line for that first vote troubled me. A young woman in front of me in the line said, "I just marked the straight ticket box. It was easier than looking at all those names I don't know and I voted for McGovern anyway."  The idea that people would vote straight ticket without knowing what any of the candidates believed seemed wrong to me and not very bright. With my Carter vote I came to realize that it takes more than being an outsider to administer the country. It takes genuine, workable ideas.

Over the succeeding (or, more accurately) failing) four years, as the gas lines lengthened and the price controls kicked inflation into double digits and we were humiliated and held hostage in Iran, I began listening to the radio messages of a California B-Western actor named Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was the first man I ever voted for in a presidential election and the first one I was ever completely happy with.  And, sadly, the last.

Ronald Reagan taught me that there were still some folk in politics who actually believe all the high-sounding phrases they use in speeches. More importantly, I learned that if you believe in Americans and get out of their way, they can do incredible things. Conservatism made sense to me. I'd seen creeping socialism rob America of it's spirit. I saw conservative leadership turn that around.

The Democrats had their chance to remold American society and all they gave us was malaise -- the same thing Communism gave the Russians and Chinese in the early days of the movement. Much longer and we'd have got some of the horror of the middle days of Russo-Chinese communism, the heyday of Stalin and Mao. Reagan shined a light on the great flaws of big government socialism and disrupted the Democrat-led march to the left.

My Grandpa became a Democrat during the depression and World War II under FDR. In his later years, he talked more and more like Reagan while he continued to vote a straight Democratic ticket. I never talked him away from his loyalty to the Democrat party, but I think he really liked Ronald Reagan and secretly admired him.

Me too, Grandpa.

Tom King, Puyallup, WA
(c) 2011 by Tom King

Why Perry Was Right on the HPV Vaccine

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Okay, before you flame me, just hear me out.  As conservatives, many of us have developed a knee-jerk reaction around certain issues, especially sex, property and religion. When confronted with certain issues, we often spout slogans without really thinking the thing through.  That tendency among conservative voters has nipped presidential candidate Rick Perry on the backside more than once.

One of the “burning” issues that turns folk against Perry has been the executive order he wrote that would have instituted the HPV vaccine program in Texas. Perry had excellent reasons for doing it the way he did. Had conservatives paid attention, they might have actually agreed with how it was done, but emotion got in the way. 

Knee-jerk conservatives thought:

1. This is a vaccine for a sexually transmitted disease.
2. This is like handing out condoms in high school. The governor is accusing Texas girls of being promiscuous.
3. My little girl will never be promiscuous!
4. This must be political so the governor must be paying off some drug company or something.
5. Therefore the governor is bad and a tool of the drug companies.

Here’s me thinking it through and putting myself in the governor’s place (a Biblical principle that is ingrained in me):

1. The vaccine prevents a deadly, horrific and often fatal disease with a single shot for a lifetime.
2. The vaccine is thoroughly tested and 100% effective. Side effects are very few as vaccines go.
3. The governor was close friends with a bright, and likable young woman who died from this disease, who could have been saved had she had the vaccine as a kid. By all accounts the governor was greatly affected by her death.
4. HPV can cause cervical cancer.  Thirty women a day are diagnosed with cervical cancer in this country.  Eight of ten women will contract some form of HPV in their lifetime. Sixty percent of college women have some form of HPV by their senior year. You don’t have to actually have sex to contract the disease.
5. For those who don’t want to give the vaccine to their daughters, there’s an opt-out clause.
6. The company that makes the drug only gave a tiny amount to the governor’s campaign – not nearly enough to buy a governor or to make him do something like this totally in the open.

Why opt-out is better than opt-in

Too many conservatives thought the governor was accusing Texas girls of being slutty and, in particularly, their own little girls and they got all offended without thinking it through.  

Now imagine if you will, how it goes down under an opt-in plan:

1. You as a parent have to decide whether your elementary school little girl is going to grow up to be promiscuous or not – something you have very little data upon which to base such a decision.
2. If you fear she might, then you have to “sign ‘er up”, thereby publicly declaring that you doubt your daughter will remain chaste. 
3. You are also telling your daughter you think she won’t be able to keep her pants on when she grows up.
4. You’ve just condemned her to take the “slut” walk down to the school nurse or the health clinic to get a shot that will protect her when, as you obviously believe, she inevitably loses her virginity in the back of someone’s van.
5. Or you don’t get the vaccine, an action which does not affirm your belief in your daughter’s future chastity, only that you don’t want anyone to think your daughter is going to grow up to be a tramp.
6. The inevitable result is that relatively few girls will get the vaccine.

Now imagine the program as an opt-out plan:

1. The vaccine is one of the standard series of shots that all the little girls are receiving. So everyone gets the shots and there is no stigma one way or the other. It’s just something we all do because the law requires it.
2. If you are convinced your little princess won’t ever slip and will remain chaste (as will her future husband), until the day of her wedding, you can march down to the health department and affirm your confidence in your child publicly by opting out.
3. Opting OUT says publicly that your daughter would never do anything naughty and you trust her. Not opting out makes no comment, but simply obeys the law where vaccines are concerned.
4. Her friends will know. Not opting out allows you to insure against your daughter making a mistake without branding her as the opt-in plan does. And lest you think (mistakenly) that no one will ever know if you opted in, remember this.  Your daughter will know and that knowledge may cause her to make all kinds of mistaken judgments about what you think of her.
5. Not only that, but young people are a brutal tribal society. Whether or not your little girl has had the HPV vaccine will, inevitably, become public knowledge, because it’s too convenient a way for kids to sort themselves into groups.  Nasty teenaged boys will, certainly, use that information as a way to brand the “safe” slutty girls whose parents chose to have them vaccinated. I mean, after all, if their parents must think they’re going to be slutty, since they went out of their way to get their daughters protected.  It would be no different than giving your teenage daughter the pill, just in case. It brands her as a “safe” target and sets her up for sexual predators and makes it easier for her to make a "mistake". 

Karen Hughes another Texas governor needs you!

The misinformed uproar over the HPV vaccine was because of the word SEX. Because that word figured into the discussion, a lot of people's eyes glazed over and it became just another sex issue to rant about like sex education or free condoms in high school, and it wasn't that at all. 

Perry did what he thought best and got bit for it.  He could have explained it better, but Perry often neglects the PR.  He needs a Karl Rove and a Karen Hughes on his team to help him articulate what he’s doing. Whoever he’s got now, is reacting, not acting and it’s hurting him.  With Palin out of it, I like the idea of a Perry/Cain ticket more and more. It won’t happen unless Perry gets a stronger support system built around him.

Conservatives MUST Support Goshen College Decision

We've gotta stop shooting at our own people!

by Tom King (c) 2011

The board of directors of tiny Goshen College in northern Indiana just stepped in it and I don't mean the stuff that litters the area's many cow pastures. A small private Mennonite school, the school board recently voted to ask college President James E. Brenneman to find an alternative to playing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ at school sporting events. Being Mennonites means accepting a strong pacifist tradition and there isn't much of a way for the announcement not to sound like another hippie leftist dissing of the national anthem. What's next? Is the school going to haul down the flag?

Not likely.  Mennonites have long been a pacifist, separatist religion but not an unpatriotic one. Similar in belief to their spiritual brethren, the Amish, though without the funny hats and rejection of electricity, the Mennonites came out of war-torn Europe to settle here, hoping to live in peace. They are hard-working, keep neat, well-ordered farms, live lives of service to their fellow man and they are good neighbors wherever they settle. They are total conscientious objectors and have a traditional cultural abhorence of violence and war, which is understandable given the violent persecution they experienced at the hands of their Christian brothers in Catholic and Protestant Europe. They are good Americans and contribute much to their communities.

While their beliefs sound like those of the socialist left, even to the point of sharing terminology like "social justice" and "peace-making", the Mennonites don't believe in sitting on their duffs and letting the government do all the work for them. They believe in full-bodied Christian giving and service - the way Christian charity ought to be done.

The school has not played the Star-Spangled banner since 1957, until recently when, for a time, it has been allowed as an instrumental piece to be played at some sporting events.  The move was likely a response by some Mennonites to the polarism in this country and to a desire in the midst of all of this to demonstrate publicly that they are, despite their pacifism, deeply patriotic Americans. The imagery of the Star Spangled Banner, however, likley proved too much for the old line Mennonite culture and some of the more left-leaning on campus. It is very Mennonite to avoid causing controversy within the faith or the school over the issue. The school, therefore, has asked staff and students to choose other patriotic songs with less war-like imagery to express their patriotism. At any rate, the school will work out the issue among its own people and perhaps some of those who wish to play the anthem will challenge the ruling.

But none of Goshen's internal dialogue on whether they should play the national anthem or not should have garnered the anger and outrage we've seen coming out of the conservative right in the past few days.

While we may disagree with the Goshen board's views on the national anthem (and I do) or on the need for a strong military, one thing we absolutely must do is defend the right of a Mennonite school to choose for itself how it will express its patriotism. Mennonites are good people. They follow the Golden Rule as well as anybody does. They are good Americans by the evidence of their day to day lives. They value honesty, loyalty, fidelity, charity, peace, love and duty as most conservatives do.

If we do not grant the right to speak, worship and express patriotism in their own manner, unmolested to a people who worship God carefully and reverently (as they do), then we become no better than the socialists who would bring everyone's conscience under the iron thumb of government and shout down anyone who objects. If we feel we must shout down, ridicule and threaten those who act according to their conscience and disagree with us a little, maybe we've been spending too much time among the liberal/progressives.  We may just be picking up their bad habits. 

I spoke to a friend today who lives in Germany. He has had a long career in the US Army and now works for the Corps of Engineers. He describes US Army communities over there as virtual "prisons", not with just razor wire, but with walls and bars and elaborate intrusive security. He says we are incrementally giving up our freedom in exchange for a false sense of security.  And as that government intrusion is allowed to grow and expand its power and to become more and more invasive, the whole system becomes more and more corrupt, with legions of fat bureaucrats making themselves fat draining the lifeblood of American taxpayers to support their lavish lifestyles. My friend says the level of waste and corruption is truly appalling.

If we pile on the Mennonites, who mean us no harm and whose fundamental beliefs support values far closer to those of the right than the left, then we succeed only in driving away more allies in the war on tyranny. Me I'd rather stand and fight to defend the right of a peaceful people like the Mennonites to live peaceably, worship peacably and sing whatever songs they want to sing. I don't care that they never pick up a gun. God bless 'em for it.  We've got no business criticizing good people for refusing to kill their fellow man. If I am called to fight upon the wall to protect such people, I will call it my privilege and honor as King David did, knowing full well that there is a price that soldiers pay for taking up arms. David, himself, was a great defender of the people, but God would not allow him to build the temple because he was a "man of war". David suffered great personal losses in his wars - even to losing sons, but he did it all for his people and accepted the cost of doing that in order to protect his family and his people from the consequences of being a warrior.  For their sacrifice, we bless the warriors, but at the same time we must NEVER curse those whom they protect!  To do so would be to disparage and minimize the warrior's sacrifice for his brothers at home.

Let's save our righteous indignation for the ones that are really out to do us harm. God bless the Mennonites for trying to find a way to express their patriotism while remaining true to their deeply held beliefs.  And shame on us for criticizing them for it.

Just telling you what I think.

Tom King