Category Archives: Blog Discussions

Comment of the Day

Blog Discussions, Civil Liberties, Comment Of The Day, Culture, Equal Protection, Freedom, Human Rights, Individual Rights, Liberty, Theory and Ideas

The following “Comment of the Day” from Rebecca was in response other comments responding to Brad’s satirical* post entitled: ‘Wendy’ Condemns Chick-fil-A President Remarks On Gay Marriage.

1. Attn: Bible-thumpers: If you haven’t read your Holy Book in the original un-pointed Hebrew and Aramaic, you have no idea what the Bible actually says. Also, if you haven’t read the Talmudic commentaries, or those of other respected Biblical scholars, you’re missing a lot of data that you kind of *need* to speak about what the Bible means with any authority.

2. “Traditional Marriage” is in the eye of the beholder, given that there are huge numbers of *freaky* “marriages” in the Bible, and given that historically marriage was a property, inheritance, procreative, or political arrangement for hundreds or even thousands of years before anyone came up with the notion of “romantic love” having anything to do with it. Moreover, traditionally, it was arranged for the children by the parents. Choosing your own spouse is an extremely modern twist on marriage.

3. Real and measuarable harm is done to LGBT individuals whose partnerships are not recognized by the state. No harm is done to your church if they marry, or if my church chooses to marry them. No harm befalls your family if theirs is united before God, or a judge. No one is going to make gay marriage mandatory.

4. Living your values is Freedom. Forcing others to live your values is Tyranny.

Comment by Rebecca — August 4, 2012 @ 10:25 am

Though I agree on all of Rebecca’s points, I believe that point 4 is the most important in terms of living in a free society.

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Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Did Justice Roberts Help Romney and Provide a Path to Repeal ObamaCare?

Blog Discussions, Democrats, Economics, Election '12, Healthcare, Independents, Libertarians, Politics, Republicans, Supreme Court, Taxation, The Contributors, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

Over at Red State, Erick Ericson theorizes that Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority opinion as a way to put ObamaCare back into the hands of the political branches to decide the law’s fate:

The Democrats have been saying for a while that individual pieces of Obamacare are quite popular. With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts has forced everyone onto that ground. Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, because John Roberts concluded it [the individual mandate] was a tax, the Democrats cannot filibuster its repeal because of the same reconciliation procedure the Democrats used to pass it.

It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.

Our own Doug Mataconis said he “would not be surprised to see it be a 6-3 decision” way back in April for the following reason:

Ordinarily, the most senior Justice in the majority gets to decide who writes the majority opinion. However, if the Chief Justice is in the majority he gets to make that decision. If Kennedy ends up voting to uphold the mandate then I could see Chief Justice Roberts joining him so that he can write the opinion himself and make the precedential value of the decision as limited as possible.

Erick Erickson also mentioned on his radio program that many conservatives and libertarians who aren’t thrilled with Romney as the nominee will put aside their objections and vote for him if it means repealing ObamaCare.

I hate to say it but I think Erickson has a point. ObamaCare being upheld is a game changer. Prior to this decision that was supposed to strike down all or part of ObamaCare, I was absolutely certain that I would enthusiastically vote for the Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson rather than settle for the lesser of the two evils. With ObamaCare being upheld, now I have to say I’m not so sure. I’m not normally a single issue voter but if ObamaCare isn’t stopped and soon, we will be stuck with it for at least a generation.

The problem is though, it might already be too late. Several things have to happen just right. First Romney must be elected and the GOP must take control of the Senate and hold the House. Second, we have to trust that Romney and the Republicans in congress will actually follow through. We’ve been disappointed before.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Shenanigans Afoot at Wikipedia Concerning Obama’s New Campaign Slogan: Forward

Blog Discussions, Culture, Democrats, Election '12, History, Hope n' Change, Media, Politics, Republicans, Socialism, Technology

How much can we or should we rely on Wikipedia, particularly concerning controversial issues? I have linked the site in the past from Liberty Papers’ posts and probably will in the future but I do think anything you or I find at Wikipedia should be verified by at least one other source before assuming it true. It was almost a year ago that Sarah Palin supporters tried to scrub the page concerning Paul Revere and his ride to cover up and support her mistaken history of the event.

Now it seems that Obama supporters are doing something similar as it relates to his one word 2012 campaign slogan: Forward.

Just yesterday, Neal Boortz referenced the Wikipedia article for the word “forward” as it related to politics but by the time he was off the air, the page had been significantly altered. Boortz explains:

So yesterday I gave you a laundry list of different political philosophers, publications and propaganda that all used the phrase “forward” to embody and promote their socialist or communist causes. Considering the historical use of the word “forward,” it is no surprise that our Marxist in Chief would select this phrase as his new campaign slogan. But one of the many examples I referenced was a Wikipedia entry under “Forward” that Cristina found entitled “Forward (generic name of socialist publications).” Yesterday morning if you went to this link you found a long history of socialist and communist publications published in many languages, principally German, Russian and French, using that name as their title.

[…]

By yesterday afternoon Obama sycophants and myrmidons were busy. They were demanding that Wikipedia remove that reference to the word “forward” being a generic name of socialist publications. Toward the middle of the afternoon if you clicked on that link it would say “This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia’s deletion policy.” By the end of the day, if you searched the word “Forward” in Wikipedia, the link to that entry had been removed from the website.

Boortz’s blog Nealz Nuze cached the original Wikipedia search and is included in his post.

The as of the publication of this post, the Wikipedia page Forward (Obama-Biden campaign slogan) says: “On April 30th, 2012 the Obama–Biden campaign announced the slogan “Forward”.” If you go back to the main page and look under “Politics,” there are 4 links in addition to the Obama campaign link of political groups, all Marxist in nature, all of which use “forward” as a slogan.

This could be a coincidence, but that is beside the point. My question is what is it about this page that certain Wiki editors who want to delete the page find objectionable? Was the original article not factual or do they not like that other Wiki editors pointed this out?*
» Read more

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Open Thread: If I Wanted America to Fail…

Blog Discussions, Civil Liberties, Corruption, Credit Crisis, Crime and Punishment, Culture, Democrats, Economics, Election '12, Energy Policy, Environment, Freedom of Association, Government Regulation, Hope n' Change, Human Rights, Individual Rights, Legal, Media, Military, Multimedia, Non-Intervention, Occupy Wall Street, Open Thread, Politics, Property Rights, Republicans, Security, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas, War on Terror, Zoning and Land-Use

FreeMarketAmerica.org has released a great video (above) called “If I Wanted America to Fail.” It’s a pretty decent list of policies one would want to implement to cause America to fail but it’s far from complete.

Here are a few suggestions of my own:

If I wanted America to fail, I would want congress to abdicate its war powers and give those powers to the president so he could commit acts of war against any country he desires for any or no reason at all.

If I wanted America to fail, I would want these undeclared wars to be open-ended with no discernable war aim. This would lead to blowback and create more enemies for America.

If I wanted America to fail, I would have troops deployed around the world to make sure the world is “safe for democracy” but would topple regimes, even those elected by the people of these countries, if the president found the new leaders not to his liking. This would create even more enemies who would try to cause America to fail.

If I wanted America to fail, I would do away with due process – even for American citizens who the president considers “enemy combatants.” I would want the president to have the ability to detain these people indefinitely, ship them to a foreign country, and even give the president the authority to kill these people anywhere in the world they are found.

If I wanted America to fail, I would have the ATF sell arms to Mexican drug cartels so they could kill innocent people on both sides of the border. I would name this operation after a lame action movie franchise and pretend to know nothing about it when details were made public (It’s not like the media would have any interest in investigating this deadly policy because this is a Democrat administration).

Now it’s your turn. What are the policies being implemented now that you would want implemented if your goal was to make America fail?

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

I Didn’t Even Know Gary Anderson Was Running in 2012!

Blog Discussions, Culture, Election '12, Humor, Media, Politics, Republicans, Strategies For Advancing Liberty, Theory and Ideas

I came across this in this discussion thread at the Agitator that I thought was too good not to share:

I’m pretty sure “Thom” wasn’t referring to Gary Anderson, the former kicker of the Minnesota Vikings (who to my knowledge isn’t running for president) but rather Gary Johnson the former governor of New Mexico (who is running for president).

I think this is exemplifies one of Gov. Johnson’s problems with name recognition. Both “Gary” and “Johnson” are such ordinary, everyday names. There’s a Gary Johnson who is an insurance agent who has an office not far from where I live. His name could just as well be Bob Smith or Bill Jones. If he were elected president, he would be the third President Johnson in U.S. history.

Names like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum are uncommon enough that they stick in your memory once you have heard or seen the names in the media. I mean really, I have never met anyone who had a name like Mitt or Newt. These names are uncommon enough I don’t even have to hear someone say the last name to know s/he is referring to the former governor of Massachusetts and former Speaker of the House respectively. As for Ron Paul, while in isolation both names are quite common, he has the whole two “first names” thing going on.

Maybe the best thing Gov. Johnson could do is do what another famous Johnson did… » Read more

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/
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