Harry Reid goes after gas prices

Actually, he doesn't.  Like the media, he seems pretty much willing to focus on anything other than our anemic economy, rising gas prices, rising prices, and general unraveling in our international status.  Gay rights is always a good thing to focus on.  And in lieu of that, for instance when gay rights are steamrolling liberties and freedoms in one victory after another, turn to another old standard of the Left: Race Relations.  And so we still go after those pesky Redskins, in this case Reid all but saying if they don't change their name they'll regret it, as well as going after TCM to add censorship wishes on John Ford movies.  This is a Democrat.  A liberal.  Remember those?  The ones who wanted to be free, free your mind, live and let live, respect diversity and all that?  How much of this is just the logic of liberal hypocrisy, and how much of it is deliberate attempts to keep our mind off of perhaps one of our country's worst presidents, I don't know  But it's worth thinking about.

An American Beauty paradise

I've told my boys if you want to understand liberalism, watch the movie American Beauty 10 times.  You'll have all you need to know.  It is the Triumph of the Will of the post-Christian manifestation of liberalism.  It has all the tropes.  The voyeuristic drug dealing dropout rebel who's kind and enlightened and brilliant.  The young sex charged daughter who dutifully hates her family and breaks the most important Commandment to break: the Fourth.  The hypocritical, shallow and laughable facade of a family in the suburban home, with a father who can't keep his hands off his own genitals, and a wife who runs the family and can't keep her hands off anyone else's genitals.  Dad is also slowly inspired to improve himself in order to live out his fantasies of sex with the underage cheerleader friend of his daughter.

Meanwhile, dear old Dad quits his job and goes for the fast food employment line while getting his only inspiration from the neighborhood homosexuals who are athletic, witty, kind, tolerant, fashionable, insightful and as close to perfection as you're going to get this side of the cross.

And the parents of our voyeuristic drug dealing hero?  Why, that Dad is a repressed homophobe who collects guns and venerates Hitler.  He's uneducated and boorish.  He beats his hapless wife and his son, but does it because he secretly desires hot, steamy sex with the fellow next door.  When this isn't realize, he must murder as all who suppress their homosexual desires must.

It's all you need to know about how modern liberals view liberalism and how they view those who don't conform. I say this because I'm in an ongoing discussion with a fellow on the thread I wrote about yesterday.  Nice enough fellow, but one who has made it clear that bigotry is defined by not accepting same sex relationships.  I've merely asked upon what authority or source he bases his claim that same sex relationships are entirely ethical.  After three comments, he has yet to answer that, appealing to the Golden Rule and a not-too-subtle 'cuz it's obviously true, duh' sort of fundamental assuredness.  And in the middle of it, he keeps throwing out some pretty humorous nods to the fact that the problem must be me: I might be ignorant, the victim of horrific relationships, in a marriage that might need an equal amount of condemnation (because nobody ever doubted that my marriage and gay marriage were on the same page).  It's amusing, in a sort of 'Big Brother on the March' sort of way.  Again, living out the American Beauty dream, with a little help from our friends and host at CAEI.

The lie that is liberalism

Or at least, its modern manifestation.  Jonah Goldberg says it better than I ever will.  Liberalism came to power with the promise of 'live and let live.'  Thought it should have been apparent, even decades ago, that grand ethic was lived out more in the breach than in the keeping.  At the same time we were told live and let live, radical progressive groups were seeking to impose their indisputable and unwavering moral supremacy on society, if not the world.  How did we miss the obvious?  I don't know.  But Mr. Goldberg, as usual, does an excellent job pointing out what should have always been known.

The New York Jets would rather lose a season than start Tebow

Ever since his ill-fated decision to stand against the Liberal Status Quo, Tebow has been a mystery   A Heisman winning quarterback whose style was questioned for its compatibility for pro football, Tebow became the proverbial hot-potato when he starred in a Super Bowl commercial renouncing abortion.  The NFL, happy to allow more progressive politicizing on behalf of its industry, is less tolerant when it comes to standing against the liberal grain.  After all, like most big business, it thrives in a culture of ME, and that's what liberalism,  whether intentionally or not, promotes.

So Tebow was begrudgingly brought in by the Denver Broncos last season, confined to the third string, and largely dismissed by critics who determined that he wasn't just not fit for pro football, but he was one of the worst to ever play the game.  Then, of course, history was changed as, due to floundering early in the season, Tebow was - with great trepidation - put in the game.  And then he won.  And won. And won again.  Critics insisted that they were sloppy wins.  Bad wins. Lousy wins.  But they were wins.  Then they went against Big Ben and the Steelers in the first week of playoffs, and the game has become the stuff of legend.

Sure, the following week, when Tom Brady and the Patriots dined on Bronco for lunch, everyone saw the limits of Tebow and a team that had never been adjusted to him.  But still, for his first time out, it was a season of magic and awe.  So naturally, the Broncos brought in Peyton Manning, prompting Tebow to go to the Jets.  The animosity toward Tebow is as much the stuff of legend as any last minute win.  Not since Muhammad Ali angered American with his flagrant condemnations of America and the war in Vietnam has an athlete galvanized so many in their hatred of an individual.  Which probably goes to show how the status quo meter has changed.  Same intolerance.  Different reasons.

But the hatred toward Tebow apparently extended to the field this year, his coach, and the team itself.  So much so that, despite one clown performance after another, despite loss after loss, despite Sanchez approaching every bad stat that a quarterback can have, there was no way in God's green earth they were going to give Tebow a chance.  When an attitude or value system becomes entrenched,  self destruction is vastly preferred to giving in, and that's just what the Jets chose to do.  In the last three possessions of last night's fair-well performance, when they needed but four points to tie the game and go into overtime, they suffered two interceptions, and a fumble.

Naturally the sports press, who is not less hateful toward Tebow, have found ways of saying he was the mischief.  His very presence I guess.  But one thing is clear: the franchise was prepared to suffer an embarrassingly bad losing season, rather than take a chance on another year where Tebow-mania vindicated a much maligned athlete   We'll see what happens next year.

Leah Libresco puzzles over a growing trend

Over at Unequally Yoked, Ms. Libresco is throwing in her two cents about this whole trend nowadays of looking to some scientific basis for ethics.  I'm shocked that there is any shock.  This is, after all, the logical consequence of where we've come and how we got here.   By now, the facade, the lie, the joke that was post-war liberalism should be known to all.  There was never, ever any desire for a nation where everyone is free to think what they want, believe what they want, say what they want, and do what they want.  That was a sales pitch.

Today, we are seeing those who once championed the age of relative truth and complete openness to all ideas, being the same ones willing to cheer and celebrate when the government steps in and attempts to crush the right to not be liberal.

Now, in the heyday of the liberal promise, the idea that there was no normal, no truth, no real objective morality was the blank check with which the left cashed in its various beliefs and standards.  It was the oxygen upon which the entire gay rights movement sucked away in order to validate the elimination of humanity's ages's old belief about sexuality.  You think homosexuality isn't normal?  Who's to say what is normal? Capt. Pierce asks Frank Burns in an early MASH episode dedicated to promoting gay rights.  Note well that in that episode, as well as most defenses of homosexuality back then, it was not that there is a gene that makes gay the same as being Asian or African, nor was it the idea that heterosexual procreative sex is only seen as normal because of a vast, homophobic conspiracy.  It was simply based on the idea that all truth is relative.  What is normal after all?

Now, of course, that idea has passed.  Why?  Because those who once said such things can now smell the milk at the finish line.  They can taste the banquet of political power and influence.  They hold domination in many of our institutions that control the narrative of our civilization.  And with such power, the last thing they want is a nation of open minded debate, and respect for those who fail to conform to their own dogmas and absolute truths which, increasingly, they can now enforce.

The problem, of course, is that those old time liberals had pretty much obliterated the idea of absolute truths. Since evertying is relative, and we sure can't appeal to personal opionion (Archie Bunker) or - chuckle - religious dogmas to support our truth claims (Stereotypical Fundamentalist Religious Zealot/Inquisitor), where is the good liberal seeking to impose his or her values on the world to go?  The answer is obvious: Science!

Yes, it's the idea that if we make a truth claim, it isn't that we want to impose our values, it's that we have to impose our values.  We don't want to start telling people how they can eat, but science has proven that in 20 years everyone is going to be so fat that the world blows up, and we can't have that.  And science also shows that spanking kids leads to Nazis, that not celebrating homosexual lifestyles causes homosexuals to kill themselves, and that not being liberal is likely to cause the universe to implode and all life as we know it to vanish at the speed of light.  So you see, it isn't as if there really is some 'objective moral truth' we're appealing to, it's just that the clear and obvious science shows there's only one acceptable option, and it just happens coincidently to be that view I hold.   In other words, we don't want to have to mandate conformity to our indepsutable values, but we owe it to you.

Why do liberals love censorship?

Because it works.  As we are seeing once again.  The big break away for the Chick fil A controversy was that it was elected government officials using the power of their government offices to banish a company based on the free speech of its top official.  Sort of like those old time puritans whipping a Quaker out of town on a cart, these liberals (and boy do I use that term loosely) are invoking the same inquisitorial Orwellian censorship.  Why? Because they can.  Because America, like so much of the world, has tried freedom and liberty and found them wanting.  Now, as liberalism has firm control over the venues of information in our culture, it's only a matter of time before rejecting leftist dogmas will get you all the tolerance as supporting the Soviet Communists did back in the 1950s.

Chick-fil-A caves to leftist censorship

It looks like Chick-fil-A has caved under the threat of liberal censorship. Once again, just like the Susan G. Komen foundation found out, this is no country for old conservatives.  Liberalism is set to become the law of the land. Those who don't conform will suffer the same fate.  Unfortunately, fealty to faith and morals goes so far, and if liberalism's not-too-secret police has you in the cross-hairs, it's likely you'll end up doing like Chick-fil-A and apparently throw your principles under the bus.      

Well, it was good while it lasted.  Though I'm inclined to give them slack - after all, it is not easy living under persecution, and despite the laughable objections by secularists and liberals, that's just what is happening - I think I've bought my last Chikin Sandwich.  Which is a shame.  I did so like their food.