POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: PART ONE

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: PART ONE

 

Political correctness, the “isms” it has given birth to, and its ugly by product, multiculturalism is basically political and cultural insanity disguised as civic virtue. This creation of the secular progressive left is designed to shut down free debate by making critical issues impossible to resolve because it forbids facts and truth to be part of any discussion. It is also designed to undermine traditional values, constitutional protections, religious freedom and free enterprise. Political correctness and it growing assortment of topics too sensitive for candor is designed to warp and distort free speech in the public square by attempting to make certain speech falsely offensive, insensitive, untrue or bigoted.

It is a humorless, neo-Stalinist process which at its conclusion has people self censor themselves for fear of losing their jobs, friends or reputations. It is killing our culture AND IT IS DELIBERATE!

The list of things now considered controversial or even taboo include the following:

Any discussion or depiction of guns by schoolchildren in a public school or playing imaginary shooting games on the school playground...

Any discussion of God, the Ten Commandments, Jesus, Christmas, Easter or major Jewish holidays in public schools...

Any discussion using humor or criticism of any one who is gay, lesbian, Trans-gendered, Muslim, disabled, a female, an atheist or agnostic...

Any public display of Christmas Trees, Easter Eggs, Menorahs, Easter Bunnies, Crèches, Crosses. Crucifixes, Stars of David, Mezuzahs in public schools and public buildings...

Ethnic humor ...

 

Any defense of :

traditional marriage or denial that it has become a so called “civil right”...

 

traditional values...

the free market...

 

religion and Catholicism in particular...

 

the 2nd Amendment or the Bill of Rights in general...

 

Israel’s right of self defense or right to exist...

the use and production of fossil fuels...

 

sugar, fried foods, smoking (except marijuana), salt or fast food...

private property...

 

Any criticism of :

Obama or his policies (which automatically make you a racist)...

Islam, Political Islam, Jihad, or any Muslim Brotherhood affiliated or supported Islamic Organization here and abroad...

“Women’s reproductive health issues” specifically abortion...

Americans as “hyphenated” Americans...

anyone receiving welfare, food stamps, or any other “entitlement”...

unions, particularly Teachers unions and other public sector unions...

sex education for young children...

 

climate change or global warming...

 

Any use of terms that are considered racist if used by white people but are ok and even funny when used by non-white people...

any use of the term “illegal alien”...

Any suggestion that the rights of certain obscure insects or other exotic life forms are not superior to the legitimate needs of human beings for fuel, work and/or food...

What is ok to mock, criticize, joke or lie about without fear of retribution the following which include:

Christians and Catholics, Pentecostals and Evangelicals in particular
White People
Israel
Fat people
Straight people
Smokers
Rich people
Meat eaters
People who wear fur, leather or animal hides of any kind
Any one from middle America
The right to life
The American Military and returning veterans
Capitalism
American History
Jews when they are neo cons
Jews when they are religious
Home schooling
The concept of profit
The concept of shame
Gun owners
The NRA
Right to work laws
Voter ID requirements
Fracking and its supporters
Oil and coal
Nuclear energy

Specific Individuals who are or have been deemed appropriate for lies, demonization, ad hominem attacks and law suits for using “hate speech” include such people as :

Sarah Palin and her children
George Bush
Rush Limbaugh
Any Black Conservatives i.e. Herman Cain, Dineen Borelli, Tom Sowell etc
Sean Hannity
The Pope (it does not matter which Pope)
Paul Ryan
Michelle Bachman
Ann Coulter
David Horowitz
Robert Spencer
Pamela Geller
Mark Steyn
Nonie Darwish
Melanie Phillips
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Any Republican running for President
Rudy Giuliani
Dr. Ben Nelson

Many of the people who make this list will have a “derangement syndrome” named after them if they stay on the list long enough.

These lists grow and change daily because they are designed not to be static for a very specific reason. They exist to silence and indoctrinate you so that you will accept a radically new different America that in reality is based on nonsense. Continuing to inform you daily as to what is now right and what is now wrong will in and of itself keep you docile and quiescent. In essence the fear of offending whatever is currently off limits or PC protected, will simply shut you down and shut you up! To stay up to date with what or who is good or evil according to the practitioners of PC dogma… check some of the following resources on a continual basis:

Media Matters, the Daily Kos, MSNBC, CNN, The Huffington Post, NPR, The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, MoveOn.org, Mother Jones, Amnesty International, Planned Parenthood, ACLU, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, or the Center for American Progress.

This is the bizarre world of the PC. It is transforming the nation and making us less free, less safe, less productive, less united, less wealthy and less American. It has permeated our culture, our institutions, our laws and our daily lives. It is a greater danger to the republic than any foreign enemy and will in fact make it easier for our enemies, foreign and domestic, to destroy us.

ERLANDSSON

HABEMUS PAPAM

Habemus Papam!

We have a Pope! With these simple Latin words the Proto Deacon, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran last week, emerged on the balcony outside the Papal apartments and announced to a crowd of over 100,000 in St. Peter’s Square and billions more watching on television, that the Roman Catholic Church of 1.2 billion souls had a new leader and his name was Francis.

Pope Francis was Cardinal Arch Bishop of Buenos Aries Argentina Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a humble Jesuit who is the first Pontiff from the “new world”, the first Jesuit to be Pope, the first to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi, and the first Pope in over a thousand years not to come from Europe.   

By all accounts he is a man devoted to the poor who actually works with them and does not just talk about them, he is a traditionalist, a believer in the sanctity of life and traditional marriage. He appears to be an ascetic man who eschews the pomp and the bling that has become unfortunately associated with the magisterium. This makes him dangerous. It did not take long for the secular progressives to begin their attack.

The attack in reality however had begun prior to the conclave with the leftwing press bellowing about how the church had to change to become in effect more like the Democratic Party. Many of these commentators were self proclaimed Catholics.

After the selection former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo opined to Crain’s New York that his background “had not taught him how to deal with the high pressure of huge problems in the church.” this was a reference to the scandals of the church and the need to resolve them. His daughter Madeline said to the New York Times “I don’t think he’s what we need right now in the Catholic Church. We’re looking to move the church forward, with gay marriage and women priests.” However, current Governor Andrew Cuomo who has proposed vastly liberalized abortion rights as well as same sex marriage, was mostly praise worthy of the humility of the new Pope and his devotion to the poor.

Now the new Pope is under attack for either complicity with the military junta in Argentina during the “Dirty War” from 1976 to 1983 where left wing Priests and laity were murdered, tortured and made to disappear or for failure to denounce these atrocities. Already the whispering has begun about the similarities to what went on then when he headed the Jesuit Order there and how Pope Pius XII allegedly behaved during and before WW II with regard to Nazi war crimes. The Vatican has denied any involvement on the part of Pope Francis with crimes committed by the Junta against citizens with left wing political views despite evidence that other high ranking clergy seemed to side with the military against them, and has stated that he worked diligently behind the scene to stop the arrests and murders.

This is reminiscent of the convenient deposition of Timothy Cardinal Dolan right before the conclave on February 20th over how he handled or mishandled the allegations against pedophile Priests when he was the head of the Milwaukee Archdiocese. At that time, the dynamic Dolan was being mentioned as an outside possibility to become the next Pontiff. After a lifetime in politics it is hard to believe that the negative news coverage this generated about him was unrelated to this fact.

The secular progressive left is at war with not just people of faith but with God himself. If the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes of Matthew and Luke are left as the pillar of not just our laws but of our society and civilization, then moral relativism, political correctness, multiculturalism and class, race and gender warfare cannot win. In this war for our hearts and minds and souls they have to defeat the word of God and the institution that is the most ancient guardian of this and its connection to our western moral and political values.

Judaism and Christianity taught the world that all individuals have rights under God because they are given by God. This is the essence of our exceptionalism and our strength. We are not only a nation of laws protecting each individual soul but we are a nations of individual souls protecting those laws. And if one does not believe in God then surely a decent person can believe in the philosophy of the laws of God and support the values transmitted from those laws to our founding documents. 

This essay began with the election of a new Pope and ends with our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Many will say what is the connection to this new Pope and American politics? I say everything… because my religious convictions as an American Catholic are under assault by my government and the secular progressive “kulturesmog” that envelops the Political / Educational / Media / Entertainment axis that attempts to separate our children from their parents and our values from our history. So it matters to me who the new Pope is and what he stands for and that those who would silence me are afraid of him and hence attack both of us. That fact if nothing else prompts me to stand in the public square, a space for too long denied to people of faith, and yell for all to hear…HABEMUS PAPEM FRANCISCUM!

ERLANDSSON

REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS

All people are born alike - except Republicans and Democrats.
GROUCHO MARX

The Republicans are in full cannibal mode. They are eating their young. Reagan’s 11th commandment is ignored. It is easier to fight those closest to you than to fight your real enemy. It is simpler to demand perfection than to accept a principled compromise. When you have a habit of only talking to those who agree with you, you delude yourself into believing it is because nobody else is important enough.

Some think this is better than their usual state of existence which is the “old guard vs. the tea party” or “neo-cons vs. the religious right” or simply “Republican vs. Conservatives”. I live in a state and city which is and has been for far too long a one party environment. People in New York have not been wooed by a Republican or a Conservative running for President for so long that “Nixon’s the One!” signs are still current. The GOP has written off the state for so long that candidates only come here to raise big money from rich people and then leave quickly in the dead of night before a desperate conservative can beg them for a poster or a lawn sign. In fact the last time they had lawns signs they were reserved for Manhattan which tells you every thing you need to know about how serious they are about winning.

Candidates for lesser offices are expected to fund their own campaigns because the party does not “do that any more”! When they lose they are blamed by the ubiquitous consultants who are forced upon them by the state or city organizations, for not raising enough money to pay the very same consultants who in reality never had a plan for them to win and whom merely wanted to use the campaign for a payday in the first place.

New York is not alone in this regard. The party no longer acts like a 50 state party when it runs a Presidential campaign and it has not learned to reach out to a changing America using social media and old fashion grass roots politics to get their message to those who they rarely if ever, talk to. Part of the GOP’s problem is they have to once again begin to act like a party with a continuous presence in every neighborhood in every city, every suburb and every “Middlesex, village and farm”. People need to know that you care about them in good times and bad and they need for you to listen to them and help them when they are in trouble. Republicans need to put on their “big boy” pants on and start acting like a real party or they will be replaced just as the Whigs were in 1852.

The Republicans have become the “D” party. They feel depressed, despondent, dysfunctional, delusional, divided, decrepit, in denial, dilapidated, and diminished but they are not yet damned, demented or dead.

 

And it’s not as if they are facing opponents who are the paragons of virtue and wisdom. The Democratic Party has historically been the “S” party. What do I mean by that ? Well for starters the Democrats in part or in whole over the years have been the party of:

SLAVERY AND SLAVOCRACY
SECESSION
SEDITION
SEGREGATION
SOCIALISM
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
SPECIAL INTERESTS
SEQUESTRATION
SECULARISM
SECRECY
SANCTIMONY
SCANDAL
STEALING
STATISM
SEXISM
SECOND AMENDMENT PHOBIA
SPENDING
SURRENDER
SCHOOL FAILURE
SEVENTEEN TRILLION IN DEBT
SEX EDUCATION FOR YOUNGER AND YOUNGER CHILDREN
SARCASM
ANTI SEMITISM

STUPID SO CALLED SUSTAINABLE ENERGY LIKE SOLYNDRA
‘SLIMING” OPPONENTS
SCHADENFREUDE
SCOUNDRELS
SWINDLE
SNOBOCRACY
SOPHISTRY AND
SOVIETISING

They are however, not the party of SHAME since they seem not to understand the meaning of the word after over 200 years of existence.

I mean with baggage like this it should not be an insurmountable task for Republicans and Conservatives to begin again to be competitive and even win elections even with their internal problems! Republicans and Conservatives have a choice to either lead the fight or leave the field of battle so that others may take up the standard to restore this country to its former greatness.

ERLANDSSON

'PEOPLE LIKE ME..."

“PEOPLE LIKE ME…”
Exit polls for the 2012 Presidential Election contained five questions for voters covering the economy, health care, employment and the like . Mitt Romney was viewed favorably for the first four but lost the fifth 82% to 18%. That question was “who cares most about people like me”?

I believe that the 2012 election was won by Barack Obama and lost by Mitt Romney, the GOP and Conservatives on that issue alone.

American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks recently wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Republicans and their faulty moral arithmetic”. In this article Mr. Brooks cited further polling prior to the election that indicated only “ 33% of Americans said that Mitt Romney ‘cares about people like me’. Only 38% said he cared about the poor.“

Mr. Brooks went on to cite research from NYU sociologist Jonathan Haidt that declared that“care for the vulnerable is a universal moral concern” and “that citizens across the political spectrum place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak”.

Brooks goes on to urge Republicans and Conservatives to make the vulnerable and weak a centerpiece of their concern and not cede a false moral victory in this arena to radical left wing progressives who demagogue the issues vital to poor people without truly helping them.

Conservatives in particular are defined constantly by the left as racists, sexists, homophobes, bigots and worse who, hate peace, the poor, the old, the disabled and the sick. The left gets away with these lies because Conservatives don’t define themselves very well to communities that have become the political serfs of the Democratic party. They also have in far too many instances, written off these communities of voters where they do not believe they have any reasonable expectation of success on election day.

The left wing media echo this identity message coined by the most radical and divisive elements within the Democratic party. It is a message designed to divide us as a people and not unite us. It is designed to destroy the melting pot and replace it with a PC inspired cult of diversity. We have become tribalized into victim groups…separated by race, gender, religion, age, income, sexual preference and every other kind of identity barrier they can devise. The ultimate goal is to exchange individual rights for collective ones, redistribute income and shut down any debate about grievances real or imagined within the new balkanized, divided United States. This has become the new normal and it is a major reason why the radical left has de facto become the status quo in far too many parts of the country.

Conservatives are now are the rebels and the freedom fighters just as they were in 1775. We are in reality the alternative to this new false status quo.

We have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking our message to those who have been convinced into believing we are not on their side. We have ideas, policies, ideals and programs to make the American dream a reality for each and every person in the nation. We have solutions that will save the social safety net for both the present and future generations. We have solutions to reduce taxes and make government more efficient and effective. We have solutions to make people more free, more healthy, more productive and more wealthy. We are not the enemy of anyone save only those who in reality, do not want these things for the people of this country.

Before the 2014 Congressional elections and for every election thereafter, Republicans and in particular Conservatives must take their message of individual rights and equal opportunity to people and groups they have stopped talking to. They must not leave any one out and they must back up their words with action so that in the future the phrase “people like me” means only “we the people of the melting pot” where color, age, gender or any other artificial division has been rendered obsolete when it comes to our shared identity as Americans. All it takes is the will to walk into those places we have avoided, keep on walking, keep on talking and not let those who would divide us to succeed.




ERLANDSSON

THE BUDGET FIRE NEXT TIME REVISED...

(IN THE SPIRIT OF LENT AND TO CORRECT UNFORGIVABLE SPELLING ERRORS, I HUMBLY SUBMIT A KINDER GENTLER ATTACK ON OBAMA)



THE BUDGET FIRE NEXT TIME…

W e have survived the Fiscal Cliff crisis, the Debt Limit debacle and now the “Sequester that ate the nation” and the nation is exhausted. This President apparently lives to inflict fear, anger, terror and anxiety on the old, the sick, the disabled, the poor and his favorite target the ever handy “middle class”.

On March 27 we will be facing the next attempt to grow government, tax us to perdition, destroy the GOP, the constitution, capitalism, and our defense and national security capabilities. It is called the renewal of the Continuing Budget Resolution which we have in lieu of a budget which the Senate under Harry Reid has refused for 5 years to pass although they are required by law to do so.

I predict that Barack Obama will have learned nothing from the Sequester and the propaganda in lieu of leadership will begin anew. He will once again fear monger and use character assassination while he flies around the country in perpetual campaign mode to scare the hell out of Americans who are sick and tired of an economy that has been deliberately sabotaged by this President.

He will begin again with his demands for more taxes from the ‘evil’ rich with their “tax loopholes” who don’t pay their fair share although roughly 50% of the public pay no income taxes at all. He calls this a balanced approach. What he means by this is that there can be no spending cuts that actually result in a shrinking of the deficit or the debt. In point of fact the bill he backed in the battle of the Sequester was a Senate Democratic bill that actually increased the deficit by $7.2 billion. Yes that’s right his preferred bill cutting spending actually made the deficit larger.

We must stop pretending that he really wants to fix the problems of our economy and see him realistically instead.…and be prepared for the budget fire next time.

First and foremost the budget of the Federal Government is rife with waste, fraud, overpayments, duplication of programs and incompetent management.

For example the “Waste Book 2012” compiled by Sen. Tom Coburn lists 100 questionable projects funded by you the taxpayer ( Robosquirrels… climate change musicals…food for men on Mars…cellphones for 16, 5000,000 people in 2012) which total $19 billion.

A 2011 GAO Report lists 1,362 duplicative programs funded by the Federal Government costing the taxpayers $364.5 billion annually. This includes 44 Job Training Programs…18 Nutrition Programs…82 Teacher quality Programs…56 Financial Literacy Programs and 20 programs for the Homeless. The estimated savings for eliminating and merging programs is between $100 billion and $200 billion.

A 2010 GAO Report also estimated $48 billion in Medicaid/Medicare fraud but Obama’s own AG Eric Holder estimates the level of fraud as high as $90 billion.

Fraud in the Food Stamp Program since the advent of the electronic cash card for participants is conservatively estimated at around 1% to 4% of the $50 billion program by The Cato Institute and others. This translates into a $750 million problem identified by the Obama administration and to a $2.7 billion problem by others.

The CBO has reported that government contractors are inappropriately overpaid by $115 billion.

The Project on Government Oversight or POGO reports that the Federal Government pays contractors 1.83 times more than the Federal Government pays federal employees and 2 times more than the total compensation in the private sector for comparable work. This strongly suggests that in a contracting universe costing $500 billion, savings as high as $250 billion may be possible.

Conversely, The Heritage Foundation found in 2010 that in 8 out of 10 comparable occupation groups shared by the private and federal sectors federal employees were overpaid by $47 billion.

The Public Interest Research Group or PIRG found $1 trillion in programs that don’t work or which have outlived their usefulness including 55,000 vacant Federally owned buildings costing the taxpayers $17 billion in maintenance annually and worth God knows what on the open market. Others programs they examined included Biodiesel @ $10 billion…modernizing federal computers @ $160 billion…crop insurance @ $77 billion and the over use of Air Force One @ $179,750 an hour.

Sen. Rand Paul submitted a list of where $85 billion could be cut during the Sequester debate. Those cuts not included in the items above, included $6.5 billion for attrition of federal workers…cutting federal travel 25% or $2.25 billion…confining Pentagon Research to Military applications for $6 billion and cutting foreign Aid by 50% for a cut of $20 billion. These cuts alone total $34.75 billion or nearly the estimated target cut of $44 billion for the 8 months remaining of 2013.

When you add these cuts and other deficit/debt cutting actions up you arrive at amounts between $1.373 trillion and $1.767 trillion which seem to be only the tip of the federal waste etc iceberg.

We are borrowing $ .35 for every $1 we spend and it cannot go on. To suggest however that the solution is more taxes on the rich will only serve to cheapen and distort the very real and candid dialogue needed to make the tax code more equitable and simpler and make more people pay tax even if it is a miniscule amount so they have skin in the game. We also must begin the critical job of reforming the entitlements in order to save them and thereby help bring the debt under control. Only then will the economy begin to grow in a healthy way allowing the debt to be reduced and controlled.

So in the 10 days to a week leading up to the deadline to renew the Continuous Spending Resolution remember that the above items need to be addressed before the tax payers are asked to contribute one cent more to a government that treats your hard earned money like a junkie on crack. Remember also that these addicts to your money believe that spending less than they project each year as the budget grows automatically due to base line budgeting, is to them and only them …a cut!



ERLANDSSON