The left’s anger, fear and desperation cause misplaced actions

March 25, 2025

The situation of the resistance to everything President Donald Trump says and does has always been a bit crazy, but since he took office in January, this reaction has become even crazier.

Perhaps the best example of that is the reaction to the efforts to restore order and propriety to the use of taxpayer money that the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is doing. Specifically, the involvement in DOGE of Elon Musk, who owns X (formerly Twitter) and Space X, and is CEO of Tesla is problematic.

Musk has had criticism from all sorts of people, and even threats on his life, for his efforts to find and eliminate wasteful and improper spending of our money, something every American should support.

This criticism comes primarily from those on the political left. The left is concerned about the climate and the problems they ascribe to too much CO2 in the atmosphere. They heavily oppose the burning of fossil fuels, and heavily favor wind and solar power to replace them.

Musk has helped with that by owning the company producing the very popular Tesla electric vehicle (EV).

Some on the left who disapprove of DOGE’s activities have gone after Musk. And their idea of how to get even with him, in addition to direct actions and threats against him, is through violence, which includes destroying Tesla vehicles and charging stations, and even dealerships. 

Note to those leftists: Musk does not own the vehicles, charging stations and dealerships that you are bombing with Molotov cocktails and damaging through other means. Those vehicles are owned largely by people who agree with your position on the environment, believing EVs are beneficial to the environment. And the charging station and dealership properties are owned mostly by local businesses who provide jobs for local people and generally support their communities.

These violent attacks are suspected to not be spur-of-the-moment reactions, for the most part. Vice President J.D. Vance suggests that they are coordinated and paid for by someone.

"My guess is that if we do get to the bottom of this, we're going to find out that there are some very crazy, very deranged, but very wealthy left-wing people who are funding this stuff," Vance said.

Along that line of thinking, the FBI believes there is a “map” that supposedly charts the location of Tesla owners in the United States, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said the bureau is investigating this. These actions have been described as a form of domestic terrorism by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The Daily Signal reported that “A website called ‘Dogequest’ claims to have published the personal information of Tesla owners across the country, and it turns the user’s cursor into a Molotov cocktail. The site’s operators, who also posted the exact locations of Tesla dealerships, say they will only remove personal information if the Tesla owners provide proof that they sold their electric vehicles.”

Townhall.com reports that three people have been federally charged for destruction of Tesla properties, using Molotov cocktails. They will "face the full force of the law" for allegedly firebombing Tesla cars and charging stations, according to a Department of Justice press release. The charges carry a penalty of from five years to twenty years in prison, if those charged are convicted.

"The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended," Bondi said. "Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars."

This attitude on the part of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are very welcome, after the long four years of selective prosecutions in the Biden administration. Violence, including setting fire to police stations and other properties — which the main stream media reported as “mostly peaceful” protests, as buildings burned in the background — were brushed off. 

However, parents complaining about their children’s education to their local school boards, and others carrying signs opposing abortions near abortion clinics, ranked higher with the DOJ, which labeled them “domestic terrorists.” 

And the squad of liberal prosecutors behaved like political operatives, instead of living up to their pledge to enforce laws to protect the public, for whom they work.

The country approves of and protects free speech, which often appears as organized protests. There seems to be many people who do not understand what protests actually are. And instead of peacefully protesting, they stoop to committing violent, destructive and dangerous acts. What they are doing is not protected speech; it is grounds for arrest and jail time.

Political actions and events are intended to persuade people to your way of thinking. The left’s misfocused thinking and dangerous violence only shows people how out of touch they are, and it turns people away. These illegal and dangerous antics must be stopped, and the perpetrators punished.

And what Trump and his administration are trying to do is to restore our federal government to its original design, which includes making government smaller, less controlling and less expensive. 

Why this should drive people to violence is difficult to understand, unless they believe that violence is the only path to get their way.

What in the world is happening to the United States of America?

 

Who among us that has been alive for more than five decades would believe what is happening today? Long-standing traditions — the things upon which the nation was created and that allowed it to thrive — are crumbling around us.

 

Once highly regarded qualities like righteousness, integrity and professionalism, have taken a beating over the last number of years. Career fields like education and journalism are now home to many who are willing to abandon their personal integrity, honesty, and professional ethics to indulge in indoctrination of students and the public at large for destabilizing political purposes.

 

Recent news reports told us that our gross domestic product (GDP) dropped by 32.9 percent in the second quarter. Whether this “news” was a deliberate attempt to misinform in order to cast further negativity on President Donald Trump, or the result of ignorance on the part of these so-called journalists, is difficult to determine.

 

But what actually occurred was that the GDP actually shrank by much less, only 9.5 percent, in the second quarter, and 4.8 percent in the first quarter. If this trend continues through the rest of the year, the “annualized decline” will reach 32.9 percent.

 

We see the effects of miseducation as people who never learned about their country reject their access to the broadest set of opportunities to achieve success on the planet, favoring instead the fairytale of equality of outcomes.

 

Colleges, where people are supposed to learn much more about general studies and their chosen area of interest, have produced the “woke” movement which, in addition to being ineptly named, is a destructive force to which its practitioners are totally blind.

 

“Wokeness” was aptly described as “pervasive trends under the guise of equality [that] makes diversity training in government, and corporate America, and schools, destructive, divisive, and harmful,” by Angela Sailor, vice president of The Feulner Institute at The Heritage Foundation.

 

Professional sports and similar activities —where people with high skills in a very narrow and unimportant area of life, like throwing, catching, hitting or “shooting” some sort of ball or other object — make millions of dollars, are now decaying organizations where many or most members proudly dishonor the flag and National Anthem of the country that allowed them to be the wealthy and celebrated individuals that they have become. And they do so with the blessing of their team and league.

 

Politics and such off-shoots as political correctness, and the new fad of hypersensitivity over small or years-old irritants now are the focus of many education and news folk.

 

The selfish desires of a relative few now are expected to be accepted by everyone else, whether or not they see any value in those desires. If you do not automatically cow-tow to them, you may be the target of physical and other violence.

 

And the relatively recent advent of social media adds to the problem. Social media to an increasing degree control what political information we can see on their platforms, and what cannot be seen. That is called “censorship,” which is not among the valued characteristics of our free country.

 

One example: Twitter removed the Star of David from several tweets, calling it a hateful image.

 

Another is that certain discussions about fighting the coronavirus are deemed inappropriate for you to see. Twitter has been identified as having taken down some tweets about a drug, hydroxychloroquine, that is favored by many physicians who have used the drug, and say it is effective against the virus.

 

In addition to Twitter, social media platforms Facebook and Google, and website hosting service Squarespace banned video from a group of physicians known as America's Frontline Doctors about hydroxychloroquine.

 

A doctor in Tampa, Florida, who is lead physician at a medical office that has 8,000 patients, created a video about how she and other physicians were precluded from prescribing hydroxychloroquine for their patients, despite their previous experience with that medicine.

 

The brilliant constitutional attorney and author Mark Levin said that the Frontline Doctors’ video was “not about the overthrow of America, not about anti-Semitism, not promoting terrorism — but talking about experience, science, medical knowledge about hydroxychloroquine."

 

Apparently, Twitter, Facebook and Google know more about medicine than doctors. And furthermore, they think you shouldn’t be able to get information on certain subjects without their guidance, which means providing only what they want you to know.

 

When someone is triggered by something — virtually anything, these days — suddenly there arises a movement to remove or replace that “something” without even a superficial attempt to understand that something's complete nature. If one out a hundred things is bad, to the dump with it.

 

Through the decades, we learned to generally trust our teachers and news organizations. We expect school subjects to be presented wholly and without bias. Likewise, news is supposed to tell us the what, where, when, why and who of events, without opinion or bias.

 

When those rules are deliberately broken in order to control what the public knows, or how the public should think about things, then the result is what we see happening so often today: the sabotage of our country; the freest and most wonderful nation in history.

Political shenanigans and crimes dominate political landscape

When it comes to which political party has received the most serious bad treatment, last week’s mail bomb threat targeting Democrats definitely ranks high. Even though it appears the “bombs” were built so that they wouldn’t explode, the idea of someone mailing bombs to people for political purposes is quite unsettling.

Among the targets of the devices were former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and 11 others.

One of the many honest-to-goodness experts on bombs appearing on TV analyzed the situation this way: The person who did that was either not trying to hurt anyone, or was the world’s worst bomb-maker.

Another important factor is that most of the bombs actually never made it to their recipient. Bad addresses, discovery by postal employees and Secret Service agents before delivery prevented recipients from actually getting delivery, although one made it to the home of Democrat funder George Soros, and another made it to the mailroom of CNN’s New York offices. That one was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, though Brennan is a NBC News contributor and has no public ties to CNN. Some of CNN’s offices were evacuated s a result.

Had these “bombs” detonated, this would be the most serious on the list of political crimes and persecutions. But since they did not, far and away the most serious is the shooting at a House Republican baseball practice last June where a lone gunman, a Bernie Sanders devotee, opened fire on the team. Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise nearly died from gunshot wounds, and is still recovering from them. Three other people were wounded.

While several republicans were harassed while trying to merely have a meal in a restaurant, and Senate Republicans were harassed as they walked the Halls of Congress, these things happened to a Democrat only once that made the news.

Certain media outlets and politicians like to lay blame for this hostility and violent behavior at the feet of our overly frank Commander-In-Chief, President Donald Trump. His attitude and language much too frequently stir the ire of people, especially Democrats.

But we must not overlook the sterling performances in unacceptable comments coming from angry Democrats, as well. They include Hillary Clinton, California Rep. Maxine Waters, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and former Attorney General Eric Holder. All of them have issued statements that fire up the anti-Trumpers, and anger Republicans. Waters leads the pack with her encouragement to confront administration officials in restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, and where ever they are seen.

Democrat activists have hassled Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his wife, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and her spouse and children, Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Neilson and a friend, all while they were minding their business enjoying a meal at a restaurant. Not content to harass Neilson at dinner, the mob appeared at her home later, blasting loud noises from the street.

To date, the only Democrat in the news to have endured this treatment is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was harassed at a campaign event in Florida by what was described as a “mob” that called her a communist, among other things.

And then earlier this month we have the letters containing a “white powdery substance,” a couple of them identified as containing deadly ricin, targeting President Trump, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, and Sen. Ted Cruz’s Houston campaign headquarters. Two Cruz staffers were hospitalized. 

Two weeks later, and following her wonderful comments as she announced her support for Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Maine Sen. Susan Collins received a suspicious letter at her home. Police were notified. In tweets, the letter writer claimed the letter was contaminated with ricin, but no harm was reported. Why so little news coverage of these events?

Naturally, those who support the victims of these acts blame the other side. Trump is the most common alleged perpetrator. However, as disturbing as all of these aggressive comments are, the blame needs to fall on those that actually carry out the harassment, mail letter bombs or ricin letters, or shoot up a baseball practice.

While the wild and crazy comments of the president and Congressional Democrats may affect their followers’ attitudes and thinking, their comments are just words. They are not orders that must be followed. And so long as they do not actually encourage violent acts are merely ill-advised speech.

Therefore, the responsibility for these acts is the sole responsibility of the person who committed the act. Bernie Sanders is not responsible for the near killing of Steve Scalise; the guy who decided to commit an illegal act is responsible. 

And Donald Trump is not responsible for a crazy ne’er-do-well sending phony bombs to Democrats; the ne’er-do-well is. And, Donald Trump is also not responsible for the nut-job who shot up the Jewish synagogue in Pittsburg killing 11 innocent people and wounding four others.

We must learn to assign responsibility where it belongs, not where it feels good.

Leftists take protected rights to their illogical extreme

Gertrude Himmelfarb, a brilliant observer of society and culture, had this to say about the state of American society many years ago: “The litigious temper of the times is a consequence of the decline of civility and the concomitant proliferation of ‘rights’ — legal rights in place of the manners and morals that once arbitrated disagreements and disputes. In this sense the law has become not so much the aid and abettor of manners and morals as a substitute for them.”

Those who want to focus on “rights” as if they are sacrosanct and exist in a vacuum will instantly jump upon this insightful piece of reality. Do they truly believe that the mere fact that a person has the right to do something absolves that person of the repercussions of exercising that right, particularly when they push the limits beyond reason?

The answer is “yes.” That is precisely what they believe, because nothing is as important to these folks as their own desires. It’s okay, they say, to have a “society” as long as what’s good for the many does not interfere with what’s good for “me.”

Such a philosophy makes it impossible to maintain a society that, by definition, requires individuals to sacrifice a “few” of their abundant rights for the good of the many, or for a few, or even for one. For example, maybe Dan doesn’t have to remind his friend Julie at her mother’s funeral that her mother had too much to drink over the last three decades, even though he has the right to do so.

Personal selfishness and the assertion of individual rights to the exclusion of what is good for the whole of society, or parts of it, is a recipe for societal collapse, and we see substantial movement toward that frightening possibility every day.

And there is likely no better example of this than the atmosphere surrounding the nomination and confirmation hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Such behavior has been on the increase in recent years, and peaked – hopefully – in this disgusting display of individual rights being taken to their ridiculous extreme.

I’m not arguing here about the nomination itself, or whether the judge should have been confirmed or not, but about the crazed behavior of those poor, misguided souls who not only oppose the confirmation, but who do so from a position of ignorance of civics and fairness, and the idea that they can do as they please.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees us “the freedom of speech … and the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

None of which guarantees anyone the right to say anything they want at any time or at any place, or do anything they want in the name of free speech, and it specifically limits assembly to being peaceable.

It does not, for example, encourage people to attend a formal proceeding of the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives, or a function of a committee thereof, and scream and interfere with the conducting of a formal process.

It also does not protect a group that confronts a peaceable assembly and attempts to intimidate the group, or worse to commit violence against its members, such as what the fascist Antifa gangs do, particularly when private property is destroyed. Prosecution is needed.

Many of these folks are factually challenged, having insufficient knowledge of our system and how it works.

The #MeToo movement is prime territory for serious errors. In response to inexcusable sexual assaults against females, society has largely accepted an accusation as truth. Many times – perhaps most times – such an allegation is true and accurate, but not always.

Let’s travel to Zelienople, Pennsylvania, where five female schoolmates accused a high school boy of sexual assault on two separate occasions in a 27-page complaint filed against him. One instance was said to have occurred at the Zelienople Community Pool where he worked, and the other at a private home.

The boy was fired from his job at the pool, endured multiple court appearances, was placed in a juvenile detention facility and also in home detention, was subjected to months of bullying from kids at school, had his reputation forever damaged, and faced the possibility of criminal penalties.

After some time had passed, some of the girls admitted that they had conspired to mount false accusations against the boy.

In this instance, some of the worst that could happen did happen. Fortunately, the boy’s parents have taken action to deliver justice to the parties who slandered their son, and to hopefully restore his reputation.

They have filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh against the Seneca Valley School District in Butler County (which did nothing after learning that the charges were false), District Attorney Richard Goldinger, and the parents of the five teenage girls who falsely accused the boy of sexual assault.

Perhaps some criminal statutes were also breached.

Let us hope for this unfairly damaged family that all of these scoundrels are severely punished. Perhaps the news of severe and just punishment against false accusers will serve to dampen future false accusations.

America’s summer of discontent proceeds, and violence increases

Back in 1961 when Willie Nelson composed and released a soon-to-be famous ballad, its title described a situation our country would see a few years later. The title of that song is perfectly applicable today: “Crazy.”

There are always at least a few crazy things going on in America. Today, the list is long, and growing. For example, there’s the manic movement to remove statues of some of the South’s and the Civil War’s better-known personalities, or rename things honoring them that adorn the American south.

Elected officials, who ought to know better, are surrendering to the small, but very loud, group that shrieks to remove them for no better reason than that they do not like them. They say that these memorials conjure up visions – not memories – of slavery, which was wiped from our land 150 years ago.

Cities and colleges are caving in with increasing frequency to the shrieking, and the movement’s criminal element is taking matters into its own hands by destroying these pieces of our history, sometimes in the dark of night, with no regard for anything beyond their own limited impulses.

Interestingly, as recently as this time last year, no one was complaining about these memorials. What has happened since to excuse these often illegal acts and exercises in bad judgment?

A somewhat older crazy thing is the protest against the “Star Spangled Banner,” most notably by athletes who remain sitting, or take a knee when the national anthem is performed prior to an athletic contest. This is a long-standing tradition only recently seen as problematic.

It is interesting how many Americans whose talents earned them fame and fortune somehow believe the country that provided the opportunity for success is now their enemy. They now protest against the country that has rewarded them. Biting the hand that feeds you is generally not a good plan.

A group organizing a “Unite the Right” rally at the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va. was treated fairly in its permit request, although city officials did later try to interfere with the plan. After a judge upheld the original permit, the group, described as “white nationalists” and “KKK,” went forward with its rally supporting protection of the Lee statue.

Another group appeared at the rally site, one that apparently did not have a permit. This Leftist group was there to protest against the pro-Lee rally. Sometimes referred to as “Antifa,” for “anti-fascist,” the group is known for its fascist methods in fighting what it calls fascism. Crazy?

Violence ensued. Who started it is unknown. Both sides were violent and had implements/weapons to assist them. The police did almost nothing to stop the violence, and one police officer, whose name was not given, said Charlottesville police received a “stand down” order.

Rumor has it that the Antifas have set their sights on likenesses of Col. Harlan Sanders. Good fascists must not allow a statue that represents southern fried chicken to remain a fixture in the white supremacist south.

In line with their fever over the existence of statues of Thomas Jefferson and Stonewall Jackson, Democrats have already altered their Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, renaming it the Unity Dinner. Will they now demand renaming the copious things honoring the late W. Va. Democrat Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who once was a member in good standing of the KKK?

Last weekend in Boston a group organized a rally in support of free speech, which, of course, was opposed by the same group that opposed defending Gen. Lee’s statue. Even the idea of free speech has opponents on the political Left. Crazy?

These organized political protests have reached the level of pure obsession, demanding the removal of long-standing monuments and memorials of America’s past that do actual harm to no one. Overcome by raw emotion, these opponents gather at locations of the subjects of their discontent, and often abandon the perfectly legitimate American act of peaceful protest in favor of illegal violence.

America is now more politically divided than it has been for decades. Some say as divided as it was in 1861, when disagreement drove southern states to secede from the Union, beginning the Civil War.

Are we headed for another civil war? The first one saw the states that seceded from the Union receive a brutal defeat. The disaffected are following the same path of those whose statues and monuments they now condemn. They have a poor grasp of history, and seem determined to repeat it.

The first civil war arose from serious and honest policy disagreement. What we see today is primarily emotional discontent, compounded by forces bent on fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

These protests are not spontaneous. America is under attack from within, but much influence, including funding, comes from outside. Paid protesters arrive from across the country to protest and conduct violence and destruction. People with the Workers World Party Durham, a hard-Left organization, were involved in bringing down a statue in Durham, NC, according to the Durham newspaper, the Herald-Sun.

We had better be prepared for more violence and destruction, unless authorities wise up and stop these violent protests.

Is this the end of Liberalism in the United States of America?

Have you noticed how unhinged many liberals have become since Donald Trump won the presidency? Of course you have; you can’t miss something that extensive and that crazy.

Many liberals, perhaps most, reside moderately to the left of the political center; but this is about the radicals who hang on by their fingernails to the left-most edge of the political spectrum, about to slip off into undisputed madness.

These leftmost folks have disentangled themselves from the general rules of common courtesy and civility where some may properly disagree with the ideas of others in a polite and accepting manner. These radicals are not just disagreeable but are becoming more militant and demanding, and want not to persuade others to their ideas, but to force their acceptance.

Whereas more reasonable folk hold the position that if they think smoking is a bad thing, they don’t smoke, or if they don’t think red meat is a good thing, they are vegans, or if they believe guns are always and forever dangerous and never suitable for personal ownership, they don’t buy a gun. The leftmost, by contrast, want to totally ban tobacco, red meat and guns, and will do their best to bring those bans to reality.

Protesting is protected speech in America, and we honor that right. But increasingly those protests sponsored by liberals turn to violence and destruction in their infantile temper tantrums of whining and foot stomping, demonization and name-calling. Demonstrating the character of those radicals, a Trump golf course in California and his Washington hotel have recently been vandalized. And if liberals think some group deserves special consideration and you don’t agree, you are called racist, misogynist, Nazi, fascist, immigrant-hater, etc.

And now, things are happening that are so bizarre that they can only be accurately described as deliberately dishonest, or just dumb. California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters actually said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” four days before the inauguration that Trump ought to be impeached. She implied that Trump had gotten campaign information from Russia, such as the names he called Hillary Clinton and others, and therefore he should be impeached, after he becomes president. Obviously, a president can be impeached only for wrongs committed while in office. Shouldn’t a long-time congressional representative know that?

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” David Wright attributed the timing of Trump’s U.S. Attorney purge to Fox News host Sean Hannity, noting the purge occurred one day after Hannity called for it on TV. These requested resignations are standard operating procedure when the new president is of a different political party than his predecessor, and any network news reporter ought to know that. Yet somehow because Hannity mentioned it on his show shortly before it occurred, it was Hannity that “ordered” the action, and Trump would not have done it otherwise. Fake news?

And it is much worse than those examples. Some liberals have sunk to a level below mere opposition. It is anti-Americanism: not the loyal opposition, but the disloyal political enemy. Among the more serious infractions is that appointees and holdovers from the previous administration apparently have leaked sensitive information to the media, which have eagerly reported these things, potentially breaking laws and committing treason.

While this behavior has been on the increase for a while, the election of Donald Trump has been like a dose of steroids, as if his election lifts the barriers to illegal and unethical behavior. People seem to have forgotten that, like him or not, Trump is the duly elected president, and while much of the opposition merely makes things more difficult for him, some of it puts the nation’s stability at risk.

Shelby Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, evaluates these changes in liberalism as follows: “The recent flurry of marches, demonstrations and even riots, along with the Democratic Party’s spiteful reaction to the Trump presidency, exposes what modern liberalism has become: a politics shrouded in pathos.”

He remembers how things were during the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, “when protesters wore their Sunday best and carried themselves with heroic dignity,” and bemoans today’s liberal marches, which he described as “marked by incoherence and downright lunacy — hats designed to evoke sexual organs, poems that scream in anger yet have no point to make, and an hysterical anti-Americanism. All this suggests lostness, the end of something rather than the beginning. What is ending?”

He continues, “Our new conservative president rolls his eyes when he is called a racist, and we all — liberal and conservative alike — know that he isn’t one. The jig is up. Bigotry exists, but it is far down on the list of problems that minorities now face.” Reaching back into his own experiences, he notes, “I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It’s harder now for young blacks to find a closed one.”

Calling current liberalism “an anachronism,” Steele goes on to explain that what we have today is not liberalism, but “moral esteem over reality; the self-congratulation of idealism.” And he concludes with the post mortem: “Liberalism is exhausted because it has become a corruption.”

Does America have free speech, or only “sometimes free speech”?

Recently, more words have been added to the list that our betters say we can’t use anymore. 
Most recent is the word “thug,” following the riots in American cities after the deaths of African-American males in confrontations with police officers. News reports describing broken windows and looting of some businesses, burning buildings and cars, etc., by some of the rioters contained that word in what clear-thinking people would accept as accurate useage.

But it immediately was labeled a no-no, because some had decided that it was being used to replace the “N” word. That, of course, falsely assumes that the only people who behave like thugs are black.

One of Hillary Clinton’s support groups virtually dared media folk to use any of 12 descriptive words in discussing her, because doing so, they say, is sexist.

What these folks, so quick on the trigger to ban words they don’t like, forget is that here in America millions of us take the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech seriously. Just because you are offended by something someone said, you don’t get to dictate what people can and cannot say.

And now the Garland, TX event that resulted in two Muslim extremists getting their just desserts before they could murder participants and the event’s sponsor, Pamela Geller, has ignited a furor over whether the Muhammed Art Exhibit and Contest event crossed the boundaries of free speech.

Ms. Geller’s critics say “yes, she has the right to have this contest, even though it is highly offensive to Muslims, but she should not have had the contest because it drove those two Muslims to violence.” Translated into plain English, these critics are saying, “If someone might react violently to what the First Amendment guarantees you the right to say, you shouldn’t say it.” And, they imply that the two now-dispatched murderous Muslim thugs aren’t the ones who did wrong, Ms. Geller is.

In that realm of illogic, what is or is not legitimate free speech depends upon how someone might react to it, and the speaker is responsible for how some maniac might react to what he or she said. That standard, if adopted as law, would lead eventually to darned near everything being ruled improper speech, because these days being offended now rivals baseball for the title of National Pastime.

For those ignorant of the founding principles, a refresher on why there is a free speech clause in the First Amendment might be useful. Since no one cares about restricting speech that they like and approve of, the First Amendment must have been created for a different purpose.

Its purpose was to guarantee the people the right to say pretty much anything they might want to say, however unpopular, vile or hurtful it may be to some. Specifically, the right to speak against government and those involved in it was high on the list. Imagine the futility of declaring independence from an oppressive master, fighting a bloody war to achieve independence, and then not providing mechanisms that guarantee that the citizens of the new nation can think and speak like the Founders did.

Where religion is concerned, consider that Andres Serrano received $20,000 of taxpayer support from the National Endowment for the Arts for the “work of art” titled “Piss Christ,” a crucifix sitting in a container of urine. Millions of Christians and others condemned this as highly inappropriate, but no one tried to kill him, or to rewrite or redefine the First Amendment.

Contrast that with renderings of the prophet Muhammad, whom the Encyclopedia Britannica said was “founder of the religion of Islam, accepted by Muslims throughout the world as the last of the prophets of God.” The episode in Garland, TX, the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest, where two Muslim men took exception to the idea of using Muhammad as the subject of art works and showed up with assault rifles, stands in sharp contrast to the Piss Christ episode.

There are some exceptions to free speech, among them the commonly cited “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” which would spark a panic that would likely hurt people. Drawing pictures of Muhammad, however disgusting they may be, or calling thugs “thugs,” or using certain words to describe Ms. Clinton fall well short of that threshold.

We cannot and will not allow self-appointed censors to cleanse the lexicon of imagined offensive thoughts and words, whether the goal is to protect a political candidate, or because certain words or deeds are likely to offend someone.

The United States has not survived and thrived for more than 200 years by letting a bunch of ideological nannies control their every word, thought and deed.

We should expect and encourage people to use good judgment in their words and deeds, but we cannot persecute them when their legal behavior strays beyond our preferred boundaries.

The United States has its way of doing things that has worked well for a long time, including guarantees of free speech, freedom of religion, and other important individual rights. Those principles are not going to change every time a small, disenchanted group wants a change.

The Washington Navy Yard shooting highlights many serious problems

Before the gun smoke had dispersed at the Washington Navy Yard, the agenda media reacted with a kind of grim glee that an “assault weapon” – an AR-15 – had been used yet again in a mass shooting.

The New York Daily News devoted its entire front page to the story with the headline, “Same Gun Different Slay,” in letters so big they took up two-thirds of the page. Inside the publication was an anti-gun column by Mike Lupica titled, “AR-15 is the rifle for the ‘sport’ of hunting humans.”

MSNBC even used an animation of the shooting, featuring an AR-15, while CNN's Piers Morgan said, "He was carrying an AR-15 assault rifle, another rifle, and a handgun.”

The Washington Post asked how the suspected shooter, Aaron Alexis, acquired “his weapons (an AR-15 assault rifle, a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol were reportedly found on him).”

Some of this results from the drive to get news out first. But hardly all of it.

And then, of course, the politicians got into the act.

“A gunman appeared with an assault rifle, and several other weapons,” said Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin on the Senate floor.

California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a statement which read, “This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons — including a military-style assault rifle — and kill many people in a short amount of time.”

Even the hallowed halls of academia were not immune to the ranting of the unhinged. (surprise, surprise, surprise!!)

“#NavyYardShooting The blood is on the hands of the #NRA,” tweeted David Guth, an associate professor of Journalism at the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism. “Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters,” he continued. “Shame on you. May God damn you.”

To its credit, the University suspended Guth. With such as this in journalism classrooms, it’s no wonder there is bias in the news media.

“The contents of Guth’s tweet were repugnant and in no way represent the views or opinions of the University of Kansas,” an official statement said. Whether UK works like the federal government, and keeps suspended misbehavers on the payroll, it didn’t say.

Well, Sen. Feinstein, Sen. Durbin, Prof. Guth, et al, we certainly have had enough of these incidents. But we’ve also had enough of you folks and your mis-informing cronies in the media allowing your emotions and your prejudices to commandeer your thought process and produce automatic responses that are so grossly wrong.

The shooter had only his own recently and legally acquired shotgun when he started the rampage, and is thought to have taken a handgun from one of his security officer victims along the way. No “assault rifle” was involved.

Moving from the thoughtless responses of these demagogues to the somber realities and serious issues that exist, we need to recognize that the most serious of these is clearly not a need for more gun control.

Washington, DC has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and the Navy Yard prohibits weapons being carried by anyone except for military police and other law enforcement and security personnel; not even trained military personnel who may carry weapons when they are deployed can carry a weapon on the Yard.

Alexis, who worked for a civilian contractor at the Navy Yard, had a history of arrests for weapons violations and mental health issues. Except for him, the military and civilian personnel assigned to and working at the Navy Yard obeyed the rules and didn’t bring guns to the Yard. Stronger gun laws would have made no difference at all.

Like gun-free schools without armed security, gun-free military bases have become shooting galleries for people who do not obey gun control laws and want to do bad things.

All kinds of screw-ups took place here, among which are:

**Lousy security checks – Given his criminal and mental health past, how was Alexis able to legally obtain the shotgun and a security clearance?

**Dumb rules about weapons on military facilities – On both Ft. Hood and the Navy Yard, had military personnel carried weapons, the shooters might never have planned those attacks, but they almost certainly would have done far less damage.

**The base security staff was undermanned when the shooting started, and had to close the gates to the base so they could respond to the emergency, and that interfered with civilian police trying to get on the base to help.

**Media knee-jerk misinformation appears to have emanated from an anti-gun mentality that leads to a shoot first, get details later process.

At least the media didn’t try to associate Alexis with TEA Party organizations or the Republican Party, as has often occurred in the past; they would have been wrong about that, too. A friend of Aaron Alexis, Michael Ritrovato, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he was “more of a liberal type, not conservative like I am.”

Let’s hold our breath to see how the media distort the coming debate over raising the debt ceiling yet again and a possible government shutdown.

Reality is often better than any fantasy dreamed up

An Idaho man that prosecutors say was upset about the country's marijuana policy has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Barack Obama by first practicing for six months and then firing live rounds at the White House.

And, it gets better: the gunman's name is ... Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez.

Prosecutors allege that Ortega-Hernandez “expressed anger towards the government regarding the continued criminalization of marijuana.” They further said he acknowledged smoking and claimed it makes people more intelligent.

He is currently awaiting trial for the Nov. 11, 2011 event that left more than five bullet marks on the White House. The President and First Lady were not home at the time.

Ortega-Hernandez, 22, has pleaded not guilty to the attempted assassination charge and to other charges. Authorities assert that his motive “was to punish and kill the president, who he believed was the head of a government that was oppressing its citizens in various ways, such as by continuing to criminalize the use of marijuana.”

They also noted previously disclosed information that Ortega-Hernandez repeatedly expressed contempt for Obama, whom he called the antichrist.

Clearly, the man is a right-wing-nut.

Latest from Bones

Obama Facing International Challenges on Day One

Continued sniper-like rocket attacks into Israel have finally pushed the Israelis to the breaking point, triggering retribution with an air attack against Hamas. The BBC reports:

Israeli F-16 bombers have pounded key targets across the Gaza Strip, killing more than 200 people, local medics say.

Most of those killed were policemen in the Hamas militant movement, which controls Gaza, but women and children also died, the Gaza officials said.

About 700 others were wounded, as missiles struck security compounds and militant bases, the officials said.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said the operation "may take some time"- but he pledged to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

"It's not going to last a few days,'' he said in a televised statement, flanked by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Israel said it was responding to an escalation in rocket attacks from Gaza and would bomb "as long as necessary."

Tensions along the India/Pakistan border have heightened, as Pakistan redeploys thousands of troops there from the tribal areas near Afghanistan, raising tensions fired by the Mumbai terror attacks.

The AP reports:

The move was expected to frustrate the United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.

India has blamed Pakistani-based militants for last month's siege on its financial capital, which killed 164 people and has provoked an increasingly bitter war of words between nuclear-armed neighbors that have fought three wars in 60 years.

Afghanistan, the two officials said. They said elements of the army's 14th Infantry Division were being redeployed to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border.

The military began the troop movement Thursday and plans to shift a total of 20,000 soldiers, they said without providing a time frame.

Since both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons; this situation could get tricky.

Just how Barack Obama will deal with these delicate and dangerous situations is, like Mr. Obama himself, a big question mark. Will he follow through on his pledge to sit down with foreign leaders, and if so, who will he talk to first? Will he continue America’s traditional defense of Israel? How will he respond to Pakistan’s abandoning efforts to stifle terrorist activity in favor of threatening India on the other side of the country?

Many questions exist. The insightful Thomas Sowell comments: “People who are impressed by how many of Barack Obama's advisors have Ivy League degrees seem not to remember how many people with Ivy League degrees mismanaged the Vietnam war and how many people with Ivy League degrees mismanaged economic policy during the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

Mr. Sowell is not apparently persuaded that these advisors understand the problems, or know how to deal with them. And his confidence in the President-to-Be isn’t much comfort, either: “Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama,” he wrote.

It is situation like these that make it important that the President has demonstrated an ability to understand them and respond appropriately.

Barack Obama’s rhetorical abilities are useless against the problems in the Middle East. Let’s hope there are other tools in his bag that can be useful.

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Technorati Tags: Middle East, Politics, Obama, Democrats

Violence in America Explained

I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It was right before my eyes all the time. Heck, I even participated in it as a child. The reason for the increasing level of violence in America is something we started doing at a young age, and something we gleefully did many days at school.

But now, as they used to say, the jig is up; we’ve found the long-hidden influence, and we can now move quickly to right the wrongs of decades of traditional child-rearing theory and put an end at long last to violence in America.

And who do we have to thank for this stunning revelation? Elementary schools.

That’s right; those at the source of this violence-inducing activity actually recognized that it had been right under their noses for generations, and they finally saw this because some children complained they had been chased or harassed against their will. Paying attention to the complaints of children and analyzing what they have been saying has revealed that the culprit is the playground game called “tag.”

So, tag is out at a growing number of elementary schools across the land, while other school administrations have said merely that running games will be allowed, as long as students don't chase each other. By keeping children from chasing each other while playing tag, school officials believe the proclivity of kids to grow up into mass murderers and serial rapists will be reduced or perhaps ended altogether.

A suburban Charleston, S.C., school has implemented a truly ingenious policy that includes not only banning tag, but outlawing all unsupervised contact activities, such as football and soccer on the playground. School officials say that has helped reduce playground squabbles. This policy not only virtually eliminates discord among students, but enables teachers to enjoy recess periods free of the inconvenience of having to go outside to watch over the children.

God bless America!

What Happened at Virginia Tech?

And what didn’t happen?

By now everyone is likely aware of the horror that gripped the Virginia Tech campus this past Monday. I live a little more than an hour from VT, and there are 15 or so local kids going to school there. Some of them are friends of my kids, so this incident is of great importance to our community and to us. Thankfully, all of the local kids are okay. The closest casualty was a boy from a community about 40 minutes from here.

This incomprehensibly mindless episode has focused attention on a variety of things, some appropriate and some beside the point. What happened and what didn’t happen there are relevant, both on a local level and on a broader level.

First, what didn’t happen.

- Guns did not kill 32 VT students and professors.
- The culture of the United States, as screwed up as it is, did not kill 32 people at VT.
- The reaction of the VT police and administration in the minutes and first couple of hours
after the first shootings did not kill 30 people at VT.
- The second-guessing, Monday morning quarterbacking and 20-20 hindsight, demonstrated
so ably by the American media, did not do anything useful.

And now, what did happen:

A Korean male in his twenties with a documented history of mental instability and violent tendencies first killed a girl he was apparently interested in and a residence adviser who tried to intervene, and two hours later systematically executed 30 innocent students and faculty before killing himself. That is pretty much the nuts and bolts of the story.

Events such as this one naturally create many questions, the first of which is, why? Two answers come quickly to mind: First, the kid went nuts. Second, the kid was evil.

Those on the side of “crazy” will note that he had been identified by other students as “weird,” “a loner,” and similar characterizations, and by one of his instructors who saw in his writings for her class things that were very troubling. The kid snapped, and went on a rampage.

I believe this was an “evil” deed. “Crazy” implies a separation from reality, sometimes a sudden emotional reaction, as in crimes of passion. A crazy person may hear voices or hallucinate. Adolph Hitler was evil, not crazy. Saddam Hussein was evil, not crazy. What Cho Seung-Hui did was premeditated and deliberate. What he did was based on hate and envy; he was evil, not insane. A law enforcement official described a note written by Cho as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. Cho indicated in his letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done, the official said. "You caused me to do this," the note said. Those are the words of evil, not the words of insanity.

Now comes word of a “manifesto,” a package of information that Cho mailed to NBC News on the day of the shooting, and it is being asserted that he mailed this package in between the shooting incidents. If that is true, it removes any doubt that these killings were premeditated.

Idiocy Personified

I've often said that criminals are not playing with a full deck, and here's proof of that.

Police in Boca Raton, Florida said a man who carjacked an SUV in Boca Raton drove all the way to Palm Springs before becoming lost and calling 9-1-1 on himself.

According to police reports, Claude King, 31, smashed the driver's side window of an SUV and pulled the driver out of the vehicle. Once inside, police said King began to punch the other four passengers. Once King got the passengers out of the SUV, he began to drive wildly around the area, finally heading southbound down Interstate 95. While heading southbound, King struck a white Chevrolet pickup and decided to turn around and head north. He struck another vehicle along the way and decided to pull over in Palm Springs. Lost and frustrated, he called 9-1-1 and turned himself in.

There are numerous things wrong with this story, first among which is that this dope tried to steal a car.

Now, I'm not a criminal and therefore don't think like a criminal, but it seems to me that it isn't very smart to steal a car that has five people in it in broad daylight. And if you can't drive any better than this incompetent boob, you shouldn't steal a car at all. Steal groceries. Or bicycles.

Thank God that many criminals are so stupid that they are easily caught, as in this case. Also fortunate is that not too many people got hurt.

Eric Rudolph Doesn’t Like Prison

Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber, the American domestic terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States in 1996 that killed three people and injured at least 150 others, is complaining about his prison cell and the facility where he gets his exercise. The room is too small, the mistreated Eric says, and the exercise yard is like a dog pen.

Aaah, poor baby. Prison isn’t all you thought it would be when you decided to kill innocent people? What a shame. I think you have too much room, and I further think you ought to spend the rest of your miserable life in a dog pen. A real one.

Wake up, you self-absorbed boob!

That’s why we have rules about killing people in the United States; you follow the rules, and you don’t go to jail. You should be damned happy you can still draw breath, because if it was up to me, you’d have been put to death years ago.