... If we would all just sit down and shut up...

The president addressed the nation’s jobs crisis by touring the rust belt in a caravan of foreign-made buses. Jobs are so important to him that he’s going on vacation.

Taking a page from European royalty of old (Please continue reading this with a high British accent), His Highness hopes that pictures of him and his family splashing in the sun will gladden the hearts of his poor downtrodden subjects. Not to worry you poor grubby blighters, blistering away in the teeming inner cities! He’s giving a jobs speech in September!  Chin up!

Global Flash Mob

This globalization/I.T. revolution is also “super-empowering” individuals, enabling them to challenge hierarchies and traditional authority figures — from business to science to government. It is also enabling the creation of powerful minorities and making governing harder and minority rule easier than ever. See dictionary for: “Tea Party.” (Tom Fried man – A Theory of Everything)

Every now and then I actually agree with limousine liberal and Chinese Politburo fanboy Tom Friedman. He has a good point about how the democratization of technology is turning the tables, but then he went and blew it.

What’s the danger to America, according to the New York Times Davos men? 

Not Philadelphia flash mobs, or people getting beat up at the Wisconsin state fair. Not an out of control government that has literally destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth… No. The Tea parties and, horror of horrors, that Texas gunslinger Rick Perry. They are the problem.

The European-North America Connection

I see a healthy young man standing in the Safeway parking lot with a cardboard sign announcing he's lost his job, his wife is pregnant and they are hungry. “Yeah right,” I think. Millions sneak across our southern border and easily find a job despite illegal status and limited ability to speak English.” The guys I see doing this appear to be in their early 20’s, in good shape, and white. And shameless? Or willfully useless?

Not so much different than England’s youth being aced out of employment by harder working higher skilled Eastern Europeans.

Our angry mobs and swarms of criminals are not so different than those of Europe.  And we haven’t seen the worst of it yet, writes Walter Russell Mead in his article, Urban Warming and Racial Climate Change. He concludes that whether we like it or not, we will have to have a national dialog on race. Unfortunately, Obama and his “Justice” Department Poobah Eric Holder, have proved themselves incapable of dialog with us cowards.

Class Warfare isn't just for England

There have been numerous outbreaks of street violence across Europe, including in France and Greece. One can expect more in countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, which will now have to impose the same sort of austerity measures applied by the Cameron government in London.

And how about the United States? Many of the same forces are at play here.  The prospects for a widening class conflict are clear even in China, where social inequality is now among the world’s worse.  (Joel Kotkin - Global Class War)

My Objectivist libertarian friends will hate his conclusion:  Ayn Rand individualism will not get us out of this.  Uneducated unskilled looters running off with sneakers and big screen TVs are acting in their rational self-interest.

Riot Round-Up

Progressivism is an incoherent jumble that studiously ignores human nature, and the world it built is crashing down around us

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. (Dalrymple - City Journal)

Keynesianism and its attendant government-planned economies has failed, as has the flim flam known as monetarism.

Dimwitted governments are looking to crack down on social networking, when they should be cracking down on socially unacceptable behavior by refusing to reward it with cash prizes, free housing and gang hangouts euphemistically known as community centers.

Taking a Good Idea Too Far

We put child abuse laws on the books, a good thing. The downside of this is that the definition of physical abuse has now expanded to the point a teacher may not even touch a student and a parental spanking that leaves no marks can bring down the wrath of Social Services upon good parents.

A guy called in to a morning radio show and commented that it is a sick joke to think kids are tougher than adults. He recalled that when he was a kid most men were military veterans and they would jerk a kid back in line if things started getting out of hand. Not anymore

Teaching the Wrong Lessons

Government has taught people that they have a right to the property of others, legally confiscated, and we are now suffering the consequences.

I'm reading commentary from relatively liberal columnists, and I think we may end up seeing some Burkean conversions, at least as it applies to law and order.

Liberal Dogma …Amoral Youngsters
Less Political Rebellion, More Mollycoddled Mob
Riots for Rioting’s Sake

You can read any of these rioting and looting stories and just as easily apply the same lawless actions to the banking industry. Same blind government enablers, same immorality, same theft, same result.

Looters and Shooters

British man stripped by thug

What happened to the British bulldog?

Stripped naked, unable to fight back. An apt metaphor. Cameron's government is talking water cannons when they should be deploying machine guns and restoring the right to keep and bear arms.

This is not a slap at Great Britain. It’s a lament. We’re not far behind.
 

The End of Progressivism

Is it any wonder looters on Main Street and Wall Street are running rampant? They've lived off of government-confiscated loot for so long now, can you really blame them for cutting out the middleman?

Self-Defense: An Inalienable Right

The 2nd Amendment isn't for hunting.  It's for shooting people who are threatening your life, liberty and property.

When the progressive constituency turns rabid, ordinary citizens must have the means to defend themselves. The absolute right to bear arms is a logical extension of the natural rights to life, liberty and property.

Statesmen from ancient Rome to the American Revolution laid the foundation in law for the right of self-defense. America's founders were influenced by these classic philosophic teachings and the European tradition derived from them.

"Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself," wrote the great Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.

"They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power." ( Claremont Institute)

Think we should surrender our self-defense rights to the state?

 OK, then riddle me this: Does the family of a murder victim have a legal right to sue the state for failing to use its police powers to prevent the murder?

American courts have ruled again and again that police have no duty to protect individuals from deadly assault. The only alternatives for a person in such danger are to rely on the mercy of criminals or to carry a gun illegally. No one should be forced to break the law to exercise a basic right. (Claremont Institute)

Your only recourse is to your natural right of self-defense. Take that away (violate it) and you have deprived a free person of the fundamental right to life. Welcome to progressivism!

For an interesting and understandable legal discussion of the right of self-defense, see Volokh - Jim Lindgren

Related Western Hero post:  Dead and Paralyzed Criminals Commit Less Crime

America's Choice: Rotten Dictator or Islamists?

President Obama exercising a time-worn American tradition

All this Egypt stuff is giving me Latin America flashbacks.  I saw some pretty violent stuff down there.  Almost getting killed by Cubans dressed as locals was just one of the many close calls...

Anyway, I caught some Sean Hannity with a couple of blathering Muslim women on his show arguing over which was better, a soul-snuffing dictatorship or a liberty-hating Islamist regime. Sean took the side of the dictatorship.

With Friends like the Saudis and the Egyptians...

"We've got to prop up the Saudi autocracy and the Egyptian dictatorship," goes the logic.  "If Islamists take over, we'll be attacked by fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt."  Uh.... On 9/11 we were attacked by Islamists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, so that pretty much blows that logic.

Why can't America simply stand for liberty?
If the Jordanians or Algerians end up electing Muslim head-cutters, so what?  It's their choice, and hopefully they'll learn from it.  If the people can overthrow a Stalinist dictatorship, they can overthrow a theocracy.  And as I previously mentioned, we've already seen how effective our Saudi and Egyptian "friends" are at containing their own poison.

We should simply be on the side of liberty.  We can trade with anyone and everyone, but let's stop getting in bed with evil people.  So violent extremists take over Saudi Arabia and Kuwait...  What the hell do I care?  They've got to sell the damned oil to survive, so let's drop the crap about "securing the world's oil supply."

And would it have killed Obama to say ONE DAMNED WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE IRANIAN PROTESTERS LAST YEAR?

It's sickening watching the Obama administration's balancing act.  VP Biden insists Dictator for life Mubarack is not a dictator, and Hillary calls the dictator and his wife "close family friends," while the New York Times frets that this looks bad for President Obama since he launched his US apology to the Muslim world from Egypt.  The liberal press also worries that the contagion is spreading across the entire Muslim world.  I say, GOOD!

A Dysfunctional Umma

"The worst psychological state is a superiority complex coupled with an inferior status."
--Jagdish Bhagwati, economist

Let the whole damned boiling cauldron of hatred burn!  The whole fragging place needs a cleansing.  I've been there, I know.  It all needs to be tipped over, spilled out and flushed down the sewer.  What a rotten, stinking hellhole these red-faced, inflamed boils on the ass of global society have created for themselves.  Ordinarily, no one would care about the shit-smeared house of horrors the spawn of Ishmael have created, but the murderous lunatics keep escaping and creating bloody havoc in the civilized parts of the world.  It's time for a cleansing, and we need to get the hell out of the way. 

I started by mentioning the death and destruction I had witnessed in Central and South America.  For all of Latin America's problems, at least they know how to use toilet paper and keep decapitations to the absolute bare minimum.  Latin Americans can also face up to their past and learn from it.  Muslims are still living in a dream world that never was.

The Muslim world must come to grips with its systemic dysfunction and utter failure.  Only then can they get past it all and try to build a future.  We are not helping by propping up hate states.  They live in a festering sewer, and we shower them with billions to carpet it over and buy air fresheners to mask the stench.  Time to step back and let reality take its course.

Afterthought:  I wrote this last nigh and it looks harsh in the light of day, but I stand by it.  All I can add is that their are millions of good people in the Muslim world yearning to breath free. There are also millions of bad people dedicated to making sure that doesn't happen.  Who's side are we on?