An independent rant on politics, religion, and life in general.
On May 8, 2012, Senator Richard Lugar and Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock will seek Hoosier support in obtaining the Republican nomination for United States Senate.
Lugar, a 36 year Senate veteran, has found himself in an all too familiar scenario that is highly reminiscent of the 2010 mid-term primaries. Not only does he face a capable opponent, he also faces an angry conservative constituency that has taken issue with his voting record.
I don’t know about you but I am sick of seeing editorials and news stories that cite studies by politically motivated (and, often, funded) scholars and experts who attempt to classify the political ideologies of Americans as genetic abnormalities, mental diseases, or some other kind of social dysfunctional problem. In most cases, political ideologies are a result of life experiences and completely rational people can change political views for a countless number of reasons that do not include genetic or mental abnormalities.
Fundamentally, the difference between conservatism and liberalism boils down to the size of government and how much legislation is passed. Neither side has any intentions of plummeting the United States into anarchy or subjecting it to tyrannical government rule, but that is exactly what happens if either side completely disappears. Ideally, the goal should be to allow Americans as much liberty as possible without turning government back into “Uncle Sam”. You know, that undesirable family member that shows up unannounced, with bad news, and unwanted advice.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.“
In essence, no government entity is allowed to search or take your property unless a warrant is issued. Further, a warrant can not be issued unless there is probable cause of illegal activity supported by testimony and then the warrant must describe the place to be search and the person(s) or things to be taken.
So, are Americans secure in the persons, houses, papers, and effects from illegal government searches and seizures?
On December 2, 2011, Bishop Kevin Rhoades removed Father Thomas Lombardi as pastor of St. Joseph-Hessen Cassel parish and suspended him from all public ministry practice, pending the results of a diocese-led investigation of a report that Father Lombardi sexually abused a minor.
While this is an extremely serious charge that the Catholic Church can not ignore, after three months of investigations that spanned several parishes Father Lombardi ministered to, no other allegations have been made. As a matter of fact, instead of accusations consistent with sexually deviant behavior, Father Lombardi has received an outpouring of support from numerous parishioners and friends on SupportFatherThom.com.
Unfortunately, Father Thom has NOT received the same support from his fellow clergy, who remain ominously silent.
The Obama administration’s controversial birth control mandate is meeting stiff opposition as religious organization and employers begin the long, arduous, and expensive task of fighting his social architecture it in court. On Thursday, March 1, 2012, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took questions from the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Health about the mandate.
Murphy: “Who pays for it? There is no such thing as a free service.”
Sebelius: “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception.”
Murphy: “So you are saying, by not having babies, we are going to save money on health care?”
Sebelius: “Providing contraception is a critical preventative health benefit for women and their children.”
Murphy: “Not having babies is a critical benefit?”
Sebelius: “Family planning is a critical health benefit in this country, according to the Institute of Medicine.”
The political elite and tradition news outlets have a problem. According to them, Americans receive too much propaganda and not enough fact. Although it is a true statement, it is the political elite and traditional news outlets who are using propaganda, omitting facts, and distorting issues presented to the American people.
Today, easy access to the internet has enlightened many people to different opinions and points-of-view that they, otherwise, may have not considered as people agree or refute stories in comment sections. Even with unwarranted censorship on mainstream media websites, meant to mislead readers into false impressions of public opinion, the internet offers people diverse forums of discussion.
This year Americans will decide whether the political elite can still use large bank accounts and news media driven character assassinations to persuade Republicans into completely abandoning conservatism.
Controlling The Narrative
Republicans, who are socially conservative, take a beating at the hands of news media outlets who are constantly changing the narrative to suit their agenda(s). The recent birth control mandate shines as a pristine example of how news media moguls and their political masters spend their time distorting perfectly valid conservative viewpoints.
At first, the narrative was an exemption for religious institutions, until the Obama administration clarified that religious laity was still required to participate. Immediately after the exemption was announced our local newspaper, the Journal Gazette, printed a front page story insinuating that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference and the Obama administration came to an agreement only to retract it the very next day on page 7A. Nancy Pelosi led the charge to speak for the Catholic laity, stating 98% of Catholics already use contraceptives. Then came the media barrage of false claims that the “out-of-touch” Catholic Bishops and Republicans wanted to ban contraception.
The problem with the birth control mandate is it shifts “out-of-pocket” costs with “premium” costs. Since most people have health insurance benefits through their employer, the rising cost of premiums will either be passed to the employee or their employer stops offering health insurance benefits altogether. Additionally, Medicare/Medicaid funding for the birth control mandate will either raise taxes, again on the private sector, or increase the national deficit. No one, not even the Catholic Bishops, have remotely suggested banning contraceptives. It is a narrative, concocted by the news media and the political elite, to discredit opposition to the mandate by removing valid argument from the discussion.
The Boogeymen
Any politician who shows signs of social conservatism is relentlessly assaulted by the news media narratives of the political elite, who attempt to make their values and principles look publicly oppressive to personal freedoms. The members of the TEA party got a glimpse of what happens to a social conservative who speaks out against the propaganda. Their characters are assassinated with labels of extremist, racist, bigot, homophobic, warmonger, and terrorist by the political elite and their news puppets.
Nothing “extreme” occurred at TEA party events. Proper permits were lawfully obtained, and although hundreds of thousands participated in the events, there were no arrests made. People gathered to grieve the tax and spend policies of Washington D.C. in a warning to lawmakers that their jobs were at stake. When you compare the socially conservative TEA protests to the socially liberal Occupy protests it becomes apparent who the extremists truly are, as well as who the political elite and the mainstream media chose to side with.
War & Peace
Contrary to the narrative, social conservatives are not warmongers or imperialists. They are realists who understand that national defense goes far beyond securing the United States borders. Trade relations or economic issues can, just as easily, start a war between nations as diplomatic failures. Social conservatives recognize the Islamic threat to the United States and its allies, the threat of communist and socialist propaganda that China and Russia have already used to convince Americans and their lawmakers to abandon capitalism, and the threat of economic collapse as nations of the world continue to abandon the U.S. dollar while the Federal Reserve prints money to buy its own debt.
The main reason for the Federal government is to secure the liberties of the American people and the main reason for Federal taxation is to have a well-trained, highly sophisticated military force to keep the peace and to pay off debts incurred by war. Almost everything else the Federal government collects taxes for can, and should, be handled at State level. From a fiscal and social conservative viewpoint, the Federal government has no business cutting military spending before relinquishing its spending power back to the States.
Unfortunately for her, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is finding out the hard way that many world leaders are even more narcissistic than her husband. There are real, live, crazy people in charge of countries who speak candidly about obliterating their neighbors and refuse to defer to diplomacy unless they are kept in check through sanctions or threat of war. In the span of her 3 year term, Mrs. Clinton has visibly aged almost 20 years, no doubt due to the stress of trying to reason with lunatics through third party negotiations.
Social Clarity
As if the lies of the mainstream media and political elites’ cries of warmongering were not enough to destroy conservatism, many Libertarians are being spoon-fed the notion that social and fiscal policies are unrelated.
Unfortunately, this is not true or we could have our cake and eat it too.
Social issues, liberal or conservative, drive government policy, determining it’s spending habits with legislation. By their very nature, social conservative policy thrives on small government while social liberal policy demands bigger government. Socially, conservatives do not need government induced legislation to express their social freedoms. Liberals, however, rely on government to shape and mold society into their image through legislation. Can you guess which social viewpoint has the higher financial cost to the tax payer?
Dear Ann Coulter
It took me a while to pin-point the exact reason why I distrust Mitt Romney and I have you to thank for making me aware of what bothers me about him. Liberalism and conservatism are more than mere political labels, they are lifestyles and Mitt Romney is not, nor has he ever been, a social conservative.
Social issues DO determine fiscal policy.
Liberals have used social issues as a reason to: pass Obama-care, hamper fossil fuel exploration, bail out banks and businesses of their own choosing, tax the wealthy, broaden entitlements, lengthen unemployment assistance, increase public education costs, and fund birth control as well as abortions. Everything is a “social” to them, even “privacy” issues.
For too long, conservatives have allowed the political elite and their media cronies to silence them with accusations of racism, bigotry, intolerance, and hatred. They are constantly on the defensive as their statements are re-narrated or taken out-of-context to suit the social engineering machine of the Left. Contrary to the narrative, social conservatives have nothing to be ashamed of and they are demanding to be heard.
Mitt Romney does not talk about social conservative values because he, like you, believes that publicly embracing social conservative principles will lose him the election. THIS is the EXACT behavior that John McCain engaged in that caused the Republican party to fracture in the first place. Maybe to a liberal State like Massachusetts, Mitt Romney is considered conservative, but in the heartland, Romney is a shining example of a RINO and conservatives are far more likely to support Gingrich or Santorum because, despite their baggage, they seem to understand that social issues have a real effect on fiscal policy. Neither one of them is running from their past, they are admitting their faults and stepping forward to correct mistakes. Has Mitt denounced Romney-care?
So please Ann, don’t get all sanctimonious on social conservatives of the TEA party who take issue with Romney’s version of conservatism. If Romney falters, you stand the risk of losing your reputation, we stand the risk of losing our identity.
In closing, I would like to dedicate this article to Andrew Breitbart. A man who defended social conservatism and exposed the fraud in socially liberal government programs. While I did not always agree with his methods, he stood, unafraid of the character assassinations of the media and laughed in the face of sheer hatred.
May God have mercy on his soul, he will be missed.
This is a guest post from one of TheIndependentRant’s favorite readers (ahem, his wife) – enjoy!
As part of keeping tabs on the news, I stop by the Drudge Report on a daily basis. I know that Matt Drudge is not “neutral”, but I have always liked how the site is an aggregator, bringing in stories from many different publications. The “Drudge spin” comes from the wording of the headlines that link to the news stories.
For awhile now, I have told my husband that Drudge appears to be very anti-Santorum. A little online research revealed that Matt Drudge is a libertarian. Probably a Ron Paul guy, I told myself. I respect differences of opinion, so I decided I could put up with a little negative spin against my favorite GOP candidate. Well, that all changed today.
Today, the top headline on Drudge was the following:
November 21, 2012, Nancy Pelosi insisted, “I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it . . . but they have this conscience thing that insists putting women at physical risk, although Catholic providers strongly disagree.”
On February 2, 2012, President Barack Obama pitched his “tax the wealthy” policy proposals to an audience at the Nation Prayer Breakfast. The President described himself as “extremely blessed” and said, “For me as a Christian, it [his tax the wealthy proposal] also coincides with Jesus’ teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”
While politicians have used false prophet politics to make claims they are trying to walk in Christ’s footsteps before, it still makes my skin crawl because it’s like listening to the devil quote Scripture.
The Republican presidential primary debates are comedy at its finest. First of all, the liberal news media are hosting the conservative presidential debates, then liberal news commentators screen all the questions that each conservative presidential candidate receives, and finally, liberal political analysts coagulate together immediately after each debate to tell conservative viewers who won. It’s almost conspiratorial.
From the moment he entered the presidential race, the liberal news media have tried to declare Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee, specifically, because he has spent the last five years running for President and the Republican establishment in Washington D.C. endorse him. Much to all of their dismay, dissatisfied conservative Republicans and Independents have not coalesced around their candidate of choice and something unexpected happened.
Rick Santorum won Iowa, Mitt Romney took New Hampshire, and Newt Gingrich captured South Carolina.
Ron Paul is a physician, an author, and libertarian politician, whose unwillingness to compromise on his principles, as a member of Congress, has earned criticisms from both the mainstream media and his peers. He has been an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policies and stands firmly on the belief that the United States has drifted from her Constitution as well as her forefathers’ intent for a Federal government. Undaunted by his opponents dismissals, Dr. Paul has garnered the support of many voters because he can quickly point out some of the root causes that led to degradation of freedoms and loss of personal liberties in the United States.
That being said, I have some difficult questions for Ron Paul and his supporters: