Right Wing Nut House

Christopher Orlet has struck a nerve among the internet addicts who are as compulsive in following politics and culture as a drunk reaching for the bottle on the night stand first thing in the morning:

I have lived most of my life with but one or two persons I would call good friends. My fiancée, who collects friends like a baleen whale collects plankton, finds my lack of friends odd. I don’t doubt that it is.

It’s not that I am unable to play well with others. It is rather that I have a hard time finding persons who interest me enough to want to be friends. This is, I suppose, what attracted me to books and magazines so many years ago — the opportunity to be in the company of interesting people with engaging stories to tell.

All but one of the friends of my youth has long since disappeared from my radar screen, which is a common enough occurrence after high school. The thing is, I never felt particularly close to any of them. Other than the fact that we were going through the same teenage crises, we had little in common. What brought us together wasn’t not mutual values and interests — they liked cars and girls, I liked guitars and girls — but that we had grown up in close proximity to each another. It was friendship based on location, coincidence, and social class.

Pathetic? Or a description of many of us who have eschewed the superficiality of most relationships outside of marriage and settled on gleaning human contact via the flickering monitor on our desktop?

Before the internet became as ubiquitous as it is today, it was burying oneself in books, magazines, and periodicals that substituted for connecting with flesh and blood. While Orlet claims there is no one as interesting in the world as himself and therefore, finds homo sapiens rather boring, that was only part of the reason I walled myself off from most of humanity. The truth is, I am a bore myself in social situations. Small talk drives me nuts. Inanities make me homicidal. I would much prefer someone walking up to me at a party and asking if I ever read In Praise of Folly than a half-soused reveler asking me about the weather (hot chicks excluded).

I have found that I get along swimmingly without this kind of connection to the species. I’m sure most of those whose company and friendship I reject are lovely people, no doubt willing to give the shirt off their backs and the last coin from their pocket if you asked. I know because some have asked me. It has always amazed me that people you have met perhaps 3 or 4 times in your life feel able to not only involve you in the intimate soap operas of their lives, but also think nothing of showing up at your door at 3:00 AM sheepishly explaining that the wife booted them off the couch they were already sentenced to sleep upon and could they please spend a night or two with you (eating you out of house and home in the process) while the old lady calmed down?

The internet is a perfect vehicle for someone like me. No one expects you to get too close so you can be as funky, as snarky, as haughty and ill-mannered as you please with the only price you pay being removed from someone’s email list. I treasure those emails from readers who, due to my apostasy - real or imagined - would solemnly announce that they would never visit my blog again. My response to these drama queens was always the same; so be it. And to help you keep your promise, I will ban your ISP number, keeping you from ever seeing my blog again.

But looking at this solitary lifestyle in a different light, it personifies Thoreau’s observation of a life lived in “quiet desperation.” The lack of real friendships in my life - save my lovely Zsu-Zsu who doubles as lover and nursemaid - leaves a hole in the soul that is the largest price one pays for shunning the kind of superficial relationships that pass as friendships. For by shunning all it shuts off the possibility that you will find that diamond in the rough - that “true” friend that brings intimacy without sex and closeness without the kind of cloying stickiness many sexual relationships embody. I stopped looking for that mythical beast long ago and have settled for meeting the greatest minds who ever lived in books, while playing with the ignorant savages who inhabit the more fascinating parts of the internet.

Orlet quotes Poe:

A real friend may be, as the musician Chuck Prophet said, someone who will pick you up at the airport. But I think Edgar Allen Poe was nearer the truth when on his deathbed he cried: “My best friend would be the man who would blow my brains out with a pistol.”

EAP obviously never imagined the internet where many who aren’t even your friend would gladly blow your brains out -even without you asking.

Makes life worth living even without friends, eh?

For many of you who use the Firefox browser to access this site, you may have found reading The House an impossibility over the last 10 days or so.

I ask your pardon. I was unaware of the problem until a reader emailed me and mentioned it. I was having problems accessing the site myself but I thought it was specific to my computer and not a general problem with viewing the website in Firefox (IE and Google Chrome were unaffected.). It seems that an insidious, unwelcome, unasked for, should-be-criminal script was surreptitiously installed in the sidebar of my blog and was wreaking havoc with visitor’s computers.

When clicking on the web address to The House, the site would appear briefly and then be redirected to something called B.scorecardresearch.com - except the script caused the site to hang forever leaving a blank page to look at. I tried to scrub it using every anti-spyware, anti-malware, anti-virus program I had - and some like Spybot I downloaded. Since I was unaware that the problem was a rogue, 3rd party script, the small piece of code laughed at my efforts to eradicate it. It sneered as I flailed about aimlessly, nearly weeping with frustration and anger, and vowing to take my revenge - if I ever managed to see my website again in Firefox.

A search revealed that b.scorecardresearch.com was a webtracking company, carefully monitoring my keystrokes and website visits. I discovered upon visiting its website that I might opt out of participating in this gangster company’s information gathering. After clicking the “opt out” link, I was told the cookie would be inoperative.

In this, they were correct - except the problem wasn’t with a cookie. The problem was that a script had been placed inside the blog infrastructure itself without my knowledge or permission. When I discovered that there were still problems with the site after opting out, I went to the Mozilla support forum and screamed for help.

The good geeks at Mozilla came through in spectacular fashion. First, Gerv identified the problem:

The sites which are having the problem include code from Technorati, which itself includes code from extreme-dm.com, which includes a reference to a script on the site b.scorecardresearch.com. For some reason, that script is not loading correctly, and it is not marked as inessential to the page, and so the page load is blocked.

This is an example of why including scripts from a 3rd party site in your website is a dangerous thing to do. Do you trust everyone that the owner of that script trusts?

So this is (probably) not a problem with Firefox.

Then a good bit of luck; an expert in Wordpress who had dealt with a similar problem on another website:

WP Specialist:

Had the same problem earlier with a client’s site. Do you have technorati called anywhere within your theme? Removing that from our site fixed the issue.

From some reading I did, it’s apparently the latest update of FireFox causing the issue. (Which explains why it’s okay in IE and Chrome) Some “tracking scripts” are running wrong and causing the redirect.

So, if you don’t have technorati going, trying disabling any of your java (i.e. twitter follow widgets)

Please let me know if this helped (because I’m curious). Good luck!

Sure enough, I accessed the blog innards and there it was - a script with “technorati” in the middle of it (I wish I had copied the script but was so excited to get rid of it I wasn’t thinking), sitting all by itself in my right hand sidebar, minding my business, not serving any purpose for the blog whatsoever. I removed it and all is well in blogland again.

I have no idea how that script got there. I certainly wasn’t asked to participate in any kind of program that would monitor my surfing habits. Did Technorati place it there? My meager knowledge of how such scripts are installed makes that an open question. I know that it wasn’t there previously since I had occasion to work on the sidebar code from time to time over the last 5 years. It could have been there for months or, given the recent problems with accessing the site, just a matter of days.

In the future, I will take no chances. I will no longer visit Technorati. And let this be a warning to everyone; no 3rd party scripts for your blog or browser. Unless you are absolutely sure what you are getting, it is best to steer clear of scripts from unknown sources.

I learned that lesson the hard way. I hope you don’t have to.

ME: So, where the hell have you been for a week? Cobwebs are forming all over the blog not to mention the fact you’ve probably lost readers by the bushel.

RM: Au contraire. My sitemeter says I have actually increased my readership by about 10%. It seems some of my older posts have been linked by blogs like Hit and Run as well as several smaller sites.

ME: OK - so why the time off? You wussing out on everybody? Scared to offend conservatives? You fricking RINOS are all alike; can’t take a little well aimed criticism.

RM: Yeah, something like that. I’ve been “decompressing.”

ME: Wah?

RM: You know, relighting the fires of creativity. Reigniting the passion. Retooling the mind and heart.

ME: More like retreating into a shell, if you ask me. What are you, lazy or something?

RM: Heh. You try working 80 hours a week, 7 days. I didn’t even know it was summer until Sue told me I probably didn’t need my parka to go up to the store and get our Powerball tickets.

ME: Yeah, well I still say you’re a wuss.

RM: You know, you’re right. It got to the point last week, after reading the usual nonsense from many conservatives about how Obama is deliberately trying to “destroy” the country, or is a Marxist, or wants to be a dictator, or is favoring Muslims in the Middle East because he actually is one, or is plotting to cancel the elections in November, or wasn’t born here/not a naturalized citizen/Hawaiian official says he was born in Kenya/yadayadayadayada…that I nearly screamed

STOP THE MADNESS!

Jesus lord God I get nauseated reading this crap. And in my two jobs, I have to read it all the time. Comments, articles, emails - it never stops. Conspiracies, falsehoods, batshit crazy observations, wildly off base dot connecting, Cloward-Piven, Rules for Radicals — a never ending flood of idiocy, illogic, unreasoning hatred, and just plain ignorance from people who tell me I am insufficiently passionate in my opposition to Obama and the liberals and am therefore on their side.

It’s like the previous 8 years of putting up with the exact same crap from liberals about George Bush never happened.

The. Exact. Same. Crap.

Bush the dictator. Bush trying to destroy the country. Bush policies formulated only to help cronies. Don’t these people remember how we laughed at that kind of stupidity? And now, it looks like I have to put up with the same damn ignorant tripe for another 8 years.

ME: Gee…if I had known you were a candidate for a padded room, I wouldn’t have asked.

RM: I would like to point out that having a conversation with oneself may be one definition of losing touch with reality.

ME: True. But where else are you going to find anyone as intelligent, sober minded, reasonable, pragmatic, witty, and devastatingly rational?

RM: Dunno…Do you think it’s too late in life to become a Jesuit priest?

It’s too bad America’s best ally in the Middle East has to deal with this empty suit in the White House. With the entire rest of the world in full throated outrage over the terrorist ambush - and it has been for more than 24 hours - we have yet to hear from the man who is ostensibly the Commander in Chief and has been constitutionally delegated to make our foreign policy.

Where the hell is the President of the United States?

Sure, he’s on vacation and all - must recharge the batteries after all those exertions on behalf of - well - some of the people anyway. But you would think that even Barack Obama could find the time between pick up basketball games and pleasant naps on the holiday weekend to personally issue a statement on a matter of war and peace - especially one involving an ally he swears he supports.

Ominously, the reason for this dearth of presidential interest may, in fact, be a not so subtle message that the US is about to turn on its beleaguered ally and join most of the rest of the world in ignoring the facts and pretending that Hamas has any legitimate claim to being an aggrieved party, and that the organization that funded these “peace” activists was a designated terrorist outfit.

Meanwhile, our State Department didn’t take the holiday off - although judging by the pablum they put out on the incident, perhaps they should have:

The United States deeply regrets the tragic loss of life and injuries suffered among those involved in the incident today aboard the Gaza-bound ships. We are working to ascertain the facts, and expect that the Israeli government will conduct a full and credible investigation.

The United States remains deeply concerned by the suffering of civilians in Gaza. We will continue to engage the Israelis on a daily basis to expand the scope and type of goods allowed into Gaza to address the full range of the population’s humanitarian and recovery needs. We will continue to work closely with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, along with international NGOs and the UN, to provide adequate access for humanitarian goods, including reconstruction materials, through the border crossings, while bearing in mind the Government of Israel’s legitimate security concerns. However, Hamas’ interference with international assistance shipments and work of nongovernmental organizations, and its use and endorsement of violence, complicates efforts in Gaza. Mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by governments and groups that wish to do so. These mechanisms should be used for the benefit of all those in Gaza.

Ultimately, this incident underscores the need to move ahead quickly with negotiations that can lead to a comprehensive peace in the region.

But on the White House website ? Not a whisper. Not a blog post. Nothing. This is to be expected. It takes time to craft a statement that stabs your best ally in the back without making it appear that you are doing so.

UPDATE

Jake Tapper is reporting that “there won’t be any daylight between the US and Israel in the aftermath of the incident on the flotilla yesterday…”

I will believe that when I see it. In fact, the administration is hanging their hat on the Security Council statement released late last night. Sources are bragging to Tapper how they diluted the statement so that blame for the incident is vague. But the statement still makes no mention of the reason for the blockade - that, what the Council demands as far as the “unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance throughout Gaza…” would result in Hamas receiving an avalanche of arms from their friends in Tehran and Damascus. One need only look at the Hezballah resupply following their war with the Jewish state under the noses of UNIFIL to understand the Israeli’s concern.

And the statement makes it clear that it is setting Israel up for another “Goldstone Moment” where Tel Aviv’s own investigation of the incident will be declared invalid and another, “impartial” investigation undertaken by the UN will no doubt finger the real culprits in the incident.

Who do you think that might be?

This blog post originally appears on The American Thinker.

Readers of this site know from time to time I take a few days off to recharge the batteries, and catch up on some reading. I had a long list of articles and blog posts that I bookmarked for later reading, and I figured it was about time for another mini-vacation anyway.

The last 5 days have been blessedly free of pressure in producing anything (except a couple of posts at AT), and I almost feel like a new man. When you write 4-5,000 words a day (often more), day in and day out (plus email responses and the occasional comment left on a blog site) there eventually comes a morning when you dread the thought of writing anything and end up staring blankly at the monitor for an hour before you realize you have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say.

I can always tell when I need a break when even good subject matter elicits nothing in the way of ideas of how to write about it. Or you realize that the ideas that come to you would require extensive research. Or you are seized with a feeling of ennui so profound that you wish you had never gotten out of bed.

So for those of you hoping that the negative response to my piece on Senator Bennett might have driven me forever from the battleground, I am sorry to disappoint you. No such luck. Tomorrow, I will be back at it, trying my best to upset you with my singular ability to get under the skin of both liberals and conservatives as I continue to explore the intellectual and cultural conceits from both ideologies that drive me up a wall.

There’s that to look forward to. And then there’s my coverage of the Blackhawks and White Sox - one team on the way up, the other going down for the count. I want to write about both teams because sports writing is really my first love. It’s the one thing I regret about the last 35 years - that I didn’t try to follow that dream as a young man.

Back to our regularly scheduled postings tomorrow.

This blurb by Dave Neiwert at Crooks and Liars is fascinating. It is so blithely ignorant of its own irony that it could easily be construed as a child sticking its tongue out at a playmate and sneering, “So there, nyeah.”

The next time you hear some right-winger (most notably Dick Cheney) sneer at the Obama administration’s “law enforcement approach to terrorism,” remember this.

Remember what? How incredibly lucky we are because twice now since Christmas we failed to interdict a terrorist attack because the essence of the “law enforcement approach” is to wait until the terrorists have killed a lot of Americans before acting? The “law enforcement approach” did not stop Shahzad from trying to incinerate New Yorkers in Times Square, nor did it stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from trying to bring down an airplane filled with people on Christmas day.

If Mr. Shahdaz was sitting in jail right after a successful attack, how sneeringly juvenile would Neiwert be about that? If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been able to bring down the plane on Christmas day, how much crowing would Neiwert be doing about the “law enforcement approach” to terrorism?

The police have an important role to play in the War on Terror. No one disputes this except people like Neiwert trying to set up strawman arguments to shadow box with his political opponents. International cooperation to break up terror cells already in place is a vital component to keep us safe. Cheney should know. He headed a Bush administration effort that, for all its faults, worked closely with our allies, and even those nations who don’t like us very much (Pakistan) in a proactive attempt to foil terrorist plots before they occurred.

Those of us who believe that we are at war with Islamic extremists (they certainly believe they are at war with us) want to go beyond this common sense approach and, using special forces, drones, and even assassins, attack terrorists where they are hiding to prevent them from planning attacks on us in the first place. Also, if necessary, attack nations that harbor and succor terrorists who have successfully attacked America.

Don’t look now, but President Obama is doing all of that (I have no doubt he would respond with military force if it could be shown a major attack on America originated in a country that allowed terrorists safe haven). He’s just not calling it a “War on Terror” and has liberals like Neiwert bamboozled into thinking he has altered President Bush’s policies much at all. He hasn’t. He has stepped up the use of drones on our enemies while special forces are assisting Yemenis, Pakistanis, and probably other nations in going after and killing terrorists. His emphasis on law enforcement is cosmetic. In order not to offend the sensibilities of moderate Muslims (and to fool his own domestic political base), the president is downplaying the military aspect of the War on Terror in his public pronouncements. What goes on behind the scenes is a different story.

Cheney is upset that Obama isn’t acting like a cowboy and broadcasting our efforts to fight a war against the terrorists where they live and plot their attacks. And liberals like Neiwert are deluding themselves if they think that because the atmospherics have changed, the policy has been altered. Nothing could be further from the truth.

CIA paramilitaries, SEALS, Green Berets, and special forces units from every branch of the service are engaged in a “hot” war with those who would do us harm. They are working with the military and intelligence services of other nations to track, expose, and kill terrorists. By any definition you want to use, this is war. And Neiwert’s arrogant posturing notwithstanding, it is a vitally important adjunct to efforts by police around the world to carry out their own anti-terrorism functions that not only look to capture terrorists before they can harm us, but also take away their sources of finance, cut off their communications with their overseas masters, and relentlessly pursue them, never giving them a moment’s rest.

Our military constantly feeds intelligence gleaned from their efforts to our allies in the War on Terror who pass the information along to local and national police authorities. It is a symbiotic relationship that has proven very successful - for the most part. But as former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge pointed out years ago, we have to be successful in interdicting the terrorist’s plans 100% of the time where they only have to be successful once in order to kill a lot of Americans.

The recent attacks in Detroit on Christmas day and in Times Square over the weekend highlight that truism. It is worrisome in both instances that our own government dropped the ball; a failure in airport security measures that failed to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from attempting his murder, and several red flags that should have made Faisal Shahzad a person of interest to domestic law enforcement. This calls into question the basic competence of this administration and whether President Obama is protecting the homeland adequately.

Only by the grace of God and the incompetence of the attackers has a major domestic terrorist incident been avoided over the last few months. I hardly think that calls for the kind of childishness offered up by Dave Neiwert or any other lefty who is stupidly celebrating their “victory” over their political foes.

A few more victories like that and we’re going to have a lot of dead Americans to mourn.

My first article is up at David Horowitz’s FrontPage.com where I look at the real motive behind Bill Clinton’s sudden interest in political speech inciting violence:

A sample:

Mr. Clinton’s concern for the quality of our nation’s political discourse is touching, if not a little curious. Apparently, the avalanche of hate, violent rhetoric, and invective against President Bush for 8 years didn’t pose much of a danger in his mind. Otherwise, he would have said something, right?

During the Bush years, major figures on the left referred to the “Bush regime” as “fascist,” while insisting that the president was trying to set up a dictatorship. Mr. Bush was regularly hung in effigy at protest rallies, and something of an “assassination chic” arose where the killing of the president became a parlor game for some of the president’s more hip critics.

I don’t recall Mr. Clinton — or anyone else on the left for that matter — raising the specter of political violence as a result of that fantastically exaggerated, hateful rhetoric. Few, if any in the mainstream media raised an alarm that such unscrewed looniness would incite or enable some left wing kook to act out his violent impulses. Not even as the left en mass were screaming about Bush “destroying the country” did we hear a peep from the former president about “demonization” of Bush by his liberal allies.

The point being, Mr. Clinton is engaging in an effort to silence and delegitimize critics of President Obama by hinting at violence that hasn’t occurred yet. He is, in effect, setting the stage for a massive backlash against the right and tea partiers if, God forbid, some nutcase were to listen to the voices in his head telling him to kill people and act on those impulses. If this were to occur, we would once again be treated to the entire left playing amateur psychologist and trying to guess the insane person’s “motivations.” The fact that most crazed gunmen don’t need any outside stimuli to perpetrate their crimes is beside the point. Even the idea that the fringe right character plotting mayhem cares what some internet blogger has to say about Obama gains currency when the left engages in its politically motivated hunt for blame.

I don’t discount the idea that speech can lead to violence entirely. I detail the Warren Commission’s efforts to quantify the extraordinary hatred directed against Kennedy in the months leading up to the assassination. Did Oswald feel enabled by the level of vitriol directed against JFK? In the end, the Commission took the politically expedient route and only made passing mention of the idea.

But it is nuts to equate the atmosphere in Dallas with anything having to do with opposition to Obama today among mainstream conservatives. Clinton is trying to cut off debate while setting up a huge backlash against the right if any nutcase decides to act out his radical impulses in a violent manner.

Read the whole thing.

This post originally appears at The Moderate Voice

There is nothing new about one’s political opponent’s trying to define your philosophy. This is a part of politics as old as the republic, and the more stinking and fearsome you can define how your enemy thinks, the more hay you will make with the electorate.

It worked so well for movement conservatives that they have chased the designation “liberal” from public discourse, perhaps for all time, by demonizing, exaggerating, and ultimately condemning those who identified themselves thusly as less than patriotic, less than American.

And previous to that, liberals worked wonders with the word “conservative” as they branded anyone of that philosophical bent a frothing at the mouth anti-Communist, a danger to American liberties, an ignorant, unlearned rube distrustful of intellectuals, and a mossback who looked with suspicion on international entanglements.

So goes the unending war between the two great philosophies - the yin and yang of the soul of America, forever condemned to be at odds while the country would find it impossible to do without both.

The complementary forces at work that make both liberals and conservatives necessary for a healthy society far exceed the puny efforts to rip asunder the the soul of America where these philosophies reside. While we have seen in recent decades an excessive partisanship that seeks dominance and control over the mechanism of government, what has been happening beneath the surface hasn’t changed; the slow, grinding forces of history that shape the destiny of America in ways we can only understand when we remove ourselves from the present political skirmishes and see the contours revealed by looking over our shoulder at what we have become.

American history is not a straight line proposition. It is tempting for narrative historians to paint it that way, but by doing so, much is missed in the translation. And the reason that is basically true is because of how America changes over the years, and the nature of change itself.

Generally speaking, America is a nation created to embrace change. Our Constitution has codified this notion by including the radical idea that future circumstances may require that the founding document be amended. But at the same time - and this is the key - the founders made it damn near impossible to alter their masterpiece. The Constitutional amendment must be passed by a 2/3 vote Congress and then approved by 3/4 of the states. A tall order that, as evidenced by the fact that, excluding the Bill of Rights, we have altered the text of our founding document only 17 times in 221 years.

Clearly, the founders wanted a little built in prudence to govern the engine of change. There is nothing wrong with that, as any conservative could tell you. Prudence is perhaps the most important civic virtue to which a society and by extension, government can aspire. It allows for change without overturning society in a helter skelter effort to address the issue of the day, putting a break on passion and forcing the citizenry to deal with what needs to be done in a rational manner. Change should be managed and well considered with a sharp eye directed toward consequences both seen and perhaps unseen.

This has usually been the case in America. And when it hasn’t been so, the worst consequences have usually been outweighed by the gains we have made by marching into the future with little or no idea of where we were going. Only the fact that we were moving ahead seemed to matter.

You can pick your own examples from history but I like the radical change found in Jacksonian democracy overturning the established order and giving ordinary people power they were previously denied. The “Age of the Common Man” had begun and since then, politicians have pandered to that notion of the “ordinary American,” sometimes masking schemes that accomplished exactly the opposite by claiming solidarity with regular folk.

Thinking of what has been done by government in the name of the “Middle Class” is to contemplate the unforeseen consequences that Old Hickory unleashed. And yet, we certainly wouldn’t trade what we have with what the Jacksonians defeated; the idea that there was a landed aristocracy who should rule by birthright.

In a similar fashion, we accept the consequences of destroying slavery even with the monumentally awful consequences of war, bitterness, divisiveness, and the system of Jim Crow that replaced bondage because slavery was such a fundamental evil that the unforeseen consequences didn’t matter. It could be said that in the case of getting rid of involuntary servitude and flushing it forever from the Constitution, that we could well say to hell with prudence, the actions we’re taking are long past due.

There are other examples of great change leading to unforeseen and deleterious consequences. Think of the Great Depression and the revolution in government begun by FDR. Until that time, the only contact people had with Washington was basically through the post office, or the draft. FDR changed that forever by initiating a massive government intervention in the economy in order to “save capitalism” while ordinary people were helped via government assistance with jobs, food, and housing. By today’s standards, these changes were modest indeed. But whether you are a liberal or conservative, you have to agree that there were unintended consequences to these changes and that not all of them were good.

Think of World War II and the rise of the national security state, the baby boom, the creation of a consumer driven economy - all changes that have good and bad consequences for our society, most of them unforeseen. War seems to accelerate change whether we want it or not which is a consequence in and of itself. How different we would be if we had not been drawn into the conflict? Alternate history parlor games notwithstanding, it would be impossible to say.

This brings us to the present and our president’s charge that opponents of his health insurance reform plan failed to embrace it because of their fear of change. There is something to that idea, although I would strenuously argue that for many on the right, it was not a question of being fearful of change per se, only the imprudent, unforeseen, uncontemplated changes inherent in a 3000 page bill few had read, fewer still understood, and no one could imagine the worst of what this effort at comprehensive reform of 1/6 the economy would mean.

Russel Kirk may be talking about conservative philosophy here, but I think he speaks to prudent people everywhere:

Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. As John Randolph of Roanoke put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

It’s almost as if the old professor had health insurance reform in mind when he wrote those words more than 50 years ago. The difference here between “real conservatives” (Kirk) and “true conservatives” (Palin) is probably lost on the partisans from both sides. But there is a universality to what Kirk is saying that strays beyond ideology and speaks to something far more important; our innate common sense.

President Obama has made a passionate case for health insurance reform. Indeed, many on the left have declared America deficient because we refuse to follow the lead of our European betters and embrace government run health care. I don’t doubt for a minute their sincerity in believing what the Democrats hath wrought on health care reform isn’t good and necessary, although I would gently point out that our founders went about writing a Constitution that put as much distance as possible between us and their ancestors across the sea.

I do question their common sense and prudence in advancing legislation that so many don’t want, and so many have pointed out potential disastrous consequences. Given that all change brings with it these unforeseen happenstances, and that the bigger the change, the more potential for catastrophe, one can only conclude that this kind of massive reform of the entire health care system was unnecessary and imprudent.

Change for the sake of change is mindless idiocy. Change because we are unique, and altering our society to conform to someone else’s idea of what is proper is nonsensical. There must be purpose, logic, and reason to change or you allow passion to govern. And if that be the case, you not only lack prudence, but judgment as well.

The American people would have embraced a far less ambitious, less costly, more tailored reform effort. We could have insured the uninsured and made insurance available to those denied it because of a pre-existing condition. We could have placed the hand of regulation less heavily on insurance companies while forcing them to conform to better standards, with more consumer protection. We could have done all of this and then carefully weighed the consequences before proceeding further.

But we didn’t. And the unforeseen consequences of this imprudent alteration in our health care system may far outweigh any good done in the passing of it.

As of today, I am no longer going to post a daily essay on this site.

The reasons are not surprising. My two paying jobs take up around 12 hrs a day - sometimes more - and it has become a burden to try and get something on this site every day.

Besides, I have wanted to write for other publications like, forever, but this blog has become something of a millstone in that it has prevented me from devoting time to carefully crafting and polishing pieces for which other publications might pay me some coin. By not having to worry about getting something on RWNH every day, I can take my time, think and write more intelligently over a couple of days, while actually editing the final product so that it is something that might sell.

I will also be able to contribute again to American Thinker and Newsreal Blog. Those submissions will appear, as usual, in their entirety on this site.

Other articles that might be published, I will supply a link and a sample as I have done with my PJ Media efforts.

In short, the blog will become a place where if you’re interested in what I’m writing about, you’ll be able to find out without any trouble.

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Rick Moran
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I write a lot less about media “bias” these days because I’ve come to the conclusion that the topic is overblown.

What some see as bias, I think it more appropriate to chalk up to laziness or even ignorance. That, and the narrow perspective that many reporters bring to their job makes what might be construed as bias to be nothing more than the media cocoon many reporters find themselves in - especially those who write for national publications or on national issues.

Bias can be screened out of reporting through a conscious effort of the writer or editor. Not doing so is simply not being bothered to get it right. I would make an exception for the New York Times which published for 100 years a fairly non-biased, non-partisan product but in recent decades has shown itself to be shamelessly skewed toward the left, and Democrats. I am not talking about editorial leanings at the Times which have been left since the Ochs family took control at the turn of the 20th century, but rather in the “straight” reporting of news where a decidedly partisan point of view is advanced.

That said, I think most charges of left wing or right wing bias are a reflection of which aspects of a story are stressed. This is an editorial rather than ideological decision - usually -but is leapt upon eagerly by those who make a living pointing out bias in media reports.

If you want an example of bias, here’s CNN:

Democrats soften pledge for three-day posting of health bill

No, sorry. Not even close. The Democrats aren’t “softening” anything. They are breaking their promise outright.

House Democrats appear to be softening their pledge to allow the public 72 hours to review the health care reform package online before a House vote. “We will certainly give as much notice as possible, but I’m not going to say that 72 hours is going to be the litmus test,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Friday.

“The House bill or Senate bill, as proposed, has been online for some two-and-a-half months, otherwise known about 75 days,” Hoyer added, referring to the November and December dates each chamber passed its version of health care legislation.

But Democrats could vote as soon as next week on a series of changes to the health care package - called a reconciliation bill - and the number two House Republican criticized Hoyer directly on House floor.

“I’m a little bit taken aback that now that 72-hour rule has been completely cast aside, since nobody in the House has seen what’s in the reconciliation bill,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised earlier this year Democrats would make the final health care bill public at least three days before voting.

I can imagine the writer and editor for that story coming up with just the right adjective to describe the Democrats reneging on their 72 hour promise. It must have taken a little bit of thought. Ordinarily, “softening” would mean that the Democrats were thinking of violating their pledge. In fact, they have already decided to do so which leaves “softening” hanging out there in misinformation land.

Deliberate? Can’t see it any other way. Of course, the GOP might shame the Democrats into changing their minds. I wonder if that happens whether CNN will use the adjective “hardening” to describe the Democrat’s position?