Content by BrianGarst
Posted at 5:44pm on Jun. 6, 2008 Why Barack Obama Cannot Unite America
By BrianGarst
It is accepted conventional wisdom that the American polity is contentiously divided along partisan lines in a way unlike ever before. While the veracity of this statement is historically debatable, it cannot be doubted that Americans are strongly entrenched along partisan lines. Barack Obama has sold himself as the candidate best suited to bridge this divide.
Embedded in Obama’s soaring rhetoric is a bold collectivist agenda. He sees a future where we, through government action, “provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.” He mocks those who want to reduce the size and scope of government - by allowing people to choose their own health care, their own schools and their own futures - as supporting “social Darwinism.” Obama proposes to implement these government programs in the name of social justice, but an understanding of democracy demonstrates that what we’ll actually see is a further erosion of social cohesion. He’d replace the Ownership Society with a Nanny Society.
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Posted at 9:25pm on Jan. 2, 2008 World Faces Dual Fascist Threats In 2008
By BrianGarst
As we enter the new year it's important to remember that world stability, economic prosperity, and freedom will again be threatened not by one, but by two separate fascist movements. Global Jihad has as its express goal the subjugation of the world, the waging of jihad to bring that part of the world known as Dar al-Harb (house of war) into Dar al-Islam (house of Islam). At present, this battle is being fought in North Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America. No one is immune. Jihadists make no distinctions between combatant and non-combatant, only Muslim and non-Muslim, or more often just jihadist and non-jihadist.
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Posted at 10:58pm on Dec. 18, 2006 Former Bush Advisor Defends Big Government Republicanism
By BrianGarst
In an audacious Newsweek column, former Bush speechwriter and policy advisor Michael Gerson offers the wrong prescription for the Republican Party. His article is rife with leftist-type appeals to emotion and faulty assumptions. That his brand of pseudo-analysis was taken seriously in the Bush White House goes a long way towards explaining Bush's failed experiment in big government Republicanism.
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Posted at 8:54pm on Nov. 17, 2006 The New Ideological Battlefield
By BrianGarst
When Patrick Henry orated for military action against the British, he finished his speech with the famous phrase, "give me liberty or give me death." The oft repeated assertion represents a high-point of American exceptionalism. But that phrase alone does not adequately represent Patrick Henry's argument. For while he used the word "give", he understood that freedom is never given. In the broader context, his closing offers up a deeper truth: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" What Patrick Henry was really calling for was not a gift of freedom but a will to fight for it. He recognized the fundamental truth that freedom cannot be given, only earned.
A will to fight is what we are sorely lacking. Speaking to war torn Britain in 1940, Winston Churchill implored his countrymen to stand strong, such that a 1000 years hence future generations would look back and say, "This was their finest hour". How will our descendents regard today's American resolve? If things continue down their present course, this will surely be regarded as our weakest hour. Never before have a people so strong been incapable of winning against an enemy so militarily weak. But that is where we sit today, incapable of defeating our enemies for no other reason then we refuse to try.
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Posted at 11:17pm on Oct. 28, 2006 It's Decision Time In The West
By BrianGarst
It's quite obvious that many haven't the foggiest idea of what's really going on in the world today. They are still operating under some mistaken notion that all these regional conflicts currently underway have little relation to each other; that the factors contributing to these fights are local, and can be solved independently in each case though some sort of diplomacy or other kind of capitulation. Oh, you're upset about land in Gaza? We'll pull back. You can't find jobs in France? We'll expand the nanny state. You can't preach your intolerance in Britain? We'll go ahead and let you do it anyway. This approach is fundamentally flawed, as each and every situation has shown. Almost every conflict the Western world is engaged in right now has one thing in common, the clash between Islamic expansionism and the ideals of Western Liberalism. Local conditions and complaints are coopted by the Jihadists for convenience, they are not the cause of this global strife.
Some seem to think that, whatever happens, it's guaranteed the world will be basically the same tomorrow as it is today. That's wrong. They think we have somehow been anointed the worlds one true society, that Western values and tolerance and all that wonderful jazz will perpetuate itself forever, without any effort from us. In short, they think we can't lose. They're wrong; we can. And we are.
We aren't losing because Rumsfeld screwed up and disbanded the Iraqi army, multiplying the pool of potential insurgents by tens, if not hundreds, of degrees. We aren't losing because he okayed an American administration over Iraq instead of immediately turning it over to Iraqi's, even if it were just exiles who hadn't been there in years. These mistakes were costly. But they are setbacks, albeit major ones; just not the kind of mistakes that bring civilizations down.
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Posted at 2:12am on Oct. 22, 2006 Death By Multiculturalism; How Western Liberalism Is Self-Destructing
By BrianGarst
The rise of Western Liberalism is not often contemplated by those who most enjoy its benefits. Few in the West are inclined to compare the presently favorable circumstances of their lives to those who have come before. They blithely assume that the freedoms and rights shared today by "civilized society" will continue on into perpetuity. Reasoning that no people would choose to deviate from that course once set on it, they are smug in their assumption that their world cannot be transformed from within. The reality of the situation is unfortunately much bleaker.
In his new book, America Alone, Mark Steyn lays out the shocking facts on the future of the West. In short, there isn't one. More accurately, whatever emerges from the rubble will be unrecognizable by modern Liberals. The citizens of the developed world have inexplicably given up. They don't want to play anymore, and the world will be left for someone else to deal with.
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Posted at 3:39am on Oct. 16, 2006 Bush Optimistic; Moonbats Hyperventilate
By BrianGarst
Bush and Rove are saying exactly what one would expect them to say: that they are confident Republicans will win etc etc.
Amid widespread panic in the Republican establishment about the coming midterm elections, there are two people whose confidence about GOP prospects strikes even their closest allies as almost inexplicably upbeat: President Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are bracing for losses of 25 House seats or more. But party operatives say Rove is predicting that, at worst, Republicans will lose only 8 to 10 seats -- shy of the 15-seat threshold that would cede control to Democrats for the first time since the 1994 elections and probably hobble the balance of Bush's second term.
In the Senate, Rove and associates believe, a Democratic victory would require the opposition to "run the table," as one official put it, to pick up the necessary six seats -- a prospect the White House seems to regard as nearly inconceivable.
Normally I wouldn't bother covering something like this, as the White House is playing the role they must, that of upbeat optimists. The real story here is the batshit insane response by the leftist blogosphere over this simple story.
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Posted at 8:28pm on Oct. 11, 2006 The Story Of Election '06
By BrianGarst
Early in 2006, things were looking bright for Democrats. Gas prices were high. Hurricane season was just around the corner. The world was cooperating, laying the emotional groundwork for the coming propoganda. Bush's oil buddies raise prices on purpose, because they hate you and are evil money-grubbing captalists, they would claim. Bush caused global warming and global warming causes more hurricans, the preprinted press releases stated.
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Posted at 11:30pm on Oct. 9, 2006 More Western Self Destruction
By BrianGarst
Prosecutors have completed their investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Italy and were preparing to ask that more than two dozen Americans and several Italian intelligence officials be ordered to stand trial, lawyers said Saturday.
Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a terrorism suspect also known as Abu Omar, was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street in February 2003 as part of an alleged CIA program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries and sometimes subjected to torture.
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Posted at 4:43pm on Oct. 9, 2006 Why We Fight
By BrianGarst
In the wake of the recent leak and subsequent media misrepresentations of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, it's been made abundantly clear that there are many who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are fighting.
Democrats and other critics think Iraq was a distraction from the true threat. They believe this because they think we are at war with Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. We are not. Al Qaeda is an enemy, but they are not the war.