A Statement Of Principles

I am a huge fan of Maggie's Farm and suggest that you read it routinely in case you do not already do so. This should give you an excellent idea of what to expect there:

People ask me why we seem so predictably and boringly preoccupied with the health care and climate change issues.

There is a simple answer: Those are the two topics which are currently being exploited to the max by Leftist totalitarian-minded folks, who believe themselves to be our moral and intellectual superiors, in their endless efforts to control our lives and to chip away at our freedom and our dignity as sturdy, intelligent, competent, free-thinking adults and families in a free nation with (semi-) free markets.

In history, the battles against central powers were fought on different fronts and, in the future, they will be fought on new fronts that have not been concocted yet in the Gramscian and Alinskian laboratories. It will never end. If Stalin's holocausts didn't end it, if the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't end it, if the evidence of Cuba and North Korea didn't end it, if Pol Pot didn't end it, if the turn of China and Russia to Capitalism didn't end it, if the countless failures of centralized control economies didn't end it, if the attempts to turn Euroland back to free markets and greater freedom didn't end it, if the pathetic return of Euroland to an imperial EU doesn't end it, if the countless failures of hugely-expensive but failed yet immortal government programs didn't end it, then nothing will ever end this battle.

Power, unlike wealth, is a zero-sum game. It is in the nature of governments, which we fully accept as necessary evils, to accumulate power and funds from the citizens - and to regard citizens as children or as subjects. This seems to be something that occurs regardless of the form of government. Some people seem born to seek power over others, some wish to be security-minded subjects, and others simply seek mastery of their own lives. We prefer the latter pursuit, with God's grace, while fully aware that this mortal life we hold so dear may be often full of sound and fury, but signifying little in the end beyond our relationships with the Deity, our family, and our friends.

Without wanting to sound or to be grandiose, people like us at Maggie's and similar sites aim to be perpetual revolutionaries, freedom-fighters, Tea Party Indians, Tom Paines; the minor heirs of our heroic forefathers, attempting to stay true to their ideals of the dominion of individuals seeking their own goals without the oppressive weight of an intrusive government. At least, that is what we aspire to be in our small way.

Individual freedom in relation to the State is close to sacred to us. We pay the State dues to protect us from external enemies and from internal criminals, for justice under law, plus for just a few other minor things. Otherwise, we want to be left alone and to take care of ourselves as best we can in a culture in which every person exercises their morals, their integrity, and their concern for their neighbor by the Golden Rule.

Live and let live, but don't tread on me.

We demand that individual freedom and liberty be part of every political equation - a Constant, like Avogadro's Number. The Constitutional Amendments lX and X remain real and valid to us - delusional though we may be.

We at Maggie's do not even feel entirely comfortable with the notion of "rights." We dislike and distrust the use of the word "rights" in America. In our view, the worthy subject of discussion is that of government powers and their prescribed limits. We the people need no "rights," as the US was conceived. We are free human beings. Free to fail, free to speak, free to do stupid things, free to take risks, free to succeed in our goals - if we have any- free to do almost any damn thing we want to. Yes, maybe we are crazy idealists and maybe we are foolish rubes who produce nothing but superficial cant and pointless rant.

However unheard a voice we at Maggie's may be in the big world, we will use it to resist insidious political maneuvers and manipulations until we turn senile or die - or run out of things to say.

If the latter comes first, we'll cheerfully turn our focus purely on things like shotguns and recipes and wildlife and fishing and salt marshes and architecture and history and philosophy and art and pretty girls and boats and travelogues and God and all of the other joyful, interesting, and delightful things in life.

By the way, if you have friends who might like Maggie's, email our link around. We do not like to be cybersluts (hmm - maybe we do), but we do not want people who might enjoy our eclectic offerings to be deprived of our humble efforts. Let people know that we exist, because our readership is our only reward for our enjoyable efforts here on ye olde Farm.

Doing so would be the finest Christmas present for us.

Van Jones - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

UPDATE SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 6: VAN JONES RESIGNS. From a Washington Post blog: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight Saturday. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

He continued: "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past."

Could it be that no one has that much time and energy?

And how will all those MSM outlets Byron York mentions below explain this to their readers/viewers - that an Obama appointed czar given $30 billion tax payer dollars to spend on "green jobs" has suddenly resigned? And their readers/viewers don't even begin to have a clue why? They don't have a clue because their sources for news are so in the tank for Obama. And the MSM figures if they don't report on it, it's not newsworthy. Out with the old media - in with the new. If you were getting your news on the web you knew about Van Jones weeks ago.

One down...

My original post begins here.

And to think that I was getting tired of the Van Jones-athon on Glenn Beck's radio show. I think Van is about to meet Obama's grandmother - under the bus.

From Glenn Thrush at Politico:

Rep. Mike Pence, the no. 3 Republican in the House, is calling on Obama green jobs czar Van Jones to resign.

This sort of thing would usually be laughed off by Democrats -- a conservative Republican telling a Democratic appointee to quit.

But the Obama team isn't exactly jumping to back Jones today in wake of revelations that in the past he signed on to one of the "truther" groups that claimed 9/11 was an inside job. Oh, and he called Republicans a**holes in a video earlier this year before he was appointed.

Asked about Jones' affiliations with the 9/11 group at the daily briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs would only say: "It's not something that the president agrees with." And then Gibbs referred other questions to a statement Thursday by the Council on Environmental Quality in which Jones said he never backed any of these 9/11 conspiracy groups.

"Given recent revelations concerning the associations and statements of the president's green jobs czar, Van Jones should resign his position and if he is unwilling to do so, the president should demand his resignation. His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate," Pence said. "The Constitution of the United States vests Congress with the responsibility to advise and consent in the appointment of high ranking officials by the president. To date, President Obama has appointed more than thirty individuals to ‘czar’ positions within his Administration without permitting the Congress or the American people to properly examine their backgrounds or public records."





The Van Jones (non) feeding frenzy
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/04/09 11:30 AM EDT
From a Nexis search a few moments ago:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama's Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, "Huh?" If you heard that that adviser, Van Jones, had apologized for a number of remarks and positions in the recent past, your response would be, "What?" And if you were in the Obama White House monitoring the Jones situation, you would be hoping that the news organizations listed above continue to hold the line -- otherwise, Jones, who is quite well thought of in Obama circles, would be history.

H/T The Drudge Report

Are You A "Mainstream" Environmentalist?

"Rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 for each statement below, with 10 meaning that you strongly agree with the statement and 1 meaning you strongly disagree.

______ A healthy environment should be able to coexist with a healthy, growing economy.
______ Investments in science and technology will generate solutions to most of our environmental problems.
______ Incentives should be offered to encourage corporations to clean up the environment.
______ Most disagreements about the environment can be resolved through the art of compromise.
______ Governments can play an important role in fostering and incentivizing a healthy environment but lose support when they are too controlling.
______ Democracies have been far better environmental stewards than totalitarian states.
______ Corporate and private philanthropy is essential to the success of a global environmental movement.
______ Most of us have been taught to respect and protect the natural world.
______ Political leadership will be defined in the twenty- first century by having a strong commitment to environmental stewardship.
______ America must be a global leader on environmental issues.

If you scored higher than 70, you qualify to be labeled a ''mainstream environmentalist'' and it makes A Contract with the Earth the perfect for you."

The author - Newt Gingrich.