A Speech to the Delegates

by David Brooks

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol...”

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely.

We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

We meet today to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans, a generation that came of age amidst iced chais and mocha strawberry Frappuccinos®, a generation with a historical memory that doesn’t extend back past Coke Zero.

We meet today to heal the divisions that have torn this country. For we are all one country and one American family, whether we are caring and thoughtful Democrats or hate-filled and war-crazed Republicans. We must bring together left and right, marinara and carbonara, John and Elizabeth Edwards. On United we stand, on US Airways, there’s a 25-minute delay.

Ladies and gentleman, I never expected to be speaking before you today. Like so many of our speakers at this convention, I come from a hard-working, middle-class family. I was leading a miserable little life, but, nevertheless, overcame great odds to live the American Dream. My great-grandfather fought in Patton’s Army, along with Barack Obama’s great-grand uncles’ fourth cousin once removed.

As a child, I was abandoned by my parents and lived with a colony of ants. We didn’t have much in the way of material possession, but we did have each other and the ability to carry far more than our own body weights. When I was young, I was temporarily paralyzed in a horrible anteater accident, but I never gave up my dream: the dream of speaking at a national political convention so my speech could be talked over by Wolf Blitzer and a gang of pundits.

And today we Democrats meet in Denver, a suburb of Boulder, a city whose motto is, “A Taxi? You Must be Dreaming.” And in Denver, we Democrats showed America that we have cute daughters who will someday provide us with prestigious car-window stickers. We heard Hillary Clinton’s ringing endorsement of “the weak-looking thin guy who’s bound to lose.”

We heard from Joe Biden, whose 643 years in the Senate make him uniquely qualified to talk to the middle class, whose family has been riding the Acela and before that the Metroliner for generations, who has been given a lifetime ban from the quiet car and who is himself a verbal train wreck waiting to happen.

We got to know Barack and Michelle Obama, two tall, thin, rich, beautiful people who don’t perspire, but who nonetheless feel compassion for their squatter and smellier fellow citizens. We know that Barack could have gone to a prestigious law firm, like his big donors in the luxury boxes, but he chose to put his ego aside to become a professional politician, president of the United States and redeemer of the human race. We heard about his time as a community organizer, the three most fulfilling months of his life.

We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, “Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.” We were inspired by dozens of Democratic senators who declared their lifelong love of John McCain before denouncing him as a reactionary opportunist who would destroy the country.

No, this country cannot afford to elect John Bushmccain. Under Republican rule, locusts have stripped the land, adults wear crocs in public and M&M’s have lost their flavor. We must instead ride to the uplands of hope!

For as Barack Obama suggested Thursday night, wherever there is a president who needs to tap our natural-gas reserves, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a need for a capital-gains readjustment for targeted small businesses, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a president committed to direct diplomacy with nuclear proliferators, I’ll be there, too! God bless the Democrats, and God Bless America!

Good and evil

David Warren

Before we begin today’s sermon, I am obliged by the curious ethical system that guides modern journalism to declare an overt bias. I am in favour of good, and against evil. (And be warned: few with the opposite bias are prepared to declare it.) In my own defence, I will state that my “preferential option for good” is not entirely self-interested. In the longest view, I trust that it will be. But in the short term, and on this planet, I don’t see people getting points for it.

As John Milton discovered (and William Blake famously nailed), evil tends to win the theatrical competitions. Milton’s Lucifer was the livelier and more exciting cosmic presence in Paradise Lost. The journalist in Milton intuitively grasped what publishers have been betting through the intervening centuries: that the life of a sinner is easier to sell than the life of a saint. And this, perversely enough, even though the lives of the saints are often more interesting.

The Devil trades on plausibility, and his argument that “the saints are boring” repays the very little thought most people are willing to devote to the issue.

Another of his arguments is that people who publicly favour the good, often shy from it privately. (My own case comes immediately to mind.) Moreover -- and here is an especially clever insinuation on the part of Old Nick -- the people who boast most recklessly of their goodness, are least likely to deliver. (For yairs: the Devil will even tell you the truth, when it is to his advantage.)

But the lies here are old ones, and the new ones -- the lies I associate with the “postmodern” party of Marx, Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, Sartre and descendants -- have the advantage of being less undermined. The postmodern view, now settled into the academy, the media, and the other bureaucracies, is that “good” and “evil” are mere words; or if they mean anything at all, irrelevant.

From the Devil’s point of view, this is an improvement on the old system, in which everyone “believed” in some religious revelation, even if only nominally and for show, and no one wished to be seen taking the Devil’s side. Hypocrisy was of course endemic in the old system, as it is endemic in all human life. But better that hypocrisy than the kind that claims to make no distinctions, and yet does decisively persecute the good, and with a real vengeance.

“What is truth?” asked Pilate, who washed his hands. I was remembering this remark while listening to a snippet of the American presidential campaign this last week. My less-favoured candidate was asked when human life begins. He replied, that this question was above his pay grade. (The other candidate replied, immediately and correctly: “At conception.”)

To the postmodern mind, it is a very low question that is above no one’s pay grade. The postmodern mind has the sophistication of Pilate. It will not stoop to using words like “evil” to describe anything at all. Therefore, it is in no position to identify anything at all as “good.”

I am thrilled when someone calls a spade a spade. When President Bush, of beloved memory, used the term “evil” to describe the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks, and then followed this up by using the same word to describe all those supporting them, I was thrilled. Perhaps I thrill too easily: but it seemed a moment when, with a single word, a man in a position of real power had cut through generations of lies.

The sophisticated people were too stunned by the events, to respond immediately to that Texan’s quaint “lapse” of vocabulary. Soon, however, they recovered their poise, and accused the man of being “simplistic.” I do not carry any brief for simpletons, per se, but there are forms of “simplisme” that deeply appeal to me, and one of them is making the more obvious distinctions between good and evil.

But to make them at all requires a bit of courage, especially at the present day. The courage may well come from a moment of alarm -- courage to one man, cowardice to another. That such distinctions can be validly made, I take for granted, though not from any empirical scientific test, for there is none that can be designed to test the proposition. The greatest truths are too deep for science.

Nor can anyone with a functioning mind believe that good and evil are always presented to us at face value, as starkly as they were juxtaposed on that memorable September morning. Under normal (and normally less urgent) circumstances, prudence dictates some analytical thinking. Under abnormal (and extremely urgent) circumstances, when there is no time to think, we must rely on the habits formed by a lifetime of analytical thinking on specifically moral questions.

Which is why so few of our contemporaries are prepared, as Boy Scouts and Girl Guides used to “be prepared,” to respond when the question suddenly arises: “What must I do?” For how does one respond when one has spent a lifetime avoiding just such questions?

The Soldier and the Phony

By Carlos Caso-Rosendi

I was watching the news today and noticed that several political talking-heads were considering a variety of theories of why Sen. Barack Obama chose to have Sen. Joseph Biden as his running mate. It really does not make much sense to select Biden, who was the first contender to drop out of the presidential race. Not when Sen. Clinton, the last contender to quit, was able to gather several million potential votes, demonstrating admirable political skill and tenacity.

The choice of Joe Biden over Hillary does not seem too logical for a Democratic candidate who knows too well how every vote counts. Al Gore and John Kerry can attest to that. Both of them lost a very tight race for a handful of delegates and I suspect that both of them would have picked Hillary without hesitation, if they had been in Obama's shoes.

Something here does not ad up, I thought. Then I had an epiphany: Joe Biden is the weakest possible choice. Obama is in no danger to loose the spotlight to Biden. That's it!

When John McCain said that Obama would "rather lose a war in order to win a political election," he was condensing a lot of truth in a very short sentence. He was also making a very precise judgment of character.

There are lots of us who are still waiting for The One to show some political substance. Where others see a leader, we only see a talker endlessly spewing vacuous grandiosity. The French have a wonderful word for this kind of man: "l'arriviste". That is a man who is only adept at positioning himself perfectly for the next promotion at any cost. Of course he is always keeping a watchful eye on the closest possible competitor. I am sure that Sen. Obama will appreciate my enriching the terminally monolingual Americans with a French word other than "mercy beaucoup!" Gnuck, gnuck!

Yes. The most obvious reason, is most likely to be the true reason. Now we know why good old Joe was picked up for the job: he makes a very safe second banana. If you think about it, his selection fits perfectly with all the carefully choreographed photo-ops, the pretentious quasi-presidential seal, the pedantic pose, and the paranoid appeal to a race card that no one ever played against him ("did I tell you, he is black?")... the sociopath has engineered yet another step on his safe way to the top.

Obama l'arriviste has arrived and now we finally have the theme for this presidential election. It is going to be the phony against the authentic, the seducing sociopath against the straight talker, the impeccable empty suit against the bloodied soldier's uniform.

Let us choose well.

Why I am not a liberal

By Dennis Prager

The following is a list of beliefs that I hold. Nearly every one of them was a liberal position until the late 1960s. Not one of them is now.
Such a list is vitally important in order to clarify exactly what positions divide left from right, blue from red, liberal from conservative.
I believe in American exceptionalism, meaning that (a) America has done more than any international organization or institution, and more than any other country, to improve this world; and (b) that American values (specifically, the unique American blending of Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values) form the finest value system any society has ever devised and lived by.
I believe that the bigger government gets and the more powerful the state becomes, the greater the threat to individual liberty and the greater the likelihood that evil will ensue. In the 20th century, the powerful state, not religion, was the greatest purveyor of evil in the world.
I believe that the levels of taxation advocated by liberals render those taxes a veiled form of theft. "Give me more than half of your honestly earned money or you will be arrested" is legalized thievery.
I believe that government funding of those who can help themselves (e.g., the able-bodied who collect welfare) or who can be helped by non-governmental institutions (such as private charities, family, and friends) hurts them and hurts society.
I believe that the United States of America, from its inception, has been based on the Judeo-Christian value system, not secular Enlightenment values alone, and therefore the secularization of American society will lead to the collapse of America as a great country.
I believe that some murderers should be put death; that allowing all murderers to live does not elevate the value of human life, but mocks it, and that keeping all murderers alive trivializes the evil of murder.
I believe that the American military has done more to preserve and foster goodness and liberty on Earth than all the artists and professors in America put together.
I believe that lowering standards to admit minorities mocks the real achievements of members of those minorities.
I believe that when schools give teenagers condoms, it is understood by most teenagers as tacit approval of their engaging in sexual intercourse.
I believe that the assertions that man-made carbon emissions will lead to a global warming that will in turn bring on worldwide disaster are a function of hysteria, just as was the widespread liberal belief that heterosexual AIDS will ravage America.
I believe that marriage must remain what has been in every recorded civilization—between the two sexes.
I believe that, whatever the reasons for entering Iraq, the American-led removal of Saddam Hussein from power will decrease the sum total of cruelty on Earth.
I believe that the trial lawyers associations and teachers unions, the greatest donors to the Democratic Party, have done great harm to American life—far more than, let us say, oil companies and pharmaceutical companies, the targets of liberal opprobrium.
I believe that nuclear power, clean coal, and drilling in a tiny and remote frozen part of Alaska and offshore—along with exploration of other energy alternatives such as wind and solar power—are immediately necessary.
I believe that school vouchers are more effective than increased spending on public schools in enabling many poorer Americans to give their children better educations.
I believe that while there are racists in America, America is no longer a racist society, and that blaming disproportionate rates of black violence and out-of-wedlock births on white racism is a lie and the greatest single impediment to African-American progress.
From TownHall.com

The evil of liberal thinking

by Evan Sayet
Published originally by the Heritage Foundation

Evan Sayet, a Hollywood writer and producer, makes a clear exposition of the poisonous notions of today's liberalism. It's a rather long video but it is clear thinking that deserves our attention.
Some of the issues Evan touches go hand in hand with the main theme of my article "A Few Tools Missing in Joe's Garage", published just a few days ago. Please listen to Evan Sayet and try to focus on why some Conservatives believe we are fighting to save the world from one of the biggest evils ever designed against human freedom and justice. This is a "must see" video and it will be worth every second you spend listening.
To watch video click here.

What would Obama do?

By Carlos Caso-Rosendi

Most of us have heard in the news that Sen. Barack Obama voted against keeping alive those babies that survive an abortion. This doggy mother, using only her God-given instinct, knew better than the U.S. Senator:

—A newborn baby abandoned outdoors in winter by her 14-year-old mother was found safe in a dog pen with a mother dog and her brood of puppies near the city of La Plata, Argentine media reported on Friday. Farmer Fabio Anze found the naked baby girl on Thursday, being kept warm among his dog China's puppies, La Nacion newspaper said. Anze called the police and the baby was taken to a hospital. Egidio Melia, director of the Melchor Romero hospital, told television and newspaper reporters that the baby was just a few hours old when she was found, and was in good health although she had some bruises.Nighttime temperatures are chilly but not freezing in the Southern Hemisphere winter in the rural area around La Plata, 40 miles (60 km) south of Buenos Aires.Police said they had located the 14-year-old girl who gave birth to the baby outdoors during the night.It was not clear whether the mother left her baby in the dog's pen or whether the dog found the baby outdoors and carried it in to join her puppies—(End of Reuters article)

It is a sad moment in history when a dog displays more sense than a U.S. Senator!