Liberty at the market

The New Neo Posted on by

As a blogger, I tend to immerse myself in the news. Lately there’s been so very much of it, and so much to think about, that I find myself neglecting some of the other parts of my life.

But yesterday it was time to go to the supermarket. And looking at all the wonderful food, in its tremendous variety and abundance—so much more than supermarkets had when I was a child—and the people there, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the wonder and bounty of it all. These days even the ordinary citizen has access to so much that most of us live in the lap of luxury compared to what it was like even when I was a child.

And then it occurred to me that for so many people the main thing must be to continue the good life (even through welfare, if they can’t afford it on their own) rather than to be devoted to some seeming-abstraction like liberty or responsibility. Obama and the Democrats promise that good life for all, and frame Republicans as wanting to take it away. Whether those facts are empirically true is hardly important; it’s the perception that’s vital.

Liberty? Too many people are inclined to take it for granted, or ignore it, or not understand how precious it is and how vulnerable to tyranny both obvious and subtle. Liberty can seem a distant concept, and food and other consumer goods and conveniences provide pleasures that are immediate, up close and personal. How many people care so much about an abstraction that they will vote for someone whom they think (rightly or wrongly) might take food out of their own mouths, or make them work harder for it?

That has always been the danger of having a republic. Its success rests on the character and the understanding of its people, because if they stop learning and comprehending what makes us great and unique—are not taught it in the schools or in society at large, or lack the skills or the motivation to understand or to care—then we will lose it. And the funny thing about liberty is that it’s only then that people experience (up close and personal) how important it was, and how deeply they yearn for it.

I’ve quoted this passage (from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor) before, and I’ll probably quote it again. It seems to take on more and more layers of meaning as time goes on:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

Manzarek: the key keyboardist

The New Neo Posted on by

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, has died at 74.

I can’t say I ordinarily notice keyboardists, except in a very general way. But Manzarek was different. I didn’t know his name until a few years ago, but I certainly noticed him, because he was a huge part of what made The Doors what they were. To me, he was every bit as important as the more telegenic and flamboyant Jim Morrison, if not more so. I thought it was his playing that gave what was then called the “long version” of “Light My Fire” (which was usually played on the radio at the time of its heyday only in the short version, alas) the qualities that caused it to become a rock and roll standard that has handily stood the test of time.

I was happy to see, when I looked Manzarek up some years ago online, that he was still playing.

But the obituary I’ve linked to contains this passage:

[Manzarek’s] creepy organ line on “Light My Fire” adds a weirdo menace to what outwardly is a rock ‘n’ roll pick-up song.

Creepy? I beg to differ, strongly. The adjectives I’d use instead to describe it would be unexpected, infectious, mesmerizing, and instantly memorable. You might have more:

RIP, Ray Manazrek.

The press…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is finally alarmed.

When the WaPo and Glenn Greewald in the Guardian are leading the charge against him, you know (dare I hope?) that Obama may have finally overplayed his hand in the unlikely person of James Rosen.

This is the article. Read it. But here’s the last paragraph:

There is simply no defense for this behavior. Obama defenders such as Andrew Sullivan claim that this is all more complicated than media outrage suggests because of a necessary “trade-off” between press freedoms and security. So do Obama defenders believe that George Bush and Richard Nixon – who never prosecuted leakers like this or formally accused journalists of being criminals for reporting classified information – were excessively protective of press freedoms and insufficiently devoted to safeguarding secrecy? To ask that question is to mock it. Obama has gone so far beyond what every recent prior president has done in bolstering secrecy and criminalizing whistleblowing and leaks.

Oklahoma…

The New Neo Posted on by

…disaster.

This tornado looks very bad, but reports of casualties are just coming in.

Much of the town of Moore has been destroyed, including the hospital. One possible consolation is that, according to Fox (which I’m watching on TV right now), there was a 16-minute warning. People in this area live in tornado alley, and most homes probably have cellars, and residents know the tornado protocol. But still, it looks horrific.

“That’s a, kind of a, scary way to put it”

The New Neo Posted on by

Ya think?

Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to embed this particular video, so here’s the URL where you can watch it.

I wonder; will this get the attention of the MSM? Or is it okay because it happened to a Fox reporter?

Prediction: Obama will either defend this move, or deny knowing about it. Maybe both.

[NOTE: It causes me to recall that the notorious “plumbers” of the Nixon administration and Watergate fame were originally formed (and got their name from) their mission to plug leaks that were considered vital to national security. But aside from the Ellsberg psychiatrist office burglary, they didn’t do a whole lot to further that goal. The Watergate break-in was apparently a side caper, committed for a different reason. The motive, however, remains a mystery to this day.]

[ADDENDUM: More information about the probe into Rosen’s doings here.

It occurs to me that this is the sort of thing the left kept thinking the Bush administration would be doing. But it’s Obama who’s doing it.

It’s typical of the left to project its own tactics onto others. But no one who has studied Obama’s past should be surprised at what his administration has done. The only surprise is that any of this is finally being revealed. WTF took so long?]

[ADDENDUM II: More details here.]

Why the IRS scandal is the worst scandal in US political history

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s why.

Please read it, and send it out to other people you think should read it. Don’t forget your liberal friends, if they are at all amenable to actually reading something you might send them (I’ve worn out my political welcome with most people).

John Kass also gets it—from bitter experience in Chicago, where it’s long been the way it works. It’s not for nothing that Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago; it’s a place that suited him well.

And one of the comments (from “Joe Phillips”) to the Kass article says it quite well:

This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.
This is the government Barack Obama said to ignore the warnings about.
This is the government George Orwell wrote about.
This is the government Hugo Chavez dreamed about.
This is the government Ayn Rand feared.
This is the government that will make your medical decisions.
This is the type of corrupt government that has enslaved and killed their citizens.

THIS IS WHAT WE THE PEOPLE HAVE ALLOWED OUR GOVERNMENT TO BECOME!

The biggest question by far is Hillary’s extraordinarily useful one: what difference does it make? If the American people don’t care, the tree will fall in the forest without making much of a sound. Way too many on the liberal/left side will think what the IRS did was perfectly fine, because it was part of the fight against the evil right, and all’s fair in that war.

Obama’s fingerprints are all over the IRS’s politically-motivated audits

The New Neo Posted on by

There are many ways to influence people or an organization, so in investigating the IRS audits of conservative groups, although it would be convincing (and legally determinative) to find a secret tape or a secret email from Obama ordering the policy, that really wasn’t necessary in order to let the IRS know what he wanted. Obama set the tone as a matter of public record, through speeches that were not the least bit subtle:

The president derided “tea baggers*.” Vice President Joe Biden compared them to “terrorists.” In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. “Nobody knows who’s paying for these ads,” he warned. “We don’t know where this money is coming from,” he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: “All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates . . . And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation.”

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets.

Please read the whole thing.

But that’s not all. Today we have an interesting story in the American Spectator describing a possible “smoking gun.” It turns out that the day before the IRS began to aggressively target Tea Party groups, the head of the union to which IRS employees belong (the NTEU, the National Treasury Employees Union), Colleen Kelly, met with Obama, according to White House logs. Of course, the content of that meeting is unknown, and I am certain that both parties will claim clean hands (where is Nixon’s taping system when we need it?). So it seems to be a deniable smoking gun, which is probably no smoking gun at all.

But the article, although long, is well worth reading for another reason. It points out something about public sector unions:

Not to be lost sight of here is the role of the NTEU in raising money for Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles ”” the exact period when the IRS was busy going after the Tea Party and the others to curb any possible influence the groups could have in the elections of 2010 and 2012.

The NTEU, through its political action committee, raised $613,633 in the 2010 cycle, giving 98% of its contributions to anti-Tea Party Democrats. In 2012 the figure was $729,708, with 94% going to anti-Tea Party candidates. One NTEU candidate after another, as discussed last week in this space, campaigned vigorously against the Tea Party.

So the IRS employee union is engaged in political action against the very groups it was targeting. Sweet.

President Obama himself may be able to successfully stonewall and deny, or even mount a “modified limited hangout” and keep the IRS scandal from touching him. But how on earth could one ever trust the even-handedness of the IRS again (assuming, of course, the dubious notion that a person ever trusted them in the first place)?

[*When I read the quote that indicated Obama had used the phrase “tea baggers,” that struck an odd note with me. I couldn’t remember him doing anything quite that egregious. It turns out he had used the term in an interview back in 2010.]

Ever wonder what a “real scandal” would look like?

The New Neo Posted on by

Because, despite the president’s feigned outrage about what the IRS did, the White House’s message is that the IRS abuses don’t constitute a “real” scandal.

Excuse me—an “actual real scandal”:

“What would be an actual real scandal in Washington would be if the president had been involved or had interfered in an IRS investigation,” Pfeiffer said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation.’”

So let’s redefine: an actual real scandal would be if we had a recording of Obama, or emails from Obama, directing the IRS to do this or directing his underlings to cover it up. Without that, no biggee.

What difference does it make what the IRS’s politically-motivated audits tell us about the tyranny of the federal government? What difference does it make that Obama publicly set the tone for the targeting of “enemies”? What difference does it make that this was purposely withheld till after the election? And what difference does it make that Obama has failed even now to fire (for real, not just those on the brink of leaving anyway) anyone involved?

Because Obama is responsible for nothing except the killing of Bin Laden and some vapid but golden oratory. The buck not only doesn’t stop at his desk, it doesn’t even pass that way.

Oh, and still another “actual real scandal” would be anything negative that happened during a Republican administration.

Next question.

[NOTE: Love this. It appeared in, of all places, the New Yorker:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)””President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.

“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”

The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.”

“The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them,” he said. “They sound like bad news.”

Mr. Obama closed his address by indicating that beginning next week he would enforce what he called a “zero tolerance policy on governing.”

“If I find that any members of my Administration have had any intimate knowledge of, or involvement in, the workings of the United States government, they will be dealt with accordingly,” he said.]