We can’t say much about the veracity of the sexual harassment complaints leveled against Herman Cain 15 years ago, given the lack of specific detail or even the names of the accusers. But this mini-scandal provides an opportunity to revisit one of the most pernicious examples of government intrusion into our lives and workplaces.

As with most bad laws, good intentions paved this road to Big Brother’s regulatory hell. No one should get away with sexual quid pro quos, sleazy innuendos, the abuse of power to gain sexual favors, or grubby groping in the mailroom. But sexual harassment these days is seldom about those obvious offenses. Consider the legal definition of harassment, which occurs when “unwelcome comments or conduct based on sex, race or other legally protected characteristics unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment,” as the FCC Encyclopedia explains the law. You’ll notice that harassment is no longer about victimized women, but a whole host of “protected characteristics,” which include “race, color, religion, sex (whether or not of a sexual nature and including same-gender harassment and gender identity harassment), national origin, age (40 and over), disability (mental or physical), sexual orientation, or retaliation.”

We shouldn’t be surprised that enshrining into law notions as vague and subjective as “intimidating,” “hostile,” or “offensive,” and then applying them to such a broad group of potential victims, will end up with the government intruding into people’s lives at the expense of their rights and freedom. Such elastic terms will mean whatever anybody, no matter how hypersensitive, neurotic, stupid, humorless, or Machiavellian thinks they do at any given time. Additionally, such subjectivity ends up in grossly unfair applications of harassment law. Flirtation that is clumsy or unwelcome suddenly becomes criminal harassment depending on the undesirability or repulsiveness or status of the perpetrator. Clever banter or sophisticated sexual wit likewise changes into harassment depending on the mood of the victim and her changing feelings for the person.

The consequences of the ad hoc standards at the heart of sexual harassment law are most obvious in politics. Bill Clinton’s antics as governor and president were textbook sexual harassment behavior. Yet the feminists and progressives gave him a pass, instructing puritanical, repressed Americans that it was none of their business. What a change from the sputtering high dudgeon on display when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, or from the scrutiny Herman Cain is being subjected to based on anonymous accusers and vague charges about “inappropriate” behavior, even as the media barely mentions the numerous genuine sexual assaults and rapes going on at various Occupy Wall Street venues.

Yet it isn’t just in politics that sexual harassment charges are weapons to be used against one’s enemies. The same thing happens in mundane office disagreements or personality clashes. When I was the chairman of my department, I was considered “management” and so had to be involved with sexual harassment complaints. Every single one was the result of a factional squabble among faculty that had nothing to do with sexuality or even gender discrimination. Actual charges included such silliness as the offender’s wearing overpowering cologne, or failing to acknowledge something the complainant put in the offender’s mailbox. No matter how juvenile, such charges can be effective. Faced with an investigation, most people will start monitoring their behavior and restricting their speech just to be on the safe side, since employers anxious about liability will err on the side of caution: they will investigate all charges, no matter how flimsy, and buy off accusers, as Cain’s were, rather than face a potentially more expensive lawsuit and the intrusion of federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioners inquisitors into their business. It’s simply more cost effective to enable a “chilling effect” on an individual employee’s freedom than to take on a government bureaucracy backed by the coercive power of the courts.

I can’t remember who told me this: “People don’t attack you unless they see you as a threat.”

The Left’s biggest targets — from Rush Limbaugh to Ronald Reagan — have been the ones who were capable of the most damage to the progressive cause. That adage must apply to Andrew Breitbart, because the Left hasn’t stopped trying to discredit him and bring him down.

Breitbart has emerged as one of the leading soldiers on the front lines of the cultural war between the Right and the Left. He has called himself a “reluctant cultural warrior,” yet he is unafraid to dive head-first into controversy. Whether he’s calling out the NAACP for accusing Tea Party activists of racism, going toe to toe with the tools at Media Matters, or facing down the worst interviewer in the world, Martin Bashir, Breitbart confronts the Left head on.

His websites — Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace — are popular, and they effectively and often irreverently expose the Left for who they really are. The release of his new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save The World, along with the ensuing book tour and media appearances, have made him an even bigger target as of late.

Andrew Breitbart has been subject to some of the most vicious charges by the Left lately. These assaults range from libel lawsuits and other attempts to paint him as a liar to ugly, uncalled-for personal attacks. These barrages may be different in nature, but they are all vicious in their attempts to drag Breitbart through the mud, and ultimately to end his career.

The following is a list of five of the most vicious attacks on Andrew Breitbart. This list doesn’t even really begin to scratch the surface of the vitriol used against him, but you’ll get a good idea of just how much the Left hates him and how badly they want to see him discredited.

We’ll start with a series of attacks that Breitbart gleefully makes public…

I can’t remember who told me this: “People don’t attack you unless they see you as a threat.”

The Left’s biggest targets — from Rush Limbaugh to Ronald Reagan — have been the ones who were capable of the most damage to the progressive cause. That adage must apply to Andrew Breitbart, because the Left hasn’t stopped trying to discredit him and bring him down.

Breitbart has emerged as one of the leading soldiers on the front lines of the cultural war between the Right and the Left. He has called himself a “reluctant cultural warrior,” yet he is unafraid to dive head-first into controversy. Whether he’s calling out the NAACP for accusing Tea Party activists of racism, going toe to toe with the tools at Media Matters, or facing down the worst interviewer in the world, Martin Bashir, Breitbart confronts the Left head on.

His websites — Breitbart.com, Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace — are popular, and they effectively and often irreverently expose the Left for who they really are. The release of his new book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save The World, along with the ensuing book tour and media appearances, have made him an even bigger target as of late.

Andrew Breitbart has been subject to some of the most vicious charges by the Left lately. These assaults range from libel lawsuits and other attempts to paint him as a liar to ugly, uncalled-for personal attacks. These barrages may be different in nature, but they are all vicious in their attempts to drag Breitbart through the mud, and ultimately to end his career.

The following is a list of five of the most vicious attacks on Andrew Breitbart. This list doesn’t even really begin to scratch the surface of the vitriol used against him, but you’ll get a good idea of just how much the Left hates him and how badly they want to see him discredited.

We’ll start with a series of attacks that Breitbart gleefully makes public…

Have you ever been to the post office during lunch rush when there’s a line of people out the door and one of the two people working at the counter decides it’s break time? Or how about the DMV where you could contract tuberculosis while you wait for 6 hours only to be told the sixteen forms of identification you brought aren’t sufficient?

Have you, or someone you love, been escorted out of the Social Security office because they were afraid you were going to do them bodily harm because they gave you the wrong instructions for the third time?

Have you ever been hung up on by a government employee because they didn’t want to answer your inquiries into why they threw out your voter registration three days before a major election?

Have you ever had to call your congressperson to get weeds cut on your street because the state owns it and the city won’t care for it and in the mean time you almost get killed because it’s a vision hazard?

Have you been ticketed for smoking outside too close to a bus stop, forced to make thousands of dollars of repairs to your car because it wouldn’t pass the emissions test while the engine light was on…even though it was just an electrical problem that had nothing to do with emissions?

All these things happened to me or people I know and I’m willing to bet you have similar stories of nightmarish run-ins with bureaucratic government offices. Rachel Maddow, however, keeps insisting that anti-government is the same thing as pro-small government. But the Tea Party she hates so much isn’t anti-government at all. It is pro-responsible government. Using the recent Southwest Airlines disaster as a jumping off point, Maddow waxed hysterical about how anti-government types hate the government and don’t want the FAA doing safety checks on airplanes for stress cracks. Really? That’s the best she could come up with? No one, except possibly Ted Kaczynski, would object to the FAA requiring safety checks.

But then she really went off a cliff, insinuating that Southwest Airlines executives as well as all other airline executives don’t care enough about their passengers to do the checks without the FAA ordering them. Is she high? If I know anything about executives it’s that they don’t like to lose money. In case Maddow doesn’t know, plane crashes are super bad for business. Furthermore, the idea that a person who happens to work for an airline in a high-paying job is a heartless bastard who would like to see his customers go down in a fiery crash is asinine and highly insulting.

Southwest Airlines is the airline of the middle class. That a piece of the fuselage tore off mid-flight is a little scary, but not unheard of and you can bet Southwest will now be the safest airline to fly by the time they’re done with their repairs. And it won’t have had anything to do with the FAA but with corporate policy and a desire to keep their passengers safe.

Maddow wants to convince her viewers that those of us who think the government is too large, bloated and imbecilic live in one room shacks with no running water penning homicidal screeds all day. She’d have you believe we don’t like roads or firemen or the police.

Conservatives don’t hate government when it functions the way the Constitution intended. We need roads, courts, jails, safety measures, security, military, all kinds of things that government should do. What we don’t need is the never ending expansion of government into every aspect of our lives. We don’t need the government taking Happy Meals away from our kids, telling us which light bulbs to buy, what car to drive, how much sugar or fat to eat, how to be civil, what is fair, what our kids should know about sex, what temperature to set our thermostat, where we can smoke, when we can practice our Second Amendment rights, and which schools we can send our kids to. And that’s just the short list!

The Tea Party and conservatives aren’t anti-government; we’re pro-American government. We love the Constitution. We’ve actually read it. We don’t want to change it, we don’t want to transform it (fundamentally or otherwise), we simply want to follow it. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the American people have a right to government funded health care. Nowhere in the Constitution does it suggest that the answer to every problem is another government agency. And if you read the Constitution, you won’t find the word “czar” in it anywhere.

Alas, Andrea Mitchell still hasn’t gotten the memo. NewsBusters’ Alex Fitzsimmons reports that the MSNBC host and her Democrat guest see the specter of bigotry behind Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) 2012 budget proposal:

“Representative Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget, released today, includes reforms, what they call reforms, and also big cuts in housing assistance, job training, and food stamps,” warned Mitchell. “All of which would have a very big impact on particularly poor and minority communities, some say.”

Mitchell was mum as Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) bandied ludicrous assertions about the 2012 Republican budget, which would slash spending by nearly $6 trillion over 10 years mostly by reforming unsustainable health care entitlement programs.

“It’s clearly a nervous breakdown on paper and it will do enormous damage, I think, to the vulnerable populations of this country,” predicted the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, who added that the House Budget Chairman’s proposed cuts to non-defense discretionary spending would “devastate the poor,” particularly in America’s racial minority groups.

Citing a concise Jennifer Rubin piece, Fitzsimmons points out that the Ryan plan’s welfare reductions are modest by historical standards, and that it in fact merely “pare[s] back such programs to 2008 levels.” If anything, it sounds like the Ryan plan can be best described as a welcome opening act, but not enough to escape the hole we’ve dug for ourselves. CATO’s Michael Tanner writes that it “cuts spending by $6.2 trillion over the next ten years” yet “still adds $6 trillion to the national debt.”

Whatever the merits or shortcomings may be, crying discrimination about attempts to seriously address the problem are as unserious and irresponsible as they are dishonest and malevolent. Of course the many people who are currently getting money from Uncle Sam would like to keep it coming, but if we can’t afford it, we can’t afford it. Do Mitchell and Cleaver not believe balancing the budget is a necessity? If so, then please, show us where else to come up with the money (and no, “tax the rich” is neither more noble nor more practical). That they instead choose the tired, worn route of casting privileged white Republicans against downtrodden minorities suggests that they simply don’t care. No wonder a whopping 25% of the country has confidence in our media.

Fortunately, this is where leftists collide with the law of diminishing returns. The first few times you allege racism, you’ll turn heads. But new acts of “racism” popping up every day? There are that many outright bigots thriving in government, on TV and radio, and in the newspapers, and enough Americans are okay with it to sustain their careers? That’s harder to swallow. It becomes increasingly obvious that all the label really means is “I hate you and what you stand for.” The more people realize that the accusers don’t take the label seriously, the more they’ll stop taking it seriously, as well. If everything is racist, nothing is.

Some years back, I got a ticket for driving without my seatbelt on. I explained to the nosy officer that I had a painful sunburn which the seatbelt would exacerbate, and he asked me if I had a doctor’s note for that.

A doctor’s note! When’s the last time you got a sunburn and ran to the doctor? But that’s not really the point. The point is, he apparently thought I was a moron who couldn’t figure out, all by my little self, that the seatbelt was rubbing my sunburn raw.  I needed an “expert” to pin a note to my collar to show the nice officer.

Well, be thankful, comrades, that Those Who Know Best are issuing more Proclamations From On High That Are For Your Own Good:

New FEDERAL labeling requirements will force chain restaurants, bakeries, convenience stores and coffee chains to clearly post the number of calories for each item on the menu.

Why? Because you’re a stupid fat slob who doesn’t know how to feed yourself, and because Michelle Obama said so… that’s why.

Now, some conservatives are entirely missing the point on this one. They’re saying things like, “well, I kind of like having the calorie counts posted. It makes it easier for me to order something healthy.”

You know what would make it even easier? If Michelle Obama came to your house and personally fixed your salad and rice cakes. But we don’t want that, now, do we?

Wake up, fellow chubsters. It’s not about what’s easy. It’s about what’s right. It’s ALWAYS about what’s right.

The government – especially the federal government – has no Constitutional right to tell the restaurant owner how to advertise his wares. Nor does should the government have the power to force the restaurant owner to pay for new signs to post information he may or may not want to post. Period. End of discussion.

If customers want calorie counts listed, they should speak to the store manager. As it is, this law doesn’t apply to non-chain eateries, or movie theaters, or a number of other places where people buy food. Again, if customers want something, they should ask for it, and if a store owner is not responsive, let the power of the free market guide the choice of where to dine out next. Consumers should have all the power, and they would, if the government would just get out of the way.

By the way, who do you think will pay for that new sign at the Burger King? Why, you will, dear consumer, when your burger price gets hiked to cover the store owner’s increased costs. (For the record, the answer to the question “who do you think will pay for fill-in-the-blank”… well, the answer is ALWAYS “you, dear consumer.”)

And for the record, this is Reason #936 to oppose Obamacare, as that law birthed this stupid requirement. In fact, there is some speculation that if you suffer a heart attack, your medical care might be denied if they can show that you were eating 1200-calorie burgers WHICH THEY WARNED YOU ABOUT.

Anyway, if this were the only regulation the feds had ever created… it would still be wrong. But it would be minor. The reason it’s not minor is because this is just one of approximately 99 zillion federal regulations, all of which took time, money and energy to draft and get pushed into law, and will now require enforcement which will mean more tax dollars spent on more government bureaucrats – this is truly a lose-lose proposition.

In fact, the only thing that won’t be lost is weight, since consumers will learn to simply ignore the calorie counts, just like they’ve been doing on packaged food from the grocery store for years.

But that won’t stop our all-knowing Federal Nanny from forcing these types of packaging requirements on food. Or forcing us, when we go to buy it, to wear a seatbelt. Blistered sunburn or not.

The fireworks in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to rein in government employee unions aren’t over yet. Unions have declared war on any Wisconsin businesses that won’t publicly oppose Walker, and the budget repair bill has been blocked by an activist judge, turning next week’s state Supreme Court election into a proxy battle on the issue.

Oh, and we’re not done with the onslaught of violence and vitriol on behalf of the unions and the educational establishment, either. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Wisconsin resident Katherine Windels is now facing felony charges for death threats she made against state Republican lawmakers:

The subject line of the second email was: ”Atten: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!” In that email, she purportedly wrote, “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.”

“I hope you have a good time in hell,” she allegedly wrote in the lengthy email in which she purportedly listed scenarios in which the legislators and their families would die, including bombings and by “putting a nice little bullet in your head.”

According to the criminal complaint, Windels told investigators “I sent out emails that I was
disgusted and very upset by what they were doing.”

Asked if she intended to follow through on any of her threats, Windels told the investigators “No,” according to the complaint.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey reveals two key details about the story that the Sentinel left out: first, Windels is a pre-school and kindergarten teacher, and second, this isn’t the first time she’s done something like this—she sent the emails using the name and email address of Lisa Patterson, a woman who she allegedly sent threatening text messages to in October 2010.

Granted, as new details about wrongdoers trickle out, it’s only natural that some outlets will catch wind of them sooner than others. But there’s reason to suspect there’s more to the media’s delinquency here—in a March 19 post on Newsradio 620’s website, George Mitchell publicizes an email exchange with Sentinel managing editor George Stanley on the paper’s lack of coverage of the protestors’ less-savory antics:

Stanley responded, “Both sides are demonizing each other with deliberate, dishonest propaganda….You reap what you sow.”

I asked, “Are you suggesting that the behavior of Walker supporters is comparable to that of his opponents?”  He replied, “I don’t ‘suggest’ like you, George. I didn’t say a word about behavior or go to your links. I prefer honesty to bullshit.”

I replied, “You use the word “propaganda” and say “both sides” are guilty.  Death threats.  Nails in the driveway.  Obscene graffiti.  The list goes on and on.  This amazing and unwarranted conclusion apparently is how the MJS rationalizes not covering the story.”

I asked Stanley if I could quote him, as I wanted to submit an op-ed to the paper.  He said, “No, you’re just full of shit, that’s all I’m saying.”

Yeah…I mean, it’s not as if we just had a prolonged media circus about alleged right-wing incitement of violence, prompting the President of the United States to call on all Americans to strive for greater civility or anything…and it’s not like the fact that a woman who told politicians their families were going to die is entrusted with the education of small children has much relevance to a debate about the condition of Wisconsin’s education system…

This case tells us a great deal about the Left.  First, the fact that Sarah Palin might as well have personally driven Jared Loughner to Gabrielle Giffords’ doorstop, yet we haven’t heard a peep from the civility police about this, or numerous other stories of left-wing civility to come out of Wisconsin, speaks to their utter insincerity about the state of American public discourse. Second, while the average teacher isn’t a nut like Windels, the nation’s public schools have a higher share of refuse—political and otherwise—than many are willing to admit—as Megan Fox wrote on March 8, “the public school system, which is about the same size as the Catholic Church in America with a school in every parish, has more sexual abuse cases in ten years than the Catholic Church has had in fifty.”

Why? Because America’s educational establishment sees teaching as a vehicle for ideological indoctrination rather than a sacred duty to raise the next generation of virtuous, independent, well-adjusted citizens, and because union rules insulate their members from accountability.

Anti-Republican anger of a less murderous sort is still high in Wisconsin, and I still have doubts that my home state’s conservative leaders are making their case as effectively as they could be (a case Morrissey sees reason to believe the American people are receptive to). But they can’t give up—from fiscal solvency to the quality of our schools, this fight simply has too much at stake.

The budget disaster awaiting the United States if the trillion dollar-plus Obamacare plan is passed was discussed on The O’Reilly Factor last night.  Numbers from the Congressional Budget Office on the latest legislative iterations are expected this week.

I think that the most important part of The O’Reilly Factor discussion focused on the sliding dollar, which will worsen considerably with the ballooning costs of Obamacare.   Few knowledgeable people believe President Obama’s assertion that it will be deficit neutral over the next ten to twenty years. 

With the Obama administration’s run-away spending financed by the Federal Reserve’s newly printed money and with the massive deficits already underway that are largely funded by China, the dollar’s days as the global de facto reserve currency are numbered.  Obamacare will destroy the dollar’s worthiness in that regard altogether.

It has been recently reported that key Arab countries (including Saudi Arabia and Qatar) are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, and replace it with a basket of currencies instead. 

For his part, while denying any intent to embrace the idea of a global reserve currency replacing the dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency, President Obama agreed to go along with certain global reforms at two Group of 20 economic summit meetings held this year to show the Europeans and the undeveloped countries how much he wants to get along with the rest of the world.   Specifically, he signed on to the International Monetary Fund’s surveillance of the U.S. economy and use of the IMF-created international reserve asset called Special Drawing Rights to help provide funding to undeveloped countries.   It is these Special Drawing Rights that are being positioned by China and others to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.

What will this mean to the U.S. economy?   We may well find ourselves giving away dollar devalued hard assets at ridiculously low prices to OPEC countries. 

Moreover, the U.S. government will no longer have the advantage, as the issuer of the world’s de facto global reserve currency, of being able to borrow money at a comparatively cheap rate.   As a consequence, Americans would likely end up paying much higher interest rates on their credit purchases, including purchases of automobiles and houses.  With consumer demand drying up for a long time to come, our economy could well sink into a catastrophic depression. 

Obamacare’s reckless spending has a good chance of causing our already sick economy to suffer cardiac arrest.

This Open Thread was submitted by Daniel Crandall who said:

We put this together in response to this video – http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/041b5acaf5/protect-insurance-companies-psa – by a bunch of paid pretenders, including Will Ferrell, stumping for ObamaCare at FunnyorDie.com

When ultrasound technology (sonogram) became readily available to physicians, it was a boon to the medical profession, which quickly realized its practical applications. Relatively inexpensive, portable and un-invasive, ultrasound scans soon became one of the first tests to be performed in the routine examination of a patient’s heart, liver, lymph nodes, etc.

Women, especially, benefit from sonograms, whose images can identify the causes of pelvic bleeding, menstrual problems, cysts and cancerous cells. And of course the general monitoring of the health of both baby and mother during pregnancy have made the sonogram an invaluable diagnostic tool.

But there is a flip side to this coin — the abuse of ultrasound technology (or of any technology, for that matter).

In societies that are culturally biased against women, the sonogram can lead to eugenics, genocide and murder. In many parts of the Islamic world, for example, the birth of a daughter can bring extreme financial hardship to a family, and the early knowledge of the existence of a female fetus developing inside the womb has led many a couple to either abort the pregnancy or hide knowledge of the pregnancy until birth, whereupon the baby girl was left on some hillside to die of exposure.

In countries with a tradition of honoring the birth of a son and lamenting the birth of a daughter, such as Communist China, the practice of female infanticide has reached new heights. China’s deadly (for females) combination of its one-child policy on the one hand, and a longstanding preference for sons on the other, has led to extremely high abortion rates for girls; as a result, in some regions of the country the living population consists of 120 males for every 100 females.

In the year 1990, it is estimated that more than 100,000 ultrasound scanners were in use in China, and that more than 1.7 million female babies went “missing” that year; the number has grown steadily higher since then. While doctors in China are officially banned from telling parents the gender of the baby, they can usually be bribed into providing the information.

In the United States, this screening process is about to be brought to a whole new level.

According to a report this weekend on Fox and Friends, there are now fertility clinics in New York and Los Angeles that will allow prospective parents–for a $5,000 fee–to have a mother’s embryo removed, tested, and then implanted back into the womb. This will not only allow for the examination and detection of defects in the gene sequence that may indicate the likelihood that the person will someday develop diseases such as Alzheimer’s, but will also enable the parents to reject those embryos that don’t meet their standards.

DNA microarray, as the process is called, will enable parents to scan their offspring’s genetic code, allowing them to customize whatever attributes they wish for their children — from eye and hair color, to height, to athleticism, to singing ability.

The potential for abuse here is enormous. These “designer babies” will bring us closer to Nazi and eugenicist ideals than ever before.

In this ugly yet entirely plausible scenario, it is only a matter of time before governments begin to explore the potential for dictating what their populations should look like.

Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood (America’s largest abortion mill), was the living embodiment of such a mindset. A devoted eugenicist, Sanger advocated forced sterilization — of the poor and the feeble-minded” in particular, who she believed were likely to produce “subnormal” offspring – for the purpose of improving society’s overall gene pool. At a March 1925 international birth-control event in New York City, Sanger advocated – for the “salvation of American civilization” — the sterilization of those “unfit” to procreate — most notably Catholics.

Sanger’s commitment to eugenic “sexual science” dovetailed seamlessly with her Marxist vision. While she had been heartened by the success of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, she doubted that a revolution for a new communist order in the U.S. could be carried out by a proletariat class of limited intellectual capacity. Thus she sought to elevate the quality of the overall gene pool by means of eugenics. Sanger wrote in The Pivot of Civilization:

“In pointing out the limitations and fallacies of the orthodox Marxian opinion, my purpose is not to depreciate the efforts of Socialists aiming to create a new society, but rather to emphasize what seems to me to be the greatest and most neglected truth of our day: unless sexual science is incorporated … and the pivotal importance of birth control is recognized in any program of reconstruction, all efforts to create a new world and a new civilization are foredoomed to failure.”

AIM’s Cliff Kincaid had another top-notch column yesterday which presented further research into the radical politics of Fox News Contributor Marc Lamont Hill. Kincaid highlighted the following quote from a February 2008 op/ed by Hill:

For whites, an Obama victory would serve as the final piece of evidence that America has reached full racial equality. Such a belief allows them to sidestep mounds of evidence that shows that, despite Obama’s claims that “we are 90 percent of the way to equality,” black people remain consistently assaulted by the forces by white supremacy. For many black people, Obama’s success would provide symbolic value by showing that the black man (not woman!) can make it to the top. Although black faces in high places may provide psychological comfort, they are often incorporated into a Cosbyesque gospel of personal responsibility (”Obama did it, so can you!”) that allows dangerous public policies to go unchallenged.

(I’ll leave aside that Hill does not specify the “mounds of evidence” demonstrating “black people remain consistently assaulted by the forces by white supremacy.” He also fails to note what public policies would be “dangerous.” There’s a bigger ideological fish to fry here.)

For poor children — of all races — born into the ghetto, what is the path out of poverty? Who are the symbols and role models they should embrace to inspire them? Are they anti-capitalist, anti-American figures like Assata Shakur, Fidel Castro, and Mumia Abu-Jamal which — until recently — Hill trumpeted from his websites? Or do the life stories of Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Condoleezza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Thomas Sowell, Jay-Z, and, yes, Marc Lamont Hill himself present more useful narratives?

Hill can mock the idea all he wants but a “Cosbyesque gospel of social responsibility” works. The American Idea — that in this country one can achieve personal success as a result of taking responsibility for oneself and participating in the free market system — has been demonstrated time and time again to be true no matter the skin color or gender of the person engaging in it. And Hill’s personal success is evidence of this whether he can realize it or not.

Part of this “gospel” of personal responsibility is honesty. Now that his previously expressed radical views have been exposed Hill has a few options:

1. He can risk his lucrative position as a Fox News contributor by defending the politics and leftist symbols which the majority of the country finds repugnant. (The “Free Mumia!” cult is marginal even among leftists. When Michael Moore of all people admits that a “progressive” movement is off base — as he did in Dude, Where’s My Country? — then perhaps that should cause some reflection.)

2. Hill can reexamine his politics. He can have his own “second thoughts” and explain how he no longer holds the same views he once did. He can do the same thing as Obama – throw his radical friends and symbols under the bus in order to engage the American mainstream.There’s nothing wrong with changing one’s political opinions.

The above two options are intellectually honest. The third, which Hill has chosen to pursue thus far, is not:

3. Hill can hide his actual views by changing his twitter page’s background, deleting his myspace, and trying to ignore his critics. In this fashion Hill can “have his cake and eat it too.” He can collect his Fox News money and present center-left views on The Factor while retaining his radical credibility in the leftist culture of the uxniversity.

This third option is not acceptable. The intellectual culture cannot function if its participants are deceitfully hiding their true political convictions.

Today’s Open Thread was submitted by Julie Trevor.

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

This  one is a little different….
Two Different Versions!  …………….. Two Different  Morals!

OLD  VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer  long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come  winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL  OF THE STORY: Be  responsible for yourself

MODERN  VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer  long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks th e ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come  winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and  starving.

CBS, NBC ,  PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of  the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How  can this be, that in a country of such wealth,  this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit  the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant ’s house where the news stations film the group  singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group curse God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Nancy Pelosi &  Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry  King that the ant has gotten rich off the back  of the grasshopper,  and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC & nbsp;drafts the Economic Equity &  Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the  beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate  number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is  confiscated by the Government Green Czar.

The  story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has  disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the  house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize  the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL  OF THE STORY: Be  careful how you vote in 2010.

A number of NewsRealblog posts have recently taken David Frum to task because of his criticisms of Glenn Beck and his (Frum’s) quest to “rebrand conservatism.”

Frum appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday to talk about his “new conservative brand,” where conservatism went wrong, and how to redefine conservative ideology so Republicans can win elections again.

The not-so-suprising conclusion: social conservatives should be told to take a hike; fiscal conservatives and libertarian conservatives must “accept” that Americans “want” more government interference (an assumption based on his own preferences instead of on polls); and the GOP must be less aggressive on the issue of immigration. The only aspect of conservatism Frum wants to keep is a hawkish foreign policy.

Arianna Huffington joined the conversation later on and told Frum she strongly supported his efforts to reform the GOP.

Nice. Everyone likes to receive a compliment, right?

Well, yes, but a compliment from Huffington should have set Frum’s alarm bells off. She is a rabid, anti-conservative, partisan Democrat who longs for a permanent Democratic majority in Congress. What more does the founder of the New Majority need to know, before he realizes that his recent efforts hurt rather than help the conservative movement?

Listening to Frum speak, you’d get the impression that conservatives are an endangered species. But in fact, conservative books are selling like hot cakes. Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, Michelle Malkin’s Culture of Corruption, and Glenn Beck’s Common Sense are best-sellers because Americans long for authentic conservative voices at a time when leftists have taken over the U.S. government.

As most members of the self-anointed intellectual elite, Morning Joe’s crew doesn’t quite understand that distrust of government is deeply ingrained in American culture and history. Democrats didn’t take back the House, the Senate and the White House because voters suddenly fell in love with leftist ideology or out of love with conservatism, but because Republicans failed to deliver on their promise to cut government and to keep it out of people’s lives. It was not conservatism, but politicians who falsely identified themselves as conservatives, that earned the distrust of the electorate.

The actual problem in this debate isn’t related to conservatism but to Frum’s inability to identify the real problem. Instead of marginalizing powerful conservative voices, Frum should build them up and explain that conservatism is far from dead; in fact, it’s more alive now than at any time since the 1980s.

Today’s open thread was submitted by Chana.

The last few weeks have not been kind to the aura of President Barack Obama.

Internationally, he has begun to be perceived as a weak leader. None of his campaign promises have led to any results on the international stage. The detention center at Guantanamo Bay is still open. The Middle East remains a mess. Oil prices are still too high. All is pretty much the same as the day he took the Oath of Office.

The Iranians, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the North Koreans, the Venezuelans, the Chinese and the Russians are all quite pleased that Barack Obama has replaced George W. Bush—a man they all feared—as president. They have understood, this early in the game, that the President lacks the one quality that makes for a strong leader: decisiveness. And they are taking advantage of it.

Domestically, things are not much better for the President.

As Bill O’Reilly reported last night, Obama’s approval ratings are in freefall, with only 49% of Americans now approving of the direction the country is moving under his leadership. Cash-for-clunkers, massive bailouts, cap-and-trade, increasing unemployment, health care reform, and now a plan to reform the educational system have left Americans shell-shocked and wondering when it will all end.

Naturally, the left needed a theory to explain away this precipitous drop in Obama’s popularity so soon into his Presidency. As luck would have it, they had an old one in the archives, which they have newly re-packaged and re-introduced. Only this time, it has now been put forth by the husband of its originator: former President Bill Clinton has resurrected the “vast right wing conspiracy” theory first put forth eleven years ago by his wife, Hillary Clinton.

This past weekend, Mr. Clinton was asked by David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program about the possibility that such a conspiracy still exists (assuming it ever did), and his soon-to-be-famous answer may have shocked even Mr. Gregory:

DAVID GREGORY: Your wife famously talked about the vast right wing conspiracy targeting you. As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?

BILL CLINTON: Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It’s not as strong as it was, because America’s changed demographically, but it’s as virulent as it was. I mean, they’re saying things about him – you know, it’s like when they accused me of murder and all that stuff they did. But it’s not really good for the Republicans and the country, what’s going on now….

Mr. Clinton went on to imply that the President’s popularity is falling because of lies and accusations levied against him by the extreme right:

BILL CLINTON: Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail, and that’s not a prescription for a good America. They can take his numbers down; they can run his opposition up. But fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America.

Clinton and the Democrats can make all the noise they want about a “conspiracy,” but the reality is much different. Obama’s sinking popularity is not the result of external forces acting upon him; it is of his own doing.

The intellectually bankrupt left, however, will continue to appear on their media outlets, crying foul and blaming others for the President’s failings. As their ideology unravels, they will make even more noise. They have to, for as Shakespeare observed, the “empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”

Today one of our commenters, Ben, posted a link to Media Bistro on David Horowitz’s post about the newest installment in the debate with David Frum.

Ben did so to demonstrate an interesting point: Glenn Beck did fairly well in a recent public opinion poll. Only 19% of Americans have a negative view of him. Compare that to the 50% who have a negative view of Rush Limbaugh. When it comes to Beck most people are either neutral or ignorant of him.

The source of Media Bistro’s information was a blog by Nate Silver, the influential polling analyst behind FiveThirtyEight.Com. And it was there that I discovered an idea far more interesting than Beck’s low negative numbers. Silver identified Beck in a fashion I’d never considered before, but now cannot help but enthusiastically embrace:

Beck is a PoMoCon — a post-modern conservative. And his philosophy is not all that difficult to articulate.

I’ve previously identified David Horowitz as a post-modern conservative. It’s a label that I identify myself with as well. (Note: I refuse to use PoMoCon. It just sounds dumb. Sorry.)

Silver describes the conservative components of this emerging political philosophy:

It borrows a couple of things from traditional American conservatism:

– It shares an extreme distrust for government, particularly the Federal Government.
– It shares the notion that American society is in some sort of state of existential decline.

There are a few other key elements as well that link postmodern conservatism to traditional conservatism which Silver leaves out (or perhaps was not aware of.) First and foremost is an overwhelming enthusiasm for the principles of the founding and the Founding Fathers themselves. Second is a revulsion at the the decidedly non-postmodern nature of the True Believer Left. So much of Beck’s approach — as well as the emphasis of Horowitz, many at the Freedom Center, and myself — is an analysis and a relentless critique of the Left. This sort of conservatism — one that develops in reaction to the Left — is unfortunately alien to many conservatives today. Because they do not understand the Left they cannot effectively fight it.

Silver goes on to elucidate where postmodern conservatism parts ways with traditional (Limbaugh and Mark Levin) conservatism:

On the other hand, it also features some important differences:

– It is much more distrustful of non-governmental institutions, such as labor unions, corporations, political parties, community groups, the media, and scientific institutions.
– It is largely indifferent toward ’social issues’.
– It is much less explicitly aligned with the Republican Party.
– It has much less use for elites, which it also distrusts.

These four aspects of postmodern conservatism allow the ideology to expand to reach out to the apolitical, the moderate, and the open-minded elements of the Left. It allows for the defense of America and the spirit of the Founders to penetrate beyond the confines of the Conservative Movement.

Silver also describes a very important stylistic and temperamental difference:

The PoMoCons are not so much less self-consistent as they are less concerned with consistency, as compared with traditional conservatives. Theirs is a bric-a-brac, skeptical (sometimes to the point of paranoid), play-it-by-ear, relatively spontaneous reaction to the here-and-now — not something cooked up by a K Street thinktank. There is no future, no past — there is only today. And today is a pretty good day to be Glenn Beck.

In other words: Beck and other post-modern conservatives are OPEN-MINDED. They have a functioning core of patriotism and freedom-oriented libertarianism but they are willing to take in new ideas and adapt to the circumstances of a changing world.

One of the key side effects of this is something I observed when watching Beck the other day. I realized my enthusiasm for what Beck was saying throughout his show would fluctuate wildly. I would be with him one moment, in complete agreement, and then all of a sudden he might present an idea or say something in an over-the-top fashion and I’d strongly disagree. I probably found myself supporting maybe 70-80% of what he had to say with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Other times I’d want to reach through the screen to yank him back before he stumbled off an ideological cliff. Such is the nature of a figure like Beck whose mind frees itself to explore the world of ideas with less rigidity than a traditionalist.

My friends, this is the next evolution in Conservatism. This is what will transmit the defense of the American Idea to the next generation and the politically disenchanted masses. And Beck is its representative in the mass culture of cable news and talk radio. Therefore it is all the more vital to make sure Beck does not stumble down Wile E. Coyote-style as he chases the Road Runner of the Left.

Dr. Sowell debates the merits and demerits of the welfare system and the incentives it creates, in this classic film clip from 1980s.

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Voice of Reason is NewsReal’s new feature highlighting political videos from noted commentators. If you would like to suggest one then please email NewsReal’s Assistant Managing Editor David Swindle at DavidSwindle AT Gmail Dot Com.

This Open Thread image was submitted by Swemson.

Today’s lunch break was submitted by Keith

Stalinism hasn’t really gone away. It’s just gotten a lot wimpier — and sweeter.

Case in point: Bill Maher’s most recent New Rules segment from Friday’s “Real Time” (reprinted as always at Arianna Huffington’s leftist mega-blog Huffington Post):

And since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol — and alcohol actually serves a useful function in society in that it enables unattractive people to get laid, which is more than you can say for Skittles.

I’m not saying tax all soda, but certainly any single serving of soda larger than a baby is not unreasonable. If you don’t know whether you burp it or it burps you, that’s too big. We need to make taking care of ourselves an issue of patriotism. If you were someone who condemned Bush for not asking Americans to sacrifice for the war on terror, the same must be said for Obama and health care.

Maher had mentioned this idea back when he found himself as the only leftist on a panel of Ross Douthat, Ashton Kutcher, and General Anthony Zinni. The panel could agree that wellness needs to be promoted but none embraced his Sugary Stalinism of wanting to use the government to try and tax bad eating out of existence.

Maher and many so-called “progressives” are no doubt blind to seeing any connection between their seemingly wholesome desires to save people from their own bad habits and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s programs of institutionalized murder and repression. (In fact I imagine the very suggestion would send them into tizzies of “McCarthyist!” and “Red-Baither!” The Dave could care less. “Sugar Stalnism” has a good ring to it. Alliteration is a virtue — and trumps political correctness.)

But there is a connection: both represent thuggish attempts to use the cudgel of government to reshape society. The Stalinism of the USSR and the Sugary Stalinism of many of today’s leftists both think that government should be utilized to kill anything that gets in the way. Stalin just went further. He actually killed people. Progressives think you can just tax bad things and pass laws. But you know that many of them deep down just wish that the malevolent conservatives that stand in their way would die.

The problem that Maher refuses to confront — and putting the morality aside for a moment — is this: his Sugary Stalinist dreams will not work. If the real Stalinists could not kill their way to a better world then how can “progressives” tax and legislate their way there?  Government attempts to try and remake society and save a people from their “vices” are  doomed to failure. We tax alcohol and cigarettes already. Is it effective to get people to give up either? Absolutely not. The government even spends billions of dollars a year fighting to keep drugs like marijuana criminalized. That doesn’t  work either. (We won’t get into the amusing paradox of Maher wanting to tax junk food but legalize weed.)

What makes Maher think government force will work for food? Further, what makes Maher think it could even be implemented effectively? (Black market Mountain Dew anyone?)

Oh wait, I know. Nothing makes Maher think it would work. Maher’s not thinking period — just like so many other well-intentioned leftists today.