The UN speech I'd like to hear

This week, in President Obama's speech to the United Nations, he declared that he "took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust." He did not say anything in the remainder of the speech to indicate that this perspective was an invalid one. Nor would I expect that he would; after all, President Obama's wife told us all last year that for the first time in her life, she felt proud of her country (once it was clear that her husband was winning the Democratic Presidential nomination).

I would love, just once, to hear a President of either party go to the UN and offer some sentiments along this line:

"Messrs. Qaddafi, Castro, Chavez, et. al: You all have denounced the United States vociferously and fomentedly for years, if not decades...and, I might add, for jolly well long enough. If it weren't for this country, none of you could even afford a skyscraper with bright carpets and padded chairs such as the one we are convening in now, not to speak of the posh hotel suites you are occupying during your stays here. This country was built on the initiative of people who put their reputations, untold hours of hard work and their very livelihoods, in many cases, on the line to make it possible. It is called capitalism; it works and the whole world is more productive and better off because of it. We love freedom, we love the flag and we love God. No, our people aren't perfect; they have their weaknesses and their foibles, and we have some bad apples, but by and large we get up every day and go out and try to improve our lot in life, thereby creating more opportunities for those underneath us on the economic ladder to improve their status and standing. In the last 200 years, the world has progressed to a greater extent than the last 5,000 years of civilization have ever seen. We have left the buggy whip, the mule and plow and the institution of slavery behind forever and replaced them with jet planes, automobiles and central air conditioning. What a country! Welcome to the United States of America!"

Don't tell me it can never happen or I'll have to find another pipe dream.

The President went on to say to the assembled world leaders that going forward, no nation should seek to dominate another. I have heard a lot of commentary on this in the several days that have elapsed since then. Charles Krauthammer opined that this was one of the more naive statements to ever be uttered by a sitting President. I don't know if my reasons for agreeing with Krauthammer or synonymous with the ones he had for expressing this belief to begin with, but I do think Krauthammer's assessment was accurate. Krauthammer, however, tends to come from a more neoconservative position than I do, with a practiced defense of American empire. I do not share that outlook; I believe history shows that America has flourished when it has concentrated on sound fiscal policies domestically, combined with incentives for the kind of hard work, ingenuity and investment that lead to prosperity. This can be combined with a robust determination to defend our interests in the world at large, but it need not lead to an interventionist foreign policy.

I actually think that President Obama was even more dangerously wrong in another portion of the speech: "It is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 - more than at any point in human history - the interests of nations and peoples are shared." This sort of claptrap makes for a good applause line from the tinhorn dictators at the UN, but it is a ridiculous across-the-board formulation. The "interests" within our own country aren't even shared, beyond the most basic fundamentals of putting food on the table and bringing home a paycheck, by hook or crook. The philosophical and political differences within the United States have never been more pronounced, let alone across the rest of the globe. What the President is trying to tell us is that we should all care about and work for the same goals. But we cannot and will not; we see the world too differently. The President sees other countries that are more "compassionate" and "fair" and "socially just" than the United States because these countries maintain a higher output of tax dollars of which this portion of the population can take advantage. I and my fellow conservatives, on the other hand, see a country that has already moved much too far in this direction and needs to return more of its tax revenues to their rightful earners who made the money in the first place!!! This is genuine fairness, rather than the artificial equitability advocated by liberal politicans who want to pad their vote tallies with the ballots of grateful welfare recipients.

ACORN's demise

I just took a brief glance at my last 5 or 6 posts, which span back about 3 weeks. Not proud of that. My friend Jed Hutchison, who blogs on religion and not politics, is an every-single-day-I-post-something type of blogger. I never have been...but I aspire to that, and it just may happen someday soon. This week, though, is illustrative of how illusive such a goal is for me and probably will be for the next several weeks. My youngest daughter had a 5-in-1 surgical procedure on Tuesday morning and didn't get out of the hospital until last night. In the meantime, I was shuttling back and forth from Indianapolis to Kokomo, conducting standard university duties, studying material for my last Liberty class when I got the chance and paying attention to news and catching a day with the Hoosier Congressional Policy Leadership Series. Of the above list, the one element that will soon be changing is the scholarly obligation to Liberty; I will complete the final requirement for the Master of Arts in Religion when I close out my Systematic Theology II class on October 18, 4 weeks from tomorrow! I hope to kick the blog into higher gear after that.

In the midst of it all, I have failed to blog on what I am convinced may be one of the biggest, if not the most significant scoop of the year. I probably shouldn't feel too badly about it, because so did most of the mainstream media (fail to report on it, that is). I sat in on a conference call a couple of days ago with Fox News' and the "Weekly Standard's" Fred Barnes, whom I always enjoy when he turns up a couple of times a week on the Fox News All Stars. Barnes chuckled with genuine delight over what an unlikely pattern the story of ACORN's exposure has followed! Two twentysomething young activists with a video camera have, at the very least, brought about the proposal to defund ACORN by both houses of Congress, the complete break with ACORN by the US Census Bureau and a manifestly steep falloff in donations. It is, indeed, a beautiful thing to behold, and we can only hope that ACORN's ill fortunes continue to accelerate.

It has been an interesting September. What is it about this month anyway? Last year, we had the first TARP bailout and this year, we are treated to the health care debate and the 9/12 March on Washington, with its several thousand patrons (har, har). I think I prefer 2009, all things being equal.

On other matters ACORN-related: Charlie Gibson's admission on Don Wade and Roma's WLS radio show, replete with nervous giggling, that he had not even heard about ACORN and its difficulties...let's just say that the mind reels. I got to ask Fred Barnes about this on our HCPLS conference call and I admitted my incredulousness at Gibson's reply as I posed my question. As I suspected, Barnes knows Gibson and says he is a very nice man, but is just out of touch up in New York. Barnes also observed that it is a telling sign of the times when an evening news man on one of the ostensibly "Big 3 networks" is so insulated from reality that he is completely unaware of one of the major breaking stories of the day.

Bertha Lewis, the current head of ACORN, will be on Fox News Sunday tomorrow morning. I will be watching; I would anyway, but I will go out of my way to do it, even though if I have guests since President Obama has chosen to hit 5 other shows tomorrow, including Univision, but to snub Fox. Chris Wallace said on O'Reilly last night that "They [the Obama White House] are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington. They constantly are on the phone, or emailing me complaining, well, you had this guest. Or you did this thing. I mean, they are working the umps all the time. I think it works for the others. It doesn't work with me." Very frank admission from the most non-partisan Sunday host out there, the rightful heir to Tim Russert.

Retraction and the Fed

I have a former student who lives in Iowa and reads my blog regularly (thanks, Karen!) She diligently took it upon herself to check in with Senator Charles Grassley after reading my "Audit the Fed is dead" post from a couple of months ago. I am happy to stand corrected on this. I reported what I remember reading at the time, which was that Grassley had blocked DeMint's efforts on "Audit the Fed." In fact, Grassley had sponsored a similar piece of legislation, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act. I was correct, unfortunately, in citing Senator Richard Shelby, also a Republican, as the culprit who essentially neutered the bill by very narrowly defining its potential auditory functions to a few specific tasks.

Charles Grassley, in spite of the fears of some conservatives, has proved to be a stalwart, refusing to give an inch on the so-called "public option" in the Senate health care negotiations. I don't ever want to convey mistruth, but in this case, I am more than happy to retract my unwarranted criticism of such a determined advocate for transparency in government.

The Federal Reserve will be getting its share of attention in the coming weeks, with the recent release of a book by one of the Fed's harshest critics. Ron Paul's End the Fed will hit bookstores this week. In celebration of that event, I want to highlight this article, in the "Huffington Post", of all places, a site which I normally do not recommend, but which, in this instance, provides a fascinating look at the destinies of those intrepid economists who have departed from Federal Reserve orthodoxy in recent years. Credit where credit is due; Ryan Grim has assembled a fantastic research piece here, which makes for scintillating reading.

Congressman Joe Wilson

So the President gave another speech after the last one that I blogged about. (I know that ending sentences with prepositions is not grammatically sound. I feel terrible that I just did it.)

Now that 3 days have passed since the President addressed a joint session of Congress, I am beginning to wonder if Joe Wilson got more mileage out of President Obama's speech than the President did. Since the President's stemwinder on health care, Joe Wilson has:

1) Been on Sean Hannity's radio show
2) Been on Sean Hannity's TV show
3) Been booked for Fox News Sunday
4) Obtained thousands of Twitter followers, including yours truly
5) Raised somewhere around $700,000 for his 2010 re-election campaign and perhaps most rewarding of all,
6) Really gotten under the skin of our Democrat friends.

Rush Limbaugh was disappointed that Joe Wilson apologized to President Obama for shouting "You lie" as the President made an assertion that health care for illegal aliens would never be a part of any legislation to cross his desk. I humbly differ with MahaRushie on this one. Wilson did the right thing to apologize, as befits a Southern gentleman of his stature.

But as "National Review's" Kevin Williamson put it, "Joe Wilson was rude, but also right." Columnist Rich Galen expands and somewhat echoes, "Turns out there is nothing in any of the four or five or 27 versions of this legislation which specifically requires proof of citizenship - or even legal immigrant status - so Wilson was right, if rude."

I would only add one more comment to all of this: Wilson's response to the President was not only both of the above, but also understandable. Wilson is a flesh and blood player in a high stakes game on which the quality of millions of lives and trillions of dollars, not to mention the future of the Republic, are riding. That he got a little carried away in the heat of the moment is, to me, more comforting than disconcerting.

So does the office of the President still merit respect, especially in the chambers of Congress. Affirmative! But I will still be doing my part to render Joe Wilson's campaign coffers just a tad more fulsome. After all, didn't someone famous once say that "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing"?

President Obama and schoolchildren

Erick Erickson sums it up most concisely in a Facebook status update from a few minutes ago:

"Not really worked up about the President's school speech."

Me neither.

We may not appreciate his policies, but Barack Obama is the duly elected President of the United States who won a fairly sizeable victory last fall. We also may believe (and I do, based on empirical observation) that many Americans did not realize all that they were voting for when they elected him.

Still, for now, President Obama is the leader of the United States of America, of the free world, if you will. A few points that are worth making:

1. We conservatives profess to value education. Why should we denigrate the President when he encourages students to study hard and stay in school? He should be doing this, shouldn't he?

2. We justifiably criticize many of President Obama's initiatives. But if we cry foul over EVERYTHING he does, who looks like the extremists in the eyes of the average swing voter? A little pragmatism once in a while never hurts.

3. Read the President's remarks if you are worried about the speech. I have. I can find no fault with any of it; frankly, any President of any ideological orientation could give this talk.

4. (And last) If you are worried about the President giving a 10-minute speech to your children, yet you put them on a government bus every day to be transported to a government school to be educated by government textbooks that, according to Tucker Carlson's Fox special last Friday, are authored by one of a mere 3 textbook companies with countless sensitivity censors as a part of the process...

Just think about that for a while.

Glenn Beck and Van Jones

I had planned for several hours to put this up tonight, and then the news crossed the wire a few minutes ago that Van Jones has resigned. This is the best political news I've heard in a while...yet another setback for an administration increasingly besieged by incompetence and misfortune.

There will, I'm convinced, be much more to say about the hapless Obama team in the weeks to come; things will only heat up this fall.

For the moment, I plan to be one of the first to pay Glenn Beck the kudos he is due for shining the light on the truly detestable human being that Van Jones is. If anyone else was out in front of this story in the way that Beck was, I don't know who it would be. This has been one of those news items that has been fascinating to view as it spun out into more and more of a nightmare for the White House, to the point where yesterday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs could only offer the lame defense that "Van Jones continues to work for this Administration." And Glenn Beck was pushing it relentlessly the whole time.

Totally as a point-of-privilege bit of background...I am somewhat proud that I was listening to Glenn Beck before being a Glenn Beck fan was cool. It has been quite a ride, although a bittersweet one, watching the evolution of not only his show, but his reach and influence. I'll explain: I remember the first time I stumbled across his show, on a cold February morning in 2002, headed east towards Ohio, tuning into the AM blowtorch out of Fort Wayne, News Talk 1190 WOWO at around 9:06 EST. Glenn was yukking it up with Stu, Dan and the rest of the team and I was thinking, "Who IS this guy?" and not in a really impressed sort of way, either! He was SO off the wall and extremely random; I was used to Rush Limbaugh methodically dissecting a news item or opinion piece and Glenn just had the feel of someone who didn't take it all real seriously. I listened occasionally over the next couple of years and he grew on me until by 2005, I was an avid fan and went to see his stage show when he came to the Murat Theater in Indianapolis.

This is the deal: Townhall.com blogger Matt Lewis recently opined that Beck seems more like a rodeo clown to him than a serious political commentator. I like Matt and highly respect his opinion, but I differed with him on this point; however, I think I understand why he proffered that assessment. Until a couple of years ago, that is exactly how I would have described what Glenn did: hilarious radio, with a seasoning of seriousness thrown in from time to time. Good, clean fun. I miss it, to be honest. His comedic timing was excellent and he discussed a lot of things that were, frankly, really inane, but also really funny.

But not anymore. About 2 years ago, I noticed a far more purposeful tone to what Glenn was doing with his radio broadcast and his new TV show. It was a slow build, but it was easy to discern that he was doing homework requiring the kind of digging that he had not engaged in up to that point, reading books, doing research and thinking below the surface. The humorous, sarcastic edge is not as observable now as it once was; in fact, I heard Glenn himself say a couple of weeks ago on the radio show that he wishes desperately on most days that he could "just go back and do funny again", but that he would be failing his audience and his calling if he did.

Glenn has brought substantive people of expertise to his microphones that, otherwise, might not have had a voice or a platform this soon, including many faces from my favorite new advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity. Other organizations and people such as the Media Research Center, Steve Moore from the Wall Street Journal and Art Laffer, the famous supply-side economist who drew the Laffer Curve on a restaurant napkin, are routinely featured.

But my prediction is that the Van Jones resignation will bring Glenn's portfolio to a whole new dimension. Glenn Beck has walked us all through every step of the Van Jones travesty, from exposing him as a Marxist to documenting his revolutionary worldview to unearthing the radio clips that show Jones' intentions to remake the country in a leftist Communist image to finally exposing his 9/11 Truther connections.

There is a beautiful subtext to this whole story: Van Jones was the former president of Color of Change, the environmentalist wacko group that led the boycott against Beck and tried to influence Beck's sponsors into pulling away from his show. Glenn Beck went head to head with the Obama administration and in the end, the administration blinked.

So now, in the words of one of my Twitter buddies (whose Tweet I can't locate at the moment, in order to give credit), Van Jones can go to the Czar listings in the phone book and start job hunting.