Defining the Abstract

We spend a great deal of time in our country (way too much in my opinion) in arguing over what things mean.  How exactly do you define the abstract?  What does it mean when people say “they just want freedom” when talking about people from other nations?  Do they define freedom the same way you do?

We can’t agree on what freedom means in this country, yet people want to define it for someone who has no concept for government like ours.  They have never lived in a “free” society.  President Bush famously (or infamously depending on how you look at it)

“And my deepest conviction, the guiding principle of the administration, is that the United States of America must drive to expand the reach of freedom.”

Go and talk to the average person who lives in Europe and ask them if they are “free” and have “freedom”.  The answer you are very likely to get is yes.  Yet, you ask a person who is on the right in this country if they do the answer is very likely to be no.  Most European countries are set up as Socialist Democracies.  A very ugly concept to the view of many in this country.

The Arab spring didn’t happen because of the overwhelming desire for freedom.  It started over the price of bread.  In Egypt and Palestine they have gone to the polls and voted in the likes of Hamas and The Muslim Brotherhood.  While you do have to take into account that many of these elections are likely rigged, but sorry to burst your bubble, many people willingly voted these people into office.

While that sometimes is mind-boggling, one has to remember that both of these terrorist organizations also have an arm to them that aren’t at all terrorist, but work as a charitable organization.  They help the unemployed feed their families, they help with goods and services that many of the poor in those areas simply cannot afford to get on their own.  When you have close to 70% unemployment in the Palestinian Territories, you are going have a great deal of need.  These organizations go in and fill those needs.  It allows them to do their terrorist activities with a wink and nod from the population, they aren’t going to bite the hand that feeds them.  For many, this isn’t just a saying, but a literal thing for them.  They are dependent on these people for their livelihoods and for those of their children.  It is far more complicated than many in this country dare to even try to understand.

The world is a very complicated place.  It is very easy to sit in the cheap seats, which believe me the U.S. are the cheap seats, and make statements about what others want and need.   When you live in the U.S. you have safety nets in place (we can argue the right and wrong of these at another time).  No matter how poor you are in this country, you are still richer than approximately 70% of the rest of the world.  This isn’t about bashing poor people in this country, but just about perspective.

I saw this posted by Kira Davis on her Facebook page yesterday:

I make it a general rule not to argue about the Constitution or the principles of freedom with non-Americans. Not because of anything biased or personal, but just because being an immigrant myself I know that the way the rest of the world views freedom is far, far different than how Americans view freedom – yes, even the lefties. You can’t debate someone who has a fundamentally different understanding of what it means to be a free citizen and what a “right” is.

Decades ago we saw people in the streets in China demanding more “freedoms”.  The government crackdown was harsh and immediate.  But, in those preceding decades, the government of China has loosened some of the restrictions.  The citizens are getting more freedom over their lives from an economic perspective.  There are more jobs.  There is more autonomy.  They are allowing more and more people to drive cars.  I look at that country and am horrified at how little freedom those people have, yet they are feeling more comfortable with the changes the government is making.  It is about perspective.  I don’t get to define what freedom means to the average Chinese citizen. I wouldn’t want to live there, but that doesn’t mean that many of the people who do aren’t satisfied with their lives.

Emerging markets growth will also dramatically redistribute the bourgeois around the world. For instance, as our Rapid-Growth Markets Forecast explores, the number of households in Mexico with annual disposable incomes over US$50,000 is expected to reach 7.1 million by 2020, and 9.4 million in Brazil. For both countries this is an increase of over 50%.

Nevertheless, China’s and India’s contributions will be substantial.

Today, China has around 150 million people earning between US$10 and US$100 per day. As long as China continues to grow, and necessary economic reforms are made, we expect as many as 500 million Chinese could enter the global middle class over the next decade.

By 2030 around one billion people in China could be middle class — as much as 70% of its projected population.

To them this may mean “freedom”.  You can’t say that it does or it does not.  But many have said over the years the reasons that the communist government of China made economic reforms to help its citizens, is because it wanted to keep mass unrest from happening.  This likely will allow them to control the country for a longer period of time.  Are the people stupid for going along with it?  Some will say yes, others will say no.  That will depend on your perspective.  Many in this country look at this as a model of how government should work.  The heavy hand of government to guide economic policies that help all.  That is their idea of freedom.

We can talk all we want about what people in foreign lands want and or need.  We are doing so from our perspective, not from theirs.  We have not lived their lives in those places.  We don’t get to define what their lives should be, what their hopes and desires should be.  We also can do the same about people in this country.  We have plenty of people in this country who define freedom in ways that I don’t.

When you make broad statements about what abstract concepts mean, just remember that just because you define it a certain way that doesn’t mean that others do the same way.  When you talk about how everyone just wants freedom, just remember what they view as freedom won’t necessarily match up with what you think it means.

Tony Blair believes in “freedom” heck President Bush even gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he is a socialist.

“We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and not as opposites”

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Quote of the Day – Andrea Mitchell Edition

alienated our “ally” in Iran and paved the way for rocky relations even to this day.

MSNBC reporter/political pundit Andrea Mitchell on the most impactful State of the Union addresses when President Bush identified Iran as part of the axis of evil.

I could be wrong here, but I think there a whole bunch of hostages that would disagree with this statement.

To think that people actually listen to this crap, more horrifying is that she actually gets paid to say this crap.

President Bush Celebrating His First Halloween as a Grandpa

Too cute.

Quote of the Day – Arab Diplomat Edition

“I have to tell you, I miss President Bush, I disagreed with almost every political decision he made. But I knew where he stood and what his views are. He told us personally and he told the world at the U.N. General Assembly. We could disagree and move on with it. With Obama not only don’t I know, I just don’t understand.”

Well that makes two of us.

Jenna Bush-Hager Statement on President Bush

President Bush Speaks at the Dedication of his Presidential Library

Yes, I am a geek.  I love Presidential Libraries.  I have been to four of them.  I am looking forward to going to this one as well.

Welcome to Baby Mila – President Bush becomes a Grandpa

Former President Bush’s daughter Jenna and her husband Henry welcomed their first child into the world Saturday night.  She was named after her grandmothers Margaret Laura and they will be calling her Mila.  What a cutie.

Congrats to them.  President Bush has finally gotten the grandchild he has been waiting for.   

And Liberals Don’t Understand Why Conservatives Don’t Trust the Educational System

Exhibit A.

This is a page from a college text book:

Quote of the Day – President George W. Bush Edition

“You’re always the former president but I wanted to come here as a laborer…I do want to say that on this particular trip that myself and friends have left behind a clinic and hope to inspire others to come and refurbish clinics as well,”

President Bush on his institute’s work in Africa.  This week he and his wife are in Zambia building a clinic to help diagnosis and treat cervical cancer.  He didn’t send a check, he went out and help build the clinic.

As usual his service is done with little news coverage. As a side note, I guess this further proof that Laura Bush has never done anything for women, huh?

The Ignorance Amongst Us

I was reading a post over on Pundit and Pundette the other day about “Julia” in part she wrote:

 Reality-based arguments can’t break through the kind of barriers some people have erected in their minds. Facts, reason, and even one’s own deteriorating personal circumstances will barely make a dent.

The day before I read this, I was talking to man who told me that there was no national debt when President Bush took office.  That is not a typo.  No national debt, there was a “surplus”.  When he first mentioned the surplus I said it was all smoke and mirrors.  He couldn’t understand what I meant.  So I asked him how do you have a surplus when you had a $5T debt?  That is when he told me that there was no debt.  For the record, the day President Bush was sworn into office in 2001 our debt stood at $5.727 Trillion.  You want to toot the horn that President Clinton says he left office with a “surplus”?  Personally I think it is rather immoral that they didn’t pay down the debt with “extra money”.  I also mentioned to him that the government doesn’t produce anything of value, so all the money belongs to the tax payers not the government.  Where’s my rebate?  The federal government should never have a surplus.    If you want to see the truth about Bush’s economic record, go here.  It isn’t what President Obama and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz would have you believe that it is.  This man also believes that asking for an ID is racist, and there is no voter fraud.  He happened to be a black man.  We live in a state where they have ID laws for voting.  I asked him if he has problems voting.  Of course he doesn’t because he has an ID.  I also told him if there was no voter fraud how come Newt Gingrich wasn’t on our primary ballot?

Look, the guy is a Obama fan.  That is fine.  That is his choice as American.  The problem isn’t that he likes Obama, the problem is the man is completely ignorant of the facts he spouts off.  It was less than five months ago that the story of ballot fraud was all over the news in Virginia.  The company Gingrich hired to help with signature collection committed fraud.  It happened.  This isn’t something being made up.  Does this man think that this same company has never done that before?  Did the white kid getting the ballot for Eric Holder in DC not happen?  Because it is on video.  There was almost $6T in debt when Bush took office.  The surplus that the democrats like to point to is all smoke and mirrors.  That is like me saying I have $10K in my checking account when I owe the credit card company $20K.  What I really have is $10K of debts; in fact more than that once you figure in compounding interest that I will be paying until the additional $10K is paid off.

We have so many people in this country that are so ignorant of the facts.  I am not saying this only happens to people on the left.  We see it on the right as well.  Virtually every major news source in this country has some sort of bias.  They report the news with a slant.  It is up to the individual to go out and do independent research on the facts that they hear on TV or read in the newspapers.  Fox News does the same thing.  Do I think that they lie as much as the left says they do?  No.  But they report news without giving context to things.  One example being is the lawsuit that was filed against Catholic University about there not being places to pray for Muslim students that didn’t have a crucifix in the room.  The way Fox reported this story led you to believe that people responsible for the lawsuit were the Muslim students, when in fact it was some idiot guy who files lawsuits about religion all the time.  The very few Muslim students who attend this school thought the lawsuit was ridiculous.

I see things in my travels around the net that just make me shake my head.  I can’t believe how dishonest some of the things are that are out there.   We will never fix things in this country if don’t understand the problems.  How can we understand the problems when we have so much ignorance?

We still have not gotten to the point in this country that we can have an honest debate about which things we are going to cut from the national budget.  We still have people out there that don’t understand that we are quickly reaching the tipping point.  We cannot keep spending our money in the same fashion that we have been.  I am sick to death of hearing “what about your two wars”.  I didn’t start any war.  Congress voted and gave authorization.  73 senators approved the use of force in Iraq.  This was a bi-partisan decision.  I have always been on the fence about Iraq.  Am I sorry that a sociopath is no longer a head of state?  No, I am not. Call me crazy, but I think being a sociopath is a sure tell-tale sign that someone shouldn’t be leading a country.  But the other side to that is that Saddam was a counterweight to Iran, which has grown stronger and more menacing since our entrance into Iraq.  That shouldn’t have been too hard to see and it certainly doesn’t seem that was thought out in any way that makes sense.

Instead of talking about the real issues we are discussing imaginary wars on women, color form depictions of a life dependent on government, throwing granny off the cliff, and other such nonsense.  Some of which can very entertaining at moments, but it doesn’t address our real issues.  There is no problem to access of birth control in this country; especially at Georgetown University.  There are four, count them four, planned parenthoods within 10 miles of campus, which gives you pills based on your income.  There are stores that you can purchase your pills within 3 blocks of campus for under $10.  Those are facts.

I am sick to death of hearing, well Bush spent a great deal of money.  Yes he did.  More than half of which was done under a democratically controlled congress.  We have people who don’t even understand that President has very little power to spend money on his own.  Spending is a function of congress.  If anyone thinks that I was happy about TARP, No Child Left Behind, and many other debacles of the Bush administration, then they don’t know me very well.  I didn’t like the spending then, nor do I like it today.

We need remedial training on how the government is supposed to function and how it is functioning today.  We need people to understand that if you want to truly understand an issue, you need to do a little digging on your own.  Read accounts from several different sources.  Listen to opposing points of view.  No one is right or wrong 100% of the time.

But what really scared me about this man is that he votes.  People with his level of ignorance help decide who run this country.  No wonder we are in such a mess.  I really would like it if someone would track down Miss. Peggy and let me know how that Obama Cash is working out for her.

Quote of the Day – Matt Damon Edition

I would kiss George W. Bush on the mouth for what he did on PEPFAR…You know, PEPFAR is an incredible thing just in terms of how many lives it saved. These ARVs have a Lazarus effect on people. You see a picture of them before and then you see them vibrant, alive, working. Their whole family has been dragged down by the illness and now this. I went on a trip in 2006 (to Africa) and I just had a sense of national pride going around, talking to these people, and they were so happy, they would say, “America,” and I was saying, “Yeah, our president did that, and it’s terrific.” It’s such an obvious connected thing. People aren’t going to hate you when you’re saving their lives.

Matt Damon on President Bush’s work in Africa.

Something he gets virtually no credit for.  He saved millions of lives and his work there continues.  Something the left usually chooses to ignore.

Stat of the Day – National Debt Edition

$4.89 Trillion in Debt under President Bush in 8 years

$4.93 Trillion in Debt under President Obama in 3.15 years

Stats from Treasury Department

I am sick to death of hearing from liberals that our debt is Bush’s fault.  What Bush did in 8 years was bad enough, but this is inexcusable.  It is also noteworthy that a great deal of the debt under Bush came after 2006 when the democrats had control of both houses of congress.

Picture of the Day

Paul Krugman is Not Allowing Comments

For what he calls obvious reasons.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

I keep hoping that the Times will issue a note that their site has been hacked.  I hope because I saw a typo, a Te for a The, that the whole thing is a scam to yank the chains of Red State America, a prank by some lowlife who will use a Columnist with a history of being liberal, to promote an agenda that is hatefully so. 

But so far, it is a benefit of the doubt that I have a hard time extending.  This is the New York Times after all, and even if it was a prank, there is the possibility that the tenor and sentiment expressed is not disagreed with, that those with the power to pull such a piece, do not find the entire piece disagreeable.  After all, he called President George W. Bush a fake hero and declare that the neo-cons wanted to fight an unrelated war that September 11th gave opportunity to begin. That’s classic NYT boiler plate.

The spaghetti slam of others without names, “How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?” and the demand that we agree that this day is now a day of shame followed by the duck and cover of not allowing comments make me wonder what he actually believes happened on that sunny Tuesday that became so other than the morning had promised. 

By contrast, President Bush spoke yesterday at Shanksville. (I guess Krugman thinks he was cashing in by being there). He said, “One of the lessons of 9-11 is that evil is real and so is courage.”  That for me is the take away knowledge from that day, the reality that must be kept in our hearts along with the names and stories of those lost.

Mayor Guiliani and President Bush both acted as leaders on that day, whatever the avant guards of fashionable thought in Hollywood or New York might think or have come to think afterwards.  Krugman also throws in Bernie Kerik into the mix as as one of those who made September 11th about them.   What any of these three men did beyond September 11th, good, bad and otherwise, does not change what they did On September 11th, which was brave, hard and good.  

Maybe Krugman needs to get out of the city a bit more often, but most recognize September 11th was not about these three men, not even close.  I would submit that even most New York Times reading New Yorkers know that as well. 

Looking at the nation, Red, Blue or otherwise, the people on the streets, in the parades and even on the televison don’t seem to be politicizing September 11th.  They seem to be recalling the events of that day, not packing it with politics that came afterwards.

Most of us remember the day for what it was, and not as Krugman demands that we acknowledge. There is no shame, no atrocity in recalling that day, whatever mistakes, human, political, personal, public, nationally and internationally that may or may not have followed.    

As for falseness and phoniness, Paul Krugman may consider himself courageous for posting this piece but I don’t.  Throwing that emotional molotov cocktail of trash out onto the internet and running off to congratulate himself, he may feel secure because no one can talk back.  Most people call such tactics those of a coward and a bully.  On the internet, it is the standard operating procedure of a troll.  

Krugman may well consider September 11, 2011 a day of shame, when the conscience of a Liberal at least in his case, was shown to be so very small.  He has used the date to batter his readers who cannot respond because of his choices, to advance a rage that has nothing to do with the celebrations and memorials of the day. 

But I will give him one point.  He claims the events are subdued.  He’s correct in that, no First Responders or Clergy that might remind us of the reality of that day,(rather than the ideological wars that have begun since then), were invited.  If he is complaining about no “real heroes,” perhaps he should stop looking across the political aisle and offer up some food for thought to the powers that be that organized the Ground Zero event.  Perhaps he should save some of that vitriol for those trying to use today’s services to advance their future career, (Hello Bloomberg?) rather than politicians that are not currently in charge, much less proclaiming themselves heroes of September 11th.

For the rest of us, September 11, 2011 is a time to remember September 11, 2001.  Ten years or twenty years, fourty or 100, September 11th, 2001 was a day America was attacked, 2,819 people were killed and all of us became linked by the pain, the reality, the scars of that day.  It is a day we set aside to remember those that died fighting those who plan such things as September 11th, and those who died because of those who planned September 11th.  

If Krugman truely wants to honor those hurt by September 11th, perhaps he should practice in his own life, what he has demanded of his readers of this column, and in the future, Not allow himself to comment for obvious reasons.