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December 25, 2006

• A Failure of American Competency
• Your Lawn Looked Stupid This Year
• The Original Foreign Policy

December 17, 2006

• The Russians Have Never Stopped Spying on Us
• When I Was Your Age, All The Kids Wanted Hoverboards
• Who Makes Foreign Policy?

December 10, 2006

• The Zen of Suicide Bombing
• In Defense of Desk Rage
• Monetary Inflation is the Problem

December 3, 2006

• Our Disappearing Farmers, Dollars, and Future
• Clintons’ Cathartes Aura (A Buzzard's Eye View)
• Letters To Santa: D.C. Edition
• Rethinking the Draft

November 26, 2006

• The Californication of the Economy
• What A Fantasy
  (The Real Freedom Fighters)
• Embracing O.J.
• Milton Friedman 1912-2006
• 3rd String, But Still on the Team

November 19, 2006

• The Tyranny of Numbers
• Welcome Back The Draft (A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy)
• Conventional Wisdom Midterm Election Mailbag
• Demographic Reality and the Entitlement State

November 12, 2006

• Oil, Terror & Environmental Pipedream
• This Could Work
  (Sometimes It’s Better To Lose)
• Dances With Comcast
• Gun Control on the Back Burner

November 5, 2006

• Atheists! Who Are These People?
• Br'er Rabbit (Don’t You Feel Stupid Now?)
• If It's Broke, Fix It: How Republicans Can Win
• The NAFTA Superhighway

October 29, 2006

• A Muslim Manifesto for America?
• A.D.D.S. (American Democrat Dhimmitude Suicide)
• On Campaign Ads
• Do Tax Cuts Cost the Government Money?

October 22, 2006

• Making Sense of US Population Growth
• The Anti-Saints Fan
• “R” Stands for Reading Rat Race

October 15, 2006

• “Open Access” or Covert Propaganda?
• The "Chip 'n' Dale" Approach (Since Treason Doesn’t Work Anymore)
• Where Art Thou, FCC?
• Taxes, Spending, and Debt are the Real Issues
• Showing Students How Just Makes Sense

October 8, 2006

• Predicting Hurricanes. Not! [Part Two]
• A Taxing Situation
• Rethinking Birthright Citizenship
• Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Radical Islam

October 1, 2006

• Global Warming Scares Heat Up
• The Liberal Gestalt (Why Don’t Hugo And Chavez It!)
• Diagnosing our Health Care Woes

September 24, 2006

• Robbing Parents to Pay Teachers
• When Banning Smoking, Please Speak English
• When Banning Smoking, Please Speak English
• Amnesty and the Welfare State
• Battling the Education Hydra

September 17, 2006

• “Peak Oil” or Lots More Oil?
• The Real Tokyo Rose (Born on the Fourth of July)
• Nine-Eleven Five
• Immigration Reform in 2006?
• Keith Ellison: Will his oath be to Shari’a or Constitutional law?

September 10, 2006

• End the Tyranny of Homework!
• A Modern Day Tokyo Rose (A Real Dog of War)
• Industrial Hemp and Hurricane Katrina
• Elected Officials Threatening Property Rights
• Caving in the face of Union Politics

September 3, 2006

• California Commits Eco-Suicide
• Liberals and Truth: Keeping the Plame Alive
• Tonight, We Dine On The Virgin Mary
• A North American United Nations?

August 27, 2006

• Making Kids Eco-Crazy
• The Dogs of Politics (All Fleas Have Dogs)
• Why Desk Jobs Are (Mildly) Better Than School
• Lowering the Cost of Health Care
• And “W” takes the Series!

August 20, 2006

• Sabotaging U.S. Sovereignty
• Civilization’s Cycles
  (Spiritus Mundi)
• World Trade Center: See It Again, For The First Time
• Your Taxes Subsidize China
• Wal-Mart: Always Low Prices without Union Vices

August 13, 2006

• Lebanon, the Imaginary Nation
• Hypocrisy On Steroids
• The Threat of Rising Property Taxes
• Undermining the Covenant between Mother and Child

August 6, 2006

• Iran Declares its Nuclear Bad Intentions
• The Other Israel (India: A Power Waiting To Happen Again)
• Is George Bush An Idiot?
• What Congress Can Do About Higher Gas Prices
• Why Kids Can’t Read: Challenging the Status Quo in Education

July 30, 2006

• No Liberals in My Foxhole!
• Liberal Lojic (Double Take On a Double Standard)
• Fun With Hitler
• IRS Threatens Political Speech

July 23, 2006

• Do it Now or Do it Later?
• Iran and I Won (The Downside of Elections)
• World War III

July 16, 2006

• The Fate of Lebanon and the Rest of Us
• Mister Energy (Or Mister Kticulturennticulturedy)
• What Happens In Vegas... Happens In Vegas
• Federal Reserve Policy Destroys the Value of Your Savings

July 9, 2006

• Water’s Nice, But Not as Ice
• The Founding Fathers Order Cheesesteaks
• The Worldwide Gun Control Movement
• All the Shouting is Taking Us Nowhere

July 2, 2006

• Are You Bored with Global Warming?
• Demotivation As Motivation (Smiley Faces With Bullet Holes)
• How To Not Be An Aggressive Driver
• A New Declaration
• Equitable Education is Possible

June 25, 2006

• Islam’s Lethal Certitude
• As Above So Below (Equilibrium Equals Gridlock)
• The Baby Shiloh: Chosen By God To Stop Global Warming
• Congress Rejects UN Taxes
• Reading Between the lines

June 18, 2006

• Past and Future Holocausts
• On Decency and the Death of Zarqawi
• Why Won't Congress Abolish the Estate Tax?

June 11, 2006

• Drilling for the Future
• Pretzel Think (Emoti-Cons on Parade)
• What's The Deal With "Seinfeld?"
• A Free Market in Gasoline The Annual Foreign Aid Rip-Off
• A Brief History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

June 4, 2006

• Throw the U.N. on the Ash Heap of History
• Thank God for Barry Bonds
• A Free Market in Gasoline
• Are guns to blame for Murder-Suicides in Switzerland?

May 28, 2006

• Has John Kerry Morphed into Al Gore?
• Pseudo-Intellectual Insurgents (On the Nature and Origins of Liberalism)
• On Barbaro: The Horse That You Hold Dear
• Stop the NAIS
• The Arrogance of the Not-My-Fault Generation

May 21, 2006

• Predicting Hurricanes. Not!
• Civility (When Four Year Olds Rule)
• Love Me, Hate Me: George W. Bush and the Pursuit of Presidential History
• The Declining Dollar Erodes Personal Savings
• Why Should We Tolerate Guest Workers?

May 14, 2006

• Drug Choices, Bad Choices
• Conventional Wisdom vs the World
• True Foreign Aid

May 7, 2006

• Late Word from the Oil Patch
• Paying The Price (The Other Side Of Free Choice)
• An Open Letter to the FCC
• Foreign Policy, Monetary Policy, and Gas Prices
• Measuring Achievement Against Objectives

April 30, 2006

• An Inconvenient Al Gore
• Euphenasia (May Day Suicide)
• A War on Iran is a War on America
• Policy is More Important than Personnel
• The Customer is Always Right

April 23, 2006

• Goose-Stepping Iranians
• Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed (Conspiracy or Stupidity - Who Cares?)
• The Hidden Threat America Faces That Not Even Securing Our Borders Can Solve
• Sanctions against Iran
• A Think Tank’s Credibility Tanks

April 16, 2006

• Homeland Security? You’re Kidding, Right?
• Try Being Honest For Once (Why The Fear?)
• The Truth! (As We See It): A Special Note From The White House
• Don't Complicate Immigration Reform

April 9, 2006

• The American Empire
• If You Love Your Country, You Should Question 9/11
• Cough Up
• A Battle Cry for Freedom

April 2, 2006

• The Attack on the U.S. Dollar and Energy Needs
• Corruption (Gas Pains)
• How Our Shortsighted Media Got Us Into War
• Making the World Safe for Christianity
• Love of Country

March 26, 2006

• Re-Thinking Iraq
• Murder By Dearth (Professor Plum in the Library w/o a Clue)
• The Failure of the Iraq War
• The Perils of Economic Ignorance
• Sticks and Stones Can Break my Bones

March 19, 2006

• The Illegal Immigration Time Bomb
• The Idiots and The Oddity (Liberals, Greek Action and History)
• It's Time To Forget September 11th
• Congress Should Read the Bills Before they Vote!
• It’s Time to Revisit the Electoral College (Redux)

March 12, 2006

• Endless Environmental Lies
• McCain Not So Able (Eye On The Leftwing Whiners Circle)
• By a Show of Hands, Who Cares About The First Amendment?
• How Government Debt Grows
• Genocide Has Become Benign

March 5, 2006

• Thinking Like an Arab
• Formulaic Thinking (Of Meat Grinders and Men)
• More Hits from the Conventional Wisdom Mailbag
• International Taxes?
• Will Political Correctness Indoctrinate our Youth?

February 26, 2006

• What’s So Great About Ethanol?
• When Weakness Rules (Short Circuits)
• In the Age of Terror, a War on Torino
• The Port Security Controversy
• Teaching with Laptops

February 19, 2006

• Playing God and Stealing Land
• Meet The New Bosses (Same As The Old Bosses)
• Unlike You, I Have Nothing Smart To Say About Those Anti-Muslim Cartoons In That Danish Newspaper
• The Ever-Growing Federal Budget
• The U.S. Supreme Court in History and Today

February 12, 2006

• Addicted to Nonsense
• Frozen In Time (Greco-Roman Sculpture and National Policy)
• The First Annual State of the Union Wet T-Shirt Contest
• A Real Washington Scandal
• Jeb and George Bush: True Education Reformers

February 5, 2006

• You’re Under Surveillance
• Strategy Versus Tactics (Them and US)
• Right Brain + Left Brain = No Brain
• Federalizing Social Policy
• Is a Bilingual Society a School Mandate?

January 29, 2006

• Smearing Conservative Writers
• D.A.M. (Mothers Against Dyslexia)
• Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Gore
• New Rules, Same Game
• Education’s Iron Curtain

January 22, 2006

• Partisanship + Stupidity = Democrats
• The Bridge To Eternity (American Democratic Dissociation Syndrome)
• The Sad, Impending Demise of Napoleon Dynamite
• Federal Courts and the Growth of Government Power
• “Heads” Bin Laden Wins, (Turning) Tails, Bush Loses

January 15, 2006

• Animal Loving Freaks
• Pat Robertson Sings The Blues
• Scandals are a Symptom, Not a Cause
• Stossel Launches Potent Strike for Education Revolution

January 8, 2006

• An Attack on Iran is Inevitable
• Conventional Wisdom Answers Your Letters
• Politics and Judicial Activism
• Actions Speak Louder Than Words

January 1, 2006

• Global Predictions for 2006
• A Modest Proposal (How To Plug the National Security Leak)
• 2005: The Year In Headlines
• Peace and Prosperity in 2006?

• 2004 Archives
• 2005 Archives

What They Thought December 25, 2006

Alan Caruba
R.A. Hawkins
Jonathan David Morris
Rep. Ron Paul
Nancy Salvato

Click here for columnist bios

Alan Caruba
A Failure of American Competency

There’s a reason why political power was taken from the Republicans and given to the Democrat Party. Voters in the political center had concluded that the Iraq invasion has been a failure. They may be wrong, but the Middle East has a long history of befuddling the best efforts to reform it.

At the heart of the election was the conclusion that, given America’s famed managerial and military skills, what had occurred in Iraq was a failure of competency at the highest levels of government. The blame cannot be placed on our soldiers, airmen, and Marines. It was not a failure of the valor of our fighting forces.

It is now widely understood that the White House and Pentagon failed to provide either sufficient manpower or planning for the postwar period.

Following 9/11, having rapidly rid Afghanistan of the Taliban by employing the forces of local warlords, combined with U.S. air power, the White House became fixated on ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein without the necessary planning for the aftermath of that goal. Books such as “Fiasco” by Thomas Ricks and “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward reveal a lack of competency at the highest levels of government that is appalling.

It’s a remake of John F. Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” advisors who never understood the enemy they took on in Vietnam and repeated by Bush’s neocons who probably had even less insight to those in the Middle East. They blithely expected other nations to unite in “a war on terror.” Like the 1930s, however, appeasement was and is the order of the day.

The failure was made even more manifest in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when nothing could hide the astonishing incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with state and local authorities to respond effectively. The citizens of New Orleans who played their own role in the disaster recently re-elected William Jefferson, a Congressman under investigation for bribery. Their failure to maintain and improve the levees played a significant role in the disaster.

It did not go unnoticed that FEMA had been one of many federal agencies folded into the newly created Department of Homeland Security. The Immigration and Naturalization agency, too, had been added to the DHS organizational chart. Neither before nor since 9-11 have they received sufficient funding to stop America’s potential enemies at the borders. Plans to strengthen our borders remain in limbo.

At issue is competency in a government Americans have been taught to believe was ready to take care of every problem and every need they had. Since the days of Barry Goldwater, conservatives have striven to advance their fundamental belief in a smaller federal government, more reliance on the role of the States, and fiscal responsibility.

After George W. Bush took the reins of government, the very opposite of the success initiated during the Reagan years of the 1980’s and the subsequent 1994 transfer of power to a Republican Congress, occurred. Conservatives looked on in dismay and slowly began to raise their voices in protest. Centrist voters heard them and Bush is now a very lame duck President.

Billions of U.S. dollars have been expended on the Iraq war and its aftermath.  We are closing in on more than 3,000 casualties, in addition to thousands of wounded and maimed service men and women.

Unheeded in the initial and subsequent calculations was the ancient and endemic corruption that has existed for centuries throughout the Middle East. It has proven as powerful as bombs and bullets.

A retreat from Iraq, however, will further embolden the forces of radical Islam that have been on the march since the late 1970s. They want to control the whole of the Middle East and then the world beyond. This would be their goal whether the U.S. had invaded Iraq or not.

Congress must decide whether America needs a larger military and on that decision hinges much of the future at home and abroad. It is an obligation that America must assume because few other nations can or will.

The military we have is a superb fighting machine, but as Gen. John Abizaid recently told an audience at Harvard, “This is not an Army that was built to sustain a long war.”

If the neocons knew that, they ignored it.

Our population of 300 million people has 60 million between the ages of 18 and 35, more than enough to expand the current force if Congress would authorize the expansion to 70 brigades from our current 52. Constantly drawing down on Guard and Reserve units is a bad idea.

War is always a serious enterprise. Americans need to take it more seriously.

R.A. Hawkins

R.A. Hawkins is on a brief hiatus as he puts the finishing touches on one book and works on another. His columns will continue to appear here on a sporadic basis until he returns to his regular weekly writing schedule.

R.A. Hawkins       Web Site       Contact       Back to Top

Jonathan David Morris
Your Lawn Looked Stupid This Year

Can this be the end of stupid Christmas decorations, please? Can 2006 be the last time we celebrate Christmas with giant inflatable snow globes on our front lawns?

I can’t take it anymore. I’m not Scrooge. I’m not anti-Christmas, and I’m not anti-decorating for Christmas.

I’m anti-you.

And I’m anti-anyone who decorates their lawn like an idiot.

Here’s a list of what I never want to see again:

1. Those giant inflatable snow globes with real “snowing” action.

2. Giant inflatable Santas, snowmen, polar bears, penguins with scarves, Winnie the Poohs, football players, and Thanksgiving turkeys. In fact, if you ever have the chance to put something giant or inflatable on your front lawn, don’t.

3. Nativity scenes made from cheap plastic where I can see the yellow light bulb inside the Baby Jesus’s head.

4. Any simulation of the Santa Claus character. This includes electrical life-size Santas that turn at the waist as they wave at me, and small plastic Santas perched with reindeer on your roof.

5. Anything that involves the creative arrangement of seizure-inducing blinking lights. Especially if it spells out a seasonably relevant word. Great—you can spell. Try spelling “Hi, I’m a moron” next time.

I’m tired of seeing this stuff when I drive past your house every December. It doesn’t make me merry. All it does is make me think you and your neighbors are pathetic (you for having the decorations; your neighbors for living next to you).

I think we’ve come to the point where people will put literally anything on their lawns as long as it’s billed as a “Christmas” decoration. You could sell a giant menorah and write “Christmas” on the box, and people would put it on their lawn for Christmas.

You could put human feces on a stick and tie a crimson ribbon around it, and people would be lining up to drive the sharp end of that stick into the grass outside their house.

This needs to stop. These decorations have “white trash” written all over them. And speaking on behalf of fine white trash everywhere: Your Christmas decorations are giving us a bad name.

For future reference, just because they sell a decoration at the drug store doesn’t mean you have to buy it. They sell Trojan Magnums at the drug store, too. I’ll bet you’re not buying those every Christmas.

Someone should get everyone who wants giant inflatable snow globes to move to a single town out in Iowa somewhere. You would probably be able to see this town from space. But I wouldn’t care, as long as I can’t see it from my house.

I realize you’re just trying to compensate for your complete lack of faith in anything spiritual. But honestly… I shouldn’t have to look at it.

Jonathan David Morris      Web Site      Contact     Back to Top    

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
The Original Foreign Policy
December 18, 2006

"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world."
— George Washington

Last week I wrote about the critical need for Congress to reassert its authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive.

But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not threatening our freedoms at home?

I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military alliances. In other words, noninterventionism.

Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not we that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign attachments.”

Yet how many times have we all heard these wise words without taking them to heart? How many claim to admire Jefferson and Washington, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Since so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on the critical matter of foreign policy, they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it.

Of course we frequently hear the offensive cliché that, “times have changed,” and thus we cannot follow quaint admonitions from the 1700s. The obvious question, then, is what other principles from our founding era should we discard for convenience? Should we give up the First Amendment because times have changed and free speech causes too much offense in our modern society? Should we give up the Second Amendment, and trust that today’s government is benign and not to be feared by its citizens? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights?

It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today’s more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.

It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to understand the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to ask ourselves whether further American lives and tax dollars should be lost trying to remake the Middle East in our image.

Rep. Ron Paul      Web Site      Back to Top

Nancy Salvato

No column this week.