Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Are same-sex marriage advocates tolerant of traditional-marriage advocates?

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Hot Air reports that the the organizers of the recent Miss America pageant tried to get Miss California to renounce her beliefs about marriage and apologize to same-sex marriage activists like Perez Hilton. The organizers didn’t want her to be herself. They wanted to change her beliefs to be like theirs. The organizers didn’t want a rainbow of diverse opinions, they wanted uniform, lock-step, monochrome compliance!

The Western Experience linked to a video debate from CNN between Jewish scholar Dennis Prager and Perez Hilton.

Sometimes, same-sex activists like Perez Hilton move beyond disagreement to name-calling, and to harassment, and to threats of violence, and to vandalism, and to actual violence, as even the New York Times acknowledges. It seems to me that this coercion intrudes on the freedom of other people to express disagreement with same-sex marriage activists over same-sex marriage.

I wanted to draw your attention to a 10-point analysis of the whole Perez Hilton episode by Christian philosopher Douglas Geivett, so that we could really see who is being intolerant of who.

Here are my favorites:

3. Carrie Prejean was not “inclusive” enough in her answer, say her critics. But if she had answered that she approved of gay marriage, she would have excluded many Americans who also disapprove, including all those from her own state who passed Proposition 8 with their vote in November.

4. Gay rights advocates are bound to take offense even if Carrie Prejean meant no offense. Gay rights advocates are duty-bound by their cause to take offense. It is a strategic requirement in their effort to persuade others of gay rights. “Being offended” is an acquired taste. It comes natural when you’ve trained for it.

5. A beauty pageant is a popularity contest. Because of her answer, Carrie Prejean is unpopular with certain people. Which people? Gay rights activists. Who are gay rights activists? This is an important question. Some gays are not gay rights activists. Many gay rights activists are not gay. Gay rights activists are engaged in a strategy to marginalize anyone who believes that there is no “right” to gay marriage. You may believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. But do you have a right to believe this? Do you have a right to say so? Doesn’t matter. Gay rights activists will do anything in their power to ensure that if you believe it you will be made a pariah.

7. Former Miss USA, now director of the Miss California USA pageant, Shanna Moekler has also made it publicly known that she’s disappointed in Carrie Prejean. As state pageant director who sought sponsors for Prejean’s participation in the pageant, Moekler was embarrassed and indignant, and said that Prejean had betrayed her sponsors. Apparently, Prejean should have betrayed herself and her own values, instead. This is very revealing about Moekler’s own moral compass. We should like to know who the sponsors are and which ones are so offended. In view of serious economic reversals in this country, it’s become imperative that Americans know more about the moral compass of corporate leaders. So tell us, Ms. Moekler, which sponsors are embittered by Prejean’s integrity?

Isn’t the activist left worried about inciting hatred, violence, depression and increased suicide rates against those who are different from them? Shouldn’t we celebrate diversity (of opinion) and not coerce those who disagree?

I recently wrote about legal sanctions being faced by those who stand up to the agenda of same-sex marriage activists.

Commentary

Missouri legislators consider Fair Tax policy

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UPDATE: Welcome visitors from The Maritime Sentry!

I discovered this story at the Tax Foundation blog.

Excerpt:

Missouri lawmakers are considering a drastic change to their tax system. A bill recently passed by the state’s House of Representatives would allow residents to vote on a Constitutional amendment that would eliminate corporate and individual income taxes in the state and replace them with a broad based sales tax. The plan is essentially a state version of the national FairTax proposal popular with some grassroots groups that would replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. If the Senate passes the bill Missouri residents would be voting on the amendment in November of 2010.

Missouri currently has a sales tax, a corporate income tax, and a personal income tax. The sales tax rate is 4.225%, and the top corporate and personal tax rates are 6.25% and 6%, respectively. The plan put forth would replace all those taxes with a single sales tax levied at a rate of 5.11%. Accompanying the sales tax rate hike would be a substantially broadened sales tax base that would include all purchases. Currently most services are tax exempt and certain goods, most notably groceries, are taxed at a reduced rate of 1.225%. These exemptions would not exist under the new tax structure.

The overhaul of the tax system is meant to be revenue neutral. In other words, the revenue from the sales tax increase and broadening of the tax base is meant to exactly offset the elimination of income taxes. In 2008 Missouri’s sales tax brought in $3.2 billion while the state’s corporate and individual income taxes brought in $5.5 billion. In order to achieve revenue neutrality, at a rate of 5.11% the base would have to increase by 124%, or a little more than double. This may sound like a huge increase, but it is very possible.

This would be a useful test case to see if a national fair tax is feasible. I am all for consumption taxes. Leave a comment if you prefer the fair tax to the flat tax. I’m leaning towards the flat tax, and I love the way that it’s been implemented in those Baltic states, like Estonia. Estonia is such a courageous country!

Commentary

Why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

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That is the actual title of an article by Gerald Warner of the UK Telegraph. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

We are the laughingstock of the entire world now.

This entire passage from the Telegraph piece needs to be excerpted, so that people understand that the United States has elected a President who is far less competent than Jimmy Carter. The Worst President Ever.

If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people – not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama’s problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora’s Box by publishing the Justice Department’s legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda.

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened the last few weeks,” he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them – or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers…

President Pantywaist’s recent world tour, cosying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America’s enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners. His only enemies are fellow Americans. Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

Michelle Malkin has more on the Democrats national security and foreign policy blunders:

Data point – Hillary cackles at serious questions about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation.

Data point – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ups pressure for ‘truth’ panel on torture

Data point – Soros acolyte Rosa Brooks, al Qaeda apologist and military-basher, now ensconced at the Pentagon.

Data point – Radical Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh’s Senate confirmation hearing for a key State Department legal adviser slot set for next Tuesday.

Data point – Department of Haplessness and Stupidity Secretary Janet Napolitano — fresh from pooh-poohing terrorism and illegal border-crossings, botching 9/11 history and issuing hit jobs on limited government conservatives and veterans — is now pushing for repeal of Real ID Act

And she ends with this:

We have lost our war footing. Welcome back to the Sesame Street school of national security. Feel safer? Me neither.

You Democrats who voted for Obama didn’t want to know anything about this man during the election campaign. You trust the left-wing media to tell you everything you needed to know. Well, now you know what we, the people who can read, were trying to tell you.

UPDATE: Stop the ACLU linked to another post by Gerald Warner entitled Barack Obama: President Pantywaist – new surrender monkey on the block. Why is it that the entire world can see this guy is an unqualified joke, except us?