June 15, 2012

TOWN HALL
Remember When Being on the Government Tit Was a Bad Thing?

by Doug Giles

July 15, 2012

When I was a young dork growing up in West Texas in the 70s and 80s, my folks raised me to believe that making good money via righteous and industrious means was actually a good thing—y’know, something to aspire to. Remember that notion?

My folks would point out people in the neighborhood and community who busted their butts and got rewarded for the goods and/or services they provided and would say, “See Johnny, Dougie? Johnny studied. Johnny worked hard and smart, and now Johnny’s rich, and you’re still a weed-smoking dipthong working at a frickin’ gas station high as a kite on Colombian gold.”

Yep, Johnny had a good life. And me, eh … not so much. The reason why? Well, it wasn’t because wealthy fat cats suppressed me. It wasn’t because I wasn’t afforded knowledge (because I was); I just chose to esteem it lightly. In addition, it wasn’t because I didn’t have enough after school government pimped-out programs at my disposal to help my wayward self.

No, my lack was based not on a deficiency of opportunity but primarily because I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High, thought Spicoli was cool, and ran with that. Yes, I blame Sean Penn. Damn you, Sean Penn.

As Providence would have it, at the ripe old age of 21, I extracted my head from my backside via Christ’s effectual grace, and all the advice my folks gave me regarding knowledge and hard work came rushing back to my bong resin clogged cranium. Call me a late bloomer.

Since I had an affectation for organic stuff, I got into landscaping—planting grass, trees, shrubs, and installing sprinkler systems and custom curbing. I bought a used CJ-7, a crappy trailer, a sod roller, some machetes, rakes, hoes and shovels, and within one year I was doing a solid six figures in sales. No government handouts. No pity money from Christians. No, “woe is me, I used to be a drug addict.” No, “I’m lost and need to get on the government tit.” Nope, I accomplished the aforementioned at a young age via hard work. Just hard work. Nothing but good ol’ hard work

Read more: http://bit.ly/NpnxWM

NEWSBUSTERS
Saturday Night Funny Video: ‘Joe Biden: VP of Comedy Tour’

by Brent Baker

July 14, 212

Joe Biden has started a new tour, a “VP of Comedy Tour,” FNC’s Bret Baier noticed Thursday night in ending his show by playing a compilation put together by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. Kimmel’s announcer promised Biden’s “every laugh” and “every gaffe.”

That would be impossible to contain to a short montage – or really one of any length -- but this is an entertaining packaging of Biden at his most-embarrassing.

http://newsbusters.com



PJ MEDIA

The Cliches of Tyranny - Jonah Goldberg's battle in the war of ideas
by Robert Wargas
July 15, 2012

When John Adams first wrote the phrase “tyranny of the majority,” in 1788, he was helping to inaugurate a tradition in American politics to regard the faceless masses with, at best, a healthy and measured skepticism. Indeed, political history since the Enlightenment is full of epigrams and catchphrases—”banality of evil” being one, “totalitarian democracy” another—reminding us that the worst of humanity is often derived from the quotidian. The participants in a genocide are usually not disfigured foreign monsters but the victims’ fellow citizens. The scary thing about a serial killer is that it’s always the quiet guy who, as the neighbors tell the network reporters, “keeps to himself.” One finds that this tendency holds true at the level of language as well: the worst trespasses on our intellect are those sayings that, worked into a state of flaccidity and vacuity, have slipped by our rational defenses and have become “cliches.”

A society governed by slogans is condemned to repeat them. The degeneration of political debate into a series of cliches, particularly those of the self-proclaimed progressives, is the subject of an intelligent new book by Jonah Goldberg titled The Tyranny of Cliches. The author’s goal is to discern, as the subtitle informs us, “how liberals cheat in the war of ideas.” It was Richard Weaver who warned us that ideas have consequences, and Goldberg has assigned himself the adjunct role of showing that the lack of ideas is just as important. This means that concepts like “diversity” and “social justice,” bromides like “violence never solves anything,” and comfortable thought-terminating rejoinders like “social darwinism” and Marie Antoinette’s never-uttered “let them eat cake” are up for consideration.

For Goldberg, cliches “are a way to earn bravery on the cheap, defending principles you haven’t thought through or perhaps only vaguely support.”

Read more: http://bit.ly/NrbNTr