Friday, May 23, 2014

Ben Shapiro on Losing the Debate


We all remember Ben Shapiro as the man that exposed the true nature of Piers Morgan's tactics on national tv.  Many of us might also remember him as the man who, wearing his Harvard baseball cap, interviewed many of the Tinseltown elite on how their political values have influenced the movies and television.

When he says something about winning the debate, I have to admit I'm interested.  He's released a book to Kindle called How To Debate Leftists and Destroy Them.  To let us know what he means by "destroy," he's allowed Amazon to display the following excerpt on how the masters of propaganda destroyed Romney, in terms of what the impressions of the average joe who distills his political knowledge from sound bites:

 

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

T-Shirt Biz Speaks Truth to Power

Is there a sudden market for conservative t-shirts?  Apparently Bad Idea T-Shirts has upset liberals for responding to the market and trading their anti-conservative and anti-Obama t-shirts.
We're equal opportunity offenders. We've got what you need to reflect your political persuasion no matter what it is. We don't pick sides..our customers do and they love our anti obama shirts. Don't email us telling us that you hate us b/c we don't sell anti republican shirts...and that you were about to buy 6 or 9 but you won't now.....we have sold PRO OBAMA and anti republican designs in the past but they don't sell anymore so we removed them from the site. If you make you choice on politics on who you buy from, I am sure there are 1 or 2 stores out there that would love your money. We can't control you...we can only give you great deals! [excerpted from here; emphasis mine]
Don't brag too loudly about this.  Progressives will try to legislate that t-shirt companies have to sell equal amounts of conservative and liberal T-shirts, like they tried to do when conservative radio was more successful than liberal radio. (They still have NPR, so they can't say their point of view isn't subsidized at all.)



Funny post-script from the political page:

We have shirts like “Back to back World War champs” and “Made in the U.S.A.” that let the world know you’re proud to be American regardless of where you stand on Obama or the debt ceiling. Policy: It’s hard to get rid of an elected official you’re not happy with. But if for some reason you’re not pleased with your order, no problem, just let us know and we’ll set things right. Imagine how fabulous things would be if Washington had a return and exchange policy! [emphasis mine]




Thursday, May 8, 2014

Justin Rosario Pits Sex Ed Against Misogyny

When I was growing up, there seemed to be a general attitude about paternity that in retrospect seems to have transcended the usual ideological boundaries.  It seemed to appeal to liberal feminists and social conservatives alike. The way I usually heard it expressed:  "If a man didn't want to take care of a baby, he should've kept it in his pants."  Last year I came across a little skirmish in the culture war, in which a vitriolic blogger named Justin Rosario distinguishes between pro-lifers who differ with him on two counts and those who differ on one.  The former are, in his opinion, vile misogynists, as you will be able to read in the back-and-forth comments in that post.  
Click picture to enlarge.

The exchange in question apparently got I find this meme a little ironic in this context, because progressives want to force the average working parents and the average middle class parents to send their kids to public school.  If this has any negative effects on the unwed birth rate, then more sex education, more Planned Parenthood graft-driven progressive teaching on sexuality, more government intervention into the shaping of our kids.  The progressives and their ineptocrats help create the problem, take away the options for fixing the problem, and then say, "Ah this proves you need even more of our help!"

Which is similar to what the meme is saying about conservatives.  (It conflates pro-lifers with social conservatives with fiscal conservatives, but hey.)  Based on the meme, one would think that Pro-Choice logic would be consistent with allowing parents to kill children who were less than 1 year old (or whatever age the government's wisdom happened to dictate).  It would certainly mean more food and services for the rest of us.  A lot of problems getting solved. (In fact, that has been the "fourth-trimester abortion" idea that was gaining momentum before the Gosnell horrors.)  In fact we could even give a tax break to those who liquidate their "genetic assets."  Then the government would have that much more to spend on the children that people actually want.

While it's a larger topic requiring a lot more time and energy, suffice it to say that progressives/liberals either do not think that sexual mores among youth changed much between the 50s and 60s, or they think that the changes are due to something other the moral chaos of modern liberalism (i.e. progressive libertinism), or they consider it an inscrutable matter for the sociologists to theorize about. The only answer to this at any rate, in the liberal mind it seems, is increased state involvement in sex education, with the government talking over the sex education because the two-working-parent progressive economy (which would send a tingle up Marx' leg, and Hitler's too) is failing to control unwed births.

Rosario supposedly has a little respect for those silly pro-lifers who, misguided as they are about when life begins, agree to the government takeover of shaping the sexuality of our youth.  (Though I'm sure he can find any number other reasons to hate them if they are socially or fiscally conservative in any way--which is what his site is devoted to.)  Parents, you had your chance!  So even parents who are actually would otherwise do a good job of it, have their roles essentially taken over.  (As Ed Asner would say, "It's the only waaaaaay!")

In Rosario's mind, the pro-lifer either accepts progressive sexual education as legitimate "abortion prevention" or he/she is a misogynist who is out to punish women mercilessly for their sins.  I'm not making this up.  It is interesting because Rosario is trying to expose something he perceives to be in the conservative mind, but what he is really showing is a tactic that has become a habit of thought: the tactic is forcing people to choose between accepting progressive education and being labeled mysogynistic; the cognitive habit is reducing a sense of personal responsibility to a sort of punitive Puritanism.

People like demonizer-at-large Rosario think it's inhumane to "punish" a woman with nine months of pregnancy for a little mistake, but that it's okay to punish a man with many years of servitude/debt for a mistake--if the woman decides on her own to keep the child (in essence creating a de facto "marriage" in which the man has responsibilities but the wife as all the monetary benefits).  This arrangement is just fine in the progressive mind, one supposes, because a man can be held accountable for his actions when he should've "kept it in his pants", whereas a woman can only be a helpless victim of her mistakes.  One wonders whether Rosario would be as offended by the phrase "kept it in his pants" as he would be offended by the phrase "she should've kept her legs together."

Try not to take it too seriously though.  Rosario's bile is the just new elevated tone in Washington.  He probably really believes in his cause so much that he can't believe that one can honestly not want babies to be killed willy-nilly and yet disagree with liberal social policies of state-commandeered morality, to also want a sense of personal accountability.  TO these people, we're all just mean-spirited woman-punishers leading the charge in the War on Women™ (brought to you by CNN).  Rosario's style sort of reminds me of those who want to argue with you about your religion, but not to persuade you, only to feel so good about how right they are... except with a lot more venom:
 Rosario's logo
I find Rosario's logo ironic, since this is exactly the basis on which President Obama was peddled to America the second time around. Boil away all the rhetoric and this is the attitude of the Left: oppose us and that means you are selfish.  Yet they did little but appeal to people's selfishness in 2012.  This idea in this logo is a marketing tool turned way of thinking.  I also find it disingenuous in a deeper sense.  All this consolidation of power at higher levels for "the greater good" is supposedly by the will and consent of the people.  And yet, if that were true, there are enough liberals of every income bracket to make their own charities for healthcare, education, what have you. Participation could be voluntary.  The enormous funds that fed Obama's second campaign are enough to show that.
Statism: Ideas so good they must be mandatory.  

Friday, May 2, 2014

Wolf of Wall Street and the Pigs of Tinseltown

Is this their post-Oscar celebration, or a scene from the movie? What difference does it make?
If you can't imagine a more beat-you-over-the-head obvious infomercial for liberalism than the painful healthcare/amnesty vehicle Elysium with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, then you haven't seen Wolf of Wall Street.  It's amazing: a true Hollywood writer/filmmaker's dream — vile, disgusting scene after scene without worrying about story or character development.  And there were a lot of actors with time on their hands after helping campaign for the incumbent in 2012.  Even Rob "Meathead" Reiner was recruited to channel what he must think of as his inner "Republican" to be as crass and thuggish as possible.  (One imagines Scorsese directing Reiner: "You're a Koch brother, Rob! A Koch brother!")  It's a sheep-in-wolf's-clothing party, everybody!  Everybody pretend to be an evil capitalist and channel your inner sociopath!

Toby Young has written a articulate and telling summary of the film for the Telegraph, taking issue with the forced stereotypes.  But I've got an even more succinct description.  It is liberal porn.  Not just pornographic in the literal sense, which it was, not just pornographic in the analogously creepy sense of ultra-gore horrorfest, though it does have a touch of the horrific and indulgently reprehensible, but also gluttonously indulgent as cheap political fantasy with all the cheap thrills of burning someone in effigy (in this case, the capitalist bogeyman), obsessively and relentlessly vulgar and debauched all in the name of liberal self-righteousness.  And we're not at all surprised at how this movie fared against the emotionally resonant cinematic triumph Saving Mr. Banks at the Oscars, are we?  Not a bit.  Not since the "timely" and uneven Crash won over its betters.  Certainly not while the staged and dubious political ads of Michael Moore win hands down, as the thoughtful and personal 2016: Obama's America is conspicuously ignored.  And certainly not since the fish-out-of-water "Alone Yet Not Alone" was hamstrung by threatened Tinseltowners. (How did you wander into our party, little mainstream America Christian song?)  Because this is what the Oscars have come to represent: a members-only club celebration of unprincipled and incoherent political sectarianism.

Scorsese and Dicaprio have something in common with Jordan Belfort, the eponymous wolf:  They made an obscene amount of money by selling a worthless product to a lot of people.