UPDATE: Americans Did Not Vote For This...

We know it’s just an anecdote, and we know how this sort of thing can be spun and deflected and rationalized and dismissed (and Pravda will dutifully obey), but it’s still worth noting. On Thursday evening’s NPR quiz show “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me”, when senior Obama advisor David Axelrod was asked on the show if he had helped the Obama’s choose their recently acquired dog, Axelrod replied:

“I was only called in for the final three, and one was Miss California.”

Maybe if this story is passed around on your email distribution list, a few more people will wake up, turn on this government, and join the effort to stop its agenda, NOW. All the talk of stimulus, deficits, bailouts, nationalization of industries—maybe all of that is just too far beyond the grasp of the typical, politically unengaged citizen who just wants to believe the new President is doing his best for America. But David Axelrod is Obama’s No. 1 political advisor; he ran Obama’s campaign for President. When that typical citizen gets a window on the despicable arrogance and elitist cultural depravity captured by Axelrod’s smear of Carrie Prejean—well, maybe that will matter more than a thousand imponderable op-eds on economic policy.

A young girl just wanting to win a beauty contest, set up to be forced to answer a question that would cut to the core of her Christian beliefs, nevertheless standing up for the institution of marriage—and the top advisor to Obama, a guy with daily, even hourly access to the Oval Office, pops off with this kind of comment on Pravda’s hallowed NPR. What an ass.

The American people did not vote for these attitudes; they were concealed in the campaign. This is not the way the vast majority of Americans think. The American people need to rise up and confront this fraud and stop this agenda. NOW.

Special thanks to George Joyce at American Thinker, here.

Posted May 16, 2009

Thoughts on Swine Flu

We like to think you’ll find a unique ‘take’ on things at Brushfires; maybe not one you’ll instantly agree with, but one you’ll think about.

Here’s one: the media panic and obsession with swine flu is evidence of cultural decay. It reflects a loss of moral fiber in society when so much fear can be whipped up in so little time over such a comparatively small matter (at this writing, the swine flu appears to be milder than common strains of flu that seem to make the rounds every year). How so?

Morals and moral teaching come from a higher power. Their continued relevance and animus in humankind is not due only to the teachings of Moses and Jesus when they walked the earth, but to the spiritual substance behind those teachings—a substance that people sometimes call the little voice that is always trying to help us choose correctly between right and wrong. But as we’ve noted from the beginning in Brushfires (see our theme statement in the box at the top of this page), elitist, godless intellectualism disdains the idea of God and despises the notion that unseen spiritual factors shape and affect daily life. Morals are to them much more safely viewed in terms of ‘consensus opinion’ or ‘shared values’, but never a matter of God-given directives for healthful living.

None of this may seem to matter so long as the elitist view of secular ‘shared values’ conforms more or less to the divine standards of moral living. But in the process of driving God out of existence or relevance in day to day existence, there comes an unintended consequence: in the proportion that God is driven out of existence and relevance, in that proportion society becomes more vulnerable and fearful of every dimension of material existence. The flu becomes an overnight, world-wide fear phenomenon, and our supposedly all powerful government agencies become one more casualty of the Orwellian times we live in. The Center for Disease Control becomes the Center for Panic-Spreading and Propelling Disease Out-of-Control. The World Health Organization becomes the promoter of worldwide disease.

This isn’t to disparage any individual working in those organizations or the organizations themselves. We’d guess that to a person they are working tirelessly to do what they think amounts to helping humanity. Nor is it to suggest that disease outbreaks should be viewed with casual indifference. It’s the bigger picture we’re talking about. A society more grounded in faith in God is a society more likely to stay calm, to maintain focus, and to deliver relief wisely and where it is needed. Protection is less likely to be viewed as subject to the vagaries of chance and, pardon us for being blunt, idiots like Joe Biden are less likely to find themselves elected to a public office where they can create havoc with their hyper-fearful, running-off-at-the-mouth. A return to faith is always available to each and every one of us. Starts with prayer. Try it, and encourage your neighbor to join you.

Posted April 30, 2009

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video clip—even just a 36-second clip—must potentially be worth millions. While the media elites compete for triumphant-moralizer-of-the-year awards in their high-minded denunciations of Bush administration interrogation tactics with Islamo-fascists, along comes an Obama administration screw up that places the controversy in context in a way that a thousand essays never could.

You may have read of today’s Air Force One photo-op fly-by of Manhattan. Turns out not many New York officials knew of the fly-by, and certainly everyday citizens didn’t. And so when the 747 comes screaming by Manhattan with a military jet escort, people on the ground have no trouble recalling 9/11—they start to panic and practically stampede.

In the aftermath of 9/11, if the U.S. government had announced its top priority would be to be extra-special-nice to any detained Islamo-fascist who might have plans to send another 3,000 Americans to their death, we would not be reading columns in the ‘triumphant-moralizer-of-the-year’ contest. We would be reading calls for impeachment and removal of the Bush administration for failing to act to protect the country.

Now Obama is doing what Bush would have been impeached for doing. Think about that. Pundits can put justification around anything. But at the common sense level, either Bush was right in what he did, or Obama is right in what he’s doing. Both cannot be right.

The only people truly safer under Obama are Islamo-fascists. Think about that, too.

Posted April 27, 2009

Barney Frank Redefines Shamelessness...
...Now Joined by Nancy Pelosi (scroll down for update)

Lately, we’ve used our “cultural decay” category to file stories on the Pravda media (scroll down). We wouldn’t normally use it for stories on politicians, because people have recognized the cultural rot of politics since time began. In other words, evidence of a politician lying doesn’t really make the case that the culture is decaying; it just proves we’re still human. Nevertheless, Barney Frank deserves mention. Not because a gay prostitution ring was run out of his Washington, D.C. apartment; not because one of his gay lovers was an executive with Fannie Mae at a time when Frank led a government oversight role characterized by Frank’s consistent assurance that a collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would pose zero risk to taxpayers.

Barney Frank stated this week that it was a 'conservative view' that led to the housing bust—a push by the Bush administration toward home ownership while he, Barney Frank, was trying desperately to push instead for the building of decent rental housing.

It’s hard to quantify or describe lying on this scale. It surely is beyond Orwell’s imagination. It is sick.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd know to the very core of their being that they led the reckless push for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stimulate sub-prime mortgage lending by relaxing underwriting standards for the purchasing and packaging of mortgages into mortgage-backed securities. This was the primary cause of the financial and economic meltdown in the nation and the world. They know it, and they know intelligent people know it. They also know President Bush went to Congress on at least twelve different occasions to try and rein in these quasi-government agencies, only to be rebuffed by a Democrat-controlled Congress led byChris Dodd and Barney Frank. But Barney Frank believes nothing is beyond the reach of a lie; and no political problem for him is unworthy of a bald lie to try and fix it.

Barney Frank is now the gold standard for shamelessness. He’d like to dismiss virtually all of his critics with accusations of some variation of homophobia. Sorry, Barney. There’s no need to even raise the question of sexual morality; your demonstration of shamelessness is the new poster child for moral bankruptcy.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi has now achieved the Barney Frank standard of shamelessness. With the hard left now frightening every liberal Democrat to their very core—this time about the need to support prosecution of Bush administration officials in their conduct of the war on terror—Pelosi has claimed that she knew only that waterboarding could be used, but didn’t know that it would be used. But in a nice piece of web-enabled investigation, Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online has caught Pelosi in a BarneyFrank-worthy lie—based on a 2007 article in the Washington Post, here. She knew all about what was being done; she approved it. It’s that simple.

Nancy Pelosi (and Harry Reid) are almost literally scared to death of the hard left and their threats against Democrats who don’t toe the line, and are addicted to the hard left’s money. Integrity and conscience are lost in the shambles. Once again, shamelessness at a new level.

Posted April 22, 2009; Update April 23

Mark Steyn: The Media as Part of Cultural Decay

We've commented before on the incomparable wit and insight of Mark Steyn. His latest column, containing his take on the tea parties, is here.

We were struck by his comments on the Boston Globe's editorial decision NOT to cover the tea parties going on all over the country on April 15, including in the very birthplace of the political concept: Boston.

Think of it! A headed-for-bankrupty-or-shutdown newspaper does not provide hometown coverage of the same movement that in its first iteration in 1773 in Boston eventually gave rise to a government organized around the protection of individual freedom--a part of which was the very freedom of the press that allows a Boston Globe to exist. But no, the editorial staff and management of the paper do not think the content of their publication has anything to do with its demise; they think it's all a matter of technology and the internet. And they buy into the idea that the original tea party was only about 'taxation without representation', and therefore today's movement is silliness since there is representation. Ergo, they say, today's movement is only about sore election losers.

That's why we filed this under cultural decay. Only a morally vacuous press could fail to see the origins of the anger Americans feel today. We've explained it most recently, here. The freest people on earth were hoodwinked by a smooth-talking fraud, and are now being subjected to a hard-left denial of freedom that they would NEVER have voted for had it been honestly put on the agenda before the November 2008 election. They are rebelling against an arrogant and out-of-control government that they did not choose. Just like 1773.

Too bad for the Boston Globe; they won't learn in time. In the meantime, readers of Mark Steyn zoom into the millions...

Airport Television – Time to Set a Brushfire!

A question for freedom-loving Americans: do you recall voting for Big Brother TV in American airports? We can’t claim to be 100% current on the TV fare at every American airport, but we fly a fair amount, and it seems to us that CNN is ubiquitous.

It is disgusting and annoying to be forced to watch and listen to anything, and especially if it is nothing but the Pravda drivel that CNN spouts. We’d frankly be happy if all the airport TV screens were shut down, and individuals were allowed to use their handheld devices to turn to whatever news or entertainment they choose.

But on the assumption that the handheld technology isn’t universal enough or cheap enough (yet), why not a little competition for what fills these screens? Why not a few with Fox News, or ESPN, or even the History Channel or National Geographic? Why not let the different programs and networks compete for the right to be in the public waiting areas of the airports?

No doubt we’re not the first to notice or complain about this, and no doubt there’s some imponderable bureaucratic reason why changing from all-CNN-all-the-time simply cannot be done.

We call BS. Change it! We want freedom from Big Brother TV!

We've commented elsewhere on this site that approval ratings are the only thing holding the Obama fraud together. We've also said repeatedly that we question the legitimacy of almost every poll, and certainly anything done by the Pravda media. So it came as no surprise when a recent above-the-fold New York Times story on Obama's 66% approval rating in a recent poll was shown to be completely bogus.

The essence is that from a sampling of 39% Democrats, 23% Republicans and 30% Independents, the NYT was able to gin up the result it wanted. Powerline nails it well:

"There is no conceivable basis for believing that Democrats outnumber Republicans by 39-23 percent. The respondents in the Times' poll who claim they voted went for Obama by 18 points, while Obama in fact won by 7. So the Times deliberately dummied up the numbers, putting its thumb on the scale to create mythical Democratic voters in order to make Obama look good and the Republicans look bad. Adam Nagourney and his editors at the Times then turned these made-up numbers into charts and graphs which they published above the fold. Evidently, the Times is trying to create a bandwagon effect on behalf of its party's leader.

Lying, manipulative, deceitful behavior by politicians is contemptible; such behavior by the media is beneath contempt.The New York Times is the poster child for this type of cultural rot.

Financial bankruptcy follows moral bankruptcy. The Times' moral bankruptcy is plain for all to see; the financial bankruptcy will follow soon.

Score One for Cultural Hope

Columnist and talk radio host Dennis Prager has drawn attention to the new Broadway play "Irena's Vow", here.

Prager's column speaks for itself. Our purpose is simply to highlight that all too rare piece of good news: in this case, an actual theatrical production which portrays Christianity in a positive light, and illustrates the human capacity for good that Christian faith so enhances when honestly lived.

Rise in Single Motherhood...
      is not a Good Thing

It’s good to keep some things very simple. Children are better off when they are born of a married father and mother. When children are better off, society is better off. Society’s aspiration should be that more and more children arrive into this world within the ideal of a married father and mother.

This doesn’t mean the ideal will be achieved easily; it doesn’t mean we are angry or judgmental when the ideal is not achieved; and it doesn’t mean we write off the future of all children not born into the ideal. It just means the ideal is the ideal, and we should not kid ourselves into thinking otherwise.

A story has come out reporting 2007 as a record year for births in the United States, but with the unhappy aspect that 40% of those births were to unwed mothers. There’s not enough data to determine how many of the 40% of unwed mothers were due, for example, to the father having died before birth (e.g., a war casualty). But it’s probable safe to assume the largest portion of the 40% were simply single women choosing to become unwed mothers.

Ann Coulter decries this phenomenon with irrefutable data in her recent book, "Guilty". No need to repeat the data here; suffice to say that the grown-up children of single mothers constitute a demonstrably high percentage of ‘societal problems’—in the form of juvenile delinquency, criminality and incarceration, and general dysfunctionality as they move into adulthood. The reasons are multiple, but if we’re honest, this really isn’t something we need a 10-year peer-reviewed study to understand. It’s the way we’re made; it's the way things are.

The godless left will expend no end of energy rationalizing, justifying, excusing and even celebrating this 40% number, but we’ll keep it simple: it’s a bad thing.

Society will be better off when our leaders are willing to say so, without a hundred different hedges and disclaimers. Brushfires is happy to lead the way.

GEMS from Brushfires of the Past

“Only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom; the more corrupt and vicious a society becomes, the more it has need of masters.” - Ben Franklin

“The First Amendment does not say that in every respect there shall be a separation of church and state. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise, the state and religion would be aliens to each other -- hostile, suspicious and even unfriendly. We are a religious people and our institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion.” - Justice William O. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court

SOME HOPE ON THE CULTURAL DECAY FRONT

Michael Medved writes here on some significant and underreported trends among teens that actually show a movement away from some of the most destructive habits of a culture of sexual promiscuity. We shouldn’t be surprised, because many of these children have grown up in homes broken up by marital infidelity by one or both of their parents. When you know and feel first-hand the pain that a cheated-on spouse feels—and that spouse happens to be one of your parents—you don’t buy into enlightened commentary that tells you how ‘research’ has confirmed that it’s no big deal to the spouse or to you. And without teaching or preaching of any kind, you resolve that you’re not going to do that to your children. This is better thinking, and better thinking leads to better choices, better behavior and, ultimately, we hope, better marriages—which lead to children and teenagers raised with better moral values in the first place.

FRAUD is the Right Word for the 2008 Election

Yes, we think this story is properly filed under "Cultural Decay". We’ve been on record here, here and here addressing the fraud that has been perpetrated on the American people in the election of Obama. One of most obvious co-perpetrators was the American mainstream media, which is now in the process of finding out that financial bankruptcy follows moral bankruptcy. When their shareholders ask why these media companies went bankrupt, exhibit A will likely be the story conveyed by the upcoming documentary from director John Zeigler: “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted”. To spike your interest, look at this early screening review from John Nolte at Big Hollywood. And order your copy, here.

Blogging for Pajamas Media , Andrew Klavan, a Brushfires favorite (below and here ), had this to say about the importance of winning the culture war:

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: We can win back the presidency, the congress and the supreme court, but if we lose the culture, we ultimately lose the country.

The ‘octomom’ of recent notoriety is the poster child for his point—even if clear-thinking conservatives controlled all branches of government, if we still have a culture that produces this kind of extraordinarily self-centered, irresponsible, morally vacuous decision-making (bringing what is now a total of 14 children into her fatherless, welfare-based standard of living), we’re going to have serious and destabilizing social dysfunction for a long time to come.

We think Mr. Klavan’s point is right in step with Brushfires’ commentary (see below) on the subject of abortion. As we’ve often noted, winning the abortion battle by itself will be a Pyrrhic victory, if we don’t at the same time win the culture back to adherence to Christian standards of moral living. If the sex-as-recreation, hookup culture is not rejected and reversed, the babies who emerge from such self-absorbed, immature attitudes are likely to emotionally scarred in ways that will make it hard for them to have even a fighting chance at growing into stable, health-sustaining relationships in the future. Society will not be better off, regardless of a pro-life government policy.

"We’ve lamented in the past that the nation’s cultural decay is too often summarized by the single word “abortion”---which is, to us, a too narrow view of the problem. If all abortions were banned, but the culture of sexual immorality remains unchanged—humans as no better than animals in heat; sex as recreation for anyone at any age; marriage as either outdated or in need of opening up to new definitions; glorification of single motherhood against overwhelming evidence of its dysfunctional and harmful impact on children—we’re not sure how much better off society would be. Make no mistake, we are on the pro-life side of the abortion debate, but we believe sexual morality is the bigger issue."

Few articles validate our worldview more than Melanie Phillips later story in the Daily Mail, here.

Yet another validation of Brushfires' worldview comes from columnist Jeff Jacoby, writing on our society's infamous octuplet-bearing welfare mother in a column appearing at The Patriot Post :

"It may seem reasonable to argue that women are not designed to bear litters, or that society should not have to facilitate an unemployed woman's obsession for a "huge" family, or that it is wrong to purposely bring 14 fatherless children into the world.

Those are all sensible opinions, and a sensible public policy would reflect them. But in the name of autonomy and privacy, our public policies regarding families and reproduction have grown increasingly unmoored from good sense. From the campaign for homosexual marriage to the routine insemination of single women to the legality of abortion on demand, notions that would once have been thought outlandish have steadily been normalized.

Would that further industrial-scale pregnancies like Suleman's could be headed off with a new law or stepped-up regulation. But can law and regulation fill the void left when longstanding taboos and morals are cast aside? When society decides that families and child-rearing can be improvised at will, who gets to say what's "freakish"?"

Obama is Promoting Cultural Decay - Just Look at David Ogden, Deputy Attorney General

Melanie Phillips drew attention to the appointment of David Ogden as a Deputy Attorney General in this piece.

Brushfires has added its own commentary, here. This appointment is repulsive to American ideals. Resist this! Make your voice heard among your elected representatives. Ogden’s thinking has no place leading the U.S. Department of Justice. None.

Reclaiming Hollywood from the Cultural Cesspool
Hollywood and cultural decay are almost synonymous, but maybe there's a stirring of hope. Check out Andrew Breitbart's new website, Big Hollywood for an outpost of conservatism in the entertainment world. Will it turn things around? Wrong question. It's a step in the right direction, and that's a good start. And in one of the early celebratory columns, columnist Andrew Klavan captured the spirit of Brushfires of Freedom in these words:

"The right to individual liberty is the greatest gift with which our Creator endowed us. It is immeasurably more important than some so-called Common Good as defined by intellectuals or politicians; more important than political correctness; more important than being loved by the rest of the world. A small band of brilliant dead white men bequeathed to all of us a machine for preserving this right: America and its Constitution. It’s a wonderful machine and it has to be defended in every generation. Sometimes, sadly, it has to be defended with the guns of our military. One day, it may have to be defended with the gun you have in your house. But always—every day—each of us has to stand up for it in our thoughts and with our words."