Or to be more precise, a hatred of their country and America, plus an inability to comprehend the fact that some of us are actually proud of our country.
Normally I wouldn’t bother to write about this as I know that the answer to my question is that they lack common sense (see, that’s how you tell a sane leftist from an insane leftist…the insane one will have a rabid dislike of their country, America and often Israel…a sane one might not be a big fan of these entities, but they won’t blatantly hate them) or they might just have a mutant gene (I’m not sure that I believe this theory, although it certainly would explain a thing or two). I know that I have no hope of redeeming the rabid and insane among the leftists, but sometimes writing this is therapeutic. Today is one of those days.
A couple things spurred me to write this. The first was the reaction I read on a bunch of forums during the day after Marco Rubio, in his acceptance speech after winning the Florida Senate race, noted multiple times that:
America is the single greatest nation in all of human history
Naturally I didn’t bookmark them and now I can’t find the darn things…the closest I can get now is the reaction of a person on Facebook
What? You don’t think that America is unquestionably the greatest society ever to exist on the entirety of humanity? If you say this mantra enough, you’ll start to believe it. Marco said it 5+ times in his speech alone.
This was in response to another person complaining about every aspect of Marco Rubio’s speech including the music. Much of the reaction which I’d love to link to but neglected to bookmark was along these lines…people had a problem with Marco Rubio believing that his home country is “the single greatest nation in all of human history”. Basically, they had a problem with him being patriotic.
I don’t get it. When I elect someone to public office, I want them to be patriotic. I want this because I want them to stand up and fight for their country’s interests, and to do all they can to ensure that their country remains great. If you do not believe in your country, and if you lack the capacity to be proud of your country, then quite frankly I don’t think you can be an acceptable representative of the people.
Those few forum and Facebook posts, I could have let them slide as I was expecting that type of reaction from the left after they were annihilated in the election, but then I stumbled across this blog post:
Unfortunately, most of the public holidays in Australia are either religious holidays or celebrations of nationalistic ideas or wars.
[..]
I’d like to see more silly holidays, scattered through the year, as a sign of good will towards the mental health of the entire community.
At first I couldn’t tell if they were serious(ly deranged) or if it was the best piece of sarcastic writing that I’ve read all week. Could they really be against the idea of public holidays which celebrate, amonst other things, the founding of the nation? A quick flick back through their posts revealed the sad truth…they were serious:
Why I will vote for the Greens
I’ve voted Labor all my life, not because I like their colours or the dress sense of their leaders, but because their policies have been generally in accord with my own principles. I’ve never voted for the two big conservative parties because their policies have been (and remain) focussed towards meeting goals that I believe to be unethical.
[..]
The Greens now have real and ethical policies on most of what I see as the important issues of 2010.
From what is written there, I can surmise that the author has done more research that merely listening to the Green love-fest of various parts of the mainstream media, and has actually read the Greens’ policies, in which case they would know that they pretty much reflect a marxist view of the world. How capitalism could be seen as unethical when put up against marxism is beyond me…but it does give a decent insight in to the deranged mind of the far-left.
Their goal, clearly, is to form a worldwide “socialist utopia”. To do this, they do three main things:
1) Concentrate power and resources in the hands of individual national government, at the expense of smaller governments and individuals.
2) Set up massive unelected multi-national government organisations such as the UN and EU, and grant them the power to issue binding directives which override national laws.
3) Convince the public that their own nation (along with large powerful nations) is bad and that they need to be overseen by organisations such as the UN and EU, thereby slowly moving power to these unelected bodies, at the expense of national governments, and especially at the expense of smaller governments and individuals.
And then all of a sudden it makes sense why they hate their country, and insist that we need to follow their lead. It’s one of the many tricks of the far-left socialists, but when you understand it in the context of the overall plan, it is so much easier to argue against.
I’m not saying that you have to like everything about your country, or anything about it for that matter…but what you should do is value your liberty. You are well within your rights to prefer aspects of other countries over aspects of your country, and subject to the immigration laws of other countries, you are well within your rights to move to a country which is more in-line with your beliefs. But what happens if the above plan is carried out to completion? You would no longer be able to move to a country which is a better match for your views and beliefs because, thanks to the aforementioned plan, the whole world would be under socialist rule.
You would have lost your right to choose.
As I say, you don’t have to like everything about your country or agree with the government (it’s pretty obvious that I, for example, am a proud Australian but disagree with various bits of the nation, including many of our governments)…that’s the great thing about living in a country where debate and the vote is valued, but hating your country to the point where you would prefer a global socialist utopia is not the answer…unless of course you’re not a fan of your own personal freedom.
I, for one, am a fan of liberty and freedom, and I suspect that all but the most radical far-left nutjobs would agree with me that liberty and freedom are things which should be valued.
I didn’t have time to address this yesterday, but I certainly wanted to.
I’m sick of people complaining about banks making profits and increasing interest rates, without giving any thought to changing bank and instead wanting the banks to be more heavily regulated.
Regulation is not the answer to this problem; competition is. At the moment there is virtually no competition for two reasons:
1) People don’t consider changing bank. If they did, the banks would be more afraid of losing customers and be less willing to annoy their customers.
2) The federal government put that silly deposit guarantee in place which gives banks an unfair advantage over the smaller outfits such as credit unions. This bit of government regulation is killing competition by making smaller outfits seem less safe in the eyes of customers.
The banks are doing what any sensible profit-making business does when in a virtual monopoly position; they’re making as much money as they can. Of course they wouldn’t be in a virtual monopoly position if the federal government’s deposit guarantee hadn’t caused a heap of people to shift their business from credit unions to the big banks.
The federal government’s regulations are largely responsible for this situation, and yet people want more regulation. Haven’t people learnt from the financial crisis yet? Government regulation was the main catalyst for the financial crisis, as the US government forced lenders to lend money to people who could never pay it back. Government regulation does not help people when it comes to banking. In fact the current situation is not sustainable as this ever increasing concentration of the banking business will lead to many people defaulting on their loans, followed by banks struggling to sell houses, followed by the federal government (aka the taxpayers) compensating banks for lost investments due to a lack of loan repayment income.
The solution to this problem is for the deposit guarantee to be removed. This will encourage competition.
Competition is good for consumers, and leads to businesses being more creative in the way they run their business in an effort to gain more market share. This, in turn, leads to economic growth.
The solution is simple…the question is though, will the government make it happen?
The message from voters in the Midterm election is clear. When they voted for “hope and change” in 2008, they were not hoping for socialist change, and they do not appreciate the massive spending of Obama and the Democrats.
Republicans romped in on a basis of cutting spending, repealing Obamacare (which undoubtedly would have eventually led to the total collapse of the private healthcare industry through over-regulation, resulting in government-run socialised medicine) and reducing the role of government to a more constitutionally mandated role. Basically, Republicans got in on conservative principles, something which can’t really be said of Republican victories since Reagan was President, with perhaps the exception of the 1994 midterm victory. The Bush-led governments, while Republican, were not what the American public view as being based on conservative principles…a subset of them perhaps, but not true conservatism.
Republicans did not win enough seats to take control of the Senate, but they did win more of the Senate seats which were up for grabs than the Democrats did (currently by a margin of 23-11), in much the same way as they won more House seats than the Democrats and more Gubernatorial races than the Democrats. Whichever way you looks at it, more people wanted Republicans in charge than wanted Democrats in charge…and the only reason the makeup of the Senate does not reflect this is that only a third of it was up for election.
The onus now is on the Republicans to follow through on their promise. They have a hostile Senate to contend with, but even without the blessing of the Senate, they can at least show that they meant what they said by submitting the Executive branch to proper scrutiny, and by passing various bills in the House which are in line with their agenda. They don’t have to get their agenda through the Senate, but they do need to be able to show in 2012 that they have at least been trying to do what the people have asked them to do.
The split control of the Houses is in many ways the perfect opportunity for both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats have two years to rethink their approach. If they’re smart, they’ll learn from this election. A decent chunk of the country obviously wanted at least some of what they promised in 2008 (and they did promise a few things, once you get past the whole “isn’t Obama such a lovely historic man” thing), but the country has flatly rejected the socialist approach which they took, and especially the dishonest approach (attempting to appoint a whole heap of tax cheats to important positions, for example) which they took in doing it. I’m sure that people expect some level of dishonesty in politics…but when, Like Obama did, you campaign on a platform of “ethical administration” you just can’t get away with being unethical.
As I say, if the Democrats are smart, they will learn from this, and offer a better product in 2012.
As for the Republicans, they have two years to prove that they are capable of doing what the people have elected them to do. If they can run the House in a conservative manner for two years, and make sure that the public are well informed of this, then they should be able to quite easily take the Presidency and Senate in 2012.
One thing which I can say with absolute certainty is that socialism has been rejected by the American people, and as funny as it may sound, Obama is one of the best things to happen to the conservative movement in decades. Sometimes it takes a taste of the exact opposite of what you believe, to remind you of the value of what you believe.
Now on a lighter note, I thought this was the funniest thing to happen yesterday. You might recall the infamous MSNBC utter elation at Obama’s 2008 victory, and MSNBC host Chris Matthews going all giddy over it to the point where he was getting tingles and thrills up his leg.
Well the delightful Michele Bachmann who won her House seat was interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC. Chris completely lost his remaining marble and asked Michele if she was in a trance. Michele was not thrown by it, and instead managed to have some fun at Chris Matthews’ expense.
Well, he deserved it, and it looks like it threw him because that ramble trying to justify the thrills and tingles was a cross between a flat-out lie and some sort of deranged incoherency.
An interesting election, and needless to say, I’m very happy with the outcome. The final results won’t be in a for a little while yet, and in the coming days I will run through the results of some of the races which were of particular interest to me.
For now though I will just say this. The people have spoken, and the clear message is Conservative Victory 2010!