harmonicminer

I’ve already commented on how dishonest the “NO on 8” campaign is, to try to defeat Proposition 8 in California, which would restore marriage to the status it has held for some thousands or years, namely, between men and women only.  The No on 8 ad claims that it won’t affect the schools, when gay marriage advocates know that it will, and already has.  And, they’ve stalled on implementing lawsuits to force even more gay marriage propaganda into the schools, until they defeat Prop 8, if they can, knowing that it wouldn’t look good for them to be suing for yet more specific pro-gay marriage influence in the schools when their ads are claiming it won’t happen.

A new ad just hit the airwaves tonight, and it isn’t on youtube yet, but it quotes Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Diane Feinstein, a couple others, all claiming that Prop 8 is (horrors!) discriminatory.  It doesn’t even say what Prop 8 is about.  Neither the word “gay” nor the phrase “gay marriage” is used.  Obviously, we’re supposed to recoil in horror at the word “discrimination” and flee the battlefield.

To hear them tell it, you’d think that Prop 8 was trying to keep Romeo and Juliet apart.

This is fundamentally dishonest, of course.  It’s a very close election, and most people have made up their minds by now, but they’re hoping, at the last minute, to snag some people who have no idea whatsoever just what Prop 8 might be about, but can be swayed with mindless use of the word “discriminate”.  One is reminded of the way pro-choice advocates never use the word “kill”, unless it’s to describe the incredibly small amount of violence aimed at abortion providers.  (About one abortion worker killed for every seven million babies aborted, over the life of Roe v. Wade, meaning abortionists are far safer in their clinics than driving home, despite the nonsense you’ve heard in the major media.)

One of the best ways to lie, of course, is to simply avoid telling the whole truth.

Here’s a video of another group of people, who give about as much actual information in this display of public discourse as the ad with the big names.

Of course, Prop 8 does NOT discriminate.  Anyone can marry a person of the opposite sex, just like it has always been, for all of human history.

I’m looking forward to talking about something besides the election.  And whether it’s in (tentative) celebration, or mourning combined with hiding my head in the sand (hoping the debacle is not so great as I fear), I plan to continue two chains of posts I’ve started.

One is the series on The Next Great Awakening.  It starts here.

Another is the series on The Left At Christian Universities.  It starts here.

And I have some other ideas up my sleeve.  (sheesh….  talk about mixing metaphors)

So stick around:  I’m sure I’ll find the time to criticize whoever manages to get elected, and in the meantime, there are lots of other interesting things to talk about.

Thomas Sowell is brilliant economist and observer of culture, one of the handful of African Americans, it would seem, who won’t be voting for Obama. (read it all)

After the big gamble on subprime mortgages that led to the current financial crisis, is there going to be an even bigger gamble, by putting the fate of a nation in the hands of a man whose only qualifications are ego and mouth?

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

In 5 years, I wonder how many people will admit to voting for Obama. I remember 1981, when no one would admit to having voted for Carter….

via Powerline and RealClearPolitics

UPDATE:  The battle of the Yes on 8 sign continues unabated at our local elementary school.   The last one I put up (the third replacement I put up, to replace one someone ELSE had first installed, in a public area with many political signs) was defaced by having the YES torn out, and the word NO put on with a marker.  I left it there, as was; it seemed a good way to illustrate to passersby that those demanding tolerance were the most intolerant of all.  This morning, when I took my daughter to school, someone had replaced that sign with a fresh, new YES on 8 sign.  I smiled, knowing there was a fellow traveler out there somewhere.  But when I picked up my daughter today, that new sign had been completely stolen.  NO other signs in that area are touched, ONLY the YES on 8 sign.   The lesson is clear, isn’t it?

PREVIOUS POST: Earlier, I reported on all the Yes on Prop 8 signs that are being stolen and defaced. (More at the link.)

When I came back, the sign I put on the corner of my property was gone, again. I will never, never let any person from the Left tell me about how the Left is about tolerance of diverse viewpoints. I have observed many instances of the Left shouting down the (very) rare speaker from the Right on college campuses, while the reverse virtually never occurs. This is my first experience with it happening on my own property, and in my own relatively rural community, however. Bottom line: the Left is about shutting up the opposition, not merely about winning the argument. The Left is not in favor of diversity, the Left uses diversity-speak as a tool, plain and simple. Pay attention. You will hear this material again.

Since that post, I’ve put up several signs, and had them stolen or vandalized (sometimes they just rip out the YES, and scribble NO on it), both off my own property and on public property where other political signs are left alone. Uniquely, I have not heard of or noticed any missing or defaced signs for candidates, just Yes on Prop 8 signs.

Here’s my latest attempt on my own lot:

This is the corner of my 5 acre property.  I added the additional sign “My Land, My Sign, Hands Off!!” just in case some Lefty miscreant thinks that it’s public property and so he can do what he wants to my sign….  Not that I expect it to do any good.  But you do what you can.

So, I’m taking bets:  this sign went up today at noon.  How long will it last?

And I have quite a bit more information now, enough to know that “NO on 8” signs in my community are being left alone, and no candidate signs are being touched…  it seems to be ONLY Yes on 8 signs.  So none of this “moral equivalence” nonsense, please.  Everybody isn’t doing it.  It’s the Left, period, around here, and apparently statewide, from all reports.

John Mark Reynolds makes the case that the denial of gay marriage is not discrimination in the sense of “denial of a basic right”.  (It’s worth reading it all, it isn’t long.)  Key graphs:

Traditionally, the government has supported marriage as a benefit to encourage the formation of strong families to produce future citizens. There may be other good relationships (friendship for example), but the state hands out no special benefits for them because it has no compelling reason to do so.

The hidden assumption of the Feinstein case is that marriage is a right and not a privilege. We should not discriminate in cases of human rights, but marriage is not one of those rare and precious things.

You don’t have the right to get married . . . not even under California law. You cannot, for example, marry a plant, a comic book character, or your mother. We (rightly) discriminate regarding the privilege of marriage.

I would just add that there are quite a few people I cannot marry, even if we decide we are “in love”.   And I would add that I can’t legally marry TWO women in the USA, even if we all are “in love”.   In fact, even under current California law, three men who are “in love” cannot all marry each other.

When marriage is untethered from its traditional meaning, no reasonable case can be made for not allowing 3 men and 2 women to marry, to have various bisexual arrangements within the group, to raise children AS a group, etc.   And while we’re at it, since parents may give permission to a child under the age of 18 to marry, there is no reason why parents could not legally give their blessing for 6 teenagers to marry each other in a group marriage… won’t the prom be fun?    These are not “scare stories”, or “extreme cases”, they are the logical result of the line of reasoning now used to support gay marriage, that “being in love” trumps all other considerations.  If there is no applicable traditional standard, then there is no standard at all, and anything is allowable, if people are in love, right?

Let’s face it:  the age of 18 for majority is a purely social construct.  It has been different and IS different in many other societies.  I’m entertained by gay activists who righteously assert, because they are sensitive to the accusation of “recruitment” of children and teens, that they would never support or encourage sex between “under 18” and “over 18” partners.  Well, why NOT?  What arbitrary reasoning is involved in picking the age of 18?  Why not 17?  Or 16?  Or 15?  Especially if they’re “in love”?  How can we deny them, in good conscience?  Aren’t we just imposing our values on them?

The funny part about this is that these people have decided that this fairly arbitrary number deserves enshrinement in law and must never be challenged, rather as if it is received wisdom from on high, while the REAL received wisdom from on High is ignored.

My point here is not to suggest that most gays are incipient pedophiles, not at all.  I know better.  My point is to suggest that their utter faith in age 18 as the magic boundary is largely opportunistic, and is a way of trying to seem in agreement with society on one norm (the age of majority, which has varied from culture to culture), while completely challenging another (heterosexual marriage, which is the only type that has ever existed anywhere) that has even firmer roots in tradition and biology than the one they are challenging.

John Mark Reynolds’ point is that since marriage is privilege, not a right, it is reasonable for society to place restrictions on it that serve society’s best interests (essentially the encouragement of children and families), and not to be swayed by particular circumstances of particular individuals, however sympathetic they may be.

You can vote YES on Prop 8 and continue to love your gay friends.  I plan to do exactly that.

Let’s Review @ AMERICAN DIGEST

“It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.” — Karl Popper

And this:

Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered

Here is just a taste, but you’ll be well rewarding for clicking through and reading it all.

Pajamas Media » European Obamaphiles Trash the U.S.

I am sick and tired of Britons and Europeans pontificating about “American racism.” It defies belief that nations who plundered vast continents and colonialized the Hottentot are now telling Americans they should shed their shameful past. There is no denying the United States has a legacy of misfortune in the context of the era of slavery and that segregation was a blot on its history, but the impact of African-Americans on every aspect of American culture is something to be celebrated and that has no equal in Europe and Great Britain. Whether one supported Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee, or whether one will be voting for John McCain or Barack Obama, the United States has just shown the world it is capable of staging an energetic exercise in democracy that cannot be rivaled anywhere on the planet. Yes, there have been nasty moments aplenty but no blood has been shed.

UPDATE:  As others, notably Dennis Prager, have said, it is not “the world” that hates the USA, it’s the world’s LEFT that hates the USA.  And it is the world’s LEFT that loves Obama, and believes that in their preference for him, they are expressing their disdain for the USA as it has been.  If he’s elected, Obama will be farther Left than the presidents or prime ministers of England, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Canada, etc., a fact you’re unlikely to learn from American major media.

Obama’s statements about the coal industry, and the effect his planned CO2 emissions cap and trade policies will have:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

Here is change you can believe in.

Better start chopping up the furniture. It’s gonna be a COLD winter.

If McCain had discussed bankrupting a major industry, one producing a product everyone needs, whose loss would be a major burden to the poorest of us, you can be assured that the major media would have been out with the long knives.

OBAMA 2012: FOUR YEARS LATER – New York Post

OBAMA 2012: FOUR YEARS LATER
A LOOK BACK AT HIS PRESIDENCY

H/T: Hugh Hewitt

Power Line – Professor Busse’s lesson

Phil Busse is a visiting professor at the college. In his spare time he pulls down McCain-Palin lawn signs posted on homes up and down Highway 19, the east-west road that runs through Northfield. He brags about it at what James Taranto calls the Puffington Host in “Confessions of a lawn sign stealer.”