Reaching Young People

The Boomers spawned and their progeny distilled their pot-tootin’, free-lovin’ parents’ belief system to this: community, environment, activism. This from a Detroit News editorial:

In the 2010 off-year election, half of millennials will be eligible to vote, representing about a fifth of the overall electorate. By 2012, 60 percent will be eligible to vote, and they could make up about a quarter of the American electorate when Obama runs for re-election. By 2020, when virtually all millennials will be over 18, they will represent 36 percent of the electorate and will completely dominate elections and the political agenda of America.

And it seems likely that this civic generation, like its “Greatest Generation” great-grandparents, will vote in big numbers. Turnout among voters under 30 has been rising steadily since millennials began to replace the alienated and more cynical Gen-Xers in this age group. From a low of 37 percent in 1996, turnout increased to 53 percent of all eligible millennials, and 59 percent in the key battleground states in 2008.

Their unity of opinion and their numbers will make millennials’ preferences for economic activism, a nonintrusive approach to social issues by government at any level and a multilateral interventionism by America in foreign affairs the policy paths to political success during the next decade.

Some of the data is derived from a Kos poll and is obviously skewed. Still, these young people supported Barack Obama 2:1 and they don’t have jobs. So, unless they become employed here soon, and not by the government, their notion of the government being a benign and noble force in their sad sack lives will prevail. That will steer them toward voting for Democrats.

Additionally, the Republican Party MUST have a cohesive, positive position about what I call the “Softer Side Of Sears” issues: health care, the environment, education etc. Since the younger people are all about doing their own thang while paradoxically being smothered by hovering helicopter parents, they want the government to butt out on social issues and help out on economic ones. That is, they want to be able to do socially irresponsible things and have someone else pay for the consequences.

So, free sex is okay and people shouldn’t be judged for the STDs, pregnancies, etc. they create. And also, for the poor unfortunate folks who get themselves in a bad way, the government should help out. Remember, these are the 22 year olds living at home where mom is still doing their laundry, but they have no problem telling you to turn down your thermostat and stop driving your Suburban.

The authors of the editorial take a shot at Twitter and the conservatives there. Meh. The conservatives there aren’t trying to reach the Millenials. That social group isn’t primarily on Twitter. They’re on Facebook–the social media platform that Facebook Founder Chris Hughs is personally helping Barack Obama to own. And, he does own FB.

Sigh.

Reaching young people will require showing them in emotional ways how liberal orthodoxy is harmful and how conservative orthodoxy is caring and loving. I happen to believe this is the case, in fact. The recent D.C. school choice, magnate school voucher program protest demonstrate the harsh reality of government controlled education. Students with hope were FORCED to go to a school AGAINST their will that HARMED them and their futures. Many of these students were DISADVANTAGED, MINORITY and the children of SINGLE MOMS. All of this is the truth. It’s an outrageous situation and evokes my emotions, that’s for damn skippy sure. These stories need to be told.

Now, find stories about someone who has an environment-saving technology (you know they’re out there) that’s received the ax because it ticks off another of Obama’s greedy constituencies. Then craft a positive message about how the conservative way promotes freedom, individuality and cares for the planet.

Find health care stories. There are plenty of them…where people on government run health care suffer. This shouldn’t be difficult to do either. More government run anything isn’t the answer.

Now, craft a message about Smart Government being lean, healthy and helpful. A big, fat, immobile government doesn’t help, it gets in the way. Showcase government programs that work and then contrast them with government programs that are a disaster. Again, that shouldn’t be difficult.

A “no government” message won’t work with these kids. Freedom and holistic health will, though.

Does it sound like I’m going soft? Every time I talk about message to conservative readers, that’s the accusation. Well, I am small-government to the core. I also want to win. Promising lower taxes, lower spending, and better government is how Barack Obama won. That’s how a Republican will win, too. And in the Republican’s case, it will be the truth.

Posted in America, Political Animals | 9 Comments »

The Perils Of Being A Beautiful Woman: Feminism’s Ugly Legacy

Don’t be a beautiful, smart and successful woman. Men will be intimidated. Women will hate you. And gay men will tear you to shreds consumed with vagina and breast envy.

Its okay to be a stupid, beautiful woman. It’s okay to be a smart, handsome (but not beautiful) woman. It is not okay to be a beautiful, smart woman. And if you’re a liberal and an average looking woman, expect the press to objectify you and spend lots of ink explaining why you’re a beautiful woman.

Please note: If you’re an obviously smart, beautiful, successful, and worst of all, conservative, woman here’s a succinct message, in case you haven’t gotten it via the media yet: Shut The Fuck Up.

Up until today, I haven’t written about Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps or Carrie Prejean’s breast implants and view on gay marriage. I find the left and the press’ need to objectify any (on the right or left) woman abhorrent and disgusting. Jon Stewart, of all people, sums up the convoluted mess that Feminism, yes Feminism, has wrought against women:

Media Lizzy writes a must-read piece about beauty and women, and ultimately, truth:

For years, I have watched as the feminist movement pretended to care about women. From Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland and Margaret Sanger to Kate Michelman and their pro-abortion advocacy to Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. They are contempuous of beautiful, feminine, intelligent and successful women. For a time, I read Naomi Wolf with some interest… she is charismatic, has an Ivy League education, was aesthetically beautiful and talked about the oversexualization of girls at too young an age… things I have been interested in all my life. Somewhere along the way, she fell victim to the Leftist ideals of feminism, never realizing how the vaguely masculine Patricia Irelands of the world are all too happy to kill the spirit of a beautiful woman. Modern feminism, with the glaring exception of Camille Paglia, is about hating men and stamping out their seed. It is about hate. They can wrap it up in “anti-Patriarch” ribbons and bows, but that does not make it so.

I too, have read Ms. Wolf, and in fact have her book Misconceptions on my shelf. I had hope for the next wave of feminists, that for once, they’d embrace the feminine, the female. Alas, it was not to be. They too, are consumed with envy. Gay men like Andrew Sullivan and Perez Hilton share with feminists the same trait: desire for what they cannot have. To be taken seriously, a liberal woman must be ugly or make herself ugly. To be accepted by God and/or the culture, a gay man should have been born a woman. These untenable positions make the trapped person very angry. So feminist women hate their ovaries and breasts and so do gay men.

The solution, then, is to shame and silence those who have what the jealous person cannot have. Feminists will participate in the destruction of Sarah Palin right along side Andrew Sullivan. Feminists will discuss a beauty pageant winner’s artificial breasts right along side Perez Hilton. They are consumed with jealous, impotent rage. It makes them hideously ugly.

Media Lizzy gets to another truth. Beauty serves as motivation to higher callings:

MY primary criticism of Ms. Gregory’s work, and many others, is the assertion that Anne was raped by King Henry VIII. Why imply such a thing? For literary enrichment? No. To accomplish two things: paint Anne as deserving of rape. And to paint Henry as a rapist – depicting a powerful, passionate man as an animal. Why again? Because, if Anne loved King Henry – and he loved her… then his break with the Vatican (and the spark that ignited the Reformation) was due in no small part to beauty, love, passion, and intangibles most simply can not grasp. King Henry VIII was not sitting around looking for a way to stick it to Rome.

Beauty can provoke love which can provoke noble action. I would submit that it is impossible to be otherwise. A beautiful person is not necessarily more loving, but a loving person is always more beautiful. Always. And a lifetime of hate and loathing makes one anything but beautiful. It shrivels the soul…and often, the face. Noble action is never sparked by hate. Noble action is ignited by love.

Truth is beauty and beauty is truth? Very often, beauty is love and love is beauty.

Posted in Corrupted Culture | 15 Comments »

Evil

Roger Simon met Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and says, “I was in the presence of pure Evil.”

Roger’s analysis of coming face to face with evil is compelling. Please go read the whole thing. After you come back, I’ll have some thoughts that were triggered by his piece.

I met evil once. She was in the form of a patient. She made the hair on my neck stand and I felt physically ill/drained being around her. She is the first and only patient in eleven years who prompted me to ban her from ever setting foot in the practice again. There were other wacky and weak people. There were even unbalanced and in one or two cases, psychotic people. There’s been a stalker. But evil is a whole different kettle of fish and it’s a disgusting, oily, leaves-a-rancid-residue experience to interact with them.

When I met evil, I felt afraid.

Unlike Roger, I’ve never been atheist. I’ve had agnostic periods where my faith faltered, but God has influenced my life such that disbelief would be ungrateful and stupid, really. The school of hard knocks gave me some very direct answers. The answers have tended to be more mysterious than I expected and lead me on some paradoxical paths. God, it turns out, is nuanced.

Let’s face it. Being atheistic simplifies things. The world is what we experience and nothing more. The print we make on the earth begins at birth and ends at death. Bad people had bad life experiences which makes them do bad things. A better, kinder upbringing would make a better person who would do better things. And that’s mostly true, but sometimes it’s not.

An atheist doesn’t have to fiddle with good or evil. There’s just gradations of human. Some behavior is more helpful. Some behavior is less helpful. Iran’s leader, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini, and even Hitler just consistently chose unhelpful behavior. A lot.

Acknowledging evil, though, complicates things, because that means there is also good. And we know this to be true. I’ve been in the presence of people who have a pureness of soul that’s difficult to describe. It’s just a relief to be around it. That’s why people love babies so much. They are so pure and sweet and good. It’s rarer to find in adults, but exists.

Roger asks why evil is allowed to exist. A friend and I discussed this recently. How, though, can free will exist without the possibility of choosing to do right and wrong? How can God know we believe if we’re guaranteed a simple, pain-free life just by being a believer? How will our faith be tested if every brush with evil leaves us unscathed? The ultimate evil, in my opinion, is death. From the loss of physical life, there is no redemption. Well, there is none without faith.

One more note. It is fashionable on the Left to label anyone who disagrees with politically correct ideology as evil. President Bush was called evil. There is a scripture that foretells of days when evil will be called good and good evil. To even imply that President Bush was evil is atrocious and diminishes true evil. I actually think that those on the Left have an easy time bandying about such terms because they don’t really believe in the concept of good and evil, but that know people on the Right do. So, calling President Bush evil is really about impugning believers–poking fun at their simple-mindedness.

But who is simple minded? Running away from the notion of evil lands a person in a place where engaging it is “rational”. Roger Simon asks incredulously, after meeting Ahmadinejad, “This was the guy that my president wanted to talk with?” Yes. Because evil doesn’t exist. Evil is the same sort of superstitious notion as ghosts and angels.

The evil count on this denial. The evil count on the weak and faithless to cower behind intellectualism and rational thought. Only those willing to name evil are willing to fight it.

Believing isn’t for sissies. It’s challenging, paradoxical and yes, nuanced. Does evil exist? Yes. Thankfully, so does Good.

Posted in Spirit | 2 Comments »

The Baby Boomers: Destroying America

The biggest generation is about to be the biggest retired generation. Do you think a generation nicknamed the “Me Generation” will suddenly become the generous generation? No.

The market lost value so the Boomers lost their retirements. They were overmortgaged just as their health declined (it was a shock that they were getting older). Let’s just assume perfect retirement conditions. This is how the Boomers planned:

How bad are baby boomers at financial planning? Extremely bad, according to Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia Mitchell of the National Bureau of Economic Research. They found that more than one-quarter of boomer households thought “hardly at all” about retirement, and that financial literacy among boomers was “alarmingly low.” Half could not do a simple math calculation (divide $2 million by 5) and fewer than 20 percent could calculate compound interest. The NBER researchers also found that, as of 2004, the typical boomer household was holding nearly half its wealth in the form of housing equity. Uh-oh.

For a closer look at the retirement squeeze, consider a study released last month by the Congressional Research Service. Patrick Purcell analyzed the most recent data on consumer finances gathered by the Federal Reserve. He found that for the 53 percent of households that hold at least one retirement account, the median combined balance was a mere $45,000.

For households headed by persons between the ages of 55 and 64, the median value of all retirement accounts was just $100,000. Purcell noted that for a 65-year-old man retiring in April 2009, that $100,000 would buy an annuity that would pay a paltry $700 a month for life, based on current interest rates.

The Fed data used in Purcell’s study were gathered in 2007. With stock market declines since then, the median account balances are probably even lower now.

A scared Boomer is a scary Boomer. That is why I’m concerned about nationalized health care and every other big government program being the wave of the future.

I’m not sure any small government type leader can be elected just because of the demographics of the United States. And unfortunately for future generations, the Boomers have had access to the best medical advances and health care–so they’re probably going to live a long time which means expanding the government to meet their needs until they die which will be in forever.

President Obama is a tail-ender Boomer and look at the spending. He’s not going to have to pay that money back. His kids will. Wheee! No big deal.

The Baby Boomers believe the world will end when they end. Maybe they’re making the world end and fulfilling some subconscious wish–the world can’t possibly exist without them so the solution is killing the world before they go.

On the plus side, the Boomers embraced eugenics–they are after all the biggest proponents of abortion. And the same reasoning can be used, and is being used, when it comes to health care choices. Look at what’s being talked about on the floor of the Senate from Ed Morrissey:

What happens when the state controls all the resources? New resources do not develop, and the government winds up rationing care based on its own priorities, and not the priorities of the patients or caregivers. Professor Altman’s suggestion that the elderly get hospice treatment to save scarce care resources is exactly the kind of decisions the state will make for its citizens, and it won’t be limited to the elderly, either. Anyone whose value does not show a positive “cost-benefit” ratio to the state will also likely wind up without the kind of care necessary to stay alive and healthy.

Rationed, hospice care for the elderly…read, Baby Boomers. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The same people who used utilitarian arguments to kill babies will have an interesting time defending spending money on their “worthless” lives–I mean, it’s not like old, decrepit people produce anything.

Oh, they’ll suddenly get religion and defending the defenseless will become very important and the vast numbers of hanging on Boomers will ensure they have a very loud voice as usual. They’ll bankrupt America, live off their children and demand health care that will extend their lives. It will be their children and their children’s children who will pay for their selfishness–the ones who were lucky enough to be born, anyway.

Even the Boomers will die, but probably not soon enough to save America.

Posted in America | 13 Comments »

9/11 And The Seige Mentality In The Economy

My latest American Issues Project column delves into the American psyche. I think the overspending spree that both individual Americans and then the banks and ultimately the Fed partook in the last few years can be traced back to the 9/11 attacks.

I’m interested in what you guys think about my theorizing. Here’s a bit of the article:

I’ve heard and have said myself, that there is a character flaw, typically American now, where people expect to live at a kingly level on a pauper’s wage. And that might be partly true. When my housekeeper has thousands of dollars in video games and equipment and seems mystified that I wouldn’t have those things because “I can’t afford them,” something is off in the psychology. Need and want are all mixed up.

Still, I don’t think this character flaw completely explains the problem. And even more importantly, many people don’t have this problem and the people who have lived within their means, or below, are now being asked by banks and corporations and fellow citizens to foot the bill for the collective. It’s not going over so well, thus the Tea Party movement is born.

….

President Bush was criticized for not asking Americans to sacrifice, but people have short memories. I remember the parking lots around the Doctor’s Office building and it was empty. People were paralyzed. Afraid. The Twin Towers stood out like two beacons (or eye-sores depending on your aesthetics) in the heart of Manhattan’s financial district. Osama bin Laden knew exactly what he was doing when the Twin Towers were targeted. Capitalism and freedom were being attacked and every American knew it.

So General Motors, to shore up the economy, offered, for the first time in my living memory (I’m a GM brat and grew up around cars and the car companies) 0 percent financing. We all sat around discussing this anomaly. Someone is paying that interest. How long can this last? Well, it lasted, alright, a lot longer than anyone imagined. Americans got accustomed to cheap credit and due to the competitive nature of things companies would lose money in order to gain or keep, or in GM’s case, lose market share.

I believe 9/11 shifted the American mentality and that there’s a shift back, a correction, now. It has less to do with a changed external threat reality, and more to do with the fact that a person and a people cannot maintain that level of high alert indefinitely.

And, by the way, I don’t think any of this has anything to do with Barack Obama. He just happens to be the President. He is, however, creating a situation where he is perpetuating, inadvertently, the problem.

Posted in America | 1 Comment »

Meet Todd Herman Republican National Committee Technology Director

Hi guys! A couple months ago, the Republican National Committee asked the grassroots for feedback to help the GOP get going the right direction with the use of technology. People responded via Facebook, Ning groups, and blogs. Maybe you thought your feedback didn’t matter.

Well, as with all things transitional, it often takes extra effort to get the ball rolling again. Once in motion, though, the object takes off. A good start to getting the ball rolling was hiring Todd Herman. I’ll be interviewing Todd for my radio show Right Doctor on Radio For Conservatives (you should be listening) this Thursday and he wants your questions. So you can either put the questions in the comments or email me at drmelissa1@gmail.com. Include at least your first name and city and state and I’ll ask for you. It will be a 40 minute interview and Todd will be picking the music.

The show will air next Wednesday night on RFC Radio at 10 Eastern, 9 Central. There is also a chat room. Join in the conversation and have the opportunity to talk to Todd in real time during the show.

Posted in Political Animals | No Comments »

Latest Pajamas Media Column: Poor, Poor Put-Upon Moderates

The moderates are feeling persecuted, marginalized, reviled and yes, put-upon. They also tend to inhabit the ranks of writers and journalists–you know, balanced, seeing all sides and generally talking around a topic. Because of their professional affiliation, those on the right get to hear their tortured logic and navel gazing ad nauseum. In response to this tiresome trend, I ranted at Pajamas Media:

I’m tired of Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge, and the rest of them. I’m tired of the pontificating. I’m tired of the holier-than-thou bearing. I’m tired of the self-important smugness. Most of all, I’m tired of losing big elections and being lectured by the losers about how to win.

And I’d just like to say this to moderates feelings tweaked in the current Grand Old Party: get over it.

Please read the whole thing.

Eric Florack feels that Grassroots are “taking the wheel”, and I believe that’s true. And, they need to. Eric also talks about the politicians who sway with the wind and how they need to be held to account.

In addition, Matt Lewis wrote a must-read piece about Cosmopolitan Conservatives. He talks about pulling politicians from the ranks of the professional class rather than the political class and why it’s often a big win for conservatives. He says:

If you stop to think about it, some of the conservative movement’s most effective advocates have been quite cosmopolitan. Charlton Heston, the acclaimed film star who marched with Dr. King and went on to lead the NRA, was a terrific conservative spokesman — as was William F. Buckley, the enfant terrible of the conservative cause, who, though not a movie star or famous athlete, was a wealthy and erudite conservative who essentially lived like a movie star.

While I caution conservatives from adopting an elitist mentality that looks down our noses at the “unwashed masses” and their leaders like Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee, I do think it’s worth noting that some of our most effective conservative leaders — like Reagan, Kemp, Heston and Buckley — were anything but local politicians, by trade.

So, can the conservative movement please seek out some sophisticated conservatives who stay true to principles? Yes. And, we must.

Times, they are a-changing in the Republican party, and that’s a good thing.

Posted in Political Animals | 4 Comments »

Happy Mother’s Day

And to celebrate, I’m writing nothing. Nothing.

Posted in America | 2 Comments »

How Does Closing Gitmo Make Us Safe?

Best 1 minute you’ll spend today. Pass it along:

Via ThreatsWatch

Posted in America | 5 Comments »

I’m Staying At A Best Western

Nothing like a fulminating Senator to bring out murderous impulses and the desire to openly mock:

H/T Brutally Honest

Posted in Corrupted Culture, Political Animals | No Comments »