Good Government Takes Brains

According to a letter to the editor in Thursday, August 7th Spokesman Review - "Good Government Takes Brains"

Re: "Right wing needs a heart," Aug. 2:

If the right wing needs a heart, the left wing needs a brain.

First of all, I would note that not all conservatives are members of the religious right, a fact that seems lost on Lillian Dubiel as she equates the two in her letter (conveniently).

Second, when a liberal says "have a heart," what they really mean is that they want to spend your money on their projects. If not, why would they be concerned with
where my heart is?

How I feel about gays, Muslims, illegal immigration or the price of tea in China is none of Lillian's or any other liberal's business. In America, gays are free to be gay, Muslims are free to be Muslim and illegal immigrants are free to do as they please. Why do they need my endorsement? Why do they need my heart? Why do they need to take my money?

Conservatives don't hold the moral high ground; they are simply correct in evaluating the role of government in society. Liberals are driving this country toward socialism and most of them do not even understand that. What this country really needs is less bleeding heart and more thinking brain.

Walter Litman
Coeur d'Alene

"You will be assimilated; resistance is futile"

Palousitics contributor Michael O'Neal had a must-read column about liberal collectivism in last Saturday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

First there was Rev. Wright, but I thought, "Knaves on both sides of the political nave say goofy stuff, so we can't really pin any of that on Obama." Then there was the link with Weatherman bomber William Ayers, but I thought, "Well, gee, it wasn't like Obama was knocking back shots with the guy at Hooters."

No, what did it for me was this statement by Obama: "Our individual salvation depends on our collective salvation." Just eight words, but a trenchant summary of a sociopolitical philosophy that crystallizes the distinction between liberals and conservatives. For conservatives are more likely to take the opposite (and correct) view: that our collective salvation depends on individual salvation. Conservatives believe that the nation can achieve and sustain greatness only by liberating individuals to strive and reach their potential, without the coercive hand of government and haughty elites who believe that only they know the route to the Promised Land.

Since the Magna Carta, the trend line in the West has been the struggle for democracy. Through the American and French revolutions, to the end of slavery, to the liberation of the peoples of Western and then Eastern Europe, the goal has been to wrest power from the hands of those who arrogate to themselves the belief that they know best.

Yet in the West, democracy is fraying, and one is left wondering how long the great experiment in democracy, with its emphasis on the individual rather than the collectivity, can last. Tolerance - highly touted today - for the individual is waning, for individuals can be so annoyingly ... individual. Tolerance applies to my point of view, not that of my neighbor, who ignores the wisdom of the elites. The European Union routinely sniffs at the will of the people, expressed through the democratically elected governments of its member nations, and imposes the judgment and will of a faceless Soviet-style Eurocracy. In Canada, "tolerance" - a value of the collective - trumps the value of freedom of speech - an individual value. The result is statements like this from a member of that nation's ham-fisted human rights commission, which mercilessly hunts down and punishes any kind of perceived "Islamophobia": "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." Or this from The Atlantic magazine: "The First Amendment is a peculiar and quite possibly outdated feature of the American political system, along the lines of, say, the electoral college or the District of Columbia's lack of congressional representation."

We see this notion - that we're to yield liberties to the collective - in ways large and small. People who claim to be "pro-choice" support ordinances proscribing the use of plastic grocery bags. The global warming scam is at bottom an effort to cajole us into relinquishing our liberties to the Borg, who claim to know better and want to achieve "collective salvation" by telling us what to drive and where to set our thermostats (unless, of course, you're an elite liberal whose yearly utility bills are 10 times the national average). Organizations such as the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development try to impose the will of a collective on the choices of benighted shoppers - those annoyingly individual individuals.

But there's hope. I had a conversation with a woman who lives near Sandpoint. She's an immigrant, but interestingly, not from an impoverished Third World hellhole. She's from picture-postcard-pretty Switzerland. Puzzled, I asked her why she would move from her beautiful, safe, peaceful, affluent homeland and settle in rough-around-the-edges north Idaho, where, rather than Alpine vistas, we see stacks of discarded tires and rusted '69 Corvairs parked in backyards.

Her response was instructive. Yes, she said, Switzerland is ordered and neat. So is Disneyland. Neighborhoods and city centers are pretty, trains run on time, and the nation's warts are hidden away from tourists and people on sabbatical. But all this comes at a price. You're constantly being watched. Neighbors watch you. Local authorities watch you. Behavior is dictated by codes and laws both written and - more oppressively - unwritten. The pressure to conform is enormous, and stifling. When I first came to America, she said, yes, it was messy, raw, unruly. It lacks the old-world sophistication of European cities, with their cobblestones, cafés, and cappuccinos.

And for the first time in my life, she said, I felt free.

Pass The Class Hatred, Comrade

Speaking of anti-bourgeoisie manifestos, did anyone catch some of the Pullman League of Women Voter's ballyhooed "non-partisanship" on display in Lenna Harding's colmnn in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News today?

What kind of people can be happy with failure to address some of our country's most basic problems? It is this smug head-in-the-sand satisfaction with the status quo that the author of that message shares with our current leadership that has got us deeper into the morass that I have described. Things are just peachy with them. They have their flashy gas-guzzling SUVs or sports cars along with speedy boats and ATVs that tear up our pristine wilderness. They have enough money to buy corn-fed beef and the latest electronic gadget when it hits the market.

These same head-in-the-sand types often are the same folks who equate pledging allegiance, flag-waving, wearing flag lapel pins with patriotism, and who decry those who don't follow protocol or criticize our leaders as unpatriotic. Like the flowers that bloom in the spring - tra la - these have nothing to do with the case.

Aren't you glad that so-called "progressives" are not bigoted, don't question others patriotism, don't play to stereotypes, don't practice the politics of division, and don't encourage class warfare?

Let me skewer the myth of the wealthy, selfish conservative one more time. A recent study by Arthur C. Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University, found that on average, liberal families annually earn 6 percent more than conservative families. Furthermore, conservative households give 30 percent more money to charity than liberal households.

"Meeting Dinesh"

Paul Zimmerman has a post up on his blog about Dinesh D'Souza. Be sure to read it.

Song of My Selfishness

Janet Richards' Town Crier tripe in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News amply illustrates well why the "progressives" are now in the political wilderness in Moscow. Who can take people this disdainful seriously? It is this same upper class, highly educated drawbridge selfishness that adds $200,000 to the price of Seattle homes.

WARNING: Do not click "Read More" if you are subject to nausea caused by overly florid prose, preening intellectual pretentiousness, tortured logic, asinine allegories, naturalist hyberbole, gratuitous use of adjectives, or haughty classical music references:

Importance of community-shared values

Cows graze behind the supermarket and wheat fields roll for miles in the alley behind our shopping center in Moscow. It's a lonely stretch of road - a soothing respite from the traffic and frenetic animation of the parking lot on the front side of the mall.

Drivers are discouraged from taking this route by a series of lofty speed bumps, installed to assure that only a limited number of cars will clog the delivery lane. The bumpy pavement forces a slower pace and provides a kind of rhythm to the journey, so the occasional jostle is never too much of a surprise. I like knowing what to expect.

The conspicuous evidence of consumption litters this corridor. Stacks of wooden pallets, torn shrink wrap and plastic strapping bands lie discarded - the common refuse of retail operations. Battered Dumpsters, with Smurf-colored paint, bulge with cardboard and packing peanuts resting against drab cinder block walls which form the "backside" of a marketplace filled with glitter and glitz.

The peaceful pasture that lays on the other side of this alley seems out of place. It's a bucolic scene, in stark contrast to the commercial setting that is its backdrop; a metaphor for the clash between the push for development and its opposition.

One day as I began the slow traverse of this undulating path I turned the radio to classical. The music was lilting, and beautiful, but I felt unsettled, my mind troubled by thoughts of the natural landscape on one side of the alley that seems headed for obliteration - threatened by the encroaching ooze of molten asphalt hardening into a permanent tomb and the relentless proliferation of retail outlets that have already scourged the nation.

Countless other towns have been swept up in the now familiar pattern that comes on the winds of progress. A trend favoring a homogeneous market saturated with global franchises housed in immense buildings with the offer of generic predictability. Spewing shrink wrap and clam shell cartons, they operate out of step with the rhythms of the natural world and encourage us to do likewise, causing one to wonder if health of any kind is ever a priority.

Countless towns have seen the destruction of the sense of community that comes in the wake of the big-box phenomena. The marketplace, no longer a meeting place, marches to a global drummer, oblivious to the heartbeat of the community. The anonymous nature of these cart and carry stores only adds to social isolation.

When it comes to the issues of water and Wal-Mart, the residents of Moscow, myself included, are polarized. It's hard to see common ground - the shared soil that is the essence of this community - so near and dear to everyone. But common ground is what we must find to prevent the health of our beautiful natural setting and the relationships that make life so rich and give meaning from falling victim to ideological positions set in stone.

Something rescued me from these somber thoughts that day in the alley. Without warning hundreds of small black birds descended on my car. Swirling, whipping and whirling, they snaked towards me and then away in long symmetrical streams forming layer upon layer of concentric black rings. As if hearing the music, they swept inward and outward, like ribbons in the wind, upward and back around the car in syncopated rhythm. As quickly as they came they vanished, as if sucked by a celestial vacuum.

As I negotiated the last speed bump and turned onto the street to head for home, the radio announcer spoke clearly: "You have been listening to a composition by the French composer Ravel written in 1928. It is titled "Oiseauz Tristes," "The Unhappy Birds."

It was a moment sublime - "coincidental oppositorum." Things that seem separate, even opposed, coincided to reveal an unexpected unity - an unbelievably beautiful experience driving in a littered alley behind a mall illustrating the coming together of two worlds in conflict.

Will our town slide into dissension and mediocrity as so many other towns, unwilling or unable to see the importance of the shared values that will determine its destiny? Is there a way to soar above the staunch opinions and fly together?

Say What?

NOTE: This is not MY shower. I have an underground sprinkler system and water my lawn 3-4 times a week during the summer. MUWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Lois Blackburn said she keeps a bucket in her shower during the summer to recycle water for her garden.

"Should I go to all this trouble when the City Council is going to sell water?" she asked. "I know it's the same aquifer, but you're willing to sell water to an out-of-state, very, very wealthy developer from Boise."

- "Residents sound off on water sale," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, February 20, 2008

Uh, Lois, the last time I checked, Moscow and Boise were both in Idaho. And thanks for the bucket in the shower image. I'm still laughing about that one! I'm tellin' ya. You just can't make stuff like this up!