7 posts tagged “values”

Whether you support the war in Iraq or you don’t—and here in New Zealand we have the luxury to criticize the United States—David Horowitz’s recollection (video found originally on Humbled Infidel’s blog) of why the US went in certainly correlates with my own. It’s why I have always held back attacking President George W. Bush, because faced with what he had in front of him, I cannot honestly say I would not have done the same thing. As Horowitz reveals, neither would Al Gore, who supported Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech in 2002.
   The end of this video (cut short) goes into the rationale for war surrounding UN Security Council resolution 1441, which PM Tony Blair managed to sell to Parliament—but which, I always felt, the US was less successful at doing. There are legal arguments there based on the UN Charter but it was always about 1441. 
   This is one of the problems I tend to have with the US Democratic Party, for all my own left-leaning tendencies. Right now, for example, constituents are begging the super-delegates that they should not select who will best beat Sen. John McCain and the Republicans, but who represents their position. The fact this question has even arisen is disturbing: as representatives of the people of course one should represent the citizens. The minute you do not, you do not have a democracy: it is a quest for power among élites ignoring the citizenry, the sort of thing people were getting away from when the US was founded. 
   I am not saying that the GOP wouldn’t look after its own, but given that they have fielded men like Sen. Bob Dole—who from a marketing perspective was a tough sell against President Clinton—it seems that it might be more willing to represent its base than look at seizing power. The 42nd president gifted them the Monica Lewinsky situation, which hurt the Democrats. I would say that they never forgave the GOP or Kenneth Starr who were steadfast in their condemnation and investigation. That power-hungriness from the Democrats is very apparent in the way the Bush administration has been undermined in the last eight years.

   I say if one opposes the war, then there are ways to do it without resorting to revisionism. I might not agree with our PM, Helen Clark, on her courses of action, but at least she took a position based on the facts before her and said ‘No’ to going in to Iraq. She has never gone and revised history, and simply held firm on her principles. She has good support for it because most New Zealanders opposed the war and carried out her job (on that occasion) as a servant and representative of the people.
   The consequences of Resolution 1441 were always clear but the means of acting upon them were less so because of the way the UN Charter is written, and that ambiguity effectively gave some countries a chance of opting out. Our PM took it, as did the leaders of many other nations. It is respectful, even if she later made a gaffe about how she did not think a Gore presidency would have gone to war. (As Horowitz reminds us, that is probably an incorrect position.) They believed that an extra resolution was needed before war; the US, UK, Australia and others did not.
   The Democratic Party and the anti-war movement probably think that this is all too tough to sell to the public, so they engage in other tactics, shaming US troops or the administration and pressuring those who have short memories to join their cause. I am not saying that what they have uncovered is all untrue—of course I accept there are dodgy dealings surrounding the war and I even accept some misconduct—but they’d earn my respect if they didn’t flip-flop or cover up the truth. Sen. Clinton, who voted for the war, who voted for the increase in expenditure alongside Sen. John Kerry, is one of those very high-profile politicians who has changed depending on the trade winds of public opinion.
   Of course a senator or a future president must be representative but she must also stand on truth. ‘I was wrong to have supported the war because …’ would have been a good start. ‘Now the American people are telling me that it is time to withdraw our troops.
   ‘My support was founded on the belief that resolution 1441 was inviolable. It was not, and we have carried out the due punishment needed on Saddam Hussein’s régime.’
   There are millions of ways to spin it, especially ways to do it without demoralizing the young men and women serving in Iraq—and I am not even a politician.
   This would also mean she’d have to go against her husband’s attacks on Kosovo, which also did not have that additional Security Council resolution but was a preemptive strike by the US. George W. Bush is not alone, just that the media give him more grief over it.
   But a mea culpa is not flip-flopping and it is not pandering. It is being honest, something the Beltway sees very rarely.
   What concerns me, however, is that the road to war is a serious matter. It should not be so easily bent because the decision should be founded on principle—and if those principles existed after resolution 1441 was broken then they exist today. Congress voted for the war, with bipartisan support. There needs to be a far bigger shift for any US representative to say no to the war now—so what is it?
   A poor entry strategy, a poor exit strategy, the belief that the US’s only task was to oust Saddam Hussein, the belief that the parameters of the original declaration of war have been fulfilled—what? Certainly Sen. Clinton needs to tell us.
   She has said that she would not have voted for the war if she knew there were no WMDs. But as Horowitz points out, the existence of WMDs was not the basis for war. Did Sen. Clinton “misspeak” again?
   There is a popular notion that that was what resolution 1441 was all about and we all remember Sec. Powell’s Powerpoint presentations to the UN.
   But unless Sen. Clinton has misremembered this incident as well, resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002 was about Iraq’s non-compliance with conditions laid down by the international community over disarmament, which included WMDs, but they were not the core issue.
   When Iraq lied about what it did with its WMDs, which the international community confirmed it had as late as 1998, the US took a hard line.
   Iraq itself never offered an explanation on the discrepancy between its claims and tests by the inspectors.
   That was one legal justification for the US and the UK, and, skipping over a few issues, the war began.
   I sure wish the US politicians would just tell the truth about the vote at that time because they should have a better understanding of it, having been there—rather than let people like me catch them out.
   This is another reason to not dislike Bush: he said he would stay the course, so he did. The majority of Americans voted for him in 2004 (regardless of whether one is counting the electoral college or the popular vote) and knew this full well. And while I think some of his spending has sent that US deficit soaring, he has stayed firm on his belief in his tax cuts. He seems content because he thinks he is protecting the Constitution and that he needs to continue his strategy. Maybe that is the Bush world-view. (He saw how his Dad got burned on the ‘No new taxes’ and learned from it. He saw how his Dad lost the support of the right wing of the GOP and learned from it. And he saw how he was criticized for being too smart when he ran for Congress—which is where the folksy public image comes from. Welcome to Bushland.)
   Had the war successfully concluded people would praise him on his steadfastness.
   For if a leader bends based on the trade winds, then will she bend based on pressure from other sovereign nations? If Saudi Arabia put pressure to bear on the US, would Sen. Clinton cave in? If a communist nation put pressure on Sen. Obama, would he? Or, for that matter, how far will Sen. McCain bend to foreign pressure? 
   We cannot turn back the clock now and see how the message could have been better communicated to the US. We should know, from the Horowitz video, why the US went in and understand who is now lying to the American public: that is important. For all his failings in everything from the Patriot Act (which I am no fan of, and it has restricted the movement of people who could benefit the US) to the Alberto González judicial appointments, I do not think it was President Bush. I have never called him a bare-faced liar.
   The next presidential election is a chance to address those failings. The economy can be fixed but what is in dire need of repair are the values to which not only Americans want moral leadership, but most of us in the western world. Get the values right, get the truth right, and the rest will follow.
   At the end of the day I care not if the president is a Democrat or a Republican, and I have no say in it anyway, as long as our common values are restored and preserved, and the leader is truthful. And that the decision for staying the course or withdrawing is also founded on truth.

From the Associated Press:

Former President Clinton says Democrats concerned about what the deadlocked presidential contest between his wife and Barack Obama may be doing to the party should just “chill out” and let the race run its course.

   Not great advice: ‘Chill out about my wife’s lying.’ This is effectively the idea.
   Sorry, Bill, been there before.
   In 1992 and 1996 we were told by then-Governor and President Clinton to ignore his past and focus on the future. Well, we all know what ignoring the past gave us: a controversial president distracted by the Lewinsky scandal, making him an easy target for the Republican Party.
   The trouble is, they all seem pretty controversial.
   But Americans should not forget a candidate’s background and choose not from one who can play the people or promise the earth. That past will impact on how (s)he does the job.
   Of course Mr Clinton has to ask us to forget in order for his wife to be in with a chance. I just would not be surprised if this becomes Sen. Obama’s catchcry if any controversies stick to him.
   My advice, nevertheless, will remain the same. Never forget, America. Not about your values, your freedoms, and certainly not about 9-11.

I found this on the Informer’s blog here on Vox. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, who was senior policy adviser to the Department of Education under the Reagan Administration, talks about the dumbing-down of the United States and how education has been set on a socialist path by Marxists. She has written a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, which you can download free of charge in PDF format from her site.
   From the preface, with footnotes omitted and some paragraphing changed for clarity:

… Achievement of Students, Key Points: U. S. twelfth graders scored below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS nations in both mathematics and science general knowledge in the final year of secondary school. (p. 24)
   Obviously, something is terribly wrong when a $6,330 per pupil expenditure produces such pathetic results. This writer has visited private schools which charge $1,000-per-year in tuition which enjoy superior academic results. Parents of home-schooled children spend a maximum of $1,000-per-year and usually have similar excellent results. …
   The desire by “resisters” to prove their case has been so strong that they have continued to amass-over a thirty- to fifty-year period-what must surely amount to tons of materials containing irrefutable proof, in the education change agents’ own words, of deliberate, malicious intent to achieve behavioral changes in students/parents/society which have nothing to do with commonly understood educational objectives. Upon delivery of such proof, “resisters” are consistently met with the “shoot the messenger” stonewalling response by teachers, school boards, superintendents, state and local officials, as well as the supposedly objective institutions of academia and the press.
   This resister’s book, or collection of research in book form, was put together primarily to satisfy my own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down of the United States of America assembled in chronological order-in writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities taking place at other times. This book, which makes such connections, has provided for me a much-needed sense of closure. …
   In retrospect, I had just found out that the United States was engaged in war. People write important books about war: books documenting the battles fought, the names of the generals involved, the names of those who fired the first shot. This book is simply a history book about another kind of war:
   * one fought using psychological methods;
   * a one-hundred-year war;
   * a different, more deadly war than any in which our country has ever been involved;
   * a war about which the average American hasn't the foggiest idea.
   The reason Americans do not understand this war is because it has been fought in secret-in the schools of our nation, using our children who are captive in classrooms. The wagers of this war are using very sophisticated and effective tools:
   * Hegelian Dialectic (common ground, consensus and compromise)
   * Gradualism (two steps forward; one step backward)
   * Semantic deception (redefining terms to get agreement without understanding) …
   Much of this book contains quotes from government documents detailing the real purposes of American education:
   * to use the schools to change America from a free, individual nation to a socialist, global “state,” just one of many socialist states which will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United States Constitution;
   * to brainwash our children, starting at birth, to reject individualism in favor of collectivism;
   * to reject high academic standards in favor of OBE/ISO 1400/90006 egalitarianism;
   * to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus;
   * to reject American values in favor of internationalist values (globalism);
   * to reject freedom to choose one’s career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/OBE process, aptly named “limited learning for lifelong labor,” coordinated through United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.
   Only when all children in public, private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding “choice” proposals will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the world management system to achieve a new global feudalism.

   There’s more at www.deliberatedumbingdown.com. It’s useful food for thought in our technocratically biased society, and I think we can see some of the same things happening in our own educational system and media.

Fifth school shooting in a week? Astrologers do say that US school shootings do happen more often during Mercury retrograde, which we are in now.
   I imagine that there are some out there who feel isolated, unloved and pressured by society, a society that has gone off the rails from their perspective.
   The sort of society that sees, for instance, the whole Code Pink mess happen in front of its own eyes. Or corrupt politicians who have no understanding of the rule of law. Or a decline in values, Christian or otherwise, in most of the western world.
   This is nothing to do with weapons and the Second Amendment. I keep pointing out that the Swiss are far more armed than the Americans per capita, enough guns for every man, woman and child. And you do not hear of Swiss kids going to their schools and blowing other kids away.
   It tells you that there is something wrong with the environment these people are in. You can use the same argument to explain why some countries have more of one race in prison than another. There’s a disharmony, a hopelessness, for some, for which the only way out is to make a statement by taking others’ lives—and their own.

With the good news of the engagement between my friend Jennifer Siebel and Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, whom I had some contact with in his first year on the job, I have to note that the usual anti-Jen bloggers have been more silent.
   Either it’s the time of year or they have moved to other targets.
   It makes me wonder about the type who has a need to target others. I know: I deal to politicians as though they were subjects of sitcoms—but I like to think I do so with some restraint. Men such as Winston Peters or John Key have not escaped my sarcasm, but I admit it is done with what I see as a failure for them to grasp their jobs. In short, other than the ridiculous hours at Parliament, I think I could do better. I believe I have the intelligence to. And if they wanted to dignify me with a response to justify their positions, I will welcome it—not that they would.
   When it comes to someone like Jen, who defended herself on a blog and through that attracted more negative comments, I question: why? Here is someone who is merely stating her opinion, and that opinion is then rubbished by people who are even further away from the subject than she is—yet those people all proclaim themselves experts.
   What we have is a generation that has to lash out because of envy. They wonder why they are not as loved as others, they dislike being corrected by the real facts, and express their disdain by pretending to be more important than the next person.
   These are the people who, with their cellphones, speak loudly to assure others of their self-importance, so that we all know what their business is. And giggle to ourselves about their optimistic view of their trivialities.
   And when it comes to a civil discourse, which one assumes one should be able to have in a medium where opinion-sharing is one of its raisons d’être, they no longer know how to have one. There used to be a thing called netiquette, which I thought extended to the blogosphere.
   I wonder if we can restore our values this year. I’d certainly like a 2008 where I didn’t have to quote John Gabriel’s Greater Internet F***wad Theory again.

Not a lot of people in New Zealand will publicly say this, even if they think it: thank you to our troops.
   The fear from both the Government and the Opposition is that this simple expression of gratitude will upset the anti-Americans in the country and make them sound like Bushites. We have some chicken-s*** politicians.
   What an intelligent person will work out is that regardless of one’s political stripes, our men and women in Afghanistan are fighting terrorism admirably and have even been recognized by the US Government for their valour. There are those in Iraq helping with the rebuilding efforts.
   I would even go so far as to express my thanks to the entire Coalition of the Willing, wherever the troops are based.
   Again, this should not be a political matter. Even Democratic politicians have expressed this wish. These people are willing to pay the ultimate price for a cause they believe in.
   I remember the civilians who have lost their homes, family members and their own lives in conflicts globally. I remember those whose family structures have been demolished by tyrants. I hope you find peace in 2008 as the human spirit cannot be extinguished unless we let it.
   It may be naïve to say that I wish for world peace, but on a deep level I do.
   Until we are ready to achieve that, we should be able to recognize good from evil and just what values contribute to a strong, prosperous and safe society where we can say to our children, ‘Be happy. Be yourself.’
   In many western nations I wonder if we can make the distinction between right and wrong.
   When we are clear about it, we can defend what’s right. And sometimes, men of peace must become men of war in order to stamp out villainy.
   This need not just be with guns. In the corporate world, in our everyday lives, we sometimes must “wage war” on impropriety and corruption. When we vote for our governments, we are not voting for who gives us the biggest bribe, but who will either restore, defend or build our values, to create the society that we say we want our children to grow up in.
   And to begin, I give thanks to all those who defend those values—whether they are values based in our faith or in our philosophy.

Sadly, I had no idea of the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech while I was escorting Laural and Sharaine Barrett around yesterday. In fact, I spent most of the day out or at meetings. I learned about it probably 18 hours after most other people. By today, its impact was felt strongly, particularly at Facebook, where netizens changed their profile photographs to a VT black ribbon.
   I join the millions who are sending prayers and thoughts to the victims, and the families of the victims.
   I am no expert of what happens inside the minds of people such as the alleged shooter, Cho Seung-Hui. The BBC paints a picture of a loner who has aways felt distant, even as a child. The media coverage has tended to discuss gun control, before finding parties to blame, with the Virginia campus being a target.
   If I am to add anything to this debate, I believe we need to go past the same scapegoats. After Columbine, we have already asked these questions and these school shootings continue. In a country like New Zealand, where we are not immune from rampages, we do find armed students a foreign idea associated most strongly with the United States. Le Monde says the massacre taints the American Dream. At the same time, I look at Switzerland which has (unofficially) one firearm for every man, woman and child, yet no one seems to go on rampages there—and this begs the question: why?
   Men like Cho seem to be loners, and in this case, the paranoia that grips post-9-11 USA alerted Virginia Tech staff to his odd behaviour. Despite this, the murders of 30-plus people still could not be prevented. Teachers and counsellors were on alert. There is nothing that could have been done because it seems as though the faculty was diligent, delayed emails and text messages aside.
   My guess is that the issues predate any faculty involvement into Cho’s conduct. I do not know about the Korean community in Virginia. If the Korean community is well integrated, we still hear that Cho’s peers left him alone. Perhaps this is the lesson: to not let our peers be. To be concerned with someone other than ourselves. To end a selfish, me-first society.
   Some teenagers go and get boob jobs for self-image reasons. But negative self-image comes from a society that chooses to shun, forcing some to say, ‘Look at me.’ That same society did not reach out to Cho Seung-Hui. They, we, effectively let Cho stir in his own hatred.
   There is much negativity in the modern United States, and that must seep in to people’s consciousness. I wonder if Cho was sickened by the gulf between his traditional Korean upbringing and what he witnessed among his peers. His family were decent, Christian, and churchgoing. If the United States is about values and honour, would Cho have been sickened by the hypocrisy that he saw through his filter? I often have discussions with Asians—Japanese, Pakistanis, or my own race—and this comes up. We identify sexual promiscuity among westerners as one thing that seems out of place with the stated values of our adopted nations, for example.
   Is it the breakdown of societal values, or his perception thereof, that broke Cho on that horrid, dark day?
   Ironically, through that darkness, there was light. Students and professors who shielded others from the bullets. Those acts of heroism were restatements of American values. It is an indescribable sacrifice, how some gave their lives to show that.
   Why it takes the loss of lives to show us the selflessness of some great Americans, young and old, is sorrowful. But let us not let their passings be in vain. 
   I still hear the huge bollocks here in New Zealand about ‘Asians keep to themselves’ or ‘They don’t like getting involved in public life.’ If the US is anything like that, then the US is dead wrong. I have not sensed this sort of prejudice on my Stateside visits, but I have only been to 10 or 11 states. Cho may have cried out in his own way for help but that was mistaken as a preference to be alone. Others may be crying out right now, and it is our job to help them.
   One school shooting this year is enough to last us through the rest of our lifetimes.