There is a quality to real leaders called a “command presence”. You know the type: they walk into a room and by their force of presence, command of the facts, unshaken confidence and leadership qualities, they capture the narrative and control the agenda. That command presence is a necessary mark of a good leader.

In part, this is what I’ve been looking for in these debates and the most recent debate in New Hampshire helped crystallize for me what is wrong with the Republican candidates: I have yet to see a convincing command performance.

I’ve seen it with Govs. Christie and Palin. I’ve seen it in Lt. Col. and Florida Congressional Representative Allen West. I thought that I saw it in Cain, Bachman and Gingrich. I’ve been especially Gingrich’s ability to control the  moronic chickadees of the MSM.

However, I definitely did not see a command presence when Governor Romney allowed an intellectual lightweight like George Stephanopoulos to control the narrative with his ridiculous obsession with contraception (I sense an inner conflict…care to share, Georgie?). Romney wanted to get along, to find the road to peace and harmony…so, instead, Georgie Stephanopoulos got to drive the agenda instead of getting slapped down and named for the trivial man he is.
So, after that, I was pretty much confirmed in my decision to support Gingrich as the one who best offered a vision and command presence for America. That was. This is now. The fact that Gingrich could not condemn the following ad that was posted by one of his PAC tells me that, when necessary, Gingrich will readily descend into the role of the demagogue, much like those on the Left.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You cannot be a proponent of capitalism while playing upon its worst caricatures for short-term political gain. This ad is vile. Romney was part of a turnaround corporation. Such companies play an important role in supporting the vitality and creative destruction and renewal of  capitalist economies. As history has shown over and over again, the alternative is far worse.

After this ad, I can no longer support Gingrich. We’ve already got a demagogue-in-chief. His name is Obama.

So, with great reluctance, I throw my support to Romney. Anybody but Obama!

Yay, there’s another Sarah Palin in American politics.

Mia B. Love – mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah.

Those of you that have read my posts and comments (whether you agree or disagree) know that I am a huge Sarah Palin fan. Frankly, there is a certain breed of all-American women that I hugely admire in this country – those descended from the same character stock that stood side by side with their men, gun in hand, ready to fight to the death for their families. This is the type of person that Sarah Palin typifies: strong, confident, articulate with a clear sense of…common sense.

Now, in Utah, we see that Sarah Palin is hardly alone. In fact, she may have paved the way for a new, assertive voice of American women in politics. Here is Mia Love…watch the video, imagine Liberal-Lefty heads exploding, then read the link (h/t Powerline Blog)

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/mia-b-love-a-conservative-political-star-rises-in-utah/

Let a million Palins bloom! We may yet win this country back.

Besides, I think Allen West could use some help.

“Blue” sent me an email today, asking if he could post an older American Thinker article of mine at a new conservative forum.  I said yes, and very much appreciated his courtesy in asking before posting.  Here is the site — Conservative Talk Forums — and here is the page with my old article.

We have an odd family friend. Fundamentally, she is a nice person and sports a very unconventional view of the world that occasionally emotes great insights into the human condition. She has a major flaw, however, one that she admits as a character flaw: she is an unabashed hater. Despite her husband, kids and friends being conservative, she targets her venom at conservatives. We who love her nonetheless, understand: “conservatives” remind her of her father, a redneck sort of fellow who was a very bad father. She blames him for her mother’s suicide, which occurred when she was very young.

If you dig deep into people’s psyches, you can often find the reason for visceral hatreds and, usually but not always, they have to do with childhood experiences. As Oprah (an abused child) famously remarked, some people seem incapable of shedding their childhood baggage.

So, what is it with Paul Krugman, once a brilliant economist and now a dark troll fulminating ugly thoughts under stone bridges in Liberal-land? This article, contributed by Peter Foster in Canada’s Financial Post, does a brilliant dissection of Krugman’s visceral hatreds and the warped views he espouses on economics, conservatives and climate change (some of which have been repeated rote on this blog by certain participants).

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/28/peter-foster-the-demons-in-krugmanomics/

What the article doesn’t do is explain from whence do Paul Krugman’s demons arise. What happened to cause his descent into madness?

Last night, after Andrew Breitbart had already left to catch his plane, a few of us hung around to chat and to try to answer one question:  what was the takeaway from Breitbart’s talk?  Eat their eyeballs?  Women’s dominance in the Tea Party means that men are eunuchs?  The fact that the Tea Party needs to sex up a bit (Breitbart suggested cleavage) to attract younger people?  Our responsibility to buy tickets to conservative movies even if we don’t attend, because brave Hollywood conservatives need box office support?  Nope.

Those were all enjoyable motifs that Breitbart interjected repeatedly to liven up his talk, but the real takeaway message was this one:  The true battle today isn’t being fought in the political arena, it’s being fought in the social and culture arena.  It’s there that we need to engage the Left; to out-Alinsky the Alinsky-ites; and to call Leftists on their behavior.  We can’t be afraid of confrontation, unless that confrontation will utterly destroy our lives and our livelihoods.

At first glance, Breitbart isn’t your typical warrior.  He’s got a cloud of graying hair; a smooth, youthful face; bright, clear blue eyes; and he dresses casually in sports jacket, jeans and All-Stars.  He is surprisingly handsome.  I say surprisingly because his handsomeness doesn’t derive from his looks (although he is very good-looking).  His handsomeness derives from his crackling vitality.  He has enough charisma for two people.  Even standing still, Breitbart is kinetic.  This kinetic quality comes about because — and this is a rare trait — you can actually see his mind working.  He is an unstructured speaker, but he brings such humor, energy, wit and (here’s that word again) vitality to his speech, that you feel you are getting the pleasure of engaging in a one-on-one conversation with the most interesting man in the room.

Breitbart’s discursive speech covered a broad range of topics.  The eaten eyeballs trope came about after he explained that he tells his kids that, if someone is trying to bully them, they should first try to handle the matter politely and, if that fails, they should yank out the other person’s eyeballs and eat them, a theme he returned to throughout his talk.  Since we were a sophisticated audience, we understood that Breitbart was not actually advocating violence and cannibalism.  Instead, he was reminding us that we cannot back down from a fight.  The Left’s MO is to bully all who threaten it or stand in its way, and the only way to handle a bully is through confrontation.  Eyeball eating was an amusing metaphor for the need to stand up to the insults and intimidation.

The “men are eunuchs” point was another recurring theme.  Breitbart pointed out that women outnumbered men in the room, something he says he’s noticed over and over again in his dealings with the Tea Party.  While acknowledging that women have more free time (or, at least, more flexibility to their time), he also went on to make the broader point — one I’ve made repeatedly in this blog — which is that the Left, using our schools, works hard to emasculate men.  Rather than cultivating their natural qualities as virtues (bravery, loyalty, energy, etc.), it’s castigated them as vices (aggression, bullheadedness, hyperactivity), and reduced many American men to cowering ciphers in touch with their feminine feelings.

Cleavage?  Yup, that came up too, since Breitbart told us that a friend of his believes that the Tea Party should be sexed up.  I’m not sure about the cleavage, but there was a larger point there, which is that young people are definitely missing from the Tea Party movement.  Older people have a visceral understanding about the Tea Party’s necessity, since it stands for principles that hit them where they live — mortgages, food, jobs, etc.  Young people, however, need another hook to engage them, and sex — or, at least, sexiness – sells. I would also argue that intellectual coherence sells, and the Tea Party has it in spades.  We just need to figure out how to market it to the young.

And that’s where Hollywood comes in.  When Breitbart decided there was a culture war that needed to be fought, and that Hollywood was Ground Zero in this war, his first thought was that he had, at most, an army of three:  Tom Selleck, Robert Davi and Chachi (Scott Baio).  As one Hollywood conservative revealed to Breitbart, though, Hollywood conservatives now number at least 1,500, drawn from all walks of Hollywood life, from writers, to stuntmen, to electricians, to actors, producers and directors.

The problem for Hollywood conservatives is that they commit career suicide if they come out of the conservative closet.  Breitbart told stories of people who were permanently blacklisted for donating a hundred dollars to the “wrong” cause.  This means that those stars who have come out openly as conservatives have taken an enormous risk.  It was in this context that Breitbart said urged us, even if we’re not seeing a movie buy the ticket for that all-important opening weekend.  And to buy the star’s book.  And do whatever else we can to make it clear to the money people that there is money in conservativism.

Perhaps because of his Hollywood background, Breitbart, more than many, understands the theater that is Leftism, and the need to pull back the curtain and show that there isn’t anything real there.  He likes to go up to protesters and simply ask them to explain the beliefs that motivate them.  As he’s frequently shown on video, whether they’re protesting the Koch brothers, Fox, or whatever other liberal cause de jour loads them on the bus, most of the protesters have no idea what’s going on.  They’re there because their masters have instructed them to be there.

The Left, Breitbart says, is a herd.  That is both its strength and its weakness.  He told a very amusing anecdote about spending several hours rollerblading through a vast SEIU crowd protesting a Koch brothers gathering.  After capturing many on tape saying very ill-informed and un-PC things, he decided enough was enough.  So, finding an open space, he announced loudly “We’ve spent enough time here now.  Let’s all go to Applebee’s” — and they did!

The problem for conservatives is that we’re not a herd.  We’re independent, iconoclastic, averse to mass crowds and gainfully employed.  This means that we can seldom get together long enough to create the visuals so necessary in a media age.  The fact that the Tea Party finally transcended this problem explains the explosion of crude, vile, incendiary hostility the MSM has directed at the Tea Party.  Tea Partiers are the first telegenic conservatives since Reagan.

If Andrew Breitbart comes to your town as part of his tour, take (or make) the time to go and see him.  He is a delightful and inspiring speaker, a true happy warrior.  And whether or not he comes to a town near you, buy his book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!.  I’m already in Chapter 2 and enjoying every minute.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

The Bookworm Turns : A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land, available in e-format for $4.99 at Amazon, Smashwords or through your iBook app.

In America, each side of the political aisle routinely accuses the other of engaging in “scare” tactics.  Each side is right.  Doomsday scenarios are how you engage an increasingly distracted population.  My question for you is, when it comes to predicting doomsday scenarios to engage the population, which side is more accurate?

I’ve got three Progressive predictions, two of which were definitely wrong and one of which I think is proving to be wrong:

Progressives argued global cooling, and they were wrong.

Progressives argued anthropogenic global warming, which they’ve now altered to anthropogenic climate change, which I’m sure they will alter to some other fine name when their predictions fail to come to pass.  Currently, I count them as wrong.

Progressives promised that, if “welfare as we know it” ended in 1994, the poor would be dying in the streets.  They were wrong.

Here are three conservative predictions that were correct:

Conservatives said that if ObamaCare passed, health care costs would go up immediately and dramatically.  So far, they’ve been right.

Conservatives said that withdrawing from the Vietnam War would result in a blood bath.  They were right.

Conservatives said that “welfare as we know it” was a miserable, enslaving institution and that reforming it would not result in instant death of all poor people.  They were right.

Obviously, I’ve cherry-picked to find incorrect Progressive predictions and correct conservative predictions.  Can you support my position or disprove it?  I’ll be interested either way.

Most of us here in the Bookworm Room express a healthy skepticism of “experts” in general. Most of us revel in our ability to think and discourse critically for ourselves, while others lament that socially-anointed “experts” are not solemnly revered through incense, incantations and burnt offerings made before the Temple of Orthodoxy. Ah well.

Age plays a factor. As a student in the sciences, I revered all my profs until I learned to see through their intellectual facades. By graduate school, I was far more discriminating. Don’t get me wrong – I was privileged to be able to study and discourse with true intellectual giants.  I recognized that a common trait of these models and mentors was their ability to constantly question convention and reexamine their premises. They could also doubt themselves. I admire them to this day and I wanted someday to be like them. I am still trying.

However, there was also another group of intellectual wannabees, professors and classmates, for whom the sole objective of the id was the ego. Their entire sense of self revolved around a desperate need to be recognized for their “credentials”. This group was highly insecure and many were not particularly bright. I recall PhD students who were already penning their “expert” bestsellers before having completed their orals. Alas, such “scientists” were so intent on creating unwarranted reputations for themselves that they would cause great intellectual mischief in my professional field. Thus do I take any claim to self-proclaimed expertise  or consensus opinion with a healthy grain of salt.

The point I am making is that scientists are humans, subject to all the quirks, foibles and fallibilities of other humans. However, because of their credentials, it is too easy for lay people to accept uncritically what these scientists profess. Scientists, like all other people, can also fall prey to herd mentalities and egos too often pose insurmountable barriers to self-reflection. For many of us, as we get older, realism displaces idealism and teaches many of us the need to think for ourselves. It’s part of our journey into adulthood.

I bring all this up because, at No Frakken Consensus, there is a delightful book review on “The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation”, by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky.

The book is a historical record of the many, many times that scientific, political, historical and social thinking and consensus have been proven wrong…badly wrong. It’s an intellectual journey sprinkled with entertaining footnotes and guide posts to help one navigate beyond the intellectual facades of credentialed experts (one of my favorites: “funding and forecasting may be dependent variables”).

If you click on the image of the book, it takes you to the Amazon website, where you can peruse pages thereof.

It’s a fun read and I am sure that all critical-thinking Bookworm Room aficionados could have loads of fun for years to come in adding to the book’s list of defrocked orthodoxies (it was most recently republished in 1998). It certainly yields more-than enough holy water with which to give the Temple of Orthodoxy a thorough scrub.

Democrats are the friends of big business, Conservatives are the friends of small business. Democrat government inevitably ratchets its way to corruptocracy.

If you don’t agree with this, can we at least agree that Democrats favor highly regulated economies and societies and conservatives don’t?

Let me explain with two examples.

1) The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story about how the EPA has decided that milk, because it contains 4% butterfat, should be regulated under the same environmental control standards as petroleum. Consequently, dairy farmers will have to file Federally approve emergency plans on how to deal with “oil spills” and such. Large dairies (some dairies in California milk 10,000 or more cows at a time) will probably be able to comply. Small dairies (goat and sheep milk farms, Vermont dairy producers etc. ) are just out of luck. I happen to know something about the dairy industry – it’s a highly politicized, highly subsidized industry that operates on very thin margins. I’m sure that they will come to an accommodation with the EPA and Federal Government…at a very steep price, politically and $-wise!

2) As it becomes increasingly clear the degree to which Obama Care really is a pig-in-a-poke, there is frantic activity to opt out of it. The numbers of entities that have received waivers from ObamaCare (other than Congress) magically rose from about 200 to 700+ immediately after the SOTU speech. Those entities are large companies and unions on the inside track. The way you get a waiver is to have a lobbyist obtain it on your behalf. Money exchanges hands. Large companies can afford this, small companies…out of luck! If ObamaCare is so great, why the rush by Congress, favored businesses and union to obtain waivers?

Increased regulation is inversely proportional to lobbying activity. The less regulation there is, the less the need to influence government. The more regulation, the more the need to petition the royal aristocracy at a heavy price. The need to petition our government for redress under regulations fostered by our government is a corrupting influence. If you lack influence and can’t make payment, you are out of the equation. Here in Chicagoland, we know all about this. Here is what happens:

Society sediments into three classes: a) an aristocratic Democrat nomenklatura that controls the regulatory and judiciary structures of society; b) a wealthy, economic class that can afford to exchange favors for regulatory exemptions and waivers…at a price; c) a lumpen proletariat, outside of the power structures, imprisoned into forced into regulatory straight-jackets (taxable prey…if you will) that they will never be able to escape unless willing to surrender at the price of their souls. It is this last class that pays the bills for the others. This isn’t new…despite its “progressive” tag, it’s a regression to 19th Century economic “shakedown” realities.

My entire career, I have been a champion of entrepreneurs and small companies. They are vital to our society and economy, as innovators, risk-takers and employers. I would hate to see this glorious period end as we slouch toward third-world corruptocracy.

I know that Democrats mouth have historically mouthed platitudes about looking after the “little guy”. I would like to think that only the truly moronic and armchair philosophers walled into their temples of abstract theory can fail to see how Orwellian and corrupting these platitudes are.

Have we as a nation arrived at a point where we can stop this from happening or is it inevitable? A Jewish relative once remarked that no Jew sleeps without two shoes under his bed stuffed with a roll of cash, in case of a quick getaway. I am starting to understand his point.

Yesterday I mentioned John Hawkin’s post explaining why he is sponsoring HomoCon.  I thought a nice companion piece would be Nick Gillespie’s post reprinting the HomoCon platform, a platform I think that all conservatives will find agreeable.

Remember (as if you, my dear readers, ever forget):  Unlike the statists/regressives/so-called liberals, we are not the party of identity politics.  We are the party of small government and big security.  We welcome those who agree with us on those issues, regardless of their race, color, creed, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or country of national origin.  We also acknowledge that there will inevitably be disagreements on the ideological periphery.  We know, though, that under America’s two party system, we cannot win federal elections if we allow our attention to wander too far from the core issues that currently threaten to destroy the country entirely.

My sense is that, aside from the belief many hold that homosexual activity is sinful, I believe that gay marriage is the single most divisive political issue right now between conservative gays (at least, those conservative gays who support gay marriage) and other conservatives (at least, those other conservatives who don’t support gay marriage).  It shouldn’t be.

As I’ve said before, I am not a fan of gay marriage, since I think marriage is, at its core, a religious issue.    The smartest way to resolve it would be for the state to get out of the marriage business entirely and, instead, limit itself to allowing those “domestic partnerships” that it deems are in the state’s interest.

Right now, we probably all agree that heterosexual partnerships fall in that “state interest” category.  A slight majority of Americans would add homosexual partnerships to that category, something that should be worked at through societal consensus, not judicial fiat.  And if the specter of “dogs and cats, living together” comes up, we’ll deal with that too.  And then let those various partners find the churches that will unite them before their God(s).  End of story.

That’s my view, for what it’s worth.  But my question for those opposed to gay conservatives who support conservatism on the most important political issue of the day is this:  Can you afford to get into a divisive fight over what is, temporarily at least, a less significant issue than saving our entire country from frighteningly potential internal economic collapse and external terrorist and military attack?

One of the things that I try to understand is the Great Divide between today’s Liberals and conservatives that has left us talking past one another on policy issues. Frankly, I have concluded that discussion with Liberals is often futile because we attribute different meanings to words and concepts.

One of those concepts, I suspect, has to do with “money”.  Let me throw the following proposition on the table for discussion:

Liberal /Lefties view “money” as a fixed, tangible quantity with intrinsic value, like gold coins, for example. Thus, the value of money is intrinsic to the lucre itself, be it coins or dollar notes. Conservatives, on the other hand, see “money” more abstractly as representing “created value”…as scrip or IOU on value created or received. As economists put it, money is a “medium of exchange” for value. So, for liberals, “money” is something tangible to that must be amassed by taking from someone else’s stash. For conservatives, “money” is something more abstract that must to be created (i.e. goods or services) directly (e.g., wages) or indirectly (e.g., inheritance) through the creation of “value”.

How might this color our perceptions of one another?

1) When people like Bill Gates amass a large quantity of money by creating products that many people wish to purchase, conservatives view Gates’ money as a reflection of the value that he created and contributed others. No hard feelings there – it’s a fair exchange. A Liberal/Lefty, however, sees only Gate’s amassed pot of lucre that appears disproportionately high compared to the lucre stored in other peoples’ pots. They see this imbalance as patently unfair, especially since this lucre was transferred from other peoples’ modest stashes into Bill Gates’ already whopping big stash: Bill has more, all of his customers have less.

2) When money is needed to achieve a desirable social or governmental goal, a conservative recognizes that such money needs to be generated somewhere to pay for this goal. This can only be done by either drawing down existing value (confiscating peoples’ lucre) or by creating new  ‘value” that can be taxed (i.e., growing the economy). A Liberal/Lefty doesn’t make this connection – they see the process simply as one of either redistributing the existing lucre from other peoples’ pots or creating new lucre by printing more money. The problem of printing new lucre, of course, is that it is still underwritten by a fixed quantity of value – expanding money supply representing a fixed value means that each dollar is worth less. We call that inflation.

I can’t tell you how many times Liberals have looked at me with puzzlement when I have asked where they expect to get the money for their favored social programs.

3) De-linking “money” from the process of wealth creation makes it easy for Liberal/Lefties to confuse using tax money to pay for unemployment checks, dance troupes or road repair as “economic stimulus”. You are, after all, taking lucre sitting idle in some peoples’ pots and putting that lucre into other peoples’ pockets to spend on purchases. Unfortunately, the fact is that such activities do not in themselves create new value. This cannot therefore “grow” the economy.

What do you think? Am I onto something? And, if so, what other aspects of the Great Divide does this help to explain? Does this help or hinder us in discussing our differences with the Liberal /Left?