Whilst perusing reader's comments about some conservative's books on Amazon, I came across a question - Why are there all these books that are aimed at making conservatives out of liberals, but you never see the opposite?
Is there any such animal, an argument a liberal/progressive could put forth to a conservative and turn him into a raving liberal?
Methinks not. I pride myself in having the capacity to think objectively when I wish to do so, stand back and observe from a neutral position.

Try as I might, I cannot think of an argument that would persuade a conservative to accept a progressive view of the world. Is it perhaps that the progressive view is not amenable to rational thought? Is there rationality to any part of the progressive world? Truthfully, there is; it just depends on your beginning premises. For progressivism is based on the premise that Man is fundamentally evil, and that individuals are ultimately incapable of self-determination for their own best interest. In fact, many progs believe that individuals have no capacity for self-determination: their actions are guided and chosen for them by external factors.

Once you accept these premises, one can rationally argue for a socialist or fascist government to guide the populus mobile in a utopian direction. It is a matter of deciding what type of Big Brother Government you want, not a question whether we should have one at all.

So the answer to the original question is no; there is no book or argument that can persuade one who believes that Man is fundamentally good, and capable of self-direction to believe otherwise. You may argue that books such as Mein Kampf persuaded thousands of Germans toward a socialist dictatorship, but they would not have gone down that road of thought if they had not already had the premise born and nurtured in them that Man is basically Evil; Hitler was just extending an already nascent thought process. People who are born free, and have experienced individual freedom cannot accept the reverse, but people who are born in chains are capable of feeling the winds of freedom under their wings and turning to individual liberty.

"It may be safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the State governments will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority. Projects of usurpation cannot be masked under pretences so likely to escape the penetration of select bodies of men, as of the people at large. The legislatures will have better means of information. They can discover the danger at a distance; and possessing all the organs of civil power, and the confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of opposition, in which they can combine all the resources of the community. They can readily communicate with each other in the different States, and unite their common forces for the protection of their common liberty.
   The great extent of the country is a further security. We have already experienced its utility against the attacks of a foreign power. And it wold have precisely the same effect against the enterprises of ambitious rulers in the national councils. If the federal army should be able to quell the resistance of one State, the distant States would have it in their power to make head with fresh forces. The advantages obtained in one place must be abandoned to subdue the opposition in others; and the moment the part which had been reduced to submission was left to itself, its efforts would be renewed, and its resistance revived.
....When will the time arrive that the federal government can raise and maintain an army capable of erecting a despotism over the great body of the people of an immense empire, who are in a situation, through the medium of their State governments, to take measures for their own defence, with all the celerity, regularity, and system of independent nations?"

The writer of Federalist Paper 28, Alexander Hamilton, suggests that the only bulwark against the federal government going beyond its Constitutional boundaries is the power of the States. More specifically in modern terms, the power of the States to employ their individual National Guards, who are on paper under the aegis of the governors, against federal troops which are employed by the federal government in imposing various unconstitutional mandates on the people. In a case where the President should issue an Executive Order of martial law, but which the Governors of the several States deem to be without reason, they are capable of, and morally bound to reject the federalization of their individual National Guards, and use them instead to resist federal troops.

In 2007, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act stipulated that the President may federalize a State's National Guard for disturbances within the State without the Governor's permission, but upon the urging of a letter signed by all 50 governors, that section was repealed the following year. However, it still allows for the federalization of a State's National Guard, against a Governor's objection, under a Congressionally sanctioned emergency or declaration of war. This last provision is key: we must be on guard to watch for Congressional declarations of national emergency, and resist the passage of them, lest it give the President the legal power to federalize State National Guard troops for domestic disturbances in opposition to the wishes of the people and the State's governors.

I shall close this article with the warning Hamilton gave in the same Federalist Paper: "The obstacles to usurpation and the facilities of resistance increase with the increased extent of the state (the Federal Government), provided that the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them. The natural strength of the people in a large community, in proportion to the artificial strength of the government, is greater than in a small, and of course more competent to a struggle with the attempts of the government to establish a tyranny." (italics mine) To put this in another way, the Federal Government's ability to impose forcible tyranny upon the citizens is paltry compared to the ability of the large number of citizens willing to resist such tyranny.

Geraldo (nee Gerald) Rivera went on another flamboyant scree today, talking about the sentencing of Bernard Kerik on multiple convictions of bribery, tax evasion, and lying on his Homeland Security Secretary vetting sheet. Kerik admitted that he failed to report the $255,000 value of a renovation done free of charge by a New Jersey contractor that was trying to land a city license. He also admitted that he lied about the renovations and his relationship with the contractor, which had suspected mob ties, when he was being vetted for the Cabinet post of secretary of Homeland Security.

When I heard Gerry expressing his anger at the length of Kerik's sentence, I had one of them "I don't think we're in Kansas, Toto" moments again, which seem to come more frequently lately. I never liked Gerry very much, always saw him as a cross between an ethno-*imp and a carnival barker with no discernible political motivation or stance. Nevertheless, I was surprised by his defense of Kerik. Gerry calls Kerik a hero, and castigates the Federal Judge who sentenced him for ignoring all that Kerik did in his hero status. Usually, Gerry sticks up for illegals, minorities, the great unwashed, and any other kind that challenge the status quo and those in power.

Evidence that Kerik is a hero? Gerry interviewed Rep. Pete King and a woman from New York City whose name I didn't catch. From the way they spoke about him, you might have thought that Bernie had personally rescued dozens of people from the Twin Towers, flying down on the wings of an angel, and disregarding any danger to himself to save lives (the ordinary concept of a hero). But actually, while the Towers were coming down, Bernie was safely inside the New York Police Headquarters giving TV interviews. I'm not saying that he fell down on the job as Police Commissioner, in fact he did his job very well, as he was hired to do. Where I come from, doing your job as expected means that you are competent and have earned your pay; it doesn't make you a hero or anything more than that.

But this woman, when asked by Gerry to tell the audience why Kerik was a hero, responded that she was afraid living in New York after the attack by Wahhabist terrorists, and she remained glued to the TV set for days afterward watching Commissioner Kerik assuring everyone that they would be okay; this, in her eyes, made Kerik a hero.

Okay, someone pats you on the hand and tells you everything will be alright - immediate hero! Like, in the language of my youth, gag me with a spoon!  I guess that someone who is a survivor of an ingrown toenail is a hero to someone else, but not in my book. This dumbing down of heroism is getting pathetic.

Yes, I think that when someone is sentenced in a criminal case, the good he has done, and his better side should be considered as well as what harm he has done - no problem there. But on the other side of the coin, a person in a position of public trust must, when found to have betrayed that public trust, should be held liable to the full extent of the law. This is the true application of the Constitutional mandate that all have equal protection under the law. Often misread or misunderstood, particularly by Progressive group-thinkers, the concept of equal protection under the law arose in opposition to the common practice in European law of assigning different penalties for the same crime according to the class statuses of the perpetrator and the victim. For instance, if a member of the nobility were to murder a commoner, he would get a lighter sentence, based solely on his status, than a commoner would receive for murdering another commoner. Thus, a commoner would have less protection, under the law, from being murdered by a nobleman than by another commoner; conversely, a commoner who robbed a nobleman would suffer a greater penalty than if he had robbed another commoner of the same amount of money. The dicta that we are all equal in the eyes of the law leveled the field so that status does not affect the application of the law.

Of course, with the human frailty to consider status, especially political status as a mitigating factor, the Constitutional intent has become less visible in the prosecution and sentencing of politicians, or even in the reverse, in that of the prosecution and sentencing of people who commit crimes against politicians. If we want to return to a true Constitutional Republic, and a nation of laws, then some laws and procedures need to be re-examined.

The past two weeks have been very rough for the Progressives; the piece de resistance came this afternoon when their icon, the man who personified the lust for power, greed, and special interests bit the dust.

Doubtless, those who worship him in this District will not let him take a dirt nap in peace, but will erect a huge monument (at taxpayer expense) to His Lordship. It was a disgusting, gag-me-with-a-spoon time on the local news today; many newscasters will have to go out and buy new kneepads for when they attend his funeral.

King O' Pork Murtha had a rough road ahead in the upcoming mid-term election, as his opponent, Bill Russell, had got within 5 points of beating him in the last election. Perhaps Jack saw the cards and decided to die with his boots on.

In any case, the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee won't have a viable candidate in the primary three months from now; probably some low-life lawyer will run against Lt. Col. (Ret.) Russell in the general election, ensuring another good conservative in the House next January.

Thanks, Jack! You died just in time!

A fundamental principle of Progressivism is that modern society is too complex for the ordinary person to comprehend, therefore experts are needed to manage society, people who are given sweeping powers to administrate the ship of state without public control.

For Progressives, this translates in practice to the recurrent theme we have seen lately in the Hussein Administration and the Progressives in Congress whereby they have a deliberate tin ear to public outcry to their policies. In their backroom policymaking practices, they genuinely think that we the people are just too uninformed to be able to have a legitimate input to the legislative process. They were educated and trained to know what is best for the country, not Joe the Plumber.

In truth, no society is more or less complex than another. We the people have just as much, or even better, understanding of how things work in society, given that we actually live in the real world daily, not inside the hallowed halls of the District of Corruption.

My mother, a font of useful thinking, used to say "Don't complicate things, just stand back and look at it in its simplest form," when I complained about how difficult a certain problem was. It's all a matter of how you approach a problem, how you perceive its complexity, or lack thereof.

Progressives think in terms of conflicting interests and groups, leading them to believe that things are so complex when in fact they are not. It is only for people who believe that we are all unhyphenated Americans, equal before the law, that the supposed complexity vanishes into thin air and things become simple once more. The Founders understood this, and were able to confine the Constitution to a few pages - the simplest political document in history - because it is applicable to all Americans.

Once we understand this, that legislation should not be a complex set of deals to placate an infinite number of special interests, but a simple process that is meant for all, can we take back the power we have given the "experts".

As we Americans proceed to oust the Progressives in this Second American Revolution, we must keep this principle of simplicity in mind at all times. We must not allow legislators or administrators to complicate things, to listen to a plethora of special interests, to design legislation that the average person cannot understand. For example, the Fair Tax Bill, H.R. 25, is 131 pages long in contrast to the Internal Revenue Code which is thousands of pages (no one knows for certain).

Keep It Simple Stupid!

Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans...If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.
Henry Cabot Lodge, 1888

First we have this: the federal deficit, particularly the money we are borrowing from China, is a potential tool of blackmail.

Deficit Balloons Into National-Security Threat

Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal Feburary 2, 2010

The federal budget deficit has long since graduated from nuisance to headache to pressing national concern. Now, however, it has become so large and persistent that it is time to start thinking of it as something else entirely: a national-security threat.

The budget plan released Monday by the Obama administration illustrates why this escalation is warranted. The numbers are mind-numbing: a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, $1.3 trillion next year, $8.5 trillion for the next 10 years combined—and that assumes Congress enacts President Barack Obama's proposals to start bringing it down, and that the proposals work.

These numbers are often discussed as an economic and domestic problem. But it's time to start thinking of the ramifications for America's ability to continue playing its traditional global role.

The U.S. government this year will borrow one of every three dollars it spends, with many of those funds coming from foreign countries. That weakens America's standing and its freedom to act; strengthens China and other world powers including cash-rich oil producers; puts long-term defense spending at risk; undermines the power of the American system as a model for developing countries; and reduces the aura of power that has been a great intangible asset for presidents for more than a century.

"We've reached a point now where there's an intimate link between our solvency and our national security," says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior national-security adviser in both the first and second Bush presidencies. "What's so discouraging is that our domestic politics don't seem to be up to the challenge. And the whole world is watching."

In the 21st-century world order, the classic, narrow definition of national-security threats already has expanded in ways that make traditional foreign-policy thinking antiquated. The list of American security concerns now includes dependence on foreign oil and global warming, for example.

Consider just four of the ways that budget deficits also threaten American's national security:

• They make America vulnerable to foreign pressures.

The U.S. has about $7.5 trillion in accumulated debt held by the public, about half of that in the hands of investors abroad.

Aside from the fact that each American next year will chip in more than $800 just to pay interest on this debt, that situation means America's government is dependent on the largesse of foreign creditors and subject to the whims of international financial markets. A foreign government, through the actions of its central bank, could put pressure on the U.S. in a way its military never could. Even under a more benign scenario, a debt-ridden U.S. is vulnerable to a run on the American dollar that begins abroad.

Either way, Mr. Haass says, "it reduces our independence."

• Chinese power is growing as a result.

A lot of the deficit is being financed by China, which is selling the U.S. many billions of dollars of manufactured goods, then lending the accumulated dollars back to the U.S. The IOUs are stacking up in Beijing.

So far this has been a mutually beneficial arrangement, but it is slowly increasing Chinese leverage over American consumers and the American government. At some point, the U.S. may have to bend its policies before either an implicit or explicit Chinese threat to stop the merry-go-round.

Just this weekend, for example, the U.S. angered China by agreeing to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion in arms. At some point, will the U.S. face economic servitude to China that would make such a policy decision impossible?

• Long-term national-security budgets are put at risk.

This year, thanks in some measure to continuing high costs from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. will spend a once-unthinkable $688 billion on defense. (Before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, by contrast, the figure was closer to $300 billion.)

Staggering as the defense outlays are, the deficit is twice as large. The much smaller budgets for the rest of America's international operations—diplomacy, assistance for friendly nations—are dwarfed even more dramatically by the deficit.

These national-security budgets have been largely sacrosanct in the era of terrorism. But unless the deficit arc changes, at some point they will come under pressure for cuts.

• The American model is being undermined before the rest of the world.

This is the great intangible impact of yawning budget deficits. The image of an invincible America had two large effects over the last century or so. First, it made other countries listen when Washington talked. And second, it often—not always, of course, but often—made other peoples and leaders yearn to be like America.

Sometimes that produced jealousy and resentment among leaders, but often it drew to the top of foreign lands leaders who admired the U.S. and wanted their countries to emulate it. Such leaders are good allies.

The Obama administration has pledged to create a bipartisan commission charged with balancing the budget, except for interest payments, by 2015. The damage deficits can do to America's world standing is a good reason to hope the commission works.

Then we have this, as reported last week: the NSC has downgraded spying on China from a Priority 1 to Priority 2.

 China removed as top priority for spies - Intelligence chiefs object

Bill Gertz January 20, 2010, Washington Times

The White House National Security Council recently directed U.S. spy agencies to lower the priority placed on intelligence collection for China, amid opposition to the policy change from senior intelligence leaders who feared it would hamper efforts to obtain secrets about Beijing's military and its cyber-attacks.

The downgrading of intelligence gathering on China was challenged by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and CIA Director Leon E. Panetta after it was first proposed in interagency memorandums in October, current and former intelligence officials said.

The decision downgrades China from "Priority 1" status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to "Priority 2," which covers specific events such as the humanitarian crisis after the Haitian earthquake or tensions between India and Pakistan.

The National Security Council staff, in response, pressed ahead with the change and sought to assure Mr. Blair and other intelligence chiefs that the change would not affect the allocation of resources for spying on China or the urgency of focusing on Chinese spying targets, the officials told The Washington Times.

White House National Security Council officials declined to comment on the intelligence issue. Mike Birmingham, a spokesman for Mr. Blair, declined to comment. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.

But administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the new policy is part of the Obama administration's larger effort to develop a more cooperative relationship with Beijing.

A U.S. official who defended the policy change said "everybody involved understood the absolute importance of China as an intelligence priority."

"This is a case in which the assignment of a relative number — one or two — wouldn't mean, or change, a damn thing. And it didn't." The official said the U.S. government "has to keep its eyes on a host of threats, challenges and opportunities overseas. That's how it works."

Critics within the government, however, said the change will mean that strategic intelligence on China — the gathering of data and analysis of information — will be reduced over time, undermining what officials said are urgently needed efforts to know more about China's political, economic, military and intelligence activities.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed concern about the change.

"For those who say changing from Priority 1 to Priority 2 doesn't make any difference — well then, why do it?" he asked. "China should be at the top of the priority list, not moving down."

Officials said the lower intelligence priority for China is a subtle but significant change that will affect an array of intelligence activities.

Although the effect is not expected to be immediate, a change in priority number generally means that projects regarding that country are scrutinized more skeptically on budgetary and other grounds. Agencies likely will reduce spending for intelligence operations on China, whether carried out by spies or by photographic and electronic-intercept satellites.

Critics of the decision also fear that the lower priority will cause CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency operatives to take fewer risks in the field when spying on Chinese targets.

One new area that has been given a higher intelligence priority under the Obama administration is intelligence collection on climate change, a nontraditional mission marginally linked to national security. The CIA recently announced that it had set up a center to study the impact of climate change.

One U.S. official said the NSC intelligence policy change followed protests from China's government about the publication in September of the National Intelligence Strategy, produced by Mr. Blair's DNI office. The strategy report identified China as one of four main threats to U.S. interests, along with Russia, Iran and North Korea.

At the time of its release, Mr. Blair was asked by reporters about the strategy report's harsh assessment of China and efforts to increase intelligence gathering on China.

"I would say that it is a muscular intelligence response to meet the nations responsibilities so that we can provide good advice to the policymakers and in the field," he said.

The Chinese government reacted harshly to the strategy report, both in public and in diplomatic channels, the official said.

A Chinese government spokesman in September stated that "we urge the United States to discard its Cold War mindset and prejudice, correct the mistakes in the [National Intelligence Strategy] report and stop publishing wrong opinions about China which may mislead the American people and undermine the mutual trust between China and the United States."

The NSC downgrading of China from so-called "Pri-1" to "Pri-2" was a political decision by the Obama administration that was designed to assuage Chinese concerns that intelligence agencies were exaggerating the threat from Beijing, the official said.

John Tkacik, a former State Department intelligence official, said the demotion of China to a second-tier priority reflects bias within the NSC staff.

"It means that the Obama administration doesn't understand the profound challenge that China has become or, even more disturbing, it cannot understand that China's challenges to America's policies are becoming even more threatening with each passing week," he said.

The intelligence downgrade was disclosed as civilian and military leaders were calling U.S. intelligence collection and analysis on China deficient.

Adm. Robert Willard, the new commander of U.S. Pacific Command, indirectly criticized U.S. intelligence estimates on China last fall, telling reporters in November that during the past decade "China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity every year. They've grown at an unprecedented rate in those capabilities."

Mr. Hoekstra said he had not been briefed in advance about the NSC's new policy on China intelligence gathering.

But the shift sends the wrong signal to the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community that China is not important, he said in an interview.

"That's a wrong analysis," Mr. Hoekstra said. "The current situation with China is that they are cheating on trade agreements, aggressively pursuing military capabilities and aggressively conducting cyber-attacks."

A military official also said recently that Army, Air Force and Navy intelligence components are just beginning to understand the growing need to focus more intelligence assets on the challenges posed by China's military buildup and aggressive intelligence activities.

Counterintelligence officials also were surprised at the decision to lower the intelligence priority on China, noting that China's espionage, technology theft and economic spying continue to dominate scarce resources, including people and funds.

Michelle Van Cleave, former national counterintelligence executive, also said the priority change was ill-advised and will hurt personnel, funding and intelligence assets devoted to Chinese targets.

"Chinese intelligence is going after us with a vengeance," she said, noting that the problem includes industrial espionage, technology diversion and stealing defense and other national security secrets, in addition to a global campaign of cyber-espionage.

"So why are they doing this?" she asked. "I am very troubled by how little U.S. intelligence really knows about the Chinese, in part because they have been so successful against us. Our national leadership should be pushing to close this intelligence gap, because if they dont, they will risk making serious miscalculations in dealing with China."

Is there a connection? Just because two things are related does not prove causality, but it sure looks suspiciously like China has already put pressure on the White House to downgrade our spying on them.

Proof positive that Progressives are certifiably insane:
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/walmart-customer-arrested-for-urinating-on-steaks.html

"Either this man was not in his right mind, or this was the stupidest animal-rights protest ever. The police in Canton, Ohio report that a man was arrested and jailed for urinating on a Walmart meat counter, ruining $600 worth of steak."

The lead sentence is redundant; animal-rights activists are by definition not in their right minds.

While many see the election of Brown to the US Senate as a Godsend, able with one leap to stall the Health Care Mess, it is not really the point.
Michael Savage is saying that we must not Obamacize Brown, in other words, make him the Messiah of the Right. I'll agree with that, but what he and many others fail to see is the symbolic importance of his election.
To historians years from now, I think this will be seen as the watershed event where Conservatives started the war against the forces of Fascism. It is a moral victory more than a tactical victory in that we can see now that the Fascists CAN be defeated, and surprisingly easily at that.
This past year, many including myself have been disheartened by the apparently omnipotent force of evil flooding from Washington; we have had hopes that the 2010 elections would start to turn the tide in our favor, but that it would take another two years after that before we would obtain any concrete results in the 2012 Presidential election.
Not so anymore; we have seen what can be done, and if we keep up the fight, we'll have a solid majority in both Houses come this time next year to block any initiative by the Obama Regime.