The End of Debate

“…In all my years I ain’t never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell yeah! I’m for debating anything…” 

– (Stephen Hopkins, ‘1776‘) 

—

Once upon a time, the art of debate was viewed as one of the most laudable aspects of American Society. It’s part of our national fabric, and our country was conceived almost solely as a result of prolonged and heated debate. Debate teams have been a constant in schools for ages, and the ability to winningly articulate one’s ideas is as central to our national identity as freedom itself. We even created our Congress as two parts with debate expressly in mind, with the Senate being the chamber where differing points of view could be thoroughly discussed by each state’s most esteemed intellects.

But today, the accepted virtue of Free Debate now seems hopelessly anachronistic.

(via Mark Hemingway at The Weekly Standard) – “…On his blog this morning, Roger Pielke Jr. at the University of Colorado, a respected climate scientist, reveals that he was one of seven academics being investigated by Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources.

And the good professor’s supposed crime, which is suddenly in need of Congressional inquiry? Take a wild guess:

Remembering D-Day: June 6, 1944 (VIDEO)

June 6, 1944, the allied armies launched the greatest amphibious assault in the history of mankind. Their bravery can’t be overstated, and must never be forgotten:

Of course: Somehow, GOP is to blame for “Wrongheaded” and “Cynical” distrust of Government…

Obviously, it’s not as if the President and the Democrat-led Senate could ever be to blame:

(via The Hill; May 13, 2013) – “…What’s blocking us right now is a sort of hyper-partisanship in Washington that I was, frankly, hoping to overcome in 2008, and in the midst of crisis rather than saying now’s the time for us to come together, decided to take another path,” Obama said. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet.”

“I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them,” Obama said. “And as a consequence we get the kind of gridlock that makes people cynical about government…”

Ah-ha!! So, it was “gridlock” (which was mysteriously created by the combined efforts of the Republican base and Rush Limbaugh) which was/is responsible for Americans becoming increasingly “cynical about government”. Sure. That, like, makes total sense, …right?

Riiiiiiiight.

Okay, so it doesn’t. Which is precisely why barely a year later, the President realized that he needed to remind us all (again) what silly little ninny-heads we seem to be:

Stop with all the %@!*#&^! Warnings, would ya’??!?

We’re being warned to death.

Product warnings. Tool Warnings. Ride Warnings. Viewer Warnings. Warnings on everything from coffee to cough drops, and from matches to mattresses. Warnings in every single set of instructions for anything we’ve ever bought, and ever WILL buy. Warnings at work, Warnings at home, and Warnings the entirety of our commute between.

“Warning: there’s another Warning ahead! 

You have been Warned…”

Yet now, even as we are several orders of magnitude past merely being replete with warnings, the state of California wants to drop still another warning into our lives. Any guesses what new “danger” has been uncovered by our duly-elected Wizards of Smart, and which now (naturally) requires a warning label to protect us from its fearsome wrath?

Give up?

It’s SODA.

Yes, the drink.

As in “Soda Pop”.

(VIDEO) – Memorial Day Tribute

The video below is still the best, most stirring Memorial Day Tribute I’ve ever found.

May God Bless our brave military men and women, too many of whom have sacrificed EVERYTHING to protect our freedom. They are the reason we can spend today cooking hot dogs and hamburgers with our family.

She’s back: Senator Di-Fi wants to ban guns that merely LOOK like military weapons

Here we go again.

In early 2013, Senator Dianne Feinstein was at the forefront of an effort to institute a government ban on more than 150 types of firearms, including rifles, pistols and shotguns. Thankfully, that legislation was shot down (…pun very much intended…).

But barely a year later she’s back, and singing the same ol’ tune:

Gotta hand it to her, though: she may have the approximate mental acuity of a cabbage leaf, but she certainly knows how to appeal to her base:

Democrat Senator Feinstein on Gov’t Surveillance: Rules for Me, but Not for Thee

It must be wonderful to live in a world where the rules don’t apply to you, …because you make all the rules.

And it must come as quite a shock when suddenly your rights are being usurped, right along with those of the hoi polloi:

(via Washington Post) – “…Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.) made waves Tuesday when she publicly accused the Central Intelligence Agency of spying on Senate computers in an alleged attempt to thwart her committee’s investigation into Bush era interrogation and detention practices. The senator even suggested that the agency had violated the Constitution and federal law.

But while Feinstein is up in arms about the intelligence agency’s search of her staff’s computer system and network, she has been an avid defender of National Security Agency surveillance programs. “It’s called protecting America,” she said shortly after the news broke that the NSA was collecting domestic phone records in bulk...”

OLD: “#BanBossy” — NEW: “Ban EVERY Word We Don’t Like”

In comparison, “Ban Bossy” looks positively restrained.

It was only a couple days ago that I wrote the following about the #BanBossy crowd:

“…we have the smarty-pantsers on the Left trying to remove another word from the English language, as they are wont to do. But words aren’t inherently cruel and a free society has no business banning ANY words. If you ban one word, people will simply substitute some OTHER word to convey that same meaning. Guaranteed.

Worth noting is it seems to be the allegedly free-speech-loving Progressives who are always enamored with the removal or banning of words. Our institutes of higher learning seem especially smitten with this idea…”

And in light of this newest example, my observation can only be termed disturbingly prescient: