The American Spectator

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Opportunity Knocks

10.2.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 7)

George Neumayr, as usual, has written an excellent essay. The paragraph that captures the essence of his thought:

"This crisis exposes not the opposition between big business and big government but its collusion. Derelict bankers just resemble the liberal politicians who oversee them. Earmarking pols treat money cavalierly, then encourage bankers to behave the same, mandating that banks give out loans to people who don't deserve them in the same way Congress doles out pork projects."

The difference between conservatives (or conservative-libertarians) and all the rest is an instinctive mistrust not of Big Government, but of human nature. It is passe these days to raise the now ancient Federalist arguments concerning limited government. The Founders were on to something when they crafted our constitution. They had a more accurate understanding of human nature than later day socialists and do-gooders. Graft and corruption at the local or state level can usually be confined to those locales. But corruption written on the national canvas can be catastrophic -- as we are now witnessing. What is truly frightening is the complicity of the "average" Americans in all of this. We've been seduced with no-cash low interest homes; $10,000 lines of credit despite the fact we earn make $50,000 a year, and bankruptcy laws that allow us to "write-off" our proliferate consumption; it is better for "them" to absorb the losses (i.e. those who actually defer gratification and their appetites). Lincoln once spoke of the "better angels of our nature. The Federal Government nationalized the worst instincts of our fallen nature. Somehow, in a period of just one or two generations, we've allowed our government to spread the avarice of K Street to Main St. George Neumayr raises the serious point that what has occurred over time is anything but conservative.

The cost of this form of Public/Private partnership in greed may come very soon. One can imagine the horror and panic that could befall millions some Monday morning when they stop to fill up their automobiles or pay for their Starbucks and their credit cards are rejected. In a blink of an eye, millions will soon learn a lesson that their great grand parents knew: Cash is King.
-- JP
Indiana

Mr. Neumayr, pardon my dramatic response, but the United States of America, if not the world, has lost its mind. We are undone. Who or what can save us from this insanity? It's complete madness. Nothing from history can inform us, not Hitler, not Stalin. Those who are inciting this path to destruction think they are insulated by their wealth, and therein lies the folly. Liberalism's intrinsic need to control the lives of others has reached the pinnacle of its corrupt inspiration. God is dead, it must be true, our professors said so. Those who would believe otherwise must be impugned, destroyed, and eradicated like cockroaches. This is where we are, what we've become, and our destiny is certain. Poor Sarah Palin.

When I was still a youngster, during the Vietnam War, my father and I were eating one day in a local restaurant. When we got in line to pay our check, an old gentleman struck up a conversation with me. Something he said gave me pause, and as a young man, a lot to think about. He said, "We'd be destroyed, if it weren't for the Christians holding us together." I don't know if he was a follower of Christ, or not, but he understood the truth. So, to paraphrase a saying, "Those whom God wishes to destroy He first makes mad." Perhaps, we are at that precipice.
-- Mike Showalter
Austin, Texas

Mr. Neumayr once again illuminates the folly of liberalism and the willful ignorance of its proponents, not to mention the same willful ignorance of the victims. Yes, I said victims. Once again we see the same people that liberals putatively are trying to help suffering from the unintended consequences of their policies. I have not yet heard discussion about the consequences to the families who had the American dream of home ownership writ large by the Community Reinvestment Act. I am reminded of Charlie Brown running up to kick the football, all trust and faith, ending up flat on his back when Lucy pulled the ball away at the last second. Set up for failure and yet he lines up again and again and again only to have the ball pulled away at the last second.

I live in the suburbs of Detroit; I do business in the City of Detroit. For all of the examples of the failure of liberalism and its policies, Detroit takes the proverbial cake. Since the advent of the Great Society the City of Detroit has spiraled into what could charitably called a third world country. Decimated neighborhoods, criminally ineffectual schools, rampant crime, welfare queens, crumbling infrastructure, white flight, middle class black flight, corrupt pols feeding at the trough, and on and on and on.

And oh the irony(idiocy?), after all of this 90+% of the those still left in this dying city blindly support Mr. Change and his socialist fantasies.

This from the city that put America and the world on wheels.

It boggles the mind.
-- Stuart Reed
Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan

Mr. Neumayr is surprised that "the country grows more receptive to liberalism in an economic crisis." Keep in mind that during great stress junkies and alcoholics find their greatest comforts in the poisons that got them there in the first place. They are not too different than the average citizen.
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

THROW HER IN JAIL
Re: Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz'sNature as a Privileged Minority:

Bestowing "Mother Nature" with the equivalent of "human rights" sounds great to the irrational, ignorant, and agenda-driven individuals who champion them...but only in cases where those rights work in one direction -- to the benefit of Mother Nature.

There is an opposite cause and effect to this kind of nonsensical edict that will (at some point) reveal its wrath; What happens when "Mother Nature" harms or destroys an individual, group of individuals, or a community as a result of Her actions?

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Trade, John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, Business, Environment, Constitution, Law, Military, NATO, Conservatism, Energy, Oil