After a year of college, riddled with Keynesian economics, moral relativism, and revisionist history, the question "Why am I here?" is a logical one for any conservative.

Sure, there are the clear advantages to a college degree, from the job opportunities to the social environment (as well as getting to write for the College Feed!). But, in today's economy, a college degree is far from a guarantee for a job and even though I love the camaraderie at school, eight years of tuition is a really expensive tab for jello shots.

There is a lack of "higher" ideas in American higher education. The point of a liberal arts education is to train young adults for the responsibilities of being a free individual. This doesn't mean have a working knowledge of Milton or the ability to pick out constellations, but rather a grounding in the moral and objective truths which define the West.

Unfortunately, American academia, through loose requisites and an utter embrace (as Allan Bloom so conclusively displayed) of relativism, has turned higher education into a shopping mall, wherein students jump from class to class, worldview to worldview, truth to truth, ultimately reinforcing a surrounding narrative covertly founded in nihilism.

Many universities, though, possess the opportunities and resources where a true liberal arts education can be found. It's a difficult balance and expedition, but a possible and redeeming one if discovered. Nevertheless, this is a burdensome onus that befalls only students, punished for their adherence and commitment to higher values.

So, why college? I'm not entirely sure. At the end of the day, examining the academic culture around me, I think its most important role will be to push me to ask the right questions - even if the school doesn't choose to recognize the answers.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I had just turned 18. Soon after, I was surprised to find that paradise had not been brought about (ok I'm exaggerating, but only slightly). I then started considering conservative arguments put forth mainly by Dinesh D'Souza, Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman. I was "mugged by reality."

D'Souza's book "The Roots of Obama's Rage" was the last nail in the coffin of my faith in Obama. Not only was I wrong in thinking that Obama's policies would restore/increase American greatness, I was deceived by him about his true intentions for America, his true ideology, his core beliefs, his "inner compass" as D'Souza puts it.

To this day, considerable mystery surrounds the man. Liberals and conservatives alike often find his behavior confounding.

In my view, the only one who has lifted the curtain on Obama is Dinesh D'Souza. It turns out our president has written an autobiography, and D'Souza read it! It seems to me like he's the only one sometimes. In "The Roots of Obama's Rage" and more recently "Obama's America" (also the documentary that was produced by Gerald Molen, 2016: Obama's America) D'Souza digs into Obama's past. It seems that Obama got his worldview/ideology from his father and mentors like Frank Marshall Davis. His father saw the colonial, exploitative West as the source of his and his country's (Kenya) problems. He was an anti-colonialist, he saw America as a rogue nation.

Maybe we're reluctant to dig into Obama's past because it leads to Africa, to race, to thinking about the "black man" and his exploitation by the "white man." These are "no-go" zones (taboo) for many of us. But we must understand Obama if he is to be defeated in 2012.

A good introduction to D'Souza's ideas about Obama:

discussion/debate with Jonathan Alter

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Souz

(I know it's Glenn Beck, but D'Souza presents his ideas well here I find)

part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQUHPukWFLU&feature=channel&list=UL

part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnoZf3RJPa8&feature=channel&list=UL

http://2016themovie.com/

at CPAC 2.5 M views on YT!

I'm no huge fan of the Occupy Wall Street folks. To me, they come across as just a bunch of privileged whiners moaning about things they know nothing about. Nonetheless, the whole thing makes me proud of this country.

It is not the protesters themselves that inspire me, but how their others have behaved. The beauty of the First Amendment is that it allows even the foolish and the unhinged to say their bit. I wonder what would happen if there were mass protests in, for example, the People's Republic of Tom Friedman. If New York City were run by the Chinese Communist Party- which may not actually be too far from reality- they would have had tanks rolling in by now. The worst that the Evil Fascist Capitalist Imperialist Racist Tea Party Nazi Wall Street stooges can muster? One NYPD cop pepper spraying a protester

In capitalist America, we let you speak regardless of how foolish or ignorant you are, and we might throw you in a police van if you start acting out. In Soviet Russia, we engineer famines in Ukraine. Oh, how I love my country.

Although it's about a week old, this Shepard Smith clip from FNC still caught my eye.

The notion of being on the "right" or "wrong" side of history is one of the most pervasive and most profoundly silly historiographical fallacies thrown around by a Progressives, not to mention a good many old-timey Liberals and some Conservatives. To many, History is a stern governess who passes judgment on the unenlightened tykes who linger too long in her gaze, and who graciously bestows adoration on those wise enough to predict her course. I have found such intellectual smugness particularly common with regards to the same sex marriage issue. Doesn't everyone want to be on the "right side of history?"

The problem with passing such broad judgments through the historical narrative is that history is invariably written by those in a position to observe it. It has never been the case that history's course, if such a thing can be said to exist, has been readily apparent to everyone at the time events were taking place.

Take, for example, eugenics. It was once possible in this country to be a eugenicist and be taken seriously. It was, in fact, at one point fashionable. To many, the "course of history" suggested that the historical narrative was in favor of Social Darwinism and those who wanted to forge and protect a society of "fit" citizens. Birth control and eugenic practices were supposed to help us make the great leap forward down the shining path. In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly passed two laws in furtherance of these goals, the Racial Integrity Act and the Sterilization Act.

Three years later, the US Supreme Court heard the case of Carrie Buck, a woman who had been ruled feeble-minded and had been scheduled to be sterilized under Virginia's policy. The resulting case of Buck v. Bell, in the eyes of eugenicists, vindicated their cause. An eight justice majority that included Louis Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Chief Justice William Howard Taft voted to uphold the law; the lone dissenter, Pierce Butler, was Roman Catholic. Eugenics was taken so seriously and was so well respected that a Supreme Court decision actually included the words "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Eugenicists probably thought they were on "the right side of history."

And then, of course, World War II happened. Forcibly sterilizing people  became something people in the western world were not okay with, and eugenics has, for the most part, been rightly consigned to the junkyard of bad ideas. Time has passed, and now eugenicists are widely perceived as having been on "the wrong side of history." I'm not saying that what is ethically right or wrong is fundamentally relative. What I am saying is that the Whig Theory, the idea that things are basically always getting better, is wrong.

The point here is not that same sex marriage, or traditional marriage, is in any way like forced sterilization or genocide. The point is that regardless of the merits to the arguments on either side of the marriage issue, history itself shows us that it is silly to suppose that it is making a judgment in a particular direction. I don't think that advocates or opponents of same sex marriage are any more or less on the right side history than were John Adams or Thomas Jefferson in 1800. History just happens, and whatever future historians make of it is quite up to them, and will probably bear little relationship to where we think it is headed today.

The fantastic Ricochet team has gotten the College Feed up and running again, and I thought it might be fun to celebrate by taking a quick trip down memory lane.

Think back to Summer 2008. Polls were consistently forecasting that then-Senator Obama was likely to claim a massive share of youth and minority support in the fall election. And Senator Mitch McConnell, as we will all recall, stood on the Senate floor in July and vocally denounced Obama's growing coalition as "a bunch of angry young blacks who are trying to overrun America."

Oh, wait. Never mind. That didn't happen, because that would be insane. Such a crass and demeaning generalization would have offended all Americans' sensibilities, and would certainly not have earned applause from any mainstream conservatives. And that statement would have been pounced on and torn apart by the mainstream media like a wounded gazelle on the Serengeti.

Surely, then, we can count on the media and our friends on the Left to proffer a similarly full-throated denunciation of the perfectly parallel invective recently spouted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

[Reid] says a group of "angry old white men" is bankrolling conservative outside groups that are spending millions to influence the fall elections.

"If this flood of outside money continues, the day after the election, 17 angry old white men will wake up and realize they've just bought the country," Reid said on the floor. "That's a sad commentary."

But we should not, of course, hold our breath. Nothing like the condemnations such garbage would engender in a fair, good-faith political dialogue will be forthcoming. Liberal blogs' comment sections and social media timelines are overflowing with "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" cheerleading, and all the supposedly more reputable NPR could muster was an amused eyeroll and a knowing smile:

In a world of highly calibrated political messaging, it would be difficult to find a politician less likely to deliver safe, poll-tested lines than Reid

There he goes again! A straight shooter even when he should know better, God bless him. Please. Senator Reid is propagating a socioeconomic and racial caricature to further his political agenda. The older, white, uninformed conservative who hates the foreigners and the ethnic folk – a  "bitter clinger," you could say – is a blatant stereotype, one no less offensive and no more accurate than the Angry Inner-City Black Man archetype that we can all agree is beyond the pale of any civil conversation.

Sure, the particular mega-donors to whom Reid refers are not perfect iterations of the textbook slur: Mr. Friess, Mr. Adelson, and company are obviously intelligent, informed, and successful men. But the Senator's remarks are obviously a dog-whistle, designed to provoke visceral dislike of his political opponents based solely on the demographic boxes into which they can be conveniently sorted.

In America, in 2012, such personal and racial put-downs can either generate a firestorm of righteous indignation, or can earn you points for hip self-awareness and be green-lighted as fair rhetorical game. It all depends on who is slurring whom. But it should not.

I wait eagerly for the evolution of American political culture to a point where these destructive slurs are completely off-limits, regardless of who is speaking or on which side of the aisle he makes camp. But until then, we can take at least some small comfort: if somebody was going to crudely blast angry, old Caucasian men of means who wield outsized political influence for nefarious purposes, I can think of no spokesman more qualified than the Senate Majority Leader.

Found this on my Facebook feed this morning:

If their Facebook and Twitter feeds are any indication, my liberal friends reserve a special place in their hearts for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. And it’s little wonder – taking in the latest Krugman dispatch enables the left to simultaneously indulge in two of its most treasured pastimes: shrilly accusing everyone to their right of acting in bad faith and blindly worshipping anything stamped with the Ivy League seal of approval.

Never mind that the angry invective churned out at regular intervals by the economist cum partisan attack dog seems most often to turn on ideological assertions that draw in no way upon his academic pedigree. Because the guy once wrote some really important papers about economies of scale, talking points so simplistic that even Debbie Wasserman-Schultz might think twice about spouting them are held up as gospel when they flow from his embossed pen. Reading the Times opinion page is as close as many leftists get to attending church these days, and St. Paul – a bearded mash-up of Michael Moore and Elizabeth Warren – is their favorite preacher.

The latest Krugman diatribe to spread across social media as relentlessly as Athlete’s foot in a high school locker room was his Friday column “Moochers Against Welfare,” in which the Professor expresses his complete “puzzlement” that any Americans would ever vote for the political party that doesn’t promise them bigger and bigger baskets of government goodies. He can imagine only three possible explanations for why poor people might pull the Republican lever; either the rural poor are led astray by right-wingers’ “exploitation of “social issues,” red states’ wealthiest citizens are just not decent enough to embrace the charitable liberalism espoused by their rich coastal counterparts, or – and he does not appear to be joking – they must literally be too stupid to understand how badly they need government.

In some ways, this is classic Krugman. For him, political values are not a subject in which reasonably intelligent and well-meaning people can agree: if you aren’t a liberal, you are objectively either evil or stupid, and are most likely to be both.

But there is more to this argument than run-of-the-mill Times demonization. (By the way, could nobody please mention to my grandparents that I'm a terrorist? Appreciate it.) It is actually a common liberal belief today that anyone who stands to benefit financially from a swollen safety net and votes against it must be either deluded or uninformed. But the problems with this interpretation are manifest, as are three lessons we can draw from it.

Lesson #1: Many of those communities best acquainted with welfare statism are among its most dedicated enemies.
It is truly beyond me why proponents of a centralized welfare state are so quick and so proud to point out that the communities most thoroughly transformed by the strategy of top-down handouts reject those policies as vocally as any Americans you can find. If we buy the liberal vision (the more entitlements, the better, and hurry!) then those states and towns that appear to "benefit" so disproportionately from fiscal transfers would be the last to oppose social spending – but precisely the opposite is true.

The faculty at Princeton and the editors of the Times, of course, don't bear direct witness to the ways in which utter dependency on the state acts as a cultural poison that can suck the soul out of a community. But residents of the states Krugman mocks do, and their resultant political preferences are anything but cause for celebration within the ranks of the pseudo-pragmatic redistributionists.

Lesson #2: If you love your faith more than your wallet, prepare to be gawked at.
That Krugman and the left-wing researchers he cites use language like "induce" and "exploit" to defame Republicans who care deeply about "social issues" bespeaks a baffling ignorance of the hierarchy of values to which humans the world over have adhered for centuries. Even ardently pro-abortion pundits need to recognize that, for a majority of Americans, fetal life is literally no more a "social" issue than is murder or child abuse. To their pro-life neighbors, it is an issue of transcendent importance.

Similarly, whatever one's view of gay marriage or stem cell research, to condescend to those among your countrymen who would choose a government that aligns with their most deeply held beliefs about morality and about the universe over one that offers them cash (Um, you care more about "principles" than your checking account? Whatever you say, you crazy freak!)  is not only cruel but socially ignorant on a profound level.

Lesson #3: Where public policy intersects with culture, liberal confusion proves the conservatives' point in a big way.
I'm only twenty-one years old. But I think I've learned enough from studying history and speaking to my family that there was a time in this country when those who shamelessly scarfed down a handout and immediately thrust their palm out for more would have been subject to more, not less, ridicule than people who would rather surrender some degree of material well-being in exchange for keeping their pride.

For too long, the debate about how massive entitlements and cradle-to-grave dependency stifle American culture has taken place as an abstract conversation. But it is all too evident that discussion about the deleterious cultural impact of citizenship in our democratic republic morphing into an endless array of me-first transactions is no longer confined to the realm of theory.

The huge numbers of men and women who stand to directly gain from the benefits-for-votes clientelism on which the Democratic Party thrives nevertheless muster the courage to recognize that trade-off as insulting to basic values of Enlightenment individualism and human dignity and turn down the offer – they are not a symptom of sociopolitical dysfunction in America. They are anything but. Rather, dysfunction obtains in the great swaths of intelligent scholars and writers who see these people clinging desperately to some meaningful degree of individual responsibility and can only muse, "So are they crazy or just ignorant?"

Whether we're talking about Britain under Ted Heath in the early '70s or Greece under Papademos in 2012, the breakdown of social cohesion in societies that attempt to exile individualism shows us that fiscal and social policy must be about more than tinkering with equations and cutting checks. A country's soul matters – and liberal policies are no less damaging in this broader sense than they are misguided on a pragmatic level. We conservatives must never forget this, even as we get into the weeds, insisting that this Paul Ryan graph makes more sense than that Harry Reid chart, and so on.

Progress is nothing without principles. The lower-income Americans who understand this and reject the Democrat message of dependence are heroes, not hypocrites. And that Krugman and his ilk exhibit so profound an epistemological inability to grasp this moral truth – much less to praise rather than denigrate those Americans who still ascribe to real values like character and dignity – makes it painfully clear that their bankrupt ideology offers us even less of the latter than the former.

I was watching TV, and I saw the moment when the South Tower collapsed. Or rather I was told the tower had collapsed--it didn't seem any different through the haze of smoke and dust. We drove to school, and I grasped the magnitude of what had happened, really for the first time, when we couldn't get away from it on the radio. I walked into first period wondering if it was something we were going to talk about in class. 

I was struck by the differences in the way different teachers dealt with the situation and looking back, how much adults reveal of themselves when they try to introduce or explain tragedy to children. One discussed the emotional parallel to JFK's death and mentioned the need to understand the motive at the beginning of class; one simply turned on the radio and told us it was important for us to "understand what is going on in (our) country." In history, we held an obsessive discussion about the now-imaginary "third plane" which sliced through the two towers after both were "weakened" by the first two impacts. Talk about information compulsion. In science, we were told we were living terrible history--a tragedy that would dwarf Pearl Harbor. 

I remember coming home and hearing about how actionable intelligence linking the attack to specific al-Qaeda and Afghan terrorists had already been established. To the grown-ups in the house, it was just another excuse to be cynical--those links were found too late. But to me, it was a sense of pride that we could get on their trails so quickly and a sense that, like in any good video game, the big bad boss would be beaten. Misplaced, maybe. But what are great countries built on, if not sometimes misplaced but always tender pride? 

Much has been made of the effect of the attacks on the "children of 9/11." The Millenial generation--kids when the attacks changed our world--grew up to fight in the wars, go to college, and live their lives. Those of us who were still children entered adolescence that day. And when, nearly ten years later, my neighbor in college told me on a Sunday evening about bin Laden's death, his opinion that the decade of 9/11 had come to its psychic end was mine also. 

I visited the sacred graveyard for the first time this summer, with some relatives. It was dusty, hot, noisy, and buzzing with construction. It was so bright that the light reflecting off the partially-completed Freedom Tower was nearly blinding. And for some reason that made me happy. To see that much light and sound in a place of darkness and silence was pure glory. 

As Peggy Noonan wrote last Friday, you've "got to be loyal to the pain to be loyal to the glory that came out of it." For me, raw memory brings back both. Please feel free to share yours. 

For the past two weeks, in my capacity as editor of my college newspaper, I have been traveling in a strange and unfamiliar world, one of intrigue and occasional fury. I have published a two-part critical essay on Skidmore's cultish obsession with community "dialogues," a staple of our school's diversity and peer mediation programs. And the blowback has been considerable. Part I is here, and Part II here.

I post this here because I know many of you here share my concerns over the dissolution of rigorous education into a froth of pseudo-activism and "consciousness-raising." I'll just supplement the links above with a few reflective remarks (Skidmore is on spring break now, so if the controversy develops, it won't be until after this week.)

The reactions to the essay have been, relative to the Skidmore bubble, quite extraordinary, which is not to say sober or considered. Against my judgments on the distinctly postmodern flavor of the institution of "dialogue," many are lashing out in the only language they know, i.e. in terms of power dynamics and Hollywood Marxism. Some people, proving my point about how dialogue cultivates a hyperemotional irrationalism, have come into the news room, crying. Others have congratulated me for making things "interesting" again. Still others have called me, in print and in person, everything from a bigot to a sexist to a neo-nazi.

But most conspicuous is the astounding lack of responses from those who claim my analysis to be radically off-base, out of touch, or simply wrong. Every since publishing the first piece I have been quite nearly begging for Letters to the Editor; today I received the first one that expressed anything beside ad hominems or vague disapproval. I see it as a sad confirmation of my argument, that my college's impulse for debate and deliberation has been made null and void by our culture of pity.

It is also telling that certain faculty have gotten in touch to support my efforts, while student government has been throwing me glances with a sufficiently hairy eyeball.

All part of the job, I suppose. Anyway, I thought a few of you might be interested to see what this kind of thing looks like from the inside of a vaguely but pervasively "liberal" school. Be sure to scroll through some of the comment sections in each piece to get an idea of the bile I now slip on while walking the hallways.

Part I:

http://www.skidmorenews.com/op-ed/i-friendly-fire-i-live-and-let-dialogue-part-i-1.2805684

Part II:

http://www.skidmorenews.com/op-ed/i-friendly-fire-i-live-and-let-dialogue-part-ii-1.2810516

I was reading the post-debate chatter, and stumbled across an article in the New York Daily News on RealClearPolitics. It raised an interesting point when discussing Rick Santorum:

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a candidate who has largely been ignored during previous debates, boasted his campaign best. Though he's trailing the pack, he demonstrated a keen knowledge of the issues and a mastery of conservative thought – another deficiency of both Romney and Perry.

A "mastery of conservative thought" is certainly something Santorum can boast above the other candidates on the stage. A reading of his book, "It Takes A Village," demonstrates his thorough steeping in Catholic doctrine and conservative intellectualism. Neither Romney nor Perry seem like they have any kind of deep thought about conservatism. Their ideas run as deep as the talking points used to sell technocratic policies as governors.

There is a sense in which experience governing is a better teacher of wise statesmanship than anything else. However, there is something to be said for a well-rounded understanding of ideals - the kind of ideals derived from careful study of enduring truths - that can create a solid framework to view in the world truthfully.

It comes as no surprise that the Left has taken hyperventilation to a new level since Gov. Romney asked Congressman Ryan to run for Vice President. All the emergent lines of attack are as disingenuous as they are easily dismissed, but one particular avenue the Democrats are trying to pursue is so comical as to merit special attention.

Over the past 72 hours, it's become trendy for liberals to complain that Paul Ryan's various and sundry proposals are not sufficiently detailed. They turn from painting the Congressman as a heartless, number-crunching sociopath to insisting that he really hasn't crunched enough numbers at all.

Paul Krugman's recent comments along these lines are – as always with his remarks – typical of the partisan Left:

[Ryan] asserts that he can cut taxes without net loss of revenue by closing unspecified loopholes; he asserts that he can cut discretionary spending to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge, without saying how; he asserts that he can convert Medicare to a voucher system, with much lower spending than now projected, without even a hint of how this is supposed to work.

Let's set aside the fact that any conservative familiar with Ryan's work could dispute Krugman's accusation that it's all some giant mystery.

Since when does the same crowd that ardently cheered President Obama in 2008 harbor this abiding passion to make sure that presidential and vice presidential candidates dot every last "i" and cross each and every "t" in their 20,000 page whitepapers?

President Obama fought and won four years ago on a cocktail of policy vagueness and non-germane aesthetics. His 2008 campaign website (archived here) laid out such supremely detailed fiscal policy promises as:

•  "Increase the efficiency of government" through "technology" and "stronger management"
• "Stop funding wasteful, obsolete federal government programs that make no financial sense"
• "Obama will level the playing field for all businesses by eliminating special-interest loopholes and deductions"

How brave! How specific! How controversial!

I can't even begin to count the number of times I exasperatedly complained to an Obama supporter in 2008 that the man was incapable of putting substantive plans behind his bromides and my words were met with a blank stare or shrug.

So as the narrative trickles down to all Democrat supporters, whether among the media elite or among your Facebook friends, that Paul Ryan owes us an explanation of precisely how the mechanics of his premium-support vouchers will work by 2030 and if that really won't impact his proposed caps on non-discretionary spending because if you carry the eight and then when two trains leave Delaware traveling at 70 miles per hour wouldn't Ryan's projections actually fail to account for -- well, feel free to remind them of just how ironic their demand for hyper-specificity really is, given the source.

The nuts and bolts of Ryan's proposals deserve a vigorous defense on the merits, and they will surely receive one. But don't let the Left's newfound obsession with the trees take our eyes off the forest: elections are a competition of governing visions. And with his inspired choice of Congressman Ryan, Governor Romney has made his vision explicit.

It has come to my attention that our financial institutions are not performing at the level expected for the profits they receive. People are losing their jobs. Obama's approval rating isn't high enough. And worst of all, some people actually still have to work.

If these grievances are not corrected by the next election, revolution is the only acceptable compromise.

Demand 1: Free health for everyone. Forget about insurance companies or doctors- let's get rid of the middle-man. We have public schools, public parks, and public broadcasting. It's time we have perfect public health. If Wall Street allows one person to become unhealthy, we will continue the revolution.

Demand 2: Palestine must become a state. A United State. Israeli influence is preventing the annexation of Palestine as the 51st American state.

Demand 3: One trillion dollars worth of Mike & Ike stimulus. The delicious candies must be dropped (packaged or not-packaged) from the loving hands of Peace Corpseman every day at 3PM.

Demand 4: We demand the upheaval of all jails, prisons, and other types of correctional facilities. These will each be replaced with a kibbutz, which was invented by the Palestinians (despite alternate historical interpretations).

Demand 5a: Free college tuition.

Demand 5b: Free graduate school tuition.

Demand 5c: Free pens, pencils, textbooks, and all other additional costs originally placed on us by Wall Street.

Demand 5d: Free pizza delivery. No tips are necessary in a world with free health.

Demand 6: Free medical marijuana. This doesn't conflict with the first demand, it strengthens it. NOTE: If you like your drug dealer, you can keep him. This is simply a public option.

Demand 7: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants. (h/t Anonymous. Or should I say, Guy Fawkes mask tip.)

Demand 8: No negative consequences for any actions whatsoever.

Thomas Sowell:

Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie “2016,” based on Dinesh D’Souza’s best-selling book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” Where I live is so politically correct that such a movie would not even be mentioned, much less shown.

Every seat in the theater was filled, even though there had been an earlier showing that day, and more showings were scheduled for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had to sit on a staircase in the balcony, but it was worth it.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/thomas-sowell/2016-a-powerful-movie/

                After months of running in place, Herman Cain’s presidential run has finally gained traction.  Less than a month after Cain’s huge victory in the Florida straw poll, CBS News’ latest poll shows Cain ahead of Rick Perry and tied with Mitt Romney for the lead.  Up until now, coverage of the presidential race has focused on Romney and Perry.  However, there are plenty of reasons to believe Cain’s rise is more than a momentary surge.  Cain is far from a perfect candidate and there are challenges to his candidacy that I will discuss in my next post, but there are very good reasons to believe Cain could be the GOP nominee in 2012.

                One huge advantage Cain has over Romney and Perry is his lack of experience.  Because Cain has never cast a vote as an elected official, there is no official record of Cain’s positions aside from statements he’s made on the campaign trail.  The lack of any official record makes it hard to nail Cain’s feet to the floor and expose him as a less than perfect conservative.  This will allow Cain to expose Romney and Perry’s less than stellar records while running as a perfect Reaganite.  Cain can also use his lack of experience to paint himself as an outsider the same way Rick Scott did en route to the Governor’s Mansion in Florida.  Now is the perfect time for an outsider such as Cain to run for president as an alternative to those pesky career politicians.

                Cain can also use his rhetorical skill to secure the GOP nomination.  Cain has an ability to electrify an audience unmatched by anyone in the Republican field.  At the Florida straw poll, Cain drew multiple standing ovations and had to pause his speech roughly once a minute due to the uproarious applause coming from the crowd.  Keep in mind, this wasn’t a rally full of die-hard supporters.  Most of the people at this speech didn’t vote for Cain in the straw poll and even fewer would consider themselves die-hard Cain supporters.  Nonetheless, Cain had the crowd hanging on his every word and chanting along with his 9-9-9 tax plan. 

                Lastly, Cain is likely to be seen as the last resort for many conservatives.  With Rick Perry’s rapid decline in the polls, poor debate performances and inability to deal with his immigration and HPV demons and Sarah Palin and Chris Christie opting to stay out of the race, Cain will likely end up in a one-on-one matchup with Mitt Romney.  Romney’s positions on healthcare and TARP will prevent him from appealing to staunch conservatives in the GOP.  The narrative practically writes itself: Romney the moderate establishment candidate vs. Cain the conservative outsider in a battle to determine the future of the Republican Party.  Once this narrative is set, the conservative wing of the party will rally around Cain to prevent Romney from winning the nomination.  Put briefly, Cain is able.  He very well could be the dynamic conservative that Rick Perry was supposed to be.  Of course, Cain isn’t perfect, he faces many obstacles that I plan to discuss in my next post.  Nonetheless, the road to the GOP nomination could run through Atlanta. 

Although we've seen videos of anti-Semites parading in Obamavilles across the country, Jordana Horn of the Jerusalem Post has explored another side of the protest:

“There are a lot of Jews who have been really affected by the economy,” Rabbi Alana Suskin, a participant in Occupy DC, said. “There may be one synagogue in the country where no one has lost their jobs. Jews also have their poor. It’s the unspoken elephant in the room. Not everybody’s well off. Probably most Jews are part of the 99%.”

While Wall Street is the villain of the #OWS movement, #Occupy Judaism is just a clever name for Jews involved in the aforementioned group.

The whole article itself is worth reading, so I won't waste your time too much with my talking. However, if you don't feel like reading it, just let this quote sink in:

Sieradski called the Occupy movements “one of the most exciting things to happen in American Judaism."

Any mob (and if this isn't a mob, what is?) is predisposed to getting its share of nuts. But when the mob is fighting against financial institutions and "capitalism," I would have liked to have seen Jews in New York be a little more prudent in joining the Flea Party. 

By the way, I found the graphic in this post on the Occupy Judaism Facebook page. It's actually really funny. The term "Obamaville" isn't mine, nor is the "Flea Party."

Jay Nordlinger nails one of the big problems with historians, or at least some of them, over at NRO: [full disclosure: I will be history grad student as of this fall]

A classmate of mine asked a distinguished historian, “Barbara Tuchman: Is she a historian?” The professor reflected for a moment. Then he said, “She’s a writer.” Some of the students snickered. At that moment, I figured Tuchman must be worthwhile. Which she is.

It's true that some historians can be perhaps a little snooty about the uninitiated treading on their turf and exceeding them in recognition. It's certainly no accident that some of the most-recognized and greatest American historians- Barbara Tuchman, David McCullough, and Shelby Foote come to mind- have been writers by trade rather than credentialed historians. The best academic historian I've ever read is probably James McPherson, whose Battle Cry of Freedom is both historically sound and very readable, as is his lesser-known For Cause and Comrades. Readability and writing quality have a lot to do with how successful historical writing is.

As with any class of academics, however, historians are rather easy to pick on. History is a bit like political punditry in that anybody with a basic understanding of sentence construction can pretend excellence at it. It is also true of history that doing it badly is quite easy, and I think this is part of the reason historians can come across as a bit snobbish with regards to "non-historians" intruding on their bailiwick.

There have no doubt been great historians who are not "professionals." There are also, however, lousy historians who are not "professionals." Take Joy Masoff, the author of the grade school textbook Our Virginia: Past and Present, for example. Masoff landed herself in hot water in October 2010 for writing a sentence including the words "Thousands of Southern blacks fought in the Confederate ranks," a phenomenon not thought to be widespread by most historians who have studied the subject.

So where did this claim come from? Internet research, and her apology was just delightful:

"It's just one sentence. I don't want to ruffle any feathers, If the historians had contacted me and asked me to take it out, I would have."

Basically, she couldn't be bothered to do much in the way of rigorous research on the topic.

Do historians need to get off their high horses periodically and remember that even those who don't sit at the cool kids table often have intelligent things to say? Absolutely. They are also, however, justifiably leery of those who tout themselves as serious history writers, yet don't really know what they are talking about. Some of the best history out there is by "non-historians," but many non-historians are more than capable of producing utter tripe.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the president is doing a good or an excellent job on the economy. That’s down from 30% in each of the last two weeks, down from 36% three weeks ago and the lowest ratings on the economy yet recorded for this president.

(You can find the entire summary of this recent survey here.)

However, recent Public Policy Polling polls show Obama tied with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and ahead of all the other Republican candidates in the current GOP field. The question is this: what do the Republicans have to do to take the White House next November? Will it be enough to merely focus on the economy? If so, what factors are going to push the Republican nominee past President Obama next November? If not, what strategies must the Republican nominee employ if he/she is going to win?

This semester, construction has taken over much of the University of Minnesota campus. Formerly shrubs are now mounds of dirt and broken-up concrete, the all too familiar but irritating beeping that large trucks make infiltrate a once-enjoyable walk, and, most notably, chain-linked fences have created mini-mazes and reroutes. I'll be the first to admit it can be somewhat inconvenient at times.

With that said though, I came across this sign this morning, making light at how obstructive these fences have become:

Slightly altered from Peter's original line, it's hard to not smirk at reference. In less than 25 years, those words have already found themselves transcending their original usage, seeping into the cultural mainstream, where they're no longer defined by just their iconic moment, but by jokingly comparable moments where the original sentiment is still understood. It speaks volumes to the significance of its historical stage as well as the accessibility and notoriety of the line itself. It's a message that is both simple to grasp, but deep and wide-reaching in its meaning.

So, Ricochet community, what are other famous lines that have come to be so recognizable in such a short amount of time - let's say the last 25 years - that they can be used in a different context? Whether it's used humorously like the sign above or hearkening to the influence of its genesis, I'd be interested to see what quotations we already consider ageless.

Reelection odds are generally pretty good for a sitting president. It is no mistake that since WWII the only sitting presidents to lose reelection were Carter and Bush 41; even presidents who are suffering at the polls and who are dealing with major political crises stand better than even odds of getting reelected.That is why some, particularly on the left, have casually dismissed the idea that President Obama, even with very his poor polling, is in danger of actually losing his reelection bid.

But recent evidence from the always-reliable Gallup poll suggests that president Obama's disapproval rate may, in fact, almost preclude a victory next year. President Obama's weekly average approval rating now hovers around 40%, a rating that includes several days worth of sub 40 numbers and a general trend that shows no sign of improving, at least in the short term. Baring any sort of major economic recovery in the very near future, or another major overseas success that we haven't yet considered (unfortunately for the president, you can only assassinate Bin Laden once) this is the reality that we will be dealing with between now and the election. Since 1960, there is only one example of a president who's approval rating changed dramatically in the last year of his presidency, and that is the aforementioned Bush I, whose once high approval rating—which was bolstered by a roaring victory in the Gulf War—plummeted because of the ongoing pain of recession and a reversal on his much ballyhooed insistence on not raising taxes. Realistically, the only major fluctuations in polling from about a year out is between 5%-8%, giving us a viable range of what we could be looking at from President Obama in the next year or so.

This brings me to a rather prescient post by Nate Silver from earlier this year about calculating reelection odds looking just at Gallup Poll approval ratings. Silver:

What does this mean for Barack Obama? Right now, we’re still in the period where the most useful number for estimating his re-election chances is not his approval rating but rather the historical track record of incumbent presidents. As I wrote on Wednesday, since the Civil War, 73 percent of incumbent presidents who sought another term won, as have 70 percent since World War II. Plugging Mr. Obama’s current numbers into the regression model that I described above yields a 65 percent likelihood of re-election — but again, this is a really rough guess, based mostly on the high historical batting average for incumbents rather than anything to do with Mr. Obama himself.

What we can say is important is the range in which Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have been varying in recent months: between about 45 and about 50 percent. If Mr. Obama’s approval rating is at the top of that range, 50 percent, on Nov. 6, 2012 — about where it is now — the model figures that his chances of winning re-election will be greater than 80 percent. But if his approval rating is at the bottom of the range instead, at 45 percent, his chances for a second term will be only about one in three, and he’ll have to hope that the Republican nominee is a weak one.

Read the whole thing, but I want pay special attention to Silver's use of logistic regression modeling to predict overall reelection odds. What he finds is not terribly surprising in and of itself; one would certainly like to believe that the public approval of a president at least vaugely played some role in his potential for reelection. What this method does discover that is remarkable is the gigantic difference between very similar approval ratings. Silver, trying to predict reelection, comes up with this helpful graphic to better grasp the nuance of what is being said here; minute differences in approval rating over time have a great predictive power in assessing the likelihood of reelection.

Suffice it to say, his current 40% approval rating about 14 months away from the election puts his reelection odds right around 40%. What is even more significant is that his reelection odds absolutely tank in the ensuing months. The widest 5 point gap is between 40% and 45% right up until the election, where 45% approval odds drops precipitously.

The reason statistical persons like to use metrics like the "approval rating" system created by Gallup over 70 years ago is that, frankly, it works well. This observation about the relationship between approval rating and the outcome of reelection campaigns is hardly a controversial one; the fact remains that since the political realignment that took place in the mid 60s to the early 70s, not a single sitting president has won reelection with a Gallup approval rating below 50% a year before the election. Certainly, the concept of "approval" is nebulous and undefined, but this is one of the reasons, interestingly enough, it is as good a predictor as it is. The reason people use the Gallup poll is because the question is beautiful in its simplicity and continuity; they have been using the exact same wording for the question since its inception, allowing a perfect comparison from day to day and year to year. Because "approval" is left undefined, we know people will generally interpret this very differently; disaffected supports can "disapprove" of a president for not taking the extreme ideological route they had hoped he would take, but they would never consider voting for the other guy given their ideological bent. So it is not a one-to-one stand in for voting; what it does capture, however, is the broad change in public opinion on the president, and however silly it sounds, the difference between a 45% approval rating and a 50% approval rating for reelection odds is rather large.

The overall impact of his declining approval rating may end up snowballing on the current president. There is ample evidence to suggest that a President with lower approval ratings end up getting fewer things done legislatively and, therefore, lives and dies on the vitality of the economy. Given the current state of the economy, I would venture to guess that this presidency may, in fact, be only for a single term. Later, I will explore various economic models of predicting presidential reelection, and try to find something that incorporates both economic data, popularity, and other exogenous factors.

It's finally happened. An #Occupy protest has started right outside my dorm. I was walking this Saturday to go to get a sandwich when I noticed about ten people holding signs and wearing masks. It only took a few moments for me to realize that this was no ordinary small crowd- this was one of those Occupy Wall Street knock-offs.

On the way back, the tiny gathering of liberals wasn't even there. However, it turns out an actually kind-of-big crowd should up a week earlier. My school's paper reported on it last week. 

According to the Occupy Peoria/ Bradley Action Committee Facebook page, the protesters wanted to “spread the Occupy Wall Street movement in a peaceful grassroots method,” and is based on the movement in New York City. The original protesters in New York are fighting against corporations in America, claiming they are running our government, using unmerited practices and placing money over individuals.  They called for students across the nation to come together, despite political standpoints, to demand change.

The Bradley students participating in Occupy Peoria focused on similar issues, as well as injustice at Bradley. The Facebook page argues, “Bradley students must overcome the stereotypical apathy that Bradley [University] is known for.”

But perhaps the most egregious misinterpretation of American history displayed by these protesters can be seen the photo above. This is the rabble standing outside of Peoria's courthouse, taking pictures with an Abraham Lincoln statue. I recall Peter Robinson and Larry Arnn talking about how Lincoln actually had a couple of famous speeches in Peoria. Now, call me crazy, but I imagine President Lincoln wouldn't be so quick to smile for the camera if he were alive today.

Although commentators often (correctly) note that liberals reject the principles of our heroes, like the founders and later Lincoln, and instead have an agenda of their own. However, I feel this idea is not expressed enough in today's political arena.

I recently stumbled upon the American Communist Party's website. After reporting them to HUAC, I decided to take a look at what an American Communist party would look like... and towards the beginning of their site's timeline, I found this lovely piece of literature: "The Declaration of Independence from Capitalism."

While using the same formula as the American founders, masquerading as their ideological brothers,  they simultaneously reject everything the founders stood for. This line is my favorite:

"We are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... a job, to health care, to education, to privacy, to control our own bodies, to organize and assemble, to be free of racial, national and gender oppression."

Not to compare Nancy Pelosi to Chairman Mao, but is this much different from the Democratic Party's current platform? How hard is it for a Republican politician to get on a stage and say something along the lines of, "the Democrats, including the President, reject the principles that made our nation the most prosperous state in human history?"

I'm as big of a fan of candidates bumping each others plans as the next guy. But even in my youth, I'm  willing to bet that a majority of Americans have a deep respect for our Washingtons, Madisons, and Lincolns. And when a voter can see how messed up it is for these OWS statists to align themselves with these figures, said voter will be much more likely to select a conservative candidate as opposed to a technocrat.

Perhaps this approach is naive- judging by the fact that Mike Murphy has a job, I'm assuming this is indeed an unconventional way of looking at things (unless you're one of those, you know, Tea Party hobbit types.)

According to the White House, it's all about Obama:

After weeks of internal debate, White House officials adopted the communications documents to shape public events and official statements, and they sought to strike a delicate balance between messages designed for these two very important but very different audiences on a day when the world’s attention will be focused on President Obama, his leadership team and his nation.

I think the fact that they say it is his nation speaks volumes.  You do not own this country Mr. President, it is a country made by the people, for the people.

I was sitting in my 7th grade homeroom when we heard the news of the planes hitting the twin towers.  I imagine everyone old enough remembers exactly where they were and the emotions they felt, and none were about a community organizer in Chicago.  9/11 is about the thousands of lives lost on that tragic day. Despite the tragedy America still stood strong and did not cower to terrorism and threats to the American Dream of a constitutional republic.  Shame on you and your staff for trying to declare it as a day about you, your leadership team, and 'your nation'.  It has absolutely nothing to do with you.

The Times of Israel is passing along preliminary Bulgarian reporting that the suicidal terrorist who valued the opportunity to slaughter innocent Israeli tourists more than his own life was a Swedish citizen by the name of Mehdi Ghezali.

After horrific incidents like this one transpire, it is commonplace to hear leaders and ordinary folks alike lament: If only somebody had known. If only someone could have stopped him.

But somebody did know. Someone could have stopped him.

Us.

Ghezali was reportedly a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins. He had been held at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from 2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He was also reportedly among 12 foreigners captured trying to cross into Afghanistan in 2009.

This story underscores a recent worry of mine: as the center-right movement continues the interesting and important struggle to flesh out a coherent post-Bush Doctrine vision for U.S. foreign policy, we risk losing sight of the reasons why we moved to the hawkish position in the first place.

Recent years have seen the Right interject more Nixon-style, calculating realism (e.g., the growing impatience among Republicans with our Afghanistan mission) and more civil libertarianism (e.g.,the principled revolt by much of our base against the NDAA that would have authorized the President to detain citizens indefinitely) into our views. And that's probably a beneficial swing away from the single-minded Wilsonian interventionism to which the Bush administration dedicated itself. But stories like this serve as chilling reminders that America – and, indeed, the West as a whole – still desperately needs courageous voices to unapologetically articulate the hawkish, assertive vision for national security and foreign policy that our nation deserves.

And one man's famous comment in 2008, denounced in that inhospitable climate as a painful gaffe, actually looks today to be far more prescient than any of the dovish rhetoric on which our current President then chose to stake his reputation:

I am glad they're are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.

If these early reports hold true, a long-brewing conversation about the growing prominence of Islam – and yes, some of it very radical – within Scandinavia, and Western Europe more broadly, will finally be brought to the forefront. (Paging Mark Steyn, anyone?) But even while that discussion plays out, conservatives will do well to remind our countrymen that it was during the supposed heyday of unilateral American hawkishness and national security overreach when we let this monster slip between our fingers.

Civil libertarianism and calculating realism are valuable instincts to re-emphasize. But that doesn't diminish the considerable importance of commonsense toughness and assertiveness. All of the illusory "win-win" talk notwithstanding (Sticking up for terrorists' rights and erring on the side of releasing suspects will really make us more secure in the long run! I promise!), we need to heed Thomas Sowell's timeless reminder that "There are no solutions, only tradeoffs." When you prioritize the Kindler, Gentler America posture, you will sometimes be trading off your security.

Or that of innocent Israeli tourists.

So playing nice for the sake of playing nice comes at a cost, occasionally a steep one, as five mourning families can now attest. Sometimes, particularly when it comes to security, less really isn't more.

Check out this excellent profile of Florida Senator, (and to some people, potential next Vice President of the United States), Marco Rubio. The writer, Cal Thomas, asks us to consider Senator Rubio's recent Reagan Library speech:

The right philosophy is key and the Reagan Library speech proves that Rubio has the most important ingredient of any leader: vision. Read it, be inspired and then consider whether Rubio's tide is rising.

So what are y'all's thoughts? Is Marco Rubio ready? Should he simply wait to be part of the very exciting "class of 2016" that we keep hearing about [which could include names such as Sen. John Thune (SD), Gov. Chris Christie (NJ), Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA), and Rep. Paul Ryan (WI)]? What, if anything, can he do to separate himself from the problem that then-candidate Obama had to face concerning his lack of experience? Will it be enough to have the political philosophy down, or must he also be able to point to tangible results?

Dartmouth College has been up in arms about any number of things these days, but the issue du jour is a slew of homophobic words written on the walls of a gender-neutral and freshman dormitory.

The opinion held by many is that the College's response has been less than satisfactory. Indeed the Dean of Students waited nearly a week to chime in on the issue. Now the Daily Dartmouth is running a story detailing Safety & Security's hunt for the vandal, which seems more like a witch hunt than an appropriate course of action. From the D:

Jay Keating ’15, who lives on the second floor of McLane, said he received an email from Safety and Security sergeant Rebel Roberts on Nov. 15 asking him to visit the Safety and Security main office for an interview the next morning.

“The blitz I received was pretty vague, asking me to come in about a complaint,” Keating said. “I replied asking what the interview was about, but the sergeant wouldn’t elaborate until we talked in her office.”

"Blitz" is Dartmouth slang for email. The article continues,

A male member of the Class of 2015 who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive subject matter of the case said he was “very confused” by the original email he received from Roberts.

“I looked up Roberts’s history working with sexual assault cases, and was really worried even though I know I didn’t do anything wrong,” the student said. “It was a really intimidating email. I was totally confused and didn’t know why Safety and Security wanted to talk to me.”

If a student were to not reply to the email, a Safety and Security officer would go directly to the student’s dorm room to ask the student questions, Kinne said.

It seems to me that whatever the right response is, the College is more or less off base. At any rate, they should be able to come up with more than a lackluster email followed by an aggressive smoke-out likely to yield little more than intimidation.

(spoiler alert)

I was in Jodhpur, India about a month before the release of The Dark Knight Rises. And yes, there is no doubt the city with the sky-colored houses pictured in the valley below the pit is Jodhpur, known within India as the "Blue City," which left me feeling decidedly underwhelmed. If you're going to build the world's scariest, most hellish prison, you might want to reconsider choosing the area around Mehrangarh Fort(or anywhere near an Indian city in general), where I saw enough enterprising hawkers, noisy peddlers, and crowded tourist establishments that you could probably pay someone to haul you out of the prison in a basket rickshaw for 100 rupees maximum.

The movie is derivative of Batman Begins; the appeals to seriousness and gloom make the stilted dialogue and awkwardly long boxing scenes doubly irritating. And the tragedy that eclipsed Aurora, Colorado on opening day rendered the movie even smaller.  To take it too seriously is almost impossible. 

Which is sad because rarely does Hollywood produce such a counterintuitive thing: a solidly conservative movie which fails to stand on its own. Hollywood's conservative movies are generally not meant to reinforce a conservative message: they are superb works of art that transcend the mind-numbing cliches and conformity of their peers almost unknowingly. This movie is not a superb work of art; it nevertheless chooses to reinforce something worthwhile to remember. 

Society's wealthy, talented, and accomplished are demonized and victimized in the ultimate turnover to mob rule in Gotham City: government fails those whom it is supposed to help. The show trials of Gotham's influential citizens are a specter out of the French Revolution: the movie's villains appear to be out-of-the-closet Marxists who see their triumph as the "triumph of the people('s republic of _____)."  With all this material, a much better movie could have been made. Ultimately, it descends into the usual silliness--pits, nukes that may or may not go off, and Marion Cotillard attempting to make her accent go from suave to evil.  Do Nolan's efforts represent progress or simply a new twist on silliness?