The Conservative Soldier

Law professor Paul Campos decries the folly of “security theater” at U.S. airports as a purely symbolic response to the ever present threat of terrorism within commercial aviation. His essay appears in the January 9 Wall Street Journal, entitled, “Undressing the Terror Threat”.

He observes that about 6,700 Americans die, on average, every day. Nothing approaching the invasiveness of airport security is imposed on our daily lives in an effort to prevent these randomly occurring deaths, including deaths by murder, suicide and traffic accidents.

The reason is completely logical, yet the logic is not applied to the wanding of your sweet innocent grandmother by a TSA agent.

Writes Campos, a University of Colorado academic:

“We seem to consider 43,000 traffic deaths per year an acceptable cost to pay for driving big fast cars. For obvious reasons, politicians and other policy makers generally avoid discussing what ought to be considered an ‘acceptable’ number of traffic deaths, or murders, or suicides, let alone what constitutes an acceptable level of terrorism. Even alluding to such concepts would require treating voters as adults—something which at present seems to be considered little short of political suicide.”

Treating voters as adults? What a concept. The politics of fear that the Obama White House loves to engage – ”If we don’t pass this or that into law right now, ASAP, look out, America …” — not only covers up the root causes of our vulnerability to Islamic jihadists but conveniently keeps the drums beating for “health care reform” as well.

The politics of fear distracts most Americans from our weakening stature on the world stage. The politics of fear minimizes the shoddiness of our intelligence collection, profiling and analysis, wherein real security occurs, focusing instead on how much hair gel and mouthwash you’re trying to bring aboard an airplane.

Finally, the politics of fear makes it possible for people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry “I Like A Light Skinned President” Reid to hijack the U.S. economy and stoke the fires of Socialism by exploiting the “outrage” over the less than 2% of the American population that might, or might not, be in need of medical insurance coverage.*

So it comes to this. A hard working, law abiding citizen trying to fly to a meeting is treated as a potential threat to aviation security (off with your shoes, capitalist swine!) and is vilified as heartless because his employment package provides medical and dental insurance.

If we consider 43,000 annual traffic deaths “acceptable”, what’s so appalling about five million people who are very much alive but merely uninsured?

* Of the 46 million uninsured, 9.7 million are not U.S. citizens; 17.6 million have annual incomes of more than $50,000; and 14 million already qualify for Medicaid or other programs. That leaves less than five million people truly uncovered out of a population of 307 million. (Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 09.03.09)

As I transported my daughter aboard a gas guzzling sedan to middle school this morning, even one the of the local FM rock stations was getting in on the Veterans’ Day spirit. We sang along to the Lee Greenwood classic, “Proud to be an American”.

The central lyric is so familiar it just rolls off the tongue: “And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.”

As we coasted through suburbia on a sun-washed autumn morning that line hit me like a brick wall. At least I know I’m free? Do I? Am I?

In the age of Obama, we were promised the post-racial Presidency. Looks like we were handed the post-Constitutional, post-Declaration of Independence Presidency. For now, we’re still essentially “free” but the scope of that freedom no longer feels like it has infinite boundaries.

It begins with speech. With words. With meaning. And with manipulation of meaning in the name of political correctness and the crushing Socialist agenda sweeping across Washington, D.C.

Consider the following list I drew up in just a matter of minutes. It could be much lengthier for sure, but I fear it demonstrates where we are in the post-Lee Greenwood era.

Not Islamic radicalism … religious diversity.

Not terrorism … alleged shooting incident (Ft. Hood).

Not free-market capitalism … unregulated wealth building.

Not death counseling … an affordable health care option.

Not politically correct … tolerant and fair-minded.

Not Socialist … transformational.

Not a War on Terror … routine law enforcement.

Not freedom of speech … hate-crime speech.

Not productivity … greed.

Not Communism … redistributive justice.

Not Tea Party patriotism … angry white people.

Not Commander in Chief … World President Barack Hussein Obama.

As Veterans’ Day 2009 slips into history, I am proud to be an American because our brave men and women who wear the uniform make me proud. And because civilians who rise up in the face of violent Jihadist insanity make me proud. I’m thinking about the NYFD and NYPD on 9/11, and about the brave Ft. Hood police officer, Kim Munley, who last week gunned down the terrorist Nidal Hasan.

I’m proud, but I no longer know I’m free. In 2009, my fellow Americans and I are left to pray that we are.

Do you ever find yourself wondering what it is that smells and why it won’t go away? It is like walking the halls of a frat house, wishing for a gas mask. I think I’ve figured it out.

The source of the odors hanging over our land is rotting leftovers, spilling out of the Left’s ideological Frigidaire. The liberals in this nation were emboldened by the mistaken election of Barack Hussein Obama nearly one (very long) year ago.  They rolled out a feast of old ideas veiled by hope and change. But Socialism is a flimsy premise for legislating. The core ingredients are highly perishable. Now that the party is over, we find that some of the guests are still wandering the banquet area (like Civil War soldiers in the battlefields after the surrender), desperately looking for morsels of left wing nutrition in a moldy, abandoned wasteland.

Some of these lost souls are even employed, as pundits and journalists.  Earlier today, I wrote to two of these intellectually malnourished scribes. Hopefully I got to them before the food poisoning set in.

Thomas Frank, a University of Chicago PhD who loathes Capitalism and the Constitution, writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal called The Tilting Yard (the venue for jousting in Medieval times, which seems fitting for a Dark Ages pundit). This a guy who has to call his doctor because his physical reaction to almost any Obama speech lasts “more than four hours”.

In Thursday’s Journal (where he is routinely overshadowed by an all-star team of credible, lucid columnists), Frank took up the cause of Team Obama’s frivolous vilification of Fox News. He concludes that the network exists merely to promote “conspiracy theories” even though he actually took exception to the childish approach by the Obama White House.

Frank writes: “Simply feeding Fox a slice of raw denunciation was like dumping gasoline into a fire. It did nothing but furnish the network with a real-world validation of its long-running conspiracy theories—and a nice bump in its ratings.”

In a firmly worded email, I replied: Your column is an absurd patchwork of historic references lacking context and evading the actual reasons why the frauds occupying the White House went on a public rampage against Fox News.

These always offended left wing radicals were ticked off that Fox exposed the backgrounds and questionable character of the many Obama czars, these people wholly unaccountable to the voting public. They were enraged that their buddy Van Jones was forced to resign. And, most of all, they were perplexed by the thorough outing of ACORN by the independent investigative journalists to whom Fox provided a forum to air their reporting.

Little wonder Fox is in (White House) cross-hairs. This is what radicals do. They attack without regard for the consequences. As you point out in your concluding paragraphs, the consequence is a President that fights fire with … gasoline, just like his mentors Alinsky and Ayers. #

Joseph White is a Journal editor who was inexplicably given a forum in the newspaper today to explain why he sold his car and resides on Capitol Hill in Washington. The premise was that he is joining the ranks of those goaded by environmentalists and tormented by the so-called climate change threat. He demonstrates this by living like a Stalin-era worker haunted by his carbon footprint and in deference to the wishes of his Great Leader, Barack Hussein Obama.

White claims he shed the car and a house for “sensible” reasons, but how then to explain the giddiness oozing from this passage? “My new life evidently makes me part of a trend. I am a New Urbanist, a Third Life Boomer or, to the green movement, an exemplar of the new sustainable lifestyle who leaves a lighter, smaller carbon footprint on our planet by driving less, walking more and forgoing the energy-intensive life that goes with owning an edge-city McMansion and two sport-utility vehicles.”

In a firmly worded email, I replied: This notion that we’re all pigs because we have cars and homes and choose to live in secure neighborhoods is such a tired one. Climate change is a myth perpetuated by power thirsty radical politicians who seek control of every aspect of American life. Look at how they’ve rushed to discredit the common sense solutions in the new book, Super Freakonomics.#

What a day it has been. Can somebody get me a can of Lysol?