Year: 2009

How Not to Raise Your Kids

Calvin Freiburger culture, liberalism, sex, stupidity, youth

Last week, I wrote a post for NewsReal blasting Conor Friedersdorf for his contention that teen sexting is no big deal.  In his vapid response to his critics, somebody left a comment that perfectly illustrates just how demented the liberal mind is:

Would Calvin Freiburger prefer that a 14 year old girl take off her top IN PERSON to explore her burgeoning sexuality and hormones? If I were a sane parent I’d be grateful that the only sex my kid* were having was virtual.

10 years ago the problem was “hook-ups” where your teen was expected to engage in oral sex on a first date to keep up with her peers. Obviously, that still happens, but if we get lucky, maybe sexting will replace it.

This guy comes from the starting point that his kids are inevitably going to have sex, and there’s nothing he as a parent can do about it.  Far be it from me to put any effort into raising children!  Discipline?  Discussion?  Values?  What are these words of which you speak?

Whether it’s laziness, incompetence, or a simple lack of morals, if this is your starting point, then you’re abdicating your basic responsibilities as a parent, and you are a failure.

Conservatism Must Not Abandon the Cultural Front (Updated)

Calvin Freiburger 2010, 2012, Barack Obama, campaigns, conservatism, culture, David Swindle, Democrats, education, Founding Fathers, history, liberalism, liberty, patriotism, progressivism, Republican Party, resercons, socialism, strategy, youth

My NewsReal colleague David Swindle has been debating Pajamas Media’s Mary Grabar on the subject of drug legalization.  I side with the arguments made by Grabar, Ann Coulter, and others against legalizing drugs, but I’ve honestly never cared enough about the issue to explore it in depth.

I know there’s an argument that true conservatives should recognize that arresting people for voluntary drug use goes beyond the proper role of limited government.  But y’know what?  We’ve got plenty of cases of government overreach and violated rights in this country that don’t involve destructive behavior—stolen property due to eminent domain abuses, innocent babies destroyed in the womb, politicians constantly looking for new excuses to paw through their constituents’ wallets—that frankly, the tribulations of potheads fighting for the right to light up register pretty low on my sympathy meter and priority list.

But hey, maybe the Founding Fathers really would side with the libertarians on this one.  I’ll read with open-minded interest David & Mary’s continued exchanges, but I have to strongly disagree with one of David’s assertions:

John McCain lost to Barack Obama because of politics, not culture. Obama was a more exciting candidate who ran a much more effective campaign. It’s that simple.

A conservatism that can win is one which understands itself and defines itself as a political movement, not a cultural one. To do otherwise is to begin to destroy a functioning coalition that has been vital to defending America since Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley Jr., and Ronald Reagan brought it together in the 20th century. Conservatism must take the same approach to culture as the Constitution does — neutrality. Such an attitude worked for the document which has guided and protected our country for centuries and it will work for the Movement who has the same objective.

Far be it from me to read too much into the defeat of John McCain, the poster boy for almost everything a Republican shouldn’t be.  2008 was the culmination of years of GOP incompetence and lack of principle, and for reasons completely unrelated to ideology, Barack Obama was perfectly positioned to seize upon it.

But it’s another thing entirely to assume that culture played no part in Obama’s ascendance.  A culture that worships gratification (particularly sexual) without responsibility or constraints, that believes truth is personal and relativistic rather than grounded in permanent wisdom, that has been conditioned to expect everyone else to provide for their every need and clean up after their every mistake, that sneers at traditional morality and religious belief…these trends and attitudes cannot help but play into the Left’s hands.

Simply put, a narcissistic, relativistic, secular, ignorant culture will always be receptive to a political movement that promises to give them things paid for with other people’s money, affirms their “if it feels good, do it” mentality, and assures them that supporting statism and “environmental consciousness” are the only forms of morality or compassion they’ll ever really need.

A conservatism that disregards our culture will not win; indeed, its political prospects will only diminish further still.  I grew up in a public school system completely dominated by the Left.  I have seen time after time how easily the average apolitical teen, bereft of solid core values and spoon-feed the consensus of popular culture, assumes the Left’s claims on government’s role and conservatives’ evil to be true, to say nothing of every liberal myth from man-made global warming to the military-industrial complex.

More importantly, I have seen the Right’s feeble response.  This is a battle in which the conservative movement is largely—and the Republican Party is completely—AWOL.  How many conservatives are formulating strategies to break the Left’s stranglehold on education, both K-12 and college?  How many are drawing attention to the corruption of Church teachings on compassion?  How many on Capitol Hill are challenging the Left’s poisonous sexual dogma, or publicly illustrating the connection between the Democrat Party and the cultural forces it cultivates and feeds upon?

Republican electoral failures cannot be attributed to a nonexistent emphasis on culture; indeed, it’s far more likely that our woes are intimately tied to our dereliction of duty on this front.  The same old tactics—conservatives talking to the same radio audiences, writing in the same magazines, and posting on the same blogs, all mostly to each other—will win converts to the Right from time to time, but not in numbers that can even begin to compare to how many people are unwittingly fed liberal presuppositions about the world by stealth in their schools, TV shows, music, and churches, all of which form an echo chamber, reaffirming the messages for one another.

Republican strategists tend to think short-term: what will get us back into power in the next couple election cycles? Say what you want about Democrats (Lord knows I’ve said plenty), but they see the big picture, and play for keeps.  Conservatives need to open their eyes to it, as well, and settle in for the long haul. Any real, lasting return to the conservative values of the American Founding will require comprehensive strategies and solid commitments to oppose liberal encroachments on every front.

David invoked President Reagan in his post; let me conclude by doing the same.  In his Farewell Address to the American people, Reagan said:

I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson No. 1 about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins.

UPDATE: David has responded here. It seems the differences between our positions are less than they initially appeared, and I certainly agree with his central point, that the force of law is not an instrument of value enforcement.  I’ll have more thoughts later, but thanks to David for his thoughtful reply.

A Case Study in Republican Rhetorical Incompetence

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, Democrats, dishonesty, extremism, healthcare, liberalism, Republican Party, resercons, strategy, stupidity

Robert Stacy McCain has excerpts from a speech by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in which he goes completely nuclear on opponents of ObamaCare.  In Whitehouse’s alternate dimension, it seems Republicans have filled the debate with lies and distortions all aimed at frightening the American people, all because “The ‘birthers,’ the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militias and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Obama should exist.”

Of course, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that nationalizing healthcare is a really bad idea with an abysmal track record.  Heaven knows the right-wing “lies” couldn’t possibly be true, and that it couldn’t possibly be the Left who’s been lying.  No, no, better to attribute the whole thing to extremists and be done with it.

Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) has responded to Whitehouse’s un-medicated tirade with an explanation as to why people oppose ObamaCare in good faith, along with the following criticisms of his colleague’s outburst:

I don’t know whether it’s frustration or maybe just the lens through which partisans view things and their opponents, unfortunately, that spawned the remarks earlier today from one of our Democratic colleagues…I wonder if my colleagues really believe that our position is animated by hatred. Why else would we oppose this legislation?

If why Democrats routinely engage in hate-mongering still mystifies you, then maybe you shouldn’t be entrusted with a seat in the US Senate.  It’s not that complicated: THEY DON’T CARE WHAT THE TRUTH IS.  To the Left, it’s all political—tell any lie, ignore any evidence, shoot any messenger, all in the name of doing maximum damage to their opponents and intimidating as many as possible into silence.  Punks like Whitehouse keep doing it because they know there’s no price to be paid.  At most, they’ll get a timid, bumbling response like Kyl’s.

The GOP’s problems are many, but one of the biggest is that there are virtually no Ann Coulter types—people willing to talk frankly about the severe consequences of liberalism and honestly about the motives and character of their opponents—in Congress.  Every time some liar pipes up about racist Republicans or conservatives hating poor people, he should be met with such a firestorm of condemnation that the very thought of trying it again should make him wet himself in terror.  The Democrats understand that contemporary American politics is a knife fight—it’s time for Republicans to stop bringing pillows.

A Case of Mistaken, Rabid Identity (Updated for Hypocrisy!)

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, extremism, humor, me, misc, moonbats, stupidity

Milwaukee blogger Chris Liebenthal (Boots & Sabers regulars may know him as Capper) has a cookie-cutter post about the tightrope future Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will supposedly have to walk between the crooked & incompetent GOP establishment on the one hand, and the tea-party lunatics on the other.  Blah blah blah…

Amusingly, the centerpiece of the post is a comment from somebody named “Calvin” on this post from Charlie Sykes’ blog.  Out of the State of Wisconsin’s five-and-a-half-million people, there’s apparently only one right-winger by that name, so Capper pegs me as the commenter.  I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you’ve got the wrong man.

I do, however, appreciate being recognized as a “rabid right winger.” Remember, kids: Calvin Freiburger is precisely the kind of ignorant, intolerant, right-wing extremist scum your Homeland Security Secretary warned you about!

Calvin Freiburger Online: shouldn’t you be reading?

UPDATE: Understandably embarrassed at his blunder, Capper is digging in his heels in the comments, insisting that some nonexistent inconsistency between my words here and there somehow proves Sykes-Calvin and I are one and the same.  Apparently his brilliant mind cannot grasp the concept that, in the comment he imagines to be a smoking gun, I was responding to a specific claim by Anonymous (who, now that I mention it, is probably the same “Anonymous” from that other article I was reading last week!).  With such a tenuous grasp on reality and utter disregard for truth, no wonder the guy’s a liberal.

In all honesty, though, I should have known better than to waste my time wading into Capper’s cesspool – after all, a central tenet of the liberal playbook is to make a scandal out of the very act of defending one’s self from a vapid liberal attack.  Live and learn, I guess.

In honor of what feels like the ten-thousandth time one of these bozos has given blogging a bad name, it seems like a great opportunity to revisit this Steven Crowder classic:

UPDATE 2: So it turns out that yesterday, Cappy whined about falling victim to the very same thing he did to me.  You can’t make this stuff up…

UPDATE 3 (12/22/09): The Capster’s paranoia has been going on for even longer than I thought.  If it weren’t so stupid, I’d be flattered.

Sorry, But Conservatism’s Still Not Dead

Calvin Freiburger campaigns, conservatism, David Frum, David Horowitz, NY-23, Republican Party, resercons

Yesterday Republicans took the governor’s mansions of Virginia & New Jersey, and Maine voted for true marriage.  David Horowitz is hailing Virginia’s ideological turnaround in particular as bad news for Barack Obama:

The 62-38 swing by 8:30PM EST  is a thirty point electoral swing since last November. And in a state whose northern heavily populated districts front on the White House lawn and whose news is national news. It’s early; New Jersey isn’t in. But the significance of this landslide cannot be understated. An electorally decisive part of the electorate who voted for Obama last November voted against him in Virginia today.

Which means: Obamacare is dead. For now.

Postscript: New Jersey, when you consider that Obama won the state by 15 points is also a landslide shift (20 points) — mainly among independents. By not governing as a centrist Obama has forfeited his margin of victory and doomed his health care reform. On CNN Carville said: If he doesn’t pass health care, the Democrats are going to get “slaughtered” because they will have shown that they can’t govern — they can’t get things done.

The Democrats’ only major victory is New York 23, where GOP bosses sunk gobs of money into a left-wing Republican, who was then trounced by the conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman.  Hoffman lost to Democrat Bill Owens, leading the usual suspects to blast the conservatives who rallied behind Hoffman.

Hoffman might not have been a dream candidate, but given how liberal (not to mention stupid and dishonest) the official GOP choice was, you can’t blame anyone for supporting him.  A four-point loss isn’t bad at all for somebody without experience as a candidate or a lawmaker; imagine how well he could have done if he had the support he should have had from the Republican Party all along (or if, at the very least, they hadn’t been actively working against him).

And besides, just because David Frum has decided to put politics over principle doesn’t give him the right to demand that the rest of us do the same.  The Republican Party’s self-preservation and expansion of power is not an end to itself—it’s a vehicle for advancing certain principles, and only has worth to the extent that it reflects or advances those principles.

In Defense of Hillsdale

Calvin Freiburger education, FdL Reporter, Hillsdale College, letters, me, moonbats

As usual, there are a handful of criticisms of my Reporter editorial about free speech, most of them not worth addressing—the usual assortment of illogic & dishonesty (FDL54935—one of the liars referenced in my editorial—is a conservative?  Yeah, right).  One, however, warrants a response, as this isn’t the first time it’s reared its ugly head, and it won’t be the last:

DotingDad: “I wonder: when does he have time to do his schoolwork, since he is constantly writing these long-winded letters to the editor? Maybe Hillsdale is just about right-wing indoctrination, and as long as you subscribe to that, you’ll pass all your courses.”

Yes, Hillsdale College is a conservative-leaning school, but it’s also an honest one.  Its mission is to provide students with a solid grounding in the foundations of Western civilization—Greco-Roman philosophy, Judeo-Christian morality, the political ideas of the English Enlightenment and the American Founding, and classical free-market economics.  To be sure, genuine study of these things generally leads to ideas more in line with American conservatism than with progressivism.  However, that’s a sign not of how biased Hillsdale is, but of what a radical departure progressivism was from pre-20th-century thought, as well as how factually inaccurate much of mainstream education is.

Most public schools are presented as impartial institutions with no aim beyond offering students a well-rounded knowledge base and preparing them for adulthood.  Ideology is disseminated—sometimes overtly, sometimes by stealth—to an unsuspecting, often-apolitical audience, their parents forced to support the school with their tax dollars, the teachers state-approved authority figures in the lives of impressionable minors.

Hillsdale, however, is honest about its mission.  The school’s emphasis on classical thought (which, as anybody actually familiar with the professors and the classes can guarantee, is a far cry from RNC propaganda) is out in the open; anybody considering Hillsdale is free to apply or not with full knowledge of its mission.

At most colleges, you can barely swing a dead cat without hitting some washed-up Marxist or an ex-Black Panther, and odds are he’d have tenure.  K-12 public education has more than a little propagandizing of its own to answer for, too.  Rest assured, if DotingDad is really that concerned about education, he’s barking up the wrong tree.

Freedom of Speech

Calvin Freiburger Constitution, FdL Reporter, letters, speech

My latest Reporter editorial:

*          *          *

I’m glad to see Michael Mentzer take a stand against the lies and venom that have come to dominate online forums—civil discussion is almost always an exercise in futility, and the only education you’ll receive is a crash course in human nature’s dark side.  It’s genuinely disheartening to discover what our neighbors are capable of with a digital secret identity.

However, I believe important distinctions must be made, and lines drawn, in how we respond.

The Fond du Lac Reporter absolutely has the right to insist its users attach full names to whatever they say on their forums, as well as to delete whatever comments and ban whichever users they think have crossed the line.  That’s not tyranny; it’s a private institution’s right to set the terms under which one may use its services.  Like the Trace Adkins song says: “Son, the First Amendment protects you from the government—not from me.”

But when government enters the picture, things change.  Mr. Mentzer expresses hope for new laws punishing “online users who lie with malice, falsify and distort information for their own ends, and intimidate with the intention of limiting or denying freedom of speech to others,” with violators “identified, tracked down, charged, fined or jailed.”

Libel is already punishable, if a demonstrably-false statement can be shown to have damaged the victim in some way.  But not all lies are created equal—in response to my last editorial, one of fdlreporter.com’s anonymous commenters accused me of plagiarism.  Prior to that, another cited “sources” to claim I’m “barely making it through community college.”  They’re bald-faced lies (just look up Hillsdale College sometime), but have I been damaged?  Of course not; I’m not about to lose sleep over some loser with an abundance of bandwidth and free time. (“Sources” tell me my fan is really Roman Polanski.  See how easy it is?)

The point is, a lie’s credibility matters to its potential impact—and anonymous, poorly-spelled claims made via communication technology tailor-made for the lazy just won’t cut it.  In the event that such attacks do manage to harm someone, I’m confident the proper authorities will be able to unmask the culprit.

As for “falsify[ing] and distort[ing] information for their own ends,” Mr. Mentzer has (sadly) just described much of American politics.  We have entire industries—publications, websites, advocacy groups—dedicated to spreading “the truth,” and rarely is there a consensus on what that truth is. So how could this possibly be enforced, without some government decree or administrative body established to conclude just what the “official” facts are on any given topic?  I cannot believe we would want to start down that road.

We encounter similar problems with intimidation.  Like libel, intimidation by threat of violence is already actionable, and short of that, clamping down on “intimidating” speech—and giving Uncle Sam the leeway to decide what’s “intimidating”—is another scary road that would create more problems than it would solve.

The federal and state Constitutions grant the people broad freedom of speech because our forefathers knew free and open communication was an essential bulwark against tyranny.  Whenever people are given freedom, some will abuse it, but as they say, bad speech is best countered by good speech, not government force.

Treat with caution any temptation to “fix” liberty’s imperfections, for as history shows, such endeavors always bring about more than we bargain for.  For all the beauty and wisdom our First Amendment has made possible throughout history, the occasional blemish is a price I’ll gladly pay.