Melissa Harris Perry 2/19/2012 -- Melissa's new groove

Melissa has followed her bud Chris Hayes to weekend morning stardom on MSNBC --Melissa is a welcomed relief from the blowhards like Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Martin Bashir, Al Sharpton and all the other male progressives who love to speak in defense of women and their rights, but lack the insight of a real woman like Harris Perry who has two last names, so you know she's got it going on.

Republicans and the entire rightwing should stop right now and make some deep changes in their way of thinking. The Right doesn't have to change the principles they support, they merely need to understand what the principles entail. When someone on the Right criticizes the Left for violating basic rights, the person on the Right should expand this defense of individual rights, fairness and freedom from oppression to cover women, gays, minorities and everyone humans. The critic on the Right might object and say they don't have to make their defense of liberty particular, such as women's rights and gay rights, but any liberty that is not applied particularly is not liberty.

When government makes laws recognizing marriage as between man and woman, it discriminates against two men or two women who want to also be legally recognized as married. Government and the two political parties get in a bind when they defend laws which only recognize a man and woman as a legitimate "marriage", because no one in government can reasonably defend such discrimination. To say that it's tradition in not good enough, because government has no business legislating on tradition. Slavery was traditional until it was found unconstitutional. The answer is against both sides on this issue -- the answer is not for more government intervention to give gays the same legal protections in marriage as straights, but for government to remove itself from the issue of marriage all together. In the private sector, any church can still choose to not recognize marriage as anything but between man and woman, but no one can stop any consenting adults from getting marriage -- even polygamy, if this is the marriage arrangement consenting adults choose -- it's not the business of society or government, but the business of the consenting adults involved where there is no coercion and everyone consents to the marriage arrangements. The only legal matters should be contracts made, if there's any legal issue at all, between the consenting parties involved.

This might seem radical to those who limit "liberty" to a conservative liberty or a progressive liberty or a female liberty or a gay liberty, but to anyone who thinks deeply about liberty and is serious about liberty, then it makes perfect sense. It's not condoning gay marriage or polygamy, it's just saying that no one, not even government, has any business deciding who should marry when consenting adults are involved and when there's no coercion. The same goes for issues of contraception and a woman's right to her own body and sex. Many people might not like the ideas, but if they seriously promote freedom when no one is harmed from the free choices of free people, then they have to allow others the liberty that they fight for and apply to their lives and beliefs.

Republicans will lose this fight if they attempt to limit liberty to conservative, religious liberty. Liberty is liberty and it applies to individuals, not groups or religious faiths or sexual orientation or gender or whatever.

So, go Melissa with your new groove on, but, just remember, it works the other way too, girlfriend, so don't let me hear you denying freedom to conservatives just because you're offended by that particular freedom to behave as they see fit as long as it's not violating anyone's rights.

Up with Chris Hayes 2/11/2012 -- Hayes claims victory in culture war

It's over. Chris Hayes has claimed a liberal/progressive victory in the culture war. Immediately after claiming victory, Hayes walked over to his panel of guests, Michaela Angela Davis, Richard Kim, Rebecca Traister and John McWhorter -- an unlikely group of victors. The entire program's theme was the culture war, with the birth control issue as a main focus and with  a secondary focus on gay marriage. The overal message was that Republicans can now be framed as anti-birth-control and anti-gay rights.

I love Up with Chris Hayes -- in grand, modern, progressive fashion, they are very honest about their deception, which in a perverted way is admirable. No longer are liberals hiding behind a pretension to be "real Amuricans" like everyone else in fly-over country -- now they're claiming that they represent the real world view of most Americans, and that the Right is left behind in reactionary anger, attempting to pull the country back to the dark ages in our history, before African-Americans, women and gays had rights. The progressives admit that this is deception, but they are happy the depception is working, because deep down there's a little truth in it -- I mean, who doesn't know in their heart of hearts that the Right secretly hates uppity blacks, independent women and gays who express self esteem? Right?

Rebecca Traister was near orgasmic as she described Obama's political manipulation, drawing out the Right on the issue of contraception, then setting up the narrative which can frame the Right as anti-birth control, then coming up with an accomodation that satisfies the base and the most important Catholic supporters -- Traister called it "genius", as M. A. Davis nodded and squirmed in estactic agreement.

Hayes brought on a Notre Dame Catholic to defend the Church's position, and he did a fairly good job, because he was intellectually prepared, but he failed to bring up the main point, as did the panel and Hayes. The main point is government intervention and whether we want government playing this type of role in our lives and our nation's economy. If the Left can make this about a culture war and push Rick Santorum to the front of Republican candidates challenging Obama, then Hayes is correct -- the Right loses. But if the Right can keep this about the role of government in our lives and whether we want to make systemic changes to our statist system, then the Left loses.

Hayes is right -- no one cares enough to interfere in the relationships of gay couples, and most people favor contraception, but that's not the problem. The problem is that Obamacare reveals the true nature of statism. Government intervention was abstract as long as it was gradually implemented and people became accustomed to central planning and social engineering, but now that government has effective control over healthcare, this is major statist control. Banks and financial institutions are also learning valuable lessons about statism as the structure of Dodd-Frank is filled in by myriad regulations. Obama is a big time statist, and Obama got two major structural reforms passed before the 2010 elections slowed him down. The major structural reforms are now being developed through the regulatory process, and reality is hitting Americans in the face with a Big Brother fist.

In order to stymy resistance in the private sector, such as the Catholic Rebellion of 2012, progressives have to obscure the issue and frame the controversy as a culture war in which the Right is attempting to roll back gains in achieved constitutional rights associated with gays, minorities and women. So Hayes claims progressive victory in a war which is declared by the Left but isn't being fought on the Right except among a small fringe section which is marginal. John McWhorter had the good sense to put this in perspective, although he should have called Hayes on his honest deception. The major push on the Right and among true liberals is in relation to government intervention and the role we want government to play in our lives and the economy in the 21st century. Good luck to Hayes as he fights the culture war -- but the real war between statists and anti-statists will likely be where winners and losers are established.

Getting real about religious irrationality

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39118941/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

I wrote about this recently as it related to the hokey threat from an ignorant Florida preacher that he was going to burn Korans, but the more we hear about the reactions from Muslims and read reports like the one linked above, we have to ask why so many American intellectuals aren't condemning the religious irratonality coming from a large portion of the Islamic faithful around the world.

For decades, American intellectuals have rightly called many fundamentalist Christians like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on their irrationality, bigoted comments and beliefs, and just plain ignorance, but intellectuals in America, especially on the left, are going in the other direction with Islam -- they selectively choose moderate Islamists who appear rational when quoted, but ignore the overwhelming evidence that much of Islam is stuck in an ignorant mindset which is harmful to women, gays, anyone who doesn't believe as they believe and freedom in general.

This reluctance of American intellectuals to call the Islamist faith on its worst practices and beliefs is intellectually dishonest and cowardly. Just about all the news reports on the 9/11 remembrance is couched in dire warnings about Islamophobia -- but hardly anything is written about why the ideas held by many, many Muslims around the word should be feared, condemned and rejected. In the above article, if this gay individual was being threatened with reprisals for being gay and having a Jewish fiend by the officials of an American state, there would be such an uproar and righteous indignation that  Federal investigators and the media would be falling over one another to get to the state bigots involved.

Why are we still in the UN?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/30/stayed-mum-iran-vote-womens-commission/

Forget about whether the US could've blocked or protested the UN from including Iran in their committee dealing with women's rights, why are we still in the UN? The UN is corrupt, led by tyrants, infected with moral relativity, and it's a major waste of money. Our participation is this group of thieves, cowards and rights violators is inexlicable.

Between liberty and equality

Now we are down to the issues of liberty and equality. This could be the final quandary to be resolved, but how it's resolved is critical to our future. Because if it's not resolved properly, there will be many quandaries in the future -- and no peace. Peace will come about when there's a balance between liberty and equality -- when there's no more right and left to speak of. Even if this is resolved in liberal democracies/republics, yet there are other States where people live under different forms of tyranny, the modern world will have found the way to peace, and the tyrannies will be anamolies, resisting peace, stuck in the past.

The idea that we must balance equality and freedom has been weighted on the side of equality, but as in the old Soviet Union the new inequality is a reality of political power dominating the private sector. The communists proposed equality but they created a great inequality. The main area of focus for America regarding inequality is corporate welfare. Our unlimited government is in the process of picking winners and losers, and this must stop if equality is a goal. You don't create equality by advancing some and holding others back - you remove all barriers to advancement, then allow people to equally pursue happiness. Unnatural advantages are worse than natural advantages. It's true that some people have a natural advanage in a free market in some areas of endeavors -- some people are more naturally suited to business, some more naturally suited to art, and some are more naturally suited to science -- on and on. But, if each of us has the opportunity to learn and become the best at what we strive to accomplish, then hard work and perseverance can many times trump natural ability or the accidents of birth if those with natural advantages don't use their gifts to the fullest extent.

The problem on the left is that they don't truly believe people can overcome natural disadvantages, so they opt for political power which feeds an insatiable State with more and more power. Some writers talk about how women and blacks have a particular disadvantage because of historical social influences which have worked against them cause psychological barriers to success in a free market, yet these same thinkers appear unconcerned about State influences which create an insidious dependency which is even more psychologically destructive in the long run -- at least society began changing and accepting women and blacks as equal and competent, but the State still acts as if they're incapable of competing. In fact, the Democrats have an unconscious need to maintain this dependent relationship -- the incentives are screwed up. Empowered women and minorities succeeding in the private sector, in no need of State assistance, signals the end of the Democrat Party as the Moral Gatekeepers. Once women and blacks realize that unified, creative efforts in a free market will overcome historical disadvantages, they'll see political power as a stepping stone which is now transcended and actually holding them back -- it will be in their interest for the market to be as free as possible from government interference and heavy taxation.

As the market is made up of more and more successful women and minorities, it will be in their interest to limit government. The statist policies being implemented or proposed will be damaging to economic growth, and opposition to an over-reaching government will include minorities and women, especially as they think about their families and equal opportunities for the next generation. This is where Republicans can make a distinction by standing up for liberty while showing how liberty is the sine qua non of economic opportunity and advancement for all.