AS SEEN ON TWITTER 7/16/2020

https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1283820583126532097

This is pretty awesome 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/uIsMmcLwse

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) July 16, 2020

Maybe @NBA players should wear this on their jerseys! https://t.co/FPqhHKNyX9

— Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) July 16, 2020

Another brain teaser for #epitwitter and #medtwitter -how has Sweden managed to complete its epidemic curve and bring mortality to ~0 with no lockdown, no masks, and a lower mortality rate than UK, Italy, Belgium, Spain, NY, MA, CT, NJ, RI. Wasn’t this supposed to be impossible? pic.twitter.com/X0PysYlwVg

— Ramin Farzaneh-Far MD (@rfsquared) July 9, 2020

Outside NYC City Hall 6/29/2020

We are the product of history not the judge of it

When Orville and Wilbur Wright took that momentous flight in 1903, they did not do it alone. Of course there were others present who helped the brothers in their historic quest, but I speak of others, known and unknown who were responsible for the world changing event on Kitty Hawk.

The Wright Brothers were bike makers, a rather new fad which allowed them not only an income to finance their famous enterprise but also gave them the machinist expertise necessary to accomplish it. Bicycles at the time of the first flight were a pretty new mode of transportation, the first bicycle having been built less than a hundred years before in 1817.  A crude contraption  without chains,  brakes, or pedals. Of course there would not have been bikes at all had it not been for the wheel which some unknown human with an enterprising and inventive mind first used around 3500 BC. Interesting enough however, the first historic record of men using the wheel was not for transportation but as a potter's wheel. At some later date someone got the idea for a wheel barrow, then the axle then wallah, we become mobile. 
  
An even more recent invention was responsible for the flight, the internal combustion engine.

The first commercially successful internal combustion engine was created by Étienne Lenoir around 1860 and the first modern internal combustion engine was created in 1876 by Nicolaus Otto.

 All these inventions, did I mention the glider (1853) were not only the product of their inventor's minds, but the accumulated knowledge passed onto them from various sources going back thousands of years. 

It is easy to see how inventions and other human enterprises are the offspring of previous human accomplishments, so why is it so difficult to recognize that all human advancement is built upon the past? That we are the product of history not the judge of it.

As great as they may have been, America's Founding Fathers did not come up with their revolutionary ideas regarding freedom out of thin air. They were a product of their times, taught by the evolving ideas and principles of previous generations.

For a society that sees evolution as the beginning and end of all existence we are remarkably ignorant of it when it comes to our own advancement. We did not suddenly find ourselves ending slavery any more than we suddenly found ourselves on the moon. To demean the advancement in human progress by judging the past from a place of progress is no different than Neil Armstrong condemning the Wright Brothers for their lack of ingenuity.

We don't, or shouldn't, expect children to act like adults. Most people realize there is a learning curve to life. The older one gets the more aware you become of that curve and, with humility, realize how steep it is. In a sense that is what is happening now, Rather than recognizing how far we have come, we belittle our less advanced selves.
Some are demanding that the past conform to the enlightened values that the past itself taught us. In condemning our past we are condemning ourselves. We are saying that "they" should have known better when in fact "they" knew better than the generation that preceded them and the generation before that, it is called progress. 

I have always loved history, but to truly understand and appreciate history requires a different kind of humility. It requires the ability to truly know that I did not walk in history's footsteps, I was not there, then try to be there, to understand what it must have been like.

To judge history from today's platform is worse than arrogance, it is immature. It is like an adult demanding a child act and react based on things that they don't know, on knowledge and experience they have not yet gained. Yet that is exactly the path that is being promoted, not only by misinformed mobs in the street but by a large swath of supposed mature society. 

Corporations whose very existence is a bi-product of evolutionary development of ideas and practices are failing to recognize that what created them, created us. Grown Ups who fail to teach their children, politicians who at the best bow to the loud voices of insanity and at worst, cheer it on hoping to be its champion.

As depressing as it is to watch current events, history teaches us one over riding lesson. When mankind crashes to the ground it will always brush itself off and look to fly again. That is the God spark that was built into us from the beginning and from which we cannot escape, no matter how hard we may try.

The study I want to see

Yesterday I went into a sub shop. There were five people behind the counter and they needed every one of them to keep up with the demand of even a 50% occupancy restaurant. Obviously they could not social distance the recommended six feet but four of the five employees had masks. I say had masks rather than wore masks. One, the middle aged African American manager did not even have one hanging around his neck. Three of the teen-age or early twenty employees had black cloth masks which covered their chins. They were the not even the now popular 'everything but the nose' fashion statement,  these three were in a state of full-fledged strip down to the neck mask nudity. The fifth employee, a young man another teen, was fully CDC compliant. He was covered (except his eyes), a true black cloth wearing citizen of the state.

This all got me thinking again about masks in the current "crisis," God I hate when that happens, but it did, I went and thought about masks. What I was thinking, was not about the irresponsibility of the non mask compliant foursome but rather the single compliant youth. Because I look at things backwards my thought was, is the poor kid at risk by studiously and most would consider responsibly wearing his mask? 

In our new masked society  the reason we are being "asked" to wear masks is NOT to protect ourselves from others, but rather to protect others from ourselves. If it was meant to protect ourselves we would need to wear respirators or at minimum N-95 masks which would protect me, but not you. That is why I find it so sad to see all the older people, the ones truly in danger, out dutifully wearing their masks as if it was protection, it really is not, though I doubt most realize this.

Enough sadness back to those people behind the counter not wearing masks, are they a threat? Like most such places there is a "sneeze screen" between them and us. In addition, like most such places, it is set up so you cannot get within six feet of the people behind the counter. But what about the food?

Currently, there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food. Before preparing or eating food it is important to always wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds for general food safety.

So the people not wearing their masks were no more likely to infect their customers than the young man wearing the mask, though they could be a threat to each other of course. But my thought was what if one of them was infected. Odds are, and I do mean odds are, that the four youngsters and probably the manager, he looked pretty fit, would only be mildly affected if they were infected. They might not even know they were infected. Any one or all of them could be asymptomatic or have such mild symptoms, perhaps an occasional  sniffle or scratchy throat that they simply ignored it. A young healthy person might easily just write it off as being from this new experience of wearing a mask hours on end...well sometimes.

But what about the masketeer guy? What if he was positive for Covid-19 hidden behind his black mask worn tightly over his mouth and nose. I am no doctor, obvious isn't it, but it is my understanding that Covid-19 is a respiratory virus. In short it affects how you breathe and how much oxygen you are getting.

An aside here;

The other day Nick Watney the PGA golfer withdrew from the Heritage Tournament here in South Carolina because he tested positive for the virus. The Tour and the media put out that he noticed "symptoms" and contacted officials, was given a test and he tested positive. He then withdrew from the tournament. What was his symptom? As it turns out the symptom was nothing physical, at least that he felt.

PGA Tour golfer Nick Watney said it was his wearable fitness tracker that first alerted him that he may have coronavirus.
Watney has worn his Whoop fitness tracker for more than a year now. On a Friday morning before the RBC Heritage event, he noticed his respiratory rate had spiked from Whoop’s app. Despite not feeling any of the physical symptoms associated with Covid-19, Watney decided to get tested.

By the way almost all professional athletes wear those devises. In fact the respiratory spike that Watney noticed was from the night before while he slept, it was unusual so he got tested.

Back to our masketeer  in the sub shop, chances are pretty good he does not wear a highly sophisticated health monitoring device, but he does wear his totally unsophisticated cloth mask. You want to know one thing that WHO and CDC say NOT to do in a mask? Exercise. Why? "Masks may reduce the ability to breathe comfortably" and "Sweat can make the mask become wet more quickly which makes it difficult to breathe and promotes the growth of microorganisms."

Now I know it is just me, but it just seems to me that wearing a device that reduces one's ability to breath and if not properly maintained will bread microorganisms is not all too wise when dealing with a respiratory illness. Remember  the purpose of wearing the mask is to protect them from you, which means its to be worn in case you are infected. 

My question is; What are the affects to the infected individual of wearing a mask? Since the vast majority of people wearing masks, improperly and without proper hygienic care, are wearing non-surgical cloth masks, what health issues is this creating? Not only for those wearing them that are infected but those who are not. Look around you, everywhere you look people are wearing masks, usually improperly, are they washing them? Daily? If they are wearing surgical mask are they replacing them regularly? A surgical mask in a non-sterile environment becomes contaminated very quickly and you are walking around with what ever you not only breathed out on the inside of your mask but whatever you breathed in on the outside of the mask. In short are the masks themselves becoming carriers of the very virus they are meant to protect us from, or other hazards? The outside world is not a hospital and you are probably not a healthcare professional. 

Does grandma know the mask she is wearing is not protecting her? The young masketeer in the sub shop, with all his good intentions or because he follows the rules even his boss does not, probably does not know how to wear or take care of his mask so that it does not become a breading ground for germs that may seriously harm him, do you? 

The entire mask epidemic is ripe for unintended consequences. Prior to this current Covid-19 "crisis", numerous studies were done to determine the contamination of masks worn by hospital workers so they could be properly used and disposed of so as not to infect others with germs picked up in the sterile environment of a hospital. Do we honestly believe that American society is even remotely able to comprehend, less alone adhere to protocols intended for trained professionals? 

What are the consequences to society of all this mask wearing? That is the study I want done. I guess we are already doing it.

A silent majority is easily silenced

People are saying that there is a silent majority out there that does not agree with what is happening to the country. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, hard to hear a silent majority when they are.....silent. People say there is a culture war going on, maybe there is, maybe there isn't, hard to tell when one side is not fighting.

One thing I do know is that times have changed, they always do and unless you change with the times, well time passes you by. It passes you by even faster when you are standing still, doing nothing and being silent. In fact in that condition you aren't really there at all, are you?

Here is an idea, stop being silent and take back the culture that you think is worth fighting for. How do you do that? Here is a simple start, take back something. If we really are a majority, silent or otherwise, then numbers matter, but they only matter if you don't begin by ceding the battlefield. If you don't show up you can't win. 

I'll give you a simple battlefield where numbers will matter and is now part of a culture that passes the silent majority by....Twitter. Stupid isn't it, who would want to spend time arguing in 240 characters with mostly anonymous people who don't like you and probably never will. So don't, you don't even have to write a thing, just support the people who are on your side. Support the causes that you care about. Read what people are saying and take a side and just support your side. If it is the new digital town hall shouldn't the majority control what is said there? It is really rather simple, but because we are the silent majority we think that we do not need to engage, but we do and if we don't...well we will remain silent until we are gone and the world will not be the same because we did not care to engage and were silent.  

The Short Lease

Chaos

One of the most puzzling things about the Trump presidency is the inability of the liberal establishment to make public opinion headway against him despite his attack on everything they held sacred. Though several explanations can be advanced perhaps the most plausible is that the establish...

#WalkAway

No Substitute for Total Victory

No Substitute for Total Victory

As the Left continues to spiral out of control -- foaming, spitting, frothing in rage -- it's time to state the obvious: that in the battle for the soul of America, there can be only one winner. Either we retain as much as possible of the country-as-founded, including its national character, or w...

When Heroes Aren't Human

Another month another school shooting and the never ending debate trying to understand the seemingly unknowing, why?

Why are young men in the freest most prosperous nation in human history killing their peers? Seemingly without remorse or any sense of humanity.

The go to battle lines are formed around the gun "debate" but there really is no debate there is just a divide. An insurmountable divide which will last far into the future. The divide between those who believe that guns are the problem and those who believe people are the problem. There is one undeniable fact which is that when all the guns are gone, there will still be people. And people kill people, Cain slew Abel and there was not a gun in sight.

The question should not be are guns the problem, the question should be, why are young men in the freest nation in human history killing their peers? It is sad but true that far more young people are killed due to gang violence than at school as the result of a mass murder, but that does not make these mass killings any less horrifying and far more difficult to understand.

There is, in a way, a correlation between these two seemingly different American tragedies. A desire by young people to belong. This is obvious when it comes to gangs. Gangs are formed and survive because of a desire by their members to belong, a natural need for camaraderie.

Camaraderie, there is an old fashioned word, one of those archaic ideals being ripped asunder from modern culture. But a concept critical to the psyche of the male of the species like another word not in vogue brotherhood. In a very real emotional sense it is not unlike belonging to a sports team, a fraternity or a club. Although gangs are not a justifiable outlet for this normal male desire for camaraderie , it is at least understandable.

But what of the school shooters, most of whom are outsiders and loners with no attachment to teams, groups, clubs or even gangs?

When you don't "fit in" you may find a place to "fit in" with others who have suffered as you have. Your heroes your mentors may turn out to be those who paved a path to the outlet for the frustration you so deeply feel. You may choose to join the club, the ever larger club of those who found release through massacre.

As the club grows, so too does it's opportunities for recruitment. The boy who does not identify with the Parkland shooter may, as the most recent shooting appears, identify with the Columbine murders'. As the events grow in number and frequency so too does the possibility for a spark to be lit inside a darkened soul.

Worse yet as the numbers increase so too does the justification for joining the club become easier within a tormented mind. "I am not alone, lots of people do it."

In a truly brilliant if chilling article written several shootings ago Malcolm Caldwell explored this phenomena Thresholds of Violence , How school shootings catch on.

In his essay he makes the following observation:

We misleadingly use the word “copycat” to describe contagious behavior—implying that new participants in an epidemic act in a manner identical to the source of their infection.

The key word here is contagious. The problem is not guns, young people are, as he also notes, being infected. They are catching something which their immune system cannot resist. They are susceptible to evil acts because they do not have the antibodies to fight off impulses.

It is widely accepted that gangs are primarily the result of and incubated in poverty. Add to that the increase in fatherless households and you have a toxic mix that will lead young men "astray." Not so the school shooters. A vast majority who come middle class and higher income households. Most do not come from fatherless homes. Often times it is shocking the "normal" families and homes where these killers are raised.

Which makes this epidemic even more frightening.

So again why? Why are young men from "normal" homes committing evil against their peers and society? I would suggest that there are many reasons which ferment this tragic brew. Explaining the spread of the epidemic does not explain the cause. Why in the last half century have more and more boys sought out relief from their pent up frustrations by joining this evil cult?

Let's begin with this:

Abortion is not a choice in American society today it is a cause; death should never be a cause. When the death of an innocent unborn baby becomes a political cause for individual liberty, a tool to be used to promote political agendas and a defining measure of womanhood in popular society, we truly have lost our way.

[I]n so called popular American society today, those who oppose an unnatural act are somehow considered villains and uncaring, whereas those who promote the unnatural destruction of life are considered enlightened. This is not only backwards, it is sick and it is by any moral precept-wrong. Worse, this backward, sick, immoral thinking is promoted and championed in our society to the detriment of our moral structure which corrodes the very fabric of any truly progressive society. When any society champions death over life, the death of that society is inevitable.

I wrote those words many years ago and they are no less true today. The school shooting epidemic is not a gun issue, and no it is not an abortion issue, it is a societal issue. It is about what we believe and how we teach, or do not teach, our children to believe. If you begin with promoting the death of the most innocent how can you teach children the respect for life?

In a very real sense it is not unlike the old canard "A man who stands for nothing, will fall for anything." In this case "a boy who believes in nothing is capable of anything." Life is either precious or it is not and if in your formative years you are taught not to respect life...well you figure it out.

When I was growing up, and for the generations before me, I was surrounded by heroes. Not because I lived in a unique environment or location or time but because that is the way boys were raised. Boys will be boys is not a curse it is the pathway to manhood.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Is not just a question it is an invitation, an invitation to look around you to see what you admire. "I want to be a cowboy, I want to be a policeman, I want to be a soldier. In today's "popular culture" all these and many other heroic figures are not only not held up to the youth as worthy role models they are vilified. Many of the heroes of my youth are now portrayed as villains in some way or another.

If a boy has no great dreams and examples of heroism he will never be a hero. Unless boys have totally changed since I was one, boys love to dream of being the hero. If they don't our society is lost. Heroes made the world, especially the ones we never heard of.

Try to go to a movie today where the heroes are even human, they are cartoon characters. Humans especially the male of the species are no longer allowed to be the heroes unless they are from a Galaxy far far away or a world that does not really exist. American society not only treats life as a throw away commodity we have created a heroless society less someone be offended by the glory of another.

So now we raise boys ridiculed and even drugged for their natural metabolism. They are chastised for their impulses and desires while their opposite gender is glorified for their blatant promiscuity meant to entice their male counterpart who is belittled for being what God and nature made him to be.

Not to mention that a girl in today's society is not only allowed to kill her "mistake", Barack Obama's words not mine, they are glorified for doing so. The boy? The boy is a lecherous scoundrel preying on noble womanhood. This is the world we raise our boys in, and worse.

All this is happening while "popular culture" actively promotes the degradation of normal role models and promotes the less natural alternative life styles which only confuse young males as to who they are and what they should be.

It is not that boys are stigmatized by video games or movies, it is that it becomes their escape from a society which is increasingly hostile to their nature. The outcome is the same though. Living in an imaginary world with comic book heroes and rules that defy nature will lead to more and more young men not being men at all.

It is hard to be a man when you do not know what a man is in a society which is telling you how to think and feel when you do not think and feel that way at all.

What we need are heroes. Not comic book ones but real men who know what a man's place is and proudly explain it and more importantly live it for all to see, especially the boys.

Guns are not the problem, but increasingly for the broken boys of our broken culture guns are becoming the answer.

The Crisis of Our Young Men

Add to this households where the father is a progressive, not instilling traditional values into their sons and you have a tremendous depletion of manhhod in the Western World-Jer

The Crisis of Our Young Men

Almost 5 million prime-age working men have disappeared from the work force.

As Seen On Twitter

Student barred from class for claiming there are two gendershttps://t.co/g2nEv8thPF pic.twitter.com/UaF9wA3n2H

— Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) March 10, 2018

What If Newspapers Reported the Real News about Human Progress?

What If Newspapers Reported the Real News about Human Progress?

In his new book Enlightenment Now and in his McLaughlin Lecture at the Cato Institute this week, Steven Pinker made the point that we may fail to appreciate how much progress the world has made because the news is usually about bad and unusual things.

The left always hates God — until they don’t

Stephen Colbert mocks at God: Make Oprah 'Run!'

Stephen Colbert, late-night comedian, sat down with famed talker Oprah Winfrey and turned on the charm for God to make her run for the presidency in 2020. It was a mocking bit, no biggie for atheists but at least somewhat insulting for Christians. But the deeper takeaway is the hypocrisy it reveals of the left.

Behind Cruz's Florida Rampage, Obama's School-Leniency Policy

Behind Cruz's Florida Rampage, Obama's School-Leniency Policy | RealClearInvestigations

Despite committing a string of arrestable offenses on campus before the Florida school shooting, Nikolas Cruz was able to escape the attention of law enforcement, pass a background check and purchase the weapon he used to slaughter three staff members and 14 fellow students because of Obama administration efforts to make school discipline more lenient.

The Growing Attack on Boys

The Growing Attack on Boys | National Review

Boyhood is not a disease that needs to be cured. This week's International Women's Day came and went, as it tends to do, with great media fanfare.

Billy Graham was a pernicious influence on the White House

Billy Graham was a pernicious influence on the White House

In life and in death, Billy Graham has been depicted as a benign counselor to presidents. On Wednesday, he became the first religious leader to lie in state at the US Capitol. Now, we owe ourselves a reckoning with Graham, who spread his brand of evangelical Christianity around the world while having unfettered access to the Oval Office for decades.

POLL: Americans Are More Satisfied With Their Country Than They Have Been In A Decade

POLL: Americans Are More Satisfied With Their Country Than They Have Been In A Decade

Americans are more satisfied with the United States' place in the world now than they have been in more than a decade, according to a new poll from Gallup - and that number has grown by more than 10% in the past year alone.

The Malthusian Infection Part 1

The other day I read and posted on my Facebook page an article by the economist Mark J. Perry which had a chart (below) which showed the worlds extreme poverty rate had dropped by 80% over the past thirty years.

I noted that this fact has not been widely publicized because to do so would inevitably lead to an explanation of how this miracle occurred, capitalism. As Perry explained in his article there is little doubt that the spread of more free market principles is the reason for this sudden and wholly beneficial transformation of the world.

Then I came across this blog post from Walter Russel Meade, the title of which explains the post GMO Fight Exposes Green Hypocrisy, GMO being Genetically Modified Organism, the not so new wave in agriculture. In the post Meade, one of the great common sense intellectuals of our times, makes the following observation:

What the planet and the people who live on it badly need is a pro-environment, pro-people movement that actually cares about scientific evidence. Unfortunately that’s not what we’ve got...

The reason for this of course is that the environmental movement is controlled by the left. The same holds true for why the global reduction in poverty is the "hidden miracle" of our times. The global media as a general rule is primarily populated and run by left leaning individuals who have a certain bias against free market capitalism and will seek, again as a general rule, to marginalize it.

 The left obviously sees capitalism as anti-environment which is a fallacy of the highest order and one of the greatest of the countless lies the left propagates in order to sustain itself. But the bigger question which these two connected stories bring together; is the left, as an ideology, now anti-people?

Back in the sixties a man who is still little known began what truly was the "green revolution." His name was Norman Borlaug a n American biologist that among other achievements and accolades is known as "the man who saved a billion lives."

Here is a portion of the biography of this remarkable man's contribution to the world from Wikipedia:

Borlaug received his B.Sc. Biology 1937 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.

During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations.[9] These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.[10] He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

Later in his life, he helped apply these methods of increasing food production to Asia and Africa....

Not mentioned in that brief summary but can be found in his Nobel Biography is the fact that all of that research and all of those life saving programs were not the result of some US Government program but were in fact the product of a private institution set up and sponsored by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. And we all know where that money came from, right?

But the reason I mention Borlaug other than the fact that he is perhaps the least appreciated American in history, is that what Borlaug did was destroy in advance what was to become an article of faith on the left with the publication in 1968 of The Population Bomb. Again from Wikipedia:

The Population Bomb is a best-selling book written by Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich (who was uncredited), in 1968.[1][2] It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a "population explosion" were widespread in the 1950s and 60s, but the book and its author brought the idea to an even wider audience.

It is indeed ironic that while one segment of academia using theoretical science was predicting and promoting the idea of worldwide starvation, another branch of academia using applied science was solving the problem. While the theoretician is spreading fear onto the masses, a "doer" using the charitable contributions of two of histories most successful capitalist, is out saving the masses. Some things never change.

The true tragedy of this though is that the man who in many ways "saved the world" is barely known while the theoretician Ehrlich's influence has infected academia, science and indeed the so called intelligentsia for a generation.

Not that it was anything new, what Ehrlich and his followers promoted was just the Malthusian theory.  A theory based on the works of the Reverend Thomas Malthus in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which warned that increasing population would outpace resources, particularly food, leading to mass starvation and global instability.

Of course Malthus' concerns were made mute by advances in agriculture technology in the nineteenth century such as more advanced plows, better planting practices etc. just as Ehrlich's Population Bomb has bombed due to the work of Borlaug and others.

But Ehrlich's and Malthus apocalyptic views live on in the hearts and minds of the left. Indeed it is this permeating belief  in an out of control humanity unable to sustain itself while reeking havoc on and raping the virgin Mother Earth which in many ways is the very foundation of leftist political theology.  Or at the very least one of its primary justifications for its existence.

It is indeed ironic that the political philosophy which has the gall to call itself progressive is in fact the very political philosophy that ignores the historical record of the progress of man when formulating their agendas. This I contend is in large part due to this Malthusian infection which the left either can not or will not shake from its ideological DNA.

This infection, this idea that mankind is racing towards societal and ecological disaster is in fact the left's Achilles Heel. In many ways large and small it will be its undoing because you can not be the champion of the people while being the the party which promotes anti-people policies, like abortion for one.

 I will explain in detail in Part 2.

BEWARE THE HERBIVORE EFFECT

Via-New Geography

By Joel Kotkin

In the 1980s, American commentators and best-selling authors repeatedly sought to convince companies and workers to be more "Japanese." After all, for two generations, the men of Japan, supported by their wives, constituted a fearsome force – first, in the run up to the Second World War, then during the economic "miracle" that drove that small island nation toward the pinnacle of global economic power.

Yet, today, Japan's latest generation of men appears lacking the fierce ambition that drove their fathers, much less their grandfathers. The term commonly used for this new generation of Japanese is "herbivores," a play on the word for plant-eating animals generally known for their docility. And, instead of embracing what the new generation is doing in Japan, we should look at our young people and think: God forbid.

Growing up in a period of tepid economic growth, a declining labor market and a loss of overall competitiveness, Japan's "herbivores" are more interested in comics, computer games and socializing through the Internet than building a career or even seeking out the opposite sex. Among males ages 16-19, 36 percent in one survey expressed no interest in sex, and some even despised it.

Not that women are waiting breathlessly for male stirrings: Disinterest is even higher – 59 percent – for females in the same age category. The percentage of sexually active female university students, according to the Japanese Association for Sex Education, has fallen from 60 percent in 2005 to 47 percent last year. There's a bigger issue here than overly tame libidos, suggests sociologist Mika Toyota. Once-critical interpersonal familial ties are being replaced by more ad hoc relationships based on common interests.

Read entire article

Washington Reflects Victim, Entitlement Culture

Via-RCP

By Salena Zito

Ron Razete knows a little bit about sibling rivalry.

The father of five children, ranging in age from 15 to 26, has them all working behind the counter of a shop no bigger than a walk-in closet — alongside a large KitchenAid mixer, a sizzling hot fryer, racks filled with little doughnuts, a cash register and barely enough room for four svelte customers.

They all work together in some combination at the family sweetery, Peace, Love and Little Donuts, where customers usually wait in line outside for a fresh, piping-hot treat.

Never once did Razete consider the jockeying for attention and seniority between his children as bullying, or as troubling enough to cause “mental anguish.” Yet a study released last week by the University of New Hampshire sounded an alarm indicating just that.

The study looked at roughhousing, destruction or stealing of property and name-calling. It showed one-third of 3,000 children surveyed claimed to have been victimized by a brother or sister the previous year.

Brothers and sisters have been snatching each other's toys and clothes, name-calling and squabbling since the dawn of time, said Razete.

“It's sort of the baseline for how you interact with people outside of your family and how you choose your friends in different stages of your life,” he said. “But this study makes it appear as though we have yet another layer of society to blame for our ability to manage and resolve conflict.”

And it adds to our victim/entitlement culture that rewards everyone for just showing up and allows folks to blame everyone but themselves when things go south.

In today's society, especially in large inner cities and affluent suburbs, we have been enabling at least two generations of Americans who do not know how to win in sports or in academics, by handing out rewards for everyone so no one's feelings are hurt.

Parents and teachers alike obsess over the negative effects of a child losing any sort of competition, ignoring the critically valuable skills of teamwork, healthy sportsmanship and, most important, learning how to lose.

“It's as if, as a society, we are embarrassed to award excellence for fear it will offend someone who is less than excellent,” said Bruce Haynes, a media partner at the bipartisan Purple Strategies consulting firm in Washington. “Rather than a drive to the top, it creates a drive to the bottom.”

In other words, if you build a better mousetrap, you might have to apologize to other mousetrap manufacturers, then to the Humane Society, for your accomplishment.

We've told our extraordinary people it's OK to be ordinary — and they've obliged us.

It would be easy to say Washington encourages this behavior. But politics usually is a mirror of the culture that exists; D.C. more often reflects reality than shapes it.

So a lot of these characteristics more reflect the culture in which politicians came up, not them driving culture in that direction.

To be fair, philosophers have declared the decline of civilization since 700 B.C., when Herodotus wrote his didactic poem, “Work and Days,” centuries before the Greeks' victory over the Persians and the Golden Age of Athens.

Every generation is inclined to view the latest generation as sissies (at least until it proves itself otherwise) but that doesn't mean, sooner or later, some generation won't actually earn the title.

We've had three generations in a row that have accepted — and, in large measure, been corrupted by — an enervating dependency that promotes a welfare state; they are the grandchildren of an industrial society that had no way of improving a Great Depression without creating a dead-end welfare state — or was the New Deal the failure?

So, the next time you feel the need to slather a child with anti-bacterial gel before “co-playing” with a friend on a scheduled “play date” at a rubber-cushioned playground, consider letting them play without you — and, if they skin their knees or get into a fight, let them figure things out for themselves.

The way we teach our kids to handle problems at home, or on the playground, directly impacts the leadership we get in Washington. And, based on opinion polls, we haven't been happy since the Eisenhower era.