Thought Police Tribunals

Gay “marriage” doesn’t disturb me as much as “hate crime” laws. Both are driven by pressure groups such as Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the Human Rights Campaign, and countless others pushing the Homosexual Agenda. All swear there’s no such agenda, of course, but then the first item on it is to claim it doesn’t exist. When activists pushed “gay rights” and opponents like this writer said gay “marriage” is next, they called it fear-mongering. So what’s next on the Homosexual Agenda?

State and Federal Hate Crime Laws, that’s what. Unleash the Thought Police.

Let’s say J. Edgar Hoover walked into the room wearing a dress. Would we call him “her”? Evidently, Hoover and his lover/assistant Clyde Tolson attended secret parties dressed as a woman and liked to be called “Mary.” Fine for him, but must the rest of us pretend also? If someone thinks he’s Napoleon, we don’t have to call him “Emperor” do we? It’s one thing to wink and play along, but quite another to accept neurotic/psychotic behavior as normal. If we do, aren’t we crazy too? Better not say anything though. With “hate crime” laws, you could go to jail.

After Bruce Freeman of Lewiston, Maine started calling himself “Brianna” and wearing women’s clothes, he used the ladies’ room in a public restaurant. According to the Bangor Daily News, “Another customer complained to the manager about sharing a public restroom with a man . . . ‘The customer was very upset, was irate, had threatened to call police [said the manager]. A few days later, management decided that it would be in the best interest of Denny’s to ask [Freeman] to use the men’s room until sex reassignment surgery.’”

Throughout, the Bangor Daily News referred to Bruce/Brianna as “she” or “her” or “woman.” The lead was: “The Maine Human Rights Commission decided Monday that a transgender woman was discriminated against at a Denny’s restaurant in Auburn when management would not let her use the ladies room until she had sex reassignment surgery.”

If I write an opinion that the plaintiff is a neurotic about to mutilate himself surgically, could I be found guilty of “hate speech” by government entities like the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC)? Maybe I already have by calling the plaintiff “he” and “him.” Could it be ruled “harassment” by the MHRC if he files a complaint? Did the BDN play along because it was afraid Bruce/Brianna would sue?

GLAD’s website quotes Maine Law on this: “As a general matter, if a person has filed with the MHRC, completed the process there, and later files his or her case in court, then a full range of compensatory and injunctive relief is available.”

So Bruce/Brianna can sue now. Will he?

A spokesman for the homosexual activist group “Equality Maine,” arguing for Bruce/Brianna before the MHRC, said: “This company needs diversity training to understand what it means to be gender-nonconforming.” Denny’s has already paid legal fees defending itself unsuccessfully. Will it have to pay for “diversity training” too? Will it have to pay Bruce/Brianna for pain and suffering? Will it be forced to build new bathrooms in its restaurants? What will their final cost be for telling a man to stay out of the ladies’ room?

All this has a chilling effect on others who think the world is going crazy and want to speak up about it - and that’s what “gay rights” laws are meant to do. According to the GLAD website again: “The definition of sexual orientation in the [Maine Gay Rights] law includes a person’s ‘actual or perceived…gender identity or expression.’” Gender expression? Anyone can be a man one day and a woman the next and we all have to adjust. You think that’s crazy? You’re worried that any man now has the right to put on a dress, hang out in the ladies’ room, and wait there for your ten-year-old daughter? If you say anything, you’re a bigot, and you better have a good lawyer and deep pockets. The “gender non-conforming” don’t have a problem. You do.

You think the Maine ruling is no big deal? A similar so-called “Human Rights Commission” in Alberta, Canada ordered a minister to pay thousands to homosexual activists for writing a letter to the editor outlining the Christian case against homosexuality and purportedly causing them “pain and suffering.” They further ordered Minister Stephen Boisson to apologize and: “[C]ease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.”

The Canadian government ordered a Christian minister to shut up. That’s chilling.

Can’t happen here you say? The First Amendment would protect us? Well, consider this: President Obama vows to appoint judges like Breyer and Ginsburg to the Supreme Court - judges who look to foreign law for guidance and believe our Constitution should be an “evolving document.” Both voted to overturn “Bowers vs Hardwick” because they believe sodomy is a constitutional right. Now he’s appointed Sotomayor, who believes “policy is made” in our courts. Will liberal judges uphold radical-leftist “human rights” tribunals who dictate who can and cannot speak and what they can or cannot say?

As Justice Antonin Scalia puts it: “If [an evolving Constitution] is to mean whatever the current society wants it to mean, sometimes it will give you more liberties, sometimes it will take away liberties.”

Got us out of the Depression? Uh-uh

For thirty years, I’ve sent out students to interview elderly people here in the mountains of western Maine. One question is: “Who was the best president during your lifetime and why?” Every year, Franklin Roosevelt is cited most because “He got us out of the Depression.” True or not, people believe it. Growing up a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat whose father and uncles who worked in Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, it was unquestionable. Now that I’m a history teacher and a former Democrat, I don’t believe it anymore. Roosevelt’s big-government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

Much I’m seeing and reading persuades me. I watch what big government does to public schools. I watch the Obama Administration take over the economy and ignore the rule of contract law. My changing view makes me an anomaly with fellow teachers and New Englanders, both increasingly left-of-center and enthralled with interventionist policies of Presidents Roosevelt, Johnson, and Obama.

A few recent books may help to change public perception of Roosevelt’s New Deal. One is “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes. Published a year before the 2008 financial crisis that Obama rode into the White House, it’s haunting how Shlaes lays out the mistakes of the New Deal now being magnified by President Obama and Congress in their haste to “spread the wealth around.”

Describing Coolidge’s America, she writes: “Compared to the private sector, the federal government was a pygmy. It’s size was less than 2% of the national economy.”

According to usgovernmentspending.com, federal spending is over 40% of GDP in 2009.

Shlaes describes Vice President Coolidge’s lesson that doing nothing is usually best: “During the Harding administration, recession had hit, and the downturn had been hard: one in ten men lost his job. But struggling firms had cut costs by reducing wages, and the country bounced back fast. By 1923, it was hard to find an unemployed man.”

Unemployment is still below 10% in this recession, but Obama is virtually taking over the economy, even dictating what should be printed on a Cheerios box.

In an interview, Shlaes described how she got the title “Forgotten Man” from 19th century Yale economist William Graham Sumner:

Sumner said A wants to help X, with X being the man at the bottom. And B wants to help X too. That’s our philanthropic impulse, we want to help. There’s nothing wrong with that. We all have that impulse to provide charity. It becomes a problem when A and B get together and pass a perhaps-dubious law that coerces C into funding their maybe-good project for X. In Sumner’s original version, C is the forgotten man, the man who pays, the man who prays, the man who is not thought of.

Though it’s a necessary evil, there’s nothing government does better than the private sector. Government takes the Yankee aphorism: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and changes it to: “If it ain’t broke, we’ll keep fixing it ‘til it is.” During thirty-four years in the classroom, I’ve seen fairly competent, relatively efficient local schools “fixed” by big government. Unfunded federal mandates suck up local tax money and turn teachers into bureaucrats who pack filing cabinets with paperwork. Other bureaucrats check it to make sure locals do only what the feds want them to whether it works or not. Meanwhile American kids barely keep up with students in Slovakia.

Endlessly invoking the New Deal, President Obama believes “only government” can shake us out of recession. In February he said, “The federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life.” Rahm Emmanuel and Hillary Clinton say “never waste a good crisis” that enables federal government to increase power and influence. The president and Congress borrow and print trillions of “stimulus” dollars funding Democrat boondoggles.

What will America will look like in four years? Look at California today. That formerly golden state is an exemplar for the same leftist-interventionist policies Obama, Pelosi and Reid ram through Congress. According to Realclearmarkets.com: social spending in California is “about 70 percent more per capita than the national average.”

California happens when an over-regulating welfare state with open borders overtaxes the productive and endlessly expands government. Though it has the world’s 8th largest economy, it’s bankrupt. During the 20th century, entrepreneurs brought their ideas to California. In the 21st century, they’re leaving.

Another book persuading me is Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny.” On the back, Levin quotes Abraham Lincoln:

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny.

Myths die hard. The myth that the New Deal saved us is driving economic policy today - driving us right into bankruptcy. If we “forgotten men” out here don’t exercise what liberty we still have to shatter the myth, that liberty will be gone.

McDonnell Roots

This column didn’t run for two weeks last month because I went back to Ireland to find the cottage where my great-grandmother, Kate McDonnell, lived. Traveling with me were my wife, my mother, Mary (Haggerty) McLaughlin (84) and her brother - my Uncle Joe Haggerty (90). They knew Kate - their grandmother - when she was an old woman and they were children.

My mother and uncle are spry, but I suspected the red-eye flight from Boston would wear them out. We landed in Shannon at 6:30 am Irish time and, figuring they would need to rest, I arranged an early check-in at a B&B in nearby Doolin so they could lay down while my wife and I toured the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. Instead, they opted to come with us. We toured County Clare all day and came back to O’Connor’s Pub in Doolin that night. After dinner and a couple of pints of Guinness, I was nodding off and I had to drag the two senior citizens out of the pub so I could go to bed. They had more staying power than I did.

The next morning, we took a ferry to the Aran Islands. Weather was unusually good and Joe said it was the best day of his life. Aran natives speak Irish (Gaelic) as a first language, but switched to English as they graciously answered our questions. The next day, we toured Connemara in County Galway. Day four, we toured County Mayo, then went to a pub while my wife climbed Croagh Patrick in the drizzle - a mountain that looks just like Baldface in Chatham, NH. On day five we arrived in Crossmolina.

Great Grandmother Kate McDonnell left a village near Crossmolina in County Mayo and emigrated to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania somewhere around 1880-85. If people from northern Mayo went to America, that’s where they tended to go because they’d know people who’d gone over before them. I’ve had to reconstruct Kate’s story because a great-aunt’s detailed records were lost in a flood. From what I’ve gathered, Kate wasn’t born in Crossmolina but her father moved the family there “from the south.” South Mayo? South Ireland? We don’t know. The McDonnells went to Crossmolina with another family - the Haggertys or “Hegartys” as they spell it there. Were they poor? Hungry? Politically oppressed? All three? We don’t know. Peter Hegarty evidently wanted Kate McDonnell, but something took him to Donegal. When he returned, he learned Kate had gone to Pennsylvania. He followed her there and married her when she was sixteen. We could think of that as a nice love story, but there’s another version: When Peter went to Donegal, Kate emigrated to avoid an arranged marriage. He pursued her to America and called in the obligation. I’d prefer the first story were true, but who knows? Kate didn’t talk about Ireland. Whatever happened, their first child was my grandfather, John Haggerty, born around 1886. I knew him. He died when I was six.

As was the case last summer when I was in County Donegal looking for Great-Grandfather James McLaughlin’s farm, Mayo people went out of their way to help us find Kate McDonnell’s cottage. Another relative had visited there thirty years ago and found it, but her directions weren’t specific except that it was in a hamlet called “Rathkell” near Crossmolina. There are lots of McDonnells and Hegartys thereabouts, but I couldn’t use the local records because neither Kate nor Peter had been born there, hadn’t died there, hadn’t married there, and didn’t have children there. Also, they left nearly a hundred thirty years ago. However, we found what we believe to be the ruins of her cottage.

The McDonnells and Haggertys interest me because, unlike every other branch of my family, there’s no apparent history of alcoholism. Kate’s father, Mark, had been a schoolmaster banned from teaching, and that jives with Irish history I’ve studied. In their efforts to Anglicize Ireland, British conquerors passed laws prohibiting many aspects of Irish culture such as speaking Gaelic, practicing Roman Catholicism, or teaching Irish history. Most of these “Penal Laws” were repealed by the early 1800s, but discrimination lingered all over Ireland into the early 20th century, and in Ulster into the 21st.

Mark McDonnell taught his own children however, and a good education was unusual in a poor Irish immigrant girl like Kate among Wilkes Barre’s coal-mining families. When her husband, Peter, died at forty of black lung disease in the mines, Kate took her family to Boston so my grandfather wouldn’t follow him into the hole. She placed a high value on education for her children too, and my grandfather was the only one who didn’t go to college. He apprenticed as a cigar roller - a trade that went the way of buggy whip makers. The McDonnell/Haggerty branch of my ancestors were “lace-curtain” Irish, whereas the rest were “shanty” Irish I hate to say, but the more research I do the more that notion is reinforced.

Next I’ll research the Sullivans and the Fitzgeralds, both from the south of Ireland somewhere. Great-grandfather Eugene Sullivan became a cop in Cambridge while Great-grandfather John Fitzgerald played piano in Boston barrooms. Both were known to be over-fond of whiskey. Should be interesting.

Defiance

We’re all going to die. Yup, it’s true. And before we die, we’re going to pay taxes. Those realities haven’t changed since Benjamin Franklin pointed them out more than two centuries ago. We’re all going to die of something, but it probably won’t be swine flu, or H1N1, or whatever you want to call it. And it won’t be global warming, or climate change, or whatever Al Gore or the New York Times are calling it lately either. The only uncertainties about dying are the when and the how. I don’t want to know those things for myself, any more than I wanted to know the sex of my children before they were born. I can wait. Given my druthers though, I’d prefer to eat a well-prepared dinner, drink good wine, make love, go to sleep, and then wake up dead when I’m in my eighties and in otherwise good shape. If that kind of demise isn’t fated for me, then I’d just hope to live my own way - do and say whatever I believe to be right until the day comes. Then I want to die defiantly. Meanwhile, I want to see, smell, hear, feel, taste, and try to understand why everything is the way it is. I never will, of course, but it’s great when I get a clue here and there.

One clue I’m getting is that there are genuine threats out there, but it baffles me that we instead become obsessed about nebulous ones like avian flu, swine flu, and global warming. The two most glaring examples of real threats would have to be Radical Muslims and nuclear weapons. The two are about to come together in both Pakistan and Iran. If they’re not stopped, their first targets are likely to be Israel, the US, Europe, or India. Only the US would be out of missile range, but that our enemies could smuggle a nuclear weapon into one of our cities and detonate it is a distinct possibility - a likelihood even - according to former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Even if most of us here in the United States are oblivious to these threats, the citizens of Israel are anything but.

Real threats of mass death are quite real to them, and have been for millennia. Israel’s re-creation as a nation-state in 1948 is direct result of the biggest mass murder in recorded history. I’m speaking of the Holocaust, of course. Recognizing this, Iran is doing everything it can to de-legitimize Israel as a country before destroying it. Hence the conferences sponsored by President Ahmadinejad inviting anti-Semites from around the world to argue that the Holocaust never happened.

After several years with the wussy Ehud Olmert, Israel just elected a Prime Minister with fortitude. Benjamin Netanyahu understands clearly that Iran will destroy his country and kill its citizens if he doesn’t strike first, so he will. For years, his country has been rocketed nearly every day by Iran-sponsored terrorists. To Israel’s north, there’s Hezbollah in Lebanon. To the southwest, there’s Hamas in Gaza. Former Prime Minister Olmert made half-hearted attempts to deal with those threats during his tenure, but he lacked the resolve to do what Israel must do if it’s going to survive - attack Iran’s nuclear facilities directly.

The Muslim countries around it want Israel gone. They’ve invaded three times in Israel’s sixty-year history and President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said that he will wipe Israel off the map. The lessons of history are not lost on Israel. It exists as a nation so it can field a military capable of defending itself against those who would destroy it and Adolph Hitler taught them they must take such threatening rhetoric seriously.

Iran said it will block the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf if either the US or Israel strikes. If we think the world economy is in bad shape now, wait until the Persian Gulf is shut down for even a few months. Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline will seem cheap. Those of us who remember the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s know that, at times, it won’t be available at any price. Would that precipitate a world depression? Indeed, but even that would the least of our difficulties. A wider war in the Middle East with mushroom clouds is the worst case scenario.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, we wring our hands about carbon emissions and gay “marriage,” believing our smooth-talking president will diffuse it all by schmoozing Radical Muslim dictators the way he did the American electorate. Israelis, however, know better. If there’s to be another Holocaust with mushroom clouds,they’re not going to go as lambs to the slaughter like they did in the first one.

No. They’ll go defiantly this time.

Galway and Mayo in the Rain

Got to read about the "Pirate Queen" when I get back home. The remains of one of her castles was behind our B&B on an island in Maam, County Galway. Evidently, she was quite a character. Wonder why I didn't know about her.

More typical Irish weather lately. As one pub keeper put it, "It only rains three hundred days a year." But even when it's raining sideways, sometimes filtered sunshine peeks through and illuminates up a mountainside far off, lending a mystic aura to the landscape.

Some visitors describe Galway as "melancholic" and one can see why. Others praise the solitude and stark beauty. I wonder what it's like living day-to-day in that white cottage in all that lonely countryside.

I pick out routes with remote mountain passes as we make our way north to Crossmolina. We pass lochs with centuries-old sporting lodges built and maintained by British aristocrats and off-limits to Irish tenant-farmers in the old days.

As I mentioned last year, memories of the Great Famine permeate the country. If you've forgotten about it for a day, there'll be a memorial beside a lonely road in the middle of nowhere to remind you. In Westport, Country Mayo, is the national memorial - the bronze sculpture "Coffin Ship" with skeletons strung about as rigging.

It's eerie, but poignant. Makes me appreciate the Irish breakfast I ate this morning.

Just got an email from my daughter, Annie. Our next grandchild is a little girl! We'll see her in September.

Life goes on.

Aran Islands

One of the most stunning places I've ever visited. We all were thoroughly charmed.

Why all the walls? Behind the horse's head is a "field" of limestone bedrock. According to Thomas Joyce, one of the locals, all the fields were like that until they hauled in sand and seaweed to create the soil - an ongoing process as you can see in the next shot. They broke up some of the stone and built up the walls as boundaries for different plots and to enclose the animals. The walls are higher here than in any place I've seen in Ireland, or anywhere for that matter, and I live in New England.

It all makes me feel lazy. It's even more stunning when you think about what went into making it all.

I promised to get some horse pictures for my daughter Annie

It rained in the morning so we almost cancelled, but then the sun came out and we bought ferry tickets. Joe said it was one of the best days of his life and he's had a lot of them. Let's see . . . ninety times 365 is what?

The sun stayed out all day. I had two pints of Guinness for lunch. So did Joe and Ma. Roseann had a Heiniken. I think I'll have the same tomorrow in Connemara. Very nourishing.

I've taken 410 shots so far. Even Roseann took some. I hate posing and smiling on que, but today I obliged. It was that good a day.

County Clare

Weather is great so far here in County Clare, but that could change any time. Yesterday was a long day, but great. Ma(84) and Uncle Joe (90) are holding up as well as I am. We toured the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren before eating dinner at O'Connor's Pub in Doolin.

On to the Aran Islands today. Sleeping in Galway tonight.

Sorry if I mislead readers with my last post. I'm only here for a visit and won't be posting columns for two weeks - just short bursts like this one - unless Israel attacks Iran.

Leaving The Country

Crossmolina

It's not because liberal dominance has gotten too difficult to bear, though it is trying. I'm going back to Ireland with my wife, my mother (84), and my uncle (90). We're heading for Crossmolina, County Mayo, from where my great-grandmother, Kate McDonnell, emigrated to Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania in the 1880s sometime. My great-grandfather Peter Haggerty followed her to Wilkes Barre and married her. My mother and uncle knew Kate when she was an old woman and they were children.

I may post short pieces from there with a few photos, but I probably won't be posting columns unless I'm very inspired.

Or, unless Israel attacks Iran.

Gotta go catch a plane . . .

Blue-Eyed Devils

The global financial crisis is “caused by white men with blue eyes,” said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil at a press conference with UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He’s right, of course, and as a heterosexual, non-Hispanic white guy with blue eyes, I’m ashamed to look at myself in the mirror. President da Silva went on to say that the people who have to pay for the crisis are the poor, brown people. All this misery and suffering - I’m stricken with remorse. President Obama’s Chicago buddy, Minister Louis Farrakhan, believes we’re “blue-eyed devils” too and I guess he’s right. His other Chicago buddy, the, Reverend Wright, had nasty things to say about us like: "God damn America!" President Obama is apologizing for people like me wherever he goes lately, and I guess it’s time I joined in and helped him out. I need to purge myself of this guilt so I can at least shave in the morning without wanting to cut my throat.



In Strasbourg, our president said America has “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward France, after LaFayette helped us out so much more than two centuries ago. Arrogant Americans think that just because we left 512 American military cemeteries in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg after World War I, that it somehow made up for what the French did for us, but they didn’t allow for inflation. I mean there were far fewer people in the world when the French came over here and helped us compared to how many were around in 1917/18 when tens of thousands of Americans died in the trenches defending Europe. Even though most of those dead Americans were non-Hispanic, heterosexual white guys, it doesn’t begin to make up for the bad things others of our ilk did all throughout history.

Yes, Americans went over again in 1942 after France had again been conquered by the Germans, this time in just a few weeks. Yes, we left another 359 American military cemeteries with over 246,000 dead Americans in them, and some of us think that’s enough. But think about this when you see pictures of all those lines of white crosses: The treads of Patton’s tanks tore up the ground for hundreds of miles and nobody stopped to put up silt fence anywhere. And how much truffle habitat was forever altered by arrogant Americans digging all those graves? How many frogs with nice, fat legs could have been croaking there? How many grapes could be ripening if dead Americans weren’t taking up so much space?

Why did we think we needed to go in there and push the Germans out anyway? Lots of French people were cooperating with German rule in Vichy France. They were working it out quite well until we arrogantly interfered. The French have had a lot of practice at surrendering and they’re very good at it. They cooperated nicely with the Germans by putting French Jews on trains to the gas chambers in Poland. France cooperated with the Japanese in their their former colony in Vietnam as well. Heck, they surrendered so gracefully when the Japanese moved down the Indochina Peninsula that Japan didn’t even have to disarm them. French troops kept their weapons and cooperated until the United States forced Japan to surrender by dropping two atomic bombs on them in 1945.

Speaking of those atomic bombs, President Obama apologized for dropping them too, in Prague. “As a nuclear power – as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon – the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he said. He wants America to take the lead getting rid of nuclear weapons, since we so arrogantly dropped them on Japan. Heck, all the Japanese did was attack us at Pearl Harbor - and they only did that because we refused to sell them scrap metal. If we weren’t so stubborn, all that misery could have been avoided. And, it was blue-eyed white guys who invented those terrible weapons in the first place.


Finally, it was great to see President Obama bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. What a nice way to start making up for stealing all their oil. This is the kind of hope and change the American people wanted last November. I didn’t think I’d like it, but now I see that there’s even hope for us heterosexual, non-Hispanic white guys to change too - or at least stop screwing up the world.

Ditching Dollars

Getting a straight answer from an economist is like nailing jello to a wall. “I'm tired of economists who say, ‘On the one hand ... and then on the other hand.’ Send me a one-armed economist,” said President Harry Truman about his Council of Economic Advisors sixty years ago. It isn’t called “the dismal science” for nothing.

In an old western I saw as a boy, two cowboys who didn’t trust each other negotiated a deal. One gave a coin to the other who looked at it, bit on it, looked at it again, then put it in his pocket, satisfied. It didn’t matter whose picture was on the coin or what was stamped there. He was satisfied that it was made of silver or gold. Ridges are stamped on the edge of dimes and quarters because they used to be made of silver. If there were no ridges, people would suspect someone had been shaved off. The cowboy trusted the metal in his pocket more than he trusted the other cowboy.

The value of gold or silver depends on how much is in circulation. If there were a fixed amount and no more were being mined, the value - or the price if you will - wouldn’t change, right? Like the cowboy in the movie, most of us can understand that much. There’s always a possibility of a big discovery somewhere increasing supply and reducing the value of the coin in his pocket, but such things are relatively rare. The law of supply and demand applies, like it or not. It can no more be repealed than the law of gravity can.

When our government printed paper dollars, we had to trust that it maintained enough gold and silver in Fort Knox to back up dollars it printed, just as we have to trust that someone writes a paper check, he has enough in his account to cover it. Absent trust, paper is no good. In 1971, however, President Nixon announced that the US dollar would not longer be backed by gold. It would float freely. I don’t understand how he had the authority to do that since our Constitution gives Congress power to coin money (or print it) in Article I Section 8, but Nixon did it anyway. The dollar would instead be backed by the full faith and credit of government. Nixon also said he would control wages and prices to keep down inflation, but it didn’t work. Inflation soared - as it will whenever government prints money recklessly.

Though I’m a history teacher, my teaching license says “Social Studies.” I’m charged with teaching current events, geography, civics, and economics as well. That’s daunting at times - especially when I’m having difficulty making sense of what’s going on. Things are happening so fast, it’s hard to keep up. Last November, Americans elected leftists to run the country. I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t expect it to be this bad, this soon. I’m not sure voters understood what they would actually do, but we’re all finding out now and we’re getting nervous. I’ve been gritting my teeth wondering what it’s going to be like after four years. The President and his congressional allies are using the banking crisis to take control of our economy in a hurry. The president is taking over banks, firing auto company executives, guaranteeing transmissions, and will soon take over the entire health care industry. A recent Saturday Night Live skit in which the president micro-manages the lawn mower, air conditioner and blue jean industries, isn’t far from reality.

Congress is so rushed, it voted for almost $800 billion - the biggest money bill in history - without even reading it. Yet it insists it’s “rescuing” our economy and legions of two-armed economists applaud with both hands. We’d already been bailing out banks, auto companies, insurance companies, and God knows who else with $700 billion in TARP money, and the treasury won’t tell us who-all is getting it. A Democrat congress and a Republican president hurried TARP through last fall with few people anywhere understanding where the money would come from, how it would be spent, or whether it would do any good. We know it increased our debt to over $10 trillion and China started signaling it wouldn’t lend us any more. China and Russia want to start a new world currency to replace the dollar. The old commies bit the coin and didn’t like what they saw. They’re concerned that we’re moving too far left. Europe too. Who would ever have imagined this a year ago? Not me.

Then, two weeks ago, $1.2 trillion appeared out of nowhere. The Federal Reserve snapped its fingers and there it was. Worried? It’s all backed by the full faith and credit of our federal government. And what’s that worth? Not much in the opinion of an increasing number of American taxpayers who are turning out all over the country on April 15th for a Tax Day Tea Party.

Trees and Tears

It was as if the tree were crying. Watery beads oozed out of small branches and dropped to the stone wall below. I’d never seen that before and wouldn’t have noticed if it were not back-lit by a setting sun. The prismatic twinkling caught my eye through the window. Drops fell sparkling in the amber light. I thought it was melting ice because it had been a very cold morning, warming up after noon. Then I realized it was a maple tree and those conditions were perfect for running sap. Plumes of wood smoke rose up around town as people boiled it down. Untapped, that old maple surged with too much to hold in. So the teardrops fell, making tiny splashes on the gray stones.

“You don’t have to tell a tree how to be a tree,” someone told me, and thank God for that. It’s difficult enough trying to figure out how to be a man in early 21st century America. At long last, I’m learning its best to leave other living things alone whenever possible and concentrate on myself. Life can freeze a man, but he must thaw when sun shines. Tears can form, and fall, when things surge and pressure builds. As Robert Frost said, “Poems begin as a lump in the throat.” If it can’t escape, that lump will grow and freeze a man hard.

Once allowed to flow, it gets harder for men to hold them back. Not all tears are sad though. They can surge in happiness, as women allow but men resist. Men prefer release in private and that’s all right, as long as they do it. My wife, the therapist, says: “If you can let it flow, you can let it go.”

When my house was finished twenty years ago, I began cutting trees around that maple to see the mountains behind. I split them up and warmed my family with them through several winters. I spared that tree because it’s on the edge of a panorama I was opening, but I cut some of the limbs that intruded, saving one lower limb to look out over. It was that limb upon which the sparkling droplets formed to focus my attention. Soon thereafter, buds emerged. I thought of women giving birth in pain and joy, and with tears accompanying both.

Many kinds of maple trees grow on my lot - reds, whites, swamp maples, sugar maples - and they present different colors come fall. Some, however, have been wounded and go soft inside. Scars and punky wood are obvious sometimes, sometimes not. With other trees, a black stain on the bark indicates a crack beneath. I’m careful dropping wounded trees because I need solid wood in the hinge to guide them when they fall. Some trees show no scarring, but the wood inside has gone soft anyway. My saw feels it first, revving higher and cutting faster, and I realize I won’t get as much good firewood out of that tree. But I work it up anyway.

I’ve wondered why perfect-looking trees rotted inside. Now I consider: Have they hidden their wounds to present a flawless exterior? Has their sap congealed to rot them in their cores instead of nourishing growth in their limbs? Some maples are like this. Some people too.

Another tree nearby tortures itself. It forks twelve feet up and one side sent out a limb that chafes the other. The wounded side grows scar tissue as it rubs painfully during a wind. I hear it groan in a gentle breeze. In a strong gust, it screams. A tree can be its own enemy, as a person can.

Some of my favorite trees are the old, gnarled ones whose scars are open to the world. Some scars are cavernous holes, offering shelter to animals, even children. Old trees live with their wounds over many human lifetimes and send out fresh leaves anyway. They grow bark over and around their scars without hiding them, and the resulting forms charm me. They grow in the open sunlight, and send massive limbs out laterally - unlike trees that grow in dense groves and burn out in competition to shoot upward.

They have strong branches good for swings - not good for lumber and difficult to split into firewood. Maybe that’s why they survive so long. By their very form, they show how to enjoy sun and endure storms. They display endurance. “The artist in me cries out for design,” said Frost, and old, gnarled trees show design by circumstance - what has happened around them and to them - how they’ve withstood it - has shaped them.

A tree doesn’t move. It observes. We stand under it but can’t understand it. Not all of it. Although I have a notion the tree does.

The EUnuchs Are At It Again

There’ll be no more “Misters” in Europe. No more “Madames” or “Mademoiselles,” “Fraus” or “Frauleins,” “Senoras” or “Senoritas” either. The European Union issued a booklet for EU Parliamentary Staff instructing them to eliminate all “gender-specific” terms from its literature. According to Lifesitenews.com: “. . . terms, such as ‘statesman,’ are to be replaced with gender-free alternatives, such as ‘political leader.’”

The article didn’t say if this resulted from a vote in the EU Parliament, but if that’s what Europeans want, fine. As long as the United States is a sovereign nation and isn’t controlled by liberal EUnuchs or the United Nations, they can do whatever they want over there.

Feminists are a strong force in the UN and many of their proposals are bizarre. At several UN Conferences on women, they suggest eliminating all references to gender in humans. They think gender a social construct with no biological basis. They would eliminate men’s rooms and ladies’ rooms and replace them with unisex rest rooms. Others would force public buildings to add a “transgendered” restroom because persons whose “gender” changes from day to day would feel uncomfortable in a men’s room or ladies’ room. I don’t care whether they feel comfortable or uncomfortable, and I certainly don’t want my tax money being used to construct special bathrooms for them, but let the EUnuchs do whatever they want with their own money.

Other feminists disagree with the unisex approach. Instead, they would expand the number of sexes from two to five. Anne Falso-Sterling wrote an article entitled "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough." She (and she’s not alone) thinks the five are: male, female, homosexual male, homosexual female, and bisexual.

The United Nations takes this stuff seriously. I’d be happier if my country resigned from the UN and evicted them from New York City. Let them to go Europe where they can build as many bathrooms as they like.

Some of this stuff is happening here too. The New Hampshire legislature votes this week on HB-415, which would allow “transgender” people to use whatever bathroom they choose on a given day, depending on how they feel. You don’t like that? Then you’re the problem, not the cross-dresser. Etransgender.com claims: “Employers facing the restroom issue for the first time are legally inclined to apply the ‘Principle of Least Astonishment,’ which is that a person who presents as a woman will be less astonishing using the women's restroom than the men's, vice versa for a person presenting as a man. If a concern arises, from the corporate legal department or another employee, the employer must provide alternative solutions for the employee complaining - NOT the transgender individual.”

You’re astonished by the drag queen next to you? You’re homophobic and you need Sensitivity Classes.

Feminists see men like me as members of the Evil Patriarchy that oppresses women everywhere. They don’t like the Catholic Church either because it teaches that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered,” and it insists that only men can be priests. If women want to become priests, they can join the Episcopal Church, where they can be openly homosexual too, and even be promoted to bishop. Episcopalians are fading away, but they’ll probably hang on for a few more decades.

The Roman Catholic Church has resisted fads for thousands of years. We’re not without our feminists though, and they’re making inroads. While singing hymns at mass lately, it bugs me to notice that the lyrics have been changed on some of my favorites. One is “Be Not Afraid,” by John Foley SJ, which used to go: “. . . and if wicked men insult and hate you, all because of Me, blessed, blessed are you.” Having read and heard plenty of insults, and not a little hatred for my opinion columns over the years, I related to that line. Now, however, “wicked men” has been replaced by “wicked tongues.” Now I’m distracted by visions of disembodied tongues floating in the air and uttering nasty things about me.

Another is “Turn to Me,” also by Foley, with the lyrics “Turn to Me, oh man and be saved, says the Lord for I am God.” Now, however, it goes: “Turn to Me, oh turn and be saved,” and that bugs me. Did Foley agree to the changes? If he did, well, they’re his songs and he can do what he wants with them. But if it’s stealth feminists playing with my mind, I don’t like it. Those hymns became special when I learned them at a men’s retreat called “Cursillo” twenty-five years ago. They were written by a man; Jesus Christ was a man; but feminist Christians have a hard time with all that. Women can certainly enjoy the hymns if they want, but no one has the right to change them except John Foley.

In spite of what they claim in their academic treatises at university Women’s Studies Departments, men and women are quite different and they always will be. Confused men and women can change their language and cross-dress every other day. They can cut off and sew on genitals and take all the hormones they want. Just don’t ask me to pay for any of it, and don’t send out the PC Thought Police to arrest me when I call attention to their foolishness in this space. This is still America, and we still have a Constitution with a First Amendment - for the time being at least.

Who's the Coward?

“Hello fellow cowards,” said Ward Connerly after stepping up to the mike at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) last month. Thousands in the crowd with me laughed uproariously. He was referring to what President Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, said the previous week - that we are “a nation of cowards” because we don’t talk about race enough. He wants to “foster a dialogue between the races.”

I couldn’t disagree more. I got tired of talking about race decades ago and most people I know are tired of it too. Remember 1997 when President Clinton began his second term saying we needed a “national dialogue on race”? I was thinking, “Oh boy. Not again.” We talk about race way too much, but Democrats are obsessed with it - so on and on it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

On two different forms this school year, government asked my students to categorize themselves by “race,” even though that same government outlaws racial discrimination. Everybody in America is forced to do this over and over again in an ordinary lifetime. Government is obsessed with race but ordinary people are moving well beyond it. It compiles statistics endlessly about how “African Americans” score on tests, are infected with HIV, own their own homes, are aborted, are imprisoned, what their average life expectancy is, and on and on. If there are discrepancies between how blacks are doing and how whites are doing on anything, it’s assumed to be the result of racial discrimination by whites against blacks. Democrats in government proclaim that “Affirmative Action” is necessary to “remedy” the situation.

That generally takes the form of racial quotas in hiring, awarding contracts, admission to universities, and, most recently - writing sub-prime mortgages, according to economist Thomas Sowell. Community organizers like President Obama’s buddies at ACORN threatened to sue banks if they didn’t lend to “minority” applicants who too often couldn’t afford the kind of house they wanted to buy. This sort of “affirmative action” is at the root of the economic debacle we’re currently facing, but such a discussion is not the kind of dialogue Attorney General Holder wants to have - and I’ll probably be accused of racism for writing about it.

Democrats think their racial discrimination is benevolent. They tell themselves and everyone else that granting jobs, contracts, and college admissions to women, blacks, and other minorities over white and Asian males isn’t discrimination at all. Such doublethink is their stock in trade. That’s why they get 95% of the black vote and 75% of the Hispanic vote.

With the exception of conservative black men such as Ward Connerly and Thomas Sowell quoted above, there’s little or no inclination among most so-called black “leaders” to scrap the racial discrimination euphemistically known as “affirmative action.” Even though much was made of Barack Obama’s election as the first black president, and his appointment of Eric Holder as the first black Attorney General, those two men are making sure they play the same old victim tune previous unsuccessful black candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton make their livings on.

Speaking to a group called the “State of the Black Union” two weeks ago, President Obama said, “You know that tough times for America often mean tougher times for African Americans. This recession has been no exception.” He obviously intends to continue affirmative action, saying that he is “closing the gap between the nation we are and the nation we can be,” by including it in his “economic stimulus” bill.

About the jobs in that bill, Obama’s chief economic advisor, Robert Reich said, “I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers.”

Victim mentality pervades the 95% of blacks who voted for Obama and other Democrats. They don’t tend to think of themselves as Americans first. They’re “black” first, and Americans second. Hence the now ubiquitous term “African American.” The dysfunctional numbers gathered for blacks by a race-obsessed government show a lead in nearly every negative category: illegitimate births, crime, unemployment, HIV infection, lowest life expectancy, and so forth. Black “leaders” and liberal Democrats desperately want something else to blame for all this and avoid examining their own culpability. Slavery and white racism kept blacks down for centuries, but the above-listed issues cannot be explained that way. Most flared up after the Civil Rights Act - and after Democrat “War on Poverty” subsidies nearly destroyed the black family, and after a gangster subculture began filling the vacuum created.

The Civil Rights Act was intended to outlaw discrimination and equalize public and private treatment of people regardless of race. Liberal Democrats, however, used it to substitute one form of discrimination for another, then masked it by calling it Affirmative Action. Hence the title of Ward Connerly’s latest book, “Creating Equal,” in which he argues for an end to it. He wants bookstores to take it out of their “African American Department” and include with all their other books.

If Eric Holder wants to talk about these issues, fine. But we know they’d be off the table because cowards like him are afraid to address them.

Roof Perchers and Retirement

Roof-perchers. That’s what Laura Ingraham calls them, and their numbers are rising. They’re people who depend on government for everything. If there’s a flood coming, they don’t heed evacuation orders. They don’t head for higher ground. They certainly don’t keep an inflatable raft on hand. They climb on their rooves and wait for government to rescue them. If there’s any delay, they whine to the media who amplify their complaints. Why don’t they take common-sense precautions? They don’t have to, they don’t want to, and they’ll never learn to until government cuts them loose.

That’ll never happen, you say. Oh yeah? As the roof-perchers increase, the number of rescuers declines. More are climbing on the wagon to ride between floods while wagon-pullers are getting tired and getting scarce too. To sustain their ever-increasing numbers, President Obama will increase taxes on the rich, right? Trouble is, the rich are already paying most of the taxes. The top 1% pay more income tax than the bottom 90%. How much more does the president think he can squeeze out of them until they collapse? How long before the goose that laid the golden egg lays down and dies? It’s unsustainable. The socialist programs he’s pushing haven’t worked anywhere they’ve been tried and they won’t work here either.

Last June, Iowa flooded. Did you see people on rooves waiting for government to rescue them? I didn’t. Why were there so many in New Orleans? Because people there are descended from generations who have depended on government. Soon, with all President Obama’s bailout programs and pork-barrel, “economic stimulus” programs, most of the country will become roof-perchers and wagon riders just like them. They’ll reach a critical mass even in places like Iowa and there won’t be enough rescuers or wagon-pullers to keep things running. Eventually, someone is going to call 911 and nobody will be there to answer the phone.

It’s tough watching it all unravel around us. I knew it was was going to get worse when left-wing Democrats consolidated their control over Washington DC, but I didn’t think it would start collapsing so quickly. Meanwhile, it seems every other person I bump into lately asks me, “When are you going to retire?”

Heh. What a quaint notion. Retirement doesn’t seem sustainable either.

I’ve been teaching in the same community for a long time and I have children of former students in class regularly. “You must have enough years in by now,” people say. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop working until I’m either dead or drooling in a rocking chair, but I’m more fortunate than many. I have three jobs and I like them all. The work is interesting, rewarding, and I enjoy most of the people I work with. It gets a little hectic, but my schedule is flexible enough where I can get away from time to time. I’ve been eligible to retire for a while. Theoretically, I can depend on pension checks for life.

Theoretically.

However, I’m hearing horror stories from friends in the private sector about their retirement funds disappearing as stock markets nosedive. Some envy my public-sector retirement “guarantees,” but should they? Is my pension secure? It says so on paper in the state capitol, but I don’t believe it. The Maine State Retirement System is a pension fund like others. It’s invested. Market declines hit MSRS as hard as they hit someone’s 401K and it’s down 28% for 2008 - the biggest decline ever. I hate to even look at what’s happened to it in the six weeks since Obama was inaugurated. But it’s is backed up by the taxpayers according to statute, right? Uh-huh. This poverty-stricken state is one of the highest-taxed states in the country already. Do I want to depend on the prudence of Maine State Government for my support? I’d rather depend on myself, but I’ve been forced to give them my money for three decades. I had no choice.

My wife and I had four children and they’re all working, but most of my generation had smaller families, in Maine and elsewhere. Our population would be declining if not for immigrants pouring in, many of them illegal, and with a higher percentage of them riding on the wagon than the native population. Making matters worse, Maine is a sanctuary state with better-than-average welfare benefits for illegals and all other kinds of roof-perchers and wagon-riders who move here.

But I’ll still have Social Security to help in my declining years, right? Hah! That’s funny. Retirement? People used to do that in the good old days. Roof perchers and wagon riders retire early, but retirement of for the middle class is history. That’s the kind of change President Obama has brought us.

Profile in Courage

Courage is rare. That’s why we prize it. The high point of my trip to Washington, DC last week was meeting Geert Wilders - a profile in courage for our times. He has lived for years under 24-7 guard after radical Muslims put out a fatwa on him, just as they did with Salman Rushdie twenty years ago this week. Wilders, a Dutch Member of Parliament, had the temerity to make a film called “Fitna,” which quotes incendiary lines from the Koran and depicts sermons by radical imams preaching hatred of Jews and other infidels. Interspersed with these are scenes where those quotes and preachings are put into practice, including clips of the September 11th attacks in the USA, bus bombings in London, train bombings in Madrid, and beheadings in the Middle East.

Wilders knew he would incur a death sentence when he released Fitna, but he did so anyway. He took up the mantle of courage from fellow Hollanders like Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam after making a film depicting Muslim mistreatment of women, and fellow Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was driven out the Netherlands after the Dutch government declined to protect her following the fatwa issued against her.

CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) organizers were asked to give Wilders and opportunity to speak during their event at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, but they declined, claiming their schedule was full and they couldn’t fit him in. I hope that was the reason. I hope it wasn’t because they were too afraid. A separate reception for Wilders was thrown together elsewhere in the hotel at the last minute and word went around among CPAC attendees about when and where.

Although I showed up an hour early, I barely got into the small function room where it was standing-room-only. I’d been warned that no bags or jackets would be allowed inside, so I put those in my room and showed up in shirtsleeves with a camera and digital recorder. Uniformed security guys ran metal detectors over me and asked for my press pass. I hadn’t applied for one, so I had to talk my way past that. Inside were large, burly guys with folded arms, shaved heads, and stern looks surrounding the tall, smiling, blonde-haired Dutchman. The reception was sponsored by conservative activists including David Horowitz of Frontpagemagazine, Pam Geller of Atlasshrugs, as well as authors Robert Spencer and Dr. Andrew Bostom. After each made their introductions, Wilders came to the podium to thunderous applause. Speaking in mildly-accented English, he thanked the audience and thanked US immigration authorities saying, “It’s always a pleasure to cross a border without being sent back on the first flight.” He was referring to what happened to him the previous week, when he’d been invited to London to show “Fitna” in the House of Lords, but was deported immediately after landing at Heathrow Airport by a UK multicultural police squad who were afraid his presence on British soil would stir a riot by radical British members of the “Religion of Peace.”

It’s bad enough that Wilders must live out his life in safe houses, but his own government, the most politically-correct in Europe if not the whole world, issued criminal charges against him for “inciting hatred and discrimination” and “insulting Muslim worshippers.” Only under multiculturalism can someone “insult” Muslims by quoting them when they incite hatred and discrimination. The Dutch courts do not dispute what Wilders depicted in his film. They know it’s true. Wilders’ crime is publicizing the truth liberal Europe would prefer to ignore.

Genuine courage is indeed rare. Wilders’ display of it in the Netherlands sharply contrasts - and shines light on - Dutch government cowardice. That’s why they’re trying to shut him up. As Wilders himself put it last Friday night:

“In Europe freedom of speech should be extended, instead of restricted . . . As George Orwell once said: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’”