Beacon Street Journal

Senator John Kerry, yachtsman extraordinaire, will shortly be making a charitable donation to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the amount of $500,000. That sum represents the amount of sales tax that would be due had Kerry decided to berth his $7 million yacht in his home state of Massachusetts instead of in neighboring Rhode Island. When it was disclosed recently that Kerry docks his boat in Rhode Island to escape paying the Massachusetts sales tax, he became engulfed in a public relations firestorm that could have irreparably harmed his political career.

Since Kerry has a summer home in Nantucket and most likely would have used the yacht in the waters off Nantucket Sound, his decision to dock the yacht in Rhode Island nonetheless, would have likely prompted an investigation by the Massachusetts’ Department of Revenue Continue reading ‘Senator John Kerry: the quintessential limousine liberal’ »

One of the most defining characteristics of the left has been liberals’ belief in their intellectual and moral superiority. The recent email disclosures by the Daily Caller of discussions among left wing intellectuals at the online list-server JournoList, should forever put an end to this false pretense. What the emails reveal among members of JournoList community is a political movement that is as intellectually bankrupt as it is morally dissolute.

Some of the comments are spiteful, laced with antipathy, and deranged. In the marketplace of ideas, if you can’t refute your ideological opponents arguments, the only arrow left in your quiver is reliance on scurrilous ad hominem attacks. Consider this rant from Sarah Spitz, a producer for NPR affiliate KCRW for the show Left, Right & Center, commenting on how she would be positively gleeful watching Rush Limbaugh die of a heart attack:

Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Charming.

How about the assertion of Ryan Donmoyer, a reporter for Bloomberg News, who compared the tea partiers to the rise of the Brownshirts in pre-war Nazi Germany:

“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”

By his comments, Donmoyer not only demonstrates an appalling ignorance of history, but raises a question as to how Bloomberg News can employ him as an “objective” political reporter.

Or consider the comments of Eric Alterman, who in the midst of exulting over the 2008 victory of Obama had this to say about the electorally vanquished: “F****ng nascar retards…” For Alterman and his fellow travellers, the great unwashed masses, on whose behalf they tirelessly toil, are nothing more than backwater Neanderthals, bereft of liberals’ erudition and superior intellectual prowess.

The emails are also instructive, for they reveal the nascent streak of authoritarianism present in all left wing ideology coming to the fore.  For the modern American left, it has now become an article of faith that If you can’t defeat the intellectual arguments of your political opponents through rational discourse and refutation, the best response is to silence them by curtailing their freedom of speech. Consider the comment of UCLA law professor Jonathan Zasloff, who advocates suppressing Fox News:

“I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”

One can only hope that Professor Zasloff has not yet been granted tenure. In the meantime, in light of his apparent belief that freedom of speech can be so cavalierly quashed, the Dean of the UCLA law school might want to start auditing his classes.

As evidenced by the JournList emails, liberalism is no longer about ideas, rather, it is all about obtaining power. As surveys and polls have consistently shown over the years, and as support for their anointed Messiah continues to inexorably erode, Americans have consistently repudiated the agenda of liberalism. The only way liberals can implement their policy agenda is through force (suppress Fox News), through guile (Obama fraudulently campaigning as a “centrist”, “post partisan”, “post-racial”candidate), or through character assassination of its political opponents and, when all else fails, by playing the execrable race card for partisan advantage.

Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. The president of the country whose assiduity of national purpose and engineering prowess put a man on the moon, has told Charles Bolden, the new head of NASA, that one of the foremost, if not the defining, mission of the space agency in the Age of Obama will be to act as a vehicle for enhancing the self-esteem of Muslims. What does this have to do with space exploration or examining the boundaries of the final frontier? Nothing, of course. This latest inanity emanating from the White House provides further evidence that Obama has evolved into what I would characterize as the master of governing by the non sequitur.

For example, from the outset, Obama justified his trillion dollar radical alteration of our  health care delivery system by offering for public consumption the rather bizarre and fallacious proposition that it was the only way out of the economic distress caused by the financial meltdown of 2008. That his reform scheme would ultimately bankrupt the nation seemed to escape his attention. Next, we were told repeatedly that the only way to thwart Islamic terrorism was to close down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. This preposterous sociological thesis was wholly inconsistent with the fact that acts of Islamic terrorism against America predate the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The disjointed, elaboration of the NASA mission statement from the head of an agency charged with exploring space illustrates that the Obama Administration is staffed, by and large, with those whose highest calling is to implement a world view founded upon the principles of faculty-lounge liberalism, whose precepts include a virulent multiculturalism, political correctness and a rejection of American exceptionalism. The entire NASA episode prompts the question: is there a single member of the Obama Administration that has ever seen a business plan or written a mission statement?

The idea of being on our guard never to offend the tender sensibilities of Muslims was on full display in all its multicultural, politically correct glory during the tragic, and as the evidence makes abundantly clear, wholly avoidable, massacre at Fort Hood by by the virulently anti-American, Islamic soldier of God, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. When questioned about the obvious motive for Hasan’s murderous spree, Army chief of staff, General George Casey, Jr. urged restraint and cautioned us not to jump to conclusions for,  ”This terrible event,” Gen. Casey noted, “would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty.”

The NASA mission statement is merely the latest manifestation of this politically correct pious nonsense that permeates the White House and demonstrates, in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, that history will record that among the defining characteristics of the Obama Administration will be not only its incompetence, but also, its downright silliness.

In addition, NASA’s deliberate policy of enhancing the self-esteem solely for members of an established religion raises interesting questions about the separation of church and state. Where is that famous liberal antipathy concerning keeping religion out of the public square?

The fatuous nonsense espoused by Boland  should have roused the inquisitiveness of members of the Fourth Estate, but to date, as Byron York notes, the comments of the head of NASA have induced a collective yawn on the part of the old legacy media. What do you suppose the reaction would have been among journalists had President Bush decreed that one of the principal missions of NASA would be the celebration of the influence of the principles of Christian Theology on the scientific and mathematical discoveries of Newton and Descartes?