As a relatively new Twitterer, and as an observer of new Twitterers learning the ropes, it has become clear to me that there is a definite Twitter Metamorphosis. While some people seem to be hopelessly stuck at the caterpillar stage (indeed, this seems to be terminal for some Twitterers), I offer this analysis of the Five Stages of Twitter Metamorphosis to encourage newbies to persevere:

Huh, What? is the first stage. You have just signed up, and about all you can think to do is enter some pathetic update like: “I just joined Twitter.” That’s okay. You have no idea what you are doing. You stare at your own profile page with its lone statement, or you look at the entries of a general conversation, and you are not sure what to do. Who are these people? Why are they writing and who is bothering to read what they write?  Big deal.

Yeah, Whatever is the second stage. Now, you have actually started to follow some people, and maybe a few people have followed you. You respond now and then, and maybe some people respond to you. But so what? You still don’t know why anybody is bothering. Twitter seems like a bunch of people making disjointed statements to no one in particular, and you begin to suspect a lot of Twitterers are friendless hermits sitting in front of their computers stuck in their own little Twitter worlds. That, or Twitter fanatics with 20,000 followers who are Web 2.0 geeks.  And at least one quarter of your followers are people who clicked on your name so that they could sell you on some online MLM business that you have absolutely no interest in. You join in conversations now and then, but you still don’t quite see what all the fuss is about.

Hey, This is Kind of Fun is the third stage. You have had a few useful exchanges, and maybe connected to a few funny, interesting, or useful people, links, or websites. You got into a really great conversation about one of the trending topics. You are starting to make some friends; you get a feel for the sort of people some of your connections are. You become interested in who else is out there, and start to do a little searching for people to follow. You think it’s cool that someone starts to follow you: it is an affirmation of the value of your tweets. You have figured out how to express yourself in 140 characters or less. You form opinions about who is worth following, and who is not, and you begin to see who is on the top of the Twitter heap, and why. You keep Twitter open on your desktop, and join in whenever something catches your eye. When something interesting happens during the day, you go to your computer and tweet it.

Help! I’m Twiddicted! is the fourth stage. As you begin to enjoy Twitter, you slowly spend more and more of your day tweeting. Without realizing it, your twittering has blossomed into a full-blown addiction. Through the magic of re-tweeted links, you have now found out about Mr. Tweet, TwitterGrader, Twitsnip, Twitpic, twitterfeed, tweetscan, twitteriffic, twellow, twubble, grouptweet, tweetstats, tweetlater, twittervision, tweetburner, twitbin, qwitter, twitter-karma, twitscoop, tweetbeep, and more. You must conquer them all. The Twitter home page is passé, so you use Tweetdeck, Twitterfox, Tweetgrid, or twitterfon, or all of them. You dread the thought of missing a good picture, video, or link. When you tweet good night, you don’t actually go to bed, but still add about ten more updates before you are completely exhausted and need to go. You eat with Twitter. You feel validated when your twitter grade goes up by a tenth of a point. You create custom backgrounds, change your avatar every day, and customize all your colors. You avidly search for the coolest tweeters, follow them, and feel like you’ve scored a major coup if they follow you back, even if they follow 8,000 other people. Rather than simply tweeting the things you happen upon, you actively try to find the funniest and cleverest links to tweet so that everyone will @you, and you answer everyone who DMs you. You look down with pity on newbie twitterers who thank their new followers by @name because they are committing a hopeless faux pas of Twitter etiquette. You have become so proficient at using text acronyms that you can convey the entire contents of a three page document in exactly 140 characters. You don’t want to talk on the phone to your friends; if they have anything worth telling you, they should tweet it, FCOL. You measure your worth by the number of followers you have and the number of @replies that say ROFLMAO.

Now I Get It is the fifth and, thankfully, final stage. I think. You see Twitter as a useful and enjoyable personal, professional, and social tool. Twitter is like being at an enormous cocktail party with hundreds of casual friends and acquaintances, only you don’t feel any social awkwardness and don’t care how you’re dressed or what your hair looks like. It is okay to be a wallflower and just read a conversation.Or you might decide to engage in a more intimate conversation with one or two people. Or maybe you want to join a large discussion. You come and go as you please, and you do not feel compelled to have something amazingly clever to say. You know when to talk and when to read. You can spend an entire day or more without tweeting, and you’re okay with it. You notice when it is a nice day outside, and actually go out and enjoy it. You know the Twitter party is always there when you want to attend.

Twitter is now your friend. Welcome to Twitter!

Related articles by Zemanta

• 50 Top Tweets of January 2009 (thenextweb.com)
• Getting Local With Twitter (agentgenius.com)

No related posts.

The New York Times recently published an editorial by Nicholas Kristof citing several studies showing that conservatives not only give more money to charity overall, but give a greater percentage of their income to charity (“Bleeding Heart Tightwads,” Dec. 20, 2008). And lest anyone makes assumptions that people with more money need tax write-offs and are more likely to be conservative, let me add that the studies also concluded that: the working poor give a greater percentage of their income to charity; conservatives more often volunteer to help charitable causes than liberals; and conservatives donate more blood than liberals. Thus, the amount of money one has is not an accurate proxy for calculating how charitable one is.

To anyone but a conservative, these findings are probably a surprise. That is because there is a world of difference between what political conservatives and political liberals regard as “compassion.” In a nutshell: to the conservative, compassion is simply helping a poor person in need; to the liberal, it is telling someone richer than he is to help a poor person in need.

For many years now, the liberals have been able to bank, politically, on the notion that you can be “compassionate” simply by wanting to help the poor—whether or not you actually help them. Thus, the liberal Congressman casts himself as compassionate because the liberal wants to give one person’s money to another person under the mistaken notion that the other person deserves it more than the person who had it in the first place. In comparison, the conservative politician is cast as a stingy, greedy, heartless individual simply because he does not see why the government should be allowed to take one person’s earnings and give it to another person.

This has translated down into our culture as well, so that one can call himself “compassionate” not because he himself shows compassion, but simply because he votes for liberal politicians and favors liberal causes. The essence of the liberal’s position vis-à-vis the needy is not, “I will help you,” but instead “I will force someone else to help you.” Through this subterfuge, the liberal can rationalize to himself that he is doing his part to help the needy. Thus, Mr. Kristof casts Democrats as those “who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless,” and Republicans as “the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.” But what Mr. Kristof fails to appreciate is that he is merely exposing his own impoverished viewpoint. To him, government policy, alone, constitutes the sum of America’s social conscience.

Time and again, I am confronted by this crabbed imitation of true compassion. What the liberals fail to realize is that you can neither stimulate nor salve a conscience through enforced “charity.” It is neither “compassionate” nor “charitable” to compel a wealthy person to give portions of his bounty to the downtrodden. It is nobler and more rewarding to give freely—something that conservatives apparently understand better than liberals, judging by the studies.

But even more, compassion is not about money, and money is not how to measure moral obligation. In the end, the only rational assessment of the liberal-inspired masquerade of compassion is that it has nothing at all to do with true compassion, but is simply a sterile and completely misguided egalitarian notion of wealth redistribution. Compassion is a human virtue, and a human emotion. The government, being an institution, is not capable of bestowing compassion. It is neither “compassionate” nor “charitable” to give a poor person a government-issued check or voucher to which he is entitled simply by virtue of meeting a laundry list of objective criteria.

This is precisely why the liberals cling to government handouts rather than encourage and rely upon private charities. Their own elitist pride cannot entertain the idea that anyone might have to entreat anyone else for charity. Instead, it is much more comfortable to submit a form to a cold and faceless institution under the pretense that you are entitled to it, where you will not be subjected to anyone’s judgment or pity.

Granted, it is difficult for those in need to ask for help; it is humbling and, occasionally, humiliating. But I wonder: is it really better to sanitize our society of experiencing these less enjoyable aspects of our own humanity? Having to humble oneself may not be fun, but it is self-enlightening. And it is tremendously motivating. Confronting our own weaknesses is one of the ways we develop character.

But under the current system of government-sponsored “compassion,” we have fostered an environment where no one has to deal with his own weaknesses. Thus, everyone, including corporate America, is lining up at the government trough as though their well-being is an entitlement owed to them not through any merit or worthiness, but simply because they have suffered a setback and are more shameless in their pursuit of government handouts. The notion of entitlement even saves them from the inconvenience of having to feel or express any gratitude. Is this really an adequate substitute for dignity?

It is not that liberal individuals themselves are all stingy. In fact, as a general matter, all Americans are very generous when it comes to helping people all around the world, particularly when natural disasters strike. But there is a problem with the liberal concept of what constitutes compassion. They convey the completely mistaken notion that, somehow, one person’s financial well-being alone creates an obligation to give money to others, as though only the wealthy bear responsibility for society’s social problems and that the wealthy therefore need to feel guilty about their good fortune or success. The liberal is more apt to behave as though giving up your money is how you can prove to them that you are not a greedy, selfish jerk. But a bank account is not the same thing as a conscience.

In the end, the liberal’s concept of compassion is a tremendous insult to mankind, and demonstrates a decided lack of respect for his fellow man. It is based on a belief not in man’s goodness, but in his baseness. Thus, “charity” must be mandated by the liberal because he does not trust people to do what is right through the force of their own consciences. Instead, people are compelled to be “good” in spite of themselves, and those with more money have to be “better” than everyone else. And there’s the rub: forcing someone to do anything is to remove all human will, good or bad. In short, the liberal concept of compassion is the antithesis of real compassion, because it removes volition from the equation completely.

And that is the ultimate irony. Perhaps what the charity studies cited by Mr. Kristof really demonstrate is that liberals simply ignore the promptings of conscience that should motivate them to shoulder moral obligations themselves. Instead, they translate those pangs into railroading the rest of America into succumbing to a raft of government mandates according to what they deem is “fair.” They believe that this counterfeit compassion is a sufficient surrogate for the character and conscience that they lack, but that most other Americans possess in abundance. If liberals truly understood dignity, they would feel humiliated by what their politics say about them.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Red Cross: Free Travel for Lucky Blood Donors
• Facebook Inspires Donor Drive

No related posts.

For some reason, I receive Parenting Magazine. I have never subscribed to it. I know that for a fact—this is not some, “Gee, I subscribe to so many, I don’t remember” things. The reason I know is that I have only ever subscribed to two magazines in the last 10 years. Who has time to read magazines? Besides, the two I do subscribe to I only subscribe to because they were ridiculously cheap offers, and I was hoping to find a few recipes in them. That’s all I want. If a year’s subscription nets me at least five recipes that the family likes and that I know will be keepers, I feel the whole effort has been worth it. Believe me, finding a recipe for a meal that the whole family will eat—with six individuals ages 50 down to 1 year—is a major accomplishment.

But getting back to this magazine: the problem is that I feel like I have to at least give each issue a quick perusal before I toss it out. Now, to be fair, there are some useful things in Parenting magazine. But for some reason, the whole tone of the magazine sticks in my craw. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but I think it is the assumptions the magazine makes about the parents who may be reading it. There’s this whole presumption that you’re, well . . . kind of an idiot. It is amazing how many things in the magazine are things that should not have to be said to a parent if that parent has any sense. I don’t mean everything, of course; but overall the editorial perspective seems to assume things about the modern American household that are entirely foreign to our own modern American household. I suppose that is why the people who read Parenting magazine are having all the problems that Parenting magazine talks about: they need someone to save them from their own foolishness.

Well, over Christmas I was doing a run-through of the back-issues stacked up here, and I came across an article from the October issue that just cements the whole problem for me. It is an article about a book called “Eat This, Not That,” and the book is billed as a guide for kids. Across the top of the book is a bright yellow banner stating “Be the Leanest, Fittest Family on the Block!” Sounds okay so far, right? Only the book is not a guide to teach kids about basic nutrition, or about which foods you can eat to address specific health issues or concerns. Instead, it is a book about which menu items are better choices at fast food franchises and chain restaurants, and which pre-packaged processed foods are better for you. No . . . I’m not kidding.

According to the article, the book has all sorts of fascinating tidbits that would surprise moms, like the fact that a greasy Arby’s Melt with some sort of concoction labeled “cheese sauce” is, despite artificial colorings and chemical preservatives, a better choice than a less-greasy and seemingly more healthful Arby’s Roasted Turkey and Swiss Sandwich, which has more calories, more fat, and more sodium. It explains how Spaghetti-Os are better than Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. To be fair, I have never read the book. I have only read a four page article about the book. But believe me, that is enough.

The article actually states, and I quote: “It is not the culture that is endangering our children’s health. It’s the food.” Huh, what? I thought food was part of our culture. But my take is: it is not the food that is endangering our children’s health, it is the parents, if they are the ones feeding their children this glop.

Now my husband and I, like many urban parents these days, sometimes find our family having to eat on the go. Sure, there is the occasional fast-food hamburger or taco. But the key word is “occasional.” We’re talking, oh, maybe . . . once a month? And as for eating out rather than cooking at home: are you kidding? If there is anyone in America who believes you can be truly healthy eating chain restaurant food, or who would want to feed canned and boxed processed meals to their children on a regular basis in the belief that they are providing healthy fare, they are simply being willfully ignorant.

Now, the book may be an interesting catalog of information on its own, especially when it comes to outing misconceptions about fast food. After all, it surely is curious to note that an order of Taco Bell’s deep-fried chicken grilled taquitos is less fattening than a chicken quesadilla. And it might be handy to have around to show your teenage daughter how awful that cheeseburger really is, or to sit together leafing through the book to say “eeeyeeww” at how amazingly atrocious most fast food and processed food is. But, the magazine article and book do not cast themselves as a compendium of strange and disgusting facts; instead, they seem to regard the book as a serious reference tool.

The bottom line is this: if you are eating fast food or processed food so much that the recommendations in this book are actually going to make a difference in your diet, you are probably already in big blood-congealing, heart-stopping trouble. I cannot imagine for the life of me that anyone who cares about health would actually use the book as a menu guide. If you care enough about your family’s diet to buy the book, it seems to me the only sensible thing to do is read it through once, then decide ever after to avoid all chain restaurants, and consign all your processed foods to the garbage can, never to be bought or consumed again. This book is like telling you that cyanide is more painless than strychnine.

And, heaven forbid, if the meals discussed in the book really do make up your regular family fare, for goodness’ sake, you are probably better off not knowing what you are putting in your body. For those who truly want to eat healthily, but don’t have a clue what you ought to be feeding your children, don’t buy the book. Here, I’ll give you some advice for free that is tremendously more healthful than the book, and it will only take about eight seconds of your time: cut out all sodas, all foods and drinks with added sugar of any form, cut out processed foods, and stop eating at restaurants, then replace them with home-made meals made from fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole natural grains, and natural meats. Add a bit of TLC, and you will save yourself a lot of time, money, doctor’s bills, and fat farm visits.

As I said above, almost every family and every individual, even those who are generally health conscious, probably indulge in the occasional fast food meal now and then. But it seems to me that it is a sort of guilty pleasure, and one you usually regret within about two hours, anyway. And while I can appreciate the novelty of finding out that that I would be better off ordering a chicken sandwich than a Caesar salad: what fun is that? If I can’t enjoy the indulgence of eating something I just have a craving for, however unhealthy it is, then there’s no point to the exercise. Just give me my double-double animal style fix every couple of months, and I’m good.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Top Five Cheapest–But Least Healthy–Fast Food Choices
• Cheap Meal Ideas – 3 Alternatives to Fast Food
• Penny-Wise And Health Foolish Fast Foods

No related posts.

It may seem uncharitable during this Christmas season to write an essay that is basically a rant, but I cannot help it. I went to the store to buy a traditional Christmas card—not a box of cards, but just one card, a special Christmas card—to hold some movie passes we bought as a gift for our babysitter. Our babysitter, like us, is Catholic. Or, shall we say, we are all practicing Catholics, as it seems that in this modern world, there is a not-so-small distinction between practicing and non-practicing Catholics.

And in this store, which shall remain unnamed, I could not find a single card that was remotely reminiscent of, well, Christmas. The card section was overflowing with Santas, snowmen, reindeer, trees, ornaments, stockings, snowy villages, wrapped gifts, and so on. Now, I do not want to be too presumptuous here, but doesn’t Christmas have something to do with a very special baby being born in a manger in Bethlehem?  You would never know from the card selection.

To make matters worse, the Christmas card section had a separate heading for “religious” cards. I understand when there are separate “religious” headings for birthdays, mother’s day, or even weddings, but putting up a separate heading of “religious” for Christmas is incredibly irritating, as though Christmas is first a secular holiday, and only incidentally related to religion. After all, the day is named after Christ, in case anybody cared to notice. I mean, how come the Hanukkah cards did not have a separate “religious” section? This, to me, is like having a “religious” section for baptism cards.

But even in the religious section, I could not find a suitable card. One had a gilded angel, but the only one that showed a manger scene was a sort of cartoon depiction of the blessed event. Now, a child’s drawing of the Nativity may be cute and dear if it is drawn by one of your own children or by a young niece or nephew, but a printed, mass-produced, happy-face line-drawing card is distinctly lacking in the sort of reverence and solemnity I had been hoping to convey as a proper commemoration of the day.

I am now thoroughly sick of the blatant effort of “progressive” malcontents to suck any vestige of Christ out of Christmas whenever it may appear in any public forum, even in a shopping mall. Apparently, only a fragment of these frantic, harried shoppers scrambling to conquer their gifts lists believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God.  But after all, the fact that we—those of us who are Christian—share gifts is specifically to emulate those Three Wise Men who gave gifts to the holy child. Since this is where the Christmas gift-giving tradition originated, it seems remarkably peevish to nevertheless celebrate the day with friends and family, yet simultaneously resent Christmas’ religious significance.

Nothing seems to escape. Christmas music is also being sanitized with more and more “seasonal” songs. I enjoy a good old croon as much as anybody, but apparently it is becoming taboo to play traditional carols that mention Jesus, Mary, angels, or God. We are getting plenty of Bing’s White Christmas and Dino’s Winter Wonderland, and, I shudder, a selection of today’s hip young wailers destroying some modern classic with grating vocal gymnastics. But for the most part, gone are any carols with references to that first Christmas, it seems, except for instrumental versions. Heaven forbid—excuse me, earth forbid—that Christians should be allowed to acknowledge just what we are celebrating.

And that’s dreadful. Because here in our home, we are trying to raise our children to view Christmas in the proper light. Of course it is a time that they receive presents, but it is also a time to give presents, to remember what those presents signify, to spend time with those we love and to show our love not only by giving gifts to friends and family, but giving also to those who are less fortunate whom we don’t know. But it is difficult to convey even this small lesson to our children, when so many people they see are simply engaged in a frenzy of ill-tempered consumption. It is galling, to say the least, to have a day that we regard as spiritually meaningful secularized to the point, not of meaninglessness, but worse: of meaning something that is the opposite of what it ought to mean.

I certainly do not want to imply that everyone must celebrate Christmas as we do. Rather, all those of other faiths, agnostics, or atheists should simply and respectfully allow those of us who do believe to celebrate the birth of the Christ child consistent with our time-honored traditions.  I suppose I have no strong objections, in the abstract, to anyone who wants to celebrate Christmas in their own way.  But I do not understand why Christians must therefore be forced to forsake any mention of Christ when that is the whole point of  our holiday. It seems rather ridiculous for non-Christians to get so exercised about it by militantly insisting upon a holiday filled only with cartoon Santas, inane music, and generic “holiday” greetings.

Atheists could hold their own holiday, which I would most happily ignore out of respect for their beliefs. They could celebrate Darwin’s birthday, for example, by sending each other cards with pictures of chimps and singing about the wonders of stepping forth from a blob of primordial slime. But it is the height of irony, isn’t it, that those who would denigrate Christianity bring more attention to Christmas day, and, not incidentally, to themselves, by their boorish anti-religious behavior and even more boorish insistence on the importance of Christmas by their unceasing efforts to secularize it completely. Rather like mohawked, tattooed, and pierced “non-conformists”, if they weren’t so antagonistically obsessed with what conformity IS, they might realize how silly and foolish they looked.

So I say to all of you out there who joyously celebrate the birth of Jesus in the best Christmas tradition:  I share your joy on this special day.  And I wish to everyone in the world–yes, everyone–a very Merry Christmas.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The joy of celebrating a godless Christmas.
• Is Christmas Only for Christians?

No related posts.

A lot of people talk these days about how much they care about one cause or another. They are plastered all over the covers of magazines. Some people want to save the planet, others want to help all the starving children in Africa, or to free the people of Tibet, or oppose the atrocities in Darfur. I do not want to make light of these things; they are serious matters, (that is, all but the first one). But I’m not sure all this caring about the whole world is actually making the world a better place.

In particular, I am bemused by people who seem to make a contest of simply caring. They will say and do anything to prove that they care. They study what they care about; rarely do they question what they study, but they study, anyway. And when you run into those people, let me warn you: do not try to compete. They care about everything more than you do. They care so much that they buy T-shirts, bumper stickers, jeweled brooches shaped like ribbons, rubber bracelets, and baseball caps. This way, you can see that they care by what they wear, even if they have never been within 1,000 miles of what they care about. Apparently, their willingness to wear obnoxious fashion accessories is intended to demonstrate to the rest of the world how selfless they are.

Lots of people also care by going to balls, dances, dinners, speeches, rock concerts, and rallies. Sure, it may just look like they are having a lot of fun with their friends and rubbing elbows with a bunch of celebrities, but, for them, this is “charity work.” Mother Teresa, it would appear, had nothing on them.

I would guess that at least half the stars in Hollywood have entered into some sort of implicit caring contest. They all search for a unique cause that they pin their names on: for some its animals, for others it’s one disease or another, and so on. Now that AIDS is passé, they are madly scrambling to try and find some unique niche that has not been staked out by an even more illustrious celebrity. I can appreciate the fact that some of them believe their famous names can be used to bring needed public attention to serious matters, but even then, I cannot fathom why all of America needs to care about every problem in the world.

I can also applaud when someone donates money to this or that worthwhile cause. Everyone should endeavor to be charitable. However, it is incorrect to presume that this is the moral equivalent of a “good work,” as that term is properly understood. Going to a rock concert to benefit the victims of a tsunami is, well . . . it is simply going to a rock concert. And as for the performing band: they are simply doing what they usually do, they are just not making their normal profit for a night’s work. That may be commendable, but is not the same thing as bringing a poor man on the street a hot bowl of soup and a pair of shoes.

I do not want to belittle the benefits of providing funds to worthy causes (assuming that the money actually gets there), I simply find it disturbing that people necessarily equate this sort of sterile “giving” to more concrete virtues. In particular, it is easy to be generous when your bank account shows six or seven zeroes before the decimal point, but it is hard for me to get exercised about a faraway cause, or to feel guilt when I decide some cause does not justify more than an honorable mention in my nightly prayer intentions. If people have the time and wherewithal to be extravagantly generous, more power to them, but I sincerely wish these people would spare me the wisdom of their worldly insights as though I have some personal obligation to share their passion du jour.

It is especially galling when some of the same individuals who try to preach about our “humanitarian” obligations simultaneously treat the humans around them—spouses, children, family members, friends, and associates—like expendable or inconvenient appendages that can be cast aside in pursuit of some other goal. This is simply moral confusion. It is easy to care about pet causes when that is what they are: pets. Like having a pet dog, these people can just dump some food in their pet’s bowl, then pat their heads now and then when it suits their needs and makes them feel better. It is a much more commendable, if less glamorous, thing to bear the daily responsibility of being a dependable, patient, forgiving, present, caring, and loving spouse, parent, child, sibling, neighbor, and friend. Dedication to a grand cause, in the way these people do it, is an indulgence. As a matter of fact, I sometimes think their zeal for these causes is directly proportionate to the guilt they feel for being obscenely wealthy or dissolute.

By questioning the worthiness of this hip trend toward caring for every outlandish and far-flung cause under the sun, I certainly do not wish to tar everyone with the same brush. There are very many wealthy people who are also good people, who feel that giving toward a worthy cause is the right thing to do given their good fortune, and it is their way of sharing their bounty with others less fortunate. But I would just as soon dispense with the insinuations of people whose overt caring is manifestly aimed at making normal, hardworking, middle-class Joes believe that they really need to care or do something about some injustice operating 6,000 miles away. Caring about such things is truly a luxury for those with too much time on their hands, and one that many normal people cannot, and need not, afford.

For those of us who are simply trying to provide a safe and nurturing home for our families, with enough food to eat and enough financial security to see our way through an uncertain future, the welfare of Tibetan exiles comes in, oh, a distant fiftieth or sixtieth place on our lists of priorities. My own moral obligations are pretty well staked out between these four walls; what is not covered here is generally spent in my church, my neighborhood, and my town. After all, if I simply take a short drive, I encounter plenty of people within eyeshot that would clearly benefit from a kind word or deed. Beyond that, there is little room or time in my life for pie-in-the-sky world-saving. I will leave that to the super-heroes of Hollywood and Manhattan.

However, I sincerely wish that these people, like any good superheroes, would hide their true identities and accept thanks from those they have helped as reward enough. Not only do I have no authority or desire to canonize such worthies, I would respect them more if their efforts did not seem so palpably calculated to provide some depth to their otherwise shallow and superficial public personae.

Let me be clear: I am all for caring. But just caring about some obscure cause does little, by itself, to create a better world. All of this energy and money given over to publicity and charitable “events” might be better spent modestly lending a helping hand or sympathetic ear to one’s downtrodden neighbors. Compassion requires a human hand, and a human face. And that human face should not be of Benjamin Franklin, peering out from a hundred dollar bill, spent on a trendy T-shirt intended to show the world how much you “care.”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ben Affleck Do-Gooding in Congo, Africa
• Naomi Is Not Wanted

No related posts.

Now that the election is over, Obama’s win seems, in retrospect, to be the natural result of the farce that has become our presidential election. I mean, if anyone in the media had any sense or brains, why was no one mining the one obvious and vein-rich question troubling our political landscape: is this really the best America can do?

But it is one thing to accept that at least one of these fools had to win, and another to confront the fact that a disturbingly large number of young Americans have an incomprehensible adoration of Barack Obama. I can only conclude that it is the manifestation of some variety of premature dementia. At any rate, it is inexplicable by rational processes.

Let us take Obama’s meaningless campaign themes of “Hope” and “Change.” This same weightless aura is also conveyed by the insipid title to his book, “The Audacity of Hope.” This seems to me to be the essence of his persona: every vocal outpouring of his has the same overflow of practiced, smooth, grandiose . . . nothingness. It is like listening to Jesse Jackson without the theatrics and Muhammad Ali poetry, but with good grammar and diction. Is this what impresses Americans today: a stream-of-consciousness ether of abstract nonsense? Is this what Americans interpret as intelligence, conviction, and purpose?

Because when you boil down all his flowery verbiage into actual policies, they are of the same regurgitated big-government boondoggle variety that has been doled out by the Democratic Party at least since George McGovern. At his best, Obama has the gift of dressing them up very stylishly, but without a teleprompter, he sounds like a delinquent student trying to con his way through an oral exam.

The idea that all these young pups believe that Barack Obama not only is, but is capable of being, some kind of messianic savior is, in a way, grotesque. Because whatever kind of president he turns out to be, his caliber as a man is troublingly dubious. And while I could draw this conclusion by reference to a sizable selection of his questionable relationships and activities, I need only examine one: his church.

Like many other Americans, I saw Reverend Wright’s ranting spiel against America. The man has clearly got a race chip on his spiritual shoulder. But the fact that Obama attended Reverend Wright’s church for 20 years does not bother me. What bothers me is: Obama left it.

Believe me, I am no fan of Reverend Wright’s brand of “liberation theology.” Indeed, his invocation asking God to damn America clearly smacked of political discourse rather than theological sermonizing, insofar as America, being a country, has no immortal soul to damn. It also strikes one as a startlingly un-Christian sentiment: turn the other cheek, my kingdom is not of this earth, and all that. But after watching other more extended videos of Reverend Wright, it seemed to me that his sermonizing, as a general rule, was no more remarkable than other garden-variety Bible-thumping. And, much as I hate to agree with Bill Maher on anything, I suspect he is correct in that this sort of preaching has been going on in America’s black churches for decades; it is just that most non-black Americans have neither witnessed it, nor had any particular reason to pay attention to it.

But then we have Barack Obama.

Initially, Obama stated that he never personally witnessed the America-bashing in 20 years of attending the church, and never had even an inkling of Rev. Wright’s views despite his obvious close association. That, quite simply, is very hard to believe, especially since Rev. Wright himself explained on national television that his views were nothing remarkable within the bounds of liberation theology. It also explains, very plainly, Michelle Obama’s sentiment that she had never before been proud of America. But fine, let it go; I will willingly suspend my disbelief, and take Obama at his word.

But then what happened? After offering a rather feeble defense of himself and his church, Barack Obama and his family resigned their membership. Just on the surface, that would seem to validate the criticisms, rather than diminish them. But even more: what does that resignation tell us about Barack Obama’s spiritual convictions? Instead of standing by his friends, his pastor, his church, his congregation, and his faith, of 20 years, the Obamas resigned in June: a full five months before the election. That is quite an act of recantation. In short, Barack Obama took the low road. He preferred to surrender the integrity of his immortal soul rather than risk a continued publicity fallout that might impact the election.

In comparison, take JFK: his nomination was directly responsible for a strengthening of the Republican Party, as many Democrats had a difficult time accepting his Catholic faith and abandoned the party. The idea now seems almost quaint, given the lukewarm adherence to dogma practiced by so many nominal Catholics today, but a fair number of Americans believed that Kennedy, as president, would split his allegiance by doing the Pope’s bidding. Of course, it seems now to have been a fear that was wholly unfounded, but JFK was unapologetic—and he prevailed anyway.

We have no such worry with Obama. We know where his allegiance lies: it lies with his ruthless pursuit of the ambition to power.

And before anyone takes umbrage, Obama’s behavior cannot be rationalized by claiming that he was trying to protect his church. That justification simply does not stand up to scrutiny: Rev. Wright is hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to the glare of klieg lights. His already public profile and his eager willingness to appear on national television to further espouse his uncharitable views could hardly support the claim that the Obamas were trying to shield the congregation from negative publicity. Besides, the worst had been done; little more could have been exposed that would have adversely affected the church.

No, the clear import of the Obamas’ decision was to deflate any objections Americans could have to Rev. Wright’s anti-American rantings. Barack Obama offered a perfunctory expression of surprise and astonishment that Rev. Wright could be so unpatriotically irreverent, and, to put substance behind this posture, he resigned his membership. So middle America shielded its eyes, and consoled itself that, See? Surely, Barack Obama himself could not really share such unpalatable views. And Obama’s die-hard followers never had a problem with it anyway, since they most likely agreed with Rev. Wright’s sentiments.

While those of Obama’s followers who are atheistic or agnostic are probably not troubled by Obama’s resignation, given that they view religious faith as nothing but a delusion, they would be missing the point. If Obama truly believes in God, as his longstanding church membership would suggest, then resigning his membership says a great deal about his character and his priorities. If a man is willing to sever such longstanding ties to his faith and his community, what sort of allegiance can anyone expect him to demonstrate with respect to any other principle or relationship?

Since winning the election, the Obamas have relocated to Washington, D.C., and instead of trying to find another spiritual home, he has chosen to spend his Sundays working out at the gym. While by no means would I expect Obama to spend every waking moment trying to find a new church in his new city, I can’t help but wonder what message his sudden lack of interest in setting aside time for God sends to his two young children. I know what message it sends to me.

What kind of a man sacrifices a relationship of 20 years in pursuit of ambition? What kind of a man abandons spiritual succor to embrace worldly power? Whatever the answer, Obama is that kind of man. Believe it or not, as someone who does not support him, that is somewhat consoling to me: at least I can be assured that any belief he purports to espouse is likely to be a product of political expediency rather than true conviction.

So Obama himself does not particularly bother me. No, I am troubled by something else. And that is: what sort of person idolizes a man like Obama? Because that is the sort of person who put him in the Oval Office, and that is the sort of person who is populating this once great nation of ours. In four or eight years, Barack Obama will be irrelevant. The real struggle facing America is for the minds and character of our electorate.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Obama Got Elected
• “I think most people voted for Barack Obama because they decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next 4 years explaining policy.

No related posts.

It is amazing how often I hear liberals talk about wealthy people. They seem to be obsessed with them, knowing exactly how much money they spent on this or that house or boat or car or outfit. And most of the time they are discussing these things (which is none of their business, anyway), they do so with this resentful, sour look. Now, personally, wealth doesn’t bother me; I would like to be wealthy myself, as a matter of fact.

But a lot of liberals talk as though wealthy people are evil simply because they are wealthy. But here’s the thing: they usually only hate wealthy people who became wealthy by hard work. They never seem to hate movie or television stars, pop stars, liberal writers, liberal politicians, or professional athletes.

This is very strange. I mean, a movie star or pop singer can make millions of dollars for a few months of mediocre work, and he or she only makes himself or herself (and maybe an agent) rich. And they get paid outrageous sums even when they produce garbage. Moreover, the money they make usually comes from teenagers who sponged the money off of their parents. In fact, while I like to be entertained as much as the next person, I cannot see that they provide anything of practical utility to anyone.

In contrast, a top oil company executive usually works 60 to 70 hours a week, month after month, keeping tens of thousands of people employed, keeping food on their tables, roofs over their heads, and medical care for their families, plus they try to make sure all the stockholders in the company, like union pensioners, get a good return on their investment and can retire in comfort. Oh, not to mention, they make their money off of people like me, because they provide gas for me to travel and so that all the goods I want to buy can be delivered to my local supermarket.

Now, to my mind, if someone can do all that and still bring in a hefty profit for their company, I say: terrific! But a liberal just seethes at the fact that a person who does all that should get a few million in compensation. Keanu Reeves made $200 million off of the Matrix movies. (Astounding.) Yet I’m supposed to resent the CEO of Exxon? And it’s even worse than that. Because what the liberal wants to do is to tax the heck out of the CEO’s salary so that it can be given to some deadbeat on welfare.

To me, this demonstrates the stupidity of resenting wealth. A person only works hard if he or she obtains a benefit from the hard work. When you don’t get any benefit from hard work, you have a tendency to become lazy, and do only what gets you by. And when you give something to someone who is lazy because they are lazy, they continue to be lazy. The one thing liberals just can’t figure out is that the difference between wealthy people and poor people is seldom money. Oh, there is a second thing. The second thing they don’t get is that wealth is not a zero sum game. They don’t understand that wealth can be created.

And for those liberals who are scratching their heads, let me explain. There is one primary reason that countries like Japan and Switzerland are wealthy. And it has nothing to do with natural resources; both countries would be unable to grow enough food or mine enough ore or grow enough trees to support their populations. What they do have is people with a strong work ethic, and people who take pride in producing top quality goods. You see, it is still prestigious to own a Swiss watch, and people travel to Switzerland because they run things well—banks, hotels, resorts, spas, chocolate factories. And Japan produces top-quality automobiles and electronic equipment. A mere 40 years ago, the phrase “Made in Japan” used to be a joke—it meant something was cheap and shoddy. Not anymore. Today, it means something is made well and packaged attractively. (China has now taken over the cheap and shoddy department.) The Japanese work ethic created the fastest growing national economy the world has ever seen.

These countries have become wealthy primarily as a result of human effort—adding value to meager resources and inexpensive raw materials. This also explains, incidentally, why America is becoming poorer. The difference between wealth and poverty is: human effort. People can create wealth simply by the exertion of effort. For example, if two neighbors lived side by side in identical houses (which happens pretty often these days, with tract neighborhoods), and made identical salaries, but one person sat on his duff, watched television, and drank beer while the other person regularly mowed and watered his lawn, picked weeds, eradicated pests, tended the plants and trees, cleaned the house, maintained the structure, and so on, the weed-picker’s house would be worth more.

Yet, despite the obvious truth of this statement, the liberal mind simply cannot wrap itself around the idea that hard work—the right kind of hard work—can create wealth out of almost nothing. They, like their mentor Karl Marx, sit around on their duff thinking they are smart, and that, by virtue of being smart, they deserve to have the wealth that other people have created through effort. Or else, they equate hard work with simply spending a lot of hours digging up holes and filling them in, rather than actually producing anything of value. This is why we see so many silly bumper stickers.

Liberals want to live in a sort of fairyland of liberal meritocracy, where people who do things like spout liberal aphorisms at college universities live the lives of kings, while other people, like corporate executives, who actually have to bear responsibility for the tangible results of the decisions they make and produce goods that people actually want and need, get zilch. No wonder liberals are liberals. Basically, they don’t understand that a thing is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it. And nobody wants to listen to college professors. Students only listen because their parents are paying for a college education, and because they want a lucrative job at a software company when they graduate.

I mean, the liberals got all steamed up because Cindy McCain wore a $20,000 dress. (How come they don’t mind when Jessica Simpson wears a $20,000 dress?) But they should be happy—ecstatic, in fact—that she’s wearing that dress. I mean, when a liberal buys a dress at Wal-Mart for $35, she (or he, I guess) is only supporting a lowly Chinese pinko running a sweatshop, whereas Cindy is supporting a New York City cocktail liberal or a snobby Paris socialist.

Now, Cindy’s family made its money distributing beer. If ever there was a family that earned its keep, Cindy’s family is it. They distribute a product that people are willing to pay for in either an up or a down economy. The liberals’ problem is that they think it is possible to create an economic system in which someone is willing to pay them a lot of money just to drink it.

No related posts.

I am reasonably sure that some people who read the title of this post are either preparing to argue with me, or are bracing themselves for something that is going to make them uncomfortable. That is because discrimination has become a dirty word in our political culture, even though its literal meaning is rather innocuous. Our mindset has become so used to condemning discrimination, or at least tiptoeing around the word, that, if you say it is okay, you can pretty much expect a fight. But please hear me out. Discrimination means: the ability to distinguish between two different things.

What I want to discuss is California’s Proposition 8. Let’s start with the basics: Proposition 8 is not about denying substantive rights to the gay community. In fact, if you want to get down to it, marriage is not a “right” at all, but, in legal terms, a privilege and a contractual obligation. I will, for the moment, leave its sacramental character aside—not for lack of importance mind you, but because you don’t have to go that far or deep to see how utterly reprehensible the Proposition 8 dispute is.

The California Supreme Court’s May 15 opinion made it very clear that California statutory law provides “domestic partners” virtually every privilege afforded heterosexual married couples in California. Indeed, the court cited only nine specific statutory distinctions between the law’s treatment of married couples versus domestic partners, and, notwithstanding the Court’s ultimate decision, it even described these distinctions as “minor.” For example, two of the cited distinctions provided that domestic partners may dissolve their partnerships without going through a court-ordered divorce. In sum, the differences were not necessarily adverse to the gay community.

So what Proposition 8 was about is not the law, at all, but about the word “marriage,” at best, and a few technicalities, at worst. But here is the bottom line: no matter what you call it, a “marriage” between a man and a woman is NOT THE SAME THING as a “marriage” between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are simply different. And before anyone gets all excited about what I am saying, ISN’T THAT THE WHOLE BLOODY POINT?

It is a fact that all heterosexuals discriminate against homosexuals, and all homosexuals discriminate against heterosexuals. Don’t believe it? Okay, try this on for size: the last time you went out on a date, did you care whether it was a man or a woman? Did you care about your date’s sexual orientation? Let’s not worry about who is being hyper-sensitively offended by our answers. Let’s all stiffen our backbones and look the truth in the face.

Here, I’ll confess first, if it will make anyone feel any better: I have never had a date with a heterosexual woman; neither have I ever dated a homosexual of either sex, and if anyone who characterized themselves as any of the above had ever asked me out on a date with a view to romance, I would have unhesitatingly and very firmly answered “no.” Whew. I’m glad I got that off my chest.

Come on! It is not as if George gets up one morning and says, “Gee, Joe, I never really noticed it before, but . . . you’re a man!” Homosexuality and heterosexuality are as different as men and women are different. In fact, that is EXACTLY how different they are, and you cannot pretend that they are the same, or that the differences don’t matter. The very definition of both heterosexuality and homosexuality DEPENDS upon how men and women view other men and women. Is this really that hard for anyone to understand?

All of the poor-mouthing about “second class” treatment is simply bizarre. I mean, I hate to tell the gay community this, but having to stand in a separate line at the county registrar’s office for a domestic partner form as opposed to a marriage license is not what makes you different. And no amount of futzing with the English language, by redefining spouses, husbands, wives, and what-have-you, is going to change the appearance or reality of a homosexual relationship. Indeed, the very fact that the State of California has to modify its licensing forms in order to accommodate gay “marriage” rather serves to substantiate the distinction, does it not?

So when we all finally admit that what we are talking about are two different things here, I have to ask myself: is forcing all of California to call a homosexual relationship a “marriage” somehow going to validate someone’s sexual predilections? Is the gay community so insecure in its embrace of its “alternative lifestyle” that it needs the imprimatur of the California government to vindicate it? Because frankly, the only reason I can see for forcing Californians like me to call a homosexual relationship a “marriage” is to destroy the meaning of the word marriage as that term has been understood since the moment it was first coined.

And isn’t that the irony, here? By calling a homosexual relationship a “marriage,” you are not conforming the relationship to the word, you are conforming the word to the relationship. I mean, you can decide to call a cow a horse, but that does not change the nature of the cow. And frankly, I don’t see how calling the cow a cow instead of a horse is unfair to the cow. Further, even if you decided to treat a cow and a horse as though they are both horses, it neither makes them both horses, nor makes them equal.

A vote for Proposition 8 was, unfortunately, largely symbolic, but absolutely critical, nonetheless. It was an effort to preserve this one vestige of the language, one tradition, one hallmark of a culture, rather than have it sacrificed upon the altar of political correctness, like so many of our other cultural traditions. If that is something that other Americans simply cannot live with, we may as well consign the First Amendment to the garbage heap. Because if we have to bastardize the meaning of an English word that has existed since the 13^th century because its age-old definition is now offensive to someone, we are foolishly forfeiting the ability of the words in our language to mean exactly what we intend them to mean, and, accordingly, the ability to express independent ideas and independent opinions with some notion that others will be able to comprehend what it is we are trying to communicate.

Do not kid yourself that this is not what is going on. This is not about rights or respect. The assault on language here is nothing less than an assault on an idea. This attempt to destroy the heterosexual component of the definition of marriage will leave our language with no word that precisely denotes the union that has been at the foundation of all civilized societies. And now the State of California (and much of the rest of the nation) has been turned completely upside down—lawsuits, multi-million dollar elections, protests, boycotts, demonstrations, defacement of churches, and more lawsuits—not because someone’s “rights” are being infringed, but because the left no longer has a use for the word “marriage” as it has existed since it was first uttered.

If this is “progressive” politics, we are in for a long, bumpy ride, America. Check your common sense and your sanity at the border.

No related posts.

There was a time when American women who fought for women’s rights were actually interested in obtaining those rights as women, distinct from men. But somewhere along the line, the movement went haywire, and “feminists” decided that women are not really women, after all.

It is as if the political rights of men and women were once on the opposite sides of a teeter totter, with the rights of women sitting on the ground. But as the political weight started to shift to a state of equilibrium, some of the women just kept on going—and slid down the teeter totter onto the men’s side. They left all the remaining women high and dry. The movement took on a life of its own. Rather than pat themselves on the back for its accomplishments, “feminists” tried to justify the movement by pushing all sorts of moronic ideas.

The irony is that these ideas have created a social framework that the most chauvinistic of men probably never dared hope for. Ideas like: advancing the notion of sexual “liberation” as an element of political equality; promoting “choice,” with the grim and bleak assertion that women, alone, are entitled to decide whether or not to bear a child; encouraging the myth that marriage “enslaves” women, and that therefore women should shun the institution; and pretending that women with children are not only willing but perfectly capable of competing in the job market with men.

All of these ideas, carried into public policy, have been disastrous for women, socially and financially, and men have been perfectly happy to go along. And why not? Sexual freedom meant that men no longer had to wait for marriage to find a willing partner, nor find a girl whose scruples were not particularly rigorous. Abortion freed them from any social responsibility for children; living together freed them from commitment or fidelity; and treating women with children as economically competitive allowed men to walk away from their families with no financial burdens.  In fact, the issue of “choice” makes me wonder why some enterprising child custody lawyer hasn’t advanced the argument that fathers should be free, entirely, from the burden of child support in cases of divorce.

The women’s movement began by legitimately objecting to the legal status of women. But modern feminism has “thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” and now rejects everything associated with tradition.

Feminist ideas have been particularly destructive of the institution of marriage. Yet, despite years of rhetoric, it is still women who usually seek the commitment of marriage. Men generally bear the burden of “popping the question,” because it is important, socially, for men to arrive at the decision to “settle down,” and to declare that intent by making the offer of engagement. Although it is somewhat of a cliché, soon-to-be grooms are given bachelor parties in which their companions mourn their loss of freedom, and soon-to-be brides have showers in which their companions gush at the joy of setting up a home.

Do feminists really believe these customs are the result of oppressive social conditioning, or do they have the humility to recognize that these clichés exist precisely because they signify some fundamental truth about the nature of men and women?

Certainly, fertility influences these respective positions; after all, women who want children have a limited time in which to bear them. But the fact of fertility simply reinforces the social structure. Women—at least, women with any sense—seek marriage before having children because marriage provides the most—the only—suitable social framework in which to raise children. And if it is a biological drive that partly governs a woman’s desire to marry, then it is pretty silly, isn’t it, to try to deny it? Especially through unnatural constructs like contraception and abortion. No amount of rhetoric can change biological reality.

Yet the “feminist” mindset begins from a position that disparages the traditional role of women as wives and mothers, and exalts the role of men as breadwinners. This is strange, as a rational matter, because there is nothing particularly glorious about breaking your back to make a living. Sure, men recognize each other’s professional achievements—after all, you need some kind of motivation to go to work every day—but why should that public recognition be so sought-after by feminists, as though it constitutes a validation of one’s life? For that matter, why should money be a validation?

The fact is, having a wife and children provides men—not with the only reason, but with the only important and good reason for succeeding as breadwinners. Had the feminists any sense or imagination, they would have understood marriage, instead of being an institution designed to “keep women down,” as an institution designed to civilize men—to give direction and purpose to their competitive and aggressive drives.

Which brings me to the problems feminists have in understanding motherhood: is motherhood, too, a form of enslavement to them? If so, they are more than out to lunch, they are certifiably insane. It is the single most important responsibility any woman can have. It is not that all women have to be mothers, but it is unassailable that nothing is as important, personally, socially, or politically, as raising children well, and instilling in them the values, habits, and qualities of character that make them good children, good citizens, good people, and, ultimately, good parents themselves.

In America today, nothing is needed more than good mothers. America can get by with other doctors, other lawyers, other executives, other teachers, other data-entry clerks, other bus drivers, and other plumbers, but children have only one mother. And no village in the world can take her place.

Women have traditionally wielded enormous power both morally and socially as wives and mothers. But the feminists have now yielded it up for . . . what? The vote and a paycheck. In America today, the women who call themselves “feminists” have little to offer women besides the promise of being treated as though they are the same as men. But I, and the millions of women like me, have no interest in being men. Women are not “wasting” good minds and a good education by deciding to make their families a priority. And often they have not “given up” their careers—they have simply decided that it is foolish to sacrifice their families in favor of one. At one time, the feminists’ cry was “Liberation!” Well, America’s women should truly liberate themselves from the shackling orthodoxy of something that calls itself “feminism,” and reestablish, proudly, the importance of women in their critical role as the cornerstone of the American family, and, correspondingly, of American society as a whole.

Building a decent society is not someone else’s responsibility. It is yours. Be an American.

No related posts.