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Tag:

Trump

BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Forget “Distracted Walking” – The Real Problem Is “Distracted Voting”

by lgadmin January 20, 2016
written by lgadmin

According to several recent studies, emergency room visits are surging for injuries stemming from what has been described as “distracted walking.” Incidents of pedestrians with their eyes glued to the screens of their “smart phones” or tablets, tripping over curbs or walking off train platforms are becoming almost commonplace.

The effects of a society overloaded with information, apps and various forms of electronic communication are manifest in more than just bumps and bruises. Our minds also are reeling from the flood of rapid-fire data and media consumption. People are finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on tasks requiring intellectual focus and attention to detail. Attention spans are fast decreasing as electronic devices push individuals to jump quickly and automatically from stimulus to stimulus and from topic to topic. Even goldfish are now said to have a longer attention span than humans.

To psychologists, the deteriorating condition of human cognition presents an alarming omen. By contrast, to many 21st-Century politicians, it is a Godsend; making the job of controlling voters with shiny verbal or electronic baubles far easier than in decades past.

While this phenomenon of what might be termed “distracted voting” or “D.V.,” may not result in immediate physical injury to the practitioner, in the long-run, and in the body politic, it is in many respects far more devastating to society. Distracted voting may not send voters to the hospital emergency room, but it puts them clearly and directly in harm’s way from advocates of enhanced government power.

Of the candidates running for president this year, none more than Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump have benefited from D.V.

The entirety of Sanders’ campaign have been promises of “free everything” that will require an astronomical increase in taxes to cover a price tag in the multiple trillions of dollars; on top of the ruinous consequences to businesses, healthcare and education. Yet, all his supporters appear to hear or care about, are the simple promises of “free healthcare,” “free college,” and Uncle Bernie’s plans to “tax the rich” to get them to pay their “fair share.” Few, if any of his largely young supporters bother to check further into how these fantasies will actually play out, or what it ultimately will cost them.

On the Republican side of the political divide, and much like Bernie, Donald Trump has proposed similar fantastical ideas for how to “make America great again,” such as building a gigantic wall along every inch of the border, banning Muslims from entering the country, or using executively-imposed tariffs and other regulatory executive action to punish companies with plants in other countries. By any objective standard, Trump’s proposals should have him laughed out of the GOP as an anti-Constitution, crony capitalist authoritarian.

However, voters distracted by Trump’s simplistic solutions and entertaining bullying of anyone who dares challenge him, fail to see the full picture of what they are supporting; namely, the same form of unconstitutional, executive action in which the current President has engaged. But, as long as Trump is perceived as “telling it like it is,” distracted voters blindly support whatever it is he’s yelling at the moment.

Then there’s Hillary. Using lessons from her former boss Barack Obama, candidate Hillary Clinton has taken “distracted voting” a step further; using it to not only mask the shortcomings of her proposals and accomplishments, but to skirt any responsibility for the corruption that has been the hallmark of her entire public career.

Just as Obama has masked his pitifully short record of substantive achievement over the seven years of his presidency by distracting the electorate with endless bloviating and casting blame on others, so has Hillary employed similar tactics to camouflage the corruption that infects every step of her political career. Voters are distracted from that reality to the fairy tale narrative of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that has unfairly dogged Hillary and Bill since their days in Little Rock. The story of poor, persecuted Hillary is a familiar bell to the ears of her supporters, who rush like Pavlov’s dogs to her side whenever its ring distracts them.

The phenomenon of Distracted Voting is more than just a poor reflection of our weakened ability to properly vet those asking for our votes. It represents a serious, and worsening diminishing of our ability to use logic and reason to objectively weigh the so-called “facts” presented to our senses. Furthermore, D.V. exposes a vulnerability to political manipulation that has already shown it can, virtually overnight, take a pro-Constitution Tea Partier, and turn him into a Trump supporter.

If we truly want to wrest our nation from the clutches of siren politicians like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, we first must reclaim our minds and stop being distracted with whatever shiny objects politicians dangle in front of our eyes – or our smart phone.

Originally published here via townhall.com

January 20, 2016 0 comment
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BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

America’s Slip in “Freedom Index” is No Surprise

by lgadmin November 18, 2015
written by lgadmin

Even as President Barack Obama reminds the world in the wake of the massive ISIS attacks in Paris that America, under his “leadership,” has little interest in leading on anything other than “climate change” rhetoric, the Unites States continues to lose ground to other nations in terms of the freedom it affords its own citizens.

According to the Human Freedom Index, a report issued by the Cato Institute’s Ian Vasquez and the Visio Institut, and which measures the level of personal and economic freedom in countries around the world, the country that once held high the torch of freedom in the world, now ranks 20th; behind countries such as Hong Kong, Canada, the U.K., Germany, Mauritius, and 14 others.

The easy answer for this sobering reality check is to blame inept leaders like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. However, these individuals are but a symptom of a far more fundamental problem that has deeply eroded the foundation of our nation.

Over the last several years, we have undergone a debilitating transition from leadership guided by principled ideas and understanding, to a parade of politicos who respond to the calamity of the day (be it ISIS, mass shootings, or corporate corruption) with reactive policies designed to stoke the fires of fear most effectively and quickly. In this environment, with each shriek of “doom” followed by a “quick fix” to “save the people,” America becomes a little less free. Having realized that leading by fear, not principle, is a formula for gaining media coverage and fundraising dollars, political opportunists salivate at the next chance to look “presidential.”

Consider for a moment the current presidential campaign being waged by Donald Trump. Despite religious freedom being one of the principles on which the United States was founded, Trump’s reaction to the terrorist attacks in Paris is to call for the closing of U.S. mosques. Trump’s fellow neophyte presidential candidate Ben Carson, seemingly unaware of the dangerous precedent of using bureaucrats as speech police, has suggested using the Department of Education to “monitor” political bias on college campuses. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush trumpets his desire to go back in time and kill “Baby Hitler.”

Democrats are not in any better shape. Their nominee-in-waiting, Hillary Clinton, is a crony corporatist whose sense of civil and personal liberties is guided by whatever position is polling best that day. The Democrat’s back up, Bernie Sanders, is an avowed socialist wailing constantly for “free” everything, and idiotically fixated on “climate change” as the most dire and immediate threat facing the country.

Depth of leadership at the top is hardly an environment in which freedom can survive for long; and indeed it isn’t, as the Freedom Index chronicles. As Americans, we tend to take for granted what is necessary to preserve freedom; for one thing, in our short history as a nation we have never experienced the true brutality of monarchies, dictatorships, juntas, or other forms of rule that fill the vacuum when Liberty disappears. We forget that for Liberty to survive, it takes more than a physical defense of the country; it requires a philosophical understanding and defense of the Constitution, in order to defeat enemies who use words and ideas rather than bombs and bullets to achieve their aims.

Without leaders who genuinely understand the foundation of American freedom, and who can truly defend not just the effectiveness of individual and economic freedom, but the morality of this freedom, we are as defenseless as a country without an army. After all, how can our leaders protect our constitutional freedoms if they do not understand why we have a written Constitution in the first place, or why sacrificing some these freedoms for our “safety” undermines them all?

Unfortunately, this is exactly what will continue to happen if we choose to elect leaders like our current president, whose comprehension of freedom is nothing more than a sound bite or message on a campaign poster.

Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin reportedly was asked whether the Founding Fathers had built a monarchy, or a Republic as the governing structure for our new nation. “A Republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin replied. When looking ahead to the 2016 elections, perhaps the real question we should ask ourselves is not if we can keep the Republic, but if we still possess the will and the understanding to do so.

 

Originally Published here via townhall.com

November 18, 2015 0 comment
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BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Where Have All The Leaders Gone?

by lgadmin October 28, 2015
written by lgadmin

Once upon a time, America valued and produced great leaders. Men who inspired, who rose above the common, who placed country above self, and who understood the importance of honesty as a vivid and very real motivator of personal behavior and public policy.

It was from this milieu that Daniel Webster reportedly answered the question posed him by a mid-nineteenth Century European journalist — “what is America’s greatest gift to the world?” – with five simple words that profoundly encapsulated what had brought a fledgling nation barely able to secure its limited borders, to a nation just 50 years later knocking on the doors of the world’s then-great powers. Webster’s answer to this question to describe why world powers already were looking to America as something truly special and good was simply, “The integrity of George Washington.”

Today, some century-and-three-quarters after Webster shared the secret of America’s growing leadership in the world, our nation is locked in another presidential contest pitting many men and women against each other; all vying to “lead” the United States of America for at least four years through the second decade of the 21st Century. And what do we have in this contest’s crop of front-runners? Certainly no George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or Abe Lincoln.

We have a loud-mouthed bully who delights in insulting his own teammates and anyone else within range of his piercing vision. We have the scion of a recent political dynasty, who is clothed in skin so thin the slightest barb elicits expressions of pain and cries of “foul.” We next have a physician with not the slightest experience in the public policy arenas in which a president necessarily must know to act, and whose presence is so soft one has to strain to hear his words. And finally in the pack at the front of the pack, we have a woman so steeped in scandal and fibs that the modern lie detector would be unable to detect that she even subconsciously perceives the difference between a lie and the truth.

Is this really what American Leadership has become? Has the presidency become nothing more than a scramble not just for the comfort that comes from mediocrity, but one that revels in the basest of human nature? Has it become thus rather than a contest that strives to set a tone and an example born of understanding, respect, strength and vision? Where once our national leaders asked of themselves and their fellow Americans, “what can you do for your country,” leaders in Washington now fight to rise to the top of the heap that is the House of Representatives by asking – nay, demanding – “what can this exalted position do for my career.”

In a prescient essay on “Statesmanship” written shortly before the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998, Mark Helprin eloquently explained that in generations past, men rose as leaders in America – whether in business, the military, or most importantly, in the political arena — by placing their own careers, their own lives, subservient to a higher good. Such people possessed what Helprin identified as the sine qua non of a true statesman – the soul of a Medal of Honor winner; a soul unafraid to die. Sadly now, as Helprin wrote back in those dark days at the turn of this most recent Century, “we have only what we have” — a “political class [that is] in the main, . . . in it for themselves.”

The dangers to rise from this schoolyard mess – though one with serious, even dire consequences for the country depending on who finally emerges – are, or should be clear. Our next president must be a man or woman who truly understands public policy and how to maneuver the levers of power in a complex and uncompromising world arena, but without loosening the bonds of America’s history and values that should bind their soul to the unshakable principle of integrity.

Neither the mega-rich bully Trump, nor the quiet but inexperienced surgeon Carson fit this mold. Certainly, the Democratic front-runner — the scandal-born-and-raised wife of America’s most narcissistic President — would never be able to operate in that arena; at least not in a way that would benefit our country. And the thin-skinned son of a former President and brother of another, seeking desperately to prove he is the equal of his father and his brother, already has shown himself unworthy of such a mantel.

Yet there are, on the Republican side, candidates possessed of the understanding, vision and integrity that so often in the past, but so infrequently in the present, have been characteristics possessed by true American statesmen. Whether they will be able to break the media-constructed fence that has been erected around the other front-runners, in time to present voters with a picture of true leadership, is the question not only for this 2016 election cycle, but for many more to follow.

 

Originally Published here via townhall.com

October 28, 2015 0 comment
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BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Is Trump America’s “Strongman”?

by lgadmin July 15, 2015
written by lgadmin

When it comes to public confidence in American institutions, conditions rival those of California’s epic drought. According to a recent Gallup poll, the American public is mired in a now eight-year period of historically low confidence in traditional institutions, including government, banks, religious organizations, and the news media. Only the U.S. military and small businesses enjoy greater public confidence than in decades past. Congress, no stranger to dismal approval ratings, “enjoys” strong confidence from only eight percent of Americans.

Under the tepid leadership of the Obama Administration, the United States appears to bow before strong leaders abroad, from Moscow to Havana to Tehran. Faith in America around the globe ebbs with each new “deadline” given Iranian negotiators in Europe. Every ISIS atrocity is played out repeatedly in social and mainstream media, and heightens fears of a “lone wolf” attack here at home. We indeed are in a time of fear and uncertainty.

Is the time ripe for America’s version of the Third World “strongman”? Will we see the arrival of a “macho” leader, riding in on a white horse with sword drawn, to rally a citizenry frozen in fear and uncertainty? Has this strongman already arrived? Is it Donald Trump?

Since first announcing his intentions to run for president last month, Trump has dominated the headlines with inflammatory rhetoric followed by blustery refusals to apologize. While most pundits believed (hoped?) Trump’s brash behavior would doom him to remain at the bottom of the presidential pile, his poll numbers continue to rise. Last week, CNN reported only he and Jeb Bush held double-digit support among GOP voters.

To Mainstream Media pundits, for whom isolation within the Beltway has dulled any sense of the pulse of the nation outside of Washington’s political aristocracy, Trump’s surge among conservative grassroots makes little sense. To them, the measure of a candidate’s viability is their performance as a “talking head” on Sunday shows; or their willingness to sit for fluff interviews in which no real questions are asked and no real answers given. And, while most candidates would jump at the chance to kiss the rings of the Establishment media, Trump understands the road to the grassroots does not go through D.C.; and in this understanding, Trump plays his hand to perfection.

As The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs noted recently, “Donald Trump is appealing to people . . . who hate politics, who hate politicians. [S]omeone . . . who they view as a straight-shooter, someone who’s different and fresh.”

In other words, Trump is the anti-politician politician; the classic “strongman” but in civilian, rather than military garb.

While candidates like Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Chris Christie have struggled to find a voice that resonates beyond their core supporters, Trump is bullying his way to the top using a tone and style reminiscent of the Latin American “strongman” leader. In typical “strongman” style, Trump is employing a dual combination of strength and simplicity — through his unapologetic style of campaigning and the comfort of policy solutions simple enough to broadly fit people’s preconceived notions of how to fix America’s problems. The combination of the two creates a visage of confidence, which compared to the weak vacillations of the Obama Administration, evokes a powerful emotional reaction to the point where Trump’s patently unserious political posturing is overlooked.

And this is what has the media so confused; they can only focus on the content of his speeches, not what people are taking from them. Trump is gaining ground on his competitors not for what he says — which clearly is intended more to provoke tempers than stir genuine debate — but for what his tone and demeanor symbolize. As Willem Dafoe noted in the movie “Boondock Saints,” it is all about “symbology”; and how Trump’s GOP adversaries respond to his symbology matters a great deal.

Rather than egging Trump on with petty insults, or attempting to engage him in a fruitless debate — both of which serve only to create a media spectacle the Left is more than willing to provoke – GOP candidates might want to take at least a few notes.

Republican voters clearly do not want another candidate who will go to Washington and simply perpetuate the Establishment culture by playing the same games that have left America’s problems to fester at home and abroad. Voters yearn for a candidate whose default position is not to play defense and back away from every challenge — whether at our own back door regarding illegal immigration from Mexico, the continued expansion of ISIS in the Middle East, or a federal court system usurping power from both the legislative and executive branches of government.

The field is wide open for a Republican candidate who recognizes the value of a bold leadership style, but who couples it with a more serious understanding and presentation of solutions befitting an American President rather than a Latin American Strongman.

July 15, 2015 0 comment
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