Americans Can’t Be Pussies
February 23, 2006
The war against terrorism would be a helluva lot easier to win if somebody would just be more specific about who we are fighting and what we are fighting for...and so would the war against crime.
It’s amazing how similar the two battles are and, how similarly our leaders are half-ass-backwards on both fronts.
America battles terrorists and criminals to the benefit of government, not the benefit of the American people. If protecting political ambition is the goal, then let loose the dogs of war. Otherwise, it’s time to rethink how we fight and, in the event of victory, what way of life we have actually preserved. Presently, the American people are paying the costs to preserve a system that is run solely for the benefit of those running it.
Case in point...Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley is proposing a city ordinance that would require late-night bars to install security cameras at the business’s expense and eventually wants all establishments open longer than 12 hours a day to follow suit.
Of course, the purported goal of this ordinance is enhanced public safety. And, of course, Chicago is not the only city going down this path. And, of course, those who govern just don’t get the punch line of their own joke. The father of this bright-bulb idea, Democratic Chicago Alderman Ray Suarez, believes that, “If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?”
And, as with all simple ideas hatched in the name of “order”, Suarez seems reasonable...at first glance.
But, this proposed ordinance reminds me of a question I once asked concerning a local school system’s funding.
Faced with a budget “crisis” (so clichéd), a local board of education proposed to cut funding from the usual suspects (sports, music, textbooks, paper, etc.) to soften the townsfolk up for a tax increase. While acknowledging that the town’s budget looked like a banana republic remnant, I asked, “After paying taxes for salaries, benefits and pensions...what exactly does the taxpayer receive other than the opportunity to pay for salaries, benefits and pensions?”
And to the city of Chicago, I ask the same question. After paying taxes for public safety, what benefits do the business owners of Chicago receive other than the opportunity to pay for their own security screening of public places while simultaneously having the privilege of paying the salaries, benefits and pensions for a police department that even relinquished its traffic enforcement duties to automated cameras?
Maybe next, every taxpayer can have the privilege of paying for a fire department...but be required to personally buy the fire trucks and park them in their driveways.
This isn’t about public safety...it’s about money. It’s about government being in the business of...government. It is about a system run for the benefit of those who run the system and not for those who pay the bills. It is about arrogance and contempt for the taxpayer on the part of elected officials and their lackey bureaucrats.
Let’s face it...when the day is done, your elected officials listen to government employee union bosses while shoveling-up mere lip service to the taxpayer.
American taxpayers are spending $100’s of billions to support a war against terror, only to have elected officials in the Detroit area pass an ordinance allowing the Islamic call to prayer to be broadcast onto public streets five times a day between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Yet, American female military personnel serving in Muslim countries are told to cover their heads and faces.
And what do our esteemed political and MSM leaders have to say about this? As the Detroit “Free” Press editorializes, “...where church bells regularly ring...The City Council can cut through the din and amend its noise ordinance to let the calls be heard. There should be no room for religious intolerance in this multicultural city, where two-thirds of the public school students speak a language other than English at home.”
To compare melodic church bells ringing in public air to the screeching Muslim call to prayer is patently absurd...unless you equate melodic bells to Islamic proselytizing. Maybe next our “leaders” can pass an anti “intolerance” ordinance allowing citizens to burn down Detroit every time they see an offensive cartoon. Or better yet, an ordinance that allows the burning of mosques each time a Christian is beheaded.
While weenie American “leaders” are prostrate catering to the Muslim community, 81% of the Detroit Muslims favor Sharia law (oxymoron = Islamic + “law”) in Muslim Countries. The MSM refers to this as a “moderate” position, but, if this is the true heart of American Muslims then, de jure, they also support the, “numerous provisions that deny tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Conversion from Islam is punishable by death; non-Muslims are second-class citizens; a woman's testimony is not admissible in her own rape case, and on and on.”
All of this occurs on the backdrop of an American government and MSM which is so concerned about bestowing political correctness on a Muslim world whose definition of politics is a suicide bomb and a beheading that a friend of mine recently back from his tour in Iraq told me that American troops are afraid to shoot insurgents holding a bomb trigger device for fear of being prosecuted for abuse by their own commanders.
This, indeed, is no way to wage a war. This, indeed, is no way to ask brave Americans to die.
Through near confiscatory taxes, Americans are funding a government that is expected to protect them from harm...both domestic and international. For that government to take those tax dollars and, in effect, tell the taxpayer “You’re on your own while we look good” is criminal.
If the pantywaists in government and media, from the local to the federal levels, would start worrying about the wellbeing of the U.S. taxpayer more than the “feelings” of criminals, terrorists and union bosses, both the war against crime and the war against terrorism would be worth the cost of battle.
I always thought that we pay taxes for the police to monitor criminals and the military to fight and win wars.
But to demand the economic and human sufferance of the American population for a politically correct haiku is absurd. Form has to follow substance.
Police dollars are for police services which include more than spending all of the money on salaries, benefits and pensions. Military dollars are for military services which include more than dressing up an army and then handcuffing it when the time for battle arrives.
During her address at the last Conservative Political Action Conference, Ann Coulter had the forthrightness to let the audience know that Conservatives can’t be “pussies”. Americans can’t be pussies either. If we are spending dollars and lives to get a job done...let’s get it done. Otherwise...what are we fighting for? Or, are we supposed to just keep chasing our own tails?
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