The politics of fear

President Franklin Roosevelt once famously stated as he took over leadership of a United States in the throes of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It was an attitudinal shift from the terror that had gripped the nation since the mighty crash on Wall Street just over three years prior. Historians will continue to debate whether or not FDR’s busy-work policies and alphabet soup agencies ended or exacerbated the depression, but one thing is for certain. His presidency set a high watermark for optimism for the country at large and the Democrat Party specifically.

That optimism enjoyed a brief resurgence under John F. Kennedy that his assassination seems to have stripped from the party permanently. Bill Clinton managed to put a happy face on the pessimistic party, but even his rise to power was on the back of a commodity the Democrats have mined and traded now for half a century. That commodity is fear itself.

While Ronald Reagan was restoring the country’s sense of self-worth, a new cult of despair was in its infancy. It was called the global warming movement. Its godfather, James Hansen, was taking a cue from Paul Ehrlich and his wildly successful freak-out, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich confidently and boldly predicted in 1970, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” He took the occasion of the first Earth Day in 1970 to predict that 4 billion people would die sometime between 1980 and 1989 in the “Great Die-Off.”

We’ve had nearly fifty years to assess the utter absurdity of Ehrlich’s predictions, yet he still stands by most of them. That’s what happens when you go all in on fear. There’s no backing down without totally destroying your reputation in the process.

Such now is the fate of the global warming alarmists. They have peddled fear for a demonstrable 30-year period, a time-span that scientists and political observers can assess for its accuracy, or lack thereof. Philip Shabecoff, an environmental reporter for the New York Times, wrote in June of 1988, “The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.” While we haven’t reached the middle of the century we are nearly halfway there. On the low end sea levels should’ve risen by six inches. Of course, they haven’t.

Liberals, devoid of positive ideas of their own, have resorted to exploiting not only fear but guilt. You’re destroying the planet so you must do something about it. You have too much and you’re far too comfortable so you must do something about it. All of the great gulit-and-fear schemes from peak oil to global warming to the population bomb have something else in common other than guilt and fear. Redistribution of wealth. If you’ve managed to work hard and produce it’s somehow your fault that others have not.

Now, that’s not to say that misfortune doesn’t befall people for no apparent reason, but history teaches us that misfortune has visited many successful people. It’s how they deal with that misfortune that makes the difference.

The volume of hysteria among the liberals increases with each new bit of economic news. One would think that black and Hispanic unemployment at historic lows would be cause for celebration. It is only if you measure success by the normal metrics of success. It’s bad news if you measure it only by fear.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What is a statesman?

What is a statesman?  It’s a rather subjective question.  It depends on who you ask.  I’ve seen lists.  Some are compiled by historians, some are gathered from polls.  Here are some names that seem to pop up over and over.  Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, even Al Gore.  What is the one thing that threads all of these names together?  They were all deeply divisive and partisan.

The John McCain’s of the world today seem to think that statesmen are molded through compromise and bipartisanship.  The fact is a true statesman stands for something, whether it’s popular at the time or not.  A true statesman sticks to his or her guns.  They are unwavering in their dedication to their cause.  They are unapologetic for their stand.  Whether you agree with them or not you always – and I mean always – know where they stand.  There’s no shifting sand under their feet.  There’s no hint of compromise on basic, bedrock principles.  They stand for something and they stand firm.

Today’s politicians believe if they can just get invited to the next cocktail party held by a prominent member of the other party they’ll be regarded as a statesman.  What they don’t realize is no one at the

party thinks better of them just because they’ve extended a hand across the aisle.  Moving to the middle is behavior of someone who wants to be liked, not someone who wants to be right.  There’s nothing in the middle of the road but road kill.  No one respects a capitulator, least of all the one to whom he has capitulated. 

The tea party movement is full of uncompromising people who long for a country that hasn’t forgotten its roots.  They read the Constitution as almost a sacred text, an inspired agreement between our original states that lays out the boundaries of government.  These boundaries were long ago breached by those who deemed the population too simple-minded to possibly take care of itself.

People like John McCain hold the tea party movement in contempt.  He believes the “rancor,” a word McCain is so fond of using, is destructive to our nation.  He believes that those who will not go along to get along are obstructionists who stand in the way of duly elected majorities.  He fails to understand the role of the loyal opposition to constantly push back against things with which they disagree.  Nor does he realize that the very reason he was invited to the White House to talk compromise with the president was because of the tea party, not in spite of it.  Had people like Ted Cruz – a true statesman – not fought back against the establishment the rubber stamp RINO Republicans like McCain would’ve have stepped aside to allow the Democrat steamroller to do its thing.

John Boehner in the House is hardly any better.  Sure, he has surprised some by his steadfast position in the sequester fight and later the budget fight but Boehner has been operating from a position of fear.  He doesn’t consider himself part of the tea party movement.  Any chance given to talk about it he refers to it as “them” and “they.”  He simply found himself in a position where the more conservative factions of his caucus could possibly drum him out as speaker had he not listened to reason.

At the end of the day there is nothing noble in foisting more debt and socialized medicine on the American people nor is it any nobler to have put up a good fight only to cave in the end.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The real story behind the government buying ammo

You may have heard that the government has been buying a lot of bullets lately.  The Department of Homeland Security is buying more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammo over the next 5 years.  That’s more than enough ammunition to fight the Iraq War for almost 25 years.

Of course, conspiracy theorists immediately jumped to the FEMA camp conclusion.  If you’re not familiar with the FEMA camp conspiracy theory here it is in a nutshell.  The government, they say, is setting up FEMA camps or concentration camps all across the country and at some point there will be a fabricated state of emergency and all enemies of the Obama administration will be rounded up and taken to these camps.

The problem is the FEMA camp conspiracy was hatched long before President Obama ever took office.  The theory dates back to at least the 1980s when left-wingers were convinced Ronald Reagan was going to round them up and put them in FEMA camps because of their opposition to Reagan’s Contra support in Nicaragua.  Ollie North, the theory goes, was the mastermind behind the FEMA camps and was well on his way to implementing the plan until he was snared by the Iran/Contra scandal.

The FEMA camp theory usually walks hand-in-hand with the FEMA coffin theory, that the government has purchased millions of plastic coffins in which Obama plans to bury his enemies.  Looks like it would be much easier to just burn us but perhaps that wouldn’t be good for the environment.

So, if the government is not stockpiling bullets for the forthcoming martial law and FEMA camps why is it buying so many?  My theory all along has been quite simple.  Obama and his gun-grabbing allies on the left have had little success in banning guns.  They can’t even get the so-called assault weapons ban reinstated which, by the way, didn’t ban real assault weapons, which are automatic weapons.  It just banned semi-automatic weapons that looked like assault weapons.  In other words, it was gun profiling from a crowd that claims to abhor profiling and stereotypes.

If they can’t get the guns the logical Plan B is to go after the ammo.  After all, what good is a gun if you have nothing to shoot?  Notice how every place from Walmart to gun shops is running out of ammo?  Coincidence?  I don’t think so.  My theory is the government is using its purchasing power to create a shortage of ammunition.  Sure beats being thrown into some FEMA camp.

And I’m no longer alone in this theory.  Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) offered up the same theory recently and he’s much closer to the government than I am.  He’s proposed a bill in the senate which would limit non-defense federal agencies to pre-Obama levels of ammunition.  It’s a fantastic idea but it doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.  Probably because most of the senators are already on board with this whole FEMA camp thing.

The irony of the entire gun debate is that gun enthusiasts have turned out to be their own worst enemies.  Each time the liberals start making noise about taking guns the second amendment folks start running up the price of guns and ammo.  One gun shop told me they still can’t keep anything with an AR in its name in stock.  Now with the government buying up ammunition certain types of ammo are more scarce than a bride at a Barney Frank wedding.

Until congress does something about the government there’s not much we can do except stop feeding the hysteria and stop playing into their hands.