Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leading conservative voice in the Senate, will resign his seat in January to become the next president of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, a sudden move with far-reaching implications.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conservative-sen-jim-demint-resigning-from-senate-to-head-conservative-think-tank/2012/12/06/3f815f26-3fbe-11e2-a2d9-822f58ac9fd5_story.html?hpid=z1

 

So, what does this very important CONSERVATIVE think bathtub?

 

From the Heritage Foundation

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Defending the Dream: Why Income Inequality Doesn’t Threaten Opportunity

 

Part I of this report contrasts these two dreams. While the American Dream we all know is about climbing the ladder of opportunity, the new liberal American Dream can best be likened to an escalator of results—everyone hops on and moves up without effort.

The real American Dream is first and foremost about hard work and the opportunities created by a free economy. Stemming from our founding principles, it can be summed up by a simple equation:

 

Part III provides an overview of the six factors that most seriously threaten the American Dream:

1. The suffocating web of regulation and laws that flow from the limitless state and restrict opportunity;
2. The collapse of the family and the devastating, long-lasting consequences that it has on children;
3. The dependence fostered by the welfare state;
4. The erosion of our culture of work and the rise of a slacker culture that disparages hard work and celebrates indolence;
5. The failures of the public education system that deny countless children the rudimentary skills they need to move ahead in life; and
6. The looming fiscal crisis that has already saddled the next generation with an unconscionable level of debt.

For the Left’s new American Dream to deliver on its promise, America would have to be completely overhauled and the character of its citizens altered. The spirited, entrepreneurial and determinedly self-reliant citizens envisioned by the Founders of our constitutional republic would give way to timid and envious clients who increasingly turn to an omnipotent state for their well-being. It is therefore imperative that the American Dream be rescued from those who would so radically redefine it.

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Excellent...

Er... hang on a minute... Unless one had sausage skin in from of one's eyes, one should be able to see a neat little con presented to us as a glorious path of richness and opportunity by the Heritage Foundation.

1) Much of the "suffocating web of laws" has been designed to eliminate or at least restrict snake-oil merchants, con artists, insider traders and plain/simple thiefs to make a living from the gullible. They are designed to minimise the amount of down-troddening... As well many of such laws have been designed to stop environmental degradation, protect clean air, land and rivers from over exploitation and simple industrial vandalism.

2) The family unit, in the framework of the Foundation, is mostly based on religious belief and clean handkerchief for everyone. It is also designed to discriminate against gay people and prevent abortions in all cases, even of rape.

3) The dependency fostered by the welfare state. Hum... It was much simpler in the days of slavery, wasn't it? Employing people to do stuff did not cost much, apart from some flour and sugar that came cheap. So that's why many industrialists have moved operations in China where labor is cheap as chips, making products for the masses of unemployed Americans who in return have to be on welfare so they can afford to buy the cheap goods made in China. Perverse welfare...

4) see above. Add to the fact that opportunity is not necessarily going to provide employment, the other reality is that "hard work" is not a definition of employment. Some people work hard all their lives and can't breathe above water, while a fat cat (please don't call me cat I'm a pig) can get a mega-bonus for the privilege of sitting in the high chair and acting like a dictator... As well, is the concept of shifting money to make more money be considered as hard work or is it gambling with other people's dosh?

5) Most conservatives abhor public education. It's like welfare. For many conservatives, education has to be paid for and has to be private... if you can't afford it, you don't deserve it. Unless you're a rich dude who gets a grant for being a bright light with blond hair.

6) the fiscal cliff could be avoided should "rich Americans paid proper taxes"... The next generation has been saddled with debt by Ronald Reagan and George W Bush who both stimulated the economy by giving tax break that basically broke the bank —both were conservative presidents...

In conclusion, the left (! — blimey there is a left in America?) is not stopping people to have "entrepreneurial ventures" nor is exclusively encouraging people to feed from the teat of government. The Democrats are only trying to even out the playing field a bit in which some people are not left behind... Enterprising with sensible work practice that won't break the spirit nor the bank... Income inequality all around between men and women, between street sweeper and general manager should be "measured" not thrown into the wind — a situation where the lowest paid will be paid less again and the whip crackers will be rewarded with more loot, while the financial thiefs would be making a "honest living" out of robbing people.

 

 

Come to think of it, Jim DeMint and the Heritage Foundation make sense

By Dana Milbank, Saturday, December 8, 3:12 AM

At first blush, there is something delightfully dada about Jim DeMint being named president of the Heritage Foundation.

The senator, a tea party hero from South Carolina, is a smart guy and a good politician. But running a think tank? It is the scholarly equivalent of appointing Michael Moore to head the Brookings Institution, or Ted Nugent to the Cato Institute, or Roseanne Barr to the Council on Foreign Relations, or perhaps Donald Trump to the American Enterprise Institute.

But think about it some more and the choice of DeMint begins to look brilliant. He is, arguably, the perfect candidate to run a post-thought think tank.

There is less thinking going on in much of the Washington think-tank world these days: Following the trend in politics generally, these idea factories have turned away from idea production in favor of promoting well-worn policy prescriptions. The task is less to come up with new solutions than to win the argument with epithets, labels and caricatures.

The trend goes beyond Heritage. The Family Research Council has joined the shift from wonks to gladiators. The liberal Center for American Progress was created as a conscious imitation of Heritage — more political and aggressive, less bookish. Indeed, researchers there have done extensive opposition research into . . . Jim DeMint.

Now Heritage appears ready to shed that veneer and dedicate itself to ideological and partisan warfare. And there’s no better warrior than Jim DeMint.

Consider, for example, how he would enhance Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. DeMint’s own view of freedom, based on his considerable research? “Freedom is dissolving!” and “America is teetering towards tyranny!”

Education policy? DeMint likened the Chicago schools strike to Middle East violence, calling Chicago “a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets.”

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/come-to-think-of-it-jim-demint-and-the-heritage-foundation-make-sense/2012/12/07/7d473ba8-4083-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_print.html

 

 

The "memory of Being": Vaclav Havel

As in Cicero's case, if Burke were judged at the time of his death by the results of his efforts to advance the political causes that were important to him, he was a failure. England lost its American colonies. The peoples of Ireland and India remained oppressed. France was convulsed with terror in 1793, and headed for decades of political instability.

The message, I think, is this: Just because one does not see the results of one's efforts in one's own lifetime does not mean those efforts were in vain. Vaclav Havel understood that all too well as he dealt with his disappointment over the social problems that emerged after the fall of communism. As he wrote in 1992:

" Genuine politics ... grows out of a conscious or subconscious certainty that our death ends nothing, because everything is forever being recorded and evaluated somewhere else, somewhere 'above us', in what I have called 'the memory of Being' - an integral aspect of the secret order of all the cosmos, of nature, and of life, which believers call God and to whose judgment everything is subject."

Such reminders that we should not expect to know the results of our vocations in our own lifetimes bring me back finally to the problem that, perhaps more than any other, discourages many people from accepting politics as a vocation - or even taking an active interest in politics: the sense so many people have that our economic and political fates are ruled by distant forces that are beyond our control.

Havel understood that sense of powerlessness well. He knew from personal experience how easily people can give up hope and lose the will to change. But he refused to take that path. In the fateful summer of 1989, he wrote, "There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause."

***http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/12/05/3648083.htm?WT.svl=featuredSitesScroller

Here, at YD, I think we do more than satire with a bit of salt and pepper... We record and comment on things "not above us" but for the relative effective values in a fragment of time... Beyond this, the value of what we do is mostly in the sigularity and the hope of a lasting effect — a vanishing comet like trail of that singular moment... in a universe of many moments.
As gramdmama Gladishka Leonisky said on her deathbed: "It should be frightening to you to know that, in a democracy, an idiot like me had as much power as Einstein."
Gus.