Category: Culture

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Do not farm

Almost 200 years ago our family came to this area to start farming.  My information on the first 75 years is sketchy; about all I’m sure of is that they didn’t move to our present location until the 1840s, when my great, great grandfather built the “old place” now restored by the Paul Hornback family.  In all that time, there were many ups and downs for farming, and no doubt many pessimists.  Nevertheless, we’re still here, growing mostly crops and a little jet fuel.

Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative commentator I respect, who is widely read and very well educated.  He is a college professor, and a farmer.  Here is what he Continue reading “Do not farm”

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A Failure of Nerve

My father tells me that my grandfather, one of the most respected and best known farmers of Shelby County, seriously considered giving up and selling out in the 1930’s.  It was after the stock market crash; times were very hard; he was in serious debt due to an unfortunate turn of events a few years before, and he wanted to sell out and become a doctor instead.  He was almost 40 years old at the time– this would have been a very iffy road.  He, and the farm, were saved Continue reading “A Failure of Nerve”

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Receprocity & the 2nd Amendment- UPDATED

Caution–New York is the only state that prohibits the transportation of handguns without a license. Travelers should therefore be particularly careful since they face severe consequences should they inadvertently violate the state’s highly restrictive statutes.

On June 26 [2008], the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment—”A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”— protects a purely individual right, as do the First, Fourth and Ninth Amendments. “Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right,” the court said. “The term [‘the people’] unambiguously refers to all members of the political community.”

On Sept. 8th, while traveling home from a building seminar in NY state, I got a first hand look at how law enforcement in a “gun unfriendly” location interprets my right (see above) to individually carry a weapon as a means of protecting myself and my wife.  Although I was not actually arrested, I was effectively taken prisoner Continue reading “Receprocity & the 2nd Amendment- UPDATED”

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War & judgment

The title itself makes you want to skip this one, but– hold on a sec.  This is actually about your financial future, how your government spends your tax dollars to educate children, whether your brother dies in the nuclear attack on the city where he lives and whether the Supreme Court becomes a tool of oppression for anyone who might be a moral conservative.

In this article, Noemie Emery makes the point that Iraq news is so good now that both McCain and Obama have a problem.  For McCain, who staked his career on the success of the surge in 2007, it is that Continue reading “War & judgment”

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Brutal Dictatorship in action…

are you surprised?

Here is one man’s description of his anguish:

Before sunset on Monday, Mr. Yu walked along a river running past the eastern wall of the school compound. Peering over the wall, one could see piles of bricks and concrete all over the ground. He pointed out the few standing ruins of the main building. His daughter’s classroom had been on the fourth floor.

He said she had lived for two days after being buried alive, like some other students. She had even called out to him.

“We could hear them under the rubble,” he said. “We passed them milk and water, but it was no use.”

He smoked and stared at the debris.

If you are a parent, you should be tearing up right now…

Next month, as you watch the Olympics, remember what Mr. Yu has discovered about corruption in a dictatorship.

Democracy– the worst form of government on earth…

except for all the others.

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Weirder education

Some of our friends send their children to the University of Louisville.  You may have heard of it; they won the Orange Bowl recently.  It seems that the students there can also get top scholarship input on black drag queens… courtesy of my tax dollars.

SO here’s my problem with this. Although I find gay drag disgusting, and wonder why it needs to be studied at U of L, I also have to wonder where all this is going:

  1. Will there eventually be a School of Drag funded by taxpayers, where students learn to be drag queens (AIDs and STDs included)?
  2. How does promoting the gay lifestyle, which this definitely does, fit with the overall mandate of a publicly supported university?
  3. Is it my imagination, or is there a double standard here?  No doubt riots would ensure should the KY Senate propose taxpayer funding of research on using 4D ultrasound machines to reduce abortions.  After all, this could be easily justified as a means of increasing the native-born proportion of KY citizens, with all the benefits of lower education costs (no English as a 2nd language), increased tax base (gays can’t help us there) and a reduction of mental health issues among women.
  4. Finally, is it really true that a majority of KY taxpayers wish to spend their tax dollars this way?  If so, why is there a KY constitutional provision which clearly limits the benefits and privileges of marriage to one actual man + one actual woman?

I am the father of a teenager

Continue reading “Weirder education”

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Fear and loathing on the seacoast

Recently there has been much made of an alleged “pregnancy pact” at a Gloucester, Mass. high school among a number of 16 and under students.  The school nurse reported “high fives” when pregnancy tests came in positive, and great disappointment when they didn’t; the Time magazine reporter who broke the story says that a recent graduate confirmed the basis for the pact (if it actually existed– there is some dispute about this) by noting that, “…They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally.”

Indeed.  Unconditional love is a need we all have, and a baby does provide it, at least for awhile.  Nevertheless, in the wider world, and specifically in the world of liberated women, there has been much Continue reading “Fear and loathing on the seacoast”