Attila and Stacy debate feminism on Da TechGuy’s radio show, 10 am, EDT, April 2

A blog war on the subject of feminism broke out a couple of weeks ago between Little Miss Attila and Stacy McCain, of The Other McCain. My contribution in Attila’s comment section was minimalist — “Attila: right. Stacy: wrong.” I think that must be why I’m not linked in Attila’s post tonight thanking her sisters-in-arms–in case it surprises you that I’m not listed in a fight my dear gentle readers know I usually would be in, on the side where I always would be fighting. My diet is still affecting my writing, although I am starting to feel better.

Update: dear Attila has updated her post (linked below) to include me and I am grateful. My summary of the battle–and be sure to remind everyone what set it off, you two!–is that Attila took the side that feminism has the salient redeeming quality of having gotten something near equality for women in the United States and therefore it is fine for conservatives to identify themselves as feminists. Stacy personifies the arguments of social conservatives, who try to demonize feminism by claiming it’s really just a form of totalitarian Leftism.

Bah! Humbug! As I have pointed out here many times, there are three identity groups who are on the Left because they were driven out of conservativism by social conservatives: women, gays and Jews. Social conservativism is controlled by religion and religious leaders for their own benefit. They anathematize women who want equality and the liberty of choice and birth control, gays who aren’t producing babies for them and who want equality, and Jews for not converting. This means that the primary architects of the Left are on the Right. If this fraud that social conservativism will not ALWAYS demand precedence over fiscal conservativism is not exposed and the practice stopped, America is going to die of debt. And, frankly, if sexism were not so rampant and vicious, Hillary Clinton would have beaten Obama for the 2008 Democratic nomination — SHE was qualified for the job and we’d be in much better shape if she’d won (instead of Obama).

Anyhoo, I do plan to listen to DaTechGuy’s radio show with Joy McCann, aka “Little Miss Attila,” and Stacy McCain, The Other McCain, at 10 am, EDT, Saturday, April 2. To listen live online, go to WRCN’s website and click the “Listen Live” button. If you don’t have RealPlayer, WinAmp or Windows Media Player installed, you may need to download and install one of them, so allow 15 minutes or so to do that. If you miss the show live, but want to hear it, Peter posts the recordings of each show in an archive at DaTechGuy.

P.S.

Perhaps some observations from dear Violet Socks of The Reclusive Leftist will be helpful, considering that it was a post about a comment by Gov. Sarah Palin identifying herself as a feminist that was Ground Zero for this fight. She asks, “How in the hell is Sarah Palin more conservative than Mike Huckabee?“:

First of all, if there is any daylight between Huckabee and Palin on economic issues, I’m not seeing it.* But in terms of social issues—you know, basic human rights for women, that kind of thing—Huckabee is so far to the right he’s red-shifted.

I’ve covered this ground before, but let’s review a few key points:

  • Mike Huckabee believes that God put women on earth to be subordinate and subservient to men. Unlike Sarah Palin, who explicitly embraces gender equality as a “conservative feminist,” Huckabee believes that women are the inferior sex.
  • Mike Huckabee believes that contraception should be illegal. Illegal. Sarah Palin, of course, is strongly in favor of contraception.
  • Mike Huckabee wants the Constitution to be rewritten to reflect “God’s word.” I’ve never heard anything like this from Palin. (And besides, we know she doesn’t think “God’s word” means women are inferior.)
  • Mike Huckabee thinks homosexuals are dangerous deviants and that people with HIV should be sequestered in concentration camps. Palin is against gay marriage but is comfortable with homosexuality; like Obama, she has said she thinks civil unions are sufficient.

Sarah Palin is a conservative godbag for sure, but Mike Huckabee makes her look like Che Guevara.

*Note to Violet: WE can see it. Fiscal conservatives consider Huckabee a fiscal liberal. As a bad thing. Social conservatives who want their church to BE the government vote for high taxes and big government when they are in power — even though they generally get to positions of power by promising to vote for low taxes and small government. Somehow their perspective changes, I suppose, when THEY get their hands on the money and levers of power and can do so much good with them.

Help stop the Leftist campaign to defeat Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser in next week’s election

I am very grateful to Prof. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection for making me his “Blog of the Day” today. And I would like to thank him by taking up a cause he is promoting: raising money for advertising to counter the multi-million dollar Leftist advertising campaign against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, who is up for re-election next week. Prof. Jacobson’s post quotes an editorial from National Review Online and I want to draw your attention to a different point in the same editorial:

It is important that conservatives nationwide make this campaign their own. What is at stake in Wisconsin is not just one piece of legislation or one bill restoring a measure of sanity to the state budgeting process. The question to be answered in Wisconsin is: Who works for whom? Do the public employees work for the citizens, or are the citizens mere cattle to be disposed of at the pleasure of the bureaucrats and their union bosses? Every arrow in the quiver — court cases, judicial elections, recall, lawsuits, lies, libels, and brute thuggery — will be thrown at this case, along with lots of money derived from the union dues that state and local governments helpfully deduct from their employees’ paychecks on the unions’ behalf. Wisconsin may seem an unlikely battleground, but a line must be drawn, and this is the place to draw it.

The two issues in this battle that concern me have to do with attacks on the judicial branch of government and the assertions that it is possible to be both a social conservative AND a fiscal conservative. The thing is, BOTH the Right and the Left attack the judiciary when it thwarts their respective agendas. My observation is that the Right’s attacks emanate primarily from social conservatives, have a longer history and are significantly more vicious. The most recent example is the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of marriage equality for gays. Social conservatives poured endless money and effort into the campaign to defeat those judges for upholding the law and thwarting them from imposing their religious beliefs on gays through the coercive powers of government.

So the Wisconsin election next week is a crucial tipping point between the rule of law and the rule of union mobs not only in Wisconsin but also every other state on account of the precedent it will set. Where will social conservatives stand? Will they donate money? Will busloads of them canvass the state knocking on doors to explain the importance of an independent judiciary and fiscal sanity?

P.S.

Prof. Jacobson makes a chilling point in his post that the Wisconsin State Employees Union in southeast Wisconsin is now demanding store owners put posters in their windows declaring their support of the unions. They explicitly say they will interpret a neutral position — which, I gather, would be signalled by no poster of support in the window — as opposition and call on their members to boycott those stores. I want to add that the reason the Nazis knew what store windows to break and homes to destroy on Kristallnacht was that Jews had to put signs in their windows.

Update: This is for Technorati: X4GN58SJ5BFG.

Vodkapundit drunkblogs Obama’s Libya speech — and sticks the landing

Cynthia Yockey, of A Conservative Lesbian blog, and Stephen Green, Vodkapundit, at the FreedomWorks Blogcon in September 2010
From the FreedomWorks Blogcon in September 2010, Cynthia Yockey stands with Stephen Green, Vodkapundit, the handsomest man in the blogo...--no, that's not right: Cynthia Yockey and Vodkapundit, Stephen Green, the handsomest man.

I don’t drink and seldom take painkillers stronger than ibuprofen or Excedrin Migraine, so sometimes I don’t listen to Obama’s speeches because there is only so much pain I can bear without chemical assistance. But dear Vodkapundit is made of sterner stuff. After fortifying himself for the task, Vodkapundit posted this contemporaneous account of Obama’s speech on Libya on Monday, and here is a delicious sip:

4:41PM In just one month we’ve done everything but get permission and money from your elected representatives.

Obama bragging about diplomatic and military speed. Dare we call it… a rush to war?

4:42PM NATO has taken command. And who has effective command of NATO? This is like a naked Ron Jeremy grabbing a pine needle and calling it a fig leaf.

It’s a lovely paradox that while Vodkapundit can blog while drinking,  you can’t drink while reading Vodkapundit’s blog or you’ll be spraying your beverage all over your keyboard.

Stacy McCain’s epic rant on the Left’s encomiums on the passing of Joe Bageant

Thanks to a tweet by dear Charlie Martin over at The Tattler at Pajamas Media, calling attention to Stacy McCain writing at his finest on Leftist blogger Joe Bageant’s proper place in intellectual history on the occasion of his passing, I give you this morsel and bid you go read the whole thing:

Far from being a blighted backwater inhabited by the downtrodden offscourings of benighted humanity, as Bageant would have his progressive readers believe, Winchester is in fact a thriving community where the population has more than doubled in the past three decades.

So if residents of Frederick County, Va., voted Republican by a 2-to-1 margin in 2004 (Bush 68%, Kerry 31%) why shouldn’t they? The pro-growth economic policies of the GOP have been very good for their community. If you want to seek out a “false consciousness” in need of explanation, you’d be much more obligated to look at ultra-affluent D.C. suburbs like Alexandria and Arlington, which in 2004 went for John Kerry by 2-to-1 margins.

But progressives are never required to defend their class-warfare theories against evidence that a whole lot of rich people vote Democrat. No, it is only working-class votes for the GOP which agitate the Left into declaring that the proletariat is somehow being hoodwinked and bamboozled. And this was the task to which Joe Bageant applied himself….

Probably worth pointing out in this context: I used to be a Democrat, having been raised up on the same weird political stew of an old-fashioned Protestant work ethic and class-warfare resentment of “The Rich” that seems to have congealed into Bageant’s progressive populism.

Such a worldview, based on the once-ubiquitous idea of Democrats as the party of the “little guy,” evaporates on first contact with actual facts about (a) how the market economy really works, and (b) what Democratic policies really do to the “little guy.”

Ah, yes, facts — it was my first contact with those facts in the fall of 2008 that made me a former Democrat, too.

Geraldine Ferraro, thank you, and a reminder of the vicious sexism you faced

Geraldine Ferraro died today of blood cancer. As the first female vice presidential candidate in 1984, she inspired a generation of women, including me. The moment I knew Sarah Palin has the majesty of soul to be a great leader came during her speech after John McCain announced he had selected her as his running mate, when she thanked Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, both Democrats, for their accomplishments in clearing the way for other women to run for vice president and president. This video includes both that moment and the moment on the Greta van Susteren show when Rep. Ferraro said that Gov. Palin was the FIRST PERSON EVER TO THANK HER for her achievements as a trailblazer for women. I can’t find a clip of that interview on Fox News, but I saw it at the time, and this clip doesn’t show the mixture of emotions on Rep. Ferraro’s face as she has to admit this injustice and betrayal by the women of her own party and her own liberation movement who should have heaped her with honors, if only for their own selfish reasons of using these honors to inspire more women, raise money and advance the cause of equality for women. (The fact that they didn’t now looks to me like evidence that the women’s liberation movement I joined when I came of age in the 1970’s was hijacked by Leftists and converted to serving the interests of Leftist men and a few queen bees.)

Also: this video was made during the 2008 campaign in support of the McCain/Palin ticket to shine a bright light on extreme sexism of Barack Obama and his campaign. It ends with Obama gloating about his confidence that Hillary’s supporters would come around and vote for him. Nope. Obama blew his last chance to get my support when he chose Sen. Joe “Assassination Insurance” Biden over Sen. Hillary “I’ve held real jobs and am actually qualified to be president” Clinton. And then John McCain gave me a positive reason to vote for him: Gov. Palin. I became a conservative because I actually believed that if I researched the reasons for my choice, I could explain it to my Democratic friends and, loving diversity and tolerance as they do — stop laughing — they would understand and accept my rationale for voting Republican. Well, THAT didn’t go as well as planned. Toward the end of the campaign, Obama announced he would be purging the Democratic party of centrists and I decided not to wait. I fight with a team, so I registered as Republican in December 2008. And I started this blog on January 12, 2009. About six weeks later, at CPAC 2009, Joy McCann of Little Miss Attila became my fairy blogmother and, much to my surprise, I was welcomed into the fold by other conservative bloggers. (I had just gotten settled in the Conservativism 2.0 meeting when Andrew Klavan started talking about how conservatives ought to be doing more outreach to gays, speaking as if he could be sure none were there, and I took that as a good omen and popped to my feet to agree.) A couple of weeks later, I shared my first Instalanche with Stacy McCain — on account of he was my target — and he became my fairy blogfather. (He’s still a little iffy on the “fairy” part.)

So — thank you, Geraldine Ferraro, and God bless you. You blazed the trail for other women and made the world a better place.

Gay Republican Fred Karger is the first to file in the race for president

I’ve been following press releases from gay Republican Fred Karger for about a year now and I think he deserves more coverage than he is getting from conservative bloggers. So last month at CPAC when I finally got to meet Fred, I told him that I would be publishing blog posts about him and some of his press releases even though I support Gov. Sarah Palin for president in 2012. Yesterday, Fred was the first candidate to file in the race for president and here is his press release:

Fred Karger First to File for President at FEC in Washington, DC

Statement by Fred Karger

WASHINGTON, DC — Today [March 23, 2011] is a very significant day for my community and me. I have just submitted my papers to the Federal Election Commission, making me the first candidate to file for the 2012 Republican nomination for President.

I am also the first openly gay person, in a major political party, to ever run for President of the United States.

After spending 35 years in politics behind the scenes, I want to be a participant and help shape the debate in the Republican Party and our nation.

While I intend to talk about many important issues, I dedicate today to the 6 teenagers who took their lives this past fall because they were bullied for who they were. They could not go on living for even one more day.

There is no place for hatred and bigotry in this country. We must all learn to respect each other and our differences.

I began this journey 13 months ago when I traveled from my home in California to Washington, DC, New York and then up to New Hampshire. It has been a whirlwind. I have traveled to 19 states, including 12 trips to New Hampshire and 6 to Iowa. I have talked to thousands of people, and I have been encouraged to take this to the next level.

During the months ahead, I will propose some bold new ideas on a wide array of issues, and I want to help bring back optimism like my old boss Ronald Reagan did 30 years ago.

I know that I will not be invited to participate in some of the debates and forums that will be held during the next year. Some will not include me because I am an outsider, others because I am gay. I will fight to get into each and every debate, so that my ideas and my voice may be heard.

I want to send a loud and clear message to anyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer, that you can do anything you want to do in this country. You can even run for President of the United States.

Fred explained yesterday on CBS why he believes a gay candidate can win the Republican nomination: