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When I was a kid, I'd wake up extraordinarily early every morning and turn on the television, scanning for episodes of 'The Jetsons.' For some reason, I loved the notion of a future where there would be flying cars, supercomputers, and most of all, robot maids to take care of the chores.
President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control. It's an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.
Geopolitical drama lessened but did not die after the Cold War; in 2008, the specter of thousands of seeming automatons banging drums at the opening of the Beijing Games frightened and enthralled the world, reminding us that China was a nation on the rise, a competitor for global dominance.
Same-sex marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for traditional marriage. It is just another road sign toward the substitution of government for God. Every moral discussion now pits the wisest moral arbiters among us - the Supreme Court, President Obama - against traditional religion.
In actuality, California could be a wonderful place to live. In fact, if you're highly educated and ambitious, you can do quite well here while enjoying the sun and the fun. The only problem: California will then blame you for your success and recommend that all your cash be removed from you.
'Noah' doesn't merely get the story wrong; like all Biblical adaptations, it's bound to do that (although some aspects of the film are out and out ridiculous). It gets the morality of the story wrong, and in the process turns God into Gaia and morality into radical deep green environmentalism.
Vice President Joe Biden believes that illegal immigrants are citizens. Obama believes that some Americans who join Islamist groups are citizens, while others are not. Who is an American? Whomever the executive branch deems an American. Who isn't? It depends on whether Obama ate his Wheaties or not.
Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?
Obama's entire foreign policy was predicated on the notion that by existing, he would bridge all gaps and bury all hatchets. Instead, the Muslim world burns his picture even as he tells them he respects their radicalism. It turns out that diversity is a one-way street for the devotees of global Islam.
Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system - they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics.
Thanks to presidential immunity and executive control of the Justice Department, there are no consequences to executive branch lawbreaking. And when it comes to presidential lawbreaking, the sitting president could literally strangle someone to death on national television and meet with no consequences.
The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Primarily affecting low-information voters and members of the mainstream media, Obama Worship Syndrome attributes impossible capabilities to Obama's political opponents, finds excuses for every Obama failure in everyone around him and praises the president as the finest politician - nay, human being - of our time.
Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.
By giving professors jobs for life, universities create a feeling of unanswerable power among too many. Tenured professors who are uninterested in serving the student body are less likely to respond favorably to criticism, and are more likely to feel the freedom to intimidate or harass those with opposing viewpoints.
The argument that gay marriage doesn't affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.
The Tea Party is almost solely grassroots-based; business interests have almost no grassroots organization. The Republican Party has for too long been run on behalf of business interests who favor candidates the grassroots hate; the minute that those candidates begin to flag, only loyal Tea Partiers stand behind them.
The greatest obstacle to the welfare state is not greed but private charity that makes the welfare state irrelevant; the greatest obstacle to re-education of children in the name of the collective is allegiance to a higher power. More than that, the greatest obstacle to the state as god is an actual God above the state.
The greatest bulwark against an overreaching government, as tyrants know, is a religious population. That is because religious people form communities of interest adverse to government control of their lives; religious communities rely on their families and each other rather than an overarching government utilizing force.
It is no wonder that advocates of Obamacare blindly push forward with their agenda to force religious Americans to violate their own precepts: in the war between the state and the individual, religion is on the side of the individual and his or her relationship with God. That is why symbolic prayer matters. It is symbolic.
It was always foolhardy for Republicans and conservatives to stake their objections to Obamacare on the number of sign-ups; Social Security is going bankrupt despite 100% enrollment. The reality is that Obama was always destined to hit his required numbers because, after all, he has the power of government to compel action.
During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again.
Why should Congresspeople have to visit D.C.? Thanks to Skype, meetings are possible across the country. Thanks to email, communications are simple. And we've had the technology to vote from afar for decades. Why should we have backroom deals made over cigars thousands of miles distant from those who are affected by those deals?
President Obama's biggest advocates believe that Americans are ready to embrace his vision for the United States: a less muscular America on the world stage, an America with a more controlling executive branch and less conflict in the legislative branch, an America in which the government takes care of us, be we Pajama Boys or Julias.
Socialism has no moral justification whatsoever; poor people are not morally superior to rich people, nor are they owed anything by rich people simply because of their lack of success. Charity is not a socialist concept - it is a religious one, an acknowledgment of God's sovereignty over property, a sovereignty the Left utterly rejects.
Despite the fact that he has run the most incompetent administration in history, President Obama remains a solid bet for re-election in 2012. Obama's frontrunner status springs from two crucial facts: first, by overexposing himself in the public eye, he has made himself larger than life; second, the Republican field is pathetically weak.
When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.