By Richard Larsen
Published – Idaho State Journal, 04/29/07

The great British philosopher, Bertrand Russell once said, “The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.” Perhaps liberalism has changed significantly over the past 40 years since Russell uttered those words. Or, perhaps as a liberal intellectual himself, he saw in liberalism what he saw in himself: an open-minded, tolerant, and naturally inquisitive nature, anxious to learn and expand his own conceptual horizons. In this context, we should all be liberals.

Having known a good number of liberals, I can truly say that many fit the mold of Russell; perhaps not with his mental acumen, but with his open-mindedness, tolerance, and convictions in pursuit of truth, wherever it may come from. They were easy to respect because they were respectable, intelligent, honestly adhering to their principles, and sometimes even convincing.

Russell would have to be disappointed in the trends that are so pervasive today in his end of the political spectrum. For many liberals, intolerance is supplanting tolerance; a rigid dogmatism is replacing pursuit of truth; intimidation and accusations are used to stifle dissent rather than freely engaging in the exchange of ideas; and censorship is replacing open-mindedness.

As an example of this degeneration, we can’t help but notice how the discussion on global warming is reaching a fevered pitch. As cited here two weeks ago, many notable climatic and environmental scholars and experts maintain that the science behind man-caused global warming is not settled. Global warming is generally accepted, but man’s ability to mitigate harmful effects of global warming (if any) is as much a matter of economics and politics as science. In spite of the inconclusiveness of these studies, and the huge price tag associated with proposed remedies, those of us who want further discussion about the theories and the economics are identified as “global warming deniers,” in an attempt to lump us in with imbeciles like the President of Iran who are “Holocaust deniers.” If the science is conclusive and incontrovertible, why are such efforts expended to intimidate the skeptical? We may all have our theories, but it surely seems a lot more dogmatic than it does tolerant and open-minded.

There is more primary source information available via the internet today than has ever been accessible by lay researchers or commoners like me. Such availability of information allows us to be more inquisitive than ever before and have our thirst for knowledge almost immediately quenched by the plethora of sources available to us. We always have to research further to ascertain the viability and credibility of those sources, but it can usually be done. Yet for some reason, this inquisitiveness seems to escape many liberals today. If the information afforded them from someone of a different ideological bent fails to corroborate their world view, the information is immediately discounted as fraudulent, claimed to have been disproved as a hoax, or ignored altogether. It’s difficult to find open-mindedness, thirst for knowledge, and a dearth of dogmatism in such a disposition.

With increasing frequency, upon being presented with countering evidence or information, liberals will resort to character assassination. Perhaps they haven’t the foundational information to debate the issue, or simply feel threatened by someone with evidence contrary to their credo. Lacking the wherewithal to debate or discuss, they launch into their antagonist with the voracity of a protective mother bear. You can verify this firsthand by checking the weblogs of any of the Journal’s conservative columnists. Any attempt to mollify or inject humor or civility is countered by an escalated vitriol that seems to be redoubled with every attempt. Perhaps some of this intransigence results from a self-perception of being more enlightened, knowledgeable, or perspicacious that we who are simple, backward commoners. After all, anyone who disagrees with them is an unlettered, virtually illiterate “neocon” who’s a scourge to their ethnocentric society.

Of all people, liberals should be most tolerant of religions and religious adherents. Yet how tolerant do they seem when it comes to evangelical Christians? You’re right…not very. Christians are often maligned as simple-minded, uneducated dupes. Truly tragic intolerance.

Many of today’s liberals are not liberal at all. They are ideologues whose political lives and often academic lives are defined by dogmatic themes. They are most often recognized by their liberal use of ad hominem fallacy; intolerance toward religion (especially Christians) and anyone of divergent views; criticism of American traditions that in large part have defined this great country like free enterprise and Christian values; advocacy of government as the panacea for all social shortcomings; and their championing of political correctness which provides an ironic twist typically uncharacteristic of liberals as it demands orthodoxy and authoritarian adherence at the risk of censure and harassment.

Thomas Jefferson, the great liberal among our founding fathers, was a disciple of John Locke, and consequently, an audacious advocate for “inalienable rights” endowed by God that no government can or should obviate. He taught correctly that “government cannot create a right to liberty, but that it can indeed violate it,” and that “proper government is one that not only prohibits individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of other individuals, but also restrains itself from diminishing individual liberty.” He is referred to as the father of “American exceptionalism,” where the unequalled greatness of our country, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, and distinctive political and religious institutions, differs qualitatively from all other nations.

We need more 18^th century style liberals and progressives who enjoy vigorous debate and reasonable dialogue, rather than the 21^st century variety who are more dogmatic and intolerant. With an abundance of that type of liberal, we may be able to find the best solutions for America.

By Richard Larsen
Published – Idaho State Journal, 04/22/07

The horrendous acts of violence at Virginia Tech University this week remind us of the fragility of mortality, and how much we take for granted the quality of American life. We don’t, for the most part, have a violent society. From a global perspective, we truly live in relative tranquility for being the third most populous country in the world. That, in part, is why events of such wanton violence shock us to the core. They are anomalies in our society which make the contrast with typical American culture so stark.

As a society we can never be totally protected against this kind of premeditated violence. Each of us must accept responsibility for our own actions, and in spite of Cho Seung-Hui’s allegations that it was our fault; the responsibility and accountability are laid completely on his shoulders. I’m reminded of the old phrase, “no one ever became extremely wicked suddenly.” And it’s obvious based on all accounts that such was the case with Cho. There was a string of events and concomitant personality traits that provided outward manifestations of deep psychological issues.

Having lived in Korea, I know of the strength of the Korean culture in valuing human life. I know how much parental approbation of their children is valued and treasured. In light of that, I find myself commiserating with this young man’s mother, at the shock, grief, and traumatic realizations they must be facing now acknowledging the evil perpetrated by her son.

I can’t help but think of a couple sets of parents here locally whose sons likewise perpetrated a horrific crime against one of their classmates, and I grieve for them; I pray for them. Perhaps along the way those parents saw patterns of behavior in their children that alarmed them. Perhaps they did all they felt they could do to rectify their conduct and their disturbing actions. But ultimately, with few exceptions, all human acts, whether good or evil, are the exercised volition of each individual. Parents cannot have heaped upon them the failures and evil deeds of their children, unless the parents failed to teach them right and wrong. Neither can society be blamed for the evil acts Cho inflicted upon his peers at Virginia Tech. He chose to do evil, and regrettably, the families of the slain, and the rest of us, are left to wonder why, and grieve.

No culpability can be ascribed to guns, violent movies, violent video games, or school classmates and administrators who may have failed to intervene at some point in this young man’s life. No, the responsibility lies directly on him. All of these elements may have been factors increasing his proclivity to commit such a heinous crime, but they are not the cause.

However, I can’t help but believe that one of the most fundamental philosophical and moral impediments to such actions has been incrementally removed from our collective psyche, and that’s moral relativism. The secular concept that there are no absolute truths has gradually eroded our value system in such a way as to alter our social morality. The late Alan Bloom wrote some twenty years ago in The Closing of the American Mind, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” The elimination of absolute truth claims absolute morality as its first victim.

When we witness a horrendous slaying like this and the one committed by the two Pocatello youth, we must be shocked back to the realization that there is absolute evil in the world. Fundamentally it is resident within the heart and mind of perpetrators of evil acts, but those rationalized amoral sentiments can be shared collectively by those of like disposition, as with the nineteen who attacked us in September of 2001. Evil is ensconced in the hearts of those who vow to destroy us if we don’t convert to their religion or ideology. Evil is inflicted on the innocent through emotional and sexual abuse. Evil manifests itself in rape, racism, and violence.

Moral relativism weakens our collective cultural conscience. It weakens our ability to identify evil and the resolve to confront it as such. It leads to the perfidious exoneration of individual responsibility and culpability for perpetrators of evil, and seeks blame for such actions in social, parental, and educational failures. It allows continued erosion of our traditional values and social mores. It prevents us from recognizing the evil in our midst that threatens our families and our neighborhoods. And it prevents us from recognizing the enemies to our nation and our culture.

Aside from empathizing with parents of evildoers, and praying for those who have lost loved ones, a significant proactive step we can take in dealing with these tragedies is to seek an epiphany of sorts, and come to the realization that there is indeed evil in the world. Perhaps we can make more of a difference individually and collectively when moral relativism is replaced with moral certitude, and the accompanying requirement to act accordingly. For as Edmund Burke said, “The only thing needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.”

By Richard Larsen
Published – Idaho State Journal, 04/08/07

The new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is apparently not content with her attempts to usurp Constitutional Commander In Chief responsibilities from the President, now she apparently wants to usurp Condoleezza Rice’s responsibilities as Secretary of State as well.

Last week the Congress debated 17 different resolutions attempting to micromanage the Iraq conflict. The final resolution passed by both the House and Senate declared to the world, including the terrorists we are fighting in Iraq, when we would surrender Iraq to them. All this verbiage was tied to a bill that was originally intended to be the supplemental appropriation for continuance of the Iraq and Afghanistan funding. In the end, not only did it offer complete capitulation to the terrorists by offering to them a date by which time we would retreat, but also was laced with over $22 billion of pork spending such as peanut storage facilities, aid to spinach farmers, and Capital Hill tours. After all, Congressional leaders had to bribe those congressmen and senators to vote for the bill somehow, since protecting our national interests are obviously such a low priority to them. To their credit, Idaho’s congressional delegation voted against the resolutions.

This week, in an obvious effort to outdo her usurpation of Presidential authority last week, our frighteningly reality-detached Speaker is off to Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism. Syria has long been criticized by the United States and the European Union for its regional policies and its support for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Palestinian Hamas terrorists. Syria is also a major purveyor in trafficking of women and illegal drug peddling.

Understandably the President’s consternation was evident when asked by reporters about Pelosi’s visit. The President correctly said Pelosi’s visit sends “mixed signals” and does nothing to change the behavior of a country that sponsors terrorism.

The mixed signals sent to dictatorial President Assad obviates the expressions of support offered by terrorists worldwide towards Democrats heading into the mid-term elections last Fall. Taped messages from terrorist leaders, a taped message from Iran’s president, and broadcasts on Al Jazeera promulgated broad support for Democrats heading into last year’s elections. Regrettably, the cause of that support and the fruits of the election outcomes are becomingly increasingly obvious.

It’s bad enough that Pelosi would attempt to normalize relations with a state sponsor of terrorism, but the manner in which she did it was absolutely astounding. Pictures of her with her head covered with a scarf in lieu of a burka have been emblazoned across the newspapers and television screens worldwide. The female head covering is symbolic of submission in the Muslim world. Wasn’t that a brilliant gesture from the third-in-line from the Presidency?

But it gets even worse, if that is imaginable. Pelosi assured Assad that Israel was ready to come back to the peace table, in spite of the fact that Syria repeatedly has required giving up the Golan Heights region before peace talks could be resumed. Prime Minister Omert of Israel quickly denounced Pelosi’s statement as incorrect and rebuked her for implying Israel was ready to make the concessions Syria demanded in order to resume peace talks. In essence she did what Joseph P. Kennedy did in meeting privately with Hitler’s ambassador in 1938.

Israel is our only reliable ally in a region of implacable foes and false friends. Israel is a bastion of democracy and human rights in a part of the world largely bereft of either. And for Pelosi, due to arrogance, ignorance, stupidity, or a combination of all three, to accede negotiations points to Syria that were not authorized by Israel is unconscionable at best, and naïve or stupid at worst. Her acts may also be a felonious infraction of the Logan Act.

Mitt Romney correctly observed that “Washington is a broken place right now, dysfunctional in some respects, which has been evidenced by the trip by Nancy Pelosi to Syria, but also evidenced by the failure to deal with overspending,” obviously referring to the pork-laden war appropriations legislation.

What is it with politicians with a “D” behind their name that compels such detachment from reality with such obvious abandonment of reason? There are few exceptions, like Joe Lieberman, but the pattern is distinct and somewhat inscrutable. This pattern manifests itself with remarkable regularity as in the following examples: President Clinton and John Kerry traveling overseas denouncing President Bush and our foreign policy; Jimmy Carter not only denouncing our foreign policy abroad (so much for the old truism that politics stops at the water’s edge!), but prostituting himself to Osama bin Laden’s family for a million dollars for the Carter Center; and Congressman Murtha leading the charge for U.S. failure in Iraq. As a party, they need an infusion of “neocon-itis,” that is liberalism mugged by reality.

Are they really so greedy for power and attention that they are willing to sacrifice our national security to garner political points? Are they so puffed with arrogance that they think we’re all too illiterate or uninformed to realize that their pandering is all about form with no substance? These people prove time and again that they can’t be entrusted with our national security, for not only do they not believe in protecting our national interests, but they place politics and the applause of foreigners and America-haters above national security.

It’s bad enough they control Congress, but heaven help us if they regain the White House again.

By Richard Larsen
Published – Idaho State Journal, 04/01/07

Generalizations and broad statements issued as "fact" abound in today’s political environment. It is expected that ignorant and uninformed people should make some of the outrageous and unsubstantiated claims they repeat, because they hear someone say something idiotic that happens to fit their belief system and they accept it is gospel. Those of us who accept very little on face value and research everything to get to the facts are amazed that such people can even function in society.

But there’s something very disconcerting about those among us who should be, or at least project the image of being well informed making the same asinine comments as those who are totally ignorant. It’s scary because those people not only vote, obviously ignorantly, but they’re also sometimes in a position to influence others because they appear ostensibly to be erudite and informed.

For example, how many times have we heard "Bush lied!" Often times there’s a corollary attached, like "…people died." That just has such a great ring to it in the ears of those who would blame President Bush for everything from the attacks of 9/11 to hurricane Katrina. But is the phrase, with or without the corollary, factual?

The presumption is that the President lied about the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) intelligence. If one is to display even a modicum of intelligence, some evidence must be presented. Where is that evidence? In 1998 President Clinton, citing U.S. intelligence sources about the WMDs Saddam Hussein maintained in his military arsenal, made a regime change in Iraq a matter of policy. Fifteen United Nations resolutions called for Hussein to destroy, dismantle, and discontinue his WMD programs. He refused to abandon his production programs and destroy his existing stockpiles, which led to the ultimate invasion of Iraq. And frankly, since Hussein had failed to comply with the terms of the cessation of hostilities from the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. attack in 2003 was a resumption of hostilities because of Hussein’s failure to comply with those terms that ended the Gulf War. The invasion was preemptive only from the standpoint of preventing proliferation of WMDs (which we knew he had, along with U.K., Russian, and Israeli intelligence bureaus) to terrorists.

After the fall of Hussein, we failed to find the massive stockpiles of WMDs that Hussein had refused to give up. We found over 500 munitions of mustard and serin gas, but not the more recent additions to his stockpiles. His 2^nd in command of the Iraqi air force, Gorges Sada, has written a book documenting how a Russian Spetznaz (special forces) group led by Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian Intelligence Chief, assisted in transporting the stockpiles to Syria. Sada witnessed it first hand. In a court of law, an eyewitness proves culpability.

So where in all this is evidence that "Bush lied"? Some have maintained that he doctored or only accepted intelligence that fit a predefined plan for attacking Iraq. If that is the case, how was he able to "doctor" Russian, British, and Israeli intelligence? They all had come to the same conclusion, that the WMDs were there, and they posed a great threat. If Bush lied, then so did Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair, and Ariel Sharon, and their respective intelligence bureaus.

Another favorite expletive for many is "neocons." The "neocons" in Washington are blamed for everything that is wrong in the world, especially Iraq. Yet, what exactly is a "neocon?" The original neoconservatives were liberal intellectuals led by Irving Kristol and were self-described as "liberals mugged by reality." Most were Jewish, and extremely pro-Israel. Fundamental to their ideology is the fact that there is such a thing as evil in the world, and rather than rationalize it away or intellectually minimalize it, it must be confronted in order to protect our way of life and preserve the principles of liberty as propounded by our Bill of Rights.

So the natural question is, who in the Bush administration is a liberal, Jewish intellectual, mugged by reality? George Bush? Richard Cheney? Donald Rumsfeld? Condoleeza Rice? Can’t be any of them, for not only are they not Jewish, but according to those who are so quick to blame Iraq on the "neocons" the aforementioned are all idiots, and none of them could be categorized as ideologically liberal. So who are the neocons that got us into Iraq and have turned global sentiment against the U.S.? Probably the closest you could find in the administration is Paul Wolfowitz who was Deputy Secretary of Defense under Rumsfeld. He certainly had an influence in shaping the President’s response to the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent toppling of the Hussein regime in Iraq, but he’s been President of the World Bank for two years. So again, the question begs an answer: who are the "neocons" in Washington who are to be blamed for all the worlds ailments?

As an informed electorate and citizenry, it certainly behooves us to question conventional sources of information and to not accept carte blanche statements as fact. It is imperative that we educate ourselves beyond the typical 4^th grade education level (no offense intended for all the smart 4^th graders out there!) that the mass media promulgates its tainted news in. And especially if you have a forum for your opinions, at least have the respect for your audience to have facts or evidence to support your claims, if you have any. And if you don’t have any, don’t expect us to lend your opinion any credence.

So next time someone tries to tell you "Bush lied," ask what he lied about, and where’s the evidence. For there is none, it’s just become an accepted phrase out of the liberal lexicon of anti-Bushisms. And when they blame Iraq on the "neocons," ask who they are, because as far as I can see, there aren’t any in our administration.