Despite their claim to the title of enlightenment and open-mindedness, liberals are always quick to tell other people they are unqualified to have conflicting opinions. A favorite tactic for liberals in an argument is to claim the person they are arguing against is not qualified to have an opinion on the subject due to the fact that they are not female, or Buddhist, or black, or poor, or Harvard-educated, or any number of other factors, and so the debate is over before it even begins. For all their talk about equality and wanting equal access to society for everyone, liberals are always quick to disqualify their opponents on the basis of race or gender if the disparity suits them.

The truth is that liberals always seek to disqualify conservatives who disagree with them, while simultaneously granting authority to novices who do agree with them. Liberal women often tell conservative men that men should have no say on the issue of abortion because abortion is about a woman’s body and reproductive rights, and men, being physically unable to get pregnant themselves, cannot possibly understand or sympathize with a woman in that position. As someone once pointed out, this same argument applied to slavery would have prevented Abraham Lincoln from opposing that practice, as Lincoln himself was never a slave owner and had never been in their position. Similarly, it has been pointed out that everyone to support slavery was themselves free, and that everyone who supports abortion has already been born.

Conversely, liberals are quick to elevate the unqualified based on nothing more than that they agree with them. Al Gore somehow became the world’s leading authority on Global Warming (later “Climate Change,” and whatever else they have to call it down the road) despite the fact that he has no scientific background whatsoever. If someone with Gore’s résumé but lacking his notoriety tried to get a job as a meteorologist, he wouldn’t get close to the position, but that hasn’t stopped Gore from somehow becoming recognized as an expert and amassing a fortune through his bogus “green” companies, Hollywood slideshows, and high-priced speeches for people who need help falling asleep. Similarly, Michelle Obama is reported on as the nation’s leading nutrition expert, based on nothing more than that she is married to the man who became president. Wielding this bizarrely-obtained authority, she has set about trying to dictate health standards for the entire country, again despite the fact that she has no real credentials to her name and doesn’t even appear especially fit herself.

If there is one profession where the people coming into the job seem woefully unqualified and untrained for the task at hand, it is the career politician. Many are elected to office after a successful career at one thing or another, and most of those acquire a small personal fortune somewhere along the way in that profession, but typically that career is all they know. But a miraculous thing happens to politicians as soon as they enter their first election: They become an expert on everything. We know this because they will lecture us endlessly on every topic someone puts in front of them, and if they are ever confronted by someone who is truly an expert but happens to disagree with them, the politician will tell that person he or she is wrong. Politicians elected to powerful offices have a say—and sometimes the final word—in matters of extreme importance which often involve things they have never dealt with before. Only a handful of representatives in Congress have any background whatsoever in medicine or health care services, but that didn’t stop all 535 members from becoming experts on the topic when they decided to revamp the entire health care institution. We can also safely assume they didn’t all educate themselves on the subject during that episode, since the vast majority demonstrated themselves to be horribly uninformed on the specifics of the very bill they wound up passing.

Barack Obama himself is perhaps the finest example of this, having risen from the position of a “community organizer” to President of the United States in an alarmingly short period of time. Obama never held an elected office where he wasn’t spending all his time campaigning for a position of higher authority, at least until he became president, and even then he has spent all his time giving speeches and golfing. Obama was heralded as “The One” who would solve all our problems, solely on the basis that he could give speeches that convinced people he knew what he was talking about. Obama had no economic experience and no record in the private sector, and yet it was determined he was the only one with the qualifications to pull the United States out of an economic crisis. Obama was even handed a Nobel Peace Prize upon entering the Oval Office on nothing more than the qualification that he wasn’t George W. Bush. Obama spent the past four years passing himself off as the authority on health care, energy production, foreign affairs, and every other subject under the sun, all the while claiming his educated opponents were either lying or didn’t know what they were talking about, and all the while failing miserably. Then, as a reputed professor of constitutional law, he attempted to publicly lecture the Supreme Court on the subject of judicial authority, and we learned he doesn’t even know very much about that.

By extension, Obama has a habit of appointing cabinet members and czars who are often the least-qualified to preside over the tasks they are charged with. Timothy Geithner was famously appointed Secretary of the Treasury in the midst of his own tax-evasion scandal. Energy Secretary Steven Chu doesn’t even own a car and never pays for gas, so the high price American citizens pay at the gas pump is a burden he is totally removed from. Chu grades his own job performance with an “A,” which is to be expected, since both he and Obama are on record for stating their desire to see the price of gasoline rise to the level suffered in Europe.

Among this elected class and their unaccountable appointees is a category of people who are basically just theoreticians; again, Obama himself is a fine example. These are people who are highly educated and have spent many years in the classrooms of universities, first as students and later as instructors. In fact, they spent so much time hidden behind the thick walls of their refuge that they have had practically no personal involvement with what most of us would define as “the real world.” They have not held positions in the private sector, have not produced tangible goods, have never balanced books, never worried about meeting payroll, and they have certainly never created any jobs. What they have done is gathered together in hazy faculty lounges and theorized. This is not unlike a gang of alcoholics gathering in a bar and drunkenly determining how they could solve all the world’s problems if only they were the ones in charge, and it would be of the same comical inconsequence except that where alcoholics eventually sober up and lose their ridiculous notions, the educated theoreticians dive headlong into the outside world and start telling everyone else the way everything should be run.

In a classic line from The Simpsons TV show, Homer once pointed out that, “In theory, communism works,” using the sarcastic implication to dismiss something else which did not hold up in the real world. The problem with liberals is they only know the theory and are at a loss for understanding why it fails when it meets with reality. Every one of them seems to assume the right people simply haven’t been in charge and government hasn’t thrown enough money into the system, and so eventually it becomes their turn and they see themselves as the ones who will magically, finally get things right. This explains both the socialist philosophies of the left and the policy of the current administration to spend their way out of debt.

Imagine for a moment if some of these liberals were ever asked to reveal the source of their educations on the various subjects on which they claim to be experts. Imagine if Barack and Michelle Obama were asked to reveal where they learned what they know about domestic oil production and nutrition, respectively, and if Al Gore were made to name the source of his environmental wisdom. Answered truthful, their responses would be, “It’s something George Soros taught me,” “I read it off the back of a box of Special K,” and, “I’ve just been misquoting Smoky the Bear for decades.”

Meanwhile, liberals routinely attempt to discredit conservatives who have shown aptitude within the field of discussion. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were criticized as being the wrong people to fix high gas prices precisely because they had experience in the oil industry. Conservatives with stable family lives are ridiculed as too old-fashioned to relate to today’s broken homes, and those who have found wealth are labeled as “out of touch” with Americans suffering through hard economic times. Notice that this does not run both ways; Mitt Romney is facing a battle against the perception that his economic success places him out of touch with most Americans, while the Obamas are also wealthy and living like royalty at the taxpayers’ expense, but never criticized for their own finances or their apparently stable family. Similarly, previous wealthy Democratic presidential candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards were never criticized as being out of touch, and that was even with Edwards running on the concept of “Two Americas” while he was enjoying $400 haircuts, and Kerry having done nothing more to earn his fortune than uttering the words, “I do.”

Even on matters of genetics, conservatives can never qualify their positions in the eyes of the left. In the eyes of liberals, women are inherently oppressed victims in need of liberal policies, and any who buck the system in favor of their own path are portrayed as mentally unstable reprobates who must be destroyed like a disease before they can spread the notion to others. Similarly, if a minority holds conservative positions, they are labeled as “race traitors” and “Uncle Toms” for their independent efforts. A minority liberal who is uneducated and dependent on government assistance is portrayed as more aware of “the plight of his people” than a worldly representative of the race who has achieved success by his own merit.

Liberals are incapable of competing in the arena of ideas, so they do the only thing they can and try to eliminate the competition before the battle even begins. Allowing any liberal to censor any conservative through this tactic is a mistake. With our own thoughts and research born of both independent study and the examples of those who came before us, any of us can be qualified to bring insight to any issue. The qualifying question we should instead ask of any liberal is: Why do we allow you people to dictate anything to us when you yourselves are always so blatantly wrong?

Travis Sedars
Mason City, Iowa

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Is it time conservatives boycott businesses that unfairly punish paying customers in favor of liberal radicals?

Many conservatives are finally starting to think so.

Let me explain …

Monday, April 9, 2012, an apolitical, non-profit charity group — the Mason City Noon Rotary Club – - invited Congressman Steve King to speak on legislative issues to the club.

While Rotarians check their politics at the door to help others in need, they do invite elected representatives to speak to the club about issues relevant to Rotary. And Rotary always gives equal time to political candidates during election season (for more on Rotary and politics, click here: Rotary and Politics).

However, on Monday the 9th, a radical, extremist, Democrat, far-left, liberal group called CREDO – funded by George Soros and consisting of people from Ohio and other states irrelevant to Congressman King’s district (but also including a local femi-nazi Democrat, known to never have her facts straight) – planned and executed a protest on a charitable non-profit outside the meeting venue, trespassed on private property, and harassed Rotarian’s on their way into the meeting (again, on private property) for 20 minutes Monday morning.

TV coverage of their ridiculous display was very good.

TV coverage of Republicans standing up to the protestor’s — sucked!

Why? Because Republicans didn’t show up! Maybe Republicans are scared. Maybe Republicans are “beneath” that.

But the reality is, THEY had their people on camera BECAUSE THEY WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE THERE!

KIMT news was as even-handed as they could be. But Conservatives did nothing to counterbalance the coverage.

How are Conservatives going to own the argument if they don’t compete?! Conservatives who think that way of communicating is beneath them need to pull their heads out. Go find some like-minded people with the guts to confront these idiots and get them involved!

George Bush 43 learned this lesson the hard way. After 6 years of BS, he learned that failing to defend yourself makes liberal-factually-challenged-pop-BS “fact” — even when it isn’t. It wasn’t until Tony Snow (God rest his soul) came on board that things started to turn around. But by then it was too late to do any good.

So, on a local level, Cerro Gordo County Republicans lost another PR battle again!

I think the larger issue is, why do we continue to buy things from people that openly “dis” our views, pull their advertising from conservative businesses/radio shows who “offend” their lame-assed, PC, liberal sensibilities, and generally use our money against us?

At the Monday Rotary meeting, one of the reasons TV coverage of the event was so good was because the liberal Owner of Prime & Wine/Papa’s waited 20 minutes to call the police to evict them from his property. He didn’t make a move until he was FORCED to call the police to evict the unlawful trespassing protesters by the secretary of the club!

But the liberal Owner of Prime & Wine/Papa’s and his staff have a history of radical liberal sympathies.

For instance, I personally heard them call Ms. Bachmann a “Crazy” when she was running for President, based on their ignorant and gross misunderstanding of her views. Based on that incident – and the liberal Owner of Prime & Wine/Papa’s failure to safe-guard his property and the people paying their hard-earned money to rent his property that day – I think that gives us a baseline to help us figure out how he and his staff REALLY thinks.

So I ask the question again: “Why do Republican/Libertarians who may not want to elect Steve/Michelle’s opponents (or any other liberal politician for that matter) continue giving their money to people that oppose their views?”

As conservatives, we can’t keep doing things the same way and expect a different result (without satisfying the definition of insanity) and win in November.

And failing to inflict economic pain on liberal businesses/people when they are more than happy to inflict economic pain on our apolitical non-profit charities and our legitimate, for-profit businesses as a political tactic is just … plain … stupid.

Michael Fiala
Direct Response Internet Copywriter & Marketing Consultant
April 11, 2012
Clear Lake, Iowa

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Establishment Republicans Eat Their Own …
2. Republicans Come Out Swinging
3. Hello, Republicans … are you there?

Fellow commentator Ron Cline raises some good points on Paul Ryan’s budget proposal on the FBBA site.

Check them out here:

Analysis of Paul Ryan Budget

Check out more on the FBBA here:

FederalBalancedBudgetAmendment.com

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. You Can’t Polish a Turd …

Is any Republican presidential candidate capable of removing Republican rivals from his crosshairs long enough to focus on Barack Obama’s lies, distortions, and hypocrisies? Don’t any of them think it’s noteworthy to point out that Obama, who excoriates Wall Street bankers seven days a week, is the biggest recipient of Wall Street contributions of any president in U.S. history?

Or how about Obama’s ripping Republicans for “stopping his jobs bill” in the Senate, even though the Senate is controlled by Democrats? Are they really going to let something so outrageous slide and assume that sleepwalking Americans know the truth?

Hello, Republicans … are you there? Going after Barack Obama is like shooting fish in a barrel. He’s like a walking ammunition store. It’s one thing that the media didn’t bother to vet him when he was running for president in 2008, but why in the world do Republicans still refuse to hammer home a plethora of lies, distortions, and hypocrisies?

When his taxpayer-funded bus tour stopped in Asheville, North Carolina on Sunday, Obama, sounding more like former Democratic Congressman and maniac Alan Grayson than the great uniter he was billed to be, shouted that the Republican jobs plan — “Real American Jobs Act” — “boils down to a few basic ideas: They want to gut regulations. They want to let Wall Street do whatever it wants. They want to drill more. And they want to repeal healthcare reform.”

Voters are still looking for the Republican candidate who has the courage to step front and center and say: “Yes, we want to gut regulations. No, we don’t want to let Wall Street do whatever it wants. Yes, we want to drill more. And, yes, we want to repeal Obamacare.”

Let’s hope he emerges in tonight’s debate.

Copyright © 2011 Robert Ringer

ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, and The New York Times.

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. What Free Market?
2. Establishment Republicans Eat Their Own …
3. Republicans Come Out Swinging

From Robert Ringer:

I have long thought about printing the subscriber e-mail below, and with the far left now hysterically beating the class-warfare drums, I thought this would be a good time to do just that …

“I have been a long-time fan of yours and have always enjoyed your newsletters, although I admit I have not always been diligent in reading every one. Recently I read a newsletter about the most persecuted group in America. Since you wrote it, I have no need to remind you what it said.

I read it with an open mind, and I admit that at first I did not agree with you. However, due to my massive respect for you, I spent the day really pondering your message, and after reflecting on it, I realized that you were absolutely right.

I am not rich, so my agreement with you is not based on my own interests. I just purely considered the reasoning you presented. My father is from West Africa, and although my grandfather was a hardworking farmer and landowner who did not have much, he and his brothers sacrificed so that my father could have a Western education and a possibility for a better life.

Many back in Africa consider him to be rich. They constantly beg him to give them things they have not earned. He has sent many people to school, bought them houses, sends money for food, has sent money and equipment so that people can start businesses, and it has only led to more begging and laziness.

No one earnestly tries [to] make their lives better. All they have done is become bums. The land that my grandfather was once proud to farm is deserted because no one would dream of work now that they can get handouts.

Now it has gotten so bad that they constantly come up with new scams and lies in order to squeeze my father out of his money, as if he owes them something. I see the poor in this country the same way.

Working hard in this country may not guarantee you will be rich, but it will guarantee that you will not be poor, and I am happy with that. If people are punished for being successful and rewarded for being lazy, the entire system breaks down and I am starting to see that clearly now.

Just wanted to thank you for all that you do to promote success and austerity.

— S. F.”

Believe it or not, I wouldn’t go as far as S.F. when it comes to lumping all poor people together as lazy. I’ve met a lot of hardworking poor people and, more importantly, honest poor people.

Thanks to the relentless and divisive rhetoric of progressives, however, I think it is fair to say that a disproportionate percentage of people in the lower income brackets have probably bought into the idea that it’s “fair” to use force to redistribute wealth. And, to be honest about it, I can see why it would appeal to folks who are financially challenged. Human nature is what it is.

That isn’t to say they should be given a free moral pass. But the real culprits are the progressive politicians and their trouble-making allies outside of government. They conjure up images in one’s mind of serpents offering shiny red apples to all who agree to join with them in doing battle against the greedy privileged class.

Unfortunately, when the uninformed masses reach for their apples, they become entangled in an entitlement net and soon find themselves hopelessly trapped on Uncle Sam’s plantation (credit, Star Parker).

Which is why I find S.F.’s e-mail so refreshing. He’s a black man whose father came here from West Africa and made it on his own. His e-mail speaks for itself, and it almost gives one cause for hope.

This again demonstrates something I have repeatedly said — that the challenge lies in educating the masses as to the evils of socialism and the moral superiority of capitalism. The former leads to enslavement and meaninglessness. The latter leads to freedom and a purposeful life.

Only one side will prevail in the titanic struggle that is heating up by the day, and I wouldn’t want to place a bet on the outcome, given that a large percentage of the population has little or no understanding of politics, ideology, the economy, and, above all, morality.

You have permission to reprint this article so long as you place the following wording at the end of the article:

Copyright © 2011 Robert Ringer

ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, and The New York Times.

To sign up for his free e-letter click here.

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. One Black American Tells the Truth …

Immediately following the ruling in the Casey Anthony murder trial, I was amazed by the amount of outrage from people who believed the mother of Caylee Anthony had gotten away with killing her child.

Not since O.J. Simpson had so many people been convinced of the overwhelming guilt of the defendant, only to wind up in stunned disbelief when the jury failed to convict.

However, the thing that struck me about this case wasn’t the possibility that a murderer had been allowed to go free, but that people were so inexplicably disgusted by this one instance of an atrocity which occurs every day in our country.  That atrocity is not simple murder, or even the murder of a child.

What it is is the rationalization for the legally-protected “right” which our society calls “abortion.”

Indeed, Caylee Anthony serves as the perfect example of why most abortions are committed.  In trying Casey Anthony for murder, the prosecution had to ascribe a motive for her actions.  That motive was simply that Caylee had become an inconvenience for her mother and so Casey decided she had to eliminate the child from her life.

A child requires time, effort, expenses, and other sacrifices which, according to the prosecution, Casey Anthony did not feel like providing.

The jury was told that Casey felt she was being held back from the life she wanted, the life she had once known, by the burden of motherhood. Rather than dealing with the situation like a responsible mother or even seeking an alternative like adoption, Casey took the fast way out and decided to brutally murder her child.

It is true that Casey carried the child to term and eventually gave birth, but short of that, the Anthony case carries the same “who, what, and why” of any other instance of abortion; the only variation in this case is the “when.”  The only thing separating Casey Anthony from millions of other women is the fact that Casey waited longer than most to decide she did not want to be a mother.

One thing I discovered years ago in arguing abortion with the “pro-choice” crowd is that the biggest difficulty in reaching any consensus is that we are essentially arguing on two very different topics.  To someone who opposes abortion, it is all about the life of the unborn child and the preservation of the innocent who cannot protect themselves.  Pro-lifers are not seeking to trample the rights of women or tell anyone what they can and cannot do with their bodies.   Quite the opposite, the position of pro-lifers is the preservation of rights: specifically the right to life.

For the pro-choice crowd, the life of the child does not even factor into the equation.  They look at the issue entirely from the perspective of how it effects the potential parents, usually the mother in particular. 

The most common accusation and complaint comes from their belief that pro-lifers are seeking to control their “choice” of what they can and cannot do with their bodies.  They do not believe pro-lifers are seeking to preserve any form of life, but instead presume it is an excuse to control their lives, their futures, and assert ownership over their bodies.

It seems absurd to many on the other side, but it is a true belief on their part, one dictated entirely by emotion and fear.

It is human nature to desire control of one’s own destiny, and there is no greater expression of that than the physical form.  This belief taps into the primal fear that someone else is seeking control and ownership of them; the fact that a child’s fate also rests in the balance escapes them entirely. 

It is essentially useless to even argue or discuss the topic with these people because emotion blinds them to reason.  It isn’t necessarily that they condone the death of a child; they just don’t see what a child’s death even has to do with the discussion.

As for most “pro-choice” men — and also for the women to whom abortion is not strictly an emotional issue — their stance is a bit more sinister.

Unlike those who look at abortion as a matter of their own body, these people are fully aware that pregnancy means there is a baby on the way. In fact, that is entirely why they feel the need to do something about it.

In discovering that they have an unplanned pregnancy on their hands, their decision to have an abortion centers entirely on the negative impact another human being would have on them personally.  A child requires time, effort, expenses, and other sacrifices which are eerily similar to the reasons the prosecution gave for why Casey Anthony was supposed to have murdered her daughter.

Like a premeditative murderer, these people are fully aware of the facts; they simply have not been equipped with the capacity to care. When it comes right down to it, abortion is almost always handled as a matter of convenience:

•  If a woman feels a child might stand between her and her social life, she gets an abortion.
• If a young couple determines the birth of a child would be too expensive, they stop that birth from occurring.
• If a woman thinks her career might be impaired by the burden of motherhood, she prematurely terminates her baby in order to enhance her own lifestyle.

All of these reasons are the same sort of selfish, hedonistic motives ascribed to Casey Anthony during her murder trial, and they were the very things an entire nation condemned her for and wanted to see her punished for. Our nation has been surprisingly quick to pile on one woman and condemn her actions for the exact same behavior millions of other Americans have been perpetrating and making excuses for in their own lives.

Why does the murder of Caylee Anthony resonate differently from a child who was aborted?  The only real difference is that on this occasion, the child had a name and a face.

When people refer to a “fetus” or “unborn child,” they tend to think in the abstract.  Even sonographic images of a child in the womb show something that might be alive and humanoid, but which many people have trouble identifying as truly human and one of us.

The investigation into the death of Caylee and the trial of her mother changed these things by showing us images of a child smiling, laughing, playing, and beginning her life just as all human beings have done.  She was vulnerable and entirely dependent on her guardian, just like any child in the womb, and just like any aborted child, her guardian let her down, and for precisely the same reasons.

In many ways, Caylee Anthony had things better than millions of children who essentially share her fate.  She was born and cared for in some capacity.  She was given a name, immortalized in photographs, and she now has a grave and a marker to signify that for whatever brief period of time, she was among us.

In the grand scheme of things, it makes little difference that her killer may never be brought to justice.  Millions of other Casey Anthonys are also free and no one seems to have any problem with that.

There is a moral equivalency with the fate of young Caylee Anthony which is difficult for our society to face, but which cannot logically be denied.  If you were never outraged by the ruling in the Roe v Wade trial which essentially legalized abortion throughout our nation decades ago, then you have no right to be outraged by the verdict in the Casey Anthony murder trial.

Travis Sedars
Mason City, Iowa

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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In a June 20 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck a note for liberty when it overruled federal courts in San Francisco that had allowed all women who worked for Walmart since December 1998 to join in a single, nationwide suit seeking back pay. I say struck a note for liberty, because this was about far more than Walmart’s winning out over a bunch of high-priced litigators who represented a group of ungrateful Walmart employees.

The court ruled that the 1.5 million women at 3,400 Walmart stores in the United States had too little in common to allow a class-action lawsuit to move forward. In the court’s opinion, there was no proof that Walmart employed a general policy of “systemic discrimination.”

What makes the Supreme Court’s decision especially delightful is that the law firm of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll lost roughly $7 million in pursuing this classic deep-pockets case. It’s enough to make one fantasize about how different our court system (and our economy) would be if attorneys who lost frivolous law suits would be required to pay for the winners’ legal fees.

But let’s get back to Walmart’s employees. Forget that Walmart is the number-one employer in the country, employing 1.4 million Americans in 4,424 stores. Forget that it saves consumers billions of dollars each year on retail purchases. Forget that its employees, on average, earn about double the minimum wage. It doesn’t matter how much good Walmart does, the raw-meat crowd continues to call for beheadings. Bring on the Jacobins!

The word from some disgruntled employees has long been that Walmart doesn’t treat its employees “fairly” — whatever that’s supposed to mean. But, definitions aside, this is your lucky day. Because if you think Walmart is “unfair,” guess what? You don’t have to shop there.

Wow! What a novel idea — shopping with your feet. If you don’t like the fact that Walmart carries too many products made in “sweatshop” countries, shop with your feet. If you believe Walmart puts smaller retailers out of business and you’re unhappy about that, shop with your feet.

Nevertheless, to make it easy on the social-justice crowd, let’s assume there is such a thing as absolute fairness. And let’s further assume that Walmart does, indeed, treat its employees unfairly. That, of course, begs the question: What in the world can be done to protect Walmart’s 2.1 million paid slaves?

More good news: In a truly free society, unfair treatment of employees would never be an issue, because workers would be free to sell their services for the highest possible wages in the open market. If someone chose to work at Walmart, he would do so only because he believed, consciously or otherwise, that it afforded him the best opportunity to be adequately compensated for his skills, his experience, and his efforts.

An employer doesn’t ask a job applicant to present a list of his job requirements when he submits his application. On the contrary, the employer lets the applicant know, in advance, what the company’s conditions of employment are.

If those conditions call for fifteen-hour workdays, minimum-wage pay, and no paid sick leave, so be it.

How can I say such a dastardly thing? Because an employee not only does not have to take such a job, he also has the right to quit his job at any time.

Further, since an unhappy employee is free, he can apply for another job anywhere he chooses. No making a clear statement that he believes it’s the best position he can hope to obtain at that particular time. If this were not true, he would be insane, or perhaps masochistic, to remain in his present job.

It doesn’t take a Ludwig von Mises to explain it. In a free market, everything works smoothly because both employers and employees are free to make their own choices. It’s only when government bureaucrats or labor thugs (a.k.a. “labor unions”) enter the picture that freedoms are violated.

All government intervention between employers and employees results in infringements on the rights of one or the other — or both. The same goes with labor unions. The actions of most labor unions are fundamentally immoral and in violation of the constitutional rights of both employees and employers.

The so-called union shop is a violation of the natural rights of every employee who is forced to join a union against his will — even without the new card-check legislation being proposed by the NLRB. And, worse, it is a violation of the rights of an employer to hire whomever he wants, whenever he wants, for whatever reasons are important to him.

Unfortunately, that’s not reality in today’s People’s Republic of America. After decades of artificially high wages and benefits, job-protection schemes, and government-mandated safety standards, spoiled American workers demand still more.

I would make the case that an excellent investment for Walmart would be to spend mega-millions to educate its employees about the morality and efficacy of liberty and laissez-faire economics. It would be a lot less expensive than the draconian legal fees it is certain to continue incurring in the coming years.

Now that we’ve come face to face with the ugly realities of Marxism in the United States, it’s time for corporate leaders to man up and start educating their own employees, as well as the public at large, about the wonders of capitalism. History has clearly taught us what to expect if good men do nothing.

Educating muddled minds, however, does not begin with the worker; it begins with big business. If corporate America does not truly believe in laissez-faire capitalism, why should its workers? And if it does believe in laissez-faire capitalism, but is unwilling to suffer “mortification of the flesh” (in the words of Frank Chodorov) in presenting the truth to the public, then the case for free enterprise is lost.

In the meantime, it’s up to each of us to become proactive and not wait for corporate America to come to our rescue. Take every opportunity you can get to extol the virtues of capitalism, because when you do so, you are extolling the virtues of freedom. It’s true that you are but one person in a sea of millions, but it is completely within your power to be part of the solution to America’s ills rather than part of the problem.

If the Supreme Court can rule in favor of liberty, anything is possible.

ROBERT RINGER is the author of three #1 bestsellers and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. Ringer has appeared on numerous national talk shows and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, and The New York Times. To sign up for his one-of-a-kind, pro-liberty e-letter, A Voice of Sanity, visit: www.robertringer.com

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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I have to admit that the Anthony Weiner scandal has been a lot of fun for me.

While I consider myself to be well-spoken, educated, and something of an intellectual, I still retain a healthy interest in relatively lowbrow humor. I count the Austin Powers series and Dumb and Dumber among some of my favorite movies, so it should go without saying that I appreciate bathroom humor and dirty jokes as much as anyone.

So for me, the revelation that a United States congressman by the name of Weiner has been posting X-rated pictures of himself all over the Internet provides for satire and general comedy on a level I never thought I would be fortunate enough to see. The reason I’m just now getting around to writing this is due in no small part to the fact that I’ve only this minute stopped laughing over the whole thing. I am, however, still chuckling.

That said, the only thing that makes this story particularly noteworthy is the fact that the politician at the center of this scandal happens to have a hilarious name that provides endless opportunity for double entendre.

Outside of that, Weiner is just another average liberal politician doing that liberal politicians do. And while it may be true that there are Republican politicians who have made poor decisions in their personal lives, conservatives generally condemn this sort of behavior and oust offending representatives who tarnish the party rather quickly.

Democrats, on the other hand, embrace immoral behavior to the extent that it is practically a prerequisite for running for political office under their banner.

Perhaps no one in modern times exemplifies this as well as Bill Clinton. Clinton achieved national fame in 1988 when he gave a speech introducing presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, but his long-winded and pompous display also set him up as something of a joke. When he decided to attempt his own presidential run, Clinton was lagging behind in the Democratic primaries until the nation learned of his affair with Gennifer Flowers. The Democratic Party collectively stood up and said, “Yes, that guy! That lecherous, womanizing compulsive liar is the person who would best represent us as our presidential candidate.”

The media narrative became filled with glowing reviews of Clinton’s charm and irresistible charisma, propelling him to a win in the primary and later the general election. The Democrats then spent the next eight years battling the fallout from his numerous sexual improprieties, including the obstruction of justice which led to his impeachment. Throughout all of this, the media and the rest of the Democratic Party maintained an aura of incredulity and faux surprise whenever their champion was caught misbehaving . . . which was almost all of the time.

It is interesting to note that in the case of politicians like Clinton, the Democratic Party schizophrenically embraces and denies this reprehensible behavior. Democratic pundits spent years adamantly insisting that Clinton was a loyal and loving husband even when his adulterous behavior was already the defining aspect of his character. It may be that the far-left is more accepting of these actions but feels the need to pretend otherwise in order to have some imagined level of decency with which to fool the undecided independent voters. However, in addition to this is the disturbing likelihood that Democrats are fooling themselves in their inability to see their representatives for who and what they are.

Weiner is practically the poster boy for this sort of denial. As an uncommonly dweeby-looking fellow—even among career politicians—he has nonetheless staked out a number of extramarital conquests and followers ranging from attractive coeds to professional porn stars. It may be that women found the topless pictures of his concave chest somehow arousing, but a more insightful perspective comes from porn star Ginger Lee. Lee describes her reason for being smitten with Weiner thusly: “I’m normally, like, drawn to their personality before I’m drawn to their looks because normally the really cute ones turn out to be ****. So, I go for the really sweet ones before I go for the really cute ones.” Yes, someone mistook Anthony Weiner for being “really sweet,” which just goes to show how some people can be fooled into believing anything. Lee later admitted that Weiner personally coached her to lie if anyone inquired into the nature of their relationship, but I’m sure she just considered this chivalrous as well.

In truth, Weiner is what is known as an “attack dog” for the Democrats. He achieved notoriety primarily through relentlessly assaulting the opposition by distorting their character and their message. Lee might have been charmed by this because, as a porn star, that’s likely the sort of sociopathic personality she interacts with on a daily basis. However, Weiner is just one in a long line of Democratic men who have been given a free pass by liberal women to engage in whatever unscrupulous behavior they desire, as long as they say the right things and vote the right way. This includes harsh treatment of women, and is again embodied by Bill Clinton. No matter what horrible things Clinton was accused of doing, from numerous infidelities to outright assaulting unwilling women, liberals have always been quick to come to his aid. To this day, Clinton is considered a champion of women’s rights within the Democrat Party.

Self-proclaimed liberal feminists often speak of the evils of the male gender while also attaching themselves to some of the worst examples of men in our society. It is no wonder they expect men to behave badly when those are the only ones they know, but somehow they assume conservative men must be worse. Republicans are always accused by Democrats as being anti-women. The DNC’s new chairwoman said exactly that just weeks ago. This is probably because of the abortion issue. It is perfectly acceptable for men in the Democratic Party to lie to their women, marry them for money, cheat on them, beat them up, rape them, and even murder them during a drunken drive into a river, just so long as those men support a woman’s decision to kill her unborn baby.

Obviously, politicians on the other side of the aisle are hardly immune to personal failings, so the root cause of the issue is not necessarily partisan. What is partisan is how the respective ideologies react to these scandals. When a Republican is caught in an immoral or questionable position, his political career is almost certainly considered to be over. Democrats naturally seize on the opportunity of the scandal to make an example of the offending representative, who is also immediately condemned by his own party and either steps down of his own free will or is driven out by his former allies. We have seen this many times and the formula is always the same. Notable examples include former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Representative Christopher Lee (who merely posed shirtless in contrast to Weiner’s extensive catalog of lewd behavior), and Representative Mark Foley, whose improprieties were exploited as a campaign stunt by the Democrats to paint the entire Republican Party as immoral and corrupt, allowing them to take control of Congress in 2006.

Citing the Foley incident in particular, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of similar politicians and preside over “the most ethical Congress in our nation’s history.” While her swamp was largely drained by the American people four years later—and against her efforts—Pelosi did nothing to strengthen ethics in Congress. Quite the opposite, she coddled and defended her own allies through all of their many scandals, sexual or otherwise, including Charles Rangel’s tax evasion convictions. Predictably, Democrats the likes of Pelosi are only interested in ousting misbehaving politicians if those representatives have the letter “R” next to their names.

When a Democrat is caught in the midst of a scandal, Republicans will usually call for his ousting, but the response of Democrats is hardly as uniformly vindictive as it is amongst Republicans. Democrats—with some help from their allies in the media—will usually circle their wagons around their colleague and hope for the incident to blow over, which it often does. Sometimes the candidates are tarnished but survive to be reelected another day. Most of the time, they are celebrated amongst their colleagues and their political fortunes thrive. Notably, Representative Gerry Studds engaged in activities far more offensive than Mark Foley more than two decades earlier, and Studds was repeatedly reelected and applauded by his fellow Democrats for fighting to retain his office in the face of adversity.

In the rare instance a Democrat does see the end of his political career, he can at least take the Elliott Spitzer path and secure a job hosting a program on CNN.

To their credit, Democrats will roll over on one of their own candidates once that candidate has served his purpose or achieved irreparable damage, which is what seems to have happened with Weiner. After days of ambiguity, Senator Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi both condemned Weiner, which is pretty strong language considering neither of them ever got around to condemning Saddam Hussein. John Edwards became a victim of this form of abandonment as well. Edwards managed to out-feminine Hillary Clinton during the last Democratic primary to the extent that it would have been more surprising if she had shown up for a debate wearing a dress than if he had. However, Edwards was also carrying on an affair throughout that period of time with the woman who wound up bearing his lovechild. Worse still, his wife was dying from a well-publicized case of terminal cancer which he had parlayed into a campaign tool. As someone the Democrats nearly let try his hand at the presidency or vice presidency on two separate occasions, Edwards probably expected nothing more than a slap on his finely-manicured hands for breaking the law to hide his indiscretions. Instead, he might be facing prison and a closer look at that “other America” he kept telling us about.

But really, why should Edwards have expected to get into any trouble? Sure, he broke the law in trying to cover up his affair, but so did the Democrat standard Bill Clinton. Just ten years earlier, their entire party marched in lock step to the claim that this sort of thing was not a big deal, and they managed to keep Bill Clinton as President. The difference is that Clinton was in the Oval Office and it is now clear Edwards would never hold a position of power again. Had Edwards ascended to the White House in 2008, we can be sure the Democrats would be doing everything in their power to salvage him, no matter what disrespect he had shown his dying wife.

Edwards was right about one thing: there are “two Americas” and two sets of rules for people who fall into different categories. But despite his classifications, what we see here is not a divide along the financial lines of the “haves and have-nots.” This is a division amongst those who understand the difference between right and wrong, and those who only pay lip service to those concepts. The Democrat Party idolizes the likes of Bill Clinton, while the Republican Party is handicapped by a sense of morality and a desire to be something better. It might make things more challenging for us, but I think we can live more happily with ourselves if we are not the party of Weiners.

Travis Sedars
Mason City, Iowa

©2012 The Common Sense Politics Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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