Category Archives: Conservatism
9th Circus Mistake Dooms More Children to Death
The Ninth Circus strikes again — dooming more Arizona children to grisly abortion deaths.
By overturning the Mother’s Health and Safety Act (HB 2036) that prohibited most abortions after 20 weeks, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disallowed an Arizona law passed by the legislature last year.
The Center for Arizona Policy had strongly supported the bill, prompting this response by its president, Cathi Herrod:
“This ruling is not surprising nor am I discouraged at the prospects of this important law ultimately being upheld. The Ninth Circuit Court is historically one of the most overturned appellate courts in the nation. Based on the facts of this case, I am confident that this Court will be overturned once again.”
Last summer, Federal District Court Judge James Teilborg, of Phoenix, upheld the constitutionality of the law based on the significant risks that abortion presents to the health and safety of the mother and scientifically-established fact preborn children can feel pain at 20 weeks. But the Ninth Circus has an agenda to follow, and it’s anti-life and anti-family.
In Herrod’s email alert, she said:
“The Court put a pro-abortion ideology before the health and safety of women and preborn children. The Court held to the vague standard that abortions can only be limited based on whether the child is viable, even though they confessed viability is not a ‘fixed’ point. Ultimately, as we’ve anticipated from the beginning, this case should be decided by the United States Supreme Court. Sadly, until that time, women and preborn children will suffer the consequences of this disappointing decision.”
It still isn’t known if Arizona will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. It could also ask the entire Ninth Circuit to hear the appeal, but the likelihood of Chief Judge Stephen Reinhardt, an 82-year-old who carries water for Planned Parenthood, grantint that is remote.
State Representative Steve Montenegro Asks for Retraction from Reagan
PHOENIX – State Representative Steve Montenegro (LD13), today asked State Senator Michele Reagan (Scottsdale RINO) to denounce and retract attacks made by her campaign consultants that introduced ethnicity into a debate over the voting rights of all Arizonans.
“I was one of several lawmakers who voiced objections to several pieces of legislation that would take power from the citizens of Arizona and give it to the judiciary or the secretary of state. In our objections we made no mention of Senator Reagan and our objections were in no way related to the race or ethnicity of any group of voters. To the contrary, the bills trample the rights of every voter and each and every voter is equally deserving of protection.”
“I was saddened that I alone, of all of the signers of the letter, was singled out for attacks by Senator Reagan’s campaign. Far worse was that I was accused of “Pandering to Hispanics”. Senator Reagan’s campaign team is clearly eager to begin a contest that does not even exist yet, but introducing race or ethnicity where it doesn¹t belong is the ugliest form of political mudslinging. I am not sking for an apology. After defending our conservative values for the last five years I have developed some pretty thick skin. But these types of attacks demean the process, insult the voters, and illustrate why our Republican Party still has a long way to go if we are to appeal to every Arizonan.”
Montenegro asked Reagan to have her campaign retract their attacks and to promise that any potential campaign would be waged on the issues and the records and positions held by the candidates in the race, rather than on racial or ethnic stereotypes or attacks.
There were several tweets from Kyle Moyer & Company that targeted Montenegro including one from Chris Tolino, a consultant with that firm that contained the inappropriate attack.
An Interview with The Arizona Conservative
Isn’t the Conservative movement all about legislating morality?
In a word – no. All legislation, all lawmaking is someone’s morality. Those who say we’re imposing our morality on them are trying to impose their morality on us.
The Conservative movement is about advocating commonsense principles which have stood the test of time and which offer society the greatest opportunities of health and well-being.
Americans have the freedom to do a lot of things which were once considered harmful to the person, to others – and immoral. Rather than ask themselves “Can I do xyz,” people should ask themselves “Should I do xyz,” and “what are the consequences?” They don’t need government to decide that or ask for them. If everyone did this more often, we’d have fewer social problems, less crime, fewer divorces, less gambling addiction, less drug and alcohol addiction, less crime, and fewer socially transmitted diseases. And the bottom line is that we would then see healthier families, neighborhoods and communities, and far less government spending on trying to pick up the broken pieces. It’s a matter of personal accountability.
Aren’t we as a nation progressing by doing away with so-called “archaic” morality laws?
We are not progressing as a nation, period. American society is in a tailspin. We are going in reverse; progressives just aren’t willing to admit it. It is not possible to progress given the current direction and worldview of those shaping the culture.
C.S. Lewis wrote: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.”
We have removed the Judeo-Christian morality as the source of morality and decision making at the highest levels of state and federal government. But we act shocked when someone commits a horrible crime. We’ve said “no more of that old morality, we’ll take it from here.” But they’re taking it all in the wrong direction.
Sign of violence seen at a Mesa movie theater
So we’re teaching children – through government and the influence of the mass media culture – that it’s not only okay, but preferential, to kill the defenseless and treat people with incivility. Look at the titles of movies and TV shows: Everybody Hates Chris, Kill Bill, The Weakest Link. And we’re surprised children are killing children? You can’t expect a high level of civility when the foremost messages presented to the public are negative and destructive.
And then there are the special interest pressure groups raising huge sums of money to buy politicians and demand judges fabricate special privileges radically altering society. Anyone who opposes them, no matter how civil the opposition, is demonized and called “hater.” Many of them are threatened. The radicals are demanding opponents lose their jobs just for having a different viewpoint. This is disturbing. And it’s not the recipe for a civil society.
The real story of “progressivism” can best be described as man’s inhumanity to man.
Should Conservatives support influential Republicans who are supporting amnesty and same-sex “marriage”? They don’t have anywhere else to go, do they?
No, no and yes they do.
We as a nation should never abandon the rule of law. If we do, we get chaos – everyone just doing their own thing. It will be a nation in great conflict. Every self-respecting, orderly nation must control its borders. Mexico certainly does, though it criticizes those in the U.S. who demand we control ours.
It is not fair to legal immigrants for people to walk across the border illegally, going around the U.S. points of entry, and then demanding legal recognition and taxpayer benefits. Most people who immigrated here oppose illegal entry. Democrats only want to use these people’s votes: let them in, legal recognition and control over them and then demand their votes at election time.
Only about 2 percent of the population struggles with same-sex attraction, less than that in Arizona. Why should a tiny segment of the population be allowed to re-define marriage and subject more children to fatherlessness or motherlessness? The kids are not all right with this. In states where same-sex “marriage” is legal, very, very few homosexuals get married. For the most radical of the homosexual activists, it’s not really about marriage. It’s about destroying the traditional notion of family and marriage. We re-define marriage only at our own peril and a monumental loss of freedom. We opt for adult happiness over the well-being of children at our own peril and reap the social whirlwind. Homosexuality is not genetic, and same-sex “marriage” is not a civil right. That’s offensive to the people who truly suffered the indignation of slavery and denial of civil and human rights.
Republican leaders who want to join others by walking over the social cliff and into the moral abyss are absolutely undiscerning of what the end results will be. Conservatives must never acquiesce, must never join them or approve of this. There are more than enough conservative Republicans, independents and members of the Constitution Party to uphold principles and policies that will point this nation in the right direction.
Senator Harry Reid, other Democrats and many media and educational elites claim Conservatives are polarizing the nation. Is this accurate, and did conservatives create the culture war?
This is pure propaganda intended to direct attention away from those pushing for the most radical departure from U.S. history and tradition. The biblical explanation for this is calling evil good and good evil.
For most of America’s history, Judeo-Christian morality was the dominant worldview. But when those disagreeing with that worldview – John Dewey, Roger Baldwin, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and others – moved the nation in a different direction, Christians and Conservatives were slow to defend the nation’s traditional ideals. By the time Dr. James Dobson, President Ronald Reagan and many others began to respond, the moral center had collapsed. Christians had been lulled to sleep by how things had always been; they were the frogs in the pot who were boiled before they what hit them.
Now the Conservative movement is organized and defending the worldview that enabled America’s greatness and freedom. But the recent decades of indoctrination by educators and the mass media culture, along with the government’s shift to the secular humanist religion and animosity toward Judeo-Christian morality have taken a terrible toll on the country. It will be a long, hard climb to get out of this mess. It will not happen through politics. It will take a cultural shift. Everything else flows through the culture, and our culture is weak, decadent and in turmoil. We cannot allow leftists to steal our children’s hearts and minds and turn them against us. Every year millions of our kids are graduating from indoctrination in school and college and moving us further away as a nation from where we need to be. Our focus needs to be on salvaging our youth and saving this nation from the policies and worldviews that are poisoning our culture. We must change the direction our young people are being led into following. It’s that simple. If we do not accomplish this, our culture will only continue to deteriorate.
Rep. Montenegro Exploring Run for Secretary of State
State Representative Steve Montenegro (LD13), responding to a letter he received earlier this week from nearly 20 conservative community leaders, announced Thursday that he had formed an exploratory Committee to explore a campaign for the office of Secretary of State.
The third-term lawmaker released the following statement about this announcement:
“I am honored to have the confidence of so many great leaders from around the state. When respected leaders of your community come together and ask you to consider serving a worthy cause, it is impossible not to answer their call.”
“I appreciate their kind recognition of my voting record, and agree that ourparty faces challenges in communicating our message to every corner ofour state. Our message of smaller government, greater personal freedom, and opportunity for all, remains a winning message and I look forward to sharing it with everyone across this great state.”
The letter read, in part “As a conservative, you have a voting record second to none, which offers voters the assurance that you can be trusted to protect taxpayers and our Constitutional rights. You respect the rule of law and youcan be trusted to be fair and impartial in that important office. As a Latino Republican, and a legal immigrant into this country, you have the ability to take our message into every neighborhood in Arizona and connect with voters in a way that no other candidate can.”
Indoctrination, University of Arizona Style
Appearing on Fox News, University of Arizona graduate Katie Pavlich accused her alma mater of indoctrinating students and displaying intolerance toward conservative views.
“They try to crowd out not only any form of traditional ideology — conservative ideology — and also any ideology that does not fit with their leftist propaganda that they force onto their students in classes and threaten that they won’t pass the class unless they adhere to it.”
That drew a denial from Nyles Kendall, a political science major writing for The Daily Wildcat. It’s the prim and proper showpiece for how a left-wing education at the secular humanist university churns out left-wing propaganda. Kendall responded:
Of course, anyone currently enrolled at the UA knows that the university goes out of its way to accommodate different points of view. The UA College Republicans and the Bible-thumping proselytizers who set up shop on the UA Mall can hardly complain of having their views suppressed in any way.
That’s 100 gallons worth of water carrying for the secular humanist university. But apparently not everyone enrolled at or graduated from UA has been fully immersed in Kool-Aid swirling to the Left.
Then Kendall launched into his own attempt at indoctrinating Arizona alumni:
If trying to teach students the importance of inclusiveness is tantamount to “ideological indoctrination,” so be it. The world would be a much better place if folks like Pavlich got off their high horses and started embracing that kind of “radical liberalism.”
Said Kendall mounted on his own high horse – imposing his will on others and perfectly making Pavlich’s case for her: either get with the secular humanist program or risk being excluded and ostracized.
Oh, but Kendall wasn’t through shooting holes in his own argument. He finished with a bulls-eye:
So the lesson here, kids, is this: Accept and embrace each other’s differences and don’t baselessly accuse your alma mater of indoctrination.
No, the real lesson here is this: accept and embrace only the preferred viewpoints, the secular humanist positions. Or prepare for the full dose of indoctrination radiation … at Arizona, Arizona State, Northern Arizona, and every other tax-funded state university in America.
Obviously Some Don’t Share Sen. Kyl’s Gushing Career Review
A few years ago, U.S. Senator Jon Kyl stopped sending his weekly columns to The Arizona Conservative because we applauded the criticisms of his RINO boss man, U.S. Senator John McCain. We also criticized Sen. Kyl for not being an assertive leader in the Senate. So he chose to “grace” left-wing publications like The Arizona Republic with his weekly wit and wisdom while dissing his conservative base. He also supported pro-abortion RINO candidates like Michele Reagan for state legislative positions over true conservatives. And most notably Sen. Kyl was on the wrong side of the border invasion issue — and he opposed those in his own party who fought against the ongoing violation of our immigration laws and the continuous smuggling of drugs poisoning our culture and our citizens. Sen. Kyl obviously enjoyed playing second fiddle to Sen. McCain. And now Sen. Kyl once again “graces” us with a hubris-laden farewell as he nears retirement. His pious op-ed appears here on The American Spectator. And he takes a thorough basting from those posting responses, including this one:
Senator, as one of your constituents for these last several years, I would like to inform you that you were never mistaken for William Wilberforce. Or William Wallace. Never did you lead the charge for anything of importance. You do have good values, but you never went to the mat defending them. You played it safe. We wanted a strong leader. You have also conspired with Mr. McCain to blunt the conservative movement in your home state, supported some anti-life state candidates, and were never on the right side of the border invasion issue. Your hand-picked successor, Mr. Flake, is even weaker than you were and will be another no show on the Senate floor mat.
Count me, sir, as one constituent who’s dripping no tears over your farewell message above. Have a nice retirement! Keep playing it safe!
In the News Today
We’ve won the battle, but the fiscal war in Washington isn’t over yet, says Conservative HQ.
Conservatives save Americans from fiscal disaster. Read Robert Costa’s Inside the Meltdown
Obama’s gun grab will begin in earnest in January.
From Katie Pavlich, Towhall.com — A new Gallup poll shows the majority of Americans believe armed police stationed at schools would be the most effective way to prevent and stop school shootings. They also believe spending more money on the mental healthcare system would help prevent another Sandy Hook.
Jonah Goldberg says Democrats’ obsessive-compulsive racist charges are growing old — When will liberals stop living in the past? Specifically, when will they accept that they aren’t all that stands between a wonderful, tolerant America and Jim Crow?
Clark Judge’s tribute to the late Robert Bork — Judge Bork was, of course, a founder of the school of legal thought known as originalism. The Constitution should be read and interpreted, he maintained, according to the meaning the Framers and ratifiers understood it to have. It should not be treated as, in William F. Buckley’s term, a “Rorschach test,” that is, an inkblot in which activist judges saw whatever they chose to see. There had been a time when such a view needed no school of scholarship to support it. But that day was gone by the time Robert Bork arrived on the scene.
Former Reagan speech-writer Jeffrey Lord remembers Robert Bork — As America bids farewell to Robert Bork — a good man of great decency and class, a man with a brilliant legal mind and the ability to make his case — it is finally time to rewrite Ted Kennedy’s famous speech. To say, simply: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which the law is the Constitution of the United States.” Period.
Betsy McCaughey tells us there are three not-so-wise-men in Washington, D.C. — Obama is not the only one who deserves a lump of coal. So far, neither the president, his Democratic ally Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, nor Republican adversary Speaker of the House John Boehner has shown resolve to slow the nation’s out-of-control spending on borrowed money.
