By Cole

Our crumbling relations with the UK didn’t all begin overnight—it started a few months ago.

The Brits are most recently upset with America because the President continues to call BP “British Petroleum,” when they ditched that name a while back. It’s also upsetting to them because constantly connecting the worst oil spill in U.S. history to Britain isn’t exactly great PR for them—yet the President continues to refer to BP as British Petroleum.

The whole thing is like calling KFC “Kentucky Fried Chicken,” and blaming the state itself for fried-chicken induced comas across the country.

But that’s only the insult to the injury—by throwing his weight around with BP, he could potentially cost the British millions—billions—of dollars in revenue.  He even said he wanted to “know whose ass to kick” in BP.  The British will suffer as BP suffers.

Click Here To Finish The Article At The Future Speaks!

By Curtis Kalin

Beings I just returned from my freshman year of college, I believe the time is right to look back on a year spent inside the ivory towers of academia.

I entered college life knowing that I would be tremendously outnumbered ideologically. My principle on professors said that they were liberal until proven otherwise. After one year, none proved themselves to be conservative. However, I was surprised to find a couple that were liberal but also intellectually curious. Others held the quite open view that the point of being a professor is to preach from “on high” a political perspective. A year spent in uncharted waters honed my beliefs and attending the hub of the intellectual elite showed me some basics about the intellectual left in America.

First, on any issue on the horizon it is the liberal view that in some way individuals are not capable of fully living their lives, spending their money, or making important life choices. This takes many forms. Many would claim that we are simply too small in the scheme of things. We are so little compared to the big corporations and thus need someone to always help us fight them. On the surface this argument makes sense, due to the fact that in some cases money does equal power. But while that view tended to be the most pervasive, I discovered it was only the first layer of an onion. When you peel another back it reveals another reason individuals are incapable. Coupled with their lack of political power is their lack of civic knowledge. The line would go that the American people don’t pay attention to politics. That’s why politicians, who presumably follow day-to-day politics, must take a more assertive role. Again this seems plausible due to Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” where random folks can’t name the Vice President. Even this reason isn’t the end though. If you peel one last layer back you see the real reason individuals are deemed incapable, you’re stupid. In the end the first two layers stem from the individual’s inherent lack of basic knowledge. They are susceptible to fads, have unreasonable expectations, they have inherent bigotries, etc. They buy a truck even after the elite say they’ll kill us all. They buy guns even though they’re dangerous. They believe in a God that elite science cannot definitively prove. All of this is the underlying reason why we need a small intellectual elite to make decisions for the large, predominantly dumb populous.

This view of middle America as a bunch of redneck, gun-toting, Bible thumping, bigots was eloquently put in 2008 by an Illinois Senator named Barack Obama, a former college professor himself. All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion that Ronald Reagan said in 1964 on the choice America faced then…

“This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

This issue continues to be debated today.

Another issue that raised its head was the attack on the free market. I kept hearing how the market has enabled the rape and pillage of land and people. Thus, markets must be severely limited and highly regulated. But the facts that determined the raping of an individual were compared to our living standards in the wealthiest nation on Earth. If a farmer in the Caribbean gets paid 80 cents an hour that must be wrong because Americans get paid upwards of seven dollars. One professor attacked a corporation for paying farmers in Jamaica 40 cents a day to harvest the crops. She acknowledged that prior to the company coming to that country the farmer was paid 10 cents a day. She found a way to attack a 400% increase in pay as unethical. If a corporation made it, it must be bad. Even so, the hypocrisy was wild as she came in with designer clothes every single class.

Click Here To Read The Rest Of The Article At Gateway Patriot

By Alec Parent

Many liberals love to brag about how they are “pro-choice” on abortion. They try to paint their pro-choice ideology as indicative of them being the ones who support individual liberty and freedom. But is this really true?

Nope.

In reality, most liberals are among the most anti-choice people around. Don’t believe me? Let’s go down the list.

• Education- Many liberals don’t support school choice, oppose the greater expansion of private schools, and vote to maintain the Teachers Union’s stranglehold on public education.
• Guns- Many liberals support gun control and don’t believe people should be able to choose to purchase a gun to defend themselves.
• Healthcare- Many liberals don’t believe that people should be able to choose to buy insurance over state lines. They also believe in mandating that people buy health insurance.
• Social Security- Most liberals believe in forcing people to pay into social security. They don’t believe that people should be able to choose where to invest their personal retirement savings.
• Property Rights- Many liberals oppose allowing more freedom for homeowners to  choose to do what they please with their private property and have no problem with the abuse of eminent domain.
• Freedom of Ideas- Many liberals support the Fairness Doctrine which would, despite its name, eliminate the ability for people to choose the type of ideas they want to hear. (and I thought they were all about tolerance…)

Of all of things you can allow choice on, abortion is one of the most absurd. I tend to be quite libertarian on social issues, but people shouldn’t be able to kill an unborn child and play it off as a “personal choice”. It’s murder plain and simple. You don’t say that people should have the right to murder someone else on the street, so why is abortion ok? The only difference is that the unborn child can’t do anything to stop it.

There is one unifying trait in the list of choices posted above. It is that all of the choices don’t interfere with someone else’s personal rights. Abortion does just that.

What irks me even more is people who say, “Well, I don’t personally support abortion, but people should have the right to choose.” What a cop out. What if someone said, “I don’t support slavery, but people should be able to make the choice for themselves whether to buy a slave or not.”?

The conclusion here is this: While those on the left love to talk about personal freedom with regards to abortion, they don’t walk the walk when it comes to other areas of personal freedom. In the end they are statists. Abortion on the other hand isn’t an issue of personal freedom but of human life and murder. To interfere with the right to life that an unborn baby has is not a “personal choice” that people should be able to make.

Alec Parent is the founder and editor-in-chief of nextgenbloggers.com

By Ben Blay

The mainstream media blatantly declares that the Tea Party movement amounts to a clamoring mass of dumb, racist bigots. Joe Klein, a lead writer for Time magazine, said that the movement amounts to “sedition”. Furthermore, Chris Matthews proclaimed that the Tea Party movement is a “dangerous element of the right”.  These are serious accusations that I completely disagree with. The media is downright angry that the Tea Party has grown exponentially in the past year. With such growth, the movement is inevitably growing more political muscle. This is precisely why the mainstream media outlets are attempting to undermine the movement and make it appear illegitimate. For example, accusations made by the Huffington Post that Tea Partiers spit and swore at black Congressmen are completely inaccurate and designed to slander the movement. Absolutely no evidence has emerged to suggest that such events occurred, with several different videos of the “incident” failing to produce any derogatory acts. Given the current condition and attitude of America’s media today, it’s not much of a stretch for me to postulate that if a liberal movement as potent as the Tea Party came into existence, it would not experience such an odious wave of defamation.Not convinced that the Tea Party movement is a genuine, peaceful and well intended uprising in America? Allow me to enlighten you with a brief summary of my personal encounter with the Tea Partiers themselves. When I arrived with my conservative colleague Alec Parent to the Pleasanton Tea Party, we were greeted by a friendly representative that guided us to the parking lot. From afar, the rally appeared as one large summer barbeque. The smell of foods found at festivals filled the air while the muted noise of excited attendees cheering could be heard. As we finally entered, the vendors’ tents selling witty t-shirts and other merchandise gradually gave way to the representative tents. There were two Democratic tents at the rally, which is considerable because overall there weren’t too many of these politically oriented tents.

From my personal interactions, I would describe the actual attendees as amiable and well informed. The signs that were being picketed were very clever but not offensive in any manner. The overall demeanor of the crowd was never angry or spiteful. I never once heard an offensive, uneducated, or racist comment. We simply stood eagerly listening to what the speakers had to say about lower taxes, smaller government and greater personal responsibility. To be completely honest, having been slightly influenced by all of the claims from the media that the protests were characteristically hateful and violent, I was surprised when I left. I was surprised and disgusted that I, like so many other Americans, could believe that these demonstrations were somehow ill disposed. The only thing that the Tea Part is intolerant of is abuse from the government and the raising of taxes.

Now, I completely understand that you may not share my conservative values. I won’t bore you with an explanation of what I believe in, but I will say that I am not ashamed to be a conservative living in a liberal area. I do encourage closet-conservatives to come out; I know there are many kids my age who are simply intimidated by peer pressure to conform to liberal or Democratic ideas. Don’t let your Constitutional right of free speech be oppressed. However unpopular the Tea Party may be at Saint Francis or even in California for that matter, I personally feel that the movement would be less so if it received fair media coverage. That’s why I watch Fox News.

By Curtis Kalin

The answer doesn’t require a couple master’s degrees from Harvard or Yale. Heaven knows you can’t listen to Turbo-Tax cheat Tim Geithner.

Just look back at the bailouts, stimulus-es, and free cash handouts over the past two years. In fall 2008 the Federal Government bailed out Wall Street. Around the new year ‘09 the feds bailed out big auto companies GM and Chrysler. In February 2009 money was handed out to irresponsible state governments and thrown to so called “shovel-ready” government infrastructure jobs. To top it off, another car stimulus over the summer with “Cash for Clunkers”.

Meanwhile, President Obama and the Democrat leaders in Congress have been pushing major systematic transformations in healthcare, energy, and executive pay.

What economic picture does this paint? A very unstable one. Major institutions are being changed which will inevitably require more tax revenue, bankruptcy laws have been ignored, and there has been zero help for small business in America. These small businesses are the true backbone of the economy and engine of economic growth. They create three out of every four jobs. So why does it surprise anyone that in an environment where everyone is being bailed out except the small business, that small businesses aren’t expanding or blossoming? Why the surprise when, in an environment where an already unstable economy is being transformed and rules of the road being rewritten, that small businesses don’t take risks? Why dip your toe into the water when there’s a hurricane coming? Why build a city in the middle of an earthquake? The one thing that’s not being projected in Washington is a calm, stable future.

Click Here To Finish The Article At Gateway Patriot

By Liz Wheeler

You never hear the Democratic leadership talking about healthcare anymore. Why is this? Shouldn’t the passage of the healthcare legislation – heralded just a few short months ago as “a historic victory” – be an accomplishment worth bragging about? Have confidence in us! We passed the healthcare bill – we can handle this next problem without trouble!

Clearly Democrats don’t think it is in their best interest to broadcast their accomplishment since we rarely hear one of them mention healthcare.

Could it be that Democratic leadership realizes that trumpeting their healthcare “victory” has the complete opposite effect from the upswing of approval they were counting on? Ironic, isn’t it? Instead of inspiring America’s confidence in the ability of Congress and the Democratic leaders, discussion of healthcare stirs and motivates the American People even more deeply to protect themselves and hold Congress accountable for the laws they pass.

The Democrats in Congress and President Obama must find that inconvenient.

Click Here To Finish The Article At Young Con Blog

By Teddy McCullough

What is a Conservative? The dictionary defines the adjective as “resistant to change.” This statement is generally true. Conservatives are resistant to change. Some people may define that as (especially this year) resistant to President Obama’s so called “change.” Then the liberals think that we are entirely supportive of President Bush and his policies. WRONG. We conservatives are resistant to change of the founding policies. We are not supportive of President Bush or President Obama or many other presidents in the last two centuries for that matter.  The only exceptions to that statement is President Reagan and President Lincoln (you may disagree with me that they are the only ones) and even then, they are questionable.

Our founders were NOT conservatives, they were liberal. The founders were resisting the British government to create their own government, they were trying to CHANGE the way the country ran, that is the opposite of conservatism. But, every single person that supports the founding principles in government set by our founders, are conservative. Being conservative isn’t actually a political ideology; it is a state of mind, a type of character, and a way of looking at civil social order. In layman’s terms: conservatism isn’t a political party like Republican is, it is a way of looking at things, it is a belief that our original principles are how our government should ALWAYS operate. A true conservative in Congress would keep his/her oath of office and would “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” If a congressman or congresswoman voted for: The stimulus bill, the bank bailout bill, or the healthcare bill in the last year, they have broken their oath of office to which they SWEAR (or affirm) to. To tell you the truth (my New Years Resolution is to be straightforward with people), there is no TRUE definition of conservatism, just a broad spectrum of many definitions, I could go on for pages and pages of what a conservative is, and could be.6 beliefs that conservatives should believe in are:
1. A deep suspicion of the power of the state.
2. A preference for liberty over equality.
3. Patriotism.
4. A belief in established institutions and hierarchies.
5. Skepticism about the idea of progress.
6. Elitism
I will draw your attention to belief number 3. Patriotism, is the most important belief that conservatives share. Patriotism,  is a devotion towards a set of ideals from the roots of our founding, and specifically from a certain place. To a certain extent patriotism is conservatism, in the same way that being a Christian involves some level of conservatism. It a set of principles set forth in the past and carried forward to today and, hopefully, tomorrow. If you are unwilling to conserve anything this country has to offer (originally) you aren’t patriotic.

When the Republican party was first created, Republicans were conservatives, they were the same thing. But within the first 100 years of the Republican Party’s establishment, the Republican party pulled away from its original principles. Either the Republican Party needs to go back to its principles, or we need to change them ourselves.

By Alec Parent

If you could foresee the next great economic crisis years in advance, wouldn’t you want something done about it? Most people would, but judging by their actions, the majority of elected officials in Congress wouldn’t. What is the cause of this looming crisis you ask?

Entitlements.

Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and Obamacare will be the cause of the next great economic crisis. They are unfunded liabilities that will continue to grow and grow until finally we can no longer support the crushing weight of the money owed to them.

Even excluding the money that Obamacare will cost to fund, data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that by 2052 entitlements will consume all tax revenues. This chart also excludes the huge sums of money that the government will spend to fund its other social welfare programs.

Even more ominous is the fact that compared to spending on entitlements, the billions of dollars in other spending appears to be a drop in the bucket.

All the facts are pointing towards a huge economic collapse, but why does it seem like nothing is being done to prevent it. The answer is easy, because it is political suicide. Entitlement reform is called the third rail of politics for a reason. Whenever an elected official put forward ideas to combat the entitlement crisis, his or her opponents immediately accuse he or she of trying to take away Social Security or Medicare from the elderly.

Another motive for the lack of action by our elected officials is that they will most likely never suffer the consequences of the entitlement crisis. Most of them will either be dead or out of office when the crisis hits (although with the recent increase in spending and passage of Obamacare that crisis is looming closer and closer in the future). Why would a self-interested politician risk reelection when they wouldn’t suffer the consequences of inaction? The only politician thus far that has proposed a plan to avoid this crisis is Paul Ryan and his Roadmap for America’s Future. I have great respect for Rep. Ryan for taking this huge political risk to help prevent the looming economic crisis. I hope that other politicians will also take his serious approach to entitlements rather than playing politics.

The problem is that while those currently in power won’t suffer the consequences of the entitlement crisis, somebody will. That somebody is my generation. If we continue down our path of massive spending, entitlements, and European-style social welfare programs then people my age will be forced to pay the bill. This will mean middle class tax rates in the excess of 30% and a significantly lower quality of life than what we have now.

So, politicians in Washington, is that what you want your legacy to be?

Alec Parent is the founder and editor-in-chief of nextgenbloggers.com

By Andrew Harding

The other day my Dad and I were having another one of our conversations about the state of our beloved nation and what is going to become of it (I should note, these conversations almost always end in mutual disgust and frustration), we talked about the economy and the Democrat’s irrefutable disregard for anything the American public has to say. Again, the Liberals who represent certain parts of this nation have taken on the mentality of, “Even though you may not want this, we know you need it”. When will they understand that the American people do not use doublespeak as they do. We say what we mean and mean what we say, there should be no negotiation as to whether or not we are smart enough to make our own decisions.

Onto the “spend spend spend” mentality this administration has clearly adopted in a brazen effort to strip the private sector of it’s power and ability to stand alone. I find it very sad that while my Dad raised his children during the capitalist rush under Reagan I am forced to consider the prospect of raising my children under the most socialist administration this country has seen since Teddy Roosevelt. If we continue on the path Obama has set for us not only will our children not know what a truly free market looks like, they will be strapped with the burden of this administrations spending frenzy. The White House will have us believe that all of the programs they have put into place have been huge successes, but this has become routine for them. Every major setback is downplayed while every minor victory is treated as the solution to everything. Take for example, Obama’s most “successful” program, Cash for Clunkers. Yes, car sales rose dramatically under that program and everybody seemed prepared to spend money again. What you won’t hear Mr. Obama admitting anytime soon is that many dealerships have yet to be reimbursed for their losses, and I’ll give you one guess who gets the honor of paying for that. You also won’t hear that car sales dropped through the floor several months before and after Obama’s great “success”. Before I jump into the debate on healthcare reform I would like to remind everybody what happened the last time the U.S. Government spent one trillion dollars of our money. The first thing Mr. Obama did when he took office was to push through a massive spending bill that was designed to “create” more jobs and “stimulate” the economy, unfortunately it accomplished neither of these things. Obama said unemployment would never reach 8.7% if his bill was passed, we are currently sitting at an unemployment rate of 9.7% (Another small note, unemployment has dropped .4% since December and only 36,000 Americans lost their jobs today so that’s good news right? Thank you Mr. Reid). So what happened? Obama did not tell a lie, he did “create” jobs. Even if that meant using stimulus money to expand ACORN and other programs the government has it’s tentacles wrapped all over. The fact remains, we are worse off today than we were before the stimulus was passed. But now this administration has the audacity to assume they can just pull the wool over our eyes again and we will accept it because “They know what’s best”?

As massive and destructive as the stimulus was for this country, trying to pull of healthcare reform at a time like this is pure insanity. Don’t get me wrong, there are ways to reform healthcare that don’t involve destroying the country, but I have a feeling not many are floating around those infamous closed door meetings. For example, why is opening health care up across state lines not being discussed? Because Liberals would rather handcuff a perfectly capable industry and then complain that it’s not performing correctly. They did it with Banks and they are getting very close to doing it with healthcare. To say that this healthcare program, including the public option, is deficit neutral is a slap in the face to all Americans. We know enough to understand who will end up paying for it in one way or another.

The point is, all these different spending bills and unnecessary reforms are costing us in ways we can’t even comprehend. My children and grandchildren will pay for the mistakes that I allow happen. I can’t turn the other cheek knowing that I have the ability to salvage a few mortgaged futures, I don’t think any of us can.

Steven Crowder, Contributor

I should say right off the bat that I can’t just blame Brad Pitt. The plague of closed-mindedness permeates every corner of Hollywood… Brad Pitt just happens to be the one who’s most recently crystallized it so perfectly. Much like the time Megan Fox tipped Tinseltown’s hand when she said that if given the chance, she’d urge Megatron to only murder the “white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America,” Brad Pitt had a tongue-slip with his anti-Christian comment this weekend. However, I must give credit where credit’s due folks: he made the comment on the Bill Maher show. It takes guts to take such a stance on that program. Doesn’t at least a part of you admire his moral fortitude?

To start with, Brad Pitt said that he was thinking of running for mayor of New Orleans, on an “Anti-religion, pro-legalization of marijuana and pro-gay marriage” platform. I know, I know… What a risky position to take in Tinseltown, right?

After Brads continued “anti-religion” commentary, Bill Maher decided to step up the game with his uniquely hateful brand of bigotry that’s made him oh so popular with 13-year-old atheists everywhere. In a display of “compassion,” Pitt went on to say, “Well I don’t think any Christians watch this show anyway.”

See what happened there…?  Without even realizing it, Brad Pitt’s showed us that his use of the word “religion” is really inter-changeable with “Christianity,” as is the case with most of Hollywood. The entertainment industry is never anti-Religion; it’s simply anti-Christian. This goes both hand-in-hand with Hollywood’s obsession with immorality, as well as their compulsion to take shots at society’s whipping boy while praising themselves for their “risky performances.”

Brad then went on to say, “I never wanted to step on anyone’s religion” (don’t worry, that doesn’t stop him from doing so immediately afterward), “Until I started to see it define policy.”

Ooooh okay Brad, I get it. You don’t mind people having a strong worldview… Until it begins to manifest itself through their actions… Unless of course their world-view is “pro-marijuana” such as your own as displayed by your subsequent trip down memory lane where you fondly recalled your joint-rolling escapades.

Hollywood Bottom-line: If someone’s “religion” is nothing more than moral relativism, it should absolutely determine policy. If it actually adheres to an established code of conduct/ethics, you better keep it to yourself you, jerk!

For the rest of the article, check out my friends at Big Hollywood!