Bacon's Rebellion

“Squirming in Virginia” written by Lee Hockstader was published in the Washington Post on Friday, Jan 28, 2005. There is really nothing new in this article other than the fact that Hockstader puts things in a rather blunt perspective.

The article makes the often heard arguments about Tim Kaine having a problem because of his beliefs against capital punishment, while Jerry Kilgore is conflicted on the tax issue, because he supported the anti-tax contingent of the Republican Party during last year’s legislative debacle, while he is now endorsing the re-election of the 19 Delegates who voted for the tax increase.

Hockstader fails to mention that Kilgore’s support against the tax increase was lukewarm and rather muted. He only found his voice after Sen. George Allen and former Gov. Doug Wilder spoke out loudly against the folly of tax increases. In that regard, Kilgore ended up alienating the anti-tax contingent of his Party—the same folks he was ostensibly supporting when he spoke out against the tax increases.

However, what’s really an eye opener is the liberal slant in Hockstader’s column. This sentence says it all: “Forced to choose sides, Kilgore went with the anti-tax true believers over the budgetary pragmatists.”

Apparently, to Mr. Hockstader the largest tax increase in the history of our state that has resulted in a $1+ billion surplus is the stuff that materialized out of “budgetary pragmatism.” In the liberal thinking tax increases are always good, no matter how unnecessary or misleading.

It is this sort of liberal bias that has made the mainstream media’s news coverage totally unreliable. As long as they continue down the same approach, they will continue becoming more and more irrelevant.

Following my Nov. 29, 2004, column in Bacon’s Rebellion on the “Warrenton Miracle” and the potential candidacy of Mayor George Fitch for the Republican nomination for Governor, I have been inundated with messages from a number of people.



Predictably, the Republican establishment is unhappy at the thought of an intra-Party challenge. Such contests are expensive and the conventional thinking is that they drain the campaign resources of the leading candidates. That sort of thinking only looks at one side of the equation, however.

In reality, intra-Party contests cause a healthy discussion of the issues and force the Party to reassess its priorities and direction. Just going through the motions of picking the candidate that’s been campaigning the longest is no different than holding a coronation.

Here’s is a quote from a message I recently received about the direction of the Kilgore campaign: “Jerry Kilgore’s campaign manager has him following the Mark Earley strategy and if changes are not made, Kilgore will suffer the same sort of defeat that Mark Earley did.” This sort of sentiment is pretty representative in the email messages I get and what I hear from the folks I talk to.

I’m given to understand that George Fitch plans to kick off his campaign on February 8, 2004. Given his economic track record on cutting spending—and taxes—in Warrenton, his candidacy should rejuvenate the dialog as to the direction our Government has taken given the recent double-digit spending increases in the State budget.

Political correctness has struck the Virginia Military Institute. Eight cadets are under investigation for wearing inappropriate attire to a Halloween costume ball. Two cadets dressed in pink as winged fairies, one painted himself black and wore a loincloth, and three–the ones who evidently stirred the greatest response–donned swastika armbands and gave the Nazi salute. Now student investigators are pondering punishments ranging from verbal admonishments to grueling solo marches. (See the story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

Let me make it very clear: I don’t find anything remotely amusing about Nazis. War crimes and genocide are not funny. Neither do I find anything amusing about poking fun at half-naked, South Sea savages, or gays (assuming that’s who the cadets dressed as fairies had in mind).

But do tasteless adolescent pranks really require institutional chastisement? It’s one thing to have actually committed war crimes as a servant of the Third Reich. It’s another thing to wear a Nazi armband and espouse the Nazi ideology–acts that, as offensive as they are to most Americans, are protected by the right to free speech. It’s another thing entirely to wear a swastika to a costume party and pretend to be a Nazi. Juvenile? Sure. Insensitive? No question. But was the act so egregious to warrant a punishment more serious than the social opprobrium of the offenders’ fellow students?

I don’t think so. The people we should worry about aren’t adolescent cadets with a lousy sense of humor. It’s the scolds–the true heirs of the totalitarian Nazis–who would convert expressions of undesirable thought into punishable offenses.