Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
Note: I first wrote and published this a few years ago. I occasionally revise and republish it.
Two thousand years ago, a carpenter lived a conventional life for 30 years in a tiny village in the Middle East. Then he somehow became as they might say today, “radicalized.”
Historians agree that Jesus did exist. There are reliable ancient records of him. But most of what we know are opaque and contradictory accounts written decades after his death in what we now call the Gospel of the New Testament.
In one sense, those Gospel accounts are profoundly simple. They say Jesus was the Messiah prophesized in the Hebrew Bible. As such, he performed miracles to save those needing saving. He came back from the dead. That’s the word.
But in a personal sense, the Gospels present a more complicated man than the one presented in Sunday School or even adult church services.
The Democrats need every single Dem Senator in order to pass their “Build Back Better” bill. That’s the $1.7 trillion social-spend-a-palooza that really costs more like $4.9 trillion according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Several Dem Senators have reservations about BBB behind the scenes, but the one with the guts to stand up to it publicly is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Manchin publicly objected to the bill on the grounds that it pumps too much money into the economy at a time when inflation is rocketing, that it contains numerous provisions unrelated to the budget process such as illegal immigrant amnesty (where the Senate Parliamentarian has agreed with him, three times), that it is larded with too many social handouts that aren’t “means tested,” meaning they are welfare for people who don’t need it, and that the true cost of the bill is deliberately hidden by accounting gimmicks – and the CBO agrees.
No, that mostly happened with the election of somnolent, senile, drowsy, sleepy, lazy, sluggish, lethargic SlowJoe Biden (in Joe’s case, one such adjective is just not enough) and an ex-bartender called “AOC” which may stand for Auditory Out of Control.
In the old days, by contrast, the Democrats used to say some wise things. For example:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Today’s Democrats say that statement is racist. They say it’s not only permissible to judge people by the color of their skin, but mandated.
Those having white skin must be judged evil-doers, and those having black skin must be judged their victims. Skin color is real, while “character” is a white construct. That’s the thrust of the Critical Race Theory that is indoctrinating our children.
The Dems promote this divisive victimology because they think it keeps blacks on the Dem plantation. It works only so long as blacks stay there.
Store theft is now done openly. People load their arms or shopping carts with stuff they want and simply walk out the door. After closing, mobs of them smash the storefront and grab what they want. I’m reminded of stores in Mexico where padlocked steel curtains cover the glass storefronts each night. After closing, the store become a little fortress.
The left explains that this isn’t looting because . . . reasons. One reason is that it’s really a protest for social justice, whatever that is. Another reason is that stores have insurance, dontcha know, and so stealing from them isn’t really stealing. Another reason is that the looters are jobless due to COVID, and so their theft is excused by their hunger.
In other words, the left contends that stealing a Prada bag to feed their greed is just like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s children.
For seven years, I was the conservative columnist for the Aspen Times. Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one in Aspen and about twenty to one at the newspaper, where I was the one.
Despite the liberal leanings of the Aspen Times and its readers, my conservative column became the most-read thing in the newspaper. It often garnered more clicks than front page news and, I suspect, even the real estate ads for $4,000/sq ft condos.
But I evidently wasn’t hired to be a conservative success. Rather, I was hired to be a conservative token. On Christmas Eve in 2019 after savoring the clicks I had generated for seven years, they fired me in an email taking potshots at my writing. Their email culminated in the observation that my “values” did not comport with theirs.
About that last point, they may have been right.
That was a few weeks after my column again took aim at the Aspen establishment for soaking the public by giving themselves taxpayer-subsidized housing for dimes on the dollar. Those houses are sometimes adjacent the ski mountain and worth millions.
The liberal establishment that treats itself to this exorbitant housing at taxpayer expense includes, coincidentally, some of the editors, reporters and other columnists at the Aspen Times, the company that fired me after I reported on it. Small world, huh?
But Karma has a long memory.
The Karma that came my way was the good kind. I continued writing my blog after the Aspen Times fired me, and it took off. This was partly because I became more candid about my conservative sentiments when I no longer had to worry about being muzzled, partly because my firing became a national story which drew attention to me, and partly because I began writing about three times as much.
The website host of my blog, WordPress, tells me I recently passed the half-million mark in readers. To put that in perspective, the Aspen Times circulation is a few percent of that.
The Karma that came to the Aspen Times was different but equally fitting. They conduct a “Best of Aspen” contest every year where readers vote on “best” this and that. One category is “Best Columnist.”
For year 2020 when I was only writing a blog rather than a formal column after being fired by the Aspen Times back on Christmas Eve in 2019, the winner of “Best Columnist” was . . . yours truly.
It gets better. I’ve continued to write my blog and it continues to draw new readers. This year the Aspen Times once again held its annual “Best of Aspen” contest. For the second year in a row, I won “Best Columnist” even though I’m only writing a blog. The link is HERE at page 24.
And it gets even better than that. The marquee category in the Aspen Times’ contest is “Mr. Aspen.” (Don’t worry, they’ll surely have a “Mx. Aspen” soon.) In addition to voting me “Best Columnist” again, the readers of the Aspen Times in this year’s contest voted me “Mr. Aspen.” The link is HERE at page 22.
I demand a crown and the keys to the city. Or at least the keys to some of those taxpayer-subsidized slope-side digs.
One last thing. The Aspen Times is being purchased in a few weeks by a family-owned newspaper company out of West Virginia. The head is a registered Republican.
Merry Christmas!
For all this, I thank my readers. You’re the best. I may or may not have those bad values for which the Aspen Times fired me. That judgment is beyond my pay grade, at least in this world. But in any event, I’m in good company with readers like you. Thank you.
Join my readers with a free subscription HEREor just send an email to theAspenBeat@gmail.com.
The Supreme Court this week heard oral argument on the Mississippi law that limits abortion after 15 weeks from conception.
As someone who practiced law at the Supreme Court, I listened to the arguments. I think they’ll uphold the Mississippi law. I have a few observations.
Keep in mind that oral argument at the Supreme Court is typically more theater than jurisprudence. The Justices usually already have their minds made up from reading the briefs. But it’s worthwhile theater because it connects the public to the judicial process. Also, it gives some insight into the likely decision which won’t come till next Spring.
My first observation is that much of the public is confused about what the Court is deciding and what it is not. Blame the media for that. Clicks are generated and fires are stoked not by the media presenting cases, but by presenting parades of horrible.
Child rapist Joseph Rosenbaum, who was shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse
Some 20,000 sex criminals in Colorado get “treatment” from the state Sex Offender Management Board, or “SOMB.” It’s a big bureaucracy with layers of committees and “work groups.”
Rapists treated by the SOMB are of course not called “rapists.” In fact, that term appears nowhere on the big SOMB website. It was banned years ago because it became associated with criminals who coercively, forcibly and sometimes violently prey sexually upon others – persons who commit what we used to call “rape.”
Stated another way, the term “rapist” came to connote persons who rape. Such a connotation offended such persons and the bureaucracy that caters to them. Hence the modern non-judgmental and non-insulting term, “sex offender.”
Screen shot form drone video showing Rittenhouse being chased just before turning and opening fire
Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people. The first two died. It’s interesting to see who they were. The backgrounds of these guys is not determinative of Rittenhouse’s guilt or innocence – there’s no open season on creeps – but it’s relevant in piecing together the story of that deadly night.
The first who was shot served 14 years in prison for raping a child and then for dozens of in-prison disciplinary violations. He was a registered sex offender and was found guilty of assault, arson and narcotics crimes. He was wanted at the time of the shooting for bail-jumping and domestic abuse, and had been released from a hospital for a suicide attempt a few hours before the shooting. He was chasing Rittenhouse when Rittenhouse turned around and shot him.
“Woke” was coined by the left some years ago to describe a person who had become sensitive to the left’s pet issues, especially racial and “social justice” ones. It implied that a person disagreeing with the left about those issues was not just wrong, but unconscious. Becoming woke was unintentionally analogous to the Christian concept of being born again — which is appropriate since leftism is the left’s religion.
This catchy term was initially successful. But the left never succeeds at success. That’s because what’s important to them is not being successful in resolving grievances, but parading those grievances as evidence of their victimhood.
Victim status is more important to the left than winning – and easier too. If the left were a sports team, they’d be lazy and winless but they would always say, gleefully, that it’s because the referees robbed them.
The ACLU sued the United States for money on behalf of illegal immigrants for being separated from their children when they were caught and detained at the border. The Wall Street Journal reported a few weeks ago that the Department of Justice was considering settling the case for about $450,000 per individual – a settlement amounting to over a million dollars in the case of a family of three and over two million for a family of five.
The basis for the ACLU’s lawsuit on behalf of the immigrants is not clear. Most legal experts agree that whatever the morality of putting children into shelters, it is lawful. That’s what happens when parents commit a crime and are incarcerated. The lawsuit appears designed to establish new judge-made law to the effect that when the crime is illegal immigration, the children must be incarcerated with the parents (who may or may not actually be their parents) in an adult prison.
the Aspen beat 