By Fayth

Pastor Obama

2012-02-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

Jeannie "DAngelis sums it up nicely.

Suddenly we have a preacher in the White House.

The State Rules the Church

2012-02-01T12:42:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to my latest article on American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/the_state_ruling_the_church.html

2012-01-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

It Won’t Matter

Delaware Politics, a blog site to which I frequently contribute, has been dedicated to countless threads which involve endless discussion, attacks and counter attacks over local contests, personal disagreements and acrimonious assaults, Republican and Democrat alike.

In the end, it won’t matter.

Concerns about the Delaware GOP’s strategies going forward, promotion of Republican candidates and conservative fiscal policies also have provoked endless discussion.

It won’t matter.

It won’t matter because in the end, UNLESS the current trend toward the dismantling of federalism is stopped and reversed in 2012, states’ rights and states’ abilities to enact laws and to establish policies will be completely eliminated.

In the place of state governments and the exciting and sometimes brawling local politics determined by a deeply involved citizenry; in place of state governments, traditionally the breeding ground for policy innovation, will be a faceless, bureaucratic federal leviathan which will dictate policy from above.

States will be reduced to mere appendages of the bureaucracy, distributing monies and enforcing regulations according the dictates of entities neither accountable to the electorate nor interested in the individual citizen.

In other words, states will become much like the nations within the orbit of the Soviet Union—still retaining distinct names and local cuisine, but wholly subservient to the orders of the Soviet regime.

We have already seen the stranglehold bureaucracies such as the EPA hold on states and how the endless stream of regulations occupies the energies and monies of our own state of Delaware.

The EPA is only one of many such entities. We have yet to see how thoroughly the predations of the new federal health care system will eviscerate Delaware’s health care system.

How can we make Delaware and other states matter again?

We have to fight for the revival of true federalism, against the tyrannous increase of executive power and the overreach of the courts.

In order to do that, the GOP needs to unify itself by adhering to constitutional principles and to start from the bottom up to reform what is being imposed from the top down.

To that end, local entities need to instill in themselves and their constituents an unbendable resistance, a concerted effort to resist the ever increasing federal intrusion into states, local and personal rights.

It matters.

The Abolition of Gender

2012-01-17T10:46:00.001-08:00

My latest article published on American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/the_abolition_of_gender.html

A Tale of Two Leaders

2011-12-19T13:20:00.001-08:00

One was a portly, pompadoured shrimp of a man whose ubiquitous, round-faced image adorned every public space and private home. Kim Jong-Il, devoted to his Hennesy cognac and pleasure girls, inflated himself into a god like his father before him. Omnipotent, he starved, beat, imprisoned and tortured his people into total submission.

Upon news of his death, they in turn have reacted as abused people often do, revealing by their ritualistic wailing that an entire folk can suffer from the Stockholm syndrome-reacting as slaves with craven acceptance and adoration of a relentlessly vicious master, mourning on cue.

The darkness that is North Korea is abstractly but truly revealed viewed from outer space. To the South of the Korean peninsula is a land bespangled with galaxies of star lights; to the North, the land is a black hole with one dim twinkle representing the capital city of Pyongyang. Other lights are extinguished or never lit.

But a down to earth, closer view of the hereditary regime has continually revealed what a view from outer space could never reveal; namely, the incredible suffering of the North Korean people under the tyrannical leadership of Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Jung Il. The establishment of a national cult characterized by mind control, enslavement and imprisonment reaches its nadir in the North Korean gulag. The cult’s leaders and devotees have continually threatened the entire populace of the country; and now, with the nearly certain development of nuclear weapons, destabilization of the entire far East, if not the globe.

The hellish country, complete with tortures straight out of Hieronymus Bosch’s scenes of Hell is what a godless communist society-to use a much ridiculed but accurate phrase–looks like. The fact of the matter is that the leaders of North Korea have routinely stamped out Christianity as well as other faiths in order to establish the cult of Kim, viciously and systematically martyring or imprisoning anyone who worships a God other than the Dear Leader.

But that is what communist regimes do. They create a Hell on earth.

The second world leader who died this week was Vaclav Havel. Havel, his heavily lined face ravaged by smoking, health problems and long periods of imprisonment, was a Czech playwright, renegade Christian and first president of democratic Czechoslovakia.

He knew something of the hell that is communist oppression, living as he did for decades under a relentless Stalinist regime. His ambitions quashed during the 1968 Soviet invasion of his homeland, he was driven underground, becoming a symbol of resistance who suffered imprisonment, broken health, and the silencing of his voice.

Nonetheless, due to him, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa and others, Soviet communist domination collapsed in 1989. From thence forward, Havel devoted himself to the proclamation of the need for establishing a public morality eroded by communist tenets, starting with his opening speech as the new president of Czechoslovakia:

“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another,” he said. “We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other. . . . Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension. . . . They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway.”

Havel articulated the moral rot which is communism and presented the healing way of faith and morality so despised by communist leaders like that of Kim Jong-Il. He spoke to our own country, warning it about its desertion of God, saying, “The only genuine core of all our actions-if they are to be moral-is responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success.”

Our ultimate responsibility, he concluded, is to the transcendent realm above us.

The contrast between the two leaders could not be greater or more instructive as we regard the state of our own nation and its need for moral clarity.

As always, the choice represented by the two leaders is not a matter of mere words, but a decision fostering either life or death.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/a_monstrous_ramshackle

Fed Buys a Ticket on the Titanic

2011-12-04T13:41:00.001-08:00

My latest post for American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/fed_buys_a_ticket_on_the_titanic.html

A Kentucky Funeral

2011-12-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

Glenn Roland Voshell was buried on a hill on his Kentucky farm the day after Thanksgiving.

“We can still do that here in Kentucky,” his wife Gayle said.

And so my brother was laid to rest on the land he loved.

His Amish neighbors volunteered horses and wagons to carry him to his final destination. The horses chuffed and snorted as they plodded up the hill with their cargo of grandchildren, who momentarily had forgotten the reason for their ride up the hill. As all little ones do, they seized the moment, laughing with pure joy over an unexpected hayride.

We adults trudged in silence behind the wagon loaded with Glenn’s body as a kindly sun warmed our shoulders, a soft breeze blew across our faces and the vaulted blue sky looked down. The jingling of harness hardware and the soft thud of the horses’ hooves were the only sounds. A hawk wheeled overhead.

The wagon came to a halt at the top of a hillock surrounded with rolling hills turned blue-grey by the late morning mist. A gaping wound had been dug into the side of the hill to receive the body. A mound of earth was heaped beside the gap.

The Amish neighbors standing slightly back, respectfully apart from the family, who stood immediately in front of the pine casket. The brethren were all dressed somberly in black, the men with white shirts, the women with carefully pinned blouses and snow white bonnets. No one spoke.

“I want to be buried in a pine box,” Glenn had said.

His son Jaret honored his dad’s wishes, spending three full days constructing his father’s casket. The wood was fresh with an unvarnished hue of light gold, the lid carved with a mansard curve, the rails for the pall bearers made smooth. It was a thing of beauty. A small crystal vase filled with white carnations was set on the coffin lid. The slight scent from the flowers drifted out, dissipating over the green hills.

The preacher spoke briefly of the Christian faith that had animated Glenn’s life. He preached the hope of the resurrection, life everlasting. He spoke the gospel truth.

One by one, family members came forward and tossed a single flower on top of the lowered casket. The grandchildren clung to their parents and grandmother in uncomprehending grief, some not sure what was happening. One had wondered if her grandfather’s heart was still beating. “Were they sure his heart stopped?” she said, as she asked to put her hand on his chest at the viewing. Now she knew his heart had truly worn out.

The mourners followed the wagons back to the house, where church folk and the brethren had lovingly prepared a meal for us mourners.

“I am hungry,” my sister Nina said. “Isn’t it just true that life for the rest of us goes on? We get hungry and we have to eat.”

“I know,” I said.

We ate.

I sat across the table from the Amish neighbors and thanked them for helping, adding I thought the burial was the simplest, most beautiful and deeply profound I’d ever seen. “That’s all right,” they said. “We wanted to help.” They seemed a little embarrassed to be thanked with such flowery language. “Well,” I said, trying to match their simple kindness with equally simple words, “Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” they said.

We talked.

Nina, with her gift of connecting with people, found the Amish woman sitting next to her had been one of eighteen children and had had eight of her own. When asked, the woman confessed she had made all the pies for Thanksgiving, including the raisin cream pie we had wolfed down. And, yes, the pie crusts were all homemade. She smiled shyly, her kindly blue eyes lighting up. She offered to give Nina her recipe.

I reflected on how miraculous this gathering was. Here was community, family, neighbors and church folk all bonded by love and Christian faith.

Here, gathered at my brother’s funeral, was an America fast vanishing, often overlooked and sometimes openly despised. Here were works of the hands, works of the plow and works of faith. Simple things. Profound things. Things of the heart. Things my brother loved.

Here, too, I thought, was the heart of our country. If it were to stop beating forever, the land will perish.

God, I prayed. Don’t let the heart stop beating.

Stop!! Tax that Christmas Tree!

2011-11-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it’s the little things governments do that rankle the most. It’s the small stuff that gets under the skin.

We here in England don’t want much—just a little Stamp Act. A tiny tax on the paper you use to support our war efforts on your behalf. It’s so small, why bother to get it through the legislature?

Only three pence per pound of tea. What’s the big deal? Your tea actually will cost you less. Why should we ask you about taxation?

And now, just in time for Christmas, a tax of a mere 15 cents per tree in order to promote the sale of fresh trees. What’s the big stink? We’re just trying to strengthen the Christmas tree industry. Aren’t you for private enterprise?

Well, yes. We conservatives are for private enterprise. But something about this new Scrooge tax, just in time for the happy holdays, smells funny.

It’s all worded in perfectly respectable legal-ise, a language Americans have regarded--with some justification--with uneasy suspicion.

Here’s the deal, according to Heritage:

“In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expand existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).”

Right.

Like Christmas trees really, really need evaluation, research and promotion.

We already have songs written and sung to the trees--“Oh, Tannenbaum, wie grun sind deine blatter”—along with endless promotion of Christmas trees and their decorations-- lights, ornaments, tinsel, stars, angels, popcorn and cranberries.

What American family needs encouragement to buy a Christmas tree? The tree is a universally beloved symbol of the holiday that needs no improvement, no marketing plan. The consumption of Christmas trees is a given.

Something else is afoot; namely the establishment of yet another useless federal entity dedicated to useless efforts, the cost of which is passed on to the American consumer.

It’s government running amok as usual, scrambling for yet more revenue from the harried U.S. citizen. Tax, tax and tax.

I’m reminded of Ronald Reagan’s memorable quote: “Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Christmas trees may not move, but the tree tax surely illustrates Reagan’s point that an ever growing government is in fact inclined to tax everything, including trees.

Maybe we could start calling the trees “Holiday trees.”
Then there would be nothing to tax.

Just my fifteen cents.

The American Revolution of 2012

2011-11-03T12:16:00.001-07:00

From the American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/the_american_revolution_of_2012.html

PETA Sues SeaWorld

2011-11-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

My article on PETA's suit against SeaWorld can be found at: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/11/peta_sues_seaworld.html

Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Judaism

2011-10-30T19:24:00.001-07:00

My recent article form American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_occupy_judaism.html

Hurricane Hazel

2011-08-27T11:53:00.001-07:00

When the candle flames on the dinner table suddenly went horizontal and the Sterno fire under the pot of creamed tuna was nearly extinguished by the wind coming through our house, I knew by my parents' faces that we were in trouble.

The house, probably never steady to begin with, had been cut in half by the good sea captain who had owned it in the 1800's, rousted out from its original location and toted by flatbed to its new place in Georgetown, Sussex County. The old place was never the same after its radical surgery. Not even the addition of a spiffy new, multi-paned storm entry could conceal its weird lopsidedness.

I was sure Hurricane Hazel would almost do it in.

My dad had lashed the storm entry to the house, and had closed all the shutters, so we all sat in eery darkness with only a couple candles shedding light into the damp, dark recesses of the dining room.

We kids were nearly mute, sitting in wide-eyed silence listening to the howling of the wind, which increased in shrillness minute by minute. The house began to shake, back and forth; back and forth.

"I think we should pray and say a blessing over the food God has provided us," my mom said shakily. I was thinking maybe we should get out of there, but my opinion wasn't solicited.

"Dear God," my mother began. "We pray for the safety of all in this terrible storm. We ask you to be with us and to protect us. We thank you now for this food and ask you to bless it to our bodies and us to your service."

Ever a lover of abstractions completely detached from the overwhelming realities of the moment, Mom continued on as serenely as Jesus asleep in the boat during a storm. "We especially pray for all the starving children of the world, especially in India, where our missionaries are toiling. Amen."

I stared at Mom. India! India!! What about us kids right here??

"Maybe we should go into the storm cellar," I suggested helpfully.

"That would be just dandy," said my brother Frank, Jr., "If we had a storm cellar."

"Well," I said, never one to give up on a great idea even when proved wrong, "I'm sure Sally Iness has a storm cellar. Why don't we go to her house and stay there?"

I knew by Dad's immoveable countenance that wasn't about to happen, because my dad would never ask for help for anything; and I do mean anything. I never saw a repairman, a painter, a home improvement guy darken the door of our house. Dad did it all. I looked at him. He had the stiff expression of a bulldog I was very familiar with. As usual, he barely moved his lips.

"We are staying right here," he said.

The house was shaking steadily, swaying from side to side. The floorboards creaked and groaned. The candle flames sputtered, the Sterno flame went out. The storm door portico came loose, the panes of glass shattering loudly on the porch.

All seven kids looked around in the dark. Dad didn't budge. He didn't even flicker an eyelid.

"We're gonna die," I thought. It was a simple thought and provided momentary relief. "Yes," I thought,"we are going to die."

"We'll be fine," Dad said, in a quiet voice that could scarcely be heard over the shrieking wind.

As it turned out, he was right.

We were fine. Apart from the storm door addition, which was completely pulverized, the old place stood. Yes, there were a few more leaks in the roof, but dad would eventually fix them all.

"No sense paying a roofer," he was later to say. "They charge too much. I can do it myself."

And he did.

Yes, Rehoboth beach was competely rearranged for years to come, and Gerogetown had a massive cleanup to attend to, but dad was right.

We were fine.

"Moderation" is no virtue in today's politics

2011-08-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

Oswald Spengler, whose 1918 work, Decline of the West was enormously influential in Western intellectual circles, was the architect of a cyclical view of history. Spengler pointed out that new seeds of a culture shift begin when a few far-sighted people begin to depart from the consensus reigning over a given culture. Their ideas will at first seem revolutionary and are often greeted with contempt and ridicule and even persecution, but their ideas create a wedge capable of dislodging monolithic thinking. Step by step, the new point of view begins to change opinions and institutions until finally the new point of view is no longer new, but deeply embedded in the political and social structures. Every part of culture becomes saturated with one way of thinking as the economy, technology, religion, music and the arts and even architecture capitulate to the one way.

The way of thinking which presently dominates Western institutions, including The United States, is left liberal progressivism. The philosophy of progressivism, although at its apogee, is rotten to the core, its
economic tenents and drive toward statism on the verge of collapse. Force and regulation are the chief means of preventing its collapse. The entire structure has rigidified past the point of renovation. But the dying philosophy still holds sway in nearly all the institutions that matter, having even infiltrated the military.

Against the monolith of leftist progressivism stands a resurgent conservatism, the principles of which were once dominant in the United States, and which now are being resurrected and fanned into life by the rise of para-political and overtly political organizations which seek to turn the tide.

In between the two political viewpoints, or so they like to think, are those who call themselves moderates or centrists. They believe two political poles can be brought together by compromise.

It can’t be done.

As Spengler pointed out, when the age is radical, as it now is and has been in the US since the 1960’s, moderation is a dangerous and self-defeating illusion. No compromise between leftists and conservatives is possible.

As Bruce Walker has pointed out in an article entitled “Moderation Mongers:”

“...The ideological spectrum is simply a convenient invention by those who would lull us into sleep so that they can manacle our hands and feet without a fight. Although many of us have come to believe that the true enemy of our values is the "far left," the real enemy is the mythical ‘center.’ "

Walker believes “moderation” is a toxin with its roots in the history of the “two most malign totalitarian systems in modern history;” namely, Nazism and Soviet style communism. As early as November of 1931, Nazi propaganda was proclaiming the terms “Left” and “Right” were outdated concepts and that they themselves were centrist.

Walker writes:

“The 1934 book Hitler's Official Programme, by Nazi economist Gottfried Feder, states: "We know that neither the Left, with their false promise of 'Down with Capitalism,' nor the Right, with their phrases about the Fatherland, are capable of initiating a new world epoch, for neither Marxists nor reactionaries could alter anything in the nature of our economy."

In brief, Hitler opposed both the Right and the Left, calling each extremists while posing his own philosophy as a middle ground on which all Germans could safely tread.

Bolsheviks were not far behind the Nazis as propagandists who posed as “centrists,” setting themselves up as the ones who truly understood the political process, condemning both “Rights” and "ultra-Lefts” as mere opportunists, while in between lay the more sensible approach of the so-called Stalinist “moderates.”

The dilemma of conservatives is one that is self-imposed if, in the current milieu of radicalism, they buy into a “moderate” viewpoint and once again support “moderate” candidates who are clearly only a few steps behind the political status quo of leftist progressivism, gradually and incrementally agreeing piece by piece to the agenda of the Left.

It is a tempting propect, for when levers of power are controlled by a particular group of people with a unified mindset who shut out conservatives, the impulse to compromise is strong, as has been true of certain members of the GOP establishment. Power once gained is not easily relinquished. Upstarts are viewed with suspicion and not likely to gain a place at the table.

The result is that a pattern among Republicans has been established. As one commenter on Walker’s article noted, the pattern is to pick the most liberal candidate, one they can 'work' with ideologically. He asks: "Why was nothing done to prevent this again? Maybe the GOP establishment wanted to 'Tea Party proof' the process. To help ensure a 'moderate', who wouldn't rock the boat, got the votes and conservatives marginalized.”

The question for the Republican Party, national and state, is whether or not the “Moderate Fix” is already in. The commenter noted above asks if conservatives are once again being thwarted within the Party.

His is a legitimate question, not only for the national GOP, but for Delaware’s Republican Party. Such is the pressure to conform to the reigning and all-pervasive ideological paradigm that the Democratic Party winds up being influential in picking the Republican candidates they regard as the least obnoxious in opposition to their philosophy, as happened with the selection of John McCain.

He concludes, “The debt ceiling debate mostly revealed that the GOP establishment still has no spine, still wants to go along to get along, and likely will not take the bold steps needed to save the Republic. We need a new type of citizen politician who will scale back entitlements, relinquish their own power, defy the Progressive agenda, and put their careers at risk. “

Amen to that.

Walker himself concludes:

"Moderation" in personal behavior is wise and virtuous. We should balance exercise with leisure, study with resting, quiet solitude with conviviality -- but that is not the "moderation" which [some]politicians... intend. Political "moderation" means cowardice and demands prostitution to some notional center. It is liberty, not moderation, which cherishes and defends toleration. It is the constant, divinely inspired moral system of Christians and Jews which provides generous and honorable society. Goldwater said it best in 1964: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Moderation in moral values and political principles crush the conscience and the soul. The end of those shuffling feet of moderates along the meandering road of their relativism is the horror of the Gulag.

Amen to that as well.

Jerusalem No Longer in Israel, According to US State Department

2011-08-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

One of the favorite tactics of Stalinist Russia was the re-writing of history, including completely erasing certain facts and figures from the historical slate. Down the "memory hole" went uncomfortable facts such as the Ukraine famine of the early 1930's. Power players once photographed with Stalin suddenly vanished, their visages photo-shopped out of existence.

While all administration are afflicted with a certain amount of revisionism designed to keep their legacy secure, it appears our current administration takes the cake.

According to a recent article in the Weekly Standard, the state department has been busily expunging the words "Jerusalem, Israel" from all photo captions and articles.

Spokesmen say they are only following the example of the Bush administration, but as it turns out, they have also gone back and eliminated the words "Jerusalem, Israel" from the records of the Bush administration. So all erasures are of their own doing during this present administration.

Aside from the utter gall it requires to place the blame for the erasure of the words on the back of the Bush administration, what can this strange obliteration of the location of Jerusalem possibly auger?

You may well ask.

What it probably means is that the Obama state department has caved in to the demands of the Palestinians, who insist Jerusalem rightfully belongs to them, not to Israel.

It also means that Israel, having no legitimacy as a nation in the eyes of Palestinian leaders, has no city called "Jerusalem."

It's just one demand from the Palestinians which enables them to actualize their ultimate goal; namely, the extinguishing of Israel itself.

Super Sized Congressional Committee

2011-08-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

Dede Koswara, a 39 year old Indonesian, has gradually been trapped inside a body which has been gradually covered by huge, hardened warts resembling bark. Tree man, as Koswara is called, has become a grotesque, monstrous distortion of the slim youth he once was. Encapsulated by an ever growing exoskeleton, he, like Elephant Man Joseph Merrick, has been deprived of mobility, his ability to work, or even walk a few feet without exhaustion.

While an American doctor was able to help somewhat, Indonesian authorities have forbidden Koswara to travel to the West, citing fears he would be exploited as a medical research project. As the bark like warts return, his fate seems to be sealed. The man within is dying.

Koswara and his creeping exoskeleton serve as a living metaphor for the ever growing bureaucracy afflicting the life and health of the people of the United States of America.

The last few administrations have seen an ever accelerating expansion of regulatory excess comparable to the warts encapsulating Koswara’s body. A plethora of czars, agencies, commissions, committees and appointees are choking the life out of the United States.

The process has accelerated to warp speed by the Obama administration, which continues to create a supra-constitutional exoskeleton surrounding the body politic, effectively disabling citizens from making any significant movement to change themselves or their nation. Like Tree Man, the people are gradually being reduced to painfully walking a few steps forward before exhaustion brought on by regulatory excess brings them to a halt. Even their voices are in danger of being permanently stifled.

Most savvy Americans are aware that supra-legislative agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, are being used to circumvent congressional authority and that the roster of czars are accountable to virtually no one other than the executive branch headed by the President. Much like the courtiers of Louis XIV at Versailles, the czars serve to do the president’s bidding.

Now the American people are becoming aware of the latest subversion of the legitimate constitutional authority of the congress; namely, the creation of a “Super” congressional committee which would effectively bypasses congressional restraint and representative governance. Ostensibly, the committee is to find 1.5 trillion dollars in cuts.

But some, among them Judge Andrew Napolitano, have sounded an alarm concerning conflicts with the Constitution. Napolitano, in an interview on Fox News, which can be found here, is uneasy with the new development.

As Napolitano points out, the “Super Congress,” comprised of twelve members, takes power from the congress and gives it to itself, the new group. The congressional rules permitting debate, filibuster and modification by amendment would be suspended, binding this and all future congresses to only a “Yes” or “No” vote.

To put it bluntly, the creation of the “Super Congress” would establish yet another new level of unaccountable government, adding to the many layers already in place. Further, this new, unelected body would have the power to ram legislation through both houses, including new tax hikes. In other words, the new body would be used much as the Obama administration has used the EPA; namely, to bypass the tedious and drawn out legislative process that has long irritated Obama, a professed admirer of authoritarianism and law by executive fiat.

That the establishment of the “Super Congress” is a threat to the authority of all duly elected members of congress has not gone unnoticed. As Paul Joseph Watson of infowars.com notes, some representatives, like Ron Paul, have expressed their fears that the new “Gang of Twelve” could easily ram through tax increases.

Representative Paul warns:

“The legislation produced by this commission will be fast-tracked, and Members will not have the opportunity to offer amendments,” said Paul. “Approval of the recommendations of the “Super Congress” is tied to yet another debt ceiling increase. This guarantees that Members will face tremendous pressure to vote for whatever comes out of this commission– even if it includes tax increases. This provision is an excellent way to keep spending decisions out of the reach of members who are not on board with the leadership’s agenda.”

The Congressman added that the committee represents “Nothing more than a way to disenfranchise the majority of Congress by denying them the chance for meaningful participation in the crucial areas of entitlement and tax reform. It cedes power to draft legislation to a special commission, hand-picked by the House and Senate leadership.”

Watson goes on to state:
“Second Amendment organizations like Gun Owners of America fear that this new super committee of lawmakers would not stop at ruling over the debt issue, and that it could move on to target the right to bear arms by pushing legislation on “Gun owner registration, “bans on semi-automatic firearms,” and the “adoption of a UN gun control treaty.”

The fact that the establishment of a body which threatens to completely re-write over 200 years worth of constitutionally-based legislative practice has sailed through with barely a whimper of debate from politicians or the mainstream media is a damning indictment of how the Obama administration’s penchant for executive autonomy has aggressively seized control of the political process.”

It is reasonable to conclude the new “Gang of Twelve” now joins the czars, and the rest of the innumerable agencies, committees and other bureaucratic warts which allow the President ever increasing power to surround and to suffocate the legitimate constitutional entities which comprise the American body of governance, whose voice grows ever weaker as the compression of bark-like growth squeezes the life out of the Republic.

Most ominously, the plethora of institutions and regulations not voted on by the American people has reached proportions such that it is not at all inconceivable that a coup dissolving the congress entirely would still allow the government to continue on without much disruption--but with a dictator at its head.

The fact of the matter is that the gradual erosion of states’ rights, coupled with the fact that the executive branch-- as well as even congress itself!--have increasingly consigned the legitimate governing body of the US to increasing irrelevancy. In the meantime, a supra constitutional exoskeleton has gradually been created to supersede and to replace the authority not only of the US congress, but also of state governments.

The United States in danger of repeating the mistakes of the Roman Republic, which by the time of the Caesar strong men dictatorships, found the Senate reduced to a vestige of its former august self. The chamber was gradually weakened and at the end of its effective life, completely humiliated by the brutal Caligula, who in demonstration of his utter contempt for the lily livered members of the Senate, made his horse Incitus a senator. None dared protest, as the Emperor’s power was absolute and his revenge without remedy.

Even if one is inclined to think of some members of congress as horses asses, the rapidity with which the Obama administration is creating a shell around the duly elected bodies of the United States should sound an alarm. We can only hope the legislative bodies of Congress cut off the warts and escape from the carapace that would render them immobile. Our duly elected representatives and senators must stand against the latest executive power grab.

The American people must also wake up and apply the healing remedies still allowed to them, taking back the authority guaranteed them in the Constitution.

There is yet the hope and the opportunity to do so.

What remains to be seen is if the will is still there.

Brickbats

2011-06-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

Parents, shield your children’s eyes, as the material presented may be potentially offensive. Dear reader, are you wondering what the offensive material might be? Is your potentially salacious gaze to be directed at yet another photo of Anthony Weiner’s bulging briefs?

No, dear hearts.

It seems some paving bricks, costing from $100 to 250 a piece, and originally destined to be a walkway for Palm Desert High School have been deemed pernicious enough to ban the whole fund-raising project. A full frontal portrait of the offending bricks found here.

Gasp! Bible verses inscribed on bricks! Were more offensive words ever spoken than those in Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another?” The horror!

Of course, it is explained, the offensively engraved biblical bricks reveal a serious constitutional abrogation of the Leftist interpretation of the separation of church and state. Now you will understand, gentle reader, why the hellish—oops; strike that word--bricks created such a ruckus.

You probably also will understand that apparently no one in the education business wants children to know that God instructs us to be kind to one another and to forgive those who offend us. It appears administrators and teachers would rather tolerate the bullying epidemic that has broken out like an angry pustulous rash all across playgrounds in the US, some of which episodes can be found on Youtube.

But there is a serious problem to the paving brick incident. Real constitutional rights, including freedom of speech, have been stepped on. Further, the entire ridiculous episode will no doubt pave the way for Leftist feet to trample what is left of public expression of religious beliefs. Nor can we disregard the prospect that the brick ban is a stepping stone to what will assuredly be yet more overt religious persecution.

One cannot help but contrast the scrupulosity of the banners of biblical stepping stones, upon which the feet of innocent school children may have trod to their peril and their innocent eyes gazed upon to their eternal detriment, to the generosity shown to Muslim students, who as long ago as 2007, according to the NY Times, have been increasingly afforded religious expression and accommodation in public US institutions; and, yes, it’s about feet again.

The Times noted sinks were coming loose from walls because Muslim students were using them to bathe their feet. Various universities went into a frenzy of political correctness and pushed for the establishment of foot baths for those adherents to the Muslim faith. Realizing some might object to the foot baths as institutionalization of religious practice, some suggested the installation of the foot baths was really not an abrogation of the principle of the separation of church and state. The foot baths could serve a double purpose, it was said. They could be used by janitors, and since they would not be marked by Muslim symbols like a crescent, they would essentially be neutral—secularized, actually.

The hilarious excuse-making and; well, Jesuitical reasoning, did not apply to Roman Catholics or other Christian denominations. No holy water fonts, doubling as innocuously secularized drinking fountains, are to be installed in universities. Stations of the Cross charmingly disguised as vending machines judiciously spaced along dormitory walls also will not be instituted. And, needless to say, baptismal fonts are not to double as cunningly concealed bathroom sinks.

It has been said by a long forgotten wag that each generation is subject to an insanity peculiar to itself, a madness only recognizable from the distance of decades, centuries or even millennia. But the Left’s crazy interpretation and implementation of its concept of “separation of church and state,” amply illustrated by the ban of the biblical bricks, is one of those insanities which need not take decades to recognize.

It’s time to put our feet down now.

Fay Voshell is a free lance writer living in Wilmington, DE. She can be reached at fvoshell@Yahoo.com

$2,000,000 Blue Plate Special

2011-06-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

Actually, make that "Green Plate Special."

$2,000,000--That's how much it cost tax payer's for federal bureuacrats to come up with a new iconographic image telling Americans what to eat. It replaces the "Food Pyramid" of 1992.

Tim Slagle, in a really funny article entitled "Michelle Obama is Rearranging the Nation's Dinner Plates," put the silliness of it all well:

"[...]to give the new guidelines a youthful appeal, it has been named MyPlate, an obvious reference to the hip new website: MySpace, which was abandoned by everyone hip, about five years ago; and is now populated by pathetic unknown bands, and creepy old pedophiles, soliciting cops posing as teenagers. (Perhaps the original title from the contemporarily-challenged USDA was “You’ve Got Meals.”) I imagine in ten years or so, the USDA will announce their new guidelines, called Platebook.

"[...]Bureaucrats always think they can rewire the Darwinian instinct of children, which is to eat the food they like. In 2005, the Pyramid was updated with a tedious video game that wouldn’t even entertain a child of the Atari® generation. Maybe their plan was to make video games so boring that kids would be forced outside to play. Most children are overweight from lack of exercise, and bureaucrats are partially responsible for that. When you have to wear a dorky helmet every time you go out to play, who even wants to ride a bike anymore?

Michelle had to refrain from calling the new guidelines YourPlate, because they certainly don’t seem to reflect HerPlate. If we were to chart Michelle’sPlate it would be divided into four different sections for Cheeseburgers, Lobster, Ribs, and the majority of the plate devoted to Bacon. (I’m not sure if she even touches the radioactive vegetables that grew on the South Lawn, practically overnight.)

Inexplicably dairy, which was once part of the four basics, is now relegated to a circle outside of the MyPlate. This might reflect either a sensitivity to cultures that prohibit milk, or in classic Chicago style, a lack of campaign contributions from the American Dairy Association.

The New York Times claims that later phases of the MyPlate campaign “will urge consumers to avoid oversize portions, enjoy their food but eat less of it and drink water instead of sugary drinks.”

Which almost seems to be preparing us for worsening economic conditions. Because If the economy continues it’s slide there is a really good chance that MyPlate will eventually be nothing more than your daily ration of rice. I can’t help but think the President’s economic plan, is a wing of Michelle’s anti-obesity campaign.

Because when you get right down to it, there is no better cure for obesity, than poverty."

Tim is not only funny, but right.

End Medicare?

2011-06-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review, makes the case for ending Medicare and at the same time skewers “moderate” Republicans as being nothing more than a pale version of big government liberals. That includes Paul Ryan.

Now before our loyal “moderate” and “liberal” readers go into apoplectic mode, hear Mr. McCarthy out.

McCarthy regards Ryan’s earnest desire to deal with the “entitlement cancer metastasizing in our body politic,” as admirable, but says the congressman’s prescription is not a cure because it merely treats symptoms while leaving the cancer in place—that cancer being Medicare.

The error in treating the symptoms only is Ryan’s accession to the idea that health care is fundamental right to which the central government must assure access, an ideological plank dear to the heart of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights” now ensconced in the Beltway mentality among conservatives as well as moderates and liberals.

Nothing doing, states McCarthy. “Medicare was a scam from the start. It had to be a scam because its ostensible purpose—providing health insurance for the elderly—was never the objective of its proponents. Instead, Medicare was a stepping stone to a utopia its champions dared not acknowledge: A compulsory universal-health-care system administered by government experts […] The Left realized the dream of socializing the health-care sector was not attainable in one fell swoop, so an incremental strategy was adopted: Get a foot in the door with less ambitious proposals; establish the precedent of government control while avoiding debate over the principle of government control.”

To further their ends of establishing universal health care, proponents pretended to be relieving the young from dependency on their children, but all they did was shift responsibility from family and private charity to the young, especially future generations, who were to pay an ever increasing tab for elderly dependents.

McCarthy concludes with a real kicker of a statement: “Representative Ryan’s plan is a surrender to left-wing social engineering on terms the right wing naively believes it can accept. Ryan is the darling of a Washington breed of conservative wonk convinced that we can make the welfare state work if we just incorporate a few free-market, family-friendly tweaks. It is a futile political strategy for two reasons.

“First, the pathology to which all Medicare’s ills trace their origin is the involvement of government […]Reformers such as Representative Ryan[…] rationalize that they can make a government-sanctioned bribery system run better, or at least preempt Democrats from making it run worse.”

Second, “It does not matter that Paul Ryan actually tries to save Medicare, which will soon implode if nothing is done. Conservatives will still be demogogued. They will still be accused of trying to destroy Medicare and kill old people.”

McCarthey concludes: “Medicare deserves to be destroyed, and destroying it would be better for current and future generations young and old. So why not make that case…Ryan’s essential point is that health care is increasingly expensive because it is not permitted to function as a regular market commodity—one with sentient consumers shopping carefully, spurring competition, driving down prices, and encouraging innovations. That kind of market can never happen with the government as central player…Medicare is a scam. The people who designed and perpetrated it would be serving more time than Bernie Madoff if they pulled a fraud like it in the private sector…we’ve been swindled by Washington: The MONEY IS GONE. [My caps.] Preserving a scam in the vain hope of making it less offensive may be well meaning, but it’s not right, and it’s not courageous.”

You may find the full article at National Review on line.

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Bwahahaha

2011-05-23T14:27:00.001-07:00

The cynical snickering over the failed denouement of Reverend Harold Camping’s May 21st predicted rapture may be somewhat justified, for—sadly--he joins the ranks of hundreds of other preachers throughout history who thought they knew more than the Messiah they professed to follow.

Ersatz prophets throughout the ages have failed to heed the words of the Christ, who said the secret of his return was hidden even from him, secreted in the Father’s heart. But still the irresistible urge to proclaim The End has afflicted cultists from time immemorial.

One need only think of the founder of the Jehovah Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell, who predicted Christ’s invisible return in 1874 and who predicted a more noticeable appearance would occur in 1914. Russell’s successor, undeterred by the failure of Christ to appear on command, visibly or invisibly, determined the year 1925 was when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets would return to earth.

But before we break out into maniacal laughter at Reverend Camping’s and others’ notions concerning the Rapture, Second Coming or Apocalypse, perhaps it might be a good idea to take a look at why Camping’s ill-fated predictions aroused such intense interest and ridicule.

First, there is an interest among those on the Left, particularly among left media types, in ratifying their contempt for religion and people of faith by selecting the most absurd examples of Christianity run amok. That way the hard intellectual endeavor of studying faith traditions is neatly avoided while one satisfies one’s penchant for setting up paper tigers which may be shot down with one good cynical laugh. Isolated incidents and fringe doctrines are taken as the sum and substance of the whole of Christianity. Thus any story of a televangelist’s adultery, a priest’s molestation of a child, an out to lunch interpretation of scripture, or a failed prophecy become fodder for an anti-Christian feeding frenzy. There go those embittered people with their religion and guns again. Bunch of crazies, perverts and hypocrites.

Bwahahahaha.

Historically, we can see a similar tendency in the treatment of the Jews, who time and again have been saddled with stereotypical and vicious smears of blood libel, among other dangerous absurdities. As late as 1840, Jasper Chasseaud, American vice-consul to Lebanon, wrote:

“A most Barbarous secret for a long time suspected in the Jewish nation…at last came to light in the city of Damascus, that of serving themselves of Christian blood in their unleavened bread…a secret which these 1840 years must have made many unfortunate victims.”

Chasseaud appears actually to have believed the blood libel calumny, extant from medieval times and resurrected in the still popular Protocols of Zion, whose vile attacks against Jews are believed by credulous millions.

The point being, how easy is it to despise and laugh at people who believe and practice such insane and/or dangerous absurdities? Very easy.

But aren’t enlightened secular sophisticates are so much more reasonable and, well, sane. Well, are they? Are leftist secularists immune from attacks of apocalyptic craziness?

No.

One has only to think of the range of End Time, apocalyptic scenarios cooked up by the extreme environmentalists, Gaia worshippers, and Pachamama devotees, along with other crazies who have left the realm of reality and rushed headlong into prophecies based on their ideas of what is infallible; be it “science” (actually pseudo-science) or pantheism. The End by asteroid; The End by violent explosions of the sun; The End by dried up energy sources; The End by global warming; The End by ice age; The End by evaporation of the ozone layer; The End by human predations. Or, even more colorful: The End by mutating viruses; alien invasions, human made robots run amok, or evil, conscienceless human clones rebelling against their creators.

Bwahahahaha.

Thus proving the religious impulse is not only ineradicable, but also not confined to overtly religious faith based entities such as Judaism and Christianity.

But there is yet more to the story of Mr. Camping and his ilk. There are at least two more things to consider.

As formerly referred to, paying attention to and trashing Mr. Camping and other earnest but plainly wrong fundamentalist and charismatic Christians whose prophetic instincts have proved erroneous is a way to avoid intellectual and spiritual encounter with the deeper beliefs of a great faith which has its roots in a history some 4,000 years old, and which has played an irreducible role in the shaping and building of Western civilization.

It is a way of avoiding encounter with some of the greatest minds and achievements of Western civilization. It is a cheap way of bypassing the immense and incalculable contributions of Christian thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, St John of the Cross, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis and countless other theologians who have grappled with the spiritual and intellectual problems of their and our own age within the context of Christianity.

It is a way of trashing the Christian art, architecture and music which has informed and elevated the mind, heart and soul of countless millions: Chartres, Notre Dame; Giotto, Cimabue, Van Eyck, Rembrandt, El Greco; Handel, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Stravinsky—just a partial list.

But most critically, the sarcastic and cynical focus on Mr. Camping’s failed prophecies is a way to avoid the historic claims and person of Jesus Christ, whose example and work have transformed millions of followers whose depth of faith and loyalty increases over the years.

And while Christ himself exhibited humility by refusing to predict the day and hour of his return, he did speak of an Apocalypse, of a time when all wrongs will be addressed, all false prophets proved wrong, and all that is right, all that is good, true and perfect re-established.

And last but not least, he spoke of time when scoffing and ridicule will fall away, every cynical and mocking tongue is silenced and every knee bowed in acknowledgment that he is Lord.

That is what his disciples said. That is what his disciples recorded. That is what millions—now billions-- believe, based on Christ’s life, his testimony and his sacrifice.

Last, though even Christians are unaccustomed to the idea of a God who laughs in derision at the follies and foibles of the human race, such a God is depicted in Psalm 2, a poem of David, the King of ancient Israel.

Cynics may scoff and people may imagine all kinds of vain things, probably including false prophecies. Jokesters may imagine themselves both funnier and more knowledgeable than God himself, but “He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”

And He has the last laugh.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

A Tale of Two Sex Scandals

2011-05-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

For a while, it was the best of times for both men.

One was fat, fair skinned and balding, sitting on the throne of the IMF and heir apparent to the French presidency. The other was tanned, handsome and tall and sat in the governor’s chair in Sacramento.

One was from a country imbued with the idealized image of the sophisticated seductor, a moneyed heir of the Enlightenment and the ideals of the Revolution of 1789—the essence of all that is French, with the brutal sexuality of the Marquis de Sade providing a titillating dash of perversity.

The other, born to a poor family in post WWII Austria, immigrated to the United States and later married into Kennedy royalty after having achieved his American dream of a body building and movie career, culminating in a Mr. Olympia winning streak and the cult classic Terminator series. He eventually muscled his way into a starring role in California’s governor’s mansion.

By now all know the strangely simultaneous stories of their worst of times. Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of the brutal sexual assault of a hotel maid; while Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted fathering a love child with a household staff member some ten years ago.

Two sad tales. Two sad endings.

What happened to bring matters to such a pass?

Both Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger apparently became victims of the modern idea that one’s sex life is separable from one’s professional life; that indiscriminate mating doesn’t interfere with effective and moral governing or the management of the global economy; that one can be a smooth (or rough) operator in the bedroom—any bedroom with any given person--while still being a clear headed, dispassionate and moral arbiter, be it in the boardroom or the chambers of governance.

But the Golden Rule, which summarizes the moral bases of all fidelity, personal and societal, cannot be compartmentalized so easily. Any attempt to do so results in a schizophrenic division of morality similar to that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As the fictionalized good doctor and now the real life Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger, along with countless others, have found to their sorrow, the lack of moral probity in one sphere leaks steadily and remorselessly into all other spheres of life, perhaps even most especially when it concerns sexuality. Sexual corruption seeps into and stains the soul, radically altering the whole person, proving that no one is ultimately free of the consequences of unrestrained sensuality.

Roger Simon, screenplay writer and CEO of Pajamas Media, writes about his affair with a married woman, describing the lies and subterfuge involved as ultimately emotionally unendurable as well as corrupting of character:

“I won’t get into the sad details, but some time ago I had an affair with a married French woman — I was single then — that went on for a couple of years.
I’m not proud of it in the least. It was stupid, immoral (yes, that) and eventually sheer emotional Hell. Besides hurting other people, most of them innocent, it drastically affected my work in a negative way and made me a liar on frequent occasions. In sum, I was despicable, weak, selfish and destructive of myself and others to do it.
But I did learn something about the French. Pace Edith Piaf and Yves Montand, there is nothing chic or hip about their adultery. After all the shared Gauloise and baiser volé, it’s just cheating. People don’t respect each other. People don’t trust each other. Indeed, they begin to hate each other. Life is wretched. It’s like a game of ritual self-and-other torture played out by a significant sector of their society — particularly in the elite classes — into oblivion.”

C.S. Lewis, the great twentieth century thinker whose works are still read by millions, wrote about the results of continual surrender to sexual desire and the deleterious consequences in his small book Christian Behavior:

“In the first place our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so ‘natural,’ so ‘healthy,’ and so reasonable that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them… [But] surrender to all our desires obviously leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humor, and frankness. For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary…Every sane and civilized man must have some set of principles by which he chooses to reject some of his desires and to permit others.”

Lewis follows in the Christian and classical Greek philosophical traditions which see all desires, including sexual desire, as requiring moderation and containment if a person is to retain balance and attain the maturity necessary for a good life and good leadership. Adolescent lack of restraint of desires winds up either diminishing or completely destroying both the person and society.

Sadly, too often we get a glimpse of how unrestrained sexuality destroys a person. Sometimes we get to see the insanity which is the dead end result of promiscuous sexual “freedom.” Sometimes, alas, there is a close up view of a person who for decades has chosen not to reject any of his sexual desires.

Away from the sexual propaganda of Hollywood, the seduction of air brushed porn queens, the photo shopped fantasies of Playboy and Hustler, we find an example of a man driven for over half a century by sexual excess in the ancient, wrinkled and pathetic Hugh Hefner, an American heir of de Sade’s championship of the unrestrained libido.

Hefner, the self-promoted architect of the sexual revolution, has dealt out and reveled in lies about uninhibited sensuality all his life, profiting handsomely from its relentless promotion. Would any sane and civilized person seriously contemplate the prospect of someone like Mr. Hefner leading a country—in fact, would anyone seriously think such a person fit to lead anything? And, not incidentally, who among us does not also feel a profound pity for and sorrow over the clone-like, pneumatically enhanced Barbie doll wannabes clinging to the old Viagra-driven lecher’s arm? Is theirs the sort of life that produces the great leaders our country so desperately longs for?

The answer, of course, is “No.”

For all the ravages of the sexual revolution Mr. Hefner claims as his gift to the Western world, and for all the victims of the de Sade and Hefner sexual “freedoms,” for all their own personal failings, most Americans still cherish the ideal of fidelity--fidelity to one’s spouse and children; fidelity to one’s church; fidelity to one’s nation. They believe it is important to trust, to believe--to know the persons to whom we entrust governance and leadership possess and practice the virtue of fidelity.

There is an expectation, even a moral necessity, that powerful leaders of states and international organizations exhibit uprightness and personal sacrifice in all areas of life, especially in view of the perilous and demanding times in which we live. It is important for us to know our elected representatives and the leaders of international organizations as powerful as the International Monetary Fund will be faithful in the managing of monies; faithful in crafting law; faithful in dispensing justice.

In sum, instead of the relentless promotion of emotion over reason and restraint, always a characteristic of the Left, there must be a concerted effort to demolish the philosophies of de Sade and his ilk and more promotion of the ideals that led Sidney Carton, hero of A Tale of Two Cities, away from his life of alcoholism and debauchery to supreme love and sacrifice; more of the attitude that it is a far, far better thing to exercise sobriety, restraint and consideration.

But such a renewal of spirit requires a turning away from unrestrained sensuality to a renewed allegiance to God and the Golden Rule, the bases of fidelity to humanity and the heart of civilized society.

UN Endorses Mother Earth Worship

2011-04-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

World governance and world worship of a new "god," was once regarded as a wacko conspiracy theory of the far right. But UN's endorsement of Gaia/Pachamama worship has become a reality prophetically warned about by an unlikely character; that of Carl McIntire, fearless Cape May crusader against the "Fairness Doctrine." Written by yours truly, and linked here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/the_un_and_one_world_worship.html

Return of the Pharisee

2011-04-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

Return of the Pharisee

For most, the term “Pharisee” is seen as synonymous with “hypocrite.” The Pharisee is the preacher who talks about marital fidelity yet secretly views porn and visits prostitutes. It’s the politician who talks about reducing global warming and going green yet drives a gas hogging SUV and lives in a multi-million, energy consuming mansion. It’s the woman who piously speaks of being untied with the “sisterhood” yet viciously tears down any woman she sees as competition.

In other words, common usage of the term indicates a Pharisee is a person who presents a moral persona to the public, but whose hidden persona does the exact opposite whenever he or she can get away with it—a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde morality.

But while the people who belonged to the original sect often were hypocrites, according to Christ’s assessment of them in the four gospels, they were especially known for their love of minute rules and regulations which they believed if followed, led to righteousness and favor with Jehovah.

As far as the Pharisees, who along with the Sadducees were members of the upper classes, nothing was off limits as far as regulation was concerned. They were legal extremists, studying and making laws and following them scrupulously.

Examples of their devotion to legal minutiae abound, but a few will suffice to illustrate the rigidity of their lives. If they ate common foods, they washed to the joints of their fingers; but if they were eating offerings or were at an official banquet, they washed to the elbows. As a ten percent tithe was required, they even tithed the leaves of herbs such as mint or cumin. Even the yeast used to make bread rise was proscribed. Only one formula could be used. All other yeasts were forbidden.

The Sabbath was the particular focus of legal minutiae, loaded with hundreds of decrees restricting how far one could walk, what one could carry and what one could wear or eat on the Sabbath.

They regarded themselves as so holy they never needed to repent, nor would they converse, much less eat or drink with, anyone they thought were sinners. Worse yet, they regarded the common people as unclean, refusing to have anything to do with them.

Ah, the poor commoners. So burdensome were the laws of the Pharisees the regular folk of Israel simply couldn’t keep them. They were too busy trying to scratch out subsistence from the soil and tend their meager flocks to pay attention to all the regulations intended to make them holy. Trying to survive and to pay the onerous taxes of the corrupt ruling class, they were hampered by the fact they were desperately poor, having neither the wealth nor the servants necessary to lead the life of leisure necessary to adhere to the truly religious and sanctified life recommended by their rulers. The lower classes complete inability to follow all the rules meant they were always guilty of infractions and thus, according to the superior classes, worthy of dismissal and contempt.

No wonder the good Rabbi characterized them as “whitewashed tombs, pretty on the outside but full of the dead bones of legalism on the inside.

It is easy to condemn the Pharisees of Christ’s day, but pharisaical overreach is characteristic of political as well as religious zealots--legalistic zeal is not always overtly religious, as our present day political scene demonstrates. Anyone can recognize the pharisaical tendencies of today’s insufferable ruling classes, which are determined to force their politically correct, religious observations on the masses, come hell or high water. They supposedly, like the Pharisees, know the law is the way to produce a truly righteous society.

The suffocating number of rules and regulations, not just on businesses, but on every citizen’s life, is truly numbing. Whether it is the pettifogging Seattle school teacher who rules out the term “Easter eggs” in favor of “spring spheres;” or the draconian decree of the Chicago school system forbidding homemade lunches for students; be it the forced removal of basketball hoops because they are not the appropriate number of feet from the road; be it the arrest and incarceration of a young adult for the minutest possession of marijuana; the list goes on and on.

In the meantime, as countless regulatory bodies such as the EPA, larded with some 18,000 employees and a multi-billion dollar budget, are busily designing ways to control and regulate businesses, the ruling class of today looks and lives much like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day—high on the taxpayer’s hog. Average income for a government employee far exceeds the pay and benefits of those in the private sector, being almost double the amount a worker in the private sector makes.

And then there’s the way the ruling Pharisee classes live. The President and his wife are exceedingly conspicuous examples of what Thorsten Veblen termed “conspicuous consumption.” Mrs. Obama preaches monkish diet habits to you and your children while dining with impunity on fast food favorites while she and her husband serve Wagyu beef at $20,000 per carcass to voracious hangers on at White House banquets. Mr. Obama goes on lavish trips to places like India, trailing an entourage and indulging in tastes which would make a nineteenth century’s maharajah’s excesses pale in comparison.

Those who endlessly attack churches as harboring Pharisees might try to stop looking at the local Baptist church in order to find premier examples of hypocritical, rule making hypocrites. Not smoking, drinking or dancing are voluntary choices made by religious folks who don’t force their devotional observances on Joe Citizen. They are scarcely the equivalent of the bloated bureaucracy vomiting out a constant stream of rules and regulations designed to make Everyman’s life “better.”

Citizens might want to take a look at where the real Pharisees reside and ask themselves if they want to continue to support the ruling class and all its onerous regulations with their hard earned tax dollars.

In brief, the Pharisees have returned with a vengeance; but, actually, they probably never really left.

Thoughts on SB17: Legalization of Medical Marijuana in Delaware

2011-03-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on SB17: Delaware’s Medical Marijuana Bill

Whenever Mark, aged three, touched an object he shouldn’t, his mother would make him go into the kitchen. As soon as he saw she would drag him there, he would begin a chilling banshee scream, yelling, “Mommy, I won’t do it again. I promise. I won’t do it again.”

But his sobs were useless. His mom would turn on the stove’s gas flame burner and hold his hand over it until his palm blistered. As he screamed in agony, she would yell, “Will you touch that again? Will you? WILL you!!”

“No, no, NO.”

Finally she would let go.

Mark spent his toddler years afraid of everything. He’d wander aimlessly around the house with tears running down his face, sobbing his heart out with no one to comfort him.

A wasted childhood turned into wasted school years and wasted young adult years. Mark drank himself to death by age thirty-eight. In a bitter irony, not just his hands, but his entire body was burned to ashes via cremation and scattered to the four winds.

Was it alcohol that killed Mark? “Yes” and “No.”

“Yes,” in that technically he died of alcohol poisoning; but, “no,” in that Mark was killed long before he turned thirty-eight.

That’s the way it is with substance abuse. Abuse of alcohol and drugs is a sure indicator of a spiritual problem, a soul signal that a life has gone badly awry; that someone is in need of help.

Mark’s problem was not alcohol itself, for what can be used for good can be used for ill. A champagne toast at a wedding is a happy event, an acknowledgement that joy prevails, at least for a fragile and fleeting moment. That toast is a very different thing than starting out the day with a Bloody Mary and topping it off with a bottle of Scotch, as my friend Dick Scholl, convicted of grand larceny and dying of AIDs did until the day he died. But that’s another story with other lessons.

The point is: that is how it is with the human condition and the tragedy and hope of human choice. It’s not the alcohol, not the marijuana, not the opiate that is evil. Out of the heart come all manner of bad things. It’s the choices that are made and why the choices are made that are at the heart of alcohol and drug abuse.

Anything that can be used for good can be used for ill, as the site found here states:

“…there are more than 1000 household products that teens can use to get high: typewriter correction fluid, felt tip markers, spray paint, air freshener, butane, cooking spray, various types of glue, gasoline, deodorant spray, fabric protector spray, whipping cream aerosols, hair spray, and household cleaners. Not only are these items available in the home, teens can walk into any grocery store, hardware store, or pharmacy and purchase them with no questions asked.”

And, frankly, no questions should be asked of people who buy household products designed to do good but which are sometimes used for evil, self destructive and deadly purposes.

That brings us back to the point of this small essay. If marijuana, which can be used for evil, can also be used for good, then let it legally be used for the limited but obvious good it can provide for those in pain.
Sadly, like Mark, there will always be those who smoke to avoid life or who shoot up their veins to escape the heartlessness of this world, who get into the drug culture out of a foolish notion of sophistication and the literally high life, or who, out of sheer greed, determine to take advantage of fellow human beings, even children, for profit.

At the heart of the abuse is a person, a priceless life to be salvaged, a soul to be redeemed. The substance is almost incidental.

Here is where the attention and resources presently given to the War on Drugs should go: to people; to the Marks of this world--the self-punishers, the spiritually crippled, the emotionally dead—not to a useless war on substances.
And in the meantime, to that person who would rather have a gun put to their head and their brains shot out rather than live with continual and unremitting pain--have a joint.

“Rescue the perishing, care for the dying,
snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;
weep over the erring one, lift up the fallen,
tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save.”

For God’s sake, have mercy.

Asia, Quaking

2011-03-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

The shoreline of Japan is not the only shift that will have been caused by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11.

As significant as the material damage, which appears to be almost incalculable, and as worthy of attention as the economic damage, also titanic, is a potential shift in the international alliances and strategies in the Far East, particularly among China, Japan and the US and its allies.

For the grim truth is that Japan, already beleaguered by a stagnant economy, a pitiless demographic and a fate filled geographic location now has been hit with devastation the equivalent of total war, including the threat of nuclear disaster. One look at the satellite photographs reveals devastation that makes Sherman’s march on Georgia and the Nazi blitz of London seem restrained.

Japan has been critically wounded, and it will not be long before her ancient enemies China and North Korea, along with their opportunistic allies, move in to take advantage of her present weakness, as enemies always do.

Japan’s situation is not at all like a nation such as France, which is ensconced amid European allies with empathetic governments and favorable economic alliances like the European Union. Never has there been any particular inclination by China and North Korea to hammer out mutually agreeable agreements such as are characteristic of the Western democracies, regardless of their unique national distinctions and rivalries; for China and North Korea are not democracies but authoritarian governments who see economic strategies in terms of war, not mutually satisfying cooperation.

Japan is flanked on the East by the vast and geographically quixotic Pacific, which can arbitrarily wreak devastation at a moment’s notice. To the West, she is bordered by nations with long memories and persistent antipathies. Just as bad, even friendly allies such as the United States and Australia, unless they act swiftly, will be forced to revise their long term Far East and Southeast Asian strategies in light of Japan’s new weakness coupled with the increasing strength of China’s military and China’s already strong economic presence within Japan itself. This is to say nothing of North Korea’s steadfast and intractable hatred of her ancient nemesis.

It is sometimes hard for Americans, who are always among the most magnanimous, forgiving and generous of nations, to grasp how ingrained and intractable hostilities among the Far East nations are. It is equally difficult to comprehend how those hostilities continue to play out among the ancient rivals. That is because we in America do not have the long, long history of internecine conflict that has characterized the chief antagonists of Far East. Japan, China and Korea have been entangled in wars and occupations from time immemorial; wars which are not forgotten and in many cases not forgiven because of the immense brutality doled out by Japanese occupying forces.

Japan may generally have escaped the both the odium and the klieg lights which have kept the Nazi atrocities under continual scrutiny, but her behavior as conqueror and occupier of China and Korea was as horrific as the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe and the Barbarossa campaign against Russia. Japanese cruelties such as the “Rape of Nanking,” the brutal occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 , and the Japanese atrocious medical and biological warfare experiments in the infamous Unit 731 and elsewhere are still living memories for the Chinese and Koreans. Despite the attempts of Japan to apologize for past transgressions and despite the fact that both China and Korea have been guilty of atrocities, neither country would be sorry to see vengeance heaped on their former tormentors; nor would either of those nations hesitate to take advantage of Japan’s present and probably lingering weaknesses. There are old scores to be settled with Japan.

The reaction of China and its quixotic and undependable ally North Korea will probably not yet take the form of overt military action because of the presence of the United States military and America’s strong alliance with Japan. However, both will move, though not necessarily in tandem, to strengthen their already growing hegemony in the Far East and beyond, seeing the catastrophe as an opportunity to take portions from Japan’s economic pie by moving in to replace Japanese influence, already diminished by its two decades long economic malaise. The accompanying result could be a diminution of US influence in the Southeast Asian region.

While the leaders of North Korea may well continue to hold their cards close to their chests, what might China do next in view of ancient antipathies she now sees as having the possibility of being rectified? What goals will she seek to achieve in view of Japan’s and America’s weakened positions in the Asian theatre?

The most likely possibility is that China will attempt to achieve some long term goals more rapidly than previously thought possible.

One accelerated goal will almost certainly be to achieve the quiet and “peaceable” reintegration of Taiwan into the Chinese mainland, absorbing it in much the same way Hong Kong was quietly absorbed in 1997. We may look for one of the many conditions to include the return of the imperial treasures presently in the Taiwan National Museum. For one of the memories still very much alive in the minds of China’s present day rulers is the fact that when Chiang Kai Shek and his wife retreated to Taiwan, they took with them much of their nation’s exquisite and irreplaceable art; art which represented the very soul of China and the essence of its rich artistic heritage. Mainland China now, as then, wants the art back.

The watching world may also expect increasingly strengthened ties between Australia and China with diminishing ties to US and its ally, Japan. That is because regardless of Australia and New Zealand’s cultural ties with the Anglo-sphere, they also are isolated and vulnerable islands whose proximity to China necessitates realignments not necessarily in favor of its present allies. China’s increasing hegemony over the seas surrounding Australia, waters once firmly dominated by Western powers, may be cause for a new pragmatism on the part of both Australia and New Zealand.

In fact, Japan’s accelerated weaknesses may tempt China to increase its already considerable presence in countries such as Burma, where it seeks easy access to the Indian Ocean; and in Vietnam, which despite a thousand year long Chinese cultural hegemony, has sought to retain its influence in the South China Sea, despite the hot breath of the Red Dragon down its long neck. Just recently, Vietnam protested February’s Chinese military maneuvers near the disputed Spratly Islands, whose surrounding waters are rich in minerals the Chinese economy demands. The maneuvers will doubtless continue and multiply now that Japan is down and out.

There will also be increased pressure on China’s growing rival India. Like Burma, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand and other southeastern nations, India will feel the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, as minus Japanese strength and the preoccupation of the US with the Middle East, China will seek to strengthen her control over the South Sea, thus diminishing through military threat India’s ancient trade routes, routes which are critical to her continuing economic success. India’s and the West’s hegemony over the South Seas is threatened as China will seek to derail both India’s and the US alliances and dominance of the South Sea.

How must the US and her allies react to the Japan’s weakness and China’s attempts to take advantage of that weakness?

First, the US must, together with its allies in Europe, despite our and their economic troubles, launch a Marshall Plan to help Japan regroup and get back on her feet. Next, Japan must increase her own military strength in order to balance increasing Chinese belligerence in that region. Further, the US and her allies must immediately form and strengthen a coalition of Eastern nations who will, even if it is only for immediate pragmatic concerns about their survival, be a firewall against increasing Chinese influence and domination of the region.

Next, America must increase its ties with India, whose empathetic government and growth as an economic power are capable of being a counter balance to China’s antidemocratic authoritarianism, drive for dominance of the Southeast, and increasing belligerence on the world stage.

Also among the necessary domestic strategies for counterbalancing Japan’s current weakness: beefing up rather than cutting the US military, rapidly decreasing debt obligations to China by dealing with runaway government spending, reassessing the US stance concerning trade imbalances, and rectifying the US/Chinese currency difficulties.

If the US and her allies act now, Japan’s current weakness will be shored up and the effects of the devastation brought on by the earthquake and tsunami will be mitigated if not entirely rectified, while Japan’s ancient enemy China and her odious ally North Korea are at least contained and prevented from accelerating China’s goals in Southeast Asia and beyond.

In conclusion, the US must see its role as more than helping out a stricken ally. It’s imperative to develop and implement strategies which will contain the inevitable increase in belligerence from China and North Korea.

Delaware Protects Abusers

2011-03-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Christopher (not his real name) is five years old. All five years have been really difficult. For Christopher, who when born seemed perfectly fine, has had grand mal seizures from infancy. The seizures left him physically and mentally impaired, so much so he now is in a special needs kindergarten class.

His adoring parents will be moving from Wilmington because they do not trust the educational system to take care of Christopher properly. They are worried about possible neglect and abuse.

They have good reason for their concerns, as Pat Maichle, the executive Director of the State of Delaware Developmental Disabilities Council, acknowledges. She has stated children with disabilities are disproportionately victims of abuse, including sexual abuse.

She, along with Tania Culley, the Child Advocate for the State of Delaware, supports State Representative Greg Lavelle’s determined and multiple efforts to allow victims of abuse in public institutions the same redress as those who are abused within private institutions such as private and parochial schools.

Representative Lavelle has on four separate occasions introduced legislation that would give the 125,000 children in Delaware’s public school system the same redress as is presently afforded to children who attend private institutions. Four times he has been shot down, and Delaware’s children continue to be unprotected from sexual predators.

Evidently not one to give up, Representative Lavelle has introduced yet another bill aimed at leveling the playing field, HB 12, which also seeks to waive the state’s sovereign immunity in child sex abuse cases.

Lavelle stated, concerning a previous attempt, “This bill is about doing what is fair and just for all victims of childhood sexual abuse in Delaware. Under Senate Bill 29, victims who were abused in the private and nonprofit sectors…have had access to recover damages. Yet children abused while attending a public school in the state…are not granted the same legal access. To say that those victims are at an unfair disadvantage would be an understatement.

Indeed.

The question arises: Just why is it that abuse in public schools goes unaddressed? Why are public school teachers immune to the sort of prosecution we have routinely seen doled out to pedophiles within private and parochial schools? After all, millions have been given out to victims of abuse within private schools, witness the case of John M. Vai, who was awarded $30 million in compensatory damages for abuse which happened at St. Elizabeth’s parochial school.

Perhaps the answer is that the teachers union protects their own.

As James Hudnell pointed out in this eye opening article “Teachers Unions: The Child Molester’s Best Friend” (February 9, 2010), teachers’ unions in states like California and New York have coddled criminals within the school system for years.
Hudnell cites an example of such protection.

From a New York Post piece:

“At the beginning of his 32-year career as a math teacher in Queens, Francisco Olivares allegedly impregnated and married a 16-year-old girl he had met when she was a 13-year-old student at his Corona junior high, IS 61, the Post learned.
He sexually molested two 12-year-old pupils a decade later and another student four years after that, the city Department of Education charged. But none of it kept Olivares, 60, from collecting his $94,154 salary.

He hasn’t set foot in a classroom in seven years since beating criminal and disciplinary charges. Chancellor Joel Klein keeps Olivares in a “rubber room,” a district office where teachers accused of misconduct sit all day with nothing to do.

That would be $94K a year for sitting around drinking coffee and reading the paper.”

California is even worse, as accused teachers are paid to stay home.

“About 160 teachers and other staff sit idly in buildings scattered around the sprawling [Los Angeles Unified School District]…the housed are accused…of sexual contact with students…Nearly all are being paid. All told, they collect about $10 million in salaries per year—even as the district is contemplating widespread layoffs of teachers because of a financial shortfall.”

While New York’s infamous “rubber rooms,” where accused teachers sat around all day while collecting full salaries, are now supposedly gone, the fact is that protecting teachers who abuse their students is “a common practice in many states where teachers’ unions hold sway. Then they can’t fire them, in some cases schools have had to offer instructors cash payments to quit.”

Hudnall concludes, “Unions and public sector jobs are the most unholy alliance of our times…and many victims have been left in their destructive wake.”
It surely looks as if Delaware is following in the footsteps of California and New York: Protectionism of the worst sort plus a perversion of law in that some get redress for abuse while others have no recourse at all.

Lavelle’s legislation would rectify the glaring inequities, but continues to languish while strongly opposed by those who are indebted to and protecting the teachers union.

So much for equal justice for all of Delaware’s children.

Who can blame Christopher’s parents for wanting to get out of Delaware?

Courting Disaster

2011-03-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

My article on Obama and the courts.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/courting_disaster.html

2011-02-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

Saint Margaret Sanger: Patronness of the Church of Planned Parenthood

It is customary for supporters of a given cause to supply hagiographies for their founders, putting them in the most felicitous light possible while characterizing opponents as “wingnuts,” mental defectives, and hopeless ideologues—the sort of people Margaret Sanger was convinced society should be rid of.

Revisionist Leftists are inclined to sanctify the reputation of Margaret Sanger as part of their defense of Planned Parenthood’s still distinctly eugenicist bent, while openly reviling the opposition to the institutionalization of Sanger’s philosophy. But, alas for the true believers of the Left, it is Sanger who was the “wingnut,” the mental case and the ideologue; not those who were and are horrified over her eugenicist philosophy, succinctly summarized in her horrific speech “Plan for Peace.”

Briefly, Sanger’s plan for peace was to reduce certain elements of society by means of forced sterilization of those with undesirable genetic defects, such as those unfortunates who were members of non-white races. Roundups of mental defectives, who along with other social undesirables, were to be placed in concentration camps in order their odoriferous malignity not waft into the Aryan populace’s gene pool.

Sanger chose sterilization as the chief means of reducing undesirables because at the time abortion was illegal; but sterilization proved even a more effective tool than abortion, as it guaranteed the undesirable would never reproduce like kin. Through systematic sterilization of those defined as a special class of untouchables, the world would then be saved from the dilemma of generations of defectives reproducing themselves into time immemorial. The idea was that lineages such as the Jukes and the Kallikaks would be eliminated from the gene pool-- the Jukes being a case example of inheritable criminality and the Kallikaks examples of genetically induced mental retardation.

The idea that forced sterilization of people whose genetic makeup inclined their progeny to criminality or mental deficiency was a good idea was reinforced by the Supreme Court case “Buck vs. Bell,” a decision succinctly articulated by Chief Justice Oliver Holmes, who cogently summarized his much lauded decision thusly: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Sanger’s eugenicist tools of trade, widely imitated by Adolf Hitler, were not put to the philosophical equivalent of suttee during the Gotterdammerung which immolated Nazi ideology. Instead, Sanger’s concepts survived the fall of the Third Reich and re-emerged, like the Phoenix, to be incorporated into the very moral fiber of Planned Parenthood, which enthusiastically added abortion to Sanger’s tools of trade. A new means of holding down the population growth and of ensuring prosperity for the fit among us had been found and was embraced with deadly enthusiasm.

It is undeniable Sanger’ eugenicist philosophy and the tools used to effectuate that philosophy, especially abortion, have influenced Planned Parenthood to this day. One example above all others is the effectual reduction of minority populations, particularly the black community, which was targeted by Sanger as early as 1919. The effect of Planned Parenthood’s philosophy and policies on blacks has been absolutely devastating.

While there are many articles on the subject, one of the most thoroughly damaging and meticulously documented is a piece by Tanya Green entitled “The Negro Project and Margaret Sanger.” Written in 1999, the facts contained therein have not significantly changed; in fact, it is not too much to say the carnage in the black community continues unabated. This, despite the wakeup calls given by some black leaders themselves, including one Rev. Johnny M. Hunter, then national director of LEARN, the largest black pro-life organization:

“Abortion is the number-one killer of blacks in America,” Rev. Hunter said. “We're losing our people at the rate of 1,452 a day. That's just pure genocide. There's no other word for it. [Sanger's] influence and the whole mindset that Planned Parenthood has brought into the black community ... say it's okay to destroy your people. We bought into the lie; we bought into the propaganda.”

“We're destroying the destiny and purpose of others who should be here,” Hunter laments. “Who knows the musicians we've lost? Who knows the great leaders the black community has really lost? Who knows what great minds of economic power people have lost? What great teachers?” He recites an old African proverb: “No one knows whose womb holds the chief.”

Hunter has personally observed the vestiges of Planned Parenthood's eugenic past in the black community today. “When I travel around the country ... I can only think of one abortion clinic [I've seen] in a predominantly white neighborhood. The majority of clinics are in black neighborhoods.”

George Grant, author of Grand Illusions: the Legacy of Planned Parenthood, also observed the same game plan almost 20 years ago. He writes: “During the 1980s when Planned Parenthood shifted its focus from community-based clinics to school-based clinics, it again targeted inner-city minority neighborhoods,” he writes. “Of the more than 100 school-based clinics that have opened nationwide in the last decade [1980s], none has been at substantially all-white schools,” he adds. “None has been at suburban middle-class schools. All have been at black, minority or ethnic schools.”

Tanya Green, the author of the aforementioned study, “The Negro Project,” while writing of the unbelievably eugenicist bent of Sanger and her organization, also points out the stereotypical reinforcement of the racist notion that blacks are just too highly sexually charged to contain themselves in any meaningful degree. She mentions a Planned Parenthood affiliate giving condoms to residents of a poor black neighborhood. The residents were given a goodie bag which included a bright-green condom and a coupon redeemable at three clinics for a dozen condoms and a $5 McDonald’s gift certificate. The presumption was that promiscuous sexual behavior was a given within the black community, and that given their supposed penchant for indiscriminate sexual behavior, they should at least have birth control.

The combination of stereotypical and eugenicist thinking is a lethal one; one which leads Green to conclude that black leaders have been silent far too long about Sanger’s and Planned Parenthood’s devastating effects on minority communities.
But it’s not just black leaders who have been unwittingly complicitous in allowing the racist intent of Sanger and her organization to continue their “containment” of the black population, the results of which have meant the continued diminishment the black race, which at the turn of the last century was some 20% but now only 12% of the US population.

Hagiographer’s of Sanger and her Church of Planned Parenthood, along with those who willfully deny the continued implementation of her hideous ideology are also among the culprits who are complicitous in the ultimate racist behavior; namely supporting the attempt to control the population of minorities, especially blacks, through abortion and other means.

Those who wish to paint Sanger as the saint of reproductive health and who would like to add a post mortem halo around her head remind one of those revisionists who have a few kind words for Mussolini, who at least made the trains run on time; and Hitler, who got the economy rolling once again, all the while absorbing Sanger’s and other eugenicists’ ideas. Both took their vile ideologies to heights which still cause any human being with a modicum of conscience extreme moral vertigo, a dizziness engendered by the sheer incomprehensibility of seeing Evil masquerading as a Good which should be both endorsed and implemented.

"Back Alley" Backfires

2011-02-04T08:36:00.000-08:00

One of the chief talking points by those in favor of legalizing
abortion was the “back alley” argument. The claim was that if abortion wasnt legalized and women not given the oportunity to abort in sanitary, well regulated environments, they would be forced into back alley, illegal hell holes filled with filth and danger.

It was a powerful argument, as was the “coat hanger” argument, the substance of which was that the woman would use dangerous instruments to abort herself, risking her life with complications such as perforation of the uterus, damage to the cervix, and the possibility of leaving fetal remains within the uterus– a complication leading to toxic shock and death.

Alas, all the horror stories cited by the pro-abortion Left–and more–have come to pass. they have come to pass in perfectly legal clinics, witness the gruesome stories attendant to the Gosnell clinic in Philadelphia as well as the Elkton Maryland abortion clinic in which one young woman nearly lost her life and thrity-five late term, viable infants were found on site in a freezer.

Yet do we see women from NOW or NARAL marching in the streets in protest against the conditions they deplored and cited as a reason for the legalization of abortion? Do we see massive outpourings of rage concerning the lack of regulations? Do we see a push for legislating even minimal health standards for abortion clinics?

On the contrary, all we’ve seen from the pro-abortion advocates is resistance to regulations and hostility toward organizations which provide alternatives.

We don’t even see from the pro-abortion Left much, if any, outrage over the infanticide committed in Gosnell’s clinic.

Heartless.

The Evil of Banality

2011-01-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

It’s no secret the political left has continually demeaned and vilified the Tea Party and other rising conservative groups ever since their inception a mere one and a half or two years ago. So it is ironic to see that in the most recent attacks on the Right, the Left has accused the conservatives of creating a “climate of hate” so potent it infected the crazed brain of the killer responsible for the Tucson massacre. The solution to such violence, conservatives are assured, it a renewed effort guaranteeing civility of discourse in order to temper the hateful political climate. The thermostat of political discourse is to be set at a serene 70 degrees; or, like Goldilocks preferred porridge, neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

Lofty calls have gone out for all parties to rise above the passions of political partisanship, to elevate discourse to a more dispassionate and reasonable plain. But the new manifesto of the Left calling for dispassionate discourse is either a deliberate and calculating gloss whereby its true intentions are withheld so that its real agenda may be implemented without opposition or even detection; or it is a serious, debilitating inability to recognize and articulate the bases of one’s policies and the execution of those policies. In either case, the pretense of those who call for all to become dispassionate observers and commentators when it comes to politics (and religion) is just that: a pretentious charade of calculated banality which merely conceals ulterior motives and goals.

Simply put, there is no possibility American politics can be dispassionate, so the calls for toning down or eliminating passion are a cover for something else.
That “something else” is as follows: radical progressives’ tactics of vilification combined with calls for civility and peaceful bipartisanship are twin prongs of a strategy meant to discredit and ultimately to silence the opposition.

Conservatives do well to pick off charges of hate mongering and disassociate themselves from linkage to carnage such as the Tucson massacre; demanding evidence as well as refuting false accusations. At the same time, such charges must not succeed in their chief mission, which is to vitiate the opposition by putting it continually on the defensive while allowing the Left to set the agenda, linguistic or otherwise.

Conservatism must not lose the impetus of their offensive strategies such as attention to the debt, out of control spending, increasing socialization of the US, the erosion of federalism and the rest of the Leftist agenda.

Conservatives need to recognize the diversionary tactics employed by the liberal Left are meant to keep the conservative movement constantly on the defensive. They need to realize the attacks meant to keep them on the defensive are coupled with a more subtle strategy; namely, the most recent call to civility. The goal of radical progressives, who seldom--if ever-- follow their own advice, is to vitiate the conservative protest against the overreach of the federal government, to water down the recent victories in the election of 2010 and to keep conservatives constantly responding to the accusations of the Left, thus vitiating conservatism’s attempts to reform the US political system. The idea is to rendering conservatism so meek and mild, so intimidated, soft spoken and banal that it becomes utterly ineffective as a political reform movement.

In short, in the end, the constant calls for "civility" are a thinly disguised means for silencing protestors.

At this point, it is important to make a distinction between gratuitous incivility and moral outrage. Human discourse, if it is to be meaningful, abides by generally recognized rules of civil behavior. Such rules exclude profanity, name calling, and unjustifiable personal attacks. Also excluded are slander, rumor mongering and sexually and racially charged innuendoes.

But the left, and sometimes "moderate" or liberal Republicans, have sought to extend the rules of generally recognized civil behavior to include strong expressions of moral outrage. Many times the attempt is made to define genuine moral outrage as incivility; or worse, racism. To that end, members of the opposition from the left often have sought to silence conservatives by attempts to make the Tea Party and other conservative groups speak the language of the left, to accept the left’s terms of debate, which are almost always put in the context of race, victimization, political correctness and multi-culturalism.

To put it another way, progressives have certain doctrinal assumptions as the bases of any dialogue and seek to rope in and corral opposition by requiring the opposition to speak the language of the Left and to define moral issues according to progressive priorities. That is one reason, for example, the left most often resorts to the constantly repeated and by now often the merely rhetorical trope of racism. [A caveat: The reduction of the term by making it ubiquitous and all encompassing has been tragic for minorities, as the dilution of racism’s true meaning weakens justifiable attempts to confront and eradicate genuine cases of racist behavior.]

Limited linguistic tropes combined with attempts to control and neuter language are hallmarks of radical ideologues. Linguistic limitations characterized by banality can be as sure a means of repression as permitted inflammatory rhetoric characterized by faux rage and canned reactions to “insults.” Both are linguistic mechanisms designed to enforce conformity by molding thought patterns according to ideological tenets. Make everyone call each other “citizen” or “comrade,” and you’re already half way there to thought control. Enforce a stiff arm salute every time the dear leader’s name is evoked, and you have already pacified the public. Make everyone in the congregation use God neutral terms, and you have already succeeded in conforming established church doctrine to your agenda.

Ultimately, the Newspeak language of a given ideology becomes the advance sub-military attempt to enforce conformity and to achieve the banal egalitarianism ideologues desire.

It is therefore imperative for conservatives to refuse to accept the Left’s attempts to define political dialogue by linguistic manipulation which seeks to expunge language of “hostile” terms, thus re-defining political debate. Conservative groups must not allow genuine moral indignation to be redefined as incivility. Moral indignation arises from recognition of evil. In turn, recognition of evil requires strong language, strong confrontation and strong action.

It’s worth noting the prophets of ancient Israel and Jesus Christ all used strong language to define and to confront the injustices and societal ills of their time. Conservatives should encourage one another to follow those illustrious examples. By so doing, they will avoid falling prey to scurrilous attacks which keep them always on the defensive and to attempts to silence them or force them into conformity by false charges of “hate speech” and hypocritical, spurious calls for "civility."
　
Conservatives must speak boldly and truthfully to the evils of society, refusing to abide by the Left’s terms of debate. They must articulate clearly and precisely their short and long term goals, realizing that vigorous articulation and proclamation of truth is the first and most necessary requirement of any political movement pushing for reform.

Hierarchy

2011-01-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

The most important thing that can be said of hierarchies is that once established, their tendency is to hold on to power.

But the second most important thing to be said is that hierarchies are never eternal, never truly static, as there are always continually uprising currents of change either influencing the hierarchy to return to its roots or seeking to annihilate it altogether.

Sometimes established hierarchies don’t notice undercurrents of change soon enough to incorporate them into their established ways. Such seems to have been the case with the aristocracy of France before the Revolution, which though cognizant of and even catering to the Enlightenment and the radical new ideas of the intellectuals of the time, thought their status as arbiters of power would remain unchanged.

And, such seems to be the case within the Republican Party, albeit with some notable exceptions.

Within a mere year and a half, the Tea Party movement has shaken American politics to the foundations. However, some within the Party hierarchy still remain oblivious to or distinctly dismissive of the significance of the political revolution happening under their noses. They maintain a Louis the XVI posture of, “What? You say the Bastille has fallen and peasants with pitchforks are at the gates of the palace? Nonsense! Tell the guards to shoo them away.”

Too many within the established Republican hierarchy still expect matters will go on as usual, with elderly statesmen who’ve duly waited in line a lifetime for the opportunity to be nominated expecting their due anointment. But those who have been waiting in the wings may never get their cue to enter stage Left, never be that “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more,” much less fill their long expected central roles.

As Richard Land, a prominent leader within the powerful southern Baptist church has said, “We’re not going to do what we normally do, nominate the steady beau. As the grassroots Tea Party movement showed in state after state in the 2010 congressional elections, this is no longer a hierarchical party. And the field of contenders doesn’t overwhelm anyone. All the major candidates have significant problems.”

Land gets it.

Old hierarchical political models will no longer work. That’s because the rising revolutionaries have crashed the gates.

Certainly the new (actually, quite traditionally conservative) revolutionary principles have been brought to bear in Delaware, where Tea Party, conservative favorites overthrew establishment candidates. While the results were not, to state the obvious, what the conservative movement desired; nonetheless, the hierarchy cannot remain what it was, should not expect to maintain old ways. It has to change if it is to remain relevant. It has to move toward the new conservatism.

There are positive signs some respected Republican leaders in Delaware “get it.” For instance, the appearances of Pete DuPont and Charlie Copeland at the Tea Party rally last year at least indicate an acknowledgement of Tea Party power and principles.

But diehard “moderates” within the hierarchy continue to resist, expecting conservatives to continue their old patterns of behavior, believing conservatives will fall into line with their votes and money.

Resistance, however, will ultimately prove futile, as the burgeoning power of the conservative movement nationally and within the state continues to grow. “Moderates” must join the emerging revolution or permanently be left out in the cold.

All the above doesn’t mean the conservative upstarts should put the members of the old hierarchy into tumbrels headed off to the guillotine, but it does mean the momentum is with conservatives, not with the “moderates” who have dominated the party structure for so long. It means “moderates” will have to, well, “moderate” according to conservative principles if they are to remain relevant to the Party. To put it another way, the ancien regime run by “moderates is done for. It’s time for them to move with the new political currents or be left behind, consigned to near irrelevancy while holding on to an ever shrinking power base.

In the meantime, rising conservatives should use every power of persuasion to bring moderates into the conservative camp; not vice versa.

Conservatives also should extend olive branches whenever they can—but without compromising or abandoning principles as they have done so often in the past.

Show Trials

2010-12-31T12:04:00.000-08:00

From 1929-1937, Stalin conducted a series of show trials in which his enemies were pilloried and then executed for offenses against the communist regime. The first of the trials, like those which followed, was carefully scripted to include angry crowd scenes in which thousands shouted, “Death, death death!”

By the time the later trials were organized, the methods employed to destroy Stalin’s opponents had been refined to the point confessions were first extracted from supposed “wreckers” of the Soviet economy by torture and by threats to family members, including wives and infant children.

The singling out of certain individuals and groups for elimination, however, was only part of Stalin’s script, as the broader purpose behind the trials and executions was the complete purging of opposition as well as the provision of a diversion which would keep attention focused on the alleged criminality of a few while Stalin’s broader agenda proceeded apace and his power was completely consolidated.

Ultimately consolidation of Stalin’s power was achieved by his prolonged war against all Soviet citizens, a war that exterminated whole classes of people; while the show trials, with their very public examples of chastened victims, ensured the instilling of utter fear which kept any emergent opposition silenced.

Stalin’s tactics were straight out of the playbook of the radicals responsible for the Terror of the French Revolution, which playbook has been used in various permutations to isolate and destroy political enemies for over two hundred years.

“Gentler” modifications of Stalin’s (as well as Hitler’s) tactics have found their way into Western politics. The famed Alinsky method is but one example of modified Stalinist show trial and purge tactics.

One Alinskyite rite includes the “politics of personal destruction.” It is a brutal but very highly refined and honed process for destroying one’s political opponents, utilized to break down and annihilate the opposition.

But one doesn’t have to be a follower of Alinsky in order to implement the politics of destruction. The tactics of destruction can be applied without a particular name attached to them.

Tactics include repetition of offenses, sometimes real but mostly perceived and exaggerated, until the public consciousness is permeated with simple but effective negative images. The result is that every time an opponent’s name is mentioned, a negative term such as “witch” or “Nazi” comes to mind, much as the terms “wreckers,” “hooligans” and “enemies of the state” were used in the Stalinist and Maoist eras.

Next, the stupidity of the opponent must be emphasized relentlessly. Every verbal gaffe, every misplaced phrase, any small mistake in facts, any inexact recall of events is elevated to criminal status and repeated endlessly so that the targeted person always looks like an idiot. The tactic is coupled with ignoring any well thought out position papers or speeches.

Usually only a few figures are targeted for the show trials, as the object is to stereotype the victim and then to make the target representative of the entire opposition. Thus Sarah Palin, for example, is made the representative of the conservative movement within the Republican Party; while in the state of Delaware, Christine O’Donnell is anointed by her opposition as the representative darling of the Tea Party movement and conservative Republicans. Even though there are thousands of other informed and thoughtful conservatives, a caricature suits the purposes of the opposition. It makes things much simpler and avoids the chore of thoroughly examining the issues.

Last, the tactics employed by opposing forces are meant to keep everyone focused on the freshest twigs thrown on the burning fire meant to consume the targeted victim. Old scandals are continually renewed and new ones continually concocted, old history is revisited and regurgitated, personal relationships past and present are ruthlessly examined under a microscope. All are continually thrown into the bonfire, while the burning glare ensures the voting public is constantly distracted and continually focused on the targeted person. Meanwhile, the broader landscape of pressing issues and concerns is thrown into the shade.

Conservatives should continually be aware of and to repudiate the show trial tactics employed by the opposition, both from without and from within the Party. They need to refuse to join in and/or continually rebut the crowds howling for blood. They need to stop allowing the experts at “show trial” tactics set the agenda for discussion and action, for such carnival barker types will feed the frenzy for as long as they can.

In sum, conservatives should stop their participation in and mimicking of the three ring circus trials designed for personal destruction.

Instead, they need to relentlessly focus on the issues, to provide solutions and to establish and articulate a vision for the future.

Perhaps most importantly, they need to refuse to imitate or employ the politics of destruction

Wizards of Oz

2010-12-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

The theme of many sci-fi scripts is the abandonment of the human dimension for that of the machine.

One aspect of that theme is the elimination of the human factor entirely as giant computers take on a life of their own, become sentient and resolve to exterminate the human race, which is needed no longer.

Welcome to the new reality on Wall Street, which is no longer dominated by human analyses, but which is increasingly dominated by computers which specialize in complicated algorithms which determine the rise and fall of global markets.

Felix Salmon and Jon Stokes, in their article “Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street,” are among the latest authors outlining the promise and perils of unregulated computer control of stock markets.

Computers have the ability to store more data and to transfer it at speeds impossible for humans to replicate, though it is still possible for humans to “control’ the machines and put them to work to their advantage.
The abilities of computers for lightening fast absorption and actionable information has resulted in a new service known as “Lexicon,” which has clients who are algorithms, “lines of code that govern an increasing amount of global training activity.”

How does it work?

Lexicon scans every Dow Jones stock record with the immediacy only computer speed can accomplish, and look for clues that indicate the ups and downs of the investors. “Then it sends the slight variants in “emotive” behavior of investors back to computer subscribers who can break it down in order to make decision about their buying patterns.”

The lengthy evaluative process humans once had to make for themselves—reading the news and making personal evaluations, is not just abbreviated. It’s eliminated. The machines make the decisions.

Welcome to the new Wall Street, where screaming floor traders are no longer “actionable.”

Salmon and Stokes write that the entire financial system has been taken over by algorithmic trading. “From the single desk of a startup hedge fund to the gilded halls of Goldman Sachs, computer code is now responsible for most of the activity on Wall Street…Increasingly, the market’s ups and downs are determined not by traders competing to see who has the best information or sharpest business mind but by algorithms feverishly scanning for faint signals of potential profit.
Algorithms have become so ingrained in our financial system that the markets could not operate without them.”

It’s enough to make a mere human being break out into a cold sweat.

But for Washington, determined to bring Wall Street under its control, the algorithmic finesse of computers means trading, always a volatile and elusive mess, is a regulatory nightmare, as it is no longer humans who are to be regulated.

And, frankly, show me the congressman who understands the new trading systems.

What is understood, no matter how vaguely, is that the algorithmic method produces extreme volatility.

As the authors point out, “individually, these algorithms may be easy to control but when they interact they can create unexpected behaviors—a conversation that can overwhelm the system it was built to navigate. On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average inexplicably experienced a series of drops that came to be known as the flash crash, at one point shedding some 573 points in five minutes. Less than five months later, Progress Energy, a North Carolina utility, watched helplessly as its share price fell 90 percent. Also in late September, Apple shares dropped nearly 4 percent in just 30 seconds, before recovering a few minutes later.
These sudden drops are now routine, and it’s often impossible to determine what caused them. But most observers pin the blame on the legions of powerful, superfast trading algorithms—simple instructions that interact to create a market that is incomprehensible to the human mind and impossible to predict.
For better or worse, the computers are now in control.”

Also, for better or worse, academics—math, science and engineering whiz kids—are now in charge as they have begun applying algorithms to “every aspect of the financial industry. Some built algorithms to perform the familiar function of discovering, buying, and selling individual stocks (a practice known as proprietary, or “prop,” trading). Others devised algorithms to help brokers execute large trades—massive buy or sell orders that take a while to go through and that become vulnerable to price manipulation if other traders sniff them out before they’re completed. These algorithms break up and optimize those orders to conceal them from the rest of the market. (This, confusingly enough, is known as algorithmic trading.) Still others are used to crack those codes, to discover the massive orders that other quants are trying to conceal. (This is called predatory trading.)

“The result is a universe of competing lines of code, each of them trying to outsmart and one-up the other. ‘We often discuss it in terms of The Hunt for Red October, like submarine warfare,” says Dan Mathisson, head of Advanced Execution Services at Credit Suisse. ‘There are predatory traders out there that are constantly probing in the dark, trying to detect the presence of a big submarine coming through. And the job of the algorithmic trader is to make that submarine as stealth as possible.’ ”

So while the smart kids devise the algorithms, the algorithms tend to take on a life of their own, seeing the market from a computer’s point of view, “which can be very different from a human’s. Rather than focus on the behavior of individual stocks, for instance, many prop-trading algorithms look at the market as a vast weather system, with trends and movements that can be predicted and capitalized upon. These patterns may not be visible to humans, but computers, with their ability to analyze massive amounts of data at lightning speed, can sense them.”

So the statistical minutiae computers can separate and sense patterns which then determine within milliseconds the buying and selling of stocks.

Congressional efforts to report on the inevitable mess-ups that occur when a computer glitch sends the market plummeting have been an almost comical, as the reports they gather take months to compile while the computers whir on and on.

“In the wake of the flash crash, Mary Schapiro, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, publicly mused that humans may need to wrest some control back from the machines. ‘Automated trading systems will follow their coded logic regardless of outcome,” she told a congressional subcommittee, ‘while human involvement likely would have prevented these orders from executing at absurd prices.’

“Delaware senator Ted Kaufman sounded an even louder alarm in September, taking to the Senate floor to declare, ‘Whenever there is a lot of money surging into a risky area, where change in the market is dramatic, where there is no transparency and therefore no effective regulation, we have a prescription for disaster.’”

Well.

The comical saga continues even though the SEC tried to get a grip on regulating the insane computers which had displayed their mad ability to disrupt the markets; and, (Gasp!) worse, to bypass regulations altogether. Heaven forefend that any computers bypass by sheer speed of intelligence the regulatory powers of congress and the SEC.

But they did.

The efforts of the SEC and the desire of congress to get a grip on the takeover of machines did little nothing to control the algorithmic market. All their attempts at regulation merely slowed them down or stopped the process for a few minutes.
Salmon and Stokes write, surely with a wry twist of humor, “That’s a tacit admission that the system has outgrown the humans that created it.”

They conclude, “For individual investors, trading with algorithms has been a boon: Today, they can buy and sell stocks much faster, cheaper, and easier than ever before. But from a systemic perspective, the stock market risks spinning out of control. Even if each individual algorithm makes perfect sense, collectively they obey an emergent logic—artificial intelligence, but not artificial human intelligence. It is, simply, alien, operating at the natural scale of silicon, not neurons and synapses. We may be able to slow it down, but we can never contain, control, or comprehend it. It’s the machines’ market now; we just trade in it.”

But perhaps there are even more arresting conclusions to be drawn; namely, that congress, which is a slow moving human institution used to (cough!) slow and methodical deliberation, will remain eternally behind and unable to regulate the momentum of computer technology, not only as it pertains to the national and global markets, but as it pertains to much else as well.

After all, who knows how many unelected Wizards of Oz are behind the innards of the computers that now control the markets of the globe?

In fact, who knows who is in control?

Divorce

2010-12-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

Nationally and statewide, conservatives have been like spurned lovers. Like the wife who once proved useful in maintaining a home base for a disinterested spouse whose true passions lay elsewhere, restive conservatives who demanded more love and attention have been turned out of the house and in some case issued a divorce decree.

Michael Filozof documents the repudiation of the conservatives and their agenda in his excellent article (found in the American Thinker) entitled, “Is the Republican Party Finished?”

Filozof points out the lame-duck session proved the Republican Party once again does not represent the interests and passionate concerns of conservatives--even after the conservative tsunami of the 2010 elections. For conservatives, the results of the lame-duck session are stomach turning.

He writes:

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spectacularly failed to hold his caucus together to even delay ratification of the START treaty until the 112th Congress is seated in January. Republican leftists Olympia Snowe and Lisa Murkowski sided with Democrats to end the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, forcing the gay agenda from the streets of San Francisco right into the U.S. Marine Corps. Congressional Republicans agreed to cut FICA taxes for Social Security (which is underfunded already) and expand the Democratic Party's welfare state constituency by extending unemployment benefits -- in exchange for maintaining current tax rates for a paltry two years. The deal will add billions to the deficit. Tea Party darling Scott Brown, mocked by Obama for driving a truck in his insurgent 2009 campaign in which he stole "Ted Kennedy's seat" from the Democrats, voted for Obama's agenda on all of these issues.”

Why was there such a debacle in view of the fact all Republicans knew the voters’ feelings demonstrated by the results of the 2010 election?

First, Filozov writes, Democrats are Machiavillian. They know how to exercise power ruthlessly and they did so; whereas Republicans have not ruthlessly pushed their agenda since the time of Henry Cabot Lodge.

Why don’t Republicans hotly pursue their agenda? It’s because they don’t have one, at least not a conservative one that is different from the Democrats.

Part of the reason for a lack of an agenda which incites passion and unity, he continues, is that “conservatives today are essentially in the same position that the radical Left was in back in the Sixties.” The “establishment” was essentially still conservative. “The radicals found themselves with nowhere to go but the streets. Today’s “Establishment” is as uniformly leftist, and conservatives are as unwelcome in the halls of power today as the radical Left was 45 years ago.”

The result of the left Establishment’s control of institutions is that Republicans, at least in many respects, began to ape leftist establishment values, becoming part of and enablers of the establishment’s values.

In brief, Republicans lost their first love and became lukewarm.

So what do conservatives do?

In order to move forward, Filozov continues, conservatives [such as the Tea Partiers, among others] are going to have to “begin in the streets, capture a political party and convert it to their agenda, and follow up in the courts when they lost elections.

“Even more importantly, conservatives are going to have to learn to exploit national crises to advance their agenda.” [Never let a crisis go to waste!]

Not that there aren’t or won’t be plenty of crises. There’s a virtual banquet, including the national debt, the dollar, inflation, nuclear proliferation, illegal immigration, and on and on.

If the Republican establishment doesn’t woo back and engage conservatives by espousing conservative alternatives, they are doomed.

Conservatives will divorce the establishment just as the Left divorced the establishment during the Sixties.

That is because the restlessness of conservatives, who are thus far at least somewhat willing to live under the same roof as moderates within the party in the hopes they will be listened to and enabled to share power, will turn to the establishing of a third party.

In other words, conservatives will divorce the establishment just as the Left divorced the establishment during the Sixties.

Establishment intransigence will not win back conservatives; nor will vague promises that conservatives’ concerns will be addressed in the vague and indeterminate future woo back the disaffected ranks.

The observations above are applicable to the Republican Party in Delaware, for what is true nationally is true locally as well.

The Delaware GOP, if it is to survive, much less present alternatives to the current Democrat agenda, will die if it continues aping and wooing Democrats while repudiating conservatives within its ranks, for disaffected conservatives will not continue to support a party which has promised much, taken much and delivered little to the conservative partners it has relied on for votes and support. Conservatives will not continue to support an organization which has too often and not so subtly displayed a “Conservatives Not Welcome” sign in the Republican house. In brief, conservatives will not continue a marriage of convenience with a party which often displays hostility almost as severe as the Democrat establishment.

So there it is.

The Delaware GOP has to reconcile, learn to love and to share the household with a spouse it fell out of love with a long time ago. And the conservative spouse must learn to start heeding and responding to overtures when and if given.

Is it possible?

I think so. I hope so. I pray so.

Otherwise, a divorce is inevitable.

Christ and the Political Divide

2010-12-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

The one essential and transformative influence in politics was articulated by Jesus Christ. Before his time, and long after, as his precepts were slowly and gradually introduced into the institutions of the West, there was no concept of limited government, as never before had any state or empire other than that of the Hebrews recognized an overarching, higher authority which limited earthly governance.

But, as Lord Acton pointed out in his great essay, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, "when Christ said,‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,' those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of Freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased to be an aspiration of patient reasoners [such as the Greeks],and was made the perpetual charge and care of the most energetic institution and the most universal association in the world [the Church]. The new law, the new spirit, the new authority, gave to Liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy or in the constitution of Greece or Rome, before the knowledge of the Truth that makes us free.”

The limitations and boundaries of the state, previously limitless and onerously exacting, including in the matter of taxation, were articulated in that one phrase: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

From that time on, the war against the all consuming power of the state to take whatever it wished from its citizens, was commenced and has been fought over centuries.

That war continues to this day, and is currently expressed by the revitalization of the Right—not the Left, which sees the state in antique, pre-Christian terms as limitless; in fact, as a god unto itself who attributes to itself the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.

Radical

2010-12-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…” William Butler Yeats

“Burn, baby; burn…” Rioters in Watts, CA, 1965

“O Lord, remember what the Edomites did on the day the armies of Babylon captured Jerusalem. ‘Destroy it!’ they yelled. ‘Level it to the ground.’” Psalm 37

There is nothing particularly new about Julius Assange other than his use of internet communication as a means of destruction of the international order and, maybe, the Alexandrian grandiosity of his intent.

Yes, his intent is truly grandiose. By his exhaustive revelations of secret and intimate communications among the world’s national leaders, he has almost single handedly destroyed international diplomacy and upset the intricate and delicate order of the global political enterprise. This is to say nothing of the lives he has jeopardized and the alliances he has either truncated or wholly destroyed.

Why is he doing it?

Because he can. Because he wants to. Just because.

If the above sounds strange, it's good to recall Assange follows in the hallowed footsteps of anarchists throughout the ages, particularly of the last two or more centuries since the French Revolution. The goal is to tear down the existing societal order by any means necessary. The focus of the efforts is resistance to an order considered alien and intrinsically worthy of destruction; the message is action, action, and more action; the attacks are against the entire system of nation states—singly or internationally; and the means of execution are by trans/supranational cells operating subversively and mostly secretly.

He has at his disposal disaffected hackers who are spy worms within the systems, but
Assange also joins countless cadres of anarchists and terrorists who are part of a worldwide effort to bring down the entire global order, but the West is a specially favored target.

Assange has more than empathetic and skilled hackers to assist him. He finds friends and allies among the established far Left, many of whom support or ignore anarchists and terrorists for one chief reason; namely, because the Left has similar goals, but tends to achieve those goals incrementally from within the system. Assange provides both a useful and dramatic diversion at the same time he is a companion in the effort to revolutionize and transform the West according to Leftist doctrines.

That is why you will hear the Left, both in Europe and here in the US, defending Assange. Paul I. Adujie, author of WikiLeaks & Julian Assange, Heroism, Courage, Visionary of Our Time,—the title says it all!--is typical of those on the Left who champion Assange as a hero for revealing the duplicitous nature of the West, which the Left believes richly deserves Lady Godiva public nudity for transgressions real and imagined. Mr. Adujie, along with others who see the West as the Great Satan of the world, now feels vindicated. The West is as rotten to the core as he always believed it to be. Never mind Adujie is feverishly typing away while using the West’s invention of the internet to promote his hero.

For Mr. Adujie, as well as others of Leftist persuasion, Assange serves as a necessary and salutary emetic for the West, which has now been forced to vomit out all its secrets regardless of the consequences to the delicate diplomatic dances which always have to be conducted among nations; regardless of the lives which are now endangered; regardless of the alliances destroyed; regardless of the aid given anarchists and terrorists determined to destroy not only the West, but the entire global community.

Any good the West has ever accomplished or contributed to the world order is of no account, for she can never expiate her sins, as they are unforgiveable and so she must be entirely destroyed.

In the meantime, as noted above, the established Left within academia, the media and Hollywood applauds a fellow revolutionary, as he serves a useful purpose. They know that he, like they, is a true anarchist. Ironically, they may not think he, like them—if he lives long enough—will gradually become part of the system within which they themselves operate.

They may not realize Assange is like a Nikolai Bulganin, brutal and effective in ways they now do not wish to be, but gradually becoming as they now are--comfortably established apparatchiks ensconced within the hallowed halls of their privileged domains.

So they applaud Assange, like other revolutionaries before them and like them—in fact, just like they themselves—not realizing the day will come in which Assange also is seated within the established order, a blind termite who with the likeminded, will continue to gnaw at the foundations in hopes that eventually the whole structure will collapse.

Those Leftists who see present day radicals such as Assange reduced to the level of apparatchiks such as themselves should pause and take account of what may happen if the structure they live in and despise were finally to collapse on their own heads.
But being anarchists serving the god of Destruction, they can never look ahead that far. Like termites, they're too busy chewing on the foundations to take account of the damage to themselves.

It would be the penultimate irony if perhaps one day, like Bill Ayers, Assange were to become a respected professor and counsel to the White House. Perhaps he might even have a song written about him, maybe even a song as glorious as the “Horst Wessel” anthem.

After all, strange things have happened before.

But in the meantime, let's hope and pray that before such happens, others who are dreaming the good dreams, who are repudiating and looking beyond mere anarchy, will act to rebuild the grand but imperiled vision of the West.

Public education: More Than a Fiscal Problem

2010-12-01T08:48:00.000-08:00

Nearly everybody agrees, even those within the system: Public education is a fiscal mess of epic proportions and a disastrous failure at doing what it is supposed to do--educate children. Fiscal concerns and cultural concerns about public education are inextricable intertwined.

First, the fiscal mess.

Caesar Rodney Institute’s November 8 letter outlining the state’s fiscal problems—the state is now the largest employer in Delaware—noted Delaware’s public school system has 429 school administrators and employees making more than $100,000 a year—a total of more than $42,000,000 per annum. A search on (www.DelawareOnline.com ) reveals that over 282 school employees have, at one time or another, earned over $100,000. (http://php.delawareonline.com/schoolemploy_salaries.php )

But, as the site www.sunshinereview.org states: “Information about Delaware state employees is limited. However, you may find information here about certain teachers who at some point were paid more than $100,000 annually.”

However,the figures on the salaries of teachers are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. They don’t begin to include the growing problem of the unsustainable cost of teachers’ pensions. As Sunshine Review notes, the opacity surrounding information on Delaware’s public employees means complete information is hard to get hold of; but, according to (http://www.scribd.com/doc/29909590/Underfunded-Teacher-Pension-Plans-It%E2%80%99s-Worse-Than-You-Think)59 states face underfunded liabilities, including Delaware. The total liabilities amount to about 332 billion dollars.

As RiShawn Biddle points out in his article “Teacher Pension Bombs,” years of lavish traditional teacher compensation bolstered by bargains struck by state and district politicians and the NEA plus the AFT have made teaching the best-compensated public sector profession.

He adds that overly inflated investment growth models, risky investment of teachers’ pension funds, coupled with loose standards for accounting for risk and rates of return have meant pensions have overstated the actual value of their portfolios while understating their deficits. Bottom line: The pension funds are underfunded and the taxpayer is on the hook.

The point of listing the above facts is that fiscal conservatives would be right in their assumptions that budget reform for public employees, including teachers, is absolutely necessary. For instance, recommendations for consolidation of administrative districts, a hard look at the number of school employees and the compensation offered, plus an assessment of the fiscal sustainability of teachers’ pensions funding are all legitimate and necessary endeavors.

But budgetary reform and numbers crunching will not solve the overarching cultural problems afflicting failing schools; nor will throwing money at schools to solve problems work, as conservatives with a broader base of reforms readily acknowledge.

Fiscal conservatives might insist the problem of public education expenditures can be solved by mere budgetary means. Conservatives who are looking at broader based cultural issues, however, do not look at education as a mere accounting problem. They look at reforming the entire educational structure, which structure they see as absolutely foundational to the entire cultural structure. Such a look necessarily has a moral component; a “should” element that pure fiscal conservatism lacks; or, rather, simply cannot address separately, as the cultural issues are intimately and inseparably interwoven with fiscal issues (a point I’ve made in Part I).

Conservatives question the establishment of an education monopoly for several reasons, one of which is that state run educational monopolies are often a herald to encroaching state tyranny. When the entity which controls the minds of children is the state, only what the state wants taught is taught. The State becomes the “nurturing” Parent, not the children’s real parents, while children themselves are deliberately weaned away from parental influence.

Conservatives believe the state monopoly on education has as firm a grip as Standard Oil or Ma Bell ever had, respectively, on oil and telephone service. They believe the monopoly should be broken up by means of alternatives such as charter schools, voucher programs which promote private education, and home schooling.

All alternatives, no matter what individual teacher's putative disagreement with their union, have been steadfastly opposed by the Teachers Union, which correctly discerns and wrongfully opposes any competition.

Secondly, conservatives would like to look at the question of just what our kids are being and should be taught, as they consider the John Dewey progressive model of education not only inadequate, but probably the best means for “dumbing down” children in the name of forced egalitarianism, a concept which, along with politically correct extremism, runs rampant throughout the public school system.

How bad is it out there in America school land?

The great Russell Kirk, in his great work Prospects for Conservatives, gives one of the best and most succinct analyses of the American system of education the reader will ever find:

“A system of education in which respect for the wisdom of our ancestors is deliberately discouraged, and an impossible future of universal beneficence taken for granted; a system in which all the wealth of myth and fable; the symbolic study of human nature, is cast aside as so much rubbish; a system in which religion is treated, at least covertly, as nothing better than exploded superstition, or at best a vague collection of moral observations; a system in which all the splendor of history is discarded in favor of amorphous ‘social studies’; a system in which the imaginative literature of twenty-eight centuries is relegated to a tiny corner of the curriculum, in favor of ‘adjustment’; a system in which the physical sciences are huddled incoherently together, as if they formed a single discipline, and then are taught as a means to power over nature and man, not as a means to wisdom; a system in which the very tools to any sort of apprehension of systematic knowledge, spelling and grammar, mathematics and geography, are despised as boring impediments to ‘socialization’—why, is it possible to conceive of a system better calculated to starve the imagination, discourage the better student and weaken reason…

"Is it any wonder that our educational administrators, to escape from the spectacle of their own failure, turn to purposeless aggrandizement, ’plant,’ doubled and tripled and quadrupled enrollments, larger staffs, larger salaries, tougher athletic teams, as a means of concealing from the public the gigantic fraud they have put upon the nation?” (Italics mine.)

Who could put it better? In fact, since Russell made his observations concerning the starvation of children’s minds and hearts, matters have only worsened.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, as an ad for an Afro-American university reminds us. Poor parents are not alone in realizing their kids’ minds (and thus their very souls) are being wasted by progressive thinking, or rather, the lack of thinking, as Russell points out. If parents did not realize, even if merely intuitively, that their children’s minds were being wasted, we would not see the pathetic sight of parents’ anguish as charter school positions were being raffled off by lottery, some kids being allowed an “education” while others are assigned to the equivalent of jail—witness the tragic toll at a school like Martin Luther King in Philadelphia, where youngsters are put through metal detectors and frisked, and where half the students can’t even read.

All of the above points out the indivisibility of cultural considerations from fiscal policy and the need for radical reform of our public schools. As Russell notes, “The conservative task must be one of assault and reconstruction, rather than simply one of defense.”

And, to conclude, fiscal conservatives must realize that the preservation of their single conservative domain (as they define it) is in jeopardy, as progressive economic and social issues, which are intrinsically anti-capitalist and anti-free market, will drown fiscal conservatism along with the rest of conservatism if our educational system is not reformed.

In brief, the US educational system, including the Delaware public system, is hatching out cadres of young progressives inimically opposed to the US capitalist and free market system as well s to traditional conservative mores. Fiscal conservatives need not delude themselves into thinking their small preservation will escape absorption and annihilation.

Conservatives cannot avoid the necessity of systematically addressing social issues along with economic issues, and must, as Russell points out, “endeavor to redeem the modern mind” by affirming the entirety of the divine human enterprise, attacking and reforming the seminal bases from which progressivism assaults the entire culture—namely, public education.

Wait

2010-11-22T07:36:00.000-08:00

"Bombing the railway lines to Auschwitz and other camps would only have achieved a temporary respite for the Jews, and distracted attention and resources from the larger purpose of overthrowing the regime that was killing them."
--Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), p. 560Ah, yes. Of course, we saw the point: Larger purposes for a greater good.

We understand.

We agree those “larger purposes” meant attempts to secure justice for the Jews had to be delayed. God forbid we got distracted by the immediacy of saving of innocent lives. After all, we had something bigger in mind.

Of course the Jews had to wait. Wait until they died.

How many times have the voiceless and oppressed heard similar arguments?

Frederick Douglass was told by Lincoln that political exigencies were of more importance than the immediate freeing of slaves. Lincoln was concerned about border states loyalty and feared his higher goal of saving the union would be jeopardized if he freed the slaves at the outset of the Civil War. He later capitulated to Douglass’ and other abolitionists demands, but not until he had reasonable hope of victory. Doubtless the ethics of his decision will be debated for decades to come.

Regardless, slaves had to wait for their freedom.

In a similar manner, women were told for decade after decade their quest for eaulity would have to wait until circumstances were more favorable. Voices of caution counseled incremental and timely steps. Susan B. Anthony heard such voices and drily noted, “Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations…can never effect a reform.”

In the meantime, however, caution and care were thrown to the wind when other priorities dear to the hearts of those cautious about women’s rights were emphasized. There was infrastructure to be attended to-- railroads that needed to be built to grow the burgeoning economy. Reconstruction demanded the attention of the government. The growth of the United States as an economic power dictated attention to the military. In these matters, all of which generated money and poltical power, caution need not apply.

Butthe enfranchisement of women had to wait.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous letter from a Birmingham jail, and included it in his book Why We Can’t Wait. Told by authorities that other matters were more important than ridding the US of the glaring injustice of apartheid; told that interminable, fruitless negotiations should continue, he wrote:

“For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied...We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. “

Precisely.

How many times during our nation’s history have the disenfranchised, the politically impotent been told to wait until more important matters are addressed? How often have “priorities” left the voiceless at the bottom of the pile of more “pressing” concerns? How many times have those at the bottom of the totem pole been told, “We will address your concerns as soon as we”—(fill in the blank.)

For the pragmatists, the long time politicos, those caged in economic apartheid, the utopian idealists who look to the “larger vision,” no time is now or ever will be right for protection of the unborn. After all, the little ones have no votes. They have no voice at all except those who would speak for them. They are helpless.

Fiscal conservatives tell us that until economic matters are addressed and solved, abortion must be placed on the back burner. And what happened during the last forty years since Roe vs. Wade when times of prosperity returned after recession?

Still the issue of abortion had to wait.
P
ragmatists, politicos and utopians all have their reasons for delay as well. They have been busied themselves with more important matters.

In the meantime, over 50 million lives have been lost and still the carnage continues

Still the answer is, “wait.”

The September 5th discovery of 35 late term infants who were aborted by a doctor at an Elkton clinic and thrown in a freezer has provoked little sustained outrage.

“Wait,” some counsel. This matter can be addressed later. We need to deal with the foundational reasons for abortion first. We need to look at the larger picture.

In a similar manner, the grainy photos of Jews being shot and dumped unceremoniously into a ditch were disregarded for the sake of more pressing military and political concerns.

“Wait,” was the counsel. There’s a war to be won first. There are broader issues at stake.

The time for waiting is over. There is a war going on against the unborn.

Our nation is in the midst of a war for the definition of our culture at large, a war that crosses many fronts. As that cultural war is fought for the survival of our nation, it must be also be fought on many fronts, not the least of which is moral and ethical. In fact, it is not too much to state that unless the gross moral distortions of the national character are not addressed with immediacy, the rest of the national health—including economic health--is vitiated beyond restoration, for the health of a nation depends on its attitudes toward the helpless, the innocent, the victims—those regarded as sheer refuse of society.

As people like Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, among thousands of other less noted voices, some now silent and others now just being heard, when a nation loses its moral compass, and that compass is not readjusted to the due North of life, liberty and justice for all, then that nation is on its way to disintegration.

Those who seek to refocus and to change the direction of our country should recognize the necessity of fighting on many fronts, including justice for the unborn, in order to achieve restoration and vitality to our beloved nation.

Unity

2010-11-18T14:51:00.001-08:00

Members of both political parties love the idea of unity, but find it elusive, even within membership ranks. Personality differences, ideological tension, sense of priorities create dissension most often resolved by the application of power and money, the application of which is most often expressed as “pragmatism.”

But power and money, always chief armaments of any political party, ultimately fail to achieve unity. That is because a unified party can only be established among people of identical or nearly identical beliefs.

Whether the unity based on ideals holds individuals’ loyalty and attention depends on the comprehensiveness and depth of the party’s foundational bases.

Over the last ten decades or so, the cultural hegemony of the Judeo/Christian ethic was gradually eroded by the progressive vision birthed during the nineteenth century. The erosion of the former cultural hegemony has meant the major institutions of the West, including those within the US, have been absorbed by progressivism.

The process of absorption by progressive thought has affected political parties, dividing camps of thought into two major and conflicting political philosophies: progressive and conservative. While the Democratic Party has been taken over almost without exception by leftist progressivism, particularly as regards the current administration, the Republican Party is in the midst of a titanic struggle for its ideological soul.

Progressives and conservatives are fighting for the ideological/philosophical heart of the Party.
Generally speaking, however, the fight is not defined as a battle between progressivism and conservatism. It is most often defined by the terms “moderate” and “conservative.” “Moderates,” who are actually progressives at heart, proclaim themselves reasonable pragmatists who are interested only in fiscal conservatism.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not see the ideological pie as easily sliced and are interested in a broader agenda which addresses the marked deterioration of Western culture, including but not confined to the political culture.

In addition to their concerns over government’s fiscal responsibility, conservatives are pro-life, strict interpreters and upholders of the constitution, interested in retaining national identity and sovereignty, anti-statist and strong advocates for individual freedoms.

In other words, conservatives are interested in the reform of the entire culture; and for Republican conservatives, that reform starts with the political culture.

Particularly germane to this essay, conservatives do not see economics as divisible from other issues. However, moderates/progressives do see economics/fiscal conservatism as divisible from what are broadly (and I believe mistakenly termed) “social” issues.

How did economic issues become conceived as separable from the cloth of culture at large? What is the reasoning behind the idea that fiscal conservatism is separable from the rest of conservative beliefs?

I believe fiscal conservatives have at the heart of their beliefs in the separateness of economics from the rest of culture an irrational belief that economics is an objective science based on mathematics and statistics and therefore not subject to value judgments. For them, the measure of society and mankind is material.

Therefore, the reasoning goes, it is possible to apply objectively the science of economics to politics without concern for the value judgments and the moral freight “social” issues inevitably bring with them. As we shall see in another essay regarding the test case of public education, such an assumption is wrong.

But first, what is the reasoning behind the idea that fiscal conservatism is separable from social/cultural issues?

Those who follow the philosophy of science will know that the effort to find a formula to reconcile the seemingly contradictory theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity has at the heart of the efforts to reconcile, a Theory of Everything; that is, a formula the explicates and links together all known physical phenomena. The formula is then supposed to have predictive power to explain any particular phenomenon.

Forgotten in the impulse to explicate the entirety of the universe in mathematical terms is Kant’s admonition in his Third Critique that higher (“pure”) mathematics, while capable of much seduction, elegance and beauty, may not bear any particular resemblance to reality.

In brief, there are many other facets to be considered in the interpretation of the complexities and meaning of the universe. A mathematical formula may not contain the universe nor serve as a total explicatory device.

What does the above mean concerning for “fiscal conservatism?”

It means, among other things, that the mathematics and statistics attendant to economics do not define or “objectify” economics; which, after all, is a human activity and which is fraught with moral judgments.

It means that the economic measure of humanity (economics being defined as an “objective” science with universal applicability to human history and culture) is an insufficient and truncated means of measure.

It also means that the mere material, economic measure of humanity, when applied universally, creates destruction of society, as has often been noted by historians who have observed the results of communism, which used as its measure the sole factors of economics; that is, humans as purely material being measured by economics. Thus, each person is assigned a particular economic value, which in progressive/socialist/communist terms means equal distribution of wealth since equality is defined as equal material possessions.

But the presumed objectivity and certainty of economics gives, as it has given to socialists and communists, a wedge whereby value judgments contrary to political conservatism may be inserted into the political structure. In other words, supposedly objective economic issues become the proverbial nose of the camel in the tent. The real but most often unstated purpose of “fiscal conservatives” is to get the whole camel in the tent in order to obtain control of the rest of the conservative agenda, substituting progressive values for conservative values.

The above is the reason why conservatives must resist the idea that economics is a thread separable from the rest of the societal fabric; that it alone is the objectifying measure of humankind and human culture. On the contrary, every economic decision, every facet of fiscal responsibility carries with it a value judgment. The only question remaining, then, is whose value judgment will infrom economic policy; whose value judgment will prevail?

For the conservative, the value judgments undergirding economic policies are the same value judgments which are the foundational beliefs of conservatives, most of whom believe those values were most ably articulated by the founders of this nation.

Part II: Delaware’s Public Schools as a case example of the impossibility of separating out fiscal conservatism and value judgments based on conservative political philosophy.

Carnage

2010-11-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

There is one chief reason behind the stunning losses of GOP candidates for offices in Delaware: The GOP establishment.

For years the moderate/liberal leaders of the party have welcomed money and votes from conservatives, asking them to hold their noses and vote for the party’s anointed candidates while promising conservatives their time would come if they were just patient and went along with the plan.

That time came.

But when the party leadership was called on to support conservatives, with a few notable exceptions such as Governor Pete DuPont, the moderate/liberal establishment made deliberate choices to sit out the election, go over to the Democrats’ camp, or actively sabotage the campaigns of the conservatives running for national and state offices.

Whether it was Tom Ross actively excoriating Christine O’Donnell as not being worthy of the office of dog catcher or whether it was the passive aggression of quietly withdrawing support from Glen Urquhart and other conservative candidates, the message was the same:

“We’d rather go down with the Titanic than send out life boats to save conservatives. Let them swim in the icy waters by themselves.”

Conservatives will wait until doomsday before they stop hearing the excuses of why the establishment wouldn’t support them--the candidates were personally flawed, they were inexperienced, they didn’t have the knowledge of how things really work, they were naïve, they were rash, they said silly things—and on and on.

But every Republican candidate would have been flawed. Human weaknesses and failures had little or nothing to do with the rejection of the GOP slate of candidates by party leaders and hangers on.

The main reason the slate of conservative candidates were not supported was that they were, well, conservative.

For decades Republican leadership has had a chummy relationship with the Democrats that has gone beyond mere collegiality and “reaching across the aisles." The reasons for the intense cooperation have most often been presented in terms of pragmatism and “reality;” but the truth of the matter is that by and large, Delaware Republican leadership has bought into liberal ideology, carving out only one consequential conservative domain: fiscal conservatism. Social issues have been and are still regarded as entirely superfluous. Reduction of the size of government, tackling the teacher's union and other important issues were not meaningfully addressed.

The result, as we have seen, has been absolute carnage.

The Republican Party in Delaware is now destroyed, mainly because the establishment
refused to embrace the conservative movement as exemplified by Tea Party movement and its legitimate concerns. Those who thought they held the reins of power entirely missed the conservative tide that swept through nearly every other state in the union.

Going forward, things look grim for the Delaware GOP, as conservatives have learned a bitter lesson and probably will move on without the party. They might well choose to leave the Republican establishment in their chosen seats—the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The Delaware GOP has been sunk because of its leadership’s pride and false sense of power, its delusional belief in its effectiveness. To use another historical metaphor, the current leaders have become like China’s last emperor—ruler of Forbidden City, surrounded by a sycophantic retinue and deluded as to the revolution going outside their walled compound.

As for the conservatives of Delaware? The Tea Partiers, the 9/12 patriots, the Rail Splitters, devout Catholics and evangelicals and other reformers who want a return to small government and constitutional principles—they will move on regardless, for their passion for reform of our great nation remains.

Delaware's conservatives will regroup and continue their efforts, looking toward the election of 2012.

For as these 2010 elections have shown, the blue tide is turning red.

2010: What's at stake

2010-11-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

While the economy, taxes and other economic issues justifiably occupy the minds of all Americans going to the voters’ booth tomorrow, there is much more at stake than those immediate and legitimate concerns.

The truth of the matter is that the character; indeed, the very existence of our nation is at stake.

If the Left prevails, it will not be just socialism that prevails. The continued dismantling of American defense and her sovereign status as a nation and super power will relentlessly proceed. America will be in danger of disappearing.

Why?

America is in danger because the Left is committed to the leveling of American hegemony and the forced rehabilitation of her nature.

In foreign affairs, the US is to be consigned to a “one among many” status in a global governmental system dominated by world organizations such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Court.

America is to be humbled, her sovereignty taken away and her affairs conducted by global deliberative bodies intent on redistributing her great wealth. At one time such a plan was called the International Communist movement, but nowadays, the plan goes by softer appellations such as establishing a “global village.” Nonetheless, the intent is the same.

Domestically, the plan is to complete the dismantling of the federal system, making the states mere provincial appendages dependent on and administering the will of an all powerful federal government run by an elite cabal. Federal, state and legislative bodies will continue to be relegated to futility as an ever increasing bureaucracy will accomplish through myriad decrees and regulations what elected officials once were responsible for.

We get more than a hint of what an unelected bureaucracy can accomplish without being responsible to the American public by the ways in which it already advances the Left’s agenda, be it through the 159 new agencies established by Obamacare or by carbon emissions regulations imposed by the EPA.

This is to say nothing of the countless directives, rules and regulations directed against personal freedoms.

The point is that unless action is taken now, both state and federal elective bodies will become even more irrelevant because of an all powerful and all pervasive bureaucracy, possibly even attaining the status of the Roman senate under Caligula.

While the progressives plan to “radically transform” (destroy) America probably will not be entirely vitiated, the 2010 election offers voters a last chance to say “Stop!” It offers the opportunity to stem the tide, build the dam against the flood and to gather forces to reverse the flow starting in 2010 and moving forward in 2012.

What must happen nationally must also happen state by state. The issues of national and state sovereignty are inextricably intertwined and are as serious on the state level as they are on the national level. For in all cases, personal freedom, true representative government, and the existence of government as defined and limited by constitutional principles is at stake.

This election, every American interested in the return of America to its roots must get out and vote as if their lives depend on it.

Because they do.

Us and Them

2010-10-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

The good news is there are more of us than there are of them–in every state of the union.

“Us” being conservatives and “them” being liberals.

The bad news is that nearly all of America’s major institutions have been captured by radical leftists who portray conservatives as whatever pejorative comes to mind, be it tried and true, never fail to shock “racist;” blatant or latent “homophobe;” plain old generic “wing nut;” just your average “moron;” “far right wing;” ultra-conservative;” or most pejorative of all, “evangelical or fundamentalist Christian.”

Republicans and other ordinary conservatives–those who have the temerity to want smaller government, lower taxes, states’ rights, traditional morality, among other things–could add to the list of names they are routinely given by liberals. Many conservatives have become almost used to the invective, and from what they see and hear on television, often believe themselves to be in the minority, sometimes feeling intimidated by the harassment they receive by the Left “majority.”

But conservatives are NOT in the minority, writes Bruce Walker in his article, “Good News for GOP and Great News for Conservatives,” found in American Thinker. Walker writes, "There is a vast gulf between Stalinists who occupy the choke points of education, information, government and entertainment in America and us, the huge conservative majority. This disconnect is so vast that there are two Americas: the ocean of conservatives and the small delusional islands of leftists whose ignorance of America is so profound that they might as well be colonial governors from some European kingdom…Flyover country is ALL [caps mine] of America except for imperial enclaves in Washington, Manhattan, Hollywood and those leftist monasteries called universities.”

Walker bases his assertions on the much respected “Battleground Poll,” which is a joint effort between Democrat and Republican polling institutions. Gallup, he writes, concurs with the results of the “Battleground Polls.”

“In every single one of the last nineteen Battleground Polls over the last decade, about 60% of Americans describe themselves as ‘conservative,’ while about 35% of Americans describe themselves as ‘liberal…’Only 2% of Americans call themselves ‘moderate.’ “

The truth of the matter is that conservatives outnumber liberals in every single state of the union, which means that even if a state like Delaware is called “Blue,” it really isn’t. Delaware, like all the rest of the states, is red. It’s just that the levers of control in the areas Walker mentions have been held by the blues.

The above facts should be inspiring to those who are running as conservative Republicans and Libertarians, for if the conservative base in Delaware remains fired up during the next few days, candidates such as Urquhart and O’Donnell (among others) will indeed win.

That’s a pretty heady but realistic prospect.

Following the wins, the political complexion of Delaware inevitably will change to reflect the true conservative nature of the majority of voters in our little state.

For Mr. Walker’s article in its entirety, please go here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/good_news_for_gop_and_great_ne.html

Paradigm Shift

2010-10-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Paradigm shift is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn described a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. The result is a revolution in scientific thinking and practice that challenges prevailing orthodoxies.

An illustration of a radical paradigm shift within the scientific community would be that of the transition from the Ptolemaic view of the universe to the Copernican view. The Ptolemaic view, reinforced in a thousand ways for almost two thousand years throughout ancient, medieval and Renaissance civilizations provided philosophical, theological stability for millennia. It was probably was the longest lasting scientific paradigm in history, the thought patterns of which infused the entirety of societies it permeated.

Critical inquiries about such a long lasting and unquestionably elegant explanation of the universe were usually discarded because of the strength of the explanatory nature of the paradigm, which not only made a great deal of sense from the human experiential viewpoint, but was also conceptually beautiful.

For many years, scientists attempted to explain anomalies within the context of the
Ptolemaic paradigm, adding epicycles and other elaborate explanatory devices, but the unfortunately the system did not quite match scientific observations. Eventually the Copernican system brought down the entire paradigm, creating societal reverberations still felt even today.

In the end, the entire system proved unworkable, and the explanations it provided no longer prevailed in the public imagination. It was discarded, but not until it was defended for centuries long past its overdue expiration date. Explanations by defenders grew ever more convoluted and ridiculous even as evidence of the paradigm’s explanatory insufficiencies mounted.

The paradigm of Left progressive liberalism has followed a trajectory similar to that of the Ptolemaic system. Still established throughout Western institutions, Leftist thought has become increasingly removed from reality. The Left has always been firmly committed to destruction of existing societies in order to bring in revolutionary changes designed to establish an earthly Utopia. Not once has it succeeded in establishing the longed for Utopia.

In fact, ever since the French revolution, the varied progeny of the Left, be they communism, fascism or socialism have wreaked havoc within the very societies they purportedly wish to transform into a new Eden. Wherever the Left has prevailed it has created death, destruction and at the very least, in the case of socialism, stagnation and eventual ossification. The very bones of society crumble before the onslaught.

Explications and explanations no longer justify what has become—actually always has been--a destructive paradigm completely unrelated to the realities of human nature and society. The defense of the indefensible merely becomes more and more absurd as the Left searches for yet more societal mores, yet more foundations of Western civilization to destroy.

Here in our own country, even as Europe gives signs of turning away from the societal paralysis brought on by an unsustainable and smothering socialism, the evidence that left progressive liberalism has manifestly failed and can no longer be shored up by rational explanations and arguments mounts daily.

Whether it is the decadence of corrupting children as young as ten by sex “education” programs whose enthusiasts promote allows birth controls pills for ten-year-old girls, condoms for pre-pubescent boys and lectures on adult sexuality to first graders; whether it is wholesale commitment to abortion on demand throughout pregnancy; whether it is the collapse of the Western ideal of marriage; whether it is the ludicrous persecution by the ACLU of churches and people of faith by the infliction of frivolous law suits; whether it is the civilianization of the US military by the intrusion of radical mores designed to vitiate military capacity; whether it is runaway spending in the face of national bankruptcy; whether it is the jettisoning of national sovereignty in favor of globalization--in all the above and more, the absurdities of the Left have reached a point of no return.

The paradigm is not only exhausted, but has reached the point of absolute insanity. No new rationale, no adding of elliptical non-logic, no linguistic slight of hand or trickery can conceal the fact the entire paradigm is collapsing under its own weight of nonsensicality.

Meanwhile, the rumblings of a paradigmatic political revolution are growing day by day. At the very same time the paradigm of the Left has reached its apex in the US political system, in academia, the judiciary, the media, a groundswell of public revulsion is shaking the very foundations of US society.

The whole Leftist paradigm is shaking and about to collapse.

That shaking, evidenced by a spiritual awakening and by a coincident and companionate rise in opposition to the current political thuggery determined to disregard and to wreck the foundations of our nation and to replace free enterprise with a command economy, will not stop at mere tremors. That shaking will turn into an earthquake which will be felt not only at the voting booth during the coming midterm elections, but which will not only collapse the Left, but will continue to produce aftershocks for a very long time.

What will rise in its place will be a restoration of our country, the like of which we’ve never before seen, a restoration that will revive and revitalize American institutions and the American way of life.

Call That Thing a Car? Here's a Real Car...

2010-10-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

Ah, those were the days.

Americans still made cars in the grand tradition, including the 1941 Cadillac Imperial Sedan my dad picked up for a song in the 1950′s to ferry us seven kids to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Middletown, DE.

Jet black, heavy as a tank with wide whitewall tires, black leather interior in the front, beige fabric in the back. Automatic transmission, a radio, cigarette lighters and electric windows. Jump seats for the little kids, with the baby wedged in the back seat where the center arm rest came down. She couldn’t budge.

And best of all–for my folks at least, a window behind the driver’s seat that Dad rolled so he and Mom could tune out the incessant bickering in the back.

Intial price: around $2,100, but by the time it was fourteen years old, dad picked it up dirt cheap. Restored models today go for about $60,000.

We kids loved it. We looked like a Mafia family, with the older guys in long grey coats and black fedoras, with Mom all dolled up in her Sunday best looking like a gorgeous moll. Dad with greenblack sun glasses, hat rakishly tilted to the side, looking like a real tough guy.

Got lots of stares wherever we went.

Never did know what the mileage was, but nobody cared.

You could never get off with making such a grand car these days.

Here it is, folks: http://www.schmitt.com/viewimage.asp?ID=4207

The Taxman Cometh

2010-10-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Taxman Cometh

here’s been a lot of talk about Chris Coons ideological leanings, all of which is important.

His inclination toward liberation theology aside--well, not really, as taxes are one of the main ways to redistribute wealth--there are some very practical economic reasons any New Castle County resident as well as all other Delaware citizens should be concerned, because the truth of the matter is that Chris Coons is THE TAXMAN.

Today I took a look at some of my old invoices for county and city services.
A cursory look at my water bill reveals Coons tax policies at work. In 2005, my average quarterly water bill was about $50. Since then, sewage taxes have raised the bill to around $75.00 per quarter.

Now, I don’t want to put matters indelicately,but I have lived here alone for the last five years and have not dumped (pun intended) any more sewage down the toilet in 2010 than in 2005. Yet there’s been a 50% increase in taxes on sewage.

Why? Inquiring minds want to know.

Looking at my mortgage escrow fund, I note an increase in New Castle county taxes of about 48% since 2005. About one third of my monthly payment to the bank now consists of insurance payments AND more county taxes. The increase in taxes has nearly canceled out any reduction in interest. Meanwhile, since 2004, when I bought the property, the value of my home has depreciated about 25-35%. Yet my taxes on my modest town house have increased exponentially.

Why? Inquiring minds want to know.

After all, it’s not as if services from the county government have increased. On the contrary, my neighborhood, though officially an historic district, has received very little notice or help from the county. So where, specifically, are my tax dollars being allocated? Not to my neighborhood, that’s for sure. Pensions, perhpas?

I won’t even speak of what will happen to my electric bill if Coons is elected and supports the Obama agenda of “Cap and Trade.” Obama himself has said the rates will “necessarily skyrocket.” Chris Coons supports the Obama agenda, so I can expect my electric bills to skyrocket even further?

As if they haven’t already? When I first moved to Delaware, my monthly electric bills amounted to about $50-65. My last bill was $143.00. On average, my electric bills already have increased 110-120% from when I first moved back to Delaware in fall of 2004. What will the electric bill amount to if Coons is elected?

Inquiring minds want to know.

In the meantime…Help! Please help me! I’m asphyxiating from the increased weight of taxes!

But wait! Don’t call 911. Coons want to tax my calls for help.

Arrrrgggghhhh. Gasp, gasp. Gurgle, gurgle.

Miss Biddle

2010-10-11T09:21:00.001-07:00

My second grade teacher, Miss Biddle of Chesapeake City Elementary School, was an absolute dictator.

She had rules, and God help her trembling charges who broke them. Students even had to pee on schedule, a stipulation that got Timmy Walston into a deep puddle of trouble when he wet his pants while sitting at his desk. He got punished by having his chair moved into a corner. The ancient upright piano—it was never played– was shoved catty-corner in front of the chair so he couldn’t get out. All the children then filed by him on the way to recess. He was sobbing his eyes out, but to no avail.

One of her favorite tactics was to stand an offending child on a stool in front of the class and encourage the rest of the class to ridicule the kid as a “cry baby.” “Look at her cry, class,” she would say. And, of course, the child would oblige by turning on the water works, crying her heart out.

Yes, Miss Biddle had rules.

Lots of rules.

One day she handed out a picture for us to color. It was of a robin sitting in a nest. By now, having experienced Miss Biddle’s wrath on more than one occasion, having spent time on the “fool’s stool” and having had my head thumped against the blackboard, I had learned to follow the rules exactly. I colored the robin orange and brown exactly within the lines as precisely instructed by our beloved teacher; and so did just about every other kid in the class. Heaven help the budding Jackson Pollack who dared to do anything free form–likewise anyone who wanted to color a Miro-like fantastical bird with rainbow wings and a purple tail.

Needless to say, Miss Biddle’s rules suffocated initiative and creativity.

But that’s what too many suffocating rules, regulations and punishments do to children. They stifle their spirits and dumb down their creativity.

Welcome to Miss Biddle’s world writ large, American “children.”

Our state and federal governments are having the same stifling effect as my second grade teacher’s plethora of rules and punishments—suffocation.

Few put the consequences of too many laws and punishments as eloquently as Philip K. Howard, who in a recent article in the NY Daily News, sums up the results of too many laws, rules and regulations: “Government is broken and the economy is gasping.”

Did you know that a new governor of most states, including Delaware, will come to office and find that about 90% of the state budget is “pre-committed to entitlements and mandates enacted by politicians long dead;” and that, among other things, in stark contrast to Miss Biddle’s cruel authoritarianism (but equally a pox on creativity and learning), “Teachers no longer have authority to maintain order in the classroom?” Heck, they can’t even hug a crying student without fear of a law suit claiming they are pedophiles.

And what about small businesses, the engines of our economy?

There is so much legal sludge to slog through that it is impossible for small businesses and entrepreneurs to wade through the legalities. Innovation has been stifled by impossibly complex laws and an incomprehensible tax code.

To make things worse, “Hardly any social interaction is free of legal risk”—and consequent punishment. Legalities are so pervasive that any given American at any given time is automatically guilty of breaking the law and thus open to persecution from governmental entities armed with platoons of lawyers anxious to put an offender on the equivalent of Miss Biddle’s “fool’s stool.”

What is the answer to the “Biddleization” of our country?

As Howard points out, “Changing leaders or parties will not solve [the] problem…What’s required to revive America is a major structural overhaul. This is a task of historic proportions—not unlike the simplification of law by Justinian in ancient Rome. Our founding fathers never imagined that democracy would become a one-way ratchet—always adding laws but never repealing them. Nor did they intend law to be a form of central planning. The Constitution sets forth our governing goals and principles in only 16 pages.”

Yet despite the need to simplify, the new healthcare bill—as one example—adds 2,700 pages of new regulations, agencies and requirements. This is to say nothing of what would happen if “Cap and Trade” were to be enacted. Imagine what small businesses would groan under if yet another 2,000 or more page monstrosity was to be enacted?

The truth of the matter is that there will be no going forward until America gets free of the Miss Biddle authoritarian mentality. The “color between the lines” mentality has meant a legal straight jacket that paralyzes the American spirit, suffocates the entrepreneurial spirit and vitiates the body politic.

Those we send to Washington or to the Delaware State House must be committed to radical reform of the law of the land.

We need Justinians.

Miss Biddle has got to go.

Food Fight

2010-10-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

Approximately two out of every eight denizens of New York city--plus some forty million Americans across the nation-- are buying groceries with the assistance of government issued food stamps.

Prohibitions against using food stamps to buy alcohol, cigarettes, pet food, vitamins or household goods already exist. But in the interest of restraining the epidemic of childhood obesity and encouraging delinquent parents to supervise their children’s diets more closely, NYC Mayor Bloomberg and Governor David Paterson have issued a fatwa against sugared drinks for the impoverished masses receiving the food stamps.

Bloomberg, who has already been responsible for outlawing trans-fat in restaurant foods and for restaurants posting calorie content on their menus, has joined an anti-salt campaign as well. He is quoted as saying: “This initiative will give New York families more money to spend on food and drinks that provide real nourishment.”

Right.

Maybe New York families living on the edge of poverty will suddenly become avid nutritionists, but probably not. It seems anxieties over economic survival, rampant crime, lack of employment and the disintegration of the family are some of the prime reasons for worries among inner city residents, trumping anxiety over the excess consumption of Coca-Cola. They just don’t seem all that worried over sugar.

More pressing anxieties aside, do any but the most dedicated health food advocates really think food stamp recipients are going to stop buying sugary drinks—much less cigarettes and alcohol--just because of new regulations?

Of course not.

For those already offended because their idea of a enforced health food utopia has been sullied; yes, excess consumption of sugar is not healthy.]

And by the way, does anyone really think Mayor Bloomberg is going to serve guests invited to NYC’s galas club soda and carrots instead of alcohol, sweets and other forbidden goodies—goodies also paid for by tax payers’ money?

Of course not.

But as usual, austerity measures are applicable to the lower classes, not to the ruling class. Carrots for thee, but caviar for me. But isn’t this the usual bifurcated standard for the virtuous ruling class, whose motives are, of course, impeccable but whose actual behavior is not expected to be held to the standards they apply to those on the government handout list?

Regardless of whether the anticipated virtuous outcome will match the sterling motives of the originators of the new regulations, Mr. Bloomberg’s push for new rules dictating what the recipients of food stamps may and may not eat are clearly illustrative of a larger issue than children swilling Coke and Dr. Pepper.

The fact of the matter is that whenever government doles out largess, for whatever sacrosanct reasons—in this case supposedly the health of youngsters—that largess always comes with the big, fat price tag of government control and intrusion into family life and individual choices. It also will come with a new bureaucracies complete with employees whose nanny state mentalities compel them to look into every suspected unhealthy purchase. If the USDA approves Bloomberg’s new regulations, many “well meaning” US citizens will be involved in making sure those regulations are enforced against their comrade citizens.

All for the greater good, of course.

What can the unhappy beneficiaries expect? Is it outside the realm of possibility that every checkout clerk in every grocery store will be required to supervise what food stamp recipients buy, acting as a quasi Stasi citizen food police looking out for food transgressions?

Is it difficult to envision an extension of the rationing, controlling, supervisory mentality to include benefits given—or denied--to recipients of health care? But of course, we already have such a health care system in place, complete with the 159 or so new bureaucracies and agencies “needed” to run it.

In the meantime, we are learning there’s not only no such thing as a free lunch, but apparently, there’s also no such thing as an unregulated lunch--at least not for food stamp recipients. Who knows who is next? Maybe those nefarious three martini business lunches could be brought under state control by requiring everyone to submit his/her lunch selections to a supervisory health board concentrating on business executives. Then again, with the current anti-corporation mentality, it might be better to let the greedy capitalist pigs have their rib roast and booze, the better to hasten the demise of the evil profit mongers.

Bottom line, it just won’t work.

Fact of the matter is, that for every heath food devotee, like Jerome Rodale, who died on live TV-- doubtless from eating too many roots and berries coupled with asparagus boiled in urine—somewhere in Japan there’s a little 112 year old man who will attribute his longevity to drinking twelve bottles of sake per diem.

Plus, recipients of food stamps are just as bright as the next guy, and will be busy subverting regulations every way they wish to.

So why continue pushing nightmarish and ultimately unenforceable regulatory complexities?

How much simpler it would be to encourage the education of parents (and children) about basic rules of nutrition and health in order they begin by their own free will to make sound choices for themselves and their children. The basics of the food pyramid are not all that hard to learn and implement.

But I guess that would be just too easy.

Now or Never

2010-10-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

At different times during its history, a nation inevitably experiences “now or never” moments, turning points irrevocably leading to its restoration or to unmitigated disaster. At times, a yawning precipice opens up revealing a danger so wide, deep and threatening that if one more step is taken, the entire national enterprise falls off a cliff.

We can see such moments in retropsect: The expiration of the Weimar republic; the rise of the Bolshevik Revolution; the grand experiments of the Great Leap Forward. All signaled the absolute terminal point of national constructs.

The United States is at a "now or never" moment.

During the last decade, the annihilation of federalism proceeded apace as increasingly, big government trampled the constitutional principles of limited government and abandoned the commandments of fiscal common sense.

Since the elections of 2008, the accelerants poured on the bonfires ignited by the last administration have resulted in a raging inferno whose wildfire flames are devouring what little remained of our national structures.

Among the many foundational building blocks of our nation that have been consumed by the Obama arsonists, who consider the incineration of our nation’s traditions a mere bonfire of vanities: State sovereignty, as witnessed by the egregious attacks of the administration on the state of Arizona; equal justice before the law, as demonstrated by the failure to prosecute the Black Panther voter intimidation case; the free market economy, as evidenced by the government takeover of big banks, the auto industry and health care; the corruption of the governmental process by bribes and handouts; the great good of genuine civil rights, now being consumed by the inflammatory class and racial warfare; and the integrity of the economy, as shown by the volcanic eruption of federal spending and debt.

Stunned citizens, seeing the rapidity with which our country is being consumed, have reacted with shock—and with resistance. Suddenly, the conservative American center, alarmed by the prospect of a bonfire of personal liberties, the burning of the Constitution and cremation of true federalism, has risen to stop the country from falling off the cliff into an inferno. Suddenly, Americans realize that if they do not act, the inferno will, if allowed to spread, melt the Statue of Liberty herself; and in her place would rise, like Phoenix from the ashes, the terrible Medusa-like Leviathan of an iron fisted, all powerful State.

The great American conservative center has awakened. They know the election of 2010 is like none other in their nation’s history. They see the “now or never” moment for their beloved country is upon them. They agree the nation must be rescued and dragged back from the precipice and the pit of fire that lies beneath.

Conservative Americans realize nothing must divert their strength from the task of rescue before them. And nothing must prevent their turning out in droves to effectuate a devastating defeat to the powers that fiddle, play and tinker with the country's destiny while our nation burns.

Americans must erect a political firewall "now or never."

2012 might be too late.

Abattoir

2010-09-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

ABATTOIR:"A public slaughterhouse."

In August 1941 Heinrich Himmler travelled to Minsk, as he wanted to see with his own eyes how the einsatzgruppen were performing their extermination campaign against the Jews. While there, he witnessed 100 Jews being shot in a ditch outside the town.

SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff described the event in his diary: “Himmler's face was green. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his cheek where a piece of brain had squirted up on to it. Then he vomited.”

Wolff records that after shakily recovering his composure, Himmler proceeded to give the SS men a lecture on following the "highest moral law of the Party" in carrying out their work.

Though Himmler was revolted, he did not change his ideology, no matter how gruesome its actualization proved. Instead, he gave orders that a more efficient means of killing be devised.

Later, after the war was ended General Eisenhower would demand that German citizens be forced to go to Buchenwald not only to see the results of Himmler’s efficiency but actually to load the corpses on wagons for disposal.

Time and again the German folk would say, “We didn’t know.”

Blindness similar to Himmler’s prevails among the ideologues of the “pro choice” crowd. No matter how gruesome the actualities of the mega buck abortion industry, no compromise is accepted. Abortion on demand throughout pregnancy is adhered to steadfastly, though the means of killing the pre-born may vary according to efficiency and assurance of result; namely, a dead baby.

And so the carnage goes on virtually unobstructed.

But once in a while, the veil of secrecy is rent and the entire populace is given a glimpse of the horrors of the lucrative abortion industry.

On August 12 in Elkton, MD, just across our state line, an 18 year old girl who had been 21 weeks pregnant was rushed to the hospital. Her uterus, bowel and vagina had been pierced by one Dr. Nicola Riley, who flew in from Utah every other week to do late term abortions.

The abortion had been initiated by New Jersey abortionist Steven Chase Brigham, who runs a chain of 15 abortion mills. He had inserted laminaria to dilate the teenager’s cervix so the baby could be dismembered and pulled out piece by piece. But things did not go according to plan. Not only did Riley lacerate the girl’s organs, but the abortion was incomplete. The baby’s head was detached and pushed through the uterine wall into the abdominal cavity.

The semi-conscious teen was dropped off at the hospital by Riley and Brigham in a rental car. Riley then left the bleeding patient to go perform another abortion. The girl herself was flown to John Hopkins hospital where, at last report, she remains in critical condition.

When police raided Brigham’s Elkton “clinic,” they found 32 late term fetuses—one of which was 35-36 weeks gestation--tossed in a freezer. A search for documents revealed there were no medical records for most of the women and girls who had undergone abortions.

I wonder if the police threw up.

Certainly they, like Elkton residents, came face to face with the revolting and grim reality of the abortion industry. Unlike the German citizens who supposedly “Didn’t know what was going on,” Elkton police and residents now can’t use the “I didn’t know” excuse.

They know.

So what happens to the 32 tiny flash frozen corpses?

What may not be known to Elkton residents is that sale of fetal parts is a lucrative companion business to the abortion industry. As the aborted infants have no status under law, they can be and are sold for use in medical research. The biggest demand for human fetal parts comes from pharmaceutical and biological firms, government and university research laboratories.

Doubtless the pre-born frozen babies were going to be sold to such organizations, some of which place orders specifying the body parts come from live survivors of the abortion process. No frozen goods for those picky types. They want fresh samples.

Now Elkton residents know this, too.

So the question for Elkton residents (along with the rest of US citizens) is why, now that they know exactly what is going on in their town, they would continue to tolerate the grisly practices of abortionists like Steven Brigham and Nicola Riley?

Other questions Elktonians should think about: How are the practices of abortionists Brigham and Riley any different from the execution of Jews by the SS? How is the sale of fetal body parts different than turning Jews into soap and lampshades?

Elkton residents now know there has been a baby abattoir in their back yard. While it is presently under investigation and closed down, there is no legal reason why other enterprising abortionists can’t open yet another “clinic.”

So what are they to do? What can they do?

They must work to stop the carnage. They must cease looking the other way. They must stop the denials of the truth and look at it in those frozen, tiny faces.

Why?

Because now they know.

Religion Matters

2010-09-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Those who believe citizens should “Keep religion out of politics” betray a lack of knowledge about both. For the truth of the matter is the two have always been inextricably intertwined--never more so than today.

The current president as well as Delaware’s Democrat nominee for the senate, Chris Coons (among others either already in or presently seeking high office), hold strong religious/political beliefs based on a contemporary distortion of Christianity known as liberation theology.

President Obama learned much of his theology as a congregant of Jeremiah Wright, whereas Mr. Coons became a convert to the new theology during his stay in Africa and through his studies at Yale Divinity School. Both men share similar world views; views that infuse and inform their politics.

For those unfamiliar with theological trends, liberation theology as propounded by its founder, Gustavo Gutierrez and his followers and imitators such as James Cone and the aforementioned Mr. Wright, sees salvation not as an individual relationship with Christ, but as a collective sanctification of an entire society. For the proponent of liberation theology salvation is both social and political.

To put it another way, sin is no longer primarily of individual origin (original sin) but is collective, finding its origins in social structures which must be dismantled and rebuilt according to new salvific principles. Basically, those principles involve integrating the Marxist critique of capitalism within the framework of a re-interpreted Christianity. The concept of individual sin and individual redemption is replaced with the idea of collective sin stratified in class and social structures which need radical, “fundamental change” if humanity, especially the poor and oppressed of humanity, is to be collectively saved.

A new communist/socialist/”Christian” economic system is to replace capitalism, which is seen as inherently evil and oppressive. Capitalism is seen as creating poverty, fostering oppression of minorities and favoring only a few rich people.
Further, liberation theology proponent James Cone, who heavily influenced Jeremiah Wright, saw the most oppressive class as white, believing white racism alone was responsible for the oppression of minority status blacks, but he did not stop there. He not only integrated Marxist economic thought with Christian belief, but called for a complete liberation of blacks from racism, capitalism and imperialism.

Our current president’s domestic and foreign policies are explicable in terms of black liberation theology, as he fights all three fronts—racism, capitalism and imperialism—from his position in the White House. Further, his foreign policy is an offshoot of liberation theology in that it exhibits strong “third worldism;” that is, a belief that the poverty in Africa and elsewhere is the fault of Western capitalist structures which keep the boot on the neck of impoverished nations. All wealth has the stench of unjust gain, and only redistributing unjust gains made at the expense of the poor will redeem society. Third-worldism also involves giving support to Third World national liberation movements against the West, as the West is the premier example of collective guilt by virtue of its sinful social structure.

In sum, for those whose beliefs are based on liberation theology, salvation for the world involves ridding the US of its faulty capitalist economic and social structures and leveling the classes by distributing the wealth of the rich. Thus both the US and the entire world will be collectively redeemed. That is why our president speaks so often of “collective salvation.”

The ferocious drive of the left to radically transform and fundamentally change the social and economic structures of the US and the entire West—to say nothing of the entire world-- then, often arises from their strongly held religious/political world view, a view which amounts to forcing a religion down the throats of the masses.
***

The above thoughts are pertinent to the hurly burly of the current senatorial contest in Delaware. For Delawareans, it is important to know Mr. Coons’ background and convictions are those of liberation theology. As Delaware is the corporate capital of the nation—capitalism defined!—it might not be a good idea to elect a man whose theological and political weltanschauung is intrinsically anti-corporation, anti-capitalist and anti-rich (anti-business class). It might be ruinous to elect a senator who has already indicated redistribution of wealth by heavy taxation is a cornerstone of his world view.

There is a reason Mr. Coon is attracting favorable notice from the White House. He shares Obama’s liberationist beliefs and has already indicated he is on board with the Obama agenda of radical restructuring of America—"fundamental change."

Delawareans should beware.

Someone else’s religion is about to be forced on you.

***Post script on an article just found: It appears I have a doppelganger in Jeffrey Lord of American Spectator, whose article on Coons and liberation theology provides much more exhaustive coverage than my own piece on the subject. For those interested, go to the following link:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/20/chris-coons-volunteer-for-libe

Gollum

2010-09-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Every candidate for office dreams of the day his opponent is tagged with an unforgettable, indelibly etched, iconic moment. Usually it’s a photograph, but it really doesn’t matter what the moment consists of. The opposition is doomed because the event is emblazoned on the voters’ memory and nothing else computes. It’s no use. It’s over. Speeches are no longer remembered, policy statements fall on deaf ears, the candidate’s protests and explanations automatically muted. The candidate is doomed.

Who can forget helmeted little Michael Dukakis with his dopey grin riding in M1 Abrams tank? How could the guy who released Willie Horton pull off a warrior stance? It was a risible and unforgettable image. Dukakis never recovered.
People are still laughing over Jimmy Carter and the rabid swamp rabbit incident. According to the eye witness account, the rodent came at the canoe, “hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president.” Would the beast had been a bear instead of a rabbit, as the image of Carter flailing at the desperate creature with a canoe paddle seemed to define his timid presidency perfectly.

Or, who could conceal (admittedly undeserving) snickering over President Ford’s pratfall down the stairs of Air Force 1? To make matters worse, he even fell up the same stairs while wearing ...well,uh…an extremely unattractive and clownish brown and gold plaid jacket. The apparent clumsiness of someone who was actually a fine athlete was a godsend for the opposition, who used the images to their own nefarious ends. Ford was not helped by the fact he made a serious foreign policy goof by claiming during televised debate that Eastern Europe was not under the control of Russia. The clumsy image stuck. He was done for.

But iconic images are in the making for today’s races, most notably one gifted by Harry Reid to the O’Donnell campaign. Reid has called Mr. Coons, O’Donnell’s opposition, “My pet.”

Oh, dear.

No sooner had he spoken than Michelle Malkin had the perfect photo shopped image up on her web site, the headline saying it all: “Creepy Harry Reid Hands O’Donnell her First General Election Ad on a Silver Platter.” Here is the unfortunate and soon to be iconic image of Ms. O’Donnell’s opponent:

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/09/15/creepy-harry-reid-hands-odonnell-her-first-general-election-ad-on-a-silver-platter/

My guess is that Coons won’t recuperate any time soon from this image, as Reid’s fatally condescending and diminishing words indicate to every voter that Mr. Coons is not his own man, but is merely a pet for Harry Reid and the Democrat establishment. Many commentators have said and written as much, but the iconic Gollum image will fix that perception in the mind of the public as nothing else would.

In a way, that’s too bad, as the policy differences between Ms. O’Donnell and Mr. Coons could not be more starkly delineated or more deserving of deep and serious discussion. After all, one candidate stands for Reagan style conservatism and the other stands for the Obama agenda. They are, regardless of iconic images, representative in symbolic and real terms of the politics dividing our country.

Nonetheless, we can doubtless expect more photo shopped images of Mr. Coons, whose physiognomy will now appear in a burst of creative and unflattering images put together by busy computer geeks working in their basements.

Richter Magnitude 10

2010-09-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

Now that they’ve experienced the equivalent of a 10 on the political Richter scale, will the leadership of the Delaware GOP get the message? Today and the months and years ahead afford the current leaders of the Republican party an opportunity to survey the rubble remaining after their Castle was demolished. The question is whether or not they will seek to cooperate in rebuilding and reforming a party that must include the conservative wing so long ignored, or at the very most, cynically utilized to consolidate their power base. Or will they retreat to underground bunkers where they snipe away? Will they prefer a Gotterdammerung rather than accommodation?

In any case, “Moderate” Republican leaders must deal with the enormity of the ground shaking victories of two renegade candidates they neither endorsed nor supported. Both the picks of the Republican convention lost, despite the spending rivers of money and the mounting vicious attacks against fellow Republicans. Both candidates won without any support from their party—nada, zero, zilch.

The ruling class lost and lost big. They may not regain their standing any time soon—if ever.

Some modest predictions: I don’t think there will be any reaching across the aisle by Republican “moderates,” not, at least, any time soon. I also don’t think they will begin to rebuild by reconsidering their contempt for and denigration of the Tea Party movement that was instrumental in the O’Donnell victory. I fully expect the “moderates” of the Delaware GOP to pull a Karl Rove attitude from now until after the election. That is because I think that aside from a nod to fiscal responsibility, they are far more temperamentally and ideologically aligned with Democrats than they are with conservatives.

The above leads to another observation concerning the unseemly crowing of Democrats over a victory not yet won.

Do Democrats suppose there are no disaffected Democrats in Delaware who will vote for O’Donnell and Urquhart because they also are fed up with the radical leftist turn their party has taken? Do they really think there are no Democrats who are horrified by the runaway debt, the expansion of federal power, and the anti-business stance of the Democratic party--just to name a few concerns? Do they suppose the party ranks will present and hold a solid, impenetrable phalanx any more than Delaware Republicans have presented a unified front?

Do they suppose all Democrat party members are so loyal they’ll stick with a party that leans toward a socialist agenda, stands against parental choice for the education of their children, generally scoffs at religious values, scorns pro-life beliefs, and undermines small business—all the while continuing to raise taxes?
Perhaps most tellingly, do they suppose Democrats don’t see the depressing reality of the US and Delaware economy?

If so, they have missed the titanic fissure in both parties. They have missed the resurgence of a conservatism that transcends party affiliation. They have ignored the disgust of Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike with the ruling elite who have not listened to or felt, much less responded to the tremors under their feet.

In fact, I believe we are about to see a political reconfiguration that shakes both parties to the foundations, a reconfiguration that combines fiscal and social conservatism. It started with tremors of dissatisfaction and then swelled to the size of an earthquake--angry repudiation of the current state of affairs.

But we’ve seen nothing yet in comparison with what’s to come.

More political earthquakes on the scale of Richter Magnitude 10 are on their way.

Dreams

2010-09-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

At the time Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a Dream” Speech on the steps of Lincoln Memorial, few would have guessed the speech would eventually find its way into the text books of American high school students as an example of one of the most inspiring speeches ever given.
Most Americans know the substance of the speech, which was a plea for all Americans to be judged by their character and not by the color of their skins. And most Americans have forgiven and forgotten King’s own character flaws, whether they were those of serial adultery or suspected plagiarism. He is forgiven because he had a dream so transcendent and powerful its soaring message rose above his character flaws.

It is most often so. Tolstoy and Ghandi, two men King drew upon for inspiration, were also deeply flawed. Tolstoy, best known for his interpretation of a gentle, communal and deeply pacifist Christianity, was often abusively cruel to his long-suffering wife. Ghandi, whose principles of peaceful non-violence have been widely imitated—most notably by MLK--had strange personal practices such as drinking urine and testing his vows of celibacy by sleeping with young women.

Yet both had dreams that inspired millions.

Good dreamers are most often mere men and women with feet of clay. They are usually acutely aware of their shortcomings, their weaknesses and frailties. That is why they want each human being to have the opportunity to transcend their sins and weaknesses, to dream of being better, to take the opportunities to pick themselves up and to try, try again.

Good dreamers dream with you. They want you to have freedom to achieve your own dreams, your own God-given potential, regardless of your skin color, class or gender. Those who dream with you want you and your children to be enabled by freedom. They want the burdens of state taken off your back, the overweening plethora of laws, rules and regulations whittled down.

But dark dreamers say, “I have a dream for you.” They want their perfect dreams for a utopian society to prevail over you and everyone else. Dark dreamers, most often those who think of themselves as perfect people, have templates for humanity, molds into which every human being is to be poured. Dark dreamers think their template is perfect for you--but not so much for them. Most often the dark dreams come in the guise of absolute equality, a strict egalitarianism which has its roots in fantastic unreality, is animated solely by power and ambition and achieved by force of the state.

Today the differences between good and bad dreams have never been so clear. As usual, the visions are divided into “Right” and “Left.” As the famous political philosopher Erik von Kuelnelt-Leddihn wrote, the Left is and always has been the “Great Menace…[The Left believes] in a state insured, government-prescribed, and—to make matters worse—socially endorsed collectivism [in which]our liberty, our Western personality, our spiritual growth, our true happiness is at stake."

Kuelnelt-Leddihn continues:

"All the great dynamic isms of the last two hundred years have been mass movements attacking—even as they mouthed the word ‘freedom’—the liberty, the independence of the person. This was done programmatically in the name of all sorts of high-and even low-sounding ideals: nationality, race better living standards, social justice, security, ideological conviction, restoration of ancient rights-- a happier world for all. But in reality, the driving motor of these movements was always the mad ambition of intellectuals—oratorically or, at least, literarily gifted—and the successful mobilization of the masses filled with envy and a thirst for revenge.” [Add to that list an anti-religious bias and a desire for uniformity, a ‘paradise’ in which everyone is the same. Parentheses mine.]

The Right, on the other hand, stands against statist power and for personal freedom. The Right is committed not to change for change’s sake, but to what is eternally true and valid, seeking either to “restore or the reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete…The ‘Man of the Right’ does not have a time-bound mind, but a sovereign mind. [He] stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking a readiness to preserve traditional values” as well as for a commitment to the sanctity of human life, as each life is unique and irreplaceable.

Dreams of the Right are dreamt by and held to by imperfect people who believe in transcendent values that hold for all societies in all times and places, values which create maximum individual freedom.

In sum, the dream of the Right is measured not by the person, but by its Truth.

In view of the upcoming elections, what does the above mean? It means you have a choice to vote for those who uphold the good dream or to ally yourself with those who uphold a dark dream; with those who will dream with you or with those who have a dream for you.

Realize that those who dream good dreams will be, like Martin Luther King, Jr., flawed human beings just like you.

But do what you must.

Choose your dream.

Farewell, Delaware--and Every Other State in the USA

2010-08-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

Bill McCollum is the attorney general of Florida who is getting flak for proposing an immigration law for Floridians.

He has set forth a very well reasoned case against the overreach of the Obama administration, pointing out the administration's immigration policy displays a "blatant disregard for separation of powers and federalism [and has resulted in] trampling both the constitutional authority of Congress and the sovereign rights of the states."

Well, yes.

The principles of federalism as envisioned and enacted by the founders of our country are the stuff of genius and have been widely imitated. The European Union, for example, owes its ideas of federation to American political thought.

As McCollum and others point out, at the heart of American federalism is the concept of separation of powers. That separation allows spheres of authority, congress having wide authority in domestic affairs and the president having great authority in foreign affairs.

In his handling of immigration policy, particularly in the case of Arizona, the president has deliberately blurred the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs in order to expand executive power. He did so by claiming his power over foreign affairs grants him power over "any attempt by Arizona to enforce federal immigration law...The administration's effort to strip Arizona of its rights under federal law reflects the view that presidential power over foreign affairs trumps congressional authority over domestic politcy."

But it is not just congress that is being rendered increasingly irrelevant under the Obama administration's power grab.

States also are in danger of being totally subsumed under executive power, their governmental sovereignty trashed and their ability to protect their citizens with their own police powers vitiated. In brief, the Obama administration, by denying Arizona its "law enforcement prerogatives, based on vague assertions of presidential foreign policy interests," has gutted the state autonomy gauranteed within the framework of federalism checked by balance of powers.

McCollum adds: "By that logic, there is no exercise of state prerogatives that the president cannot override all by himself." [Italics mine.]

Well, yes, again. That sentence deserves memorization, for it is the very definition of executive tyanny.

McCollum concludes: "President Obama's actions are unlike anything the American people have seen before. Indeed, they are in an entirely different category than the actions of previous presidents, which were undertaken largely in wartime...[President Obama] is disregarding a clear set of statutory requirements contained in federal immigration law, and he is greatly expanding presidential power--all without tacklong a genuine national security threat...[He] is eroding the separation of powers, evading checks and balances, and destroying federalism. These actions are hostile to the core of our Constitution...

"This president seems committed to running a government of men that rules without regard for the law. A government of laws is what the Constitution requires, and what the American people demand."

In light of the above, what stance should Delaware's candidates for office take? Certainly each and all must stand up to the ever encroaching power of the executive branch and stand for state sovereignty as defined by the constitution. Each and all must stand up for the unique rights of states to defend their citizens. If states continue to lose their right to defend their own citizens, they will be completely subsumed by the federal government. Further,as concerns candidates and fellow citizens alike each and all must stand up for the ability of states to be the breeding ground for unique innovation in diverse fields of endeavor, including economic innovation.

And therein lies the rub for tiny Delaware. If Delaware does not stand up to be counted, just what will be its fate? Its' not hard to guess. Delaware's unique position as corporate headquarters for the nation will be increasingly challenged by an out of control executive branch determined to be sovereign over all economic as well as immigration and other matters.

Right now, as in the past, Delaware has been the initiator of corporate law and has studiously avoided conflict with the federal government, seeking to strike a delicate balance between state and federal authority.

But without a strong, truly federal government, it will, like other states, simply become an administrative appendage attached to an all devouring executive/administrative body. Its unique status will disappear along with its economic base and its stellar position in the corporate world.

Wag the Dog

2010-08-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

Costing only 15 million dollars--mere peanuts in Hollywood and congressional circles--and taking a mere 29 days to shoot, Barry Levinson's 1997 Wag the Dog, an acidic political satire, may well have pertinence for the upcoming elections.

In the original story, two weeks before re-election, the president is accused of molesting an underage girl in the Oval Office. The spin doctors, including a Hollywood producer, leap into action, fearing the charges, if made public, will competely sabotage the president's chances for another four years in the White House.

The specialist in damage control suggests creating a campaign centered around a fake war in Albania, and assembles a team of media experts who put out a steady stream of denials of non-existent emergencies. The experts rely on the assumption the American public doesn't know or even care about Albania. But they believe the public will rally to the side of the President and re-elect him. The ploy works.

The manufacture of false crises in order to hide real ones and to win elections seems to be an old and even a rather respected tactic of some administrations, including this one.

The point being that voters should be aware this administration's apparent serenity in the face of what appears to be a gathering political tsunami this November may well be based on backup plans to manufacture a crisis. After all, who can forget Rahm Emmanuel's trenchant advice not to let a perfectly good crisis go to waste? Who cares if the crisis is manufactured or not? A crisis is a crisis.

Not that we have not had enough real crises, mind you; some of which, like the Gulf oil spill, appear to have gone down a black hole as straight faced administration spokesmen assure us 75% of the oil has magically disappeared undersea and seafood sniffers assure the public the taint of oil is nowhere to be found. No olfactory nerves are disturbed by the aroma of oil. No, sir. Eat your flounder dinner in unperturbed equanimity.

But what might a Wag the Dog crisis look like?

Well, it would probably be one that calls all Americans to patriotic solidarity, with an emphasis on getting behind the President and helping him retain a solid Democrat majority which will enable him to deal with the crisis. He will need all the power of congress behind him. Of course, emergency measures will require suspension of certain rights and privileges Americans customarily enjoy, for after all, a dire crisis requires draconian measures.

Could Americans expect a big emergency about two weeks before the November elections? It certainly is not out of the question.

Maybe a nice little attack?

Guilt by Naming

2010-07-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

Alexander Solzhenitsen described the Soviet gulag as a "human meat grinder" that processed Stalin's enemies, real or imagined. Most of Stalin's victims found out about their categorization as enemies of the state only when there was a knock at the door very late at night accompanied by announcement of arrest.

One never knew when he or she would be hauled off to torture and enslavement. It was not necessary actually to have commited a crime in order to be arrested and sent to Siberia. All that was required was that one was named an enemy of the state. The accusing finger could be an anonymous tip-off by a disgruntled neighbor. Once the "enemy" was named a "wrecker," "vermin," "enemy of the people," his fate was sealed and he was condemned without trial or proof by a tribunal for "hooliganism" or some other such loose term.

It was a characteristic of the intellectual, moral and spiritual bankruptcy of communist philosophy and the Soviet regime that vague, catchall phrases were enough to categorize, condemn and sentence innocent people.

In our own country, how sad it has been to see once legitimate and specific terms become catchall phrases for targeting whole groups of people. How tragic to see mere naming condemn innocent people, making them automatically guilt by verbal decree.

It is particularly tragic that the term "racism" has become in our own time, a catchall phrase that has come to be void of the specific meaning it once possessed; sad--and unjust--beyond belief to see the term "racist" applied to whole groups of people who merely espouse conservative political views. The recent attempts to paint the burgeoning Tea Party movement as "racist" are attempts to condemn by naming; to throw guilt over millions of innocent people in blanket condemnation.

Those of us who lived through the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's will ever forget the harsh reality of racist apartheid and the heroic struggle that led to desgregation of America's institutions. Few fail to applaud the gains for minorities, especially for American blacks.

Those gains are jeopardized when the term "racism" becomes so broad that it is in danger of becoming a generic term meaning "anyone whose ideas I oppose." Those gains are also jeopardized when "racism" is seen as inherent and therefore inerradicable, as a sort of genetic determinism applicable only to whites or Asians. Those gains are further jeopardized when real hooligans are protected by the color of their skins.

Civil rights leaders should never forget the words of one of their foremost representatives, Dr. Martin Luther King, who preached we all should be judged by the content of our character rather than by the color of our skin.

It's well for all of us to recall and to heed his wise words and to reject the despoilation and misuse of a term that, should it continue to lose its specific meaning, could jeopardize the equal rights of all US citizens.

To Dad on Memorial Day

2010-05-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

In the right drawer of my desk there is a picture of my dad in a US Army uniform. He’s about 30 years old in the picture and he is looking straight at the camera with a clear, steady, unflinching gaze. He reminds me of my youngest son. The same steady gaze, the same full lips; and, as Nathan humorously reminds me, the same hair pattern. "Thanks Grandad," Nathan smiles ruefully, rubbing his balding head.

The year the picture of Dad was taken was 1944, the year of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last chance to push back the Allies and to obtain a negotiated peace. Americans sustained seventy-five thousand casualties.

The Germans fared worse.

Innocently enough, my dad had kept ahead of the draft because of the number of children he had. But at last even my folks’ dedication to the Genesis mandate to replenish the earth was not enough to keep the Army at bay.

But Dad wasn’t drafted as an Army regular. In fact, he wasn’t drafted at all. He was tapped as a civilian advisor. Plucked from his job at All American Engineering, he was to head to England to coach Royal Air Force and American pilots on how to employ an invention he had helped develop. It was designed to pick up soldiers stranded behind enemy lines.

Dad had wanted a way to serve his country, and he was determined to go, despite leaving his pregnant wife and four kids behind. He knew, Mom was later to tell me, that he might not come back, but his love for his country drove him on. My father, a man of few words, would not often speak about his stay in London. But for the rest of his life, the sound of warning sirens would make him turn white.

As fate would have it, the plane that was to bear him East to England burst into flames on the runway at Newfoundland. Everyone got out safely, slightly singed but none the worse except for some smoke inhalation. But the plane burned up along with all its contents, including Dad’s uniform, which was that of an Army Captain. Back to New York for another flight and another uniform; then off to England, this time safely.

Once in England, Dad faced the last gasp effort of the German Wehrmacht to destroy London. Germany’s silent and deadly V-2 rockets smashed into the city day after day and night after night. In some ways, he was later to say, the V-2 rockets were worse than the bombs of the initial blitz, because of the silence; the dreadful silence. You could be standing in the street and hear absolutely nothing, know nothing, suspect nothing until you felt the earth shudder and saw plumes of dirt and rubble rise and fall like reversed waterfalls in the dank, dusty air.

In spite of the fear, the risk of death and not knowing when the war would ever end, Dad never forgot to write a daily letter to Mom. They were always brief and to the point, Mom remembers. Dad was a man of few words; and, as he was later to tell Mom, he didn’t want to worry her. He would tell her he loved her. He would tell her he believed he would return to her and us kids. Then he would sign the letter, "Forever yours, Frank."

And he was forever Mom's faithful and true love. His fellow soldiers attempts to get Dad some romance on the side fell flat. You're in England, three thousand miles away, they would say. "I love Dottie," he would say. My thrice married Aunt Ruth would later say, "Frank is the only man I know who actually would stay faithful to his wife."

Dad returned within four months when the war suddenly ended. He did not come home a hero like his kid brother Joe, who as a dashing pilot, became an Ace. We have a picture of handsome Joe in his leather bomber jacket and rakishly dashing cap, smiling at the camera. Thankfully, Joe came home, too. My grandmother wept tears of joy.

But while he never considered himself a hero, Dad’s invention did save the lives of downed airmen and stranded soldiers. But Dad, being a quiet man, never even mentioned that.

This weekend, I’ve thought Uncle Joe's and Dad's older brother Jack, who wanted to serve but was too advanced in years at age 38 to go. I’ve thought about my brother-in-law Leonard Bird, shot down in his jet at age twenty-five in Vietnam, leaving behind a grieving bride married all of six weeks. I’ve thought about my cousin Ruth Stonesifer’s son, downed in his helicopter in Afghanistan, his blue eyes closed forever.

I’ve thought of the rows and rows of crosses and stars at cemeteries here and abroad.

But most of all, I have been thinking of my quiet, self-effacing and humble Dad. He loved his country. He served her with the skills he had. And he helped saved a few good men.

Thank you, Dad.
　
　
　

Bureaucracy

2010-05-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

Surely one of the finest essays ever written about the deadening effects of bureaucracy was written one hundred and fifty years ago by an Englishman by the name of Richard Simmons.

The entire essay is uncannily pertinent to the American dilemma today. With a few changes to make it entirely contemporaneous, it is applicable word for word to the increasing power of bureaucracy over the lives of Americans.

Some pertinent quotes:

"The men of a bureaucracy...set [themselves] up as critics and guides of life, and therefore [see themselves] fit to direct the life of the nation."

"A bureaucracy is not fulfilled till we add the pedantic element of a pretence to direct our life, to know what is best for us, to measure out our labor, to superintend our studies, to prescribe our opinions, to make itself answerable for us, to put us to bed, tuck us up, put on our nightcap, and administer our gruel."

"The bureaucracy of lawyers is the universal pattern of all...The civil law takes the entire man under its tutelage, and sets itself up as the mundane providence...Never was this exhibited more clearly than in the Convention of French pettifoggers, where Robespierre declared, "We will have an order of things where all base and cruel passions are chained up, and all beneficial and generous passions aroused, by the laws; and where St, Just pretended to change, by a violent dose of legislation, the morals and manners of a nation, and to reform the human heart." (Italics mine.)

"Suffice it to say, that the great characteristic of true bureaucracy is the intimate conviction of its conductors that the provisions made by them adequately cover the whole area of human life and thought, or at least the most important parts of it; therefore that all other provision are superfluous, and, if contrary to their ideas, noxious, and as such, to be done away with as soon as possible, so as to leave a clear field for the regenerating action of their beneficent influence. Hence the intolerant, monopolizing, intrusive character of all true bureaucracy..."

"But as the state increases, and most in the classes that require to be administered, administration must increase likewise; the number of employees must wax greater and greater, they must be organized, and with their organisation the classification of the people whose affairs they have to administer must keep pace."

Simpson has wise and powerful insights into the shortcomings of a universal, government controlled educational system; the dangers posed to a democracy by bureaucratic control, and the solution to bloated bureaucracies; one of which is namely, to keep it small.

But there is much else to glean from his amazingly prescient essay, linked here:

http://www.panarchy.org/simpson/bureaucracy.html

Brilliant; absolutely brilliant!

The Gospel According to Bishop Pelosi

2010-05-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

In 1934 Germany, the only structure to oppose the supremacy of the Third Reich was one segment of the Christian church. Hitler had already castrated the Roman Catholic church by forcing it to sign the Concordat of 1933, in which the Church, with certain guarantees of limited autonomy, agreed its bishops, upon taking office, would swear an oath of fealty to the Reich as follows:

"Before God and the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich...I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it."

By acceding to the concordat of 1933, the Church effectively allowed the Hitler regime power over it. Their capitulation, which was complete, was to have disastrous results for the Church and for Christians and Jews living under the Nazi regime.

In protest, the leading German theologians of the day, Karl Barth and Hans Asmussen, formulated and published the Barmen Declaration in protest against the theological claims of the state. Those claims included demands to "Aryanize" the Church, expel Jewish Christians from the ministry and to accede to the "Fuhrer Principle" as the chief organizational impetus for church structure. The end goal of the Nazi regime was to subsume all churches under state control as well as to use the churches to proclaim and reinforce the existing regime as above the authority of the Church. The Church was to persuade the congregations to adopt Nazi legislation. An auxiliary goal was to have the pastors preach Nazi race theory as a revelation equal to that of the Bible.

Barth, Asmussen and the great martyr to the Christian faith Dietrich Bonhoeffer protested the intrusion of the Nazi regime and its agenda into church affairs in no uncertain terms, completely and decisively rejecting the "false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God (Christ), yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God’s revelation."

They added that they also rejected the idea that "there could be other areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords....We reject the false doctrine that the Church [must hand over] its message...to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day."

The theologians concluded that neither special leaders such as the Fuhrer nor the government itself were vested with ruling authority over the church. They rejected absolutely the idea that the State "should become the sole and total order of human life and so fulfill the vocation of the church as well."

Today in the United States of America, we are once again revisiting the manifold issues of the authority of Church and state which forced the Reformed and Lutheran churches of Germany to take their stands against the force and power of the state government.

One of the most egregious examples of the intrusion of the United States government into church affairs was articulated recently by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who declared concerning Roman Catholic bishops’ stance on the passage of the administration’s immigration bill, "But I say I want you to speak about it from the pulpit...I want you to instruct...the people [who] oppose immigration reform and are sitting in those pews...that this is a manifestation of our living the Gospels."

Indeed?

It’s worth noting the phrase "But I say..." as it is the very phrase Jesus used when asserting his moral authority. Always the phrase was used to insist on the transcendent moral authority of the Kingdom of God, an authority never subsumed under any earthly government.

The Church has always held to moral autonomy derived from its belief that the kingdom of God informs and suffuses earthly structures, not vice versa. Ms. Pelosi has by her statements reversed that order, putting the political agenda of the state above those of the church. In a shocking reversal of authority similar to that Barth and Bonhoeffer faced, she has put the state above the Church. She has elevated the political religion of progressivism above the Church, trashing the Church’s historic claims to be free from the authority of the kingdoms of this world.

A powerful political leader has once again presumed to tell the Christian church what the political ramifications of the Gospel of Jesus Christ should and must be. Effectively, she has said, "This is what you are to believe as the Gospel, and therefore this is the legislation you are to support and help pass."

She has thereby declared the state the ultimate conscience of the Church and thus has eradicated the lines between Church and state. Barth, Asmussen and Bonhoeffer would have revolted against Ms. Pelosi’s presumption. They would have excoriated her, realizing the Church is not regarded by her as an institution with a sphere of influence that must not be superceded or informed by the demands of the state.

The implications, much less the consequences, of her statement and attitude are indeed eerily similar to those which face the German Church in Nazi Germany. Religion disappears under the aegis of the all powerful and all knowing state. The Church merely ratifies the a piece of legislation important to the agenda presently defined by a powerful state official as the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Were Ms. Pelosi alone in her desire to make the Church the vehicle for actualizing the latest political agenda, she could be dismissed as an anomaly. But she is joined by many others, including many within the Church, who in their desire to effectuate social justice, are in danger of giving over the unique and transcendent authority of the Church to the state by doing the state’s bidding.

The Church needs to understand, reclaim and effectually utilize its role as the conscience of the state. It must vigorously and decisively and reject becoming a tool of the state. Catholic bishops need to refute Bishop Pelosi’s infallible declaration of a manifestation of the Gospel of Christ emanating ex cathedra from her secular seat in the hallowed halls of Washington. That refutation should go out form Church authorities with vigor and unmistakable force and clarity.

In the case of immigration, as in much else that needs the concentrated attention of the Church, it needs to come up with a plan on its own based on the scriptures and traditions of the Church lest it become the mere rubber stamp for federal state immigration legislation–the rubber stamp Bishop Pelosi apparently would like the Church to be. The Church needs to lead, not to follow.

Both Catholic and protestant churches must rise up in outraged protest against the intrusions of the state as propounded by Nancy Pelosi and others. Top theologians need to come together as Barth and others came together during the Third Reich in order to articulate, publish and disseminate another Barmen Declaration. They need to assert with vigor the separation of Church and state and to resist with all their might the assertion of state control over the Church in whatever form it manifests itself. This they must do so lest the Church continued to be crushed and subdued by the state. This they must do lest the Church become a mere tool of the state used to reinforcing state authority.

This they must do in order to remain free to proclaim the historic Gospel of Christ in all its manifestations in accordance with their free conscience.

True Multiculturalism: AAP Advocates Female Circumcision

2010-05-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

So this is where embracing multi-culturalism eventually takes us: Even the morally repellent ritual of female genital mutilation gets the nod form the American Academy of Pediatricians, which in the last few days has come out with advocacy for "federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ‘ritual nick,’ such as pricking or minor incisions of girls’ clitorises. In other words, the academy is advocating female genital circumcision "lite," supposedly in order that worse mutilation, available abroad, does not occur.

Lest anyone think the subject is a rarified and indelicate procedure confined to some farflung and remote outposts of the world, it is worth noting the problem of FGM is on the rise in the USA, particularly among Muslim immigrant groups, though not confined exclusively to them.

[You can read the full story, including protests from the World Heath Organization and International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics here: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-academy-of-pediatrics-aap-is-advocating-for-us-pediatricians-to-perform-certain-types-of-female-genital-mutilation-fgm-92871624.html]

As the linked article points out, "mothers who have until now resisted community pressure and not subjected their daughters to FGM in the U.S., in part because of the anti-FGM law, could be forced under the AAP guidelines to ask pediatricians to "nick" their daughters’ clitorises if it is [now] legally permitted."

Another consequence the article doesn’t point out, but one which would be equally serious, is that all US pediatricians, under the pressure of multi-cultural assumptions that FGM is a culturally mandated procedure not subject to Western medical ethics, might be forced against their consciences to perform a non-necessary and deforming medical procedure that does their female patients harm, thus violating the Hippocratic Oath.

Western women’s organizations should be up in arms over the AAP’s accommodative stance. While prominent women’s organizations such as NOW may be officially opposed to FGM, they have been preternaturally quiet. It is time for them and for women’s religious groups as well as for leaders of churches and synagogues to speak up.

The AAP must be pressured to reverse its morally offensive endorsement of unnecessary, psychologically, emotionally and physically harmful procedures which permanently scar young girls..
　
　

Standing at the Schoolhouse Door

2010-05-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

No one who lived through the civil rights movement of the 1960's will ever forget the sight of a grim faced, tight lipped George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, standing at the door of Foster Auditorium, University of Alabama. He stood there in order to block the entry of two black students, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood.

The governor took the opportunity to give a speech on states’ rights, which for him were exemplified by the phrase "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!"

Wallace had ignored Alabama Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach’s demand he move from the school house door. But when General Henry Graham, backed by the National Guard, commanded Wallace to step aside, saying, "Sir it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under the order of the President of the United States," Wallace reluctantly complied.

Wallace’s intransigence concerning segregation and his coupling resistance to federal authority with an appeal to states rights as defined by the "right" to maintain segregation were part of a more than century long struggle to define the limitations of federal power. But from the beginning much of the rationale behind the attempt of states to maintain the constitutional balance of power between the federal government and states’ rights was based along morally reprehensible and completely unsustainable ethical fault lines.

So entrenched was the alliance of states’ rights with what amounted to maintenance of apartheid that some Southern Democrats attempted to found a short lived split-off from main stream Democrats who supported Harry Truman in 1948. Dixiecrats, as they were popularly termed, were white supremacists who believed in segregation, opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws.

However, the renegade Dixiecrats managed once again to succeed in portraying anyone who believed in states’ rights and limits to federal power as inherently racist and without any moral or political credibility. Though they seized the party apparatus of several Southern states, their efforts were short lived.

That the ethical fault line was not consistently addressed by the writers of the U.S. constitution remains one of the tragedies of our great nation. For had the founders dealt with the issue of slavery and heeded their own call to universal human rights without making exception to that call, tacit and overt, the century and a half struggle for racial equality that followed their lapse in judgment might have been far less bloody and divisive. The states’ attempt to establish a balance between federal and states’ domains might have not been defined again and again by struggles over race. That this unsustainable ethical fault line existed and was reinforced well into the 1950's is a travesty.

But, also tragically, as the examples above illustrate, for well over a century and a half, the fight for states’ rights was often based on racial discrimination in varying forms. Starting with the defense of slavery, followed by the establishment and defense of Jim Crow laws and ending with defense of segregation of the races, many states found themselves on the losing side because of the immoral bases they chose for establishing and maintaining states’ power. Much of the time, the federal government had the moral high ground and stormed the states’ weak and shabby moral defenses.

How shabby and indefensible those defenses have been are summed up in a statement by the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, who speaking for states’ rights, stated the rationale for secession in the following fashion:
The cornerstone of our new government rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. Our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.

The brilliant and prescient John Emerson Dalberg-Acton, an Englishman and a contemporary observer of American politics before, during and after the Civil War, on reading Stephens defense of states’ rights, accurately noted in his essay The Civil War in America: Its Place in History:

Here, then, was a society adopting inequality, not as the natural product of property, descent and merit, but as its very foundation...The Southern slave-owner was in contradiction to the two principles which animated the Democracy of the Northern States. He denied the absolute essential equality of all men in civil rights; and he denied the justice of the doctrine that the minority possesses nothing which is exempt from the control of the majority, because he knew that it is was incompatible with the domestic institution which was as sacred to him as the rights of property.

But Acton went on the identify something else other than the moral indefensibility of the establishment and maintenance of slavery as a basis for states’ rights. He correctly identified the fact that while the Southern and other slave states sought under faulty moral premises to protect themselves from federal expansion of power; the federal government, regardless of the high moral ground it occupied, did wish to expand its power and to make itself superior to all restraint by the states. States’ rights and true federalism, Acton noted, were noble concepts apart from the evils of slavery. The rights of self-governance were still worthy of protection. Otherwise, he wrote, Liberty would no longer consist of exemption of control but would "come to mean the right to exercise control."

He pointed out that Daniel Webster laid down the premise that the Union was not a covenant between the States and the federal government, but an unbreakable bond that could not be severed under any circumstance. Horace Greeley, editor of The Tribune, and a leading abolitionist went even further, proclaiming the doctrine that "The Union is not worth supporting in connection with the South." Webster’s and Greeley’s concepts permanently took away states’ rights of redress against incursion of the federal government into state affairs.

Acton concludes the stronger minded Republicans like Webster and Greeley "resolved to make themselves masters of the central government, for the purpose of coercing the south to submit to their political opinions. He noted the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts confessed that ‘the object to be accomplished was this, for the free states to take possession of the government."

In other words, the immorality of slavery, the odium of Jim Crow laws and the apartheid of segregation, all civic moral problems which begged for moral solutions, became not only grave moral issues needing redress, but political tools in the hands of the central government to expand its power and to override the concept of states’ rights inherent in the Constitution–states’ inherent rights regardless of any faulty foundational arguments. Because of the treading on states’ rights, the doctrine of federalism suffered almost irreparable damage as moral authority buttressed by raw federal power destroyed states’ autonomy and much of self-government.

In sum: The issue of race would take precedence in the struggle of the states against the overreach of federal power and would become for the central government a virtually unassailable moral bastion which served a dual purpose: the righteous purpose of providing equal rights to all US citizens regardless of race and the purpose of expanding of federal authority while crushing states’ rights.
　
Part II: The Distortion of the Moral Imperative of Racial Equality
Part III: Racial Equality and Immigration
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

Miss Oxford Diner

2010-05-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Miss Oxford Diner has always had an American flag out front. It’s that kind of place.

Traditional. Very traditional.

The diner is one of the vanishing breed of restaurants that popped up all over our country as imitations of railroad dining cars. Swathed in shiny chrome and faded pink striped siding, it still has the original swivel bar stools and quilted stainless steel backsplash along with tableside juke boxes with Chubby Checkers songs still on the labels.

It’s traditional. http://www.oxforddiner.com/

So traditional that menu changes are not appreciated by the locals, who want their chipped beef and biscuit breakfast special to be served any time they are in the mood for it.
Don’t expect menu lite at this place, where meatloaf, mashed potatoes and cole slaw have been on the menu for as long as I remember, and my memory goes back a long way to when I was a twenty-two year old teacher at Oxford High School and a customer every Wednesday night for the Blue Plate Fried Oyster Special.

Yes, it’s traditional. It’s as American as apple pie. And so are the people who drop in to eat. Weary truckers wheel in for fried eggs, bacon and biscuits at all times of day and night. Locals pop in for corn chowder and cole slaw to catch up on the news. Hard working waitresses with tired, lined faces still call customers “Hon.”

People know each other at Miss Oxford. They have an invisible, intuitive grapvine that signals when they know you’re not from their part of the country. But they're not unfriendly, Just watchful and curious.

And they’re traditional. Very traditional.

My sister and I stopped in for lunch today. While we were waiting, we noted two American flag placards nailed to the walls inscribed, “God Bless America.”

I thought to myself, well, I guess these folk are the ones our president was talking about when he said there were a lot of bitter people who clung to their religion and guns. I thought about it a while. It made me sad.

My sister must have read my thoughts, for she gestured toward the flag pole outside. I looked, expecting to see the American flag that always had hung from it. But the flag with the stars and stripes was gone. In its place was a bright yellow flag with a coiled snake on it. Below, an inscription, “Don’t Tread on Me.”

My sister and I exchanged a meaningful gaze and I caught the look on our waitress’ face. She saw our looks and she was calmly smiling.

Well, I thought, what a significant change. The people who run Miss Oxford Diner and their customers didn’t miss the insults to them and Americans like them. And they have responded in their own way.

They weren’t at Miss Oxford Diner engaging in outraged political discourse. They were eating their meatloaf, mashed potatoes and cole slaw. They were scarfing down chipped beef, biscuits and gravy. But they had spoken nonetheless, and they were angry.

They are sending a message that will no doubt be heard from now to this coming November election and beyond:

“Don’t Tread on Me.”

The Goldman Sachs Zionist "Conspiracy"

2010-04-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Once conspiracy theories are established as "truth," they hardly ever die, but instead mutate into ever more viral transmogrifications which have the capacity to poison institutions and governments.

One such theory, the blood libel, has afflicted both Christians and then Jews for centuries. But one less noticed libel has been the persistent charges against the international banking system as being a global Jewish cabal in cahoots with the United States’ supposed attempt to establish domination over the entire global economy. The idea is that "Big Satan" and "Little Satan" are co-conspirators determined to put the global economic system under their heels.

The libel against Jewish owned banks and financial institutions has long roots going back at least as far as the Middle Ages, when lords and knights cooperated in what amounted to extortionist shakedowns of the Jewish owned banks and Jewish communities. Part of their success in so doing was that they distributed libelous propaganda accusing the Jews of wanting world wide financial domination. Most know this conspiracy theory today in its form as anti-Zionism.

One form of the anti-Zionist, Jewish banking cabal theory has been alive and well for many years in the Middle Eastern Arab countries. The editor of "Jewish Comment" summarized the theory well in a 2002 article describing his encounters with some young Arabs who were earnestly exhorting passers by to be aware of the "fact" that "Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers were part of the international conspiracy of Jews and Americans to finance Zionist aspirations." (Google "Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and the Great Zionist Conspiracy" for the article and other interesting results.)

The SEC charges of fraud against Goldman Sachs have many facets and political permutations, but one of those facets may be the administration’s attempts to palliate Arabs and Palestinians by legitimizing one of their favorite anti-Zionist tropes. By attacking Goldman Sachs, the Obama administration gives legitimacy to Arab conspiracy theories and anti-Zionist attacks while giving succor to Palestinians who are livid over the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and have refused to consider peace talks unless the construction is halted.. Obama himself has been outraged and has pounded Netanyahu for his intransigence over the construction.

The attack on Goldman Sachs, which Marc Faber recently described as a relatively honest company, is a brilliant, multi-pronged but thuggish approach to sidelining or even crippling Goldman Sachs. It reinforces Obama’s attempts to control Wall street by creating a villain he knows the public is willing to throw rotten tomatoes at. It bolsters his aim to pass legislation controlling Wall Street while at the same time it sends not so subliminal messages to Israel and its sworn enemies that Obama is willing to throw a capitalist Jewish banking institution under the bus in order to get his legislation passed while at the same time giving solace, comfort and ratification of conspiracy theories to Israel’s enemies. Obama appears to be entirely willing to sabotage Goldman Sachs, which is integral to much of the West’s financial system.

But the chief aim of this administration in attacking Goldman Sachs is probably not to completely destroy the institution, but to keep it subservient to the US administration–much like the lords and knights of the Middle Ages used extortion and threats to humiliate and control the Jewish bankers. The idea is to wring concessions, confessions and probably hefty fines out of Goldman Sachs while at the same time achieving a multiple but dubious political goals, domestic and international.

However, a goal of the attack on Goldman Sachs, coming as it did just before the proposed sweeping financial "reforms" of the Obama administration, also is to serve as a severe warning to all of America’s banking institutions. It is the psychological equivalent of the Mafia sending a dead fish to a rival. It is the Obama administration making an offer that cannot be refused. For after all, the SEC, with its massive regulatory power can and no doubt will, target selectively those "dead fish" financial institutions the Obama administration wishes to make subservient to his agenda. All banks must now be at constant "red alert" status.

What the political outcome--domestic and international--will be is unknown. But it is quite probable that congress, in its attempts to appear supremely virtuous guardians of the public welfare, will be quite willing to buy into conspiracy theories and into the public anger over financial institutions’ transgressions, real and imagined.

To that end, goaded on by an anti-Israeli president, they may be quite willing to paint a target on Goldman Sach’s back.

[Postscript: The attack on Goldman Sachs is pertinent to Delaware, as it is home to over 50% of all U.S. publicly traded corporations and to some 60% of the Frotune 500. Banks and corporations are not high on the Obama administration's most favored list, so further erosion of Delaware's status as America's corporate capital can be expected as the administration tightens its control over businesses and financial insitutions. But another article would be requred to more fully address the situation.] 　
　
　

The Fall of the House of Finance: More Sarbanes Oxley on the Way

2010-04-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I was sitting in my opthamologist's office and chanced on a magazine I'd never heard of--Stocks, Futures and Options. In it was an interview with George Friedman, who noted the financial elite have lost all credibility. He added the political elite have stepped in to the vacuum. He also said the government and the financial communities "regard one another as incompetent."

The difficulty, Friedman added, is magnified by the fact the "government is not financially efficient. It is built to be politically efficient...Obama has to demonstrate that our institutions or government is capable of effective action, because what would terrify people and create a new crisis is if the political elite appear to have the same incompetence as the financial elite. All hell would break loose...On one side, the political state is saying the financial community is a bunch of greedy scoundrels, while the financial community says the government is a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats."

We are at the impasse Friedman so eloquently and succinctly delineates. The fact of the matter is that the American people no longer have confidence in either their financial institutions or their government. Some 76% of the American public don't trust the government. And most don't trust finacnial insitutions such as Goldman Sachs.

Friedman's assessment has come true, and all hell is breaking loose.

In the effort to put itself in the driver's seat, reclaim the confidence of the American people--or at least divert attention away from its incompetence--and to fatally weaken Wall Street, the administration is seeking further control over the financial sector. Doubtless we will be looking at another Sarbanes Oxley Act--on speed.

The result will be an economy that is furthered weakened. The above mentioned Sarbanes Oxley Act has already weakened corporations by demanding a flood of paper work and extra employees to manage accounting procedures. None of the reforms has actually dealt with the underlying problems the Enron scandal exposed and to which congress reacted, as Friedman points out, with political rather than economic efficiency. What Friedman, an Obama supporter who believes the president can restore trust to government, does not note is that political "efficiency" exhibited as total regulatory control always cripples economic efficiency.

Sarbanes Oxley is a perfect illustration of the truth that political solutions have a way of retarding or crippling industry. As Alan Reynolds of the Cato institute notes:

The Sarbanes-Oxley law was unnecessary, inadequate and harmful. It was unnecessary because the SEC already had the authority to do everything the law demands about accounting or corporate boards. Sarbanes-Oxley was inadequate, if not irrelevant, because it failed to deal with any fundamental institutions, laws or incentives that might have contributed to major bankruptcies in the wake of the 2001 recession. The 1968 Williams Act has made it too difficult to take over mismanaged companies, for example. And higher tax rates on dividends before 2003 helped devious managers camouflage overstated earnings (companies can't pay dividends with bogus earnings).

Sarbanes-Oxley has proven harmful to the U.S. economy, and to the value of stocks still listed on U.S. exchanges, because it greatly increases the costs and risks of doing business as a publicly traded U.S. corporation and it increases the risks of serving as a director or officer. Sarbanes-Oxley has essentially the same effect as a large but unpredictable increase in corporate taxes. Congress must at least lighten the heavy load of this ill-considered regulatory tax, assuming insufficient humility and courage to repeal it. Even in politics it is generally wiser to admit mistakes and fix them than to fall into the familiar bad habit of assuming that good intentions excuse bad results.

Stephen Boyko, author of We're All Screwed warns that toxic regulation will crush the free market system. He writes:

Bad rule writing has resulted in bad legislation, such as the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, and has created an ineffective system for regulating the U.S. capital markets. If we don't act fast, the 2008 subprime stack market crash could potentially result in more toxic regulation. [A prescient comment, as more toxic regulation is on its way.]

He advocates an answer: "fostering entrepeneurialsm; segmenting the market to account for size, capital and scope; and using a three dimensional model for regulation."

While GeorgeFriedman probably would not say so, Milton Firedman would say the more the political sphere of influence intrudes into the economic sphere of influence, the more likely the slide into socialism and tyranny.

The halt to this slide will only occur by embracing two major reforms. The first is a return to true federalism with an emphasis on states' initiatives, whence have come some brilliant economic models. My own state of Delaware once had such a model intitated by Governor Pete duPont, but it has been seriously eroded under the last few administrations.

The second is a return to a balance of governmental and economic spheres of influence. Any institution's integrity and effectiveness cannot remain if it is unceasingly violated and controlled by another. (This truism is valid for any institution, be it religious, governmental, economic, military or educational.)

If at one time American industrialists had too much power over the federal and state governments, that certainly is not the case now. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and accelerating steadily throughout the last century, the ascension of federal control over the states, traditionally a breeding ground for economic innovation and the financial institutions of our country, now at least temproarily discredited and under increased scrutiny and attack, is nearly complete.

It looks like this current administration is poised to push the accelerator to the floor by pushing the enactment of another Sarbanes Oxley Act.

More onerous regulation is not the answer for giving renewed health to our financial institutions. There are plenty of regulations already on the books, some legitimate; some not. A massive effort to distinguish between the necessary and unecessary regulations already on the books is long overdue and would result in a burst of economic prosperity scarcely imaginable in these dark economic times.

We are Amused: Obama as Royalty

2010-04-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

A quote attributed to Queen Elizabeth I (sometimes to Queen Victoria) has the offended aristocrat icily dismissing a courtier's off color comment thusly: "We are not amused." The use of the royal "we" was meant to declare to the offender that he had angered queen, demeaning her status as the epitome of excellence and majesty.

Americans have never been intimidated or silenced by the use of the royal "we" because they have have not been under the rule of an aristocratic class for the last two and a half centuries. In fact, no American president has ever dared to put down a large segment of the American people as if he were a king irritated by his subjects.

That is, until now.

President Obama recently has stated the Tea Party crowds who protest his tax policies "amuse" him. He feels they should be grateful to him.

Such statements by the leader of Americans certainly make it seem as if Obama sees himself as an aristocratic bent on ignoring, demeaning and controlling unfavored segments of the American people, especially those who dare to show "disrespect" by declaring their opposition to the administration's politices.

Think about it.

The president of all the people of the United States of America believes the Tea Partiers' concerns and protests are "amusing." He considers them ungrateful wretches. His attitude of "let them eat cake" is dangerously dismissive as well as divisive. His statements indicate he sees his position as one of "me" against "them."

I can recall no president in history who has brushed aside his fellow citizens and their concerns with such overtly snobblish and cavalier dismissal.

The above is not to say there haven't been presidents who hae been angered by large segments of the populace. It is not to say there haven't been presidents who have wished they didn't have strong opposition. It is to say, however, that to my recollection, there has never been a president who has consistently demeaned, derided and ignored large segments of US society.

Our president gives example after example of behavior which indicates he believes himself to be above the masses by reason of his intelligence, power and absolute rightness of his causes. When a president has an attitude of disdain toward the people he has been elected to serve, it indicates he doesn't wish to represent the people. It reveals he wishes to rule the people.

President Obama is in for a shock by November as alienated Americans send a message to him: You are not a king. You are an elected representative of the American people who is called to listen to and to act on behalf of all American citizens, even those who disagree with you.

This November voting Americans will tell the president, "We are not amused."

On Civility: Calls for civility can be a means of silencing oppostion

2010-04-12T19:48:00.000-07:00

Although the political left has continually demeaned the Tea Party movement, it has also constantly called for civility of discourse. Those who are in the Tea Party movement need to recognize and to resist both the attempts to discredit it as well as to ignore the calls for civil dialogue as defined by the left. They must do so because radical progressives’ tactics of vilification combined with calls for civility and peaceful bipartisanship are twin prongs of a strategy meant to discredit and silence the opposition.

Of course it is necessary for the Tea Party to confront, challenge and diffuse the various smears directed toward conservative political groups springing up all over the United States. The charges leveled against the Tea Party have included racism, violence, hate speech, ignorance, lack of education and even a penchant for outdoor barbeques and fast cars.

While the new patriotic groups must pick off such charges one by one, demanding evidence and refuting false accusations; at the same time, such charges must not succeed in their chief mission, which is to vitiate the opposition by putting it continually on the defensive. The new movements must not lose the impetus of offensive strategies, chief among which are preventing the election of candidates for office who do not stand for the transcendent values of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which ethic was one of the chief impetiti behind the formation of the US constitution.

But the diversionary tactics employed by the liberal left to keep the Tea Party movement constantly on the defensive are coupled with a more subtle strategy; namely, a call to civility as defined by the far left. The goal of radical progressives, who seldom--if ever-- follow their own advice, clearly is to vitiate the Tea Party’s claims to truth and its attempts to reform the US political system by rendering it so meek and mild, so intimidated and soft spoken that it becomes utterly ineffective as a political reform movement. In brief, the constant calls for "civility" can be a thinly disguised means for silencing protestors.

It is important to make a distinction between gratuitous incivility and moral outrage. Human discourse, if it is to be meaningful, abides by generally recognized rules of civil behavior. Such rules exclude profanity, name calling, and unjustifiable personal attacks. Also excluded are slander, rumor mongering and sexually charged innuendoes.

But the left, and sometimes "moderate" or liberal Republicans, have sought to extend the rules of generally recognized civil behavior to include strong expressions of moral outrage. Many times the attempt is made to define genuine moral outrage as incivility; or worse, racism. To that end, members of the opposition from the left often have sought to silence conservatives by attempts to make the Tea Party and other conservative groups speak the language of the left, to accept the left’s terms of debate, which are almost always put in the context of race, victimization, political correctness and multi-culturalism.

To put it another way, progressives have certain doctrinal assumptions as the bases of any dialogue and seek to rope in and corral opposition by requiring the opposition to speak the language of the left and to define moral issues according to progressive priorities. That is one reason why the left most often resorts to the constantly repeated and by now often the merely rhetorical trope of racism. [A caveat: The reduction of the term by making it ubiquitous and all encompassing has been tragic for minorities, as the dilution of racism’s true meaning weakens justifiable attempts to confront and eradicate genuine cases of racist behavior.]

But the point of this small essay is that it is imperative for conservatives to refuse to accept the left’s definition of racism. As noted, "racism" has become a catchall category embracing the nearly the entirety morality and politics. If at one time, the mere hint of sexual misconduct was enough to bring down any political leader, all it takes nowadays to destroy a reputation and to end a career is the charge of racism It is a means of achieving--without dialogue, reasoning or factual proof--instant condemnation of conservative opposition.

In sum, being guilty of any of the multiple and increasingly arbitrary interpretations of racism by the left are the equivalent of a Christian irrevocably breaking the Great Commandment.

The Tea Party and other conservative groups must not allow genuine moral indignation to be redefined as incivility or racism. Moral indignation arises from recognition of evil. In turn, recognition of evil requires strong language, strong confrontation and strong action. The prophets of ancient Israel and Jesus Christ all used strong language to define and to confront the injustices and societal ills of their time.

The members of the Tea Party movement should encourage one another to follow those illustrious examples. By so doing, they will avoid falling prey to scurrilous attacks which keep them always on the defensive and to attempts to silence them by false charges of racism and hypocritical, spurious calls for "civility."
　
It is extremely important for member of the Tea Party and other groups to speak boldly and truthfully; to refuse to abide by the left’s terms of debate and to articulate clearly and precisely their short and long term goals.

Moral truth is the always the first and most necessary requirement of any political movement.

How to Treat Friends

2010-03-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

When the elderly president of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Emil Hacha, visited Adolf Hitler in the late winter of 1939, his country had already agreed to measures designed to placate the dictator. The Czech cabinet had banned the communists and booted out all Jewish school teachers. The Czechs were fully prepared to make other concessions.

But Hitler was no about to accept any further conciliatory gestures. He had already abandoned any pretense of diplomacy because his real intent was to render Czechoslovakia powerless. He was determined to take the country over by force.

But before Hitler gave the aged and probably senile Hacha Germany's ultimatums, the dictator completely humiliated him. Hacha was not summoned into Hitler's presence until 1:15 A.M., at which time, after Hacha had groveled before him begging for mercy, Hitler exploded. Hacha had no choice but to sign a document of surrender and give in, the dictator fumed. Annihilation awaited if the Czechs dallied.

When Hacah and his envoy protested, Hitler stormed out of the room and handed Hacah over to Goering and Ribbentrop, who browbeat the confused and ailing president, finally bludgeoning him into signing the death warrant for his country at 3:55 A.M., March 15, 1939. [The fuller story of Dr. Hacah and Hitler can be found in William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 444-448.]

The treatment of Dr. Hacah is a lesson in how authoritarians treat their enemies.

Who would ever have believed similar tactics of humiliation and browbeating would be used by our administration against a long time friend and ally?

Though not as severe a beating as was administered to Hacha; nonetheless, our president gave US long time friend and ally a good hard smack in the face, humilating and dismissing Bibi Netanyahu as if he were an upstart lackey. While unlike Hacha, Netanyahu neither fainted nor caved in, the behavior of our president reeks of Chicago style thuggery. It has the unsavory smell of authoritarianism.

By now most observers of the political scene know the story. Jim Hoft of PajamasMedia quotes Adrian Blomfield of The Telegraph:

Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family, it emerged on Thursday. The snub marked a fresh low in US-Israeli relations and appeared designed to show Mr Netanyahu how low his stock had fallen in Washington after he refused to back down in a row over Jewish construction in east Jerusalem.

… (Mr. Obama) immediately presented Mr Netanyahu with a list of 13 demands designed both to the end the feud with his administration and to build Palestinian confidence ahead of the resumption of peace talks. Key among those demands was a previously-made call to halt all new settlement construction in east Jerusalem.

When the Israeli prime minister stalled, Mr Obama rose from his seat declaring: “I’m going to the residential wing to have dinner with Michelle and the girls.” As he left, Mr Netanyahu was told to consider the error of his ways. “I’m still around,” Mr Obama is quoted by Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper as having said. “Let me know if there is anything new."

Obama's behavior toward the head of state of one of our most trusted and valuable allies goes beyond ignorance and immaturity. Our president acted as tyrants and thugs behave, not as the leader of the most powerful nation in the free world should behave.

Mr Hoft adds:

The ritual humiliation of the Israelis is an absolute disgrace, and yet another example of how the Obama administration views its allies with indifference, contempt, and at times outright hostility. It is extraordinary how far the Obama team has gone out of its way to grovel to state sponsors of terrorism, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Muammar Gaddafi, while kicking America’s friends in the teeth.

It is no wonder Obama's approval rating within Israel has fallen to single digits.

There are many disturbing lessons to be drawn from our president's treatment of Israel. None are good.

But the chief lesson to be learned is that the new realpolitik of the current administration continues to minimize our friends while courting our enemies.

European leaders may shrug and wait it out until a friendlier administration works to repair the damage done by our current administration.

But for Israel, the minimzation of her standing and the thuggish behavior of our president could well be catastrophic as the fire breathing nations who surround her see an opportunity to increase their hostility and gain legitimacy to their complaints that Israel and the Jews should not exist at all.

Just as bad, the stinging repudiation of Israel as a prime ally and friend could well stoke the fires of anti-semitism, not only in Europe, where the brush fires of antisemitism are fast turning into bonfires of hatred similar to those of the 1930's, but also here in the US.

After all, never has this country had a president who is more overtly hostile to Israel, who surrounds himself with so many anti-semitic sycophants and who is so ready to give severe qualifications concerning the legitimacy of the Jewish nation and its claims to its land.

All the more reason to vote him and his cronies out of office.

Caligula's Horse and our Congress

2010-03-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

It's probably fair to say that by the time the emperor Caligula made his favorite horse Incitatus a senator, the glory days of the Roman senate were long past. What was once an august deliberative body had already gradually been diminished by the overweening control of powerful, godlike emperors. The final humiliation reducing the senate to the status of a horse's ass didn't really matter.

But the US House of Representatives and the US Senate have suffered an even worse fate than gradual strangulation by a series of divine rulers. US leaders have not been the primary reason for congress' present reduction to irrelevancy, try though they might.

On the contrary, the US Senate and House of Representatives have done themselves in. By voting for the current health care bill, both bodies of congress have consigned themselves to irrelevancy. Both have become as moribund and ineffectual as the Roman Senate under Caligula. That is because both have handed over their law making and regulatory powers to a vast bureaucracy they themselves have just created.

It's not that there aren't bureaucracies already existing which are, by and large, dead weights on American society. Self-perpetuating, regulatory and controlling nightmares have already been inserted into the societal fabric.

But the bureaucracy just created and about to be signed into law creates a monstrous organization controlling just about every aspect of American's lives. Even more to the point, the giant agency about to be put into place will busy itself, like every other agency, making rules and regulations. The new self-perpetuating health care bureaucracy, along with others still to be put into place, will make endless rules, laws and regulations. Americans will have no or little say concerning the new regulations, for it is truly difficult, if not impossible, to make agencies and bureaucracies accountable to the will of the people.

The above means Congress will gradually be put out of business. It will become largely symbolic as the newly minted bureaucracy takes its place.

In addition to the plethora of new laws and regulations spewed forth by health care bureaucrats and appointees, a newly empowered president with the capacity to hire and fire said appointees will preside over the bureaucratic nightmare, increasing his say over the country's destiny without the tedium of dealing with fractious deliberative bodies.

But perhaps even more importantly, the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have, by passing the health care legislation, proved themselves irrelevant because they now are not representative bodies. To put it bluntly, by passing a health care package odious to the majority of the American people, our representatives and senators have shown they no longer represent the will of their constituents, but are bought and sold to the wheelers and dealers complicit with the White House.

The upshot is that being elected a senator or representative no longer matters as far as the voice of the people is concerned. It no longer matters who is elected because the point of being elected was to represent the people who vote, and that rather important commission has no more relevance. While thankfully no one will have to see the fake torments and supposed agonies of conscience of a Bart Stupak or a Mary Landrieu, Americans have suffered what might be an irreparable loss; namely, no one will be speaking for them. In such a scenario, no individual's vote for his or her representative matters, as all representatives are become merely interchangeable faces and ineffectual, gutted zombies rubber stamping the status quo.

In sum, as of yesterday, congress voted itself out of power. It made itself as irrelevant as Caligula's senate. The power has gone elsewhere. It has gone to the White House, a privileged cabal of appointees and to the new bureaucracies.

The result? Power no longer belongs to the people.

Welcome to the brave new world of 2010.

PC and Multi-Culturalism are Destroying the US Military

2010-03-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

Political Correctness and Multi-culturalism Are Destroying the US Military: The ideological seeds that contributed to the destruction of the Wehrmacht have implications for the US military today

On June 22, 1942, in a surprise attack that flabbergasted and confounded even the wily Josef Stalin, German armies raced across the border of Russia determined to crush the nation and expand Nazi domination. That they did not succeed in so doing is one of the providential miracles of history for which the world may be profoundly grateful.

Historians have been studying the causes of the Nazi defeat for decades, and most concede that if it were not for the incredible heroism of the Russian people and the entrance of America into the war, Russia would have fallen to the Nazi war machine.

But it is seldom noted the Nazi version of political correctness played an enormous role in bringing the German armies to their knees. German military success was hindered by the racist ideology which put at the forefront of the military agenda the drive for Aryan purity, which purity was to be achieved by the extermination of Jews and Slavs.

With a few notable exceptions which would later translate into plots to assassinate Hitler, the German military was gradually absorbed into the political and ideological milieu engendered by Nazism, becoming not only a weapon for Nazi expansionist goals, but also an instrument to achieve the racial purity Hitler longed for. Prussian ideals of absolute loyalty to country and ruler were made to include Nazi ideological goals.

There was, in other words, a dual agenda comprised of military victory over the Russian armies but also victory over racial "pollution."

German army units that had thrust forward with incredible speed and determination into the very heart of Europe rushed headlong into Russia, but they were now accompanied by einsatzgruppen, special units designed to exterminate non-Aryans. As long as the Nazi blitzkrieg moved with the astonishing rapidity and success rate it had enjoyed in Europe, the einsatzgruppen could work without impeding the advance of the German armies. But as the war wore on, it became apparent that conventional and racial warfare could not co-exist without bogging down the army's military goals.

Gradually the twin goals of military victory and extermination of racially undesirable elements became so intertwined that in combination with stiffer Russian resistance than expected and the onset of the famed, brutal Russian winter, the German armies were slowed and eventually halted.

So it happened that the drag of ideological warfare was part of Hitler's "Waterloo." Because ideology trumped military strategy and sapped morale, the might of the German army was vitiated. While shedding oceans of blood in battle and in extermination campaigns, the army itself was suffering a vampiric suctioning of its life blood in the form of Nazi political correctness. The famed disciplined hierarchy of the German army broke down into a bloody anarchical melee.

Lessons for the US Military

US military forces face the prospect of being weakened from within by ideological forces as surely as the Wehrmacht was weakened by the absorption of Nazi ideology. While it is true there are far subtler ideological forces at work within our military than the odious racial ideology of Nazism; nonetheless, as with the Wehrmacht, ideological purity tests foreign to the ideals of the American military have been and are being introduced into its ranks, assuring its gradual vitiation. The US military is presently subject to and weakened by the ideologies of political correctness and multi-culturalism, both of which are inimical to a strong military, which, if it is to remain effective as a fighting force, requires strict adherence to its own longstanding traditions and ideals.

While remaining under civil authority, the military must be free to live and act according to the principles it articulates. It must have its autonomous sphere of authority, hierarchy and discipline. If it is forced to absorb and to obey the current politically correct thinking that is the hallmark of our current administration as well as of academia, it is bled of strength, compromised in its principles and subject to revisionist thinking.

In fact, it is in danger of not being the military at all.

For those unfamiliar with US military ideals, they are those of warriors devoted to God, country, the branch of the military to which one belongs, acceptance of the hierarchy of command, unflinching obedience to superiors and steadfast loyalty to one's unit and fellow soldiers.

Add to those ideals self-effacement and denial of individual privilege in the interest of protecting the innocent and vulnerable of one's country. All of the above mean that the individual soldier's "rights" as defined by the current civilian climate of opinion are freely suspended for the sake of unity--a unity necessary for fighting; a unity that melds all soldiers together as one force.

For instance, the honor code of the US Marine Corps outlines the general principles by which our military stands and by which it is led. Every action of any given Marine is guided by the honor code, by service to one's fellow citizen accompanied by prayer to God. Even the use of the Marine's gun is subject to a strict protocol of honor.

The above ideals necessarily preclude privileges and special exceptions required by the agendas followed by special interest groups defined by race, gender, national origin, or sexual behavior, all of which must be submitted to ideals and goals that sacrifice individual demands for the sake of the unifying, transcendent ideals that define a unified fighting force.

There is no room in the military for soldiers who think of themselves primarily as victims of societal sins; sins which must be rectified at the expense, vitiation or outright jettisoning of the universal moral code which defines the soldier's duty.

There is no room for campaigns and fights for individual "rights" and privileges that are not shared by the entire fighting force. There is only room for fighters; for heros devoted first to God, country and the constitution.

Current political correctness and multi-culturalism are pernicious to military unity because they are intrinsically divisive. They focus on the individual and splintered groups rather than on overarching unity. When a soldier thinks of himself primarily as an aggrieved member of a minority entitled to special privileges, he automatically is disloyal to the military hierarchy, as he sees the strict military command and fixed hierarchy as a barrier to the establishment of his personal goals and individual rights.

Examples of the dangers of political correctness and multi-culturalism

For instance, if a soldier is thinking primarily about her grievances as a woman, she divides herself from her male fellow soldiers and creates a sub-hierarchy of demands and expectations as relates purely to her and other women, not to the overall unit.

That is why it is insanity to put women on submarines with men and expect the two sexes to operate as one unit. It simply will not happen. The requirements of women are quite different than men, and military protocol would have to take note of and enforce the subset of requirements specifically geared toward women. The result would mean that the whole unit's code would have to be re-worked within what can only be broadly categorized as civilian expectations and guidelines. Those guidelines are most often formed within a radical overt or quasi-feminist framework of rules and regulations concerning not only women's special physical needs but also a convoluted protocol established to protect women from any hint of sexual harassment.

One can only imagine how such elaborate protocol between the sexes would work out when both are housed undersea for months in the equivalent of a large tuna can. One certainly can imagine and expect the fracturing of unity as the men were handed out a Chinese menu of regulations relating to treatment of the opposite sex while being exhorted to follow the rest of military protocol to the letter.

But one thing is certain: Nothing but trouble and divisiveness will result as the unity necessary for an effective fighting force is placed under extreme duress and perhaps entirely dissipated.

One final example of the rotten fruit of multi-culturalism and political correctness as concerns the US military: The case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan's case has been thoroughly examined and commented on. It is not the intent of this piece to review the shootings at Fort Hood. Nonetheless, his actions exemplify the Achilles' heel of multi-culturalism as it relates to the US military.

The grip of current politically correct thinking concerning the supposed equality and non-violent character of all faiths and religious viewpoints in Hasan's case hit the rock of reality. In fact, Hasan's personal religious views were violently incompatible with the ideals of the US army. Indeed, he placed himself in opposition to the Army from the onset of his career. The principles of his brand of religion superceded loyalty to his nation, to its constitution and to his oaths as a soldier. His religious ideology came first. In the end, Hasan thought of himself primarily as a jihadist bent on the destruction of the very nation to which he had pledged his loyalty.

All Americans know the horrible result.

The Hasan case demonstrates the ideals of multi-culturalism are in direct opposition to the ideals of the US military, which simply cannot incorporate disparate and opposing ideological forces within its body without being weakened and destroyed as surely as the Wehrmacht. The US military must require and enforce adherence to its stated ideals, its chain of command and its hierarchy if it is to remain an effective, unified fighting force.

If the US military continues to seek to incorporate the competing ideals of political correctness and multi-culturalism within its ranks, it is inviting suicide of the armed forces by treasonous bloodletting from within.

As the weakening of the Wehrmacht by ideology demonstrates, no military divided against itself can stand. If the US military does not wish to suffer a fate similar to armies which crumbled within, it must stand up for its traditions and ideals.

It must fight for its life.

--Fay Voshell

Ms. Voshell is a free lance writer living in Wilmington, DE. She holds an M.Div. From Princeton Theological Seminary, where she was awarded the Charles Hodge Prize for excellence in systematic theology. She is also one of the Delaware GOP's "Winning Women, Class of 2008.

(I would like to acknowledge my debt to authors too numerous to mention. But I am particularly grateful to Peter Hass, whose Morality after Auschwitz provided much clarification concerning the dual ethic driving the Nazi forces in their Russian campaign.)

Revolution

2010-02-12T06:24:00.000-08:00

In an irony unappreciated and probably unforeseen, Europe finds itself on the cusp of revolution as faith in its governments and financial institutions erodes. Bureaucratic officaldom, with its panoply of strangulating regulations, suffocation of entreprenuerial ambitions and onerous taxation has at last revealed the utter barreness of socialist philosophy and practice of the last century.

Europes' governments are ossified--dead skeletons devoid of the flesh which once enabled their animation. Socialism, once a chief driving force behind governmental change, has, once firmly established, killed Europe. The continent which fed the religious, philosophical and political thought that was to revolutionize the West, including the United States, now finds itself paralyzed and on the verge of societal breakdown.

Looking at the situation today, it is hard to recall that Europe had a long history of revolutions that were fought in order that more just and equal societies be formed; societies in which the governments paid heed to the people they ruled. When the governments failed to take notice of the governed, revolutions followed--uprisings of the people like the Revolution of 1848.

While we may be more familiar with the French Revolution of 1789, in which the ancien regime was repudiated by a enraged and disenfranchised populace, the Revolution of 1848 has an eerie resemblance to the current situation in Europe. It also holds lessons for the contemporary political scene in our own United States.

One observer of the political scene of 1848 was the great Alexis de Toqueville, who wrote he believed the major cause of the revolution of '48 was the hostility the working class felt toward the ruling bourgeoisie, who were seen as remote, uncaring and privileged as the aristocracy of France before 1789.

Though a constitutional monarchy had been put in place after the Napoleonic era, the class of people who replaced the old aristocracy were just as unconcerned as the ancien regime was concerning the fate of the people it represented. The people were not heard because they could not participate in political life. They were completely excluded. Once again, it was as if the people did not exist.

Tocqueville realized the government could not retain its legitimacy if society at large was not included in the government, for the public would see their rulers as "incapable and unworthy to rule them." He concluded, "Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror."

The result? Because the public saw no peaceful way to make their voice heard or to change things, revolution followed.

Today in Europe, 1848 is about to be revisited, and dress rehearsals for revolution have already begun.

But perhaps even more importantly, conditions in our own country resemble those which presaged the European Revolution of 1848 and what in the future may be termed the European Revolution of 2010.

For our country, too, is presently governed by a dynastic, aristocratic government ruled by those who exclude by attitude, policy, directives and commands the very people they are supposed to represent.

Our government is no longer a republic. It is dynastic in character and behavior. The elevation of a ruling executive branch has been accompanied by mastasticizing cancers revealing themselves in endless, deadly and suffocating permutations such as countless agencies, departments, czars, executive orders, and special interest groups.

Our government has become the equivalent of a monstrous and bloated aristocracy.

Term limits have no particular meaning as career politicians are re-elected time and again, thanks to gerrymandering, pandering to special interest groups which pour in monies for re-election, and pork barrel projects which keep their various constitutencies placated.

Corruption is rampant as government officals help themselves to largess while the public, present and future, groans under excessive taxation which destroys personal initiative and dooms future generations to inherited burdens which vitiate the life of the country. Meanwhile, as our legislators contemplate legislation that garners yet more power over the public, they vote themselves privileges only an aristocratic few could dream of. To cite just two: Luxurious pensions guaranteeing full salaries until death and cadillac medical plans stand in stark contrast to the meager and rapidly disappearing social security and universal (and minimal) health care doled out to the unwashed masses.

Meanwhile, the president and congress agree to ever expanding debt to finance an ever expanding bureaucracy which parasitically feeds off the productivity of the very people it taxes, exploits and ignores.

As if the above were not outrageous enough, when the people petition and write letters, they are ignored.

When the people ask questions and get angry at evasiveness and downright refusal to answer, they are characterized as unruly, ignorant mobs.

When the people peacefully march on Washington by the hundreds of thousands, they are maliciously slandered.

When the people protest against unpopular legislation, they are ignored as a small elite decides in closed chambers what is best for the people.

In sum, the situation in the United States today is very like that of Europe before the Revolution of 1848. Our elected rulers are no longer representing the society they govern.

The United States has become what Tocqueville described: It is a society cut in two.

The result is that new conservative movements and organizations are sprining up all over the United States. The people want a government that hears and responds to them.

As in Europe as well as in the United States, a revolution is brewing. A shaking of national foundations is already happening.

Thus far, the peoples of Europe and America are seeking peaceful change through the ballot box and reformation of political parties.

But if history proves anything, it is this: If governments continue to be deaf, continue to refuse to respond, continue to remain brittle skeletons, it can be predictably be said that more violent eruptions of the public disaffection will transpire.

Let us hope and pray our leaders and those of Europe do not wait to act until blood is in the streets.

Part II: The Resistance

The Dividing Line: Part I

2010-02-10T06:46:00.000-08:00

One of the most famous incidents in the life of Jesus Christ is found in the chronicle compiled by his disciple and friend Matthew.

Some Pharisees, accompanied by Herodians, conspired together--as they often did--to trap Jesus, seeking to put him by his own words in an untenable position with the people and the Roman government.

The Pharisees, it should be mentioned, were fiery nationalists who were adamantly opposed to Roman hegemony and who, though quiescent but seething under Roman rule during Jesus' day, had in past times fought wars against Hellenization and the influence of Rome. The Herodians, as their name indicates, supported the reigning house of Herod and their role in ruling for Rome.

Both parties saw Jesus as an enemy to their authority and wanted to discredit him in the eyes of the people, who were attracted to Jesus' message and healing powers, and who were sick of Herod and the Pharisees, both of whom burdened the populace with myriad rules and regulations as well as with onerous taxes.

The co-conspirators came up with a question they thought would be a perfect trap, one that would get rid of Jesus influence one way or another: "Tell us, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"

If Jesus said, "No, don't pay your taxes," the Herodians would report him to the Roman authorites and he would be crucified for treason. If he said, "Yes, pay your taxes," the nationalist Pharisees would denounce him as a traitor to the Jewish nation.

Matthew goes on to relate, "But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them,"Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

"Caesar's," they replied.

Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's"

Matthew relates the "When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away."

The portrait on the denarius, one of the most common coins of that day, was that of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus, who like his predecessor Caesar Augustus, claimed to be a god. Tiberius' divine person represented the entirety of the Roman government. The coin and the taxes paid with it were a statement of absolute governmental authority over all of life.

As the story is often interpreted, Jesus was simply making a statement about citizens' obligation to pay taxes.

But there is a much deeper interpretation of the story, for the distinction Jesus made between what is owed the government and what is owed God strikes at the very heart of the absolutism represented by Tiberius and Rome as well as at the heart of any and every absolutist state, ancient or modern. To put it succinctly, Jesus put the Kingdom of God and the individual Christian conscience above earthly authority even as he gave earthly government legitimacy while limiting its authority.

It is difficult for us to apprehend the magnificence and profoundity of Jesus' words, but Lord Acton of Great Britain summarized the impact of Jesus' words in his great lecture The History of Freedom in Antiquity. He wrote:

"...when Christ said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of Freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased to be an aspiration of patient reasoners, and was made the perpetual charge and care of the most energetic institution and the most universal association in the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new authority, gave to Liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy or in the constitution of Greece or Rome, before the knowledge of the Truth that makes us free."

As Lord Acton noted in his essay, never before in human history were there effectual means to limit governmental authority. Never before had the bounds of government been restrained or even defined except as rulers defined the bounds.

Even today, with many of the foundations of Western civilization weakened; even with the morally odious regimes of the twentieth century still fresh in our minds, it is difficult for us in the free countries of the West to comprehend the brutality and savagery of the absolutism of ancient Roman rulers. The metallic profile of Tiberius on the coin given Jesus didn't speak aloud of the emperor's horrible cruelties and odious, corrupt perversions. He had no moral restraints, as his contemporary chroniclers Suetonius and Tacitus noted. What transpired on the island of Capri, Tiberius' pleasure ground, still has the capacity to shock even the most jaded among us. But such are the prerogatives of a ruler who knows neither the restraint of conscience or the restraint of others.

Jesus, by the example of his life and work and by his response to both political and religious absolutism, and the reign of absolute and arbitrary prerogative of ruler "gods", put in place the chief restraint on governments and their rulers: the "New Law", a spiritual verity asserting the primacy of loyalty to individual conscience molded to faith in God. In each human heart, there is an inviolate space which earthly government may not control; a pristine tract of heart on which Government dare not trample without crushing the human longing for true freedom.

For the person who answers ultimately to his conscience before God alone, there is a dividing line no government or ruler can pass. Everything within such a person shouts, "You shall not pass!"

Where that dividing line lies, and who must be resisted if it is violated, free men and free women must decide in each and every age since Christ defined that line.

For there will always be those who out of desire for power and control; out of evil antagonism toward the good and beautiful; out of rage against those who will not at a command bend the knee, will seek to trangress, and even to eradicate that thin, but strong dividing line.

Let us hope and pray there also will always be strong men and women who will rise up to hold the line.

A Good American: John Omar Stolzfus

2010-02-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

It's a good thing my practical sister was with me when my car broke down on Rt. 896 somewhere near Oxford, as she was the one with the working cell phone. The rattling of the engine had turned to a groaning whine, and smoke was pouring out of the hood, so even I knew something was wrong. I pulled over to the side of the road.

Nina and I got out of the car and I called AAA, and a nice guy on the line told me a tow truck would come to rescue us in about a half hour.

A short time after I pulled over, a kind young man stopped and asked if we needed help. I told him AAA was on the way and thanked him. He drove off and returned shortly with an orange road cone, placing it behind the car.

"You know," he said with concern, "this road is really busy and you aren't quite far enough off the road, so this will help alert the cars coming by."

He waved goodbye and departed.

"My goodness, " I said to Nina with surprise written on my face, "what a nice thing to do."

I thought, why, in Philadelphia I could have been road kill and three thousand drivers would have rocketed by without so much as a glance.

"Yes, it was," said Nina. A few moments passed. "I need to use the bathroom, and I'm really getting cold!"

"So do I," I responded. "I wish there were someone at home in that house behind us so we could use the bathroom and get warm. But I don't see any lights on."

We both turned to watch for the promised tow truck, stamping our feet and rubbing our gloved hands together to keep warm. Suddenly we heard a voice behind us.

"Why don't you ladies come inside the house to get warm?"

We turned to see a kindly, smiling face and then looked at each other with astonishment and relief.

"'OK, " we chorused, rubbing our frozen hands together. "How nice of you."

The kindly face smiled again. "This way," he said. "I have a fire going in our new fireplace. It will warm you up in no time."

With only a slight hesitation in the back of our minds, a hesitation born of long years of city suspicions, we went in and sat by the fire and chatted. The nice man's name was John Omar Stolzfus. He had an American farmer's story to tell. He and his family had owned and farmed the land his house was sitting on for generations. Although he himself did not toil on the land, he sold seed and fertilizer.

"Farming is a good business to be in," he said. "It's feast or famine sometimes, but it's good to rely on sunshine and rain, good to see crops grow, to feed people."

He told us about his family. His two sons had chosen other careers. One was a pilot and the other was into computer programming. But his two nephews had continued the work on the farm. I could see he was glad the family tradition was being maintained.

I could see he was proud of his thick stone walled house, built by strong hands long ago. The worn, comfortable furniture also told me the wealth and pride of this family was in the land. They loved and cherished the land.

But most of all, I could see this kindly, gentle Mennonite was a good man. A good American. A God fearing American.

I thought to myself with inner rage and sorrow about the trashing our country's elite had given this man and others like him, characterizing them as clinging to "religion and guns," calling them "racist." I thought of the constant sneers directed toward faith, patriotism, loyalty to his wife and children. I thought of the arrogance and hubris of those who would tear down every vestige of faith if they could.

The tears came to my eyes.

Later, safely ensconced in Nina's car, which her husband Jim had driven out to pick us up, I said to them, "You know, I am so filled with anger at the likes of our president and his administration for the way they have spoken of people like John Stoltzfus. John Stoltzfus and others like him are the salt of the earth. They are good Americans."

I remembered when much more of the country was filled with people like John Stoltzfus. I guess it's called "flyover country" now by the elite of the East and West. But some of my sharpest memories come from flyover country.

I remembered when I was in Hull, Iowa. I lost my purse. I had everything in it. I thought I'd never see it again, but the next day it was returned to me by a big, tall guy wearing cowboy boots and hat.

"I heard you are Bill's sister-in-law visiting from out East, so I knew where you were and I wanted to return this to you." Of course, everything was still in it, down to the last penny.

I remembered when we walked down town, men tipped their hats and the women all smiled and said, "Hi, how you doing?"

I remembered the stronget expletive I heard was "Golly."

I remembered the biggest scandal in Hull centered around a beer can thrown in the middle of Main Street.

But most of all, I remembered Hull was filled with good, kindly country and small town people like John Stolzfus; people who cared about other people and took to heart the parable of the good Samaritan; people of deep faith; and, yes, people who sometimes carried guns and hunted.

And like John Stolzfus, when they did a kind deed, they expected no thanks, no money, no further thought about it.

They were just good Americans.

Lessons from King Solomon for America

2010-02-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

King Solomon's wisdom was legendary; so legendary that he attracted a visit from the Queen of Sheba, who had heard about his incredible wealth, fame and knowledge. To this day, Ethiopians claim their royal line descends from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. There remains a lot of curiosity concerning Solomon and Sheba and their heir.

There has been considerably less curiosity about Solomon's method of governance and the rebellion which took place shortly after he died.

But Solomon's reign and that after him hold lessons for us today which are just as fascinating and perhpas consderably more important than the story of him and the Queen of Sheba.

The truth of the matter is that Solomon's profligacy, his tax and spend policies, and his dictatorial realignment of government led Israel into bankruptcy and to the eventual split of the kingdom.

Solomon, who like most Mesopotamian rulers, had a deep love of luxury and a yen for huge building projects which drained the treasury and squandered his country's wealth. His massive building program and out of control expenditures, both of which involved a symbolic and real extension of governmental control over the Israeli people, led to the abuse of the Israel citizenry and a complete reconstruction of the way things had formerly been governed.

In order to construct his vast building projects, Solomon resorted to conscripting forced labor. Som 150,000 conscripts worked on his projects. In order to procure the rarities he deemed necessary for his splendid temples and mansions, he went into debt to such countries as Phoencia. In order to pay his debts to the king of Phoenecia, he sent 30,000 Hebrews slave laborers into that country to pay off what Israel owed. Human capital was sold to build lavish palaces for himself and his vast retinue of courtiers and concubines. In some ways, he was the Hebrew equivalent of Louis XIV.

In order to pay for the cedars of Lebanon which were used for the beams of Solomon's palaces, he contracted to pay King Hiram 125,000 bushels of wheat and 1,200,000 gallons of oil per annum. When the tax he extracted from Israel's farmers proved too much for them to pay, he sold off some of Israels's real estate to foreign powers. Some 20 Israeli towns were given over to foreign dominion.

Worse, the tribal league which had served as Israel's chief means of governance was abolished. In its place twelve administrative districts were established. A centralized governmental bureaucracy replaced local governance.

Most Israelites did not complain too much about Solomon's rule, for he established a military machine and alliances which kept Israel at peace during his reign.

But when Solomon died, things fell apart, beginning with a fatal mistake by Solomon's heir Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a relatively young man who surrounded himself with other young blades who were impetuous and as full of themselves as Rehoboam. Raised in incredibly wealthy and isolated cirlces, they wound up listening to and engaging with only with one another.

Enter Jeroboam, Rehoboam's brother. Jeroboam had led a rebellion against his father Solomon and had fled to Egypt in order to escape his father's wrath. Once Solomon was dead, Jeroboam led a delgation of many thousands to Rehoboam's coronation celebration. They said to him: "Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you." (I Kings 12)

Rehoboam told his brother he'd think about it for three days, at the end of which Jeroboam was to return for an answer. Then Rehoboam conulted with Solomon's elder advisors, thoroughly seasoned statesmen, asking, "How would you advise me to answer these people?"

The elder statemen replied, "If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants."

But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him. He asked them, "What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, 'Lighten the yoke your father put on us'?"

The young men who had grown up with him replied, "Tell these people who have said to you, 'Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter'--tell them, My little finger is thicker than my father's waist. My father laid a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.' "

King Rehoboam followed his friends' advice, telling it to the people word for word. The results were predictable.

When all Israel saw that King Rehoboam refused to listen to them, they answered the king:

"What share do we have with David, what part in Jesse's son? To your tents, O Israel! Look after your own house, O David.!"

"These people" shook the dust off their sandals, rejected Rehoboam's "leadership," and went home.

And when Rehoboam's lackey Adoniram, who was in charge of forced labor, went out to collect his slaves, the enraged Israelites stoned him to death and then went after Rehoboam, who leapt into his chariot and raced to the safety of Jerusalem. Israel, now in a state of total civil rebellion, made Jeroboam king; but he would be a king over a hopelessly divided and diminished nation which would gradually be absorbed by foreign empires.

The reader can deduce for him or herself the implications of the story of Solomon and his heirs for our present national predicament, but a few come to mind:

* National debt diminishes national power, putting a given nation in hock to other nations.

*The onerous, unpayable tax burdens lead to forced labor of citizens and the confiscation of their wealth and productivity.

*The nearly monarchical power of the present executive branch--in fact, it could be called a monarachy--and the demolition of local governing entities such as the states results in dictatorial behavior.

*Citizens under a monarchical executive branch are forced to pay for lavish expenditures of courtiers and government lackeys.

Other lessons to be noted:

*The bad policies of one administration were contined by the next, despite the realtively polite protest of the people.

*The new administration ("king") refused to listen to the people. In fact, the people are called "these people" as if they are not fellow citizens. They are despised and looked own on as interlopers.

*"These people" were initially perfectly willing to work with the powers that be as long as those powers were fair, but the reigning powers rejected them, determined to rule over them rather than to serve them.

* The elders' advice was completely ignored, regarded as a mere formality--much like the wisdom of American elders who wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are ignored in favor of "new and progressive" ideas.

A final thought: The history of the Hebrews as recorded in the Old Testament continues to have immense value and deep wisdom for today's world, including wisdom on how to govern.

If only we would listen.

Spreading the Guilt Around: National Debt III

2010-01-31T07:59:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, my second grade teacher had a way of punishing trangressions that even to this day sticks in my craw. If someone in the class acted up, we all had to stay after school and put our heads down on the desk for fifteen minutes. Looking back, I've guessed the object of group punishment was to put pressure on the offending party so he wouldn't act up again. The "good" kids were supposed to convince the "bad" kid to get in line.

Of course, it didn't work. One reason it didn't work was because no one was going to confront the class cutup because he was usually the class bully. Who wanted to get beat up in some dark corner during recess?

But the main reason group punishment didn't work was that it merely created deep resentment toward the teacher. All of us knew she was the one who was supposed to keep order by doling out punishment to the guilty one. Every kid, head down on the desk, simmered with resentment at the injustice of being punished for someone else's misdemeanor. Why should all of us suffer for the sin of one person?

In Parts I and II concerning the national debt, the issue of collective and trangenerational obligations were discussed, with the emphasis on the injustice of enslaving our own and future generations with debt unpayable. It is, as Thomas Jefferson noted time and again, unfair to burden generations no even yet living with another generation's debt.

But as the illustration from my third grade class illustrates, there's even more to the bascially unjust theory and practice of collective guilt. Were the theory confined to a third grade class room, perhaps the damage would not be irreparable.

But the truth of the matter is that within American society, assuming society as a whole is guilty because of the transgression of others is now a staple of the legislative, judicial and executive branch. That is because the leftist view of justice now prevails; namely, that group guilt is the cause of injustice; that society as a whole is responsible for the behavior of each member of society; that we Americans are all responsible for everybody's behavior and welfare. The view is illustrated by such slogans as:

"If there's even one child in America who is hungry, we are guilty as a society."

"As long as a single person is on death row, we in society have failed him."

"As long as one homeless person is on the streets, no one who has a bed should rest until the homeless are housed and fed."

The above is not to say that charity and compassion should not voluntarily be extended to individuals who are in need of aid. What is being said is that the idea that if there is a problem within society, we are collectively responsible and should be punished for our collective failures is unjust. To put it another way, the idea that we should all stay after school and keep our heads down in remorse and repentance for behavior we did not commit; that we, too, are automatically guilty because of someone else's transgressions is just plain wrong. There are a number of terms for group guilt, one of which is "guilt by association;" but no matter what one terms it, the fact remains that group guilt is unjust. [And as pointed out in Part I and II, group guilt overturns a chief principle of Western jurisprudence; namely, that the individual is responsible for his own transgressions, including his own debt.]

But let's take this overturning of individual responsibility and the establishment of group guilt in the place of individual responsibility for one's actions a step further.

Collective guilt vitiates another principle of Western justice; namely the Rule of Law.

Rule of Law Explained

Americans love sports, and one reason they love sports is that the Rule of Law, which should pertain to society as a macrocosm, is followed in sports in microcosm. Any given sport has set rules for the game. Within the rules, players are free to strategize and outhink and outplay the other team. Referees are appointed to make sure the rules are followed and penalties are exacted for transgressions. Everyone knows what fair play is, and the rules are rarely changed. If someone trashes the rules, he/she is the one who is benched, not the whole team.

Ideally, the Rule of Law which applies to team sports should also extend to society at large. There should be a set of minimal rules for the operation of society. Everyone should know what the rules are and should also know what penalites are exacted if the rules are broken.

The concept of the Rule of Law is particularly pertinent to the discussion on national debt and the taxes necessary to pay the debt off. Citizen should know just what the debt is, what their share of taxes will be to pay off the debt within their lifetime; and they should also know the consequences of not paying those taxes. Everything should be known in order that a just solution prevail.

Suspension of Rule of Law

But exorbitant and runaway national debt shatters the concept and practice of the Rule of Law, for debt establishes universal, collective guilt. Because everybody owes, everybody is automatically guilty. All are benched; all have their heads on the desk.

Because all are guilty, no one knows who will be punished next. A given citizen doesn't know what the rules are concerning an unpayable debt and thus doesn't know what constantly changing schemes, regulations and measures the government will take to collect the monies necessary to collect the debt. Rules will be arbitrarily made up as the government sees fit. Society is collectively in debt and collectively guilty; each citizen mortgaged to its own government. The inevitable result is suspension of the Rule of Law and the establishment of arbitrary law and persecution of those who "owe." That persecution usually begins with excessive and arbitrary taxation.

In brief, if justice concerning debt is not established for and within the present generation, if the Rule of Law does not extend to the living as well as to future generations, then arbitrary and dictatorrial measures against a collectively guilty populace will inevitably be enacted. Government will make up the rules as it goes along; its arbitrariness will put it at war with its own citizens, particularly those perceived to be "wealthy."

Americans have been warned about and fought against the dangers of the dictatorial and arbitrary suspension of the Rule of Law, especially as it concerns national debt. The issue has arisen time and again within our Republic. It is good to heed once again the wise words of Thomas Jefferson, who while recognizing the need for public credit, warned strongly against the two chief dangers of national debt outlined in Parts I, II and III.

He wrote:

I sincerely believe...that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

--Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816

[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the 'bellum omium in omnia [war against all], which some pholosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816

Since future generations cannot rise up and voice their objections to the oppression and arbitrariness of our government, we must be their voice against the albatross of national debt our current government is fastening around our and their necks.

Add to that duty to defend future generations the responsibility to refuse to accuse any class or sub-population as being collectively guilty, and Americans may be on their way to governmental reform in which the Rule of Law applies to all without exception.

The Abandoned Road

2010-01-29T10:54:00.000-08:00

As I've been thinking over Part III of my series on the national debt and it implications, I've been re-reading F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, written toward the end of World War II. The man's genius is amazing; and his trenchant insights hold as much wisdom for our contemporary scene as they did in 1944-45.

In the chapter entitled "The Abandoned Road," he warns Europeans of slowly accepting the precepts of socialism which many European intellectuals embraced despite the horrible outcome of socialist precepts. Some still optimistically embraced socialist principles despite the fact that socialism requres force, force which led to horrors of Nazism and Stalinism. The intellectuals to whom Hayek was writing still clung to the belief that in their own countries, matters would turn out differently.

He wrote:

"The crucial point of which our people are still so little aware is...not merely the magnitude of the changes which have taken place during the last generation, but the fact that they mean a complete change in the direction of the evolution of our ideas and social order. For at least twenty-five years before the specter of totalitarianism became a real threat, we had progressively been moving away fromt he basic ideas on which Western Civilization has been built...We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past. Although we had been warned by some the the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism. And now that we have seen a new form of slavery arise before our eyes, we have so completely forgotten the warning that it scarcely occurs to us that the two things might be connected.

How sharp a break not only with the recent past but wth the whole evolution of Western civilization the modern trend toward socialism means becomes clear if we consider it not merely against the backgroun of the nineteentth century but in a long historical perspective. We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth and eighteenth-century liberalism, but basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively relinquished.

Hayek's lament could well be our own as "progressive" thinking has ignored or attacked the foundations of Christianity and conservative political thought in our own country, with the deleterious effects so clearly observable over the last century.

One of the most damaging concepts of progressivism is the idea of societal (communal) rather than individual guilt. I hope to elaborate on the effects of such an idea as regards the Rule of Law, and national indebtedness. (Hayek elaborates on this concept, and I will be borrowing from him.)

Building a New Coalition: A Way Ahead for the GOP

2010-01-25T08:31:00.000-08:00

A friend and I were discussing the dividing line that occurs whenever Sarah Palin's name is mentioned or she appears on televsion: people either love or loathe her. Leftists see her as congenitally stupid.

We both agreed that thopugh she may not be an "intellectual,"--whatever that means-- she certainly is not stupid; so what explains the egregious hostility?

I told my friend it wouldn't matter if Sarah Palin were an Einstein, leftists would still loathe her because she is, among other things, deeply religious. Her core values are diametrically opposed to the left elite--indeed to some of the Republican elite. They hate her because of her faith.

It is a fact that many in political circles still buy into the enlightenment critcisms of faith; namely, that one who adheres to faith is superstitious and, well, so regrettably unenlightened; and, therefore, just not as smart as other, more educated people. Among such, if faith is tolerated, it is tolerated as purely personal and as having no bearing on the "real" world of politics. Politics and religion are seen as separate endeavors not to be mentioned in polite political circles.

As my friend noted, Palin's rise smashes such ideas, disrupting the very core of politcs as usual. She disturbed and continues to disturb the power grid of politics.

My friend and I went on to discuss the tendency for leadership of both parties to discriminate against people of faith. She noted that though such discrimination is forbidden in the work place as unconstitutional, it remains alive and well in political circles. Both Democrats and Republicans tend to have leaders who are most often led by a totally secular agenda, have found power within the secular paradigm and are loathe to give it up to or accommodate religious upstarts. If faith is noted, it most often is lip service.

[At this point, a disclaimer: The above is not to say there are not people of integrity and honor within GOP party leadership. If that were not true, I would have exited the GOP long ago. It is to say there is an underlying prejudice--a sort of vacuum, actually--against people of faith, especially people of faith who put their faith into practice in politics.]

But to put it bluntly, both parties tend to ignore or sideline--to their own peril--the 85% of Americans who derive their values from their religion, not from secularism. I suggest that as long as both parties conintue to embrace secularist ideals while jettisoning, sidelining or seducing religious people for poltical purposes, they do so unconstitutionally and to their own peril.

In the wake of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, some GOP leadership has felt encouraged to concentrate on building coalitions with "moderates" and independents, concentrating on the issues which Brown emphasized in his campaign: taxes, the health care plan and terrorism. While I certainly don't discourage outreach; once again, some in the GOP continue to think along the lines of a secular pragmatic politics which ignores or sidelines people of faith.

Brown managed to seize on populist issues which at least temporarily unified a diverse coalition which was dependent on the circumstances peculiar to Massachusetts. But none should be deluded into thinking such a coalition is permanent or a set template for future victories.

It is worth noting Brown had not one word of thanks for the Tea Partiers who helped elect him. Perhaps that is why more than one observer has cautioned against the GOP assuming that just because the Tea Partiers got behind the Scott Brown campaign, the partiers' enthusiasm can be co-opted by other campaigns supporting basically liberal candidates.

Tea Partiers and other conservative groups springing up all over the nation do not want a repeat of the times when the Republican establishment co-opted evangelical enthusiasm in the 1980's and 90's. Evangelicals soon found that issues important to them were ignored while the GOP leadership retained their grip on a party machinery terming itself "moderate" while dropping social and other evangelical values from their political agenda once victory was assured.

In sum, conservatives who are deeply motivated by religious convictions have felt ignored by, cynically used by and tehn dropped by the Republican Party, which they see as sidelining conservative candidates in favor of "moderates" who resemble liberal Democrats.

However, matters do not have to remain at such an impasse. The GOP has the opportunity to think about long term future strategy. It may well have an opportunity to form a new coalition. It may have the chance to get together people of faith and other conservatives by articulating and promoting core values consonant with those disaffected groups.

The GOP already has good leadership in the area of government transparency, growing the business middle class, growing jobs, belief in lowering the tax burdens on citizens, encouraging a climate of growth in industry, reforming our educational system and much else. None of those efforts has to be jettisoned. All are praiseworthy.

But to those excellent goals the GOP can articulate and support the right to life of the unborn. It can affirm the Western traditional definition of marriage without resorting to a persecutorial or prosecutorial attitude toward gays. It can grant increased tax relief to parents--and much more.

In sum, the party can put itself in the position of a chief reforming influence in society and can by so doing, gather together a broad coalition of likeminded people who will wrok to elect candidates who believe in core values and who will work to put those values into law.

For example, the issue of abortion is not just a moral question sitting out there in no man's land. It is not just a personal choice. Like the issue of slavery, it cuts into the moral and political fiber of our entire society. It is a political issue that needs to be addressed, not shelved.

While a worthy moral cause in it own right, it has deep political implications. Those implications can be translated into a political coalition that has the potential to split the Democratic party in two while uniting and gathering the energy of the new conservative movements springing up with the GOP.

About 55% of Americans believe that abortion is morally wrong. Many of those Americans are Roman Catholics and evangelicals, who together comprise about 55% of the population. Both the Catholic Church and evangelicals are adamantly against abortion even though most of the Catholic Church members are Democrats. The GOP, if it takes a strong position against abortion, would also be in the position of being able to woo Catholics away from their support of the Democratic Party, which adheres strongly to a pro-abortion position. The church also resonates with traditional definition of family and marriage. Further, Hispanics and blacks are also overwhelmingly pro life and pro school choice. They could be part of the new coalition.

How to put the coaltion together? First, reach the churches. I repeat, reach out to the churches. The GOP would find the goals it already pays primary attention to (outlined above) are readily suported by almost all conservative leaning congregations. Adding to those goals the social issues which also motivate and stir Tea Partiers and other conservative movements would allow rapproachment and make the GOP a united and strong force for a much needed peaceful, and moral revolution in our beloved country.

The Immorality of National Debt: Part II

2010-01-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

We’ve all read the stories: A family, children included, is wiped out by gunman whose vendetta is inclusive. His rage has grown so hot that punishing the man who "owes" him is not enough to assuage his wrath. The entire family must be wiped out. The innocent perish with the guilty.

Such a scenario is an intolerable, outrageous travesty of justice. Everything within us revolts against the targeting of innocents, for we believe only the guilty should be judged and punished.

Yet, as pointed out in Part I of this two part series, our national debt unjustly targets future generations by loading them with debts they did not authorize. None was permitted a voice. Even the voiceless unborn are burdened with debt as the sins of the fathers are passed down to the next generations.

For make no mistake, making debt trans-generational is one of the most disastrous and far- reaching mistakes our government can make. That is because such a policy violates the principle that each person is responsible as an individual before the law. It overturns a basic foundation of Western jurisprudence, which from time immemorial has stood for the Judeo-Christian principle that the innocent are not responsible for the errors, crimes and debts of preceding generations.

For hundreds of years, Westerners have believed that children are not to be condemned or held responsible for the errors of their parents. For instance, children are not required to pay off their parents’ debts. The IRS is not allowed to arrest family members because grandad hasn’t paid his income taxes in thirty years. In a similar manner, wives are not to be held responsible for the sins of their husbands. They are not thrown in jail if their husbands get drunk and wind up in jail on a DUI charge. And a third example: Parents are not to be punished for the wayward ways of an errant son or daughter. They are not sent to jail when their teenager commits murder.
In brief, our gargantuan national debt turns the entire Western system of jurisprudence on its head, calling into question the very foundations of our system of justice. After all, why should any person be punished for reckless assumption of debt if our own government has proved itself to be the most reckless debtor in the history of the nations?

The matter goes beyond mere bad example. It even goes beyond punishing the provident and encouraging the profligate. In fact, the government’s reckless and disastrous borrowing corrupts by example and policy public morality as concerns fiscal responsibility. In point of fact, the innocent are punished along with the guilty, for through taxation, all are paying back others’ debts. The entire populace is treated as if guilty.

Further, in order to fortify itself against changing its disastrous policies, the government extends its own immorality to the entire populace by creating policies which encourage individual indebtedness. This it has done in the form of bailouts of individuals and of institutional entities which have engaged in profligate behavior. Debt is garnered without painful consequences.

Our government has been working overtime to relieve its citizens of the consequences of irresponsible behavior. It has seduced the people into following its own example of reckless borrowing by offering money to relieve credit card debt, reduction of mortgage payments, and bailouts of institutions which have engaged in reckless financial behavior, thus rewarding the profligate while punishing the prudent. In so doing, the government encourages the people to imitate in microcosm what it does on the macro scale. The psychological effect is to diffuse and vitiate any protest by the people. Governmental policies achieve the moral seduction and corruption of the very people it professes to be "helping."

In other words, our government is enabling and abetting a debtor’s mentality similar to its own in an effort to deflect criticism and to make the public dependent on government "aid."

To put it another way, the seduction and corruption of the populace, the effort to make people accept the debtors’ path as legitimate, is very similar to that of an alcoholic who gives his baby beer in a bottle to suckle so that by the time the child himself is a teen, he, too, is an alcoholic. The child will not reproach by example or word the father who addicted him, for from infancy on the child has now become dependent and an addict himself.

Our government is that bad parent. It encourages the people to accept and to imitate its bad behavior.

Meanwhile, the size of the debt and the fact it exceeds any particular generation’s ability to pay it off means that within a short span of time, the profligacy of our government will seem normal. Massive indebtedness will be an accepted means of governing; a normal function of government. Further, all the while the government is encouraging by its example and policies its own indebtedness and the indebtedness and the dependency of its people, it will continue to stoke the fires of class warfare in order to distract them from the real villain; namely, the government itself.

Next article coming up:
PART III: Spreading the Guilt Around.

Christians and the World, Part III: The Mind of Christ and the Peaceable Kingdom

2010-01-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

For the Christian, the mind of Christ is inextricably linked with on-going creation and with acts of mind and will that affect the world order continuously and powerfully, calling all that is to an order of justice and righteousness. The divine mind of Christ, creator of the cosmos, thinks continually, not futile musings, but powerful, creative actualization of events cosmic and earthly.

As Christ thinks, so things are. His thought is no mere abstraction, but thought, will and creation are interwoven into one powerful entity known as the Trinity.

Christians are told by the apostle Paul that they have the mind of Christ; that is, as Thomas a Kempis points out, they are to be an imitation of Christ; an expression of the divine image as exhibited and actualized in the person of Christ Jesus.

It follows that each believer is not a being who is divided into the spiritual and the material; is not a being who is divided between the earthly (body) and the divine (spirit/soul). Division of the material and the spiritual has more to do with neo-Platonism and gnosticism than it does with Christian belief.

Each believer is called to be and is in fact a unity who in mind, body and spirit participates in Christ’s continual effectuation of justice and righteousness, both within him/her self and within the society in which he/she lives. Any split of the Christian’s being; any compartmentalization, any division into the material and the spiritual is a distortion of our reflection of the perfect unity of the Trinity--God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Mind of Christ effectuates and upholds a moral order, an order which is written into the very cosmos. Christians seek through righteous and just actions to effectuate the moral order of the cosmos within human society. The Kingdom of God is the template for earthly societies. Christians seek to bring the Kingdom of Heaven down to earth. That is the reasons Christians should refuse to heed the siren call to separate themselves from the society in which they are placed. Preaching separatism is not only faulty theology. Separatism spells disaster for Christians and the society in which they live.

Those Christians who are nervous about involvement with a world afflicted by evil, or those non-Christians who object to the idea of Christians’ views on the Kingdom of Heaven might want to know what the Christian’s vision of the Heavenly Kingdom brought down to earth might look like. Perhaps it looks like the "Peaceable Kingdom" painted by Edward Hicks, whose enchanting oil paintings–he painted over one hundred versions--depict with charming and endearing simplicity the vision of the great Hebrew prophet Isaiah. (For a visual of Hicks 1834 version of the "Peaceable kingdom, go to the following link and enlarge the picture.)
http://www.squidoo.com/the-peaceable-kingdom#module12942168

To the left of the painting, Hicks, a Quaker, depicts William Penn negotiating a treaty with native Americans in accordance with the larger vision depicted in the center and right of the painting. Peace is achieved among humans. Although the lion and the leopard appear startled or at least puzzled to be in the company of animals they usually would eat for breakfast; among them, too, all is peace. A little child, the symbol of innocence, is leading, just as Isaiah wrote:

"The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the
yearling together;
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like an ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand
into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea."

There is scarcely a person who loves peace who would not wish the earthly order to resemble such a tranquil scene. One would even venture to say those who would wish to destroy societies which bear even a faint resemblance to the "Peaceable Kingdom" are the definition of evil.

The vision of Isaiah has inspired leaders of many nations, among them Martin Luther King, Jr., whose "I Have a Dream" speech echoes the longing for a world order in which all races live at peace with one another. His vision was a profoundly Christian vision. The list of those who share the vision is long.

But what is often left unnoticed is that Isaiah 11 indicates the divine messenger of God, whom Christians associate with Jesus Christ, brings the "Peaceable Kingdom" into reality by fighting for it. The "Suffering Servant" with whom Christians identify and whom they imitate does not achieve righteousness and justice without fighting the evil powers which mitigate against the establishment of the "Peaceable Kingdom."

Isaiah writes the servant is empowered by the Spirit of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel and power that comes from a humble acknowledgment of his dependency on and love for God. The servant of God believes in a divine, perfectly moral order which transcends and informs his actions. He adheres to the eternal verities of justice and righteousness and is willing to fight for them on behalf of the oppressed, the needy and poor.

As Isaiah writes:

"He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he ill judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist."

In other words, the Peaceable Kingdom must be fought for, as there are forces which seek to keep it from transpiring; forces which would trample the poor and needy underfoot.

While there are many Christians who decry the use of any force to achieve peace, believing fighting for peace is an oxymoron, such must come to terms with the God of the scripture, whose church militant and whose chief commander, Jesus Christ, are portrayed time and again as warriors against evil. While Christians are cautioned that their primary weapons are not like those of the world; nonetheless, they are called to confront and combat evil wherever it rears its ugly head. The Christian is called to combat oppression of the poor and needy, the helpless and the despised of the earth.

The concept of the holy warrior has been much abused in the past and continues to dismay those committed to pacifism. It is entirely true that the militancy of the church has in the past been misdirected and sometimes disastrous. But by and large, the church has repented of its errors.

In fact, the current swing of the pendulum toward isolation and total pacifism has been equally if not more disastrous, for the retreat of the church into itself has resulted in a distancing from the world and its problems. The Christian subculture has wound up ministering to itself and to certain approved ministries, which while they may be completely worthy, are often too narrowly defined.

The result is that whole sections of the "world" have been cordoned off, including the political order. Governmental structures have often been considered regarded as unworthy of inclusion in the fight to extend the "Peaceable Kingdom" as they are seen as "of the world" and therefore inherently evil.

But that is not how Isaiah and the other great prophets saw matters. For them, the "Peaceable Kingdom covered the entire earth, infiltrating and transforming all societal structures. That is why the prophet Amos, who was an inspiration to Martin Luther King, excoriated the people of Israel, citing their contempt for justice and righteousness in governance, their trampling underfoot the oppressed, even selling them into slavery; the corruption of their courts, riddled with bribery, deceit and with lawyers’ tricky and devious stratagems. That is why Amos called on the people to restore justice and righteousness to their entire society, declaring, "Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a mighty stream."

It is up to every Christian to find just where his or her primary battle for justice and righteousness might be. Only one’s relationship to God can determine what God calls one to do to effectuate in some way the "Peaceable Kingdom." But each and every Christian must beware of exempting any part of the world order from the fight for and establishment of the domain of the "Peaceable Kingdom."

The battle to actualize Isaiah’s vision "Peaceable Kingdom" has been engaged from time immemorial. It remains for Christians to heed the call to participate in it.

Americans Are Indentured Servants: The Immorality and Consequences of National Debt

2010-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

From the very beginning of our country’s journey, officially begun in 1776, there’s something in the American spirit that has been revolted by slavery; and by all involuntary servitude, no matter what name it goes by; no matter what form it takes. Americans treasure their independence. It’s why they broke away from Britain.

At the time of the Revolutionary War, Americans, most of whom considered themselves good British subjects, revolted against being taxed without being represented in the British parliament. They saw correctly that if taxed without their consent for the expenses of the British Empire, their freedom was jeopardized; that they were instantly relegated to an inferior position and an inferior class–that of mere colonists, not British citizens. They saw the British empire had an agenda entirely apart from the people of the colonies; to whom the rulers of Britain were almost entirely indifferent except as the colonists met their demands and needs. Britain saw the colonists in purely exploitative terms, as serfs who worked to supply the coffers of an empire bent on expansion. Americans were seen as hewers of wood and water bearers; suppliers of raw materials--and of tax monies.

But typically, Americans did not see themselves as serfs who worked for the master of Great Britain. They saw themselves as citizens who were equal to, shared the privileges of those who resided within Great Britain itself. So they were infuriated. It wasn’t the size of the tax that mattered; it was the precedent, which once established, made the entire population of the colonies indentured servants, bound to pay off British debts they had no part in engendering and did not approve of.

It’s well to remember Americans of the time were intimately familiar with indentured servitude. While it was an established practice, free citizens wanted no part of it, for the abuses were known first hand. An indentured servant was merely a debt bondage worker, a laborer under contract of an employer. For three to seven years, the person who signed off his/her freedom had to work in exchange for their transportation, food, drink, clothing, and a roof over their heads–and that was the ideal situation.

We know the results of the British Empires attempts to tax their colonies without their consent: a whole people refused to become indentured servants, rose up and fought for the right to be free, to form a government which was to serve the people-- not the other way around. Americans decided against servitude in any form. And they have done so again and again.
Since the Revolution, the American revulsion toward servitude has manifest itself in may forms. Indentured servitude itself was eventually was banned as a practice banned by the US as inimical to freedom. As was slavery. As is human trafficking.

Time and again Americans have risen to free those whom the rapacious and cruel–always present in every culture--would enslave. To their credit, they have done so at considerable sacrifice of blood, sweat and tears. When Americans have awakened to the oppression of minorities in their midst–admittedly often far too slowly--they have risen to free the oppressed among them. The American Civil War, fought to save the union as well as to free slaves, cost the loss of 10% of our country’s population. The great civil rights movement of the 1960's moved mountains.

We Americans have even fought for others’ freedoms. WWII, as close to a perfectly righteous war as wars ever get, was fought in order that the world not fall into slavery imagined by the Aryan fanatics who saw the rest of the world as inferior, worthy only of servitude.

But in a vicious turn of fate, particularly over the two years of the Bush and Obama administrations, the American people and at least two successive generations have now themselves become indentured servants, slaves to the very government they elected to maintain the principles of the founding fathers of this great nation. Americans now work for the masters they have put in office.

How has this happened? A congress deaf to the voices of the very people who elected its representatives has enslaved generations of Americans to a unpayable debt. Without their even knowing it Americans very homes have become a debtor’s prison. Their freedom is an illusion. They are sold into indentured servitude. But their servitude does not end in two or three or seven years. Their servitude, just by order of the magnitude of the debt, is permanent.

Think about it. Up until a very short time ago, the average worker worked for the governments, federal and state, an average of four months of the year--January through May to pay the government. Thus he or she has been an indentured servant of the government for almost half of each year. But even that burden seems a halcyon scenario as the debt accumulated during the last part of the Bush administration and now by the Obama administration makes all taxes and debt that came before seem minuscule.

As of this July 6, 2009, the national debt was $11,503,557,424,736.83. The US population, at most recent count, is 306, 498, 146. If the debt is divided up among the population, each and every person in the US owes $37,532.23. This means a family of four owes $150,128.92. That’s just today’s figures, as the debt has increased 3.86 billions per day since September 28, 2007.

Since the first writing of this article in the fall, the debt has increased exponentially. It is hard to say just how much each person owes, as the amount of debt and debt service has become a runaway figure that only goes up, up and away.

It is a fact of life that debt represents work and productivity. It is Americans’ work, Americans' productivity, that are hijacked to pay off our national debt. Unless, of course, the Federal Reserve prints more money to pay off the debt, in which case you will wind up paying it off anyway in the form of inflation.

As noted above, one of the most horrific things about our government’s behavior is that it is imitating a savagely cruel practice of ancient and even modern times. It is enslaving future generations–America’s children. Each American child who is born is born an indentured servant, saddled with debts he or she neither knew or approved of–enslaved by feckless and rapacious governments, federal and state.

Did anyone ever dream our country would resort to such a practice? Just think of it: We and generations after us have been sold into slavery to our own government. Our wages present and future are permanently garnished--stolen. A yoke of taxation is fixed on our necks as securely as if our necks were in stocks.

But there is another factor to consider. Americans are not just slaves to their own government. They also have been sold to another people. Our country’s debt is largely owned by the Peoples Republic of China, whose ruthless government will extract every possible concession from the United States. Our debt puts us in the power of a government which is inimically opposed to the foundational beliefs of our country. China, whatever its concessions to a runaway capitalistic sphere may be, remains communist and is run by draconian authoritarians who have little to no empathy for their own people, much less hated foreigners.

All one has to do is to take a look at Communist China’s human rights record in order to know just what the Chinese government thinks of freedom of speech, religion and dissent. It is well to recall the consequences of the Tianamen Square revolt. The government of China is ruthlessly repressive, and pays little heed to the international community’s pleas for human rights. Does anyone seriously think the Chinese government will be as generous as Americans concerning debtors? Does anyone think there will be debt forgiveness? Or drastic consequences should America try to escape debt by inflating the currency or by defaulting?

Since ancient times, no greater fate befalls a free people than to be handed over to a repressive government. Yet such is the government to which the American people have been sold. What greater cruelty can a government commit than that of selling its own people into debt bondage to those who repress their own people?

Exaggeration? No. Debt hands control over to the lender. Recall what happens to an ordinary U.S. citizen who gets into debt. He becomes a bond servant to those to whom he owes money. Suddenly he finds himself under the control of his creditors. He is automatically subject to control and oppression, harassed by calls and threatened by legal proceedings. His possessions are no longer his own. His work is no longer for his own benefit. In short, he is no longer a free man, but a man who has become another’s indentured servant.

Even so, a nation which is indebted to another is no longer a free nation. It and its citizens are now obligated to a task master who makes the rules. The American people have become indentured servants to China.

While American citizens will no doubt escape the fate of ancient peoples who were summarily carted off to exile when they refused to pay tribute or taxes to a given empire, our indebtedness will supply China leverage to extract concessions from us while it freely expands its sphere of influence over the far East, intimidating even our most loyal allies such as Japan, its old enemy. The U.S. will be powerless to protest, especially as its indebtedness is being matched with deliberate vitiation of its armed forces by the current administration.

Of course, indebtedness and its consequences will show up as weakness elsewhere, for inevitably, an indebted nation loses its power on the entire world stage. Mikhail Gorbashev recognized that fact, and it is one of the chief reasons he began his policy of glasnost. He knew a nation with unsustainable expenditures and debt automatically lost its primacy among the nations. A similar fate awaits the United States if drastic action is not taken.
　
It is time to wake up.

The government for the people and by the people is perishing from the face of the earth as we watch ourselves and our fellow citizens shackled by a government determined to expand an already vast bureaucracy and to enrich themselves, their cronies and global institutions–all the while crushing and enslaving the great American middle class and America itself by unsustainble debt. The sovereign future of the United States is at risk domestically and internationally.

Americans must rise up and throw off the yoke of debtors’ slavery by protesting peacefully en masse by marching on Washington and state capitals, for it is probably too late to write letters and to petition.

It is time for a united, peaceful revolution; for yet more million man marches and protests.

It is time to throw out the task masters who have sold us and generations after us into bondage and to replace them with fiscally and morally responsible representatives.
　
Fay Voshell
　
.

An Open Letter to Pat Robertson

2010-01-15T07:42:00.001-08:00

An Open Letter to Pat Robertson: A response to your comments on Haiti
　
Dear Mr. Robertson,

I have read you said the following about the earthquake in Haiti:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French . . . and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French." True story. And so the devil said, "OK, it's a deal." . . . Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another, desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island."

There are several implications which can be garnered from your statement.

One is that the people of Haiti somehow deserved being hit with an earthquake as punishment for making a pact with the Devil some two hundred years ago. Another is that you can make a judgement because you have an insider’s knowledge of God’s ways.

Both assumptions are not supported by Jesus Christ or the scriptures. In the gospel of Luke 13, Jesus’ disciples tell him about a tragic events, doubtless seeking his reaction and explanation as to why the men were slaughtered. The butchering of the innocents was perpetrated by the Roman consulate Pontius Pilate, whose fame has endured because he later was to condemn Christ to death.

No doubt the disciples’ implicit question was what did these men do wrong to meet such a terrible end? After all, they had asked the question outright concerning a man who had been born blind. (John 9) "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Jesus made it clear that personal sin was not the reason for the man’s blindness, but that the work of God would be displayed in the blind man’s life. He healed the man, who went home seeing.

Addressing the case of the slaughtered Galileans, Jesus replied, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too all will perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them–do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

Jesus’ admonition cut right to the heart of the ancient assumption that calamity only falls on those who by their sin deserve it. His message was that all people sin, are in need of repentance and all need salvation, which he offered freely and without condemnation to all who would receive it.

An implied message is we can't elevate ourselves to the status of divinity, as absolute diviners of God’s will and purposes. That is because as mere limited mortals, we are bound to get it wrong.

We begin to get it right, Christ is saying to his disciples, when we start with the evil within our own hearts.

Jesus also made the order of judgement clear in his parable of the mote and the beam, in which he advised the pharisees to look at themselves before they generously handed out blanket condemnation to others.

The above is not to say there can be citadels of evil which grip whole nations, keeping their peoples impoverished and oppressed. But excoriation of Haiti’s admittedly corrupt government and implying an earthquake is God’s just wrath surely seems like the vilest hypocrisy when our own nation is riddled with the rot of Chicago style thuggery, bribery, and onerous taxation. According to the parable of the mote and the beam, surely we need to get our own house in order. Surely, we and our nation, like the disciples, need repentance, forgiveness and restoration.

In the meantime, thankfully, there are attributes of the Deity we can imitate without adding to ourselves the sins of hubris, hypocrisy and false judgement. We can imitate Christ’s compassion and kindness in reaching out to the beleaguered Haitians. Acts of kindness and compassion never bring condemnation. Acts of mercy never are wrong, especially when we extend them even to our enemies as Christ commanded. If he has ordered we give a cup of cold water to our enemy when he is thirsty, how much greater our obligation to those whose hearts and minds we know nothing about.

For the people of Haiti, like the rest of the world’s nation, tribes and peoples, are divided into the good and the bad. From afar we lack the capacity and wisdom to discern the difference. Even if we did have that discernment, we must leave the final judgement to God while we work to obey his command to rescue the perishing regardless of their sins, real or perceived; past or present.

Praise God and give thanks to the men and women of our country who have rushed to aid the desperate without thinking about who does or does not deserve it. They are giving their time, energy and resources without expectation of reward. They are grateful to be rescuing the perishing and caring for the dying.

In their response as rescuers without discrimination or condemnation, they are imitators of Christ.

After all, isn’t God also rescuing each of us each and every day of our lives?

Sincerely,

Fay Voshell