Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."
-- James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788)
Friday, December 21, 2007
Of Multicultural Patriots
A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.
-- Woodrow Wilson
-- Woodrow Wilson
Canadian free speech at risk
Canadians who do not like their hate-speech policy, it turns out, are not free to call censors unflattering things.
Let me rephrase. Canadians are not free to call censors "enemies of free speech." Even if, by the clear meaning of the English language (as well as by American standards) that's what hate-speech censors are, just because they're censors: Enemies of free speech.
. . . [A Canadian] judge ruled that a government official working from duly enacted government policy cannot be an enemy of free speech. That's just unthinkable!
Yes, in Canada you may not speak the truth about free speech to its official enemies. In Canada, the reason why we [Americans] must defend even the most vile speech and writing becomes clear: because suppression of it eventually leads to the inability to criticize government.
You know you've lost your freedom when you cannot call a censor a censor.
-- Paul Jacob, townhall.com, 12/9/07
Let me rephrase. Canadians are not free to call censors "enemies of free speech." Even if, by the clear meaning of the English language (as well as by American standards) that's what hate-speech censors are, just because they're censors: Enemies of free speech.
. . . [A Canadian] judge ruled that a government official working from duly enacted government policy cannot be an enemy of free speech. That's just unthinkable!
Yes, in Canada you may not speak the truth about free speech to its official enemies. In Canada, the reason why we [Americans] must defend even the most vile speech and writing becomes clear: because suppression of it eventually leads to the inability to criticize government.
You know you've lost your freedom when you cannot call a censor a censor.
-- Paul Jacob, townhall.com, 12/9/07
Military Minds
I've attended several conferences sponsored by the military. They bring in a bunch of civilian experts (and one sci-fi author who is an expert in nothing, but he wrote Ender's Game) and seat them at a table and each of them gives a presentation. Then they question each other in sharp-witted conversation,proving and testing each other's ideas.
During all of this, the walls of the room are lined with soldiers. Officers young and old, who listen.
Just listen.
Not that they don't have opinions. On the contrary -- when I've met these same officers in other contexts, I have been deeply impressed by the level of intellectual rigor among our military.
I daresay that if you're looking for the sharpest thinking in America, you'll find more of it in the military than in the university -- because the military know that a lot of lives depend on their getting right answers, whereas is many academic departments absolutely nothing is at stake and they can teach and write any amount of nonsense without any effect in the real world.
But in those conferences, the soldiers sit silently against the wall, saying nothing; not even their faces show what they're thinking.
-- Orson Scott Card, meridianmagazine.com, 11/27/07
During all of this, the walls of the room are lined with soldiers. Officers young and old, who listen.
Just listen.
Not that they don't have opinions. On the contrary -- when I've met these same officers in other contexts, I have been deeply impressed by the level of intellectual rigor among our military.
I daresay that if you're looking for the sharpest thinking in America, you'll find more of it in the military than in the university -- because the military know that a lot of lives depend on their getting right answers, whereas is many academic departments absolutely nothing is at stake and they can teach and write any amount of nonsense without any effect in the real world.
But in those conferences, the soldiers sit silently against the wall, saying nothing; not even their faces show what they're thinking.
-- Orson Scott Card, meridianmagazine.com, 11/27/07
Who started the crusade, anyway?
Somehow, my worthy, lifelong profession, the mass media -- following the lead of the cultural establishment -- have made up their collective mind that the evangelicals, the religious-righters, the preachers, the shouters, call them what you will, launched in the '60s some cockeyed crusade to put the Holy Bible in the center of our affairs. Putting it there might not be such a bad thing, but assuredly, that's not what the preachers, etc., undertook.
The preachers didn't start this business; the secularists did. Out of the celestial blue came the news from the U.S. Supreme Court, in the '60s, that the public schools enjoyed no right to allow prayer of any kind or the reading of the Bible.
-- Bill Murchison, townhall.com, 12/11/07
The preachers didn't start this business; the secularists did. Out of the celestial blue came the news from the U.S. Supreme Court, in the '60s, that the public schools enjoyed no right to allow prayer of any kind or the reading of the Bible.
-- Bill Murchison, townhall.com, 12/11/07
Vice President McCain
[There are] five iron-clad and important Running Mate Rules.
- FAMILIAR AND REASSURING. Most successful running mates of recent years were well-known, highly respected senior statesmen -- not newcomers or rookies.
- OLDER. . . . there's something vastly reassuring about an older Vice Presidential nominee whose only interest is service and support, rather than plotting his own future races for the top job.
- INSIDER. . . . We all want a Vice President who knows Washington well enough to step into the job at a moment's notice.
- FORMER CANDIDATE. . . . The big advantage in choosing a Vice Presidential nominee who's run before for President is that the candidate has already been vetted -- whatever skeletons he (or she) may have kept stashed in the closet has already been discussed and digested by the press.
- With mainstream media fixated on various "firsts" in the Presidential race(first woman, black, Hispanic, Mormon, and Italian American double-divorcee as serious candidates) there's a natural tendency to look at other "breakthrough"possibilities in a running mate. Any smart nominee will resist this temptation: whenever it's been tried in the past, it's always failed.
With these commons sense, unassailable rules in mind, one potential choice for the Vice Presidential nomination should emerge as an apparent Veep frontrunner-- and his name is John McCain.
-- Michael Medved, townhall.com, 12/12/07
Bigotry Revealed
When Mike Huckabee asked a New York Times' reporter, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers," he crossed a line he cannot uncross. . . .
Huckabee's obvious attempt to salt the mine and get the reporter to carry anti-Mormon rhetoric into the paper without Huckabee's fingerprints on it backfired, and the transparent attempt to use the MSM to further the anti-Mormon message was repulsive. . . .
He went to CNN immediately thereafter and asked for forgiveness.
Will that put Huckabee's anti-Mormon genie back in its bottle. I don't think so. "That which is said while drunk has been thought out beforehand," goes the old saying. In the modern media world, candidates for the presidency don't say careless things to the New York Times. It was a premeditated aside, an attempt to get a virus into circulation. It didn't work, but it did tell us a lot about Mike Huckabee.
-- Hugh Hewitt, townhall.com, 12/13/07
Huckabee's obvious attempt to salt the mine and get the reporter to carry anti-Mormon rhetoric into the paper without Huckabee's fingerprints on it backfired, and the transparent attempt to use the MSM to further the anti-Mormon message was repulsive. . . .
He went to CNN immediately thereafter and asked for forgiveness.
Will that put Huckabee's anti-Mormon genie back in its bottle. I don't think so. "That which is said while drunk has been thought out beforehand," goes the old saying. In the modern media world, candidates for the presidency don't say careless things to the New York Times. It was a premeditated aside, an attempt to get a virus into circulation. It didn't work, but it did tell us a lot about Mike Huckabee.
-- Hugh Hewitt, townhall.com, 12/13/07
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Culture War battlefields are in classrooms
Common sense, traditional values Americans are outraged that schools are allowing Gay-Straight Alliances (GSA) into schools. They want to know who is behind these clubs and their true motivations.
The plain truth is that both the GSA and Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network (GLSEN), the organization that registers GSAs, are part of a vast, interconnected network of Cultural Marxist front groups known collectively as the New Left. For over forty years, the New Left---a collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and anarchists have been waging a Gramscian style “quiet revolution” for the overthrow of Christianity and America’s Constitution, Rule of Law, sovereignty, and way of life.
While propagandists in the media have deftly kept the attention of most folks riveted on what they’ve been told to believe are the ‘real threats’ to America, such as gas prices, genuine Christianity, and mad cow disease, Marxist-trained psychopoliticians, propagandists, and change agents have descended upon the schools and are subjecting children and older youth to thought control and social re-engineering methodologies.
A position paper unwittingly published by the ACLU of Texas reveals why, “This generation of children will be the next generation of adult citizens who will make decisions on the directions this country will take. They will be molded by whatever education they receive.” (The ACLU vs. America, Alan Sears and Craig Osten, p 71) . . .
In the overthrowing of America, Cultural Marxists are utilizing a criminal methodology which originated in the USSR and whose ultimate goal can be characterized by its operative doctrine—nihilism. “Nihilism: originally in Russia, a social doctrine that defied all authority; revolutionism bent on the overthrow of all existing institutions.” (Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary, 1948)
Two key strategies included within the doctrine of nihilism were added after WWI by two Marxist theoreticians, Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs. These strategies had to do with how to destroy the Christian West, which both men concluded was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order.
Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 1600 years, it was therefore completely fused with Western civilization. The West, advised Gramsci, would have to be dechristianized and simultaneously atheitized by means of a “long march through the culture” so as to slowly infiltrate and then radically transform every cultural institution from the family, to the church, seminaries, schools, universities, judiciary, media, entertainment, politics, and political parties.
Extreme (obscene) sex education was the strategy added by Lukacs. He reasoned that if Christian sexual ethics such as chastity (abstinence), fidelity, and monogamy could be undermined among children, then both the hated traditional family and Christianity would be dealt crippling blows. Towards this end, Lukacs launched radical sex education programs in the schools. Children, under the control of Bolshevik commissars, were force-fed atheism and instructed in all aspects of promiscuity while simultaneously encouraged to deride and reject their parents, pastors, and Christian moral ethics. All of this was accompanied by a reign of terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and other dissenters. Lukacs’ strategic method would later be brought to American schools by among others, the NEA, ACLU, GLSEN, and GSA. . . .
How ironic that though the West won the Cold War, it is losing the ‘Culture War’ to the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy. While we were not paying attention it stealthily crept into America and began injecting its ‘moral insanity’ producing venom into America’s cultural institutions. Working under cover as multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, sexual orientation, safe schools/safe sex, reproductive choice, porn as free speech, etc., the evil empire has entrenched itself right here in America. . . .
If we wish to remain free, we must turn back to and rededicate ourselves to the source of our freedom and personal liberties: God the Creator and the principles of Christianity. Parents must protect their children and keep them out of the grasping hands of the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy. And as a people united by the principles of freedom and personal liberty, we must commit ourselves to the long and arduous fight to recapture every square inch of our culture, laws, and government and cleanse them of the corruptions caused by the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy.
-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 10/11/06
The plain truth is that both the GSA and Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators Network (GLSEN), the organization that registers GSAs, are part of a vast, interconnected network of Cultural Marxist front groups known collectively as the New Left. For over forty years, the New Left---a collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Maoists, and anarchists have been waging a Gramscian style “quiet revolution” for the overthrow of Christianity and America’s Constitution, Rule of Law, sovereignty, and way of life.
While propagandists in the media have deftly kept the attention of most folks riveted on what they’ve been told to believe are the ‘real threats’ to America, such as gas prices, genuine Christianity, and mad cow disease, Marxist-trained psychopoliticians, propagandists, and change agents have descended upon the schools and are subjecting children and older youth to thought control and social re-engineering methodologies.
A position paper unwittingly published by the ACLU of Texas reveals why, “This generation of children will be the next generation of adult citizens who will make decisions on the directions this country will take. They will be molded by whatever education they receive.” (The ACLU vs. America, Alan Sears and Craig Osten, p 71) . . .
In the overthrowing of America, Cultural Marxists are utilizing a criminal methodology which originated in the USSR and whose ultimate goal can be characterized by its operative doctrine—nihilism. “Nihilism: originally in Russia, a social doctrine that defied all authority; revolutionism bent on the overthrow of all existing institutions.” (Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary, 1948)
Two key strategies included within the doctrine of nihilism were added after WWI by two Marxist theoreticians, Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs. These strategies had to do with how to destroy the Christian West, which both men concluded was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order.
Gramsci posited that because Christianity had been dominant in the West for over 1600 years, it was therefore completely fused with Western civilization. The West, advised Gramsci, would have to be dechristianized and simultaneously atheitized by means of a “long march through the culture” so as to slowly infiltrate and then radically transform every cultural institution from the family, to the church, seminaries, schools, universities, judiciary, media, entertainment, politics, and political parties.
Extreme (obscene) sex education was the strategy added by Lukacs. He reasoned that if Christian sexual ethics such as chastity (abstinence), fidelity, and monogamy could be undermined among children, then both the hated traditional family and Christianity would be dealt crippling blows. Towards this end, Lukacs launched radical sex education programs in the schools. Children, under the control of Bolshevik commissars, were force-fed atheism and instructed in all aspects of promiscuity while simultaneously encouraged to deride and reject their parents, pastors, and Christian moral ethics. All of this was accompanied by a reign of terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and other dissenters. Lukacs’ strategic method would later be brought to American schools by among others, the NEA, ACLU, GLSEN, and GSA. . . .
How ironic that though the West won the Cold War, it is losing the ‘Culture War’ to the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy. While we were not paying attention it stealthily crept into America and began injecting its ‘moral insanity’ producing venom into America’s cultural institutions. Working under cover as multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, sexual orientation, safe schools/safe sex, reproductive choice, porn as free speech, etc., the evil empire has entrenched itself right here in America. . . .
If we wish to remain free, we must turn back to and rededicate ourselves to the source of our freedom and personal liberties: God the Creator and the principles of Christianity. Parents must protect their children and keep them out of the grasping hands of the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy. And as a people united by the principles of freedom and personal liberty, we must commit ourselves to the long and arduous fight to recapture every square inch of our culture, laws, and government and cleanse them of the corruptions caused by the Church of Criminal Orthodoxy.
-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 10/11/06
Friday, November 16, 2007
The secret (and weakness) of America
Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret and genius of her power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. -- Alexis de Tocqueville, quoted in "In the Words of Ronald Reagan", by Michael Reagan
[If this has a familiar ring to some of you, it may be because it restates what King Mosiah in the Book of Mormon said two millenia ago. (See Mosiah 29: 26-27) -- KJK ]
[If this has a familiar ring to some of you, it may be because it restates what King Mosiah in the Book of Mormon said two millenia ago. (See Mosiah 29: 26-27) -- KJK ]
The weakness (and dark secret) of America
As America moves into the 21st century, we have yet to admit a shameful, dark secret. Evolutionism -- the creation myth, that empowered Nazism and Communism,is being taught to America's youth in our government-controlled schools. The animalization of Americans is well advanced and coupled to a corresponding slow collapse of human worth. Already we hear of human life spoken of in dehumanizing categories such as 'vegetable,' "non-persons," and 'uterine content.'
Ominously, Evolutionary Humanism has also outstripped Judeo-Christian precepts in our universities, judiciary, federal bureaucracy, corporations, medicine,law, psychology, sociology, entertainment, news media and halls of Congress. As Biocentrism it fuels the nonhuman animal rights project, the gay rights movement, radical feminism, and the increasingly powerful and influential green environmentalist program, which demands that America submit to the draconian mandates of the Kyoto Treaty.
America, the "moral force that defeated communism" is on the verge of completely rejecting God, the natural order, and moral absolutes and instead,embracing the godless religion of evolution, amorality, and the unnatural.
-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 6/20/07
Ominously, Evolutionary Humanism has also outstripped Judeo-Christian precepts in our universities, judiciary, federal bureaucracy, corporations, medicine,law, psychology, sociology, entertainment, news media and halls of Congress. As Biocentrism it fuels the nonhuman animal rights project, the gay rights movement, radical feminism, and the increasingly powerful and influential green environmentalist program, which demands that America submit to the draconian mandates of the Kyoto Treaty.
America, the "moral force that defeated communism" is on the verge of completely rejecting God, the natural order, and moral absolutes and instead,embracing the godless religion of evolution, amorality, and the unnatural.
-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 6/20/07
Civil war and the family
In the "The Siege of Western Civilization," Herb Meyers, former CIA analyst in the Reagan administration and one of the first scholars to predict the implosion of the Soviet Union, explains that there are three major threats to the survival of Western Christian-Judeo Civilization. The first of these is the war with radical Islam. The second is the incredible plunging birthrates throughout the West and Japan. We have stopped breeding, said Meyers, and this may well lead not only to destruction of the world economy, but to the extinction of entire populations. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of the world, declared Herb. Western Europe and Japan, said Meyers,are catastrophes simply waiting to happen. The third threat is what Meyers termed the 'second civil war' being waged within America by a coalition of God-hating progressive secular humanists (socialists), and Cultural Marxists(multiculturalists). As Meyers cautioned, these revolutionaries mean to overthrow and destroy the America of our Founders and its traditional Christian-Judeo based culture. . . .
As revealed by [William] Hinds, the traditional family is the foundation of personal property, which is why Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, George Lukacs and comrades sought its destruction. Likewise, it's why today's Cultural Marxists are viciously attacking it and promoting sexually fluid alternatives such as polygamy and same-sex marriages. Additionally, since all goods are to be shared equally -- even sex -- and promiscuity is, therefore, a prominent feature of secularized communal societies, Christian sexual ethics such as abstinence, fidelity, and monogamy are as antithetical as are the ideas of personal property and individual rights and freedoms.
-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 9/1/06
As revealed by [William] Hinds, the traditional family is the foundation of personal property, which is why Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, George Lukacs and comrades sought its destruction. Likewise, it's why today's Cultural Marxists are viciously attacking it and promoting sexually fluid alternatives such as polygamy and same-sex marriages. Additionally, since all goods are to be shared equally -- even sex -- and promiscuity is, therefore, a prominent feature of secularized communal societies, Christian sexual ethics such as abstinence, fidelity, and monogamy are as antithetical as are the ideas of personal property and individual rights and freedoms.
-- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 9/1/06
Why governments don't shrink
... The "big trends" in world history are going our way. The American way of life and doing business is spreading at an amazing rate around the world and throughout our country, as entrepreneurs create new companies and new value every day. The people, in general, "get it."
It is the politicians who don't. In fact, to a great degree the very temperament that makes somebody likely to run for office makes them an unlikely candidate for shrinking government. It is often, even usually, that it is a desire for power that motivates candidates. It is the need to limit government power that lies at the root of the conservative insight.
-- David Strom, townhall.com, 10/24/07
It is the politicians who don't. In fact, to a great degree the very temperament that makes somebody likely to run for office makes them an unlikely candidate for shrinking government. It is often, even usually, that it is a desire for power that motivates candidates. It is the need to limit government power that lies at the root of the conservative insight.
-- David Strom, townhall.com, 10/24/07
Understanding Atheism
Those who become agnostic or atheist often say that it was due to an intellectual journey or an intellectually honest re-appraisal of childhood faith. But, as my mentor David L. McMillen used to say, "People rarely understand their own motivations." -- Mike Adams, townhall.com, 10/29/07
Romney Concepts 101
I believe the free market works and government doesn't -- that when government takes over a function which can be effectively managed in the free market, we make a huge mistake. -- Mitt Romney, quoted by Brian M. Carney, opinionjournal.com, 11/12/07
As usual, it boils down to greed
Vouchers are adamantly opposed by the teacher unions, which spent millions persuading Utah voters last week to repeal a voucher law passed by the legislature. No one can say for sure how much vouchers would improve education. But they are "forces of competition," as Greenspan puts it, which we're almost entirely prevented from harnessing because of the power of teacher unions -- the power, more specifically, that they wield in the Democratic Party. ...
The teacher unions are an incredibly important source of money and volunteers for the Democratic Party -- about one in 10 delegates at recent Democratic national conventions have been teacher union members or their spouses. When they snap their fingers, the Democrats jump. Vouchers threaten to dry up dues money, and that is that. -- Michael Barone, Townhall.com, 11/12/07
The teacher unions are an incredibly important source of money and volunteers for the Democratic Party -- about one in 10 delegates at recent Democratic national conventions have been teacher union members or their spouses. When they snap their fingers, the Democrats jump. Vouchers threaten to dry up dues money, and that is that. -- Michael Barone, Townhall.com, 11/12/07
The greatest scam in history
I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the 'research' to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims.Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus... I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.However, Global Warming, ie Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you 'believe in.' It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise.And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it... There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril... In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. -- John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Hillary's forked tongue
Here, boiled down, is what [Hillary Clinton] said [in the recent Democratic debate].
Giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses makes sense because it makes sense, but she may not be for it, but undocumented workers should come out of the shadows, and it makes sense. Maybe she will increase the payroll tax on Social Security beyond its current $97,500 limit, to $200,000. Maybe not. Everybody knows what the possibilities are. She may or may not back a 4% federal surcharge on singles making $150,000 a year and couples making $200,000. She suggested she backed it, said she didn't back it, she then called it a good start, or rather "I support and admire" the person proposing such a tax for his "willingness to take this on."
She has been accused of doubletalk and she has denied it. And she is right. It was triple talk, quadruple talk, Olympic level nonresponsiveness. And it was, even for her, rather heavy and smug. Her husband would have had the sense to look embarrassed as he bobbed and weaved. It was part of his charm. But he was light on his feet. She turns every dance into the polka. And it is that amazing thing, a grim polka.
-- Peggy Noonan, OpinionJournal.com, 11/2/07
Giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses makes sense because it makes sense, but she may not be for it, but undocumented workers should come out of the shadows, and it makes sense. Maybe she will increase the payroll tax on Social Security beyond its current $97,500 limit, to $200,000. Maybe not. Everybody knows what the possibilities are. She may or may not back a 4% federal surcharge on singles making $150,000 a year and couples making $200,000. She suggested she backed it, said she didn't back it, she then called it a good start, or rather "I support and admire" the person proposing such a tax for his "willingness to take this on."
She has been accused of doubletalk and she has denied it. And she is right. It was triple talk, quadruple talk, Olympic level nonresponsiveness. And it was, even for her, rather heavy and smug. Her husband would have had the sense to look embarrassed as he bobbed and weaved. It was part of his charm. But he was light on his feet. She turns every dance into the polka. And it is that amazing thing, a grim polka.
-- Peggy Noonan, OpinionJournal.com, 11/2/07
Religion *IS* being taught in public schools
Opponents of school vouchers say tax money shouldn't go to support religious schools. Obviously they don't realize just how much religion is being taught in the public schools today: atheism, homosexuality, situational ethics, mental mediocrity, sexual promiscuity. These principles are the foundation of humanism, twice declared by the Supreme Court to be a religion. Why should families with conservative religious beliefs have to pay twice for their children's education? -- Ellen Hindman, The Deseret Morning News, 11/1/07
Atheism's Gift to Humanity
If we look at the history of Western civilization, we find that Christianity has illuminated the greatest achievements of the culture. Read the new atheist books and make a list of the institutions and values that Hitchens and Dawkins and the others cherish the most. They value the idea of the individual, and the right to dissent, and science as an autonomous enterprise, and representative democracy, and human rights, and equal rights for women and racial minorities,and the movement to end slavery, and compassion as a social virtue. But when you examine history you find that all of these values came into the world because of Christianity. If Christianity did not exist, these values would not exist in the form they do now. So there is indeed something great about Christianity, and the honest atheist should be willing to admit this.
By contrast, does it make any sense to say, as Hitchens does in his book's subtitle, that "religion poisons everything"? Religion didn't poison Dante or Milton or Donne or Michelangelo or Raphael or Titian or Bach! Religion didn't poison those unnamed architectural geniuses who built the great Gothic cathedrals. Religion didn't poison the American founders who were for the most part not Deist but Christian. Religion didn't poison the anti-slavery campaigns of William Lloyd Garrison or William Wilberforce, or the civil rights activism of the Reverend Martin Luther King. The real question to ask is, what does atheism offer humanity? In Tonga, as in America, the answer appears to be: Nothing.
-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 11/1/07
By contrast, does it make any sense to say, as Hitchens does in his book's subtitle, that "religion poisons everything"? Religion didn't poison Dante or Milton or Donne or Michelangelo or Raphael or Titian or Bach! Religion didn't poison those unnamed architectural geniuses who built the great Gothic cathedrals. Religion didn't poison the American founders who were for the most part not Deist but Christian. Religion didn't poison the anti-slavery campaigns of William Lloyd Garrison or William Wilberforce, or the civil rights activism of the Reverend Martin Luther King. The real question to ask is, what does atheism offer humanity? In Tonga, as in America, the answer appears to be: Nothing.
-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 11/1/07
Republican Hindsight
You know what? Standing on principle is a good idea. Too bad we didn't do it when we were in the majority. -- Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), GOP Debate, 10/09/07
How do you define "hate speech"?
Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener's inability to offer an intelligent response.
Because this inability to offer an intelligent response is due to one of two reasons, there are really two different types of hate speech: 1)Speech that is too dumb to merit an intelligent response, and 2) Speech for which the listener is too dumb to offer an intelligent response. . . .
The similarity between the two principal forms of hate speech is obvious: They both induce anger in the listener, regardless of whether the speaker expressed his view with any feeling of hatred or animosity. . . .
Islamic advocacy of violence is not classified as "hate speech" because it induces fear, not anger.
-- Mike Adams, townhall.com, 10/22/07
Because this inability to offer an intelligent response is due to one of two reasons, there are really two different types of hate speech: 1)Speech that is too dumb to merit an intelligent response, and 2) Speech for which the listener is too dumb to offer an intelligent response. . . .
The similarity between the two principal forms of hate speech is obvious: They both induce anger in the listener, regardless of whether the speaker expressed his view with any feeling of hatred or animosity. . . .
Islamic advocacy of violence is not classified as "hate speech" because it induces fear, not anger.
-- Mike Adams, townhall.com, 10/22/07
Atheist Indoctrination Practices
Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought "to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own." Rorty noted that students are fortunate to find themselves under the control "of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents." Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that as professors "we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable."
This is how many secular teachers treat the traditional beliefs of students. The strategy is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong. Rather, it is to subject them to such scorn that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate. This strategy is effective because young people who go to good colleges are extremely eager to learn what it means to be an educated Harvard man or Stanford woman. Consequently their teachers can very easily steer them to think a certain way merely by making that point of view seem fashionable and enlightened. Similarly, teachers can pressure students to abandon what their parents taught them simply by labeling those positions as simplistic and unsophisticated.
-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 10/22/07
This is how many secular teachers treat the traditional beliefs of students. The strategy is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong. Rather, it is to subject them to such scorn that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate. This strategy is effective because young people who go to good colleges are extremely eager to learn what it means to be an educated Harvard man or Stanford woman. Consequently their teachers can very easily steer them to think a certain way merely by making that point of view seem fashionable and enlightened. Similarly, teachers can pressure students to abandon what their parents taught them simply by labeling those positions as simplistic and unsophisticated.
-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 10/22/07
Election Issues for Evangelicals
Here is what I believe is at stake in this election:
- Someone is almost certain to appoint two, three, or four justices to the Supreme Court. Do we want that person to be Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney?
- Someone will cast vision and lead Congress on matters of national security, including securing our borders against illegal immigration. Should that be Hillary, Rudy or Mitt?
- Someone will deal with the definition of marriage in America -- and will either defend and model a faithful marriage and strong family, or not. Who should that person be?
- Someone will either defend unborn life -- or defend those who place THEIR rights and desires above those who can't defend themselves. Would we prefer that Clinton, Giuliani or Romney be in that position?
- Someone will need to deal with radical Islamic Jihadists and the threat they pose to our nation. As evangelicals, do we want to entrust Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney with that critical assignment?
- Finally, someone will either welcome evangelicals and people of faith into the White House and their administration; or shut them out of deliberations and consideration for various appointments. Would Hillary, Rudy or Mitt be most accepting of evangelicals and people of faith?
. . . I concluded that I am more concerned that a candidate shares my values than he shares my theology.
-- Evangelist Mark DeMoss, quoted by Hugh Hewitt, townhall.com, 10/11/07ECONOMICS 101 STUFF
I don't buy the concept that any reduction in taxes is lost revenue to the government. . . . Generally speaking, lower taxes and lower tax rates grow the economy. It's been proven in the '20s, it was proven during the Kennedy administration, proven during the Reagan administration, and again during this administration.
-- Fred Thompson, GOP Debate, 10/10/07
-- Fred Thompson, GOP Debate, 10/10/07
Do-gooders, Money, and Power
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always 'against,' never 'for' anything. -- Ronald Reagan
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Gauling Guile of Liberal Politics
"You're outmanned, you're outgunned, you're out equipped. What else have you got?" Worf lamented. Commander Riker's reply: "Guile." ( Star Trek - TNG: "Peak Performance")
The same would be the response of many if not most of our honored politicians. But some (and not a few) take the guileful art to new heights. Enter the Smart People. Orson Scott Card, in his essay, Phony Soldiers and Patriotism, shares an incisive and clear view of those who consider themselves the ultimate benefactors of the Stupid People, justifying all manner of deception that they may save the nation and the world (and their power). Card is my favorite Democrat. Please read this one! -- Kirt
The same would be the response of many if not most of our honored politicians. But some (and not a few) take the guileful art to new heights. Enter the Smart People. Orson Scott Card, in his essay, Phony Soldiers and Patriotism, shares an incisive and clear view of those who consider themselves the ultimate benefactors of the Stupid People, justifying all manner of deception that they may save the nation and the world (and their power). Card is my favorite Democrat. Please read this one! -- Kirt
Monday, October 15, 2007
The forgotten reasons for intervention in Iraq
While factions of our society debate the pros and cons of US military intervention in Iraq the facts presented for the initiation of efforts there have always stood clearly defined. They were laid out in no uncertain terms, and in order of priority, by President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002:
You will notice the obvious absence of the anti-war Progressive-Left’s favorite myth, that the US invaded Iraq because the “neo-cons” said they had stockpiles of WMD. That’s because the WMD argument was manufactured by anti-Bush politicos and spin doctors, disseminated by an agenda-driven media and promoted by the anti-war Progressive-Left. It was always about the issue of WMD development and verifying the successful destruction of not only the existing WMD – WMD that the UN documented and verified Hussein had – but the long-range missiles he had to deploy them. It was always about the programs and the “grave and gathering threat” those programs posed.
That being said, the only reason that should have ever been required by the UN, the American people and/or the free world for deposing Saddam Hussein’s regime was the first reason – human rights violations and mass murder to the point of genocide.
-- Frank Salvato, OpinionEditorials.com, 9/07/07
- Violation of UN Security Council Resolution 688: Human rights violations and the torture, rape and murder of political opponents and ordinary citizens, including the genocide of the Iraqi Kurds.
- Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 686 and 687: The refusal to release prisoners of war captured during the Gulf War.
- Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 687 and 1373: The refusal to disassociate with terrorist organizations and the facilitation of terrorist entities within and traveling across Iraq borders.
- Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 678, 686, 687, 688, 707, 715, 986 and 1284: Refusal to cease development programs for weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and refusal to allow UN inspectors uninhibited access to any and all weapons development programs.
You will notice the obvious absence of the anti-war Progressive-Left’s favorite myth, that the US invaded Iraq because the “neo-cons” said they had stockpiles of WMD. That’s because the WMD argument was manufactured by anti-Bush politicos and spin doctors, disseminated by an agenda-driven media and promoted by the anti-war Progressive-Left. It was always about the issue of WMD development and verifying the successful destruction of not only the existing WMD – WMD that the UN documented and verified Hussein had – but the long-range missiles he had to deploy them. It was always about the programs and the “grave and gathering threat” those programs posed.
That being said, the only reason that should have ever been required by the UN, the American people and/or the free world for deposing Saddam Hussein’s regime was the first reason – human rights violations and mass murder to the point of genocide.
-- Frank Salvato, OpinionEditorials.com, 9/07/07
China is on the move, or haven't you noticed?
China's "smile diplomacy" and its deployment of the "tools of culture" are clearly elements in a purposeful, government-directed campaign to reassure, charm and gain influence. . . .
The hope that China will soon change [to become more Western and democratic], and the assurance that, in the meantime, there is a great deal of money to be made, have helped many in this country into a state of comfortable complacency. . . .
If China stays on its current path, if it continues to grow richer and stronger while remaining autocratic, it will likely become bolder, more assertive, and possibly more aggressive than it is today. If the United States wishes to preserve its present military, diplomatic, and technological advantages, it will have to compete much more vigorously and deliberately than it has been doing in recent years. We are going to have to run faster just to stay in place. But we are unlikely to do so if we cannot even acknowledge to ourselves that we are in a race.
-- Aaron L. Friedberg, CommentaryMagazine.com, October 2007
The hope that China will soon change [to become more Western and democratic], and the assurance that, in the meantime, there is a great deal of money to be made, have helped many in this country into a state of comfortable complacency. . . .
If China stays on its current path, if it continues to grow richer and stronger while remaining autocratic, it will likely become bolder, more assertive, and possibly more aggressive than it is today. If the United States wishes to preserve its present military, diplomatic, and technological advantages, it will have to compete much more vigorously and deliberately than it has been doing in recent years. We are going to have to run faster just to stay in place. But we are unlikely to do so if we cannot even acknowledge to ourselves that we are in a race.
-- Aaron L. Friedberg, CommentaryMagazine.com, October 2007
My Fellow Republicans
If we're going to change Washington, Republicans have to put our own house in order. We can't be like Democrats -- a party of big spending. We can't pretend our borders are secure from illegal immigration. We can't have ethical standards that are a punch-line for Jay Leno. When Republicans act like Democrats, America loses. It's time for Republicans to start acting like Republicans. -- Mitt Romney, open letter to the Republican party
Investing in Iranian Democracy
American lawmakers and Iranian-Americans who would eliminate financial support for Iran's democrats need to understand the following: Supporting Iranian civil society and the nonviolent struggle toward democracy and human rights is likely the most cost-effective means to prevent a future conflict with Iran or an armed struggle within its borders. Democracy is difficult to achieve. But with its remarkably young, educated population, and a long-stifled yearning for the fruits of modernity and liberalism, Iran has many of the key ingredients for success. -- Akbar Atri, OpinionJournal.com, 10/15/07
Friday, October 05, 2007
Of Lemmings, Appeasers, Piranhas, and Activists
Like lemmings marching toward a nearby cliff, many business leaders are blindly embracing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the doctrine du jour of activist nannies who are seeking to usurp political authority by setting themselves up as private regulators -- all for the purpose of dictating how the rest of us live our lives. . . .
In addition to the CSR lemmings, there are two other types of business leaders who preach the gospel of corporate socialism. They include those who believe CSR represents a public relations opportunity that companies can exploit for the sake of getting the activists off their backs. They are modern-day Neville Chamberlains; appeasement artists who believe that the Holy Grail of successful business management is good PR. . . .
The third group of business executives who support the CSR movement do so because they can afford to, and they believe their competition either cannot pay the price of admission to the CSR cult, or are unwilling to genuflect to the activists when they show up for tribute. . . . But their real motive is to exploit CSR to achieve an artificial advantage over the competition. They are not lemmings or appeasers. They are good old-fashioned piranhas. . . .
The net-net of this spectacularly undemocratic process called CSR is that the activists are being aided and abetted by some business executives in their efforts to dictate business policies and expenditures based on their vision of what is sustainable, equitable and fair for the rest of us. . . .
Fortunately, there are still some corporate warriors who understand that businesses do not have social responsibilities; only people do.
-- Nick Nichols, townhall.com, 10/4/2007
In addition to the CSR lemmings, there are two other types of business leaders who preach the gospel of corporate socialism. They include those who believe CSR represents a public relations opportunity that companies can exploit for the sake of getting the activists off their backs. They are modern-day Neville Chamberlains; appeasement artists who believe that the Holy Grail of successful business management is good PR. . . .
The third group of business executives who support the CSR movement do so because they can afford to, and they believe their competition either cannot pay the price of admission to the CSR cult, or are unwilling to genuflect to the activists when they show up for tribute. . . . But their real motive is to exploit CSR to achieve an artificial advantage over the competition. They are not lemmings or appeasers. They are good old-fashioned piranhas. . . .
The net-net of this spectacularly undemocratic process called CSR is that the activists are being aided and abetted by some business executives in their efforts to dictate business policies and expenditures based on their vision of what is sustainable, equitable and fair for the rest of us. . . .
Fortunately, there are still some corporate warriors who understand that businesses do not have social responsibilities; only people do.
-- Nick Nichols, townhall.com, 10/4/2007
Liberal Reactions 101
Liberal hysteria about conservative speech always follows the same pattern; I call it "The Five Stages of Conservative Enlightenment." There are public denunciations, demands for apologies, letter-writing campaigns, attacks on the sources of your income, and calls for censorship. There will be lots of wailing, but no facts refuting the point behind your hysteria-inducing statement. Liberals prefer denouncing people with idioms -- over the top, gone too far, crossed the line,beyond the pale -- not substance. Whose line? Whose pale? It almost makes you think they don't want to talk about the substance. -- Ann Coulter, townhall.com, 9/30/07
Friday, September 28, 2007
Radical Islam is worth worrying about
[Daniel Pipes said] "Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?" A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:
-- William F. Buckley, quoting Norman Podhoretz, townhall.com, 9/6/07
- A potential Access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
- A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
- An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.
- An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, form illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians."
-- William F. Buckley, quoting Norman Podhoretz, townhall.com, 9/6/07
How to define victory
Iraq is only one campaign in the war against the nations that sponsor terrorism.Victory isn't an Iraq that can defend and govern itself. Victory is defined as the end of state sponsorship of Islamic terrorism, which means forcing Iran,Syria, and Saudi Arabia and others out of that business. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less will defeat an existential threat to America. -- Diana West, townhall.com, 9/7/07
Better teach your grandkids to shoot
We fight and defeat these people [i.e. Islamic terrorists] here and now [in Iraq], or my grand-daughter will be fighting them in Des Moines forty years on.. . . You know, as I do, that there are people who want to kill every American in Iraq. And if they succeed in doing that, they will come here and try to kill every American in America. -- Rich Galen, townhall.com, 9/12/07
Keeping Up Appearances
The conclusion I came away with after a couple of rounds [of diplomatic talks]was that the Iranians were only interested in the appearance of discussion, of being seen at the table with the U.S. instead of actually doing serious business. -- Ambassador Ryan Crocker, congressional testimony, September 2007.
If Uncle Sam Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy
The paradox is this: There has been no follow-on attack against he United States [since 9/11]. The United States did dislodge Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, and while the war goes badly, the casualties are a small fraction of those lost in Vietnam. Most important, bin Laden's dream is gone. No Muslim state has been overthrown and replaced with a regime that bin Laden would find worthy. He has been marginalized by both the United States and by his rival Shiite radicals, who have picked up the mantle that he dropped. His own jihadist movement is no longer under his effective control. . . .
The effect on the United States is much more profound. The war, both in Iraq and against al Qaeda, has worn the United States down over time. The psychology of fear has been replaced by a psychology of cynicism. The psychology of confidence in war has been replaced by a psychology of helplessness. Exhaustion pervades all.
That is the single most important outcome of the war. What happens to bin Laden is, in the end, about as important as what happened to [Che] Guevara.Legends will be made of it -- not history. But when the world's leading power falls into the psychological abyss brought about by time and war, the entire world is changed by it. Every country rethinks its position and its actions.Everything changes.
. . . The United States has psychologically begun tearing itself apart over both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Whatever your view of that, it is a fact -- a serious geopolitical fact.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/11/07
The effect on the United States is much more profound. The war, both in Iraq and against al Qaeda, has worn the United States down over time. The psychology of fear has been replaced by a psychology of cynicism. The psychology of confidence in war has been replaced by a psychology of helplessness. Exhaustion pervades all.
That is the single most important outcome of the war. What happens to bin Laden is, in the end, about as important as what happened to [Che] Guevara.Legends will be made of it -- not history. But when the world's leading power falls into the psychological abyss brought about by time and war, the entire world is changed by it. Every country rethinks its position and its actions.Everything changes.
. . . The United States has psychologically begun tearing itself apart over both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Whatever your view of that, it is a fact -- a serious geopolitical fact.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/11/07
The Games Russkies Play
The Russians are chess players and geopoliticians. In chess and geopolitics, the games is routine and then, suddenly, there is an opening. You seize the opening because you might never get another one. The United States is inherently more powerful than Russia, save at this particular moment. Because of a series of choices the United States has made, it is weaker in the places that matter to Russia. Russia will not be in this position in two or three years. It needs to act now.
Therefore, Putin will go to Iran on Oct. 16 and will work to complete Iran's civilian nuclear project. What agreements he might reach with Iran could give the United States nightmares. If the United States takes out Iran's nuclear weapons, the Russians will sympathize and arm the Iranians even more intensely.If the Americans launch an extended air campaign, the Russians will happily increase the supply of weapons even more.
. . . At a certain point, sooner rather than later, the Iranians must examine whether they want to play the role of the Russian cape to the American bull.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/17/07
Therefore, Putin will go to Iran on Oct. 16 and will work to complete Iran's civilian nuclear project. What agreements he might reach with Iran could give the United States nightmares. If the United States takes out Iran's nuclear weapons, the Russians will sympathize and arm the Iranians even more intensely.If the Americans launch an extended air campaign, the Russians will happily increase the supply of weapons even more.
. . . At a certain point, sooner rather than later, the Iranians must examine whether they want to play the role of the Russian cape to the American bull.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 9/17/07
Figure It Out; It's Not That Hard
Which makes more sense: trusting the judgment of military commanders closest to"conditions on the ground" in Iraq and with no political ax to grind, or that of partisan armchair generals on the left aisle of the Senate with little to no expertise and no constitutional authority to act as mini-commanders in chief? -- David Limbaugh, townhall.com, 9/14/07
Of Hammers and Nails
Liberals like to say of the Bush administration's allegedly militaristic foreign policy that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Likewise, if the only tool you have is dialogue, everyone looks like a reasonable interlocutor. -- Rich Lowry, townhall.com, 9/24/07
Monday, September 17, 2007
How to end a war
Just because you want to leave doesn't mean the bully is finished with you. You can pull the US military out of Iraq, but that doesn't end the war. Victory and defeat end wars. -- Senor Dangriga, 9/14/07, senordangriga.blogspot.com
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
There Are Bigger Fish To Warm
I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book ["Cool It"] is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
-- Bret Stephens, opinionjournal.com, 8/28/07
Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book ["Cool It"] is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?
Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.
-- Bret Stephens, opinionjournal.com, 8/28/07
Friday, August 17, 2007
Entertaining Addictions
Today's young people have the ability to experience excitement more than any generation in history. Outside of school, excitement is available almost 24/7.MTV is exciting (MTV has done far more damage to this generation than has the tobacco industry); video games are exciting... The list of exciting things many children experience is as long as there are hours in the day. But all this excitement is actually inhibiting our children's ability to enjoy life and therefore be happy. All this excitement renders young people jaded, not happy... All this excitement in their lives bodes poorly for the future happiness of millions of American children. Real life, let alone daily life,will seem so boring to them that they will not be able to enjoy it. And more than a few of them will opt for lives of constant excitement, often in ways destructive to themselves and others. The solutions are as simple to offer as they may be difficult to enforce. Limit the amount of excitement in your children's lives: the amount of video games, the amount of non-serious television, the amount of music whose only aim is to excite. If they are bored, they will have to remedy that boredom by playing with friends, finding a hobby,talking to a family member, walking the dog, doing chores, reading a book or magazine, learning a musical instrument or foreign language, memorizing state capitals, writing a story or just their thoughts, exercising or playing a sport, or just thinking. The younger the age from which children are deprived of superficial excitement, the longer they will remain innocent -- i.e., not jaded -- and capable of real happiness.
-- Dennis Prager
-- Dennis Prager
Health Care American Style
I believe we can reduce costs and improve the quality of care by increasing competition. We can do it through tax cuts, not tax hikes. We can do it by empowering patients and their doctors, not government bureaucrats. Instead of being more like Europe, we need to be more like America. -- Rudy Giuliani
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
KGB and the Cold War Genesis of Bush-Hatred Syndrome
I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president. ...
Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. The same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. ...
The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman--the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.
The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans."
During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs,blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.
The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.
Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. ...
On July 28, I celebrated 29 years since President Carter signed off on my request for political asylum, and I am still tremendously proud that the leader of the Free World granted me my freedom. During these years I have lived here under five presidents--some better than others--but I have always felt that I was living in paradise. My American citizenship has given me a feeling of pride, hope and security that is surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive. There are millions of other immigrants who are equally proud that they restarted their lives from scratch in order to be in this magnanimous country. I appeal to them to help keep our beloved America united and honorable. We may not be able to change the habits of our current political representatives, but we may be able to introduce healthy new blood into the U.S. Congress. ...
For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts.
-- Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, highest-ranking KGB officer to have defected from the Soviet bloc, opinionjournal.com, 8/7/07
Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. The same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. ...
The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman--the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.
The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans."
During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs,blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.
The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.
Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. ...
On July 28, I celebrated 29 years since President Carter signed off on my request for political asylum, and I am still tremendously proud that the leader of the Free World granted me my freedom. During these years I have lived here under five presidents--some better than others--but I have always felt that I was living in paradise. My American citizenship has given me a feeling of pride, hope and security that is surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive. There are millions of other immigrants who are equally proud that they restarted their lives from scratch in order to be in this magnanimous country. I appeal to them to help keep our beloved America united and honorable. We may not be able to change the habits of our current political representatives, but we may be able to introduce healthy new blood into the U.S. Congress. ...
For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts.
-- Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, highest-ranking KGB officer to have defected from the Soviet bloc, opinionjournal.com, 8/7/07
Monday, August 06, 2007
Mormon Mitt Romney Unplugged
During the breaks in this interview, supposedly "off air," Romney candidly discusses his Mormon faith without the campaign rhetoric. This is the genuine Mitt as a devout Mormon. You be the judge.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Liberal Military Economics
Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home. -- Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Nothing New Under The Sun
Not only the history of the UN, but the history of the League of Nations before it, demonstrates again and again that going to such places [as the UN] is a way for weak-kneed leaders of democracies to look like they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing. The Iranian leaders are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And, like Hitler, they don't think we have the guts to stop them. -- Thomas Sowell
An Encouraging Sign
The recent capture of the leading Iraqi in al-Qaeda's Iraq affiliate is no accident... You capture such people only when you have good intelligence, and you have good intelligence only when the locals have turned against the terrorists. -- Charles Krauthammer
A Manager for President? Instead of a Lawyer? Duh!
It would be helpful to have a person leading the country who understands how the economy works and has actually managed something. In the case of the three Democratic front-runners, not one of them has managed even a corner store, let alone a state or a city. -- Mitt Romney
The Rookie is Right
"Today's federal government is too big, too powerful, and too expensive because it is doing things beyond the scope of the Constitution. This is foolish and it is dangerous." -- newly elected Georgia Rep. Paul Broun
Rules of Presidential Politics, Iran, and Bush
- No Democrat from outside the old Confederacy has won the White House since John F. Kennedy. . . .
- No Republican has won the White House since Eisenhower who wasn't from Texas or California. . . .
- No sitting senator has won the presidency since Kennedy. . . .
Here is what the Iranians are seeing: . . . Bush become increasingly weak. . . . Congress making sweeping declarations, but backing off from voting on them . . . . a Republican Party splitting in Congress. . . . a presidential election shaping up in unprecedented ways with inherently unexpected outcomes. . . .
This gives Bush his strange strength. . . . Given the strange dynamics, he is not your normal lame duck. Everyone else is tied in knots in terms of policy and in terms of the election. Bush alone has room to maneuver, and the Iranians are likely calculating that it would probably be safer to deal with this president now rather than expect the unexpected in 2008.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 7/24/07
To Be A Useful Politician
A man to be a sound politician and in any degree useful to the country must be governed by higher and steadier considerations than those of personal sympathy and private regard. -- Martin Van Buren
Adversaries on the Run
The war is not lost in Iraq. In fact, now American and Iraqi security forces are winning. The enemy is on the run in Iraq. But here in Congress, in Washington, we seem to be or some members seem to be on the run, chased, I fear, by public opinion polls. -- Sen. Joe Lieberman
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
America's Unintended Secret Weapon
[There is] a strange paradox that has been manifest in American foreign policy since World War II. On the one hand, the United States has consistently encountred strategic stalemate or defeat in particular politico-military operations. At those times, the outcomes have appeared to be disappointing if not catastrophic. Yet, over the same period of time, U.S. global power, on the whole , has surged.
. . . The invasion [of Iraq] four years ago has led to the Sunnis and Shia turning against each other in direct conflict. Therefore, it could be argued that just as the United States won the Cold War by exploiting the Sino-Soviet split and allying with Mao Zedong, so too the path to defeating the jihadists is not a main attack, but a spoiling attack that turns Sunnis and Shia against each other. This was certainly not the intent of the Bush administration in planning the 2003 invasion; it has become, nevertheless, an unintended and significant outcome.
. . . Moreover, it is far from clear whether U.S. policymakers through history have been aware of this dimension in their operations. In considering Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Iran, it is never clear that the Truman, Kennedy,Johnson/Nixon or Carter/Reagan administrations purposely set out to implement a spoiling attack.
. . . However, there is a deep structure in U.S. foreign policy that becomes visible. The incongruities of stalemate and defeat on the one side and growing U.S. power on the other must be reconciled. The liberal and conservative arguments explain things only partially. But the idea that the United States rarely fights to win can be explained. It is not because of a lack of moral fiber, as conservatives would argue; nor a random and needless belligerence, as liberals would argue. Rather, it is the application of the principle of spoiling operations -- using limited resources not in order to defeat the enemy but to disrupt and confuse enemy operations.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 3/20/07
. . . The invasion [of Iraq] four years ago has led to the Sunnis and Shia turning against each other in direct conflict. Therefore, it could be argued that just as the United States won the Cold War by exploiting the Sino-Soviet split and allying with Mao Zedong, so too the path to defeating the jihadists is not a main attack, but a spoiling attack that turns Sunnis and Shia against each other. This was certainly not the intent of the Bush administration in planning the 2003 invasion; it has become, nevertheless, an unintended and significant outcome.
. . . Moreover, it is far from clear whether U.S. policymakers through history have been aware of this dimension in their operations. In considering Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Iran, it is never clear that the Truman, Kennedy,Johnson/Nixon or Carter/Reagan administrations purposely set out to implement a spoiling attack.
. . . However, there is a deep structure in U.S. foreign policy that becomes visible. The incongruities of stalemate and defeat on the one side and growing U.S. power on the other must be reconciled. The liberal and conservative arguments explain things only partially. But the idea that the United States rarely fights to win can be explained. It is not because of a lack of moral fiber, as conservatives would argue; nor a random and needless belligerence, as liberals would argue. Rather, it is the application of the principle of spoiling operations -- using limited resources not in order to defeat the enemy but to disrupt and confuse enemy operations.
-- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report, 3/20/07
Islam vs Democracy
Why is separation of church and state such an alien concept resisted so fiercely by the Islamist leaders? . . . Islam from the outset united church and state. The prophet Muhammad was during his lifetime both a prophet and a Caesar. He established an Islamic society in which the sharia or holy law governed not only religious duties but also divorce, inheritance, interest rates, and the rules of warfare. The sharia is a comprehensive Islamic law that covers constitutional, civil and commercial matters in addition to spiritual or religious ones. -- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 5/14/07
Conspiratorial Hysteria
"The science of global warming is speculative. But there's nothing speculative about the damage a CO2 capture program will do to this country. I know the names of many of the thousands of people -- American workers, their families --whose lives will be destroyed by what has become a deceitful and hysterical campaign, perpetrated by fear-mongers in our society and by corporate executives intent on their own profits or competitive advantage."
". . . What you are really doing with a global warming program is getting rid of low-cost energy." The consequences? Americans have been fretting about losing jobs to places such as China or India, which already offer cheaper energy. "You hike the cost of energy here further, and you create a mass exodus of business out of this country."
-- Robert E. Murray, quoted by Kimberley A Strassel, opinionjournal.com, 5/21/07
". . . What you are really doing with a global warming program is getting rid of low-cost energy." The consequences? Americans have been fretting about losing jobs to places such as China or India, which already offer cheaper energy. "You hike the cost of energy here further, and you create a mass exodus of business out of this country."
-- Robert E. Murray, quoted by Kimberley A Strassel, opinionjournal.com, 5/21/07
Americanism as a Religion
Everyone who has reflected more than casually on the American national character has observed that religious belief is one of its most prominent features. We are, as G. K. Chesterton remarked of us in 1922, "the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed . . . a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection." -- Terry Teachout, commentarymagazine.com, July/August 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
Someone is deluded and dishonorable, but it isn't Petraeus
[W]hat cannot be said -- although it is now heard daily in Washington -- is that the surge, which is shorthand for Gen. David Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy, has failed. The tragedy is that, just as a working strategy has been found, some Republicans in the Senate have lost heart and want to pull the plug. . . .
A month ago, Petraeus was asked whether we could still win in Iraq. The general, who had recently attended two memorial services for soldiers lost under his command, replied that if he thought he could not succeed he would not be risking the life of a single soldier.
Just this week, Petraeus said that the one thing he needs more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus' plan just as it is beginning -- the last surge troops arrived only last month -- on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.
That's the logic of the wobbly Republicans' position.
-- Charles Krauthammer, townhall.com, 7/13/07
A month ago, Petraeus was asked whether we could still win in Iraq. The general, who had recently attended two memorial services for soldiers lost under his command, replied that if he thought he could not succeed he would not be risking the life of a single soldier.
Just this week, Petraeus said that the one thing he needs more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus' plan just as it is beginning -- the last surge troops arrived only last month -- on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable. Deluded in that, as the best-positioned American in Baghdad, he still believes we can succeed. Or dishonorable in pretending to believe in victory and sending soldiers to die in what he really knows is an already failed strategy.
That's the logic of the wobbly Republicans' position.
-- Charles Krauthammer, townhall.com, 7/13/07
How to fix illegal immigration
- Pursue enforcement first.
- Build the fence.
- Fully staff our border patrol.
- Fully staff Citizenship and Immigration Services.
- Establish an effective exit visa system.
- Eliminate the "jobs magnet" with heavy employer penalties.
- No more anchor babies.
- End sanctuary cities and drivers' licenses for illegal aliens.
- Permanently disallow citizenship for illegal aliens.
- End catch and release.
Wussie warfare
The Washington Times' Sharon Behn recently asked Command Sgt. Maj. Jeff Mellinger why the world's most powerful army hadn't yet accomplished this mission [i.e. to destroy Al Qaeda in Iraq]. He replied: "We could absolutely crush every one of them, but would you be happy with what is left?"
He's referring to the catastrophic destruction that is, and has always been,the price of total victory. It's something that never makes anyone "happy," but previous generations have found it necessary. Not ours. Postmodern man prefers a kind of limited warfare, fighting with one hand tied behind his back as a matter of choice -- a moral choice that lends even a superpower the humanizing aura of victim-hood. -- Diana West, townhall.com, 7/13/07
Thursday, July 12, 2007
A politically incorrect foundation
[T]he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. -- Benjamin Rush
Robbery in progress
I am not robbed by people who have more money than me. I am robbed by a government that wants to penalize my industry and give increasing portions of what I earn to people who do not emulate my principles, morals and ethics. -- Cal Thomas, townhall.com, 5/31/07
Historical license
Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works. -- Charles Krauthammer
Mormon canary
[Hugh] Hewitt's message [in "A Mormon in the Whitehouse?"] is that Mitt Romney has become a political canary in the coalmine. If a man of Romney's intellectual and professional stature is taken down simply because of his religious beliefs, others will follow. Permission will have been granted to destroy political opponents across the religious spectrum for believing "weird" things -- or perhaps for being excessively moral in the eyes of a skeptical, secular press. -- Richard Kirk, spectator.org, 5/11/07
Politics by other means
When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 5/1/07
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Harry's War Dumbed Down
Here is a poetic interpretation (suited to preschool mentality) of Senator Reid's defeatist stance on Iraq.
Dr. Seuss Revisited
Dr. Seuss was a popular purveyor of cartoon commentary during World War II. Much of his work is still spot on. Check it out.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
May I Suggest Impeachment?
In the long-term, the Democrats will be hurt by what Harry Reid is saying [i.e. "this war is lost" ] and what other senior Democrats are not saying. -- Rich Galen, townhall.com, 4/26/07
Nothing Short of Victory
One of the things we have learned from the action in Iraq is that weakness is seen by our enemies as . . . weakness. Our enemies are not looking for a path to peace to coexist with the West in a Shangri La. -- Rich Galen, townhall.com, 4/26/07
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Liberalism 101
In the liberal world, inefficiency in government is a good thing. It means more government employees, probably unionized. It means more money going through their hands. It means more and more people under their control. What’s not to like?
Never, ever believe a liberal or moderate when they say that government services could be better if we just reformed the system; the liberal is lying, and the moderate is delusional. Government bureaucracies almost always have interests fundamentally in conflict with the people they supposedly serve. Individuals are almost always better off if they can provide for themselves or go into the competitive market to get a service, rather than depend upon government. Bureaucracies are always better off the more people who depend upon them and lack alternatives.
-- David Strom, townhall.com, 4/25/07
Never, ever believe a liberal or moderate when they say that government services could be better if we just reformed the system; the liberal is lying, and the moderate is delusional. Government bureaucracies almost always have interests fundamentally in conflict with the people they supposedly serve. Individuals are almost always better off if they can provide for themselves or go into the competitive market to get a service, rather than depend upon government. Bureaucracies are always better off the more people who depend upon them and lack alternatives.
-- David Strom, townhall.com, 4/25/07
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
What Driving Costs
In 2005, 43,200 people died on American highways. (John Crawley,"U.S. traffic deaths hit 16-year high in 2005," Reuters, 20 April 2006.) If we were fighting a war in which 40,000 people died every year and it had gone on that way for the past twenty years, wouldn't you join the anti-war movement? And this is a war in which the victims are children, teenagers, elderly people, adults in their prime. Men and women in equal numbers. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people from 4 through 33 years old. -- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 4/8/07
Reid's Political Greed
It's hard to tell anymore whether the Democrats' deplorable actions are motivated more by their psychological predisposition against recognizing evil in the world (except among American political conservatives), or their raw quest for power. But perhaps Sen. Reid's recent statement to reporters sheds some light on the question.
"We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war," said Reid. "Sen. Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding."
Enough said.
-- David Limbaugh, townhall.com, 4/24/07
"We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war," said Reid. "Sen. Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding."
Enough said.
-- David Limbaugh, townhall.com, 4/24/07
Pay Attention To China
The Chinese aren't coy about their long-term plans. Beijing last year announced its army will move "from regional defense to trans-regional mobility," including "long-distance maneuvers, rapid assaults and special operations." Its air force will expand "its capabilities in the areas of air strike, air and missile defense, early warning and reconnaissance, and strategic projection."
China now spends an estimated 4.5 percent of its $2.5 trillion GDP on defense (the United States spends 3.9 percent). To continue protecting our interests, we'll need to devote at least 4 percent of our GDP to defense. That's more than we've spent since 1995. But it's been a while since we faced a rising threat like the one China poses today. It's a serious military threat that demands serious military spending. -- Ed Feulner, townhall.com, 4/24/07
China now spends an estimated 4.5 percent of its $2.5 trillion GDP on defense (the United States spends 3.9 percent). To continue protecting our interests, we'll need to devote at least 4 percent of our GDP to defense. That's more than we've spent since 1995. But it's been a while since we faced a rising threat like the one China poses today. It's a serious military threat that demands serious military spending. -- Ed Feulner, townhall.com, 4/24/07
Monday, April 23, 2007
How America is a Threat
[According to world opinion surveys by the Pew Research Center and others,] huge majorities of more than 80 percent of people in Indonesia, Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, Egypt, and Turkey say they want to protect their values from foreign assault. The Pew study concludes that there is a "widespread sense" that American values, often presented as the values of modernity itself, "represent a major threat to people's traditional way of life." These sentiments are felt very keenly in the Muslim world. . . .
There seems to be a growing belief in traditional cultures that America is materially prosperous but culturally decadent. It is technologically sophisticated but morally depraved. . . .
As these observations suggest, the main source of Muslim rage is not American foreign policy but American popular culture as it is projected around the world.
-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 4/10/07
There seems to be a growing belief in traditional cultures that America is materially prosperous but culturally decadent. It is technologically sophisticated but morally depraved. . . .
As these observations suggest, the main source of Muslim rage is not American foreign policy but American popular culture as it is projected around the world.
-- Dinesh D'Souza, townhall.com, 4/10/07
The Last Best Hope
The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the Dark Ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America, God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind." We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on Earth.” -- Bill Bennett, townhall.com, 4/17/07
America's Underlying Foundation
The Bible is the foundation, the Declaration is the “why,” and the Constitution is the “how” of this wonderful experiment in liberty and self-government known as the United States of America. . . .
If no God, then no Creator, no natural rights, and no equality. If no Creator, then evolution. If evolution, then all rights are positive rights, expressions of power rather than authority. And, if evolution, then no equality since the different races evolved separately, and no human exceptionalism – man is but an animal. Meaning, if man were to consider himself on a higher moral plane than the brutes, he would be guilty of the highest form of racism: speciesism.
Ultimately, rights come from either God or Government. If rights come from God, then government is under God, since it is the role of government to secure those rights. But, if government is the source of rights, then what is granted can be withdrawn. Rights would be alienable, only temporary. Similarly, laws are either divine or positive. All positive laws are expressions of power, while all divine laws are claims of authority. The Founders understood these things better than anyone before or since – they are the greatest political philosophers in history. . . .
Consider an Atheist’s Declaration of Dependence:
. . . It is a high, noble and an especially American thing to do to reject secularism, atheism, evolution, and other ideologies of the Left – for such thinking could never have drafted the Declaration of Independence.
-- Frank Pastore, townhall.com, 4/8/07
If no God, then no Creator, no natural rights, and no equality. If no Creator, then evolution. If evolution, then all rights are positive rights, expressions of power rather than authority. And, if evolution, then no equality since the different races evolved separately, and no human exceptionalism – man is but an animal. Meaning, if man were to consider himself on a higher moral plane than the brutes, he would be guilty of the highest form of racism: speciesism.
Ultimately, rights come from either God or Government. If rights come from God, then government is under God, since it is the role of government to secure those rights. But, if government is the source of rights, then what is granted can be withdrawn. Rights would be alienable, only temporary. Similarly, laws are either divine or positive. All positive laws are expressions of power, while all divine laws are claims of authority. The Founders understood these things better than anyone before or since – they are the greatest political philosophers in history. . . .
Consider an Atheist’s Declaration of Dependence:
We claim these opinions to be our relative truth, that most men are to be considered equally evolved, that they are granted certain temporary rights by government, that among them are generally life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to create, define, and enforce these rights, governments are instituted to rule over men, deriving their powers from the ruling elites, that whenever any form of government is threatened, it is never the right of the people to alter and abolish it, for they are to never institute new government. For it is the power and authority of government to create and destroy all rights, and to always determine what is in the best interests of the people. For the people are forever dependent upon government for all things.
. . . It is a high, noble and an especially American thing to do to reject secularism, atheism, evolution, and other ideologies of the Left – for such thinking could never have drafted the Declaration of Independence.
-- Frank Pastore, townhall.com, 4/8/07
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Myth of Ignorant Freedom
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be.
-- Thomas Jefferson
-- Thomas Jefferson
Science in Denial
Here's the raw truth:
All the computer [climate] models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict the past. . . . The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done. . . .
Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. When a hypothesis -- or a computer model -- fails to correspond to the actual real-world data, you throw them out. That's what the real climate scientists are doing. They have found, in recent years, a very close correspondence between global climate and variations in the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun.
What matters right here and now is that it is time for the world's scientists to apostatize from the Church of Global Warning. It is a false religion. It is based on lies, and its leading prophets know that it is because they're the ones faking the data or stretching it to ridiculous lengths to pretend that the real world hasn't already ruled against their claims.
-- Orson Scott Card, meridianmagazine.com, 3/13/07
All the computer [climate] models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict the past. . . . The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done. . . .
Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. When a hypothesis -- or a computer model -- fails to correspond to the actual real-world data, you throw them out. That's what the real climate scientists are doing. They have found, in recent years, a very close correspondence between global climate and variations in the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun.
What matters right here and now is that it is time for the world's scientists to apostatize from the Church of Global Warning. It is a false religion. It is based on lies, and its leading prophets know that it is because they're the ones faking the data or stretching it to ridiculous lengths to pretend that the real world hasn't already ruled against their claims.
-- Orson Scott Card, meridianmagazine.com, 3/13/07
Honor and Iraq
It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath. -- Fouad Ajami, opinionjournal.com, 4/11/07
The Wisdom of Doubt
In a world where there are few absolutes, and where knowledge of fact can become yesterday's mistaken assumption, a wise man will temper his wisdom with perpetual self doubt. If a wise man stands rigidly on nuggets of reasoned wisdom, for rigidity's sake, that man may find himself standing on lumps of fool's gold when the new day dawns. -- Phil Harris, townhall.com, 4/8/07
Islamic Jihad Means Blood . . . Much Blood
Anybody who still believes that nonsense about how jihad is a personal, internal struggle will find out what a stupid lie that is and always was. Islam prevails in this world only in places where force of arms conquered, or where the religion was forced on the people by their rulers. And there is no shortage of proof that the "conversion" of Europe will be a bloody one. And Islam has never been rolled back except by force of arms. Anybody who finds himself ruled by Muslim conquerors will suddenly discover that Crusades are actually a pretty good idea -- unless you want to convert to Islam yourself, of course. -- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 4/1/07
Honor
Honor is something Republicans believe in, so it can be used to destroy them. But because the elitists who run the Democratic Party don't care about honor, it costs the Democrats nothing to break their word.
. . . But in all the world, only two nations that can be called major powers are known to stand by their word no matter what the cost: The United States of America, and Great Britain. . . . Part of the reason we are a great power is that we are known as keepers of our word, relentless defenders of freedom and human rights.
. . . Indeed, almost from the beginning of this war, the American Elite -- the people who are too cool to care about honor or patriotism, except when someone accuses them of not having any -- have done all that was within their power to strip us of any sense of honor.
. . . Now the Democrats in Congress are breaking their word to the American people (in the form of those candidates who pretended to be moderates when they are now proving they are not), in order to try to force President Bush to break our national word to Iraq and, in the long run, to the whole world.
If they succeed, here is where we'll be:
Remember the name "Nancy Pelosi." It will stand someday beside the name "Neville Chamberlain" in the pantheon of deluded fools whose poll-following stupidity led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their own nation's citizens, and the deaths of millions of others who would have lived if those deluded fools had done what was necessary to preserve their national honor.
-- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 04/01/07
. . . But in all the world, only two nations that can be called major powers are known to stand by their word no matter what the cost: The United States of America, and Great Britain. . . . Part of the reason we are a great power is that we are known as keepers of our word, relentless defenders of freedom and human rights.
. . . Indeed, almost from the beginning of this war, the American Elite -- the people who are too cool to care about honor or patriotism, except when someone accuses them of not having any -- have done all that was within their power to strip us of any sense of honor.
. . . Now the Democrats in Congress are breaking their word to the American people (in the form of those candidates who pretended to be moderates when they are now proving they are not), in order to try to force President Bush to break our national word to Iraq and, in the long run, to the whole world.
If they succeed, here is where we'll be:
- The power of the Presidency will have been shattered, along with the Constitutional separation of powers. If Democrats think they can destroy the Presidency while a Republican holds it, and then have all that power back when a Democrat has it, they are sadly mistaken.
- We will be exposed to the whole world, once and for all, as an unreliable ally. Who will dare to bet on us again? It was hard enough to persuade Shiites in Iraq to trust us after President Bush, Sr., did nothing to support them when they revolted against Saddam. It will be at least a generation, if ever, before we recover our national honor.
- Our enemies will be so greatly encouraged by the fact that Osama was absolutely, completely right in his assessment of us, that their attacks against America and America's interests throughout the world will vastly increase in number. They will think this jihad is a war they can win -- that they will be able to finish the job that was stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1660 -- the Muslim conquest of the world.
Remember the name "Nancy Pelosi." It will stand someday beside the name "Neville Chamberlain" in the pantheon of deluded fools whose poll-following stupidity led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their own nation's citizens, and the deaths of millions of others who would have lived if those deluded fools had done what was necessary to preserve their national honor.
-- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 04/01/07
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Better Than the Weatherman?
The current alarm [over global warming] rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.
-- MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen
-- MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen
Perspective Lacking
Too many Americans lack perspective... They ignore real problems and challenges and contrive silly ones. They praise people who are truly evil and demonize people, flawed though they may be, who are trying to do good. They lack the ability to discern. And if America doesn't regain its perspective, it will lose the overwhelming blessings it continues to receive. -- Tom Purcell
Friday, April 06, 2007
HUMANE WARFARE
If you want a shorter rebuilding process, then we're going to have to wage less humane wars. The enemy -- as well as innocent civilians -- must be bombed into quivering terror. Otherwise, we displace aggression but don't destroy it. ... If we're going to have humane wars, they are going to take a little bit longer. -- Ann Coulter, townhall.com, 4/5/07
Monday, April 02, 2007
MAKE THIS DAD PRESIDENT
I've seen my Dad [Mitt Romney] in action, not just in one crisis, but in dozens. I don't think there is a person alive in whom I'm more confident in placing my trust.
Take a look back to 2002. That was the year he put on an incredible Winter Olympics with a $100M surplus (right after 9/11, and despite a major scandal that almost ruined the games before he took them over), won as a Republican Governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and turned a $3B budget deficit into a surplus without raising taxes.
Ask yourself who you want leading our nation over the next decade as we face the following challenges: a Jihadist enemy intent on destroying our way of life; liberal elites and activist judges attempting to break down the social values and norms that have existed for centuries; an exploding immigration problem; a serious threat to our status as economic and military superpower from Asia; a looming energy crisis; out-of-control spending in Washington.
What kind of person should we want to be leading our nation at this time of challenge and opportunity? The answer seems obvious – we want someone strong; someone who recognizes our challenges and is willing to deal with them head on; a fiscal conservative; a social conservative; someone whose personal integrity and moral values are unquestioned; someone who has been tested; someone who isn't a career politician; and someone who will get the job done.
There is only one person I believe can do all of that. There's no question that I'm biased—I love my Dad. But my love hasn't blinded me. Like Lincoln in 1860, Roosevelt in 1901, and Reagan in 1980, Mitt Romney is the right leader at the right time for our great nation. He may not be Superman. But he's close enough for me.
-- Taggart Romney, townhall.com, 4/2/07
Take a look back to 2002. That was the year he put on an incredible Winter Olympics with a $100M surplus (right after 9/11, and despite a major scandal that almost ruined the games before he took them over), won as a Republican Governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and turned a $3B budget deficit into a surplus without raising taxes.
Ask yourself who you want leading our nation over the next decade as we face the following challenges: a Jihadist enemy intent on destroying our way of life; liberal elites and activist judges attempting to break down the social values and norms that have existed for centuries; an exploding immigration problem; a serious threat to our status as economic and military superpower from Asia; a looming energy crisis; out-of-control spending in Washington.
What kind of person should we want to be leading our nation at this time of challenge and opportunity? The answer seems obvious – we want someone strong; someone who recognizes our challenges and is willing to deal with them head on; a fiscal conservative; a social conservative; someone whose personal integrity and moral values are unquestioned; someone who has been tested; someone who isn't a career politician; and someone who will get the job done.
There is only one person I believe can do all of that. There's no question that I'm biased—I love my Dad. But my love hasn't blinded me. Like Lincoln in 1860, Roosevelt in 1901, and Reagan in 1980, Mitt Romney is the right leader at the right time for our great nation. He may not be Superman. But he's close enough for me.
-- Taggart Romney, townhall.com, 4/2/07
Friday, March 30, 2007
GIVE ME VIRTUE
Statesmen ... may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand....The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue,and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty." -- John Adams (letter to Zabdiel Adams, 21 June 1776)
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
WHO NEEDS NUKES? The problem with nuclear weapons today can be summed up as follows: They are going out of fashion where they are needed most and coming into fashion where they are needed least. -- Bret Stephens, opinionjournal.com, 3/20/07
Monday, March 19, 2007
KYOTO IS ONLY A DEMO!
Columnist Steven Milloy recalls talking with Mr. Gore in 2006 about the 1997 Kyoto Protocol he helped negotiate as vice president. "Did we think Kyoto would [reduce global warming] when we signed it? . . . Hell no!" said Mr. Gore, according to Mr. Milloy. The former vice president then explained that the real purpose of Kyoto was to demonstrate that international support could be mustered for action on environmental issues. -- John Fund, opinionjournal.com, 3/19/07
Friday, March 16, 2007
GUNS FOR DC
In a major triumph for the Constitution, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled last Friday that the Second Amendment means exactly what it says
...."To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad)." (Circuit Court of Appeals for-- PatriotPost.us, 3/16/0
the District of Columbia, 3/09/07)
THE NEW FASCISM
Fascism idolizes the state, socialists idolize "society" and communists idolize"humanity" as a whole.
What holds these ideologies together is much stronger than what divides them: they are all dedicated to the proposition that the rights and desires of individuals are properly subsumed by the needs of the whole. Individualism is selfishness, rights are collective, and the "good" of the whole is the true measure of society....
So today we are witnessing the rise of a new version of the same old collectivist ideal; instead of the State or Humanity being elevated above individualism, it's an idealized version of the environment or the "Earth." Call it Nature, call it Gaia, or even call it Climate, the ideologists of collectivism are just trying to sell us a new reason to subsume our individual liberty to a collectivist whole....
The "solution" to the climate change "crisis" is exactly the same "solution"that was proposed to solve the "population bomb" crisis in the 70's. It's the same solution that was proposed to solve the "crisis" of capitalist"exploitation." It's always the same collectivist solution, whatever the"crisis:" the relinquishing of individual rights in order to promote the greater good....
The people who warned you about the crisis are the very people who you need to follow in order to solve it.
In today's rebirth of fascism the leaders of tomorrow are the academic-media-political elite who run the major Universities, the government bureaucracies, and of course the all important media.
The elite is those who know better than you what is good for you.
-- David Strom, townhall.com, 3/1/07
What holds these ideologies together is much stronger than what divides them: they are all dedicated to the proposition that the rights and desires of individuals are properly subsumed by the needs of the whole. Individualism is selfishness, rights are collective, and the "good" of the whole is the true measure of society....
So today we are witnessing the rise of a new version of the same old collectivist ideal; instead of the State or Humanity being elevated above individualism, it's an idealized version of the environment or the "Earth." Call it Nature, call it Gaia, or even call it Climate, the ideologists of collectivism are just trying to sell us a new reason to subsume our individual liberty to a collectivist whole....
The "solution" to the climate change "crisis" is exactly the same "solution"that was proposed to solve the "population bomb" crisis in the 70's. It's the same solution that was proposed to solve the "crisis" of capitalist"exploitation." It's always the same collectivist solution, whatever the"crisis:" the relinquishing of individual rights in order to promote the greater good....
The people who warned you about the crisis are the very people who you need to follow in order to solve it.
In today's rebirth of fascism the leaders of tomorrow are the academic-media-political elite who run the major Universities, the government bureaucracies, and of course the all important media.
The elite is those who know better than you what is good for you.
-- David Strom, townhall.com, 3/1/07
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
