TRUE AMERICAN...

It is time to change from REDNECK humor to TRUE AMERICAN Humor!
Only I don’t see it as Humor, but the correct way to LIVE YOUR LIFE!
If you feel the same, pass this on to your True American friends.
Ya’ll know who ya’ are...

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

It never occurred to you to be
offended by the phrase, “One nation, under God.”

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You’ve never protested about seeing the
10 Commandments posted in public places.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You still say “Christmas” instead of “Winter Festival.”

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You bow your head when someone prays.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You stand and place your hand over
your heart when they play the National Anthem.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You treat Viet Nam vets with great
respect, and always have.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You’ve never burned an American flag.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You know what you believe and you
aren’t afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You respect your elders and expect
your kids to do the same.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You’d give your last dollar to a friend.

[0] comments (4136 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Moscow Trials...

Moscow Show Trials on the Charles

By Thomas E. Brewton

Most people are aware, if not in specificity, that Harvard president Larry
Summers has been forced to resign.  This local contretemps is of national
importance.  Railroading president Summers proves that, confronted with the
truth openly addressed, liberals can defend themselves only with KGB tactics. 
It reminds us again that all sides of issues must be presented to students.

-------------------
When a college or university faculty can force a leader out of office, solely
because he questions their dogma, the prospects for education are dimmed.  The
remedy is, not to scourge the liberals, but to give students full access to the
opposing Judeo-Christian knowledge upon which Western civilization was based
before the advent of socialist collectivism.

Columnist Ben Shapiro, himself a Harvard Law student, sums the Harvard case in a recent column, which recaps the events leading to the Harvard faculty coup.

“.....Summers faced the uniform wrath of the arts and sciences professors.
Those professors were lobbying for the Harvard Corporation to fire Summers. And
despite the fact that three out of four Harvard students supported Summers,
despite the fact that deans at every graduate school supported him, despite the
fact that Summers has restored Harvard’s image as a moderate left, not radical
left, institution, this is the end for El Presidente.

“All of which goes to show that for Harvard professors, the university doesn’t
matter. The students don’t matter. All that matters is that professors be
allowed to pick up their fat paychecks, sit in their tenure-sized offices,
spout what they want to spout and buy off students with easy A’s. With Summers’
resignation, Harvard’s faculty adds yet another black spot to their
increasingly egregious resume.”

Let it be acknowledged that the shoe was on the other foot in the 1920s and
30s, when college administrations dominated by conservatives forced liberals
out of their faculties.  Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler
was as high-handed as any liberal in ousting Professor Charles A. Beard, who
published an often-since-discredited book alleging that the Constitution was no
more than a conspiracy of wealthy property owners to defraud “the people.” It
was in that connection that president Butler, asked if he had read Beard’s last
book, is supposed to have said, “I hope so.”

As I have written many times, a Judeo-Christian society is implicitly
individualistic in the sense that every citizen must shoulder personal
responsibility for his own conduct and that, in doing so, he must seek to
acquire moral virtue.  In the Western tradition, embracing both the Jewish
worship of Almighty God and the Greek philosophical understanding that
happiness is, not sensual pleasure, but virtuous conduct, as well as in their
synthesis in Christianity, Truth is the goal.

This is in contrast to the liberal conception that individuals are merely
Social-Security-number components of social and economic classes and that the
object of worship, the source of all good, is the collectivized national
state.  Individualism in that context is selfish greed, to be muzzled by state
regulations and quashed by redistributive taxes.

Truth is not, as liberals opine, merely whatever opinions find public favor at
any moment.  God-given Truth is fixed and eternal, in the same way that human
nature has been unchanged from prehistoric times into the present day.

What is debatable and should be open to candid discussion at the college level
is how virtue is to be applied in specific cases.  Morality does not evolve, as
John Dewey and other socialists taught.  Application of Eternal Truth to new
circumstances needs continuing and full debate, not dictation of PC dogma.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

[0] comments (3988 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Authentic Liberalism at work...

View From the Blind Side

By Thomas E. Brewton

Blind men groping an elephant from different sides, trying to decide what it
resembles, have fragmentary impressions.  Liberals groping today’s events from
the left side are either blind, or willfully deceitful, because they present
one-sided and misleading interpretations.

-------------------
We may take as authentic liberalism the views expressed by Harold Meyerson, who is editor-at-large of The American Prospect, a very liberal magazine, one of whose founders is Robert Reich, President Clinton’s Labor Secretary.  In an article written for the February 22, 2006, issue of The Washington Post and also published in The American Prospect, his critique of the competitive free market reminds us of how different liberal assumptions are from those of the people who fought in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787.

Mr. Meyerson’s opening line is either a deliberate lie or an expression of
ignorance.  He writes, “We’re selling our harbors to an Arab government.”

It is by now general knowledge that nobody is selling any ports to anyone.  All
that is involved is prospectively transferring management of East Coast ports
and the Port of New Orleans from one foreign company to another.  These ports
already are managed by a foreign company, Peninsular & Oriental Steam
Navigation Co. The proposal is simply to approve acquisition of P & O by the
state-owned Dubai Ports World organization.

Mr. Meyerson continues:  “Welcome to American capitalism in the age of
globalization.  Here the market rules. National security and freedom of speech
are all well and good, but they are distinctly secondary concerns when they
bump up against our highest national purpose, which is maximizing shareholder
value.”

This is merely putting a new dress on the perennial liberal thesis that wars
are caused by greedy capitalists using the workers’ blood for profit.  In the
Iraq invasion, Halliburton was the bloody shirt to wave.  Now, somehow,
permitting one foreign company to buy another’s assets (management contracts in
this case) is an example of American capitalistic greed at the expense of
national security.

Mr. Meyerson concludes, “.......Indeed, at the heart of the Bush
administration’s theory of democratic transformation, we find two non
sequiturs: that integration into the global marketplace leads to democratic
pluralism, and that elections lead to democratic pluralism.”

First, it is doubtful that any official in the Bush administration ever used
the term ‘democratic pluralism,’ a symbolism coming out of the New Deal era and
much employed by left-wingers in the 1950s and 60s. 

‘Democratic pluralism’ in the liberal sense means moral relativism, the idea
that there is no need for core values in the United States, that no objections
may be raised to preaching divergent doctrines such as the atheistic
materialism of socialism.  Paradoxically, ‘democratic pluralism’ has
metamorphasized into the ACLU’s relentless campaign to suppress all expressions
of Judeo-Christian morality in public life and in our schools.

Understanding Mr. Meyerson’s opinions requires scanning the transition from the
liberalism of 1776 to the liberalism of the 20th century.

Liberalism for our founding generation meant political liberty, freedom from
arbitrary exercise of power by the sovereign government, particularly
confiscation of private property via unconstitutional taxes or by seizure
without due process of law and reasonable compensation.  The Bill of Rights is
a catalog of individuals’ rights against the government and against the
democratic majority, Tocqueville’s tyranny of the masses.

20th century liberalism stands this on its head.  A quotation from William A.
Donohue’s “The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union” illustrates the
point.

Mr. Donohue writes, “[John] Dewey contended that “the ends which liberalism has
always professed can be attained only as control of the means of the production
and distribution is taken out of the hands of individuals who exercise powers
created socially for narrow individual interests.” Social control of the
economy was what Dewey advocated.  As Edmund Wilson once noted, social control
was a code word for socialism that liberals used in the thirties: “We have
always talked about the desirability of a planned society Ð the phrase ‘social
control’ has been our blessed Mesopotamian word.  But if this means anything,
does it not mean socialism? And should we not do well to make this perfectly
plain?”....Dewey pleaded we must realize that unrestricted individualism [i.e.,
free-market capitalism] is destructive of freedom.”

John Dewey, of course, was the foremost liberal philosopher of the early 20th
century, and Edmund Wilson was considered the era’s major literary critic.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

[0] comments (4500 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Liberals....

These are submissions from John Lillpop of San Jose, California:

In 1981, Michael Morales set his sights on 17-year old Terri Winchell and marked the young California woman for death.  Seems that Winchell had dated a man involved in a homosexual affair with a male cousin of Morales.  To untangle this perverted love triangle, Morales decided to eliminate the female.

Morales began by attempting to strangle Winchell to death with a belt. Failing that, he pulverized Winchell’s skull to a bloody pulp with a claw hammer. It took 23 hacks, but Morales persisted.

End of story? Sadly not, because Morales decided the freshly mutilated young woman still had value. Namely, to satisfy his carnal urges; so, he raped the dying woman and then stabbed her four times to drive the last breath of life from her devestated being.

Morales was found guilty and sentenced to death. His date with destiny was scheduled for 12:01 AM, February 21, 2006.  Unfortunately, a liberal activist judge decided that Morales should not suffer any “excruciating pain” during execution. 

Judge Jeremy Fogel pushes the liberal agenda from his lofty position on the bench at a US District Court in San Jose. But His Honor stepped way over the line in the Morales case:  He actually dictated the detailed procedures that California was to follow in executing Morales.

Thus, Fogel was instantly transformed from US District Judge to execution expert, at the expense of justice.

As a result of Fogel’s judicial activisim, Morales is still alive, at least for a while.  And this killer who used a claw hammer to destroy a beautiful human life has temporarily avoided justice because Fogel was duped into believing that a needle p****, akin to a flu shot, would be “cruel and unusual.”

And this is justice? Apparently so, at least according to one of the killer’s attorneys who wrote “Yee-haw!’’ in an e-mail celebrating the stay.

But California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has it right. “The federal court has interjected itself into the details of the state’s execution process,’’ Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “I am confident that the convictions and sentence were appropriate in this case. I will continue to fight to uphold California’s laws.”

We are with you all the way, Guv. May the next scheduled gig for The Terminator end with real justice, rather than undeserved victory for the killer!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Knowing when one is a liberal, and the full extent of that devastating mental disorder, is vital information that everyone should have in order to effectively navigate life’s many obstacles and roadblocks.

This simple, yet scientific, test has been programmed to evaluate one’s liberal quotient. Asking for honest answers from liberals is probably unrealistic; nonetheless, honesty is essential for this exercise.

The test:

1. Roe V. Wade, one of America’s most famous founding Fathers, authored Amendment No. 16 to the US Constitution which guarantees women the right to privacy while undergoing an abortion.

In what year was Amendment 16 added to the Bill of Rights?

( ) 1792 ( ) 1812 ( ) Still being filibustered by Dems

2. The war on terror is:

( ) Based on outright lies and exaggerations by the Bush administration, and, as such, criminal in nature.

( ) Over, kaput. The terrorists have won---Bush should surrender immediately.

3. Abortions should be:

( ) Mandatory for unmarried women under 30 .

( ) A real no-no after an expectant mother has started to labor, unless the attending physician and nurse can guarantee that law enforcement authorities will not be notified.

4. Higher taxes:

( ) Stimulate economic growth and create millions of secure, high paying jobs.

( ) Are needed to keep overachievers humble.

( ) Should be paid by any family with an annual income in excess of $10,000.

5. ( ) True or ( ) False?

President Bush has personally listened to calls made and received by Democrats and moderate Republicans. This type of domestic spying is OK as long as the president does not use racial profiling in deciding which calls to eavesdrop on.

6. Samuel Alito:

( ) Is a bigoted racist who should take up the cross of women’s rights, diversity and tolerance, using Ted Kennedy as a role model.

( ) Should report to the Supreme Court immediately because the Senate confirmation process is a complete waste of time and can be ignored with impunity.

( ) Is far too Italian and, with Anthony Scalia also on the bench, will lead to discrimination against the Mafia, the Sopranos, and other innocent Italians.

7. Osama bin Laden obviously had help with the language in his latest warning to America. That help most probably came from:

( ) The Council on American Islamic Relations(CAIR)

( ) John Murtha, Howard Dean, and John Kerry

( ) Editors at the New York Times & Washington Post

8. President Bush should respond to Osama bin Laden’s latest warning and truce offer as follows:

( ) Offer Louisiana, Mississippi, and all other red states ravaged by major hurricanes to OBL in exchange for Iraq and Afghanistan.

( ) Send Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Patty Murray and Hillary Clinton to Tora Bora in exchange for a luxury cave with a view.

9. In order to appear tough for the 2006 elections, Democrats should recommend the following steps to resolve the Iran nuclear weapons crisis:

( ) Immediately withdraw our “broken down” military from Iraq and deploy the troops to Iran with John Murtha in command.

( ) President Bush to send a personal note to Iran President Ahmadinejad telling him the Islamic messiah bought a GPS made in China and mistakenly ended up in a well on Bush’s ranch in Texas.

Bush’s note to include this warning: Ahmadinejad, shut down your centrifuges or we will force your messiah to watch “Brokeback Mountain” and eat Kosher food.

That’s it. You have successfully completed this objective assessment of your vulnerability as a practicing liberal. Congratulations!

Because we understand that self-esteem and confidence are very fragile commodities to liberals, we provide neither answers nor grades to this test. This is essential in order to protect the self-worth of those who may have performed poorly.

But rest assured:  You did GREAT just by reading all the questions without requesting a lawyer and/or psychiatrist!

[0] comments (4103 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Liberal Hypocrisy....

When President Bush announced that US funds would be used to help rebuild a Mosque damaged in Iraq this week, one would have expected an immediate firestorm of outrage from the ACLU & other liberal extremists.

A “Violation of separation of church and state!” they would have been expected to argue in typical knee-jerk reaction. But, oddly enough, not a peep out of the ACLU, or the other usual suspects on the loony left.

How to explain this indifference? After all, Bush’s proposal involves an assault on the constitutionally-required separation of church and state, which, although it does not actually exist, is nevertheless revered as holy by liberals.

Then I remembered.  Liberals pursue church-state arguments only when it concerns Christian
symbols and values. And they do so to advance their “Tear America Down” agenda.

In other words, its perfectly fine to spend scores of millions of US taxpayer dollars to rebuild a Mosque in Iraq, but not OK to display a cross or nativity scene in a public park at Christmas, or to delineate the Ten Commandments in a court house or other government building in America.

Once again, liberal hypocrisy proves very vexing. One is at a loss to explain how such misguided and harmful thinking is able to survive in a sophisticated, modern society like America.

Submitted by:  John W. Lillpop of San Jose, California

[0] comments (1564 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Left Wing???

Left-wing GrapeNuts

By Thomas E. Brewton

Instead of more mush from wimpy Peanut Carter, another left-wing icon offers a
solid proposal to chew on.

-------------------
After a nauseating diet of ‘sensitivity’ from Senators Kerry and Kennedy,
sprinkled with Peanut Carter’s encomiums for every left-wing terrorist from
Castro and Hugo Chavez to Yasser Arafat and Hamas, Harvard Law School’s Alan
Dershowitz advances a constructive proposal for new jurisprudence underlying
our foreign policy.  In the past a radical leftist, Professor Dershowitz
appears to be edging away from Utopia and toward the clear-eyed understanding
of human nature that informed the writers of our Constitution.

Carnegie-Mellon professor Tom Emerson alerted me to Tony Blankley’s editorial piece on soon-to-be-published “Preemption, A Knife That Cuts Both Ways” by Alan Dershowitz.  Mr. Blankley writes:

“The premise of his book is that in this age of terror, there is a potential
need for such devices as profiling, preventive detention, anticipatory mass
inoculation, prior restraint of dangerous speech, targeted extrajudicial
executions of terrorists and preemptive military action, including full-scale
preventive war.

In [Dershowitz’s] own words, from his introduction: “The shift from responding
to past events to preventing future harms is part of one of the most
significant but unnoticed trends in the world today. It challenges our
traditional reliance on a model of human behavior that presupposes a rational
person capable of being deterred by the threat of punishment. The classic
theory of deterrence postulates a calculating evildoer who can evaluate the
cost-benefits of proposed actions and will act Ñ and forbear from acting Ñ on
the basis of these calculations. It also presupposes society’s ability (and
willingness) to withstand the blows we seek to deter and to use the visible
punishment of those blows as threats capable of deterring future harms. These
assumptions are now being widely questioned as the threat of weapons of mass
destruction in the hands of suicide terrorists becomes more realistic and as
our ability to deter such harms by classic rational cost-benefit threats and
promises becomes less realistic.”

Mr. Blankley continues: “To see the difference between traditional Anglo-
American criminal jurisprudence and his proposed jurisprudence of prevention,
he raises the great maxim of criminal law: better that 10 guilty go free, than
one innocent be wrongly convicted. That principle led our law to require proof
beyond a reasonable doubt before conviction in criminal trials. Most of us
agree with that standard.

“But then Mr. Dershowitz updates the maxim thusly: “Is it better for ten
possibly preventable terrorist attacks to occur than for one possibly innocent
suspect to be preventively detained?” I would hunch that most people would not
be willing to accept ten September 11 attacks (30,000 dead) in order to protect
one innocent suspect from being locked up and questioned for a while.”

As I interpret Mr. Blankley, Professor Dershowitsz’s conclusion is that,
because this new imperative of preemption and its related devices conflict with
our traditional views about the Bill of Rights and moral conduct, we must
develop new procedures of judicial due process that both permit preemptive
action and preserve individual rights.  We must get beyond the knee-jerk
reactions of the ACLU that are aimed, not at preserving the rights of
individuals against majority greed, but at promoting hedonistic license in the
interests of liberal socialism.  We must put aside jockeying for political
advantage and focus on national survival.

Reality must be confronted before the next 9/11 and before Iran has nuclear
weapons.  That requires extensive and detailed debate in Congress and in the
media that will give the public more than sound bites, slogans, and mud-
slinging personal attacks against public officials and nominees. 

People must come to understand that there is no way to survive by ignoring the
threat of Islam’s savagery; they must understand that no amount of reason or
materialistic foreign aid will deter people whose religion orders them to kill,
pillage, and enslave all non-Muslims, people whose religion glorifies suicidal
killing of defenseless women and children.  Americans must face the inescapable
reality that, if jihadists are not killed preemptively, they will kill us. 
There is no middle ground.  Months of UN resolutions and weapons inspections
merely grant more time for jihadists to prepare another 9/11.

Rather than looking to foreign countries’ laws to apply the maxims of
socialistic class collectivism, as some Federal judges have advocated, we must
develop our own, realistic ways to do what must be done to survive, yet protect
the rights of individuals.

The key, I believe, lies in understanding the most fundamental purpose of
government, and the purpose for which men enter political societies.  As John
Locke stated it in 1689 and Samuel Adams and others restated it in 1776, the
essential purpose of government is to protect the private property rights of
individuals from arbitrary confiscation by the sovereign state.  Individuals
who can control their own property can thereby control the purse-strings of
government and ultimately resist any tyranny. 

To that end, we must reverse the New Deal jurisprudence that subjugated Fifth
Amendment rights to those of the First Amendment.  We must again see, as the
founders did, that political liberty cannot survive where the masses can take
from the few, merely to satisfy envy and greed.

This high-wire act requires balancing, on the one hand, tax cuts to protect
people’s property from the depredations of welfare-state entitlements and, on
the other hand, the military costs of defending ourselves, with inflation
waiting in the wings to devour us as it did under the Johnson and Nixon
administrations.

If Republicans and Democrats foolishly ignore the real dangers already
confronting us and continue to conceive the purpose of government to be the
pork-barrel welfare-state, there is no hope for survival against Islamic jihad
over the coming century of conflict.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

[0] comments (3939 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

The Mark!

Explaining Revelations: The Mark of the beast
http://www.thercg.org/books/wowitbor.html?gclid=COPd3YSnsIMCFRMbSAodsGOHFg

Also see www.grantjeffrey.com for further information as well.

[0] comments (4489 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Morality, etc.

Morality is not Ideology

By Thomas E. Brewton

Marxists and other liberals place religious or ethical dictates about the
sanctity of life under the negative category of ‘ideologies.’ They believe
that there is no reality beyond the material conditions of society controlled
by the regulations of the political state. 

-------------------
Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro contends that religion and morality are
“an ideological agenda that undermines science and the public health.”

The quotation appears in a February 22, 2006, article in the Hartford Courant
and my local newspaper, The Stamford Advocate, headlined “Advocates, Officials
Want `Morning-After Pill’ Widely Available.”

The lead paragraphs tell us, “The culture war over emergency contraceptives has
heated up on several fronts in recent weeks, with battles fought in pharmacies,
state legislatures, political campaigns and Congress.

“On Tuesday, advocates for sexual assault victims called on Connecticut
lawmakers to require that all Connecticut hospitals - including the state’s
four Roman Catholic hospitals - provide emergency contraception to rape
victims.”

Further along in the article we are informed, “In Washington, meanwhile,
lawmakers such as Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, have urged the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration to adopt recommendations made by its own advisory
committee more than two years ago and make Plan B available without a
prescription.

“Democrats say the FDA bowed to pressure from conservative groups in delaying
approval of over-the-counter emergency contraceptives.

“There is no reasonable medical evidence to support the FDA’s delay, only an
ideological agenda that undermines science and the public health,” DeLauro said
Tuesday. “The FDA must not allow ideology to supersede public health.”

DeLauro is saying that belief in the primacy of human life undermines science
and the public health.  How does this square with the Hippocratic Oath, the
classical version of which contains the following paragraph?

“I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make
a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive
remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.”

Moreover, the Wikipedia describes the Hippocratic Oath as, “...an oath
traditionally taken by physicians, in which certain ethical guidelines are laid
out.” In other words, ethics lie at the heart of the practice of medicine.
because sick people are in varying degrees at the mercy of the physician.

Additional light on this aspect is found in Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland’s
“Maimonides,” a biographical and doctrinal interpretation of the life and
teachings of the Jewish world’s most towering figure of the Middle Ages. 
People know of Maimonides as an authoritative interpreter of the the Talmud and
other Jewish scriptures.  Less well known is that he was also a justly famous
medical doctor.

Dr. Nuland is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University Medical
School, where he also teaches bioethics and medical history.  He writes that,
in the “Ethics of the Fathers” sections of his “Commentary on the Mishnah,”
Maimonides articulates a theme that appeared repeatedly in his writings:

“..[the purpose of wealth] should be to expend it for noble purposes, and to
employ it for the maintenance of the body and the preservation of life, so that
its owner may obtain a knowledge of God, in so far as that is vouchsafed unto
man.  From this point of view, the study of medicine has a very great influence
on the acquisition of the virtues and of the knowledge of God, as well as on
the attainment of true spiritual happiness.  Therefore, its study and
acquisition are pre-eminently important religious activities.”

Congresswoman DeLauro’s diametrically opposed use of the term ideology to
dismiss the ethical side of medicine, one may conjecture, derives from its
usage by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to represent metaphysical, or
spiritual, concepts as fictional ignorance, in contrast to the materialistic
forces of the atheistic world of socialism.

DeLauro is an apostate Roman Catholic who, after graduating from Marymount
College, migrated to the London School of Economics and Columbia University,
both major institutions for the advancement of socialism and other doctrines
arising from atheistic materialism.  Subsequently she became executive director
of EMILY’s List, an organization open only to women who are members of the
Democratic Party or the Australian Labor Party and who are advocates for
abortion.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avoid Vain Teachings
February 23, 2006

2 Timothy 2:15-18

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman
that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (16)
But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more
ungodliness. (17) And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is
Hymenaeus and Philetus; (18) Who concerning the truth have erred, saying
that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

Over the last few days, we have examined the need for understanding the
will of God.  Contained in the Bible is the wishes, commands, and
statutes of God’s will for man.  Diligent study, that rightly interprets
and divides the truth, is critical to the proper understanding.  Today
we look at the flip side of that coin

In verse 16, we find the contrast for study that produces the rightly
divided truth; that is vain and profane teachings. So many in the
religious world has a view that as long as we teach something about
Jesus, or something loosely based on the Bible, then it is a teaching
from God.  But Paul tells Timothy to avoid “Vain Babblings”.  The word
“vain” is interpreted as: having NO value.  In fact, he says it is even
worse than being empty.  This worthless teaching will INCREASE
ungodliness.  What Paul is telling us is, that teaching close to the
Bible, loosely based on the Bible, or intermixed with the opinions of
man, is leading people AWAY from God!

If someone asks for directions to Nashville, telling then to take the
I-65 north will “increase” them going in the wrong direction.  They
would have had a better chance of reaching their destination had they
not been LED in the wrong direction.

The proper study of God’s word will help us to understand when someone
is teaching us “Vain Babblings”.  When they do, let us do nothing more
or nothing less than that which Jesus authorizes us to do.

Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan

denpeg@alltel.net
(270) 234-0705

244 Ridgeway Drive
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[0] comments (4589 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

The TRUTH!

Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
February 22, 2006

2 Timothy 2:15-18

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman
that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (16)
But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more
ungodliness. (17) And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is
Hymenaeus and Philetus; (18) Who concerning the truth have erred, saying
that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.

The last two days we have examined the importance of studying the word
of God. But that really is only half of the equation.  The other half
comes in our comprehension.  Paul also gives Timothy specific direction
in that regard.

He didn’t just command Timothy to study a lot.  That would be like
giving someone the advise, if they wanted to get to Florida, to get in
their car and drive.  Is just driving or driving a lot going to get you
to Florida?  Not if you go north on I-65.

Paul tells Timothy to study, RIGHTLY dividing the word of truth.  There
are right ways and wrong ways to divide the truth.  There are certain
principles, when reading God’s word, that must be applied.  We certainly
do not have time to cover this subject comprehensively, but one the most
important principles is CONTEXT.

We must understand who is writing that text, when it was written, to
whom it was written and the circumstances behind the writing.  For
instance, why aren’t any of us building an ark?  It certainly is
commanded in Genesis 6:14.  Because that commandment was limited to just
Noah.  Understanding the proper context helps us to rightly divide the
truth.

If we do not properly apply this passage we may be very busy studying,
but it may not get us any closer to God’s approval because we could be
heading in the wrong direction.

Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan

denpeg@alltel.net
(270) 234-0705

244 Ridgeway Drive
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

[0] comments (3971 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

A Great Truth!

WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

SPYCHIPS

Spychips is a great website to visit. It is a continuation of the book Spychips which deals with RFID technology and micro-chip implants in humans as a tracking device. This is serious stuff and I highly recommend people get involved at www.spychips.com . For my last article concerning this issue click here: http://newsbyus.com/more.php?id=2141_0_1_0_M

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IN THE NEWS:

Saddam’s WMDs, Russia, and the cover-up
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/060220

Microchips being implanted in humans – rise of the Anti-Christ?
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06021607.html

Over 500 Scientists claim they doubt Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2732

SUPPORT THE FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT
http://newsbyus.com/more.php?id=2136_0_1_0_M

Russia moved Saddam’s WMDs says ex-official
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/18/233023.shtml?s=et

[0] comments (3939 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Performance...

William Jennings Bryan: Radical Reformer

By Thomas E. Brewton

Despite his influential role in national politics between 1896 and and 1915,
Bryan is known (if at all) to the present generation only as an ignorant
buffoon who was ridiculed for his belief in literal interpretation of the Bible
by ACLU attorney Clarence Darrow in the 1925 Scopes Money Trial.

-------------------
A recent Wall Street Journal review of “A Godly Hero,” by Michael Kazin, the
latest biography of Bryan, puts a broader and more accurate frame around his
career.  As reviewer James Grant writes,"Bryan—he of the Scopes trial and
the Cross of Gold speech; orator, journalist, evangelist and perennial
Democratic presidential hopeful—tirelessly worked to take from the rich to
give to the poor. Or, rather, to take from the other rich. If you were
wondering whom to thank for the federal income tax, you may begin by thanking
Bryan. His voice was the wind in the sails of what became the 16th Amendment to
the Constitution.

“His latest biographer, Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown
University, does thank Bryan: “In his advocacy of a stronger, more
interventionist state, Bryan calmed his party’s ancestral dread of federal
power. Every Democratic president from Woodrow Wilson to Lyndon Johnson would
reap the rewards of his apostasy.”

Paradoxically, Bryan has been indelibly painted in the public mind as an enemy
of liberal-socialism whose ignorant faith in the Bible’s truth was a conclusive
validation of teaching atheistic Darwinian evolution in our public schools. 

William Jennings BryanÕs celebrated ÒCross of GoldÓ speech in the 1896
Presidential campaign was the Populist Party’s rallying cry in the midst of a
serious economic recession.  Bryan lost the election to Republican William
McKinley, who did the opposite of what the Populists demanded, strengthening
the gold standard and raising tariffs. Prosperity returned almost immediately,
leaving a moribund Populist party that never again was a factor in national
politics.

Their place was assumed by the Progressives, who formed separate political
parties in 1912 and 1924.  Progressives were the first organized political
movement in this country to identify themselves with the emphasis of socialism
on scientific management of society, what Franklin Roosevelt two decades later
was to introduce as State-Planning.  Progressives metamorphasized into todayÕs
socialist liberals, more or less officially in 1924, when they united with the
Socialist party to support the Presidential candidacy of Robert M. La
Follette.

While the Progressives were heavily represented in Midwestern farm states like
Minnesota and Wisconsin, they were equally the party of the academic community
and big-city intellectuals.  American Progressives before World War I had come
to believe that AmericaÕs future lay in socialism and rejection of religious
and moral Òignorance.Ó

This background explains why today’s liberals, fearing the negative political
connotations of the “L” word, have reverted to calling themselves
Progressives.

ProgressivesÕ infatuation was characterized by a blind, unquestioning faith in
ÒscientificÓ management and social engineering.  The individual citizen, they
thought, was incapable of directing his own affairs, either to his own good, or
to the well-being of the National State.  Hence the thesis of Herbert Croly in
“The Promise of American Life” (1909) and Walter Lippmann in his “A Preface to
Politics” (1914) that AmericaÕs competitive position in the world required
putting affairs of state into the hands of trained managers and scientists,
under a strong leader.  Lippmann, then fresh out of Harvard, where he had been
president of the student socialist organization, joined with Croly in 1914 to
found “The New Republic,” which became the flagship periodical of liberal
socialism in the United States.

They were anxious to have an activist President, of the sort envisioned by
Bryan and the Populists a generation earlier, who could overpower the
traditionalist mind-set of Congress and the Federal judiciary of that era. 
Herbert Croly proclaimed that the nation was mired in mediocrity by its
devotion to Jeffersonian individuality.  A vigorous leader was needed to break
through the social and constitutional barriers that separated us from
scientifically-managed greatness.  Political power, Croly insisted, must be
taken from the states and collectivized at the national level.  Moreover, the
constitutional powers of Congress must be tightly constrained and subsumed by
the powerful personality needed for the presidency.  The United States required
NietzscheÕs iron-willed Super Man.

For intellectuals before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Germany was the
model to emulate.  In the 1860s, Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, had
single-handedly, by sheer personal brilliance and diplomatic dexterity, pulled
together the divergent German principalities of the old Holy Roman Empire to
form the new German Empire under the Prussian Kaiser.  By the 1870s, Germany
had the worldÕs most admired universities, the most advanced chemistry and
physics, as well as the leading medical system.  In 1881, Bismarck had
established the worldÕs first national welfare system, created, as he said, to
make the German people more dependent upon the National State and therefore
more easily herded like cattle.

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal ideas about the need for a collectivized
political state came directly from Fascist Italy and from the Soviet Union, but
the path to public acceptance of socialistic state-planning had been prepared
by William Jennings Bryan and Germany’s Otto von Bismarck.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve got wonderful - OUTSTANDING - news to share with you about our effort to
stop the anti-war Democrats from taking over Congress.

In the past week fundraising for our campaign has reached its highest level to
date.  This comes just as a new poll shows our campaign is surging.  And on
top of that, in the next week we will be going up on the air with a series of
TV commercials to promote our conservative Republican campaign for Congress.

But for right now, I’d like to see us surpass this past week’s record
fundraising.  With the liberal Democrat anti-war candidate, Francine Busby,
having raised over $520,000 we still have a ways to go to catch up to her.

BUT WE’RE NOW CATCHING UP TO HER!

You can contribute online - any amount up to $4,200 per individual (or $8,400
per married couple) for the Special Election and Primary Election.

Contribute online here:  http://www.kaloogian/contribute

Or mail in a contribution to:

Kaloogian for Congress
P.O. Box 1863
Sacramento, CA 95812

Thank you very much - and let’s continue to move America forward by defeating
the candidates being backed by the likes of Howard Dean, Cindy Sheehan and
Michael Moore.

Sincerely Yours,

Howard Kaloogian
Conservative Republican for U.S. Congress
http://www.KaloogianForCongress.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: In Illinois(we’ve been told), the Day of Truth will be on April 20,
following the Day of Silence on April 19. Double check your local school
plans.

-----------------------------------

PLEASE TELL OTHERS OF THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE:

Day of Truth

The Truth Cannot Be Silenced

On Thursday, April 27, students from across the country will stand together on
the Day of Truth...will you be one of them?

This year marks the second year of the Day of Truth, which was established to
counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing
viewpoint from a Christian perspective.

Last year more than 1,100 students from over 350 schools participated and
shared the Truth with their classmates. But there are so many more who need to
hear the Truth, spoken in love.

The Day of Truth was established to counter the promotion of the homosexual
agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective.

In the past, students who have attempted to speak against the promotion of the
homosexual agenda have been censored or, in some cases, punished for their
beliefs. It is important that students stand up for their First Amendment
right to hear and speak the Truth about human sexuality in order to protect
that freedom for future generations. The Day of Truth provides an opportunity
to publicly exercise our free speech rights.

Participating students are encouraged to wear T-shirts and pass out cards (not
during class time) with the following message:

I am speaking the Truth to break the silence.
Silence isn’t freedom. It’s a constraint.
Truth tolerates open discussion, because the Truth emerges when healthy
discourse is allowed.
By proclaiming the Truth in love, hurts will be halted, hearts will be
healed, and lives will be saved.

The Day of Truth is scheduled for April 27, 2006. This is the day after GLSEN
(The Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network) will sponsor the “Day of
Silence.” GLSEN’s Day of Silence encourages students to remain silent
throughout the day. It is part of their overall strategy to change how our
society perceives homosexual behavior. But the Day of Silence is a misnomer,
because what is truly being silenced is the Truth.

For more information, see www.dayoftruth.org .

[0] comments (1966 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

CHIPS...

The REAL Threat to our Privacy...

by

Rob Hood

I have heard many criticize the Bush administration for allowing the NSA International Counter-Surveillance to go on like it has without warrants. The fact of the matter is that the left thinks that the unwarranted phone taps by mostly a supercomputer is an invasion of our privacy while the Europeans are now implementing the ultimate tool to destroy privacy in the human race.

Lifesite News recently published an article about microchips being implanted in humans that can contain vital data like medical history, driving record, criminal record, and can also be used as a tracking tool. The link to this is :
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06021607.html Anyone who may have seen the hit show CRIMINAL MINDS last week witnessed a person that was psychotic who thought the governernment was watching him and that he needed his microchip removed.

While this show was fiction, just how far away from this are we really becoming. There are already microchip implants being installed in children throughout the world as we speak for the purposes of tracking down the child if they are kidnapped or lost. While this may sound like a good idea, it may well be the worst we have ever come up with. Any Christian who has a knowledge and teaching of the book of Revelation knows that when the Ant-Christ comes to power, he will require all to have a mark in their right hand or forehead and they will not be allowed to buy or sell without this mark.

Many say that the mark will read 666, but that is not the case. 666 is the number of the man who is the anti-Christ. Hebrew names often can be decoded as numbers. This number when decoded will give the name of the person who is the Anti-Christ. The mark must be in the form of a micro chip implant to be ale to buy or sell. Credit Card companies are talking of moving in that direction and there is talk all over the world about a “cashless” society where everyone pays with a “key”, card, or micro-chip. The idea had been around for years, but only now it’s becoming reality.

There are two really good books about this. Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre have written tow books called The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance and Spychips. These books go much more into detail about how corporate America is incorporating the idea of these dangerous chips to organizations like the European Union and the common workplace. While there are people who are willingly implanting these chips into themselves, just how long will it be before we are required to do the same?

I simply don’t like the idea of having a chip implanted into my skin and letting the government know where I am at all times, what I buy, why I buy it, and other things that are personal. I work with RF technology every day and know how complicated it can get, but at the same time know that RF technology has its flaws and some chips can be FRIED just by common static electricity, so I wonder how these chips will hold up under mild electric shock by those wanting to remove it or destroy its transmission sequence.

For now I’ll stick with the technology that works with the aid of fellow human hands. However when the day comes for the beast to call for his people to be identified, I will resist the effort and so should you. I highly recommend you do some research into this threat for yourself so that you may know how to counter those who wish to implement this dangerous technology into your life. To do so, just google “RFID” or “Spychips”. Good luck and don’t get caught!

* Books by Grant Jeffrey at www.grantjeffrey.com is also helpful.

RESOURCES: Lifesite News @ www.lifesite.net

ABOUT ROB HOOD

Rob Hood grew up in rural Mississippi and was rooted in the doctrine of the Southern Baptist Convention and its teachings of Biblical right and wrong, accountability to a higher authority, and the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was a participant in Bible Drill for nine years, a Southern Baptist Convention program devoted to educating children and youth with scriptures from the Bible for use in everyday life situations. He graduated from Holmes Community College in Grenada, Mississippi with an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree in Electronics Technology and is currently employed as an Electronics Technician with HAM radio equipment manufacturer. He is also a Federal Communications Commission licensed Technician Class HAM radio operator and lives in North Mississippi.

Mr. Hood is also the author of Issues That Matter : America’s Moral Battleground and a columnist for five of the news/commentary sites of the Move Off Network at www.moveoff.net ) in addition to The Kentucky Conservative and also runs his own site and his own blog. You can check out Rob Hood’s blog at http://robhood.us ( click on blog ). Check out his regular site at www.standfortruthonline.com .

[0] comments (3920 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Men are Disappearing?

Western Culture is Destroying MEN
http://catholicinsight.com/online/social/article_646.shtml

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

STAND FOR TRUTH
www.standfortruthonline.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[0] comments (3239 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Banking on Religion...

The World Bank Gets (Socialist) Religion

By Thomas E. Brewton

Experience is said to be one of the best teachers.  Not, however, with the
evergreen hypothesis that income redistribution is the solution to all of
mankind’s problems.

-------------------
World Bank policy theorists have just ‘discovered’ the universally disastrous
idea of socialistic income redistribution.

Whether they call themselves liberals, Progressives, or socialists, secular
materialists cling to the hypothesis that unequal income distribution causes
all of society’s problems.  According to the hypothesis, crime and wars would
cease to occur if everyone had nearly equal income and if all of society’s
goods and services were available at no cost to the individual, only on an as-
needed basis.  Everyone would cooperate joyously to achieve the Marxian ideal
of “from each according to ability, to each according to need.”

Theoretically, because everyone is working as part of the collectivized
‘democratic’ whole, everyone works harder.  Moreover, because the political
state’s planners would be running business, there will be more efficiency and
higher productivity levels.

This hypothesis has repeatedly been tested and failed in the laboratory of
history, most memorably for us in the catastrophe of President Johnson’s Great
Society that created our vast panoply of entitlements to welfare-state
payments.  Crime rates soared, education fell into chaos, drug abuse became
rampant, illegitimate birth rates rose to levels never before seen anywhere,
sexual promiscuity and marital infidelity became accepted patterns, and the
highest rates of inflation in the nation’s history wiped out the purchasing
power of a whole generation’s life-time savings.

The same story was told in the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Germany, France, the
UK before Margaret Thatcher, and in the Scandinavian countries.

Ignoring all this, locking its vision firmly onto the Brave New World of
socialist materialism, the World Bank is about to waste enormous amounts of the
world’s financial resources on another expedition to find the pot of gold at
the end of the rainbow.

According to a story in the Saturday, February 18, 2006, edition of the Washington Post, “The authors of the World Bank report, “Poverty Reduction and Growth: Virtuous and Vicious Circle,” recognize that a country can’t necessarily grow its way out of poverty and that poverty can be a huge drag on economies and on growth. Poor regions lacking in infrastructure fail to attract investment. Poor families, faced with substandard schools and high costs, are less likely to invest in the education of their children. And, as has been particularly clear in recent years, countries unable to moderate income disparities face social tensions that jeopardize business. As the authors quantify it, when poverty levels increase by 10 percent, growth decreases by 1 percent and investment is reduced by up to 8 percent of a country’s gross domestic product.”

The report writers are saying that a country’s GDP declines because poverty
increased.  That is a tautology, a statement that says “Ice is cold because
it’s frozen.”

According to the World Bank report writers, the solution is, “Converting the
state into an agent that promotes equality of opportunities and practices
efficient redistribution is, perhaps, the most critical challenge Latin America
faces in implementing better policies that simultaneously stimulate growth and
reduce inequality and poverty.”

Let’s look at the experience of Sweden, the poster-child for world socialism. 
With some of the highest redistributive taxes in the world, Sweden has near
income equality.  Far from raising productivity and incentivizing workers to
work harder, Sweden’s socialistic inequality has incentivized workers to game
the system and free-load to the maximum.

According to a New York Times article dated September 24, 2002, “A government
report this month showed that one in 20 Swedish workers were on sick leave for
more than a week last year, double the European Union average, and that paid
sick leave averaged nearly 25 days, up from 14 days in 1998. An average of
430,000 Swedish employees, 10 percent of the country’s work force, is on sick
leave at any given time.

“According to another study, carried out for the Confederation of Swedish
Enterprise by the research firm Temo, 62 percent of the employees interviewed
said they had taken sick leave when they were not really sick and that they
felt there was nothing wrong in doing so.

“.....The government pays a benefit equal to 80 percent of a person’s salary
during sick leave, no matter how long, and an additional 10 percent in what is
called “contract insurance” for the first three months. This public outlay has
grown to $5.3 billion annually from just over $2 billion in 1998.

“....."What happens is that the person becomes `clientified,’ “ he said. “If
the responsibility for recovering is taken away from you, you lose the
motivation to get better. If I get up every morning and ask myself if I have
any ailments, I will find them.”

“A study he did showed that when the government made benefits more generous,
people took more days off. In 1998, Prime Minister Goran Persson increased the
government’s benefit from 75 percent to 80 percent of salary, and the average
number of days spiked upward each year thereafter, from 11.1 in 1997 to 24.4 in
2001.”

In the Wall Street Journal edition of January 24, 2006. Fredrik Segerfeldt, a
director at Timbro, a think tank based in Stockholm, wrote:

“....Sweden saw impressive productivity growth during the 1990s: 2.5% per year.
But productivity growth per capita, a more relevant measurement, topped only
four industrialized countries.

“According to Eurostat, Sweden has the EU’s smallest amount of business
investment as a share of GDP. The U.N. reports that Sweden is among only 12
countries in the world with a net outflow of investments.

“.… our nominal unemployment rate of 6.3%, according to Eurostat, is the
ninth lowest in the EU. Yet even trade union specialists put total unemployment
-- including those on sick leave, in early retirement or in job retraining
programs—at 20-25%. Between 1995 and 2003, employment grew faster in 11 of
the 14 other “old” EU countries than in Sweden. In fact, the private sector
employs 350,000 fewer people today than in 1965, despite population growth of
about one million. The public sector—at the taxpayer’s expense—picks up
the slack.

“Lagging employment growth is also a result of the low level of
entrepreneurship. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports that only four of
the 34 countries it surveyed have a lower level of entrepreneurial activity
than Sweden. The number of self-employed Swedes has fallen by half since the
early 1960s. Today more Swedes are in early retirement than are self-employed.

“.......Despite an increase of almost 70% in spending since 1979, Sweden’s
public health-care system is coming apart at the seams. The Swedish Association
of Local Authorities and Regions reports that doctors see an average of four
patients a day, down from nine in 1975. According to the Swedish Institute for
Health Economics, doctors spend 50-80% of their time on administrative tasks.
The number of hospital beds is down by 80% since 1975. More than 50% of
patients wait over 12 weeks for an examination and then at least 12 weeks more
for treatment.

“........At the heart of the “Swedish social model” are the generous welfare
benefits. And it is true that Sweden has the highest proportional government
social spending in the EU.”

If income redistribution can’t do the job in Sweden, a country with a high
level of education, what reason is there to think that it has a chance in Latin
America?

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

[0] comments (3862 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Genesis...

Q: How often is the book of Genesis quoted in the rest of the Bible?

A: Genesis is quoted from or referred to in the rest of the Bible more than any other book of the Bible.

In the New Testament alone, there are at least 200 quotations from—or references to—Genesis. In fact, there are over 100 citations or direct references in the New Testament to the first eleven chapters of Genesis. And every one of those eleven chapters is referred to somewhere in the New Testament.

Not only that, but each New Testament author refers somewhere in his writings to Genesis, chapters one to eleven in particular. And Jesus Himself quoted or referred to the first eleven chapters of Genesis on six different occasions.

If Genesis isn’t true, then Jesus Christ would have been lying. Also, the rest of the Bible collapses, since every biblical doctrine of theology—directly or indirectly—is founded in the book of Genesis. That’s why Genesis is referred to so often throughout the Bible.

Believing Genesis is the key to fully understanding God’s Word.

* A message from Answers In Genesis at www.answersingenesis.org .

[0] comments (3978 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

The Church!

The Church That Will Not Burn

by

Rob Hood

I am sad to hear of the awful church burnings going on in the great state of Alabama these days and my heart goes out to those fellow Christians whose sanctuary has been destroyed by someone who does not understand what they are doing.  The arsonists simply do not understand that they are not burning churches, they are burning man-made houses of worship. The church is the people that meet in those houses, not the buildings themselves.

Take a look at what Jesus told Peter about the church lasting forever : “You are Peter and on this Rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it” ( Matthew 16:18). Jesus is the head of the church, not a preacher or a priest. He does offer the gift of salvation and forgiveness to all. While the people responsible for these Alabama church fires may not like what the church stands for, it will not die because one day Jesus will return to gather his people and to proclaim judgment on the nations of the world.

While these church burnings are devastating to the members, we must also remember to do what Jesus would have done and that would be to forgive. However, Jesus would not like people desecrating the house of God as we read in the story of Jesus chasing the money changers from the temple in Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11: 12-19, and Luke 19: 45-48.  I feel that these arsonists can’t run forever. Sooner or later they will get caught and even if they never get caught here on earth, God knows who they are and they will have to answer to those fires one day when they face Him. If they repent, then they will be forgiven by God, but the State of Alabama might not be so forgiving.

While these buildings burn and are destroyed , we have to remember that the real power lies in the people, not the sanctuary. No one has the might, power, or authority to destroy souls or to take away salvation. That is the one thing that mere mortal man cannot touch.  These churches will be rebuilt here on earth, but one day God’s people will go home to a paradise that no evil can touch. What a day that will be when we can live in peace with no fear of death, sickness, or any other form of illness and live without fear of what “man” can do to us. There will be no more fighting, no more war, no more tears, no more pain ever again. Those things that Satan put upon us in the Garden of Eden will be lifted and the devil and his followers will never have the powers to harm another living soul again.  The devil had his death warrant signed when Jesus died on the cross and rose again the third day. Death was defeated and so was evil. It remains only temporarily, but one day when we see Him coming, we will know that the end of evil is at hand.

ABOUT ROB HOOD

Rob Hood grew up in rural Mississippi and was rooted in the doctrine of the Southern Baptist Convention and its teachings of Biblical right and wrong, accountability to a higher authority, and the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was a participant in Bible Drill for nine years, a Southern Baptist Convention program devoted to educating children and youth with scriptures from the Bible for use in everyday life situations. He graduated from Holmes Community College in Grenada, Mississippi with an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree in Electronics Technology and is currently employed as an Electronics Technician with HAM radio equipment manufacturer. He is also a Federal Communications Commission licensed Technician Class HAM radio operator and lives in North Mississippi.

Mr. Hood is also the author of Issues That Matter : America’s Moral Battleground and a columnist for five of the news/commentary sites of the Move Off Network at www.moveoff.net ) in addition to The Kentucky Conservative and also runs his own site and his own blog. You can check out Rob Hood’s blog at http://robhood.us ( click on blog ). Check out his regular site at www.standfortruthonline.com .

[0] comments (3859 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Values...

THE WAR ON CHRISTIANS and the Values Voter in 2006
Vision America Conference
www.visionamerica.us for more details

March 27-28, 2006

Washington, DC - Omni Shoreham Hotel
Special Hotel Rate available for attendees
$229 a night (March 26 - 29)
Available until February 27th
Call reservations at 202-234-0700

Early Registration through Feb. 15th
$125 for Individuals and $225 for Couples
$50 for Students (no meals included)

Registration after Feb. 15th
$149 for Individuals and $249 for Couples
$50 for Students (no meals included)

Call or e-mail for more details
866-522-5582
mail@visionamerica.us

--------------------------------
CONFERENCE Tentative Schedule
March 27-28, 2006
Updated as of 1/20/06

--------------
March 27
---------------

12:30 pm - 5:30 pm Plenary Session

12:30- 1:00 Welcome and Invocation

1:00-1:30 Speaker Ron Luce

1:30-2:30 Panel: Jews Confront The War On Christians

Jeff Ballabon (Center for Jewish Values) moderator
Don Feder (Vision America and Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation)
Rabbi Aryeh Spero (Caucus for America)
Michael Horowitz (Hudson Institute)
Joseph Ben Ami (Institute for Canadian Values)

2:30-3:00 Afternoon Coffee Break

3:00-4:00 Panel: The Gay Agenda: America Won’t Be Happy
Peter Sprigg (Family Research Council) moderator
Bob Knight (Concerned Women For America)
Peter LaBarbera (Illinois Family Institute)
Lou Sheldon (Traditional Values Coalition)
Stephen Bennett (Stephen Bennett Ministries)
Brian Camenker (Massachusetts Parents Rights Coalition)

4:00-4:30 Speaker—Phyllis Schlafly
4:30-5:30 Panel: The ACLU and Radical Secularism: Driving God from our Public
Life
Williams Greene (rightmarch.com), moderator
Phillip Jauregui (Vision America Action)
Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel)
Janice Crouse (CWFA)
Bill Donohue (Catholic League)
Mike Johnson (Alliance Defense Fund)

5:30-6:30 Break

6:30-9:30 Banquet, Speakers Rick Scarborough and Senator John Cornyn

---------------
March 28
----------------

8:00-8:30—Worship

8:30-12:00 Plenary Session
8:30-9:30 Panel: Hollywood: Christians Through A Distorted Lens
Ted Baehr (MovieGuide.org)
Rebecca Hagelin (Heritage Foundation)
Don Feder (Vision America)

9:30-10:00 Speaker Rod Parsley

10:00-10:30 Morning Coffee Break
10:30-11:00 Speaker—Gary Bauer

11:00-12:00 Panel: The News Media Megaphone for Anti-Faith Values
Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), moderator
Don Irvine (Accuracy In Media)
Tim Graham (Media Research Center)
Bill Fancher (American Family Radio)
Janet Folger (Faith2Action)

12:00-12:30 Break

12:30-2:00 Lunch Speakers, Congressman Tom DeLay and Pastor Laurence White

2:00-6:00 Plenary Session

2:00-3:00 Panel: The Judiciary: Overruling God
Jeff Shafer (Alliance Defense Fund) moderator
Phyllis Schlafly (Eagle Forum)
Rep. Todd Akin
Rep. Louis Gohmert
Manny Miranda (Third Branch Conference)

3:00-3:15 Afternoon Coffee Break

3:15-4:15 Panel: Taking Our Faith to the Ballot Box
Bill Federer (Amerisearch) moderator
Larry Cirignano (Catholic Vote)
Gary Cass (Center for Reclaiming America)
Richard Bott, Sr. (Bott Communications)
Herb Titus (former law school professor)
3:00-3:30 Press Conference for Declaration of American Restoration

4:15-4:45 Speaker—Janet Parshall

4:45-5:15 Speaker—Senator Sam Brownback

5:15-5:45 Speaker—Alan Keyes

5:45-6:00 Final Business and Benediction

6:00 Conference Conclusion
------------------------

[0] comments (3937 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Media Hypocrisy...

Main Stream Media Hypocrisy

By Nathan Tabor

At one time, the New York Times was considered the newspaper of record in this country.  It soberly proclaimed “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Aspiring journalists looked at the Times as the gold-standard for writing and reporting.  If an item appeared in the Times, it was serious business.  Statesmen routinely consulted the Times, especially when it came to foreign news that might affect U.S. policy.

But in recent years, new questions have been raised about the credibility of the Times.  A reporter named Jayson Blair disgraced the paper through plagiarism.  In an interview at the time of Blair’s exit from the Times, Blair said, “"I am sorry to hear that more people have fallen in this sequence of events that I had unleashed. I wish the rolling heads had stopped with mine.”

But there was more wrong with the Times than just Jayson Blair.  Time and time again, it has proven to be a publication with an extremist editorial policy and a radical left-wing news agenda.  The concept of “fair and balanced” simply does not enter into the editorial mind-set of the Times staff.  To the Times, Republicans are simply lying ideologues who are completely out of touch with the American people.  For Times reporters, a strong defense is unnecessary; abortion is simply a rite of passage for women; and homosexual marriage should not simply be tolerated, it should be celebrated.  The Times never met a conservative it ever liked.

Still, one would think that the Times would try not to alienate members of an entire religious group.  Nevertheless, it has. And the paper’s editors went out of their way to do it.

The Times refused to print Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad—cartoons which are considered extremely offensive to Islamic believers. Yet, the Times had no qualms about printing an image of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in elephant dung. That’s right—elephant dung.

Some Catholics are so offended by this that they have launched a boycott of the Times. Yet, it’s not just Catholics who should be concerned about this.  Next, the Times might decide to print a picture of Jesus covered in manure. In essence, the Times has no problem respecting religious beliefs—as long as those beliefs belong to a group other than one that claims Jesus as its savior.

As one member of the clergy, Father John Trigilio of Pennsylvania, said, “Toleration of such sacrilege is not diplomatic, it is cowardly and irresponsible.  We must peacefully but steadfastly express our outrage or suffer the consequences of becoming completely irrelevant and incredible.”

Let’s face it. There are far too many Christians today who are willing to turn a blind eye to media reports that mock their religion.  They don’t want to make waves, and they consider the attacks to be “no big deal.” But what has such an attitude brought us? “Holiday” trees at Christmas time, an absence of prayer in schools, and a ban on the posting of the Ten Commandments inside courthouses.  They forget that the founding fathers didn’t want freedom FROM religion—they wanted freedom of religion. 

It’s time that the hypocrisy stops.  We owe it to our children to defend our faith in the public square—and in the pages of our major newspapers.  Certainly, if the Times printed a picture of Anne Frank covered in elephant dung, Jewish readers would be outraged—and rightly so.  We need to show similar outrage whenever a newspaper such as the Times attacks Christianity. 

After all, faced with such a situation, what would Jesus do? 

Copyright © 2006 by Nathan Tabor

Nathan Tabor is a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in public policy. He is a contributing editor at www.theconservativevoice.com and his 60-second commentaries are heard on over 250 stations daily. Visit www.aconservativemoment.com to hear them. You can contact him at Nathan@nathantabor.com

[0] comments (3876 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Kaloogian...

A message from Howard Kaloogian:

It’s been reported now several times over:  who controls Congress - whether the
Democrats or Republicans - could very well be determined by who wins the 1st
Congressional battle in the nation that takes place on April 11th, 2006.

That’s when the Special Election to fill the seat vacated by Randy Duke
Cunningham takes place - for which I am the conservative Republican candidate
running.

To win this seat we will need conservatives from around the nation to match the
efforts by anti-war, liberal Democrat activists from all over the country who
have contributed to the Democrat candidate, Francine Busby.  Several hundred
activists are even traveling cross-country to walk precincts for her.  That’s
how determined the Left is to take back the Congress from Republicans.

But I have some great news to report - conservatives from around the nation are
mobilizing to fight back.

This week, national newspaper ads promoting our conservative Republican
campaign for Congress have run in the Washington Times (national edition) and
Human Events (the newspaper Ronald Reagan said was his “favorite” to read).

You can see a copy of the ads that ran here:
http://www.kaloogianforcongress.com/newsletter.asp?ID08=53

Friends, we’re going to meet the challenge of the anti-war “Blame America
First” crowd and win this race.  Thank you so much for your support, your
prayers and your contributions.

-- Howard Kaloogian
Conservative Republican for U.S. Congress
http://www.KaloogianForCongress.com

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

FROM DENNIS HOGAN:

One Thing is Needful

Luke 10:38-42

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into
a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into
her house. (39) And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at
Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. (40) But Martha was cumbered about much
serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my
sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.
(41) And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art
careful and troubled about many things: (42) But one thing is needful:
and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from
her.

Yesterday, we looked at the question from Martha.  Today I want to
concentrate on the specific answer that Jesus gave to her in response to
that question.

We have pointed out many times over the last several months, the
emphasis that God puts on the spiritual rather than the physical.  The
physical will perish at our death or at the end of time, but the
spiritual will endure forever.  Therefore we need to give more earnest
emphasis on the spiritual aspect of life rather than the physical.

That is exactly the message that Jesus gives to Martha.  Martha was
doing what most of us would do.  She made sure that she made the “right
impression” for her important guest.  The house has to be clean.  The
menu has to be perfect, etc.  But that is not what is important to
Jesus.  He said, One thing is Needful.  What was that Needful thing? 
Mary had it right.  To concentrate on the words of our Savior.

We spend so much time on our careers and our free time.  But we too need
to give diligence to that which is needful.  Is there a proper balance
to our TV time versus the time that we spend at the feet of Jesus,
studying his word?  Is there an appropriate proportion between our free
time and prayer, service and worship?  Let us “Choose the good part”! 
Let us choose that which is needful!

Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan

denpeg@alltel.net
(270) 234-0705

244 Ridgeway Drive
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

[0] comments (3953 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Jesus Cares...

Reflecting the SON

Do You Not Care?

Luke 10:38-42

Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into
a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into
her house. (39) And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at
Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. (40) But Martha was cumbered about much
serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my
sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.
(41) And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art
careful and troubled about many things: (42) But one thing is needful:
and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from
her.

In our text today, Jesus is visiting his close friends Mary & Martha
(and possibly Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead).  And an incredible
question is raised to Jesus by Martha:  Do You Not Care?  This is really
kind of embarrassing to think about in context of his magnificent sacrifice.

Let’s look at the context of the question.  Jesus has come to their home
and begins to teach.  There seems to be a small gathering of people,
maybe his apostles, maybe friends of the sisters.  Regardless of who it
is, Jesus is teaching and Mary decides to listen to what Jesus has to
say.  Martha, however, stays “in the kitchen” and continues to serve in
a physical manner.  She gets agitated that Mary is not assisting in the
preparations and asks this question of Jesus.

We must understand, that sometimes, God doesn’t care about certain
things, because our priorities are out of line.  God may not care that
we are a millionaire.  God may not care if we are driving the nicest
car.  God may not care that we live in the nicest neighborhood. 
Ultimately what he does care about is that we put him first and love him
with all of our heart soul and mind.

Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan

denpeg@alltel.net
(270) 234-0705

244 Ridgeway Drive
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

[0] comments (4372 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

The Untold Truth...

A Message from Mission America ( www.missionamerica.com ):

The Truth About the Homosexual Rights Movement

By Ronald G. Lee

New Oxford Review
(New Oxford Review is a Catholic monthly magazine. Visit their website at http://www.newoxfordreview.org/
)
February 2006, Volume LXXIII, Number 2.
© 2006 New Oxford Review. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission.

There was a “gay” bookstore called Lobo’s in Austin, Texas, when I was living
there as a grad student. The layout was interesting. Looking inside from the
street all you saw were books. It looked like any other bookstore. There was a
section devoted to classic “gay” fiction by writers such as Oscar Wilde,
Gertrude Stein, and W.H. Auden. There were biographies of prominent “gay”
icons, some of whom, like Walt Whitman, would probably have accepted the
homosexual label, but many of whom, like Whitman’s idol, President Lincoln, had
been commandeered for the cause on the basis of evidence no stronger than a bad
marriage or an intense same-sex friendship. There were impassioned modern “gay”
memoirs, and historical accounts of the origins and development of the “gay
rights” movement. It all looked so innocuous and disarmingly bourgeois. But if
you went inside to browse, before long you noticed another section, behind the
books, a section not visible from the street. The pornography!
section. Hundreds and hundreds of pornographic videos, all involving men, but
otherwise catering to every conceivable sexual taste or fantasy. And you would
notice something else too. There were no customers in the front. All the
customers were in the back, rooting through the videos. As far as I know, I am
the only person who ever actually purchased a book at Lobo’s. The books were,
in every sense of the word, a front for the porn.

So why waste thousands of dollars on books that no one was going to buy? It was
clear from the large “on sale” section that only a pitifully small number of
books were ever purchased at their original price. The owners of Lobo’s were
apparently wasting a lot of money on gay novels and works of gay history, when
all the real money was in pornography. But the money spent on books wasn’t
wasted. It was used to purchase a commodity that is more precious than gold to
the gay rights establishment. Respectability. Respectability and the appearance
of normalcy. Without that investment, we would not now be engaged in a serious
debate about the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” By the time I lived in
Austin, I had been thinking of myself as a gay man for almost 20 years. Based
on the experience acquired during those years, I recognized in Lobo’s a
metaphor for the strategy used to sell gay rights to the American people, and
for the sordid reality that strategy concealed.

This is how I “deconstruct” Lobo’s. There are two kinds of people who are going
to be looking in through the window: those who are tempted to engage in
homosexual acts, and those who aren’t. To those who aren’t, the shelves of
books transmit the message that gay people are no different from anyone else,
that homosexuality is not wrong, just different. Since most of them will never
know more about homosexuality than what they learned looking in the window,
that impression is of the greatest political and cultural importance, because
on that basis they will react without alarm, or even with active support, to
the progress of gay rights. There are millions of well-meaning Americans who
support gay rights because they believe that what they see looking in at Lobo’s
is what is really there. It does not occur to them that they are seeing a
carefully stage-managed effort to manipulate them, to distract them from a
truth they would never condone.

For those who are tempted to engage in homosexual acts, the view from the
street is also consoling. It makes life as a homosexual look safe and
unthreatening. Normal, in other words. Sooner or later, many of these people
will stop looking in through the window and go inside. Unlike the first sort of
window-shopper, they won’t be distracted by the books for long. They will soon
discover the existence of the porn section. And no matter how distasteful they
might find the idea at first (if indeed they do find it distasteful), they will
also notice that the porn section is where all the customers are. And they will
feel sort of silly standing alone among the books. Eventually, they will find
their way back to the porn, with the rest of the customers. And like them, they
will start rooting through the videos. And, gentle reader, that is where most
of them will spend the rest of their lives, until God or AIDS, drugs or
alcohol, suicide or a lonely old age, intervenes.

Ralph McInerny once offered a brilliant definition of the gay rights movement:
self-deception as a group effort. Nevertheless, deception of the general public
is also vital to the success of the cause. And nowhere are the forms of
deception more egregious, or more startlingly successful, than in the campaign
to persuade Christians that, to paraphrase the title of a recent book, Jesus
Was Queer, and churches should open their doors to same-sex lovers. The gay
Christian movement relies on a stratagem that is as daring as it is dishonest.
I know, because I was taken in by it for a long time. Like the owners of
Lobo’s, success depends on camouflaging the truth, which is hidden in plain
view the whole time. It is no wonder The Wizard of Oz is so resonant among
homosexuals. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” could be the
motto and the mantra of the whole movement.

For the REST of the article, go to
http://www.massresistance.com/docs/articles/new_oxford.html

[0] comments (6255 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

The scene would be different if...

d*** Cheney vs Teddy Kennedy

By Thomas E. Brewton

Let’s suppose that Teddy Kennedy had accidently shot a fellow hunter....

-------------------

According to press reports, the first thing that Vice President Cheney did
after accidently shooting his fellow hunter was get medical aid for him.

Some years ago while on a marital infidelity excursion, Teddy Kennedy ran his
car off a Chappaquiddick Island bridge into the bay.  Escaping, he left a young
woman trapped in the car while he frantically considered ways to prevent
linking his name and political reputation with the accident.  Only many hours
afterwards did he report the accident to local authorities.  By then it was too
late, and the young lady was dead.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

[0] comments (918 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

VOTE FOR MARRIAGE...

Maryland marriage initiative:

02-08-2006
Press Release:
VoteMarriage Begins Petition to Michael Busch

Wednesday, 08 February 2006

VOTEMARRIAGE.ORG STARTS PETITION TO HOUSE SPEAKER MICHAEL BUSCH ASKING FOR VOTE
ON THE REAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

On February 2nd and 3rd, Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch SHUT DOWN THE
HOUSE and DID NOT LET LEGISLATORS DISCUSS A REAL VOTE ON MARRIAGE. By
procedurally killing HB 48, he ensured that the bill never got a true vote in
its original language. His action had the effect of killing the Senate version
of the marriage bill (SB 262) as well.

Votemarriage.org has started an on-line petition to persuade Speaker Busch to do the right thing. This petition will be posted at www.votemarriage.org and is open to any Maryland citizen 18 years old and older regardless of party affiliation or registration status. Simply go to http://www.votemarriage.org and click the PETITION BUSCH tab at the TOP of our web site.

The Petition states:

“I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman only and that this
forms the natural family unit. I believe that every child wants a loving father
and mother who not only love that child, but also love each other and are
mutually faithful to one another and the Creator. I believe that in America and
Maryland that our civil government must do everything in its power to reinforce
the natural family unit and the laws of nature and nature’s God. I want to see
a vote on House Bill 48 in its original language so that the above beliefs are
reflected in the Maryland State Constitution. I am a Maryland resident and I am
asking for the Speaker of the House, Michael Busch, to special order HB 48 in
its original language to the floor of the House of Delegates for a vote.”

To sign today go to www.votemarriage.org and simply fill out the petition.
Votemarriage.org will periodically update the petition’s status. We encourage
all Maryland citizens to get involved before the courts and a select group of
politicians radically redefine marriage and impose it on us by force of law.
###

You can reach votemarriage.org by going to their website at

www.votemarriage.org

or by calling (443) 621-5112 for more information.
Man + Woman = The True Diversity – VoteMarriage.org

[0] comments (1511 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Together Mocking Christ - Shame on Them...

What do The New York Times and Marilyn Manson have in Common?
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/douggiles/2006/02/11/186092.html

RESOURCES: Townhall @ www.townhall.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[0] comments (3804 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Taxes, Taxes, taxes.....

Windfall Profits Taxes

By Thomas E. Brewton

Shouldn’t Congress always slap windfall profits taxes on companies that make
‘obscene’ profits (at public expense)?

-------------------
If high profit margins are evidence of price-gouging and therefore deserving of
punishment with windfall taxes, then Exxon has lots of company, of all places,
in the liberal media.  Why not levy special taxes on CBS, NBC, the New York
Times, and the Washington Post, companies that have operating margins
substantially higher than Exxon’s?

Anxious to show their constituents that they are in there ‘fighting for the
little guy’, Congressional Democrats led by Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat from
North Dakota, attempted to impose a windfall profits tax on ExxonMobil after it
reported record quarterly profits. 

Exxon, of course, didn’t raise prices to gouge the public.  Its profits soared
temporarily because Hurricane Katrina caused disruption of oil output in the
Gulf of Mexico and put New Orleans area refineries out of commission.  With an
immediate curtailment of spot market supplies, every user of oil in the world
bid higher prices to get as much of the reduced supply as possible.  This is
Economics 101, the law of supply and demand.

Liberal-progressive-socialists, however, live in a different world, one in
which government bureaus decide who should get what and at what price.

Think-tanks like left-wing Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), led
to no one’s surprise by Harvard economists, rolled out white papers to
demonstrate that such profits are indecent in a good socialist society and
really belong to ‘the people.’ Congressional Democrats, who are proxies for
‘the people,” naturally would be entitled to take possession of those indecent
profits and spend them on Democratic Party vote-building projects in New
Orleans.

The specious argument is that everyone buys gasoline regularly, because
automobiles are part of our daily lives, therefore consumers should not be
subject to the law of supply and demand.  They should be entitled to a maximum
price per gallon at service station pumps.

The same argument, however, applies in spades to media companies, some of
which, like Dan Rather’s CBS, have government-granted monopolies.  CNN, in a
January 30, 2006, news story reported that the “...… previous [quarterly
profit] mark was held by Media One, the cable television operator that
eventually became part of Comcast. It posted net income of $26.3 billion in
1998.”

More people watch TV every day than drive automobiles to work.  Why shouldn’t
CBS or General Electric’s NBC, occupying government-monopoly band width, be
subjected to windfall profits taxes on the tasteless and left-leaning programs
they air? If they didn’t charge such high advertising rates, prices on products
all of us use would be lower. 

Forbes Magazine in its February 27, 2006, article Those Rapacious Media Companies notes: “Big oil companies have huge bull’s-eyes on their backs. Record profits (like ExxonMobil’s $36 billion) and $65 oil have made the industry targets of politicians, newscasters and editorial writers who claim the oil companies have rigged the market and gouged consumers. The cry is up for a windfall-profits tax. But wait. What if “windfall profits” were defined to include any fat margin? Media companies would be much more exposed than oil companies.”

CBS’s operating margin of 26% is 63% higher than ExxonMobil’s 16% margin.  The
Washington Post, at 23%, and the New York Times, at 18%, both ‘gouge’ the
public more deeply than ExxonMobil.

Left-wing-social-policy investor Warren Buffet made a huge investment in the
Washington Post years ago, because, he said, it has a monopoly brand-name
franchise that insulates it from competitive pricing pressure.  The same can be
said of the New York Times, even though the current Mr. Sulzberger seems to be
doing his best to decrease the value of his family’s asset.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

[0] comments (3853 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

CREATION Fossils...

Creation scientists believe that most of the fossils—including most of the dinosaur fossils—formed at the time of Noah’s Flood, only about 4,500 years ago. This means that fossils must have formed rather quickly.

Can we know, then, when the fossil record was formed? The answer’s in Genesis: most of the fossils were formed during the Flood of Noah’s day, just a few thousand years ago.

RESOURCES : Answers in Genesis @ www.answersingenesis.org

[0] comments (3872 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Remembering Terri...

PAC backs leaders who backed Terri Schiavo
http://www.lifenews.com/bio1318.html

RESOURCES : Life News @ www.lifenews.com

[0] comments (4476 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Islam is Dangerous...

Islam: Sic Semper Extortioniis

By Thomas E. Brewton

Militant Islam has a long pedigree, and 9/11 is not the first time that it has
sunk its fangs into the United States.

-------------------
Walter Stahr, in his biography of John Jay, says of the early days of the
United States under the Articles of Confederation, when Mr. Jay was Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, that perhaps the most difficult foreign policy problem of
that time was the Barbary pirates. 

Islamic states of Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis were strategically
positioned along the north African Barbary coast, bordering a main trade route
in the Mediterranean Sea.  Our vigorous and successful military actions to end
their piracy account for the Marine Hymn’s “From the halls of Montezuma to the
shores of Tripoli.”

A principal source of income for the Barbary sultans was seizing ships,
confiscating cargo, and enslaving the sailors, who could be held for ransom or
sold to African and Middle Eastern potentates.  As with today’s Mafia, the
Barbary rulers were also prepared to dispense ‘protection’ in exchange for
‘peace treaty’ extortion payments; not unlike Osama Bin Ladin’s ‘peace’
offerings to us and European nations in exchange for abject submission.

Mr. Stahr writes that the Ambassador of Tripoli explained to Adams and
Jefferson, “.., it is written in their Koran, that all nations who should not
have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and
duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of
all they could take as prisoners, and that every [Moslem] who should be slain
in battle was sure to go to paradise.”

That early 19th century assertion of Islamic religious prerogative is the same
one employed by today’s Islamic jihadists. 

It’s hard to square such firmly enunciated doctrine from 200 years ago with
censure by today’s liberals like MIT’s Noam Chomsky, who say that we caused
9/11 by our ‘imperialistic’ and greedy capitalistic posture in international
affairs.  Or with the analysis of the state of Washington’s ultra-left-wing
Senator Patty Murray, whom the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in its December 20,
2002, edition quoted as opining that the Middle Eastern nations have turned
against the United States and support Osama Bin Ladin “.… because he and his
supporters have spent years building good will in poor nations by helping pay
for schools, roads and other infrastructure.”

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com

[0] comments (3823 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

CREATION...

The Seven C’s of Disproving the Big Bang

by

Rob Hood

I recently read an outstanding book called Dismantling the Big Bang by Alex Williams and Dr. John Hartnett. In this book the authors describe the reasons that the Big Bang cannot stand up to real science and how Creation has more evidence than does the Big Bang Theory. The first half of the book may be a bit technical for those not used to mathematic calculations and a few lessons in astrophysics, but the last half of the book is genuinely Biblical and describes to a “T” what God had in mind when he created the world. The one thing that stood out to me was the Seven C’s of Creation which follows:

1) Creation- in the beginning God created the universe by speaking them into existence.

2) Corruption - Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought the Curse of death and decay among them and future generations.

3) Catastrophe -Mankind continued rebellion, so God wiped out all of creation except one family (Noah) and the animals aboard the ark.

4) Confusion - After the flood and after the earth had regained population man continued to rebel, so God confused the people’s languages at the Tower of Babel which eventfully led to the races and cultures we see today.

5) Christ - Christ appeared through the line of Abraham and David, though he was the Messiah and the Son of God.

6) Cross - Christ died for us to take the place of our sins.

7) Consummation - When Christ returns, the world will be destroyed and a new one created where righteousness will reign and sin will no longer prevail.

I have often told people that to believe in Christ you must believe in Creation because Christ was present at Creation. This book boldly supports that idea and is a great read for anyone wanting to argue the case of intelligent Design versus the theory of Evolution. This book can be purchased through most online bookstores or through Answers in Genesis at www.answersingenesis.org . I highly recommend it.

[0] comments (3875 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

WAR...

War under Attack

By

Rob Hood

I am proud to say that our President is giving the dems a hard time on the NSA surveillance ordeal. What I can’t understand is how the mainstream media and the liberals came to make this a politically correct thing.

I have heard it day in and day out on CBS. The evening news usually starts by mentioning the “domestic spying” program or the “domestic intelligence gathering”. It is neither. It is what it should be called and that is the National Security Agency INTERNATIONAL COUNTER-SURVEILLENCE PROGRAM!

It seems to me that if Al Queda is planning an attack here in the U.S. then we should be able to do everything in our power to stop it including listening to their phone calls inside and outside the United States.

This is not a domestic program designed to collect evidence toward from crime. It is simply not that type of program and the president does not need permission from judges on a FISA court to justify a need for a warrant to conduct this activity. THIS COUNTRY IS AT WAR! War time presidential powers are just a little bit different in that he is COMMANDER IN CHIEF over the United States armed forces.

We are fighting three wars at the same time. The first war is the American culture war where secular American and Christian America are neck deep in lawyers and courts. The second war is the war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and where ever the next battle will lead until radical terrorism is extinct. The third war is the war over the war on terror.

Liberal Democrats have waged war on conservative America and President Bush. The best president we have had since Reagan has been mocked, cursed, disputed, called ludicrous names, and other such unnecessary things. He has done his very best at leading this country and I think he has done an admirable job in doing so.

This year is election year and the goal of the Democrats is to muster enough fellow Democrats to have a one sided case against President Bush and impeach him. WE MUST NOT LET THAT HAPPEN! We have come to far now to go back to the failed Clinton years. We are winning in Iraq. Things are getting better for Americans. We are making progress in returning to old time traditions, ethics, and moral values that this society was founded on and we cannot go back now!

No one knows the outcome of the November elections, but I feel pretty good about it. The Democrats are only putting the hurt on themselves by going against the American people and sacrificing the security of the nation by leaking secrets that 120 years ago could have earned them the death penalty before a firing squad.

Some things in Washington can be overlooked and ignored but giving secrets to an enemy in war time is as serious as things can get. Prosecution is inevitable for whoever the leak is and whatever party they belong because they have damaged a program designed to keep terrorists where they belong – six feet under. People who are challenging this concept may just find out how the American people really feel in November. I’ll sure let them know how I feel anyway.

[0] comments (3940 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

A Great American...

Interview With a Great Conservative Kentuckian

by

Rob Hood

I recently came to know another great American that is wanting to serve his country by running for public office as a Republican in the great state of Kentucky. I have been through Kentucky many times myself and consider this state to be a pretty conservative state much like my own state of Mississippi.

Dennis Hogan, I believe is the man for the job for serving Kentuckians. He is running for House of Representatives in the 25th District. The reason that I believe he would serve the people of Kentucky well is that he represents what America is all about. The Majority of America is still conservative, hard-working, traditional thinking people who love their country and love their freedom. Mr. Hogan is all of this and more.

His decision to run for this position is based on a 1994 House Bill 250 that resulted in a decay of health care in the state and caused 28 health insurance agencies to leave which resulted in extremely high insurance premiums. The situation still has not been fixed in Kentucky and Mr. Hogan would like the opportunity to repair the damage done to Kentucky’s health care system.

While the health care issue is very important, that is not the only reason that Mr. Hogan decided to run for office. He was seeing the same thing that many other conservative Christian Americans are seeing which is a decay in our culture due to the lack of leadership roles that have Godly character, value human life, moral values, and ethical standards. Mr. Hogan himself was a full time preacher for four years and still does some preaching from time to time.

He has indicated that he remains strong in his Godly character and upbringing. He is one that stands against gay marriage, stands strong for the value of human life, and at the same time still agrees that our constitution guarantees us freedom, liberty, and human rights to all of mankind. Although Mr. Hogan is a man of God and a conservative, his beliefs in our constitutional right to bear arms is one that many of us share regardless of whether we are Christian or not. Remember that the vast majority supporting the Second Amendment are honest, God fearing, law abiding citizens who revere their rights as free Americans to bear arms for hunting, sport, self-defense, collecting, hobby, or whatever reason they may have to do so. I have asked Mr. Dennis Hogan a few simple questions that interest the majority of true conservatives and Christians in America and he has gladly responded and I think any Kentuckian would be lucky to have this great American serve their state. Here is the interview between myself and Mr. Dennis Hogan:

Rob Hood
1) We all saw that eleven states voted overwhelmingly to ban same sex marriage on November 2, 2004. What is your policy towards this issues and states’ rights in the matter? Do you think we still need a Federal Marriage Amendment?

Dennis Hogan: 
Typically, I favor states rights over the federal power, but in this instance I do not think that we can leave it up to the individual states.  The reason is simple.  If only one state decides to allow gay marriages, by the nature of state’s reciprocity, all of the states that have voted to ban gay marriages would be forced to accept those unions when the gay married couples move out of the gay marriage states.  There MUST be a federal amendment outlawing ALL gay marriages to keep the few from imposing their will on the masses.

Rob Hood
2) Since Roe V. Wade, abortion has claimed the lives of over 47,000,000 innocent unborn children and over 255,000 last year alone. If Roe V. Wade were overturned and left for each state to decide, what would be your view of this in your own state?

Dennis Hogan:
I would do all that I could to see abortions made illegal under all circumstances!

Rob Hood
3) The Controversial topic of Intelligent Design has gained popularity recently throughout the nation. Do you think it is right or fair for public schools to offer a second side of evolution and the Big Bang taught in the classroom or should that be something for the schools themselves to work out?

Dennis Hogan
If a school feels that discussing the beginning of time must be instructed, I would want that both “theories” be discussed as options.  Not to be unclear, however, I believe, with NO doubt that God created the Heavens & the earth in six, 24 hour days as taught in Genesis 1.  I do not think there is any way that the schools would teach creationism only.

Rob Hood
4) Do you feel that your own state of Kentucky is adequately prepared for a major
terrorist attack and what do you think can be done to make your state safer?

Dennis Hogan
Honestly, I do not feel qualified to answer that question.  I would like to research it before stating a position.

Rob Hood
5) Do you believe that lowering taxes works to stimulate economic growth and why?

Dennis Hogan
Yes, I believe that lowering taxes stimulates the economy and inspires entrepreneurs to invest in the expansion of their own business; creating additional jobs and a larger tax base.  The Trickle Down theory works and President Reagan proved it when he lowered the tax rates and created a greater stream of revenue for the federal government.

Rob Hood
6) On the issue of illegal aliens, do you think that it is fair to the American taxpayer to have to pay the bill of the illegal aliens’ education and medical care?

Dennis Hogan
NO!  It is not fair.  If an illegal alien develops a serious illness NEEDING healthcare while on our soil, they should get the basic healthcare that is needed to get them “on their feet”, then deported back to their own country and their country should be billed for the expenses incurred.  We must find a way that forces the Mexican government to want to keep their citizens in their country.

Rob Hood
7) What is your feelings toward securing America’s borders with National Guard troops as some have suggested? What could be done in Kentucky about illegals that politicians may have failed to act on that you would like to see changed?

Dennis Hogan
I think the borders should be protected against illegals.  Whether that is guarded by National Guards or a fence or wall built.  The defense of our country is the federal government’s most fundamental purpose.  In Kentucky, we must punish the employers that hire illegals.  Once you dry up the demand, the supply will diminish.

Rob Hood
8) Are a you a supporter of the Second Amendment and what does it mean to you?

Dennis Hogan
I am a FIRM supporter of the Second Amendment.  I think that the liberals have done a masterful job of reshaping the average American’s thinking process, causing many to believe that the 2nd Amendment is about hunting.  The Second Amendment has not one thing to do with hunting.  It has everything to do with the individual American being able to protect oneself against a tyrannical government.  That means that we should be able to own and possess “assault” styled weapons as well.  I personally own a shotgun and have no desire to own a pistol nor assault rifle, but, defend those who wish to own them so that they may be able to possess them.

Rob Hood
9) In my own home state of Mississippi, a new bill is being considered. It is called the “Stand Your Ground” bill which simply gives the right of law abiding citizens the right to use a firearm to defend themselves against attackers whether it be in their home or vehicle. I am sure that the National Rifle Association has picked up on this and that other states will begin similar legislation. What is you feeling about similar legislation in Kentucky? Do you support the right to self defense against criminals who invade homes to burglarize or rape?

Dennis Hogan
Yes I believe that a person should have the right to defend one’s self.  The average, law-abiding citizen will only use this right as a last result.  The average gun owner has no desire to kill anyone.

Rob Hood
10) In what area do you feel that Kentucky needs to improve on the most and what do you suggest would be a possible legislative action to take to correct the problem(s)?

Dennis Hogan
Healthcare is one of the biggest issues both in Kentucky and throughout the US.  Our current path will lead us to a collapse of our current healthcare system or the institution of socialized medicine.

The ultimate solution that I know at this time is the encouragement of MSA (Medical Savings Account).  As I understand it, no other option addresses the ultimate problem of the system:  the controlling of Costs by the end user.  Until the patient makes better decisions about the care that they receive, we will over burden the system.  See my website for more thoughts on this issue.

Another significant issue facing Kentucky is the expansion of gambling throughout the state.  Current the state allows the lottery and para-mutual betting at Thoroughbred horse tracks.  The problem, as some see it, is that right across the Ohio river from Kentucky, other states allow riverboat casinos.  Many fear that too many Kentucky dollars are going into the coffers of other states, we need to expand gambling in Kentucky to allow casinos throughout the state.  This is a terrible idea and I am completely against the expansion gambling for any reason.  It can only encourage those less responsible to get into trouble and then the liberals will expect the state to bail them out as well.

I do believe that Mr. Dennis Hogan is right for this position and I feel that we are only going to see more moral decay in our society unless we act by obtaining God-fearing men and women that seek what’s best for America, but at the same time do so in a way that is respectful and has the qualities that make a great representative of our people. We need more men like Dennis Hogan in leadership positions across this great land to bring back ethical standards and moral values that have been disappearing for the last fifty years. We need to stand strong as a nations and bring forth leaders like this man who will serve our nation well and be a beacon of light for all nations to gaze upon. The fate of our national heritage and foundation is in the hands of the American people, so when you choose someone to represent you please choose wisely. I do believe that Mr. Dennis Hogan would be a wise choice indeed.

Dennis Hogan also has a website at www.electdennishogan.com if anyone wants to know more about him or contribute to his cause.

Dennis Hogan, Candidate
KY State Representatives, 25th District

The True Conservative,

web:  www.electdennishogan.com
email:  dennis@electdennishogan.com

[0] comments (3919 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Sin Continues...

The Entrapment of Sin

February 7, 2006

Luke 15:11-24 And he said, A certain man had two sons: (12) And the
younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods
that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. (13) And not
many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his
journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous
living. (14) And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in
that land; and he began to be in want. (15) And he went and joined
himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to
feed swine. (16) And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks
that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. (17) And when he came
to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread
enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! (18) I will arise and go
to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against
heaven, and before thee, (19) And am no more worthy to be called thy
son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (20) And he arose, and came
to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him,
and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (21)
And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in
thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. (22) But the
father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on
him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: (23) And bring
hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: (24)
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
And they began to be merry.

Sin is like a bad habit. People always think they can quit any time, but
that is easier said than done.  You know, if we could have interviewed
the Prodigal Son as he left his father’s house with his new found
wealth, his goal would not have been to be broke, lonely, and homeless. 
He did not go out on his own to ruin his life.  But that was the result.

Like that prodigal son, too many of us think that we can dabble in sin. 
We have the false sense of security that we can get into sin and out of
it whenever we choose.  But that is exactly what Satan wants you to
think!  He hooked the son on the allure of the “fun” and “enjoyment” of
the life of sin.  And once he was in too far, he ruined his life.

Sin has a way of entrapping us.  It is like a quicksand.  The more we
struggle, the deeper we get.

Gal. 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made
us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Let us learn to avoid sin, so that we do not get in too deep.

Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan

denpeg@alltel.net
(270) 234-0705

244 Ridgeway Drive
Elizabethtown, KY 42701
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Excellent article by Al Dobras:

http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=17946

Prescription for Tolerance

Is Moral Judgment a Mental Disorder?

By Allan Dobras

February 2, 2006

It was bound to happen. In the span of a single generation, we have seen the
practice of sodomy evolve from a bizarre sexual behavior to a normative
alternative lifestyle; from illegality to a constitutional right; from the
closet to the boardroom; from tolerance to promotion; and lastly, from the
bathhouse to the marriage altar. The next step, which is already in process, is
reminiscent of a Soviet-style “reeducation” program.

According to a December 10, 2005, Washington Post article, “Psychiatry Ponders
Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness,” it seems there is a serious move afoot
to formally designate those who are repulsed by homosexual practice as
suffering from a pathological neurosis—“homophobia.” In other words, a person
who views the legitimization of homosexuality as sinful, immoral, or
destructive to society may have a mental disorder!

That analysis was offered by a number of mental health professionals, including
UCLA psychology professor Edward Dunbar, who equates so-called homophobia with
racial bias and suggests the “disorder” should be included in the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

According to Professor Dunbar, “When I see someone who won’t see a physician
because they’re Jewish, or who can’t sit in a restaurant because there are
Asians, or feels threatened by homosexuals in the workplace, the party line in
mental health says, ‘This is not our problem.’ If it’s not our problem, whose
problem is it?”

Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, said “
Psychiatrists who are uneasy with including something like this in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual need to get used to the fact that the whole
manual reflects social context. That is true of depression on down.
Pathological bias is no more or less scientific than major depression.” Dr.
Belkin plans to conduct a study on pathological bias among patients at his
hospital.

Other psychiatrists have gone a step further and suggested that persons who
exhibit “homophobia” may need to be treated with anti-psychotic medications,
with a program already implemented within the California Department of
Corrections.

Shama Chaiken, divisional chief psychologist for the department, said, “We
treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders. Treatment with anti-
psychotics does work to reduce these prejudices.”

Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says
that persons with such pathological biases are “delusional” and believes their
problems should be treated with psychiatry. “They imagine people are going to
do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to
protect themselves. When they reach that stage, they are very impaired. . . .
They can’t work and function; they can’t hold a job. They would benefit from
treatment of some type, particularly medication.” (Emphasis added)
A voice of “dissent” was heard from psychiatrist and author Sally Satel, who
opined that hate-crime perpetrators could evade responsibility by claiming they
suffered from a mental illness: “I think it’s absurd. You could use it as a
defense [in court].”

Brokeback Mountain, the homosexual “love story” between two cowboys has served
as a catalyst to bring the issue of “homophobia” as a neurosis before the
public. Irrespective of the fact that Hollywood and liberal elites are thrilled
by the film and have honored it with a number of awards, moviegoers have
generally been turned off by the portrayal of the noble American cowboy as gay.
Many theaters are refusing to show the film, prompting co-star Heath Ledger to
claim the cancellations are “akin to racism.” He added:

I heard a while ago that West Virginia was going to ban it. But that’s a state
that was lynching people only 25 years ago, so that’s to be expected. . . .
Personally, I don’t think the movie is [controversial] but I think maybe the
Mormons in Utah do. I think it’s hilarious and very immature of a society—if
two people are loving. I think we should be more concerned if two people
express anger in love, than love.

The premise that deep opposition to homosexual practice is a mental disorder
appears prominently in columnist Dru Sefton’s examination of the negative
reaction to the film in her January 6 column. The article features the “expert”
opinions of several researchers who see aversion to the film as “homophobia”
and offers a good example of the homosexual propaganda machine at work.

Dr. Dean Hamer, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) researcher said to be
investigating homophobia, was described as “a scientist who discovered genetic
links to sexuality.” He commented, “It does seem to be almost culturally
universal that heterosexual men can have a deep repulsion to overt
homosexuality, but there is no study I know of to ascertain whether this is a
biologically based trait.”

Actually, Dr. Hamer is a homosexual activist who has been searching
unsuccessfully for a genetic link to homosexuality for many years. In 1993 he
published some study results on gene position Xq28 that he alleged showed a
genetic link to homosexuality. The study was widely reported in the press and
touted as discovery of a “gay gene.”

However, his discovery did not hold up to scientific scrutiny. A much larger
study by researchers George Rice and others concluded, “Our data do not support
the presence of a gene of large effect influencing sexual orientation at
position Xq28.” Reportedly, Dr. Hamer was later investigated by the NIH on
charges of scientific fraud.

Dr. Simon LeVay, also said to be investigating homophobia, agreed with Dr.
Hamer. “From a neurobiological basis, I just don’t think this response has been
researched at that level, although it’s something that should be.”

Dr. LeVay is the author of the 1991 study, “A Difference in the Hypothalamic
Structure Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men.” The study, which was
reported to have identified a physiological difference between gay and straight
men, was later proved to be bogus. Dr. LeVay himself admitted, “I did not prove
that homosexuality was genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn’t
show that gay men are born that way, the most common mistake people make in
interpreting my work.”

Dr. George Weinberg, a New York City psychologist and researcher, commented
that the aversion to Brokeback Mountain is “definitely homophobia.” He said the
film is “the idea of one man’s adoration for another. A love affair more deep
and lasting and romantic than with their wives.” He advised that those who are
uneasy about the film “first understand you have this problem. At least by
acknowledging it, that’s a start. It’s like saying, ‘I have a fear of
heights.’”

In reality it is not unusual, nor is it immoral, for a man to have a deep and
affectionate bond with another man, but not the erotic relationship described
by Dr. Weinberg. As a case in point, men often experience a sacrificial, moral
love among comrades in arms, which is called agape love. The greatest example
of such love was the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross: “For God so
agapao the world, He gave His only begotten Son . . .”

Plainly, it is part of the gay rights strategy to portray homosexuality as “
normal” and to marginalize—and even criminalize—the views of those who might
expressly disagree. Brokeback Mountain has provided an opportunity for
activists to take the debate over homosexuality to a new level and suggest that
aversion to the practice may be a neurosis.

Thus, in one generation homosexuality has been removed from the DSM as a sexual
disorder, and persons who find it abnormal and repulsive have been offered up
in its place.

Notwithstanding, it is well established that the practice is repulsive, self-
destructive, and corrosive to society, as both sacred and secular sources have
emphatically stated for the last several thousand years. The fact that it is
repulsive is both a bane and advantage to the homosexual rights movement.
Because the topic is so unseemly, there is scant open discussion of
homosexuality, and the public is understandably reluctant to seek out
information on the subject. (For a peek through the window of reality of the
homosexual lifestyle, visit gayhealth.com.)

It is an arrogant ploy on the part of gay activists to insinuate that people
who find homosexual acts to be repulsive may be mentally disturbed. However,
the good news is that such persons would not have to worry about being arrested
under “hate crimes” statutes for voicing negative opinions about the lifestyle—
they’re simply crazy.
------------------------

Allan Dobras is a freelance writer on religious and cultural issues and an
electronics engineer. He lives in Springfield, Virginia.
---------------------------

Mission America
www.missionamerica.com
Learn how homosexuality and neopaganism endanger our kids.

How does same sex marriage affect ALL America’s children? Order our DVD,"Veil
of Deception: The Impact of Same Sex Marriage on American Youth.” More info at
www.missionamerica.com .

[0] comments (3821 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Sin...

Reflecting the SON

The Audacity of Sin
February 6, 2006

Luke 15:11-24

And he said, A certain man had two sons: (12) And the
younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods
that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. (13) And not
many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his
journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous
living. (14) And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in
that land; and he began to be in want. (15) And he went and joined
himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to
feed swine. (16) And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks
that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. (17) And when he came
to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread
enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! (18) I will arise and go
to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against
heaven, and before thee, (19) And am no more worthy to be called thy
son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (20) And he arose, and came
to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him,
and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (21)
And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in
thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. (22) But the
father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on
him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: (23) And bring
hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: (24)
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
And they began to be merry.

How many times have we heard someone justify their sin by claiming: 
“It’s my life, I’ll do what I want”.  Their justification is based on
the rationale that sin is a victimless crime.  If it hurts anyone, they
conclude, it would only harm them self.

Jesus, I think, paints a different picture.  The focus of this lesson
will concentrate on verse 12.  The son comes to the father and asks for
his inheritance....NOW!  Have you ever thought about the selfishness in
that statement?  Essentially, he said, “Dad, your money is worth far
more to me than you are, and since you won’t go ahead and die, I can’t
wait any longer.  Give me your stuff.” Is that victimless?  Does the
feelings of the Father not matter?

What about the affect that sin has on others?  Does adultery have NO
effect the spouse or kids?  Does theft have NO effect on the owner’s of
property?  What about sin within the family?  If your child committed a
sin, would it have an effect on the parents?

The selfishness of the son is simply mind boggling.  And the
selfishness, of each of us, when we sin, is no less appalling!  The son
put himself first and had no concern for the impact that it may have on
others.  Like that son, when we sin, we are essentially telling the
father that our desires are worth more than our relationship with him.

We are not an island to ourselves.  It takes real audacity and
selfishness to put ourselves first and to have no concern for others.

Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan

denpeg@alltel.net
(270) 234-0705

244 Ridgeway Drive
Elizabethtown, KY 42701

[0] comments (3878 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

The True Conservative...

Interview With a Great Conservative Kentuckian

by

Rob Hood

I recently came to know another great American that is wanting to serve his country by running for public office as a Republican in the great state of Kentucky. I have been through Kentucky many times myself and consider this state to be a pretty conservative state much like my own state of Mississippi.

Dennis Hogan, I believe is the man for the job for serving Kentuckians. He is running for House of Representatives in the 25th District. The reason that I believe he would serve the people of Kentucky well is that he represents what America is all about. The Majority of America is still conservative, hard-working, traditional thinking people who love their country and love their freedom. Mr. Hogan is all of this and more.

His decision to run for this position is based on a 1994 House Bill 250 that resulted in a decay of health care in the state and caused 28 health insurance agencies to leave which resulted in extremely high insurance premiums. The situation still has not been fixed in Kentucky and Mr. Hogan would like the opportunity to repair the damage done to Kentucky’s health care system.

While the health care issue is very important, that is not the only reason that Mr. Hogan decided to run for office. He was seeing the same thing that many other conservative Christian Americans are seeing which is a decay in our culture due to the lack of leadership roles that have Godly character, value human life, moral values, and ethical standards. Mr. Hogan himself was a full time preacher for four years and still does some preaching from time to time.

He has indicated that he remains strong in his Godly character and upbringing. He is one that stands against gay marriage, stands strong for the value of human life, and at the same time still agrees that our constitution guarantees us freedom, liberty, and human rights to all of mankind. Although Mr. Hogan is a man of God and a conservative, his beliefs in our constitutional right to bear arms is one that many of us share regardless of whether we are Christian or not. Remember that the vast majority supporting the Second Amendment are honest, God fearing, law abiding citizens who revere their rights as free Americans to bear arms for hunting, sport, self-defense, collecting, hobby, or whatever reason they may have to do so. I have asked Mr. Dennis Hogan a few simple questions that interest the majority of true conservatives and Christians in America and he has gladly responded and I think any Kentuckian would be lucky to have this great American serve their state. Here is the interview between myself and Mr. Dennis Hogan:

Rob Hood
1) We all saw that eleven states voted overwhelmingly to ban same sex marriage on November 2, 2004. What is your policy towards this issues and states’ rights in the matter? Do you think we still need a Federal Marriage Amendment?

Dennis Hogan
Typically, I favor states rights over the federal power, but in this instance I do not think that we can leave it up to the individual states.  The reason is simple.  If only one state decides to allow gay marriages, by the nature of state’s reciprocity, all of the states that have voted to ban gay marriages would be forced to accept those unions when the gay married couples move out of the gay marriage states.  There MUST be a federal amendment outlawing ALL gay marriages to keep the few from imposing their will on the masses.

Rob Hood
2) Since Roe V. Wade, abortion has claimed the lives of over 47,000,000 innocent unborn children and over 255,000 last year alone. If Roe V. Wade were overturned and left for each state to decide, what would be your view of this in your own state?

Dennis Hogan
I would do all that I could to see abortions made illegal under all circumstances!

Rob Hood
3) The Controversial topic of Intelligent Design has gained popularity recently throughout the nation. Do you think it is right or fair for public schools to offer a second side of evolution and the Big Bang taught in the classroom or should that be something for the schools themselves to work out?

Dennis Hogan
If a school feels that discussing the beginning of time must be instructed, I would want that both “theories” be discussed as options.  Not to be unclear, however, I believe, with NO doubt that God created the Heavens & the earth in six, 24 hour days as taught in Genesis 1.  I do not think there is any way that the schools would teach creationism only.

Rob Hood
4) Do you feel that your own state of Kentucky is adequately prepared for a major
terrorist attack and what do you think can be done to make your state safer?

Dennis Hogan
Honestly, I do not feel qualified to answer that question.  I would like to research it before stating a position.

Rob Hood
5) Do you believe that lowering taxes works to stimulate economic growth and why?

Dennis Hogan
Yes, I believe that lowering taxes stimulates the economy and inspires entrepreneurs to invest in the expansion of their own business; creating additional jobs and a larger tax base.  The Trickle Down theory works and President Reagan proved it when he lowered the tax rates and created a greater stream of revenue for the federal government.

Rob Hood
6) On the issue of illegal aliens, do you think that it is fair to the American taxpayer to have to pay the bill of the illegal aliens’ education and medical care?

Dennis Hogan
NO!  It is not fair.  If an illegal alien develops a serious illness NEEDING healthcare while on our soil, they should get the basic healthcare that is needed to get them “on their feet”, then deported back to their own country and their country should be billed for the expenses incurred.  We must find a way that forces the Mexican government to want to keep their citizens in their country.

Rob Hood
7) What is your feelings toward securing America’s borders with National Guard troops as some have suggested? What could be done in Kentucky about illegals that politicians may have failed to act on that you would like to see changed?

Dennis Hogan
I think the borders should be protected against illegals.  Whether that is guarded by National Guards or a fence or wall built.  The defense of our country is the federal government’s most fundamental purpose.  In Kentucky, we must punish the employers that hire illegals.  Once you dry up the demand, the supply will diminish.

Rob Hood
8) Are a you a supporter of the Second Amendment and what does it mean to you?

Dennis Hogan
I am a FIRM supporter of the Second Amendment.  I think that the liberals have done a masterful job of reshaping the average American’s thinking process, causing many to believe that the 2nd Amendment is about hunting.  The Second Amendment has not one thing to do with hunting.  It has everything to do with the individual American being able to protect oneself against a tyrannical government.  That means that we should be able to own and possess “assault” styled weapons as well.  I personally own a shotgun and have no desire to own a pistol nor assault rifle, but, defend those who wish to own them so that they may be able to possess them.

Rob Hood
9) In my own home state of Mississippi, a new bill is being considered. It is called the “Stand Your Ground” bill which simply gives the right of law abiding citizens the right to use a firearm to defend themselves against attackers whether it be in their home or vehicle. I am sure that the National Rifle Association has picked up on this and that other states will begin similar legislation. What is you feeling about similar legislation in Kentucky? Do you support the right to self defense against criminals who invade homes to burglarize or rape?

Dennis Hogan
Yes I believe that a person should have the right to defend one’s self.  The average, law-abiding citizen will only use this right as a last result.  The average gun owner has no desire to kill anyone.

Rob Hood
10) In what area do you feel that Kentucky needs to improve on the most and what do you suggest would be a possible legislative action to take to correct the problem(s)?

Dennis Hogan
Healthcare is one of the biggest issues both in Kentucky and throughout the US.  Our current path will lead us to a collapse of our current healthcare system or the institution of socialized medicine.

The ultimate solution that I know at this time is the encouragement of MSA (Medical Savings Account).  As I understand it, no other option addresses the ultimate problem of the system:  the controlling of Costs by the end user.  Until the patient makes better decisions about the care that they receive, we will over burden the system.  See my website for more thoughts on this issue.

Another significant issue facing Kentucky is the expansion of gambling throughout the state.  Current the state allows the lottery and para-mutual betting at Thoroughbred horse tracks.  The problem, as some see it, is that right across the Ohio river from Kentucky, other states allow riverboat casinos.  Many fear that too many Kentucky dollars are going into the coffers of other states, we need to expand gambling in Kentucky to allow casinos throughout the state.  This is a terrible idea and I am completely against the expansion gambling for any reason.  It can only encourage those less responsible to get into trouble and then the liberals will expect the state to bail them out as well.

I do believe that Mr. Dennis Hogan is right for this position and I feel that we are only going to see more moral decay in our society unless we act by obtaining God-fearing men and women that seek what’s best for America, but at the same time do so in a way that is respectful and has the qualities that make a great representative of our people. We need more men like Dennis Hogan in leadership positions across this great land to bring back ethical standards and moral values that have been disappearing for the last fifty years. We need to stand strong as a nations and bring forth leaders like this man who will serve our nation well and be a beacon of light for all nations to gaze upon. The fate of our national heritage and foundation is in the hands of the American people, so when you choose someone to represent you please choose wisely. I do believe that Mr. Dennis Hogan would be a wise choice indeed.

Dennis Hogan also has a website at www.electdennishogan.com if anyone wants to know more about him or contribute to his cause.

[0] comments (1493 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Hitting the Nail on the Head...

Center for Individual Freedom ( www.cfif.org )

Did you know a Commission report exists that exposes ugly, festering Democrat corruption at the highest levels of government?

Did you know that this report might ruin Hillary Clinton’s chances to run for president and even jeopardize her reelection campaign?

Did you know that Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan, Carl Levin, d*** Durbin, John Kerry and Congressman Henry Waxman, with the help of Democratic judges, suppressed key portions of this report?

Did you know that the suppressed sections reveal some of the most obscene abuses of power in the history of the presidency?

If you’ve never heard of the Barrett Commission Report, I’m not surprised. The liberal news media continues to refuse to give the story the coverage it deserves. They don’t want you to know that this unexploded bombshell exists.

Here are the facts:

On May 24, 1995, David Barrett was appointed to head a commission investigating President Clinton’s Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, who was accused of paying hush-money to his ex-mistress, committing tax fraud, and lying to the FBI.

During the course of his investigation, Mr. Barrett uncovered a scandal that dwarfed the Cisneros fiasco - the Clinton Administration’s use of the IRS and the Justice Department to bully, intimidate, and silence political enemies.

For the next several years, Mr. Barrett and his team - initially alerted to the abuse of power by a whistle blower at the IRS - widened their investigation to include the IRS (headed by Hillary Clinton’s old college chum, Margaret Milner Richardson), the Justice Department (headed by Clinton crony Janet Reno), and the White House itself (headed by co-presidents Bill and Hillary).

The Barrett Report discusses in detail the cases of people whom the IRS and the Justice Department persecuted on orders from the White House. These included women who had accused President Clinton of sexual misconduct and even rape: e.g., Paula Jones, Juanita Broderick, and Gennifer Flowers. All three were targeted for audit by the Clinton-controlled IRS.

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax messages to Senator Charles Grassley, Congressman James Sensenbrenner and the Republican leadership in the Senate and House. Demand that they support Grassley and Sensenbrenner in their efforts to make the entire Barrett Report public. Tell them the American people demand to have this crucial information. Tell them that conservatives need to play hardball like the liberals.

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/barrettreportnm.html

AOL Members Use This Hyperlink

If the above hyperlink does not function, please copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.

And These Women Were Not The Only Ones

The White House ordered the FBI to send over the personnel files of hundreds of Republicans who served in the Bush Administration.  Is it possible that the Clintons turned this highly sensitive information over to the Democratic National Committee to use as political ammunition in future elections?

Hillary wanted to hand over the lucrative White House Travel Office to one of “our people” so—according to a White House insider—she ordered the firing of Travel Office Bill Dale and six of his employees. And when Dale protested, she ordered the FBI to “get” him.

And here’s the most sinister ploy of all: When the Clintons found out that Barrett was investigating their outrageous use of the IRS and Justice Department, they ordered surveillance of Barrett himself and his team.

Question: With the suppression of the Barrett report, why have all the high-profile liberal organizations that claim to fight government corruption gone mute?

Answer: They’re only concerned with alleged rights violations by Republicans. On Monday, I ran a search on the Common Cause website for the Barrett Report. The result: “nothing found.” The featured story? Jack Abramoff!

Folks, this buried body is a HUGE story!

The Barrett Report could contain evidence of shocking criminal activity by the Clinton White House.

The suppression of this report by the Democratic leadership is equally shocking, equally vile, equally worthy of front-page coverage.

Some of the biggest names in the U.S. Senate have worked to keep the truth from the American people in order to protect their dirty political allies.

If the Barrett Report comes out before the general public, liberals will be wiped out in the mid-term elections and Hillary Clinton will be fighting for her political life.

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax messages to Senator Charles Grassley, Congressman James Sensenbrenner and the Republican leadership in the Senate and House. Demand that they support Grassley and Sensenbrenner in their efforts to make the entire Barrett Report public. Tell them the American people demand to have this crucial information. Tell them that conservatives need to play hardball like the liberals.

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/barrettreportnm.html

AOL Members Use This Hyperlink

If the above hyperlink does not function, please copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.

Why Is This Story Still Under Wraps?

But wait a minute! Just how did the Democrats manage to hide this still-warm corpse?

Here’s how they operated:

When the Barrett Report was complete in 2004, Clinton lawyers set out to suppress the radioactive document in its entirety or to excise those parts dealing with criminal activity on the part of the White House. Team Clinton filed some 140 motions designed to delay the Barrett Report or kill it outright. For over a year, Clinton’s legal team stalled its publication.

As columnist Robert Novak reported: “An IRS whistleblower told Barrett of an unprecedented cover-up. The informant said a regional IRS official had formulated a new rule enabling him to transfer an investigation of Cisneros to Washington to be buried by the Justice Department. Barrett’s investigators found Lee Radek, head of Justice’s public integrity office, determined to protect President Clinton.”

Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), d*** Durbin (D-IL), and John Kerry (D-MA) attempted to slip a provision into the Iraq-war spending bill that would have suppressed the ENTIRE Barrett Report.

Eventually, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) - supported by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), Senator Kerry, and Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) - slyly stuck a provision in a 2005 appropriations bill that gave three judges the power to censor the report.

And here’s the kicker: Two key Republican lawmakers - Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) and Representative Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) - agreed!!!

Bond and Knollenberg gave away the store. They also may have given the Democrats control of Congress and snatched Hillary’s presidential bid out of the flames.

However, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) are determined to force release of the ENTIRE REPORT - WARTS AND ALL.

But they can’t do it without our help - yours and mine.

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax messages to Senator Charles Grassley, Congressman James Sensenbrenner and the Republican leadership in the Senate and House. Demand that they support Grassley and Sensenbrenner in their efforts to make the entire Barrett Report public. Tell them the American people demand to have this crucial information. Tell them that conservatives need to play hardball like the liberals.

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/barrettreportnm.html

AOL Members Use This Hyperlink

If the above hyperlink does not function, please copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.

Can The Barrett Report Really Knock Hillary Off Her Pedestal?

She is so smug right now, so sure of herself , so clever at “repositioning” herself that no one believes she can be beaten.

You can be sure the House of Dior is already designing her inaugural dress.

Can anything derail the Hillary Express?

Veteran observers of the political landscape believe the Barrett Report might just stop that train dead in its tracks.

Tony Snow - who has been a news analyst for the Washington Times and Fox News - wrote: “By all accounts, the 400-page Barrett report is a bombshell, capable possibly of wiping out Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.”

Robert Novak, the dean of political columnists, has written: “Its disclosures could dig deeply into concealed Clinton administration scandals.”

And Carl Limbacher—in an article entitled “Report Could Torpedo Hillary Clinton’s Prez Plans”—has written: “Hillary is said to be particularly vulnerable to the Barrett report’s exposure, since her old college chum, Margaret Milner Richardson, ran the IRS at the time.”

Novak has said that “hardly any of Barrett’s allegations will remain” now that Democratic leftists have bottled up the genie.

However, he sees hope in Chuck Grassley:

“A stubborn Iowa farmer who often drives the White House and Republican leaders to distraction, he said that if the Barrett report finally emerges as a mutilated remnant in order to protect the IRS, he will press for legislation to change that.”

Let’s help that stubborn Iowa farmer get the FULL TRUTH out to the American people.

Use the hyperlink below to send your urgent and personalized Blast Fax messages to Senator Charles Grassley, Congressman James Sensenbrenner and the Republican leadership in the Senate and House. Demand that they support Grassley and Sensenbrenner in their efforts to make the entire Barrett Report public. Tell them the American people demand to have this crucial information. Tell them that conservatives need to play hardball like the liberals.

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/barrettreportnm.html

AOL Members Use This Hyperlink

If the above hyperlink does not function, please copy and paste it into the address bar of your browser.

Jeff Mazzella
President
www.cfif.org

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The CFIF Action Alert is a service to the conservative community. If this e-mail was forwarded to you and you would like to subscribe please go to www.cfif.org/signup

If you experience any technical problems and/or do not receive confirmation that your request has been completed online, please postal mail, phone or fax your request using the contact information listed below. Your request will be processed within 10 days of the receipt of your request.

Center for Individual Freedom
113 S. Columbus St., Suite 310
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-535-5836
Fax:703-535-5838

CFIF is a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit constitutional advocacy organization with
the mission to protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights
in the legal, legislative and educational arenas. Contributions to CFIF are
not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
Contributions may be deductible as a business expense.

[0] comments (1589 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Not in the best interest...

The ACLU—Not Looking Out for Your Best Interests

By Nathan Tabor

When you hear the word “America,” the word “liberty” naturally comes to mind.  This nation was founded upon the principle of freedom—that an individual citizen should be master of his or her own fate.  We should be free to pursue the career of our choice, free to practice our faith, and free to establish homes and families. 

Unfortunately, there are a number of threats to our liberty today.  Big government, with its burdensome taxes and extensive regulations, threatens the liberty of small business owners.  Corrupt judges threaten the religious liberty of schoolchildren who want to pray in public schools.  Violent crime forces the elderly to be virtual prisoners in their own homes—an assault on their liberty.  And the list goes on and on.

As a result of all this, you might think there’s a tremendous need in this nation for something called the American Civil Liberties Union.  After all, it seems as if our liberty is under constant attack—from the very government we finance with our tax dollars.  We need organizations in the public square that are willing to safeguard our freedom.

However, the ACLU is terribly misnamed.  Instead of defending our liberties, this radical organization threatens our freedom in courtrooms around the country.  The ACLU will not defend the rights of the unborn child, opting instead to sacrifice babies on the altar of something called “choice.” The ACLU is, in fact, one of the most vocal proponents of all forms of abortion. 

If a public high school student wants to hold a prayer meeting at school, the ACLU is the first in line trying to sabotage the project.  In the vocabulary of the ACLU, there is no such thing as religious liberty. Instead, the organization routinely fights for freedom FROM religion—not freedom to exercise religion.

If a mayor wants to place a Christmas display on the grounds of City Hall, the ACLU is at the ready to put a stop to it.  If a judge wants to post the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, the ACLU is prepared to fight the idea—all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the ACLU is not being downright dangerous, it is engaging in silliness.  Take, for instance, the recent case of a high school boy who wanted to wear shorts in violation of his school’s dress code.  As teenagers often do, the boy decided to rebel. His form of protest? Wearing a skirt to class.

Sound strange?  Not to the ACLU.  In a bizarre turn of events, the organization decided to get involved in the controversy.  Recently, it was announced that the ACLU had reached an agreement with school officials allowing 17-year-old Michael Coviello to wear skirts to school.

What about the rights of Coviello’s classmates to attend school without the distraction of a skirt-wearing boy? What about the rights of taxpayers to have schools that are orderly and abide by some kind of standards in dress and behavior?  The ACLU was only concerned with the supposed right of a teenage boy to engage in cross-dressing. 

In a statement, Coviello said, “I’m happy to be able to wear skirts again to bring attention to the fact that the ban on shorts doesn’t make sense.”

But what really doesn’t make sense is that an organization that tries to portray itself as reputable would engage in this kind of foolishness. 

The only word that adequately describes the ACLU is “extremist.” It is not extreme in the defense of liberty—it is extreme in imposing bizarre attitudes and policies on the rest of us.

Copyright © 2006 by Nathan Tabor

Nathan Tabor is a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in public policy. He is a contributing editor at www.theconservativevoice.com and his 60-second commentaries are heard on over 250 stations daily. Visit www.aconservativemoment.com to hear them. You can contact him at Nathan@nathantabor.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[0] comments (3830 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Imperial?

George Bush: Imperial President?

By Thomas E. Brewton

Compared to the unilateral actions of iconic liberal-Progressive Presidents,
President Bush is a Casper Milquetoast.

-------------------
Liberals on both sides of the political aisle have adjudged President Bush a
uniquely power-hungry chief executive bent on destroying our Constitution and
creating a dictatorship.  Evidently they haven’t reviewed the records of some
of their favorite Presidents Ð Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow
Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

A somewhat extreme liberal-Progressive-socialist indictment of president George
W. Bush was Joe Conason’s column in The New York Observer

“Bush’s abuse of power deserves impeachment
12.23.05 - Recklessly and audaciously, George W. Bush is driving the nation
whose laws he swore to uphold into a constitutional crisis. He has claimed the
powers of a medieval monarch and defied the other two branches of government to
deny him. Eventually, despite his party’s monopoly of power, he may force the
nation to choose between his continuing degradation of basic national values
and the terrible remedy of impeachment.”

The volume of such rhetoric is rising, because the short-term extension of the
Patriot Act ends in about five weeks.  Left-wingers hope to see it rescinded
altogether.  Congressional moderates on both sides of the aisle have legitimate
concerns that the Patriot Act may go unnecessarily far, threatening the Bill of
Rights more than it protects against terrorists. 

Such concerns are well founded historically.  The legitimate aim is proper
balance, based on careful analysis, not on partisan politics.  Every major war,
beginning with the Civil War, has engendered expansion of scope in the Federal
government and greater concentration of powers that threaten individual
rights.  Citizens, unified by enemy threat, tolerate regulations and controls
that would provoke revolt in peacetime.

Liberals argue both that there is no real war, that the Iraq invasion was
illegitimate, if not unconstitutional, and that, in any case, the Bush
administration has overplayed its hand, creating despotic abuses of power.

Neither charge holds up under scrutiny.  First, there was clearly an observance
of Constitutional requirement that Congress is alone authorized to declare war,
which it did.  Second, however much it distresses civil libertarians, nothing
authorized by the Bush administration in prosecution of the war in Iraq or
against terrorists elsewhere, is unprecedented or definitively outside the
scope of the President’s constitutional authority.

With regard to legitimacy of the war in Iraq, the Wikipedia states:  “Although
some of them have changed their opinion in the last two years, in 1998, many
key Democrats including President Bill Clinton, Tom Daschle and Richard A.
“d***” Gephardt were supporting the idea of destroying Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction programs, using force if necessary. In February of 1998, former
President Clinton remarked “ There is no more clear example of this threat than
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the
stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us.” He goes on to
say “Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.” and concludes
“Let there be no doubt, we are prepared to act.” [3]

“.… On October 31, 1998 US President Bill Clinton signed into law the Iraq
Liberation Act which was passed by the US Congress by large bipartisan margins
declaring: “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to
remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote
the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” [5]
“In early December of 1998, the British and US governments launched airstrikes
against Iraq, codenamed Operation Desert Fox.
“....On October 11, 2002, the United States Congress passed the “Authorization
for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002”, giving U.S.
President George W. Bush the authority to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein did not
give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).”

With regard to the second main charge by liberals, the scope of Presidential
authority under the Constitution’s Article II, Section 2 has been a subject of
heated contention from the nation’s earliest days. 

Section 2 states simply: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when
called into the actual Service of the United States;” Within that broad grant
of authority lie myriad implied powers.  Proving that any one of them is
unconstitutional has been a near impossible job since 1789.

The ACLU’s catalog of President Bush’s alleged abuses includes secretly spying
on American citizens and wire-tapping phone conversations without a warrant;
secretly searching homes and library records; kidnapping people off the street
without charging them, secretly flying them to other countries, and torturing
them; holding people in Guantanamo for four years without charging them with a
crime; and enacting policies that allow torture.

This list, even if one were to accept the allegations as factual, is pretty
mild stuff compared to unilateral actions by Presidents Abraham Lincoln,
Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

Most actions alarming to defenders of the Constitution have been taken under
executive orders, a process that allows a President to legislate without
Congress.  As James Madison noted in the Federalist Papers, Montesquieu had
warned that uniting legislative and executive powers in the same office amounts
to despotism.

Before the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, presidential executive orders
were issued only 143 times in 72 years, mostly for declaration of special
holidays and other innocuous purposes.  More than 13,000 numbered executive
orders have been issued since then.

The greatest number of executive orders were issued by Franklin Roosevelt
(3,723; 29% of all orders); Woodrow Wilson (1,791; 14%); Teddy Roosevelt
(1,006; 8%); and Harry Truman (905; 7%).  After Truman, the highest number of
executive orders issued was 452 by Dwight Eisenhower.

In the early months of the Civil War, President Lincoln ran the war entirely
via executive orders, without a constitutionally-mandated declaration of war by
Congress.  Without Congress’s authorization, for example, he ordered 72,000
Federal troops into battle with Confederate armies, blockaded southern ports,
and ordered the Treasury to spend money to build 19 warships and add 41,000 men
to the Federal armed forces. 

Note that an executive order to the Treasury to spend Federal money is directly
in violation of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 9, one clause of which
states: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law [i.e., pursuant to acts of Congress].”

In addition, via executive orders without Congressional legislation, Lincoln
suspended habeas corpus, arrested without warrants people who were suspected of
‘disloyal’ practices, proclaimed martial law, seized private property,
suppressed publication of newspapers, prohibited use of the Post Office by
persons or organizations deemed ‘treasonable,’ emancipated slaves, and issued
orders for reconstructing the Confederate states.

Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtis said that Lincoln had established
‘military despotism,’ and abolition leader Wendell Phillips said that Lincoln
was an ‘unlimited despot.’ Lord Bryce later was to write that Lincoln
exercised more single-handed political power than any Englishman since Oliver
Cromwell’s Protectorate.

Under Teddy Roosevelt the process of issuing executive orders, without prior
Congressional authorization, went into overdrive.  A partial list: establishing
Civil War veterans’ disability pensions, at a cost of more than $20 million per
year, without Article I, Section 9 authorization by Congress; in 1905, after
the Senate refused to ratify a treaty with Santo Domingo, Teddy issued an order
declaring the treaty effective and acted under it; he made a secret treaty with
Japan not to interfere with their military protectorate over Korea without the
Senate’s knowledge, let alone its approval. 

Also by executive agreement without prior approval of the Senate, TR
established the 1907 policy to limit Japanese immigration; backed the Open Door
policy in China; recognized Japan’s special interests in China; acquired the
Panama Canal (again contravening Article I, Section 9 regarding appropriation
of public funds); dispatched the U. S. Navy’s Great White fleet on a round-the-
world provocative display of American military power; and sent military forces
into Caribbean countries, using them in some cases to establish puppet
governments under our control.

After World War I, the Senate Special Committee on National Emergencies
concluded that President Wilson had exercised “dictatorial powers.”

President Wilson was the first president to declare a national emergency and
then to use that as the authority for a long string of other executive orders. 
He was the first to create Federal departments by executive order, among them
the Food Administration, the Grain Administration, the War Trade Board, and the
Committee on Public Information (i.e., propaganda to bolster support for the
war effort). 

His Fourteen Points as a basis for negotiating the treaty to end World War I
was without any input or agreement from Congress, as was his dispatching
American troops to Siberia after the war.

At Wilson’s request as we prepared to enter into World War I, Congress passed
the 1917 Espionage Act, which made it a crime to promote or cause
insubordination in the military forces or to obstruct recruitment and
enlistment in the armed forces.  This act, parenthetically, was a major impetus
in establishment of the ACLU to oppose any restrictions on anarchist and
socialist speech or actions.  The Supreme Court, in the 1919 case of Schenck v.
United States, upheld the act.  Ironically the majority opinion was delivered
by liberal icon Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  It was the occasion of
Holmes’s famous “clear and present danger” test on curtailment of free speech,
in which he wrote, “When a nation is at war many things that might be said in
time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not
be endured so long as men fight, and that no court could regard them as
protected by any constitutional right.”

Franklin Roosevelt in his 1933 first inaugural speech, invoking Wilson’s
precedent, equated the Depression to a national emergency on the level of
invasion by a foreign enemy.  As one newspaper headline put it the next day,
“Roosevelt Declares for Dictatorship if Necessary.”

FDR’s first official action was an order, without Congress’s approval, closing
all banks pending Federal review.  His claimed authority was the 1917 Trading
With The Enemy Act, which, however, granted no authority without a
Congressionally-declared war (which came only after Pearl Harbor, December 7,
1941) and permitted no regulation of transactions of citizens within the United
States.  By executive order, he granted diplomatic recognition to the Soviet
Union in 1933 and, in 1940, instituted Lend Lease transferring Navy destroyers
to Great Britain, over strong Congressional opposition to our involvement in
the war with Germany.  In other cases before World War II, FDR seized private
businesses to settle labor disputes (one of them, North American Aviation).

After our entry into World War II, a notorious FDR executive order forcibly
removed 112,000 American citizens of Japanese descent from their homes and
relocated them in concentration camps.  His claimed authority was the powers of
a wartime Commander-in-Chief, the same powers President Bush cites to wiretap
conversations of international terrorists.

In his first two terms, FDR created at least 101 new Federal agencies, many
without Congress’s authorization.  These agencies controlled almost every
aspect of what had been private business and agriculture.  By 1936 there were
more than five hundred Federal agencies that had offices in every state in the
union.  These quasi-judicial agencies became vehicles for diluting
Congressional power and for stripping the states of many of their former powers
under the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Bill of Rights.  They represented
delegation of legislative power by Congress, in that these agencies were free
to make whatever regulations they deemed appropriate, without prior
Congressional approval.  In addition, they were authorized to enforce and to
adjudicate disputes under their own regulations.  In short, they combined the
powers of the separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches, which the
Constitution had separated to prevent dangerous concentration of power.  Many
of these agencies fell under the direct control of the President, rather than
of Congress.

As had his cousin Teddy Roosevelt, FDR funded a number of his executive
department agencies unconstitutionally, without Congress’s spending
authorization.  This was accomplished by having the Federally-funded
Reconstruction Finance Corporation borrow money in the public markets and use
it to purchase stock in the agencies, which were organized as private
corporations.

Some of the greatest concentrations of power in the hands of the Federal
government were authorized by Congress, but they represented fulfillment of
FDR’s campaign promise in 1932 to institute Soviet and Italian Fascist-style
state-planning.  Going off the gold standard for our monetary system and
outlawing the gold-payment clauses in private and public contracts and for all
Federal currency was designed deliberately to induce price inflation as a
theoretical way to boost the economy (a policy that Mussolini predicted
correctly would actually depress business activity). 

The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was modeled directly on Mussolini’s
Fascist State Corporatism: the Federal government designated industry groups
and appointed councils of labor union, industry, and Federal executive
department leaders to establish production quotas, wage rates, and selling
prices; in effect, NRA transformed free-market private enterprise into European-
style government regulated cartels.  This, of course, was illegal under
existing anti-trust laws.  A tailor in New Jersey was sent to prison for
charging 35 cents to press a pair of pants, when the NRA code called for 40
cents.

The Agricultural Adjustment Agency (AAA) fixed prices and quotas for farm
production, even jailing a farmer who grew food for his family’s use without
specific regulatory authorization.

President Harry Truman continued in the pattern laid out by FDR.  In the last
year of the war and afterwards, to settle labor disputes, he seized control of
manufacturing plants, textile mills, steel mills, slaughterhouses, coal mines,
refineries, and railroads.  The Supreme Court observed that his May 1946
seizure of the bituminous coal mines was for the purpose of permitting the
Secretary of the Interior to impose a contract favorable to the Miners Union.

In short, whatever President Bush has done was either authorized by Congress or
is well within the bounds of presidential powers as wartime commander-in-chief
established by his liberal iconic predecessors.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com

[0] comments (4326 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Always Right...

This is from a forum member of The Conservative Voice:

European cartoonists are having a ball satirizing Muhammad, the Muslim prophet. One of the more creative panels shows Muhammad looking down from heaven at a long line of suicide bombers, pleading for them to slow down because “We are running out of virgins!”

What Muhammad really needs is a clone of Howard Dean to bring some liberalism to Islamic heaven:

* Redistribution of Wealth- Rewarding each suicide bomber with 70 virgins is “obscene” especially since disadvantaged (non-Martyr) Muslims are forced to survive with far fewer. A progressive formula for equitable redistribution of wealth would be required to level the playing field.

* Affirmative Action- The virgin population in Islamic heaven is currently limited to beautiful, thin, middle-eastern Muslim women between 18-20. This bigoted discrimination prevents otherwise qualified virgins from gainful employment.

An affirmative action program would be needed to assure diversity and equality. Heaven would have to hire plain, overweight women of black, white, Latino, and Asian ethnicity, between the ages of 18-75, and from the Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist religions. This would immediately eliminate shortfalls. (It might reduce the number of suicide bombers as well, but that can be solved elsewhere.)

\

*Redefining “Sex” and “Virgin"- As a recent American president discovered, defining the word “sex” is nearly as bewildering as defining “is.” But, as it turns out, Bill Clinton’s definition of sex would greatly reduce the number of “spoiled” women, while automatically expanding the pool of those eligible to work as virgins.

*Recycling- Virgins are increasingly seen as disposable commodities in Islamic heaven. One or two uses, and out! Strict recycling rules would be needed to eliminate waste and protect heaven’s environment.

[0] comments (3905 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Saddam... His days are numbered!

What is Saddam’s Problem?

by

Rob Hood

Day in and day out we all watch the news and see a very angry and very arrogant Saddam Huessein defy his involvement in the murder of hundreds of thousands of his own people. This, of course, is not counting his terrorist sponsoring days when he killed thousands more in Israel by paying the families of suicide bombers $25,000 every time they would blow themselves up to kill others.

The liberal antiwar left which is also the ant-Christian left as well, keep asking why we are in Iraq and we keep replying with the same answers. I guess it never sank into their thick skulls about why we are there or they would not keep on asking and being contrary. Many on the left are as defiant of President Bush as Saddam himself.  My question is what is Saddm’s problem. How can he just up and decide not to show up for court whenever he chooses and why does he still insist he is the ruler of Iraq?

Someone needs to slap some sense into him and let him know that his day has passed. IT’S OVER! Of course this is partly due to a courtroom judge who is very soft hearted towards Saddam or just scared of him one. If they really wanted saddam in court at a certain time, don’t you think they could get him in there? Either by will or by force, he should have to be there when the judge orders it. Not only this, Saddam is telling the judge what to do. How can he get away with this? Why don’t the judge tell him “ Sit down and shut until your turn comes. “If I hear another word out of you without being asked or permitted to speak, I’ll have you hanged right now without a trial”. Maybe then Saddam wouldn’t be so big and bad.

My suggestion on the whole issues is three options for Saddam:

1) Carry him to a conservative Judge in Texas and have him tried. maybe he’ll get the electric chair. maybe even move him to Mississippi where public hanging is still legal. ( It has not been used in decades though).

2) Carry him to Iraq and gather the people of Iraq around . Let him go and let the people in the streets take care of him.

3) Carry him back to Iraq and put him back in his hole where he was hiding like the true coward he is.

Saddam is the most evil and corrupt leader the world has seen since Vlad Dracula the Impaler. I am sure that Stalin, Hitler, and Vlad the Impaler would have feared Saddam. He even modeled his life after king Nebuchadnezzar who kept the Jews in captivity. The whole story of this is in the Bible. As a matter of fact the Ishtar gate where the Prophet Daniel was lead to the lion’s den still stands today. I have pictures of our troops camped out near this ancient gate.

To answer the Democrats’ questions that might be reading this, here is why we are in Iraq ( for the one millionth time):

We saw a grave threat that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He would not have been smart to use them against a country, but would have ultimately sold them to Al Queda terrorists who would have struck Israel and the United States. We offered Saddam a full decade to rid his country of these weapons, yet he remained defiant of every resolution of the UN and the US and did not allow inspectors to do their jobs of SURPRISE inspections. Often, inspectors would be made to leave or wait when they should have had full access to every military installation of there choosing in a time of their choosing without notification of their arrival. We went to Iraq to destroy the weapons and replace a dangerous world leader. As for the weapons of mass destruction, they now lie either buried in the desert of Iraq, Iran, or Syria. Cybercast News Service reported on this just yesterday. This is old news though. Rusty Humphries, a talk radio host, talked about this only weeks after we arrived in Iraq.  Here is the link for the resource:

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200602/SPE20060202a.html

It makes since that Saddam would hide his weapons though. He even had the help of the American left in doing so. Senator Rockefeller told him about a possible U.S. operation 15 months before we ever arrived in Iraq. So he had at least this amount of time or more to hide his weapons and he certainly had the opportunity amid the UN Food for Oil Scandal that our so called “allies” were in on. Talk about a scandal. CBS barely reported on this. If that had been George Bush up there in the UN they would have never shut up about it. Then again, CBS is nothing more but an extension of the left wing Democratic party anyway.

Saddam may be mean, but he knows how to play politics with the best of them.  It’s too bad he had to go to jail and lose his job. He and Howard Dean could have been buddies against “white Christians” and “evil” Republicans. How dare we arrest a Dictator without his permission. I am just wondering why the ACLU has not backed Saddam. Oh, I know, they’re still waiting for Bin laden. Then they’ll get the two together and defend them. I am sure Saddam and Osama need good lawyers with good acting talent. The ACLU are just what the doctor ordered. No lawyers in America are better actors than these guys and no one has more experience defending evil. Perhaps Saddam is Iraq’s ruler in his perverted and wisted little world, but in reality, his days are numbered and so are Bin Laden’s.

[0] comments (3846 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Support?

SUPPORT ISSUES THAT MATTER

and

STAND FOR TRUTH

DONATE HERE: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr

----------------------------------------------------------------------

to buy Rob Hood’s book click here:
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-35667-2

[0] comments (3794 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

STATE OF THE UNION

This is the State of the Union Speech given by President Bush last night in it’s entirety. Courtesy of the GOP at www.gop.com

BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON TO FRIENDS:

Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress, Members of the Supreme Court and diplomatic corps, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Today our Nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream. Tonight we are comforted by the hope of a glad reunion with the husband who was taken from her so long ago, and we are grateful for the good life of Coretta Scott King.

Each time I am invited to this rostrum, I am humbled by the privilege, and mindful of the history we have seen together. We have gathered under this Capitol dome in moments of national mourning and national achievement. We have served America through one of the most consequential periods of our history - and it has been my honor to serve with you.

In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will and respect for one another - and I will do my part. Tonight the state of our Union is strong - and together we will make it stronger.

In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom - or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life. We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy - or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity. In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting - yet it ends in danger and decline. The only way to protect our people … the only way to secure the peace … the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership - so the United States of America will continue to lead.

Abroad, our Nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal - we seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it. On September 11th, 2001, we found that problems originating in a failed and oppressive state seven thousand miles away could bring murder and destruction to our country. Dictatorships shelter terrorists, feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer, and so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause.

Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time. In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on Earth. Today, there are 122. And we are writing a new chapter in the story of self-government - with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan … and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink … and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom. At the start of 2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic nations. And we do not forget the other half - in places like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran - because the demands of justice, and the peace of this world, require their freedom as well.

No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it. And one of the main sources of reaction and opposition is radical Islam - the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death. Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder - and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously. They seek to impose a heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East, and arm themselves with weapons of mass murder. Their aim is to seize power in Iraq, and use it as a safe haven to launch attacks against America and the world. Lacking the military strength to challenge us directly, the terrorists have chosen the weapon of fear. When they murder children at a school in Beslan … or blow up commuters in London … or behead a bound captive … the terrorists hope these horrors will break our will, allowing the violent to inherit the Earth. But they have misc alculated: We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.

In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores. There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat. By allowing radical Islam to work its will - by leaving an assaulted world to fend for itself - we would signal to all that we no longer believe in our own ideals, or even in our own courage. But our enemies and our friends can be certain: The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil.

America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. We are the Nation that saved liberty in Europe, and liberated death camps, and helped raise up democracies, and faced down an evil empire. Once again, we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed, and move this world toward peace.

We remain on the offensive against terror networks. We have killed or captured many of their leaders - and for the others, their day will come.

We remain on the offensive in Afghanistan - where a fine president and national assembly are fighting terror while building the institutions of a new democracy.

And we are on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory. First, we are helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased, and the insurgency marginalized. Second, we are continuing reconstruction efforts, and helping the Iraqi government to fight corruption and build a modern economy, so all Iraqis can experience the benefits of freedom. Third, we are striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy. Iraqis are showing their courage every day, and we are proud to be their allies in the cause of freedom.

Our work in Iraq is difficult, because our enemy is brutal. But that brutality has not stopped the dramatic progress of a new democracy. In less than three years, that nation has gone from dictatorship, to liberation, to sovereignty, to a constitution, to national elections. At the same time, our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration, clearing out insurgent strongholds, and turning over territory to Iraqi security forces. I am confident in our plan for victory … I am confident in the will of the Iraqi people … I am confident in the skill and spirit of our military. Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning.

The road of victory is the road that will take our troops home. As we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels - but those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C.

Our coalition has learned from experience in Iraq. We have adjusted our military tactics and changed our approach to reconstruction. Along the way, we have benefited from responsible criticism and counsel offered by Members of Congress of both parties. In the coming year, I will continue to reach out and seek your good advice.

Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

With so much in the balance, those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor. A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison … put men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of a strategic country … and show that a pledge from America means little. Members of Congress: however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our Nation has only one option: We must keep our word, defeat our enemies, and stand behind the American military in its vital mission.

Our men and women in uniform are making sacrifices - and showing a sense of duty stronger than all fear. They know what it is like to fight house to house in a maze of streets … to wear heavy gear in the desert heat … to see a comrade killed by a roadside bomb. And those who know the costs also know the stakes. Marine Staff Sergeant Dan Clay was killed last month fighting the enemy in Fallujah. He left behind a letter to his family, but his words could just as well be addressed to every American. Here is what Dan wrote: “I know what honor is. It has been an honor to protect and serve all of you. I faced death with the secure knowledge that you would not have to.… Never falter! Don’t hesitate to honor and support those of us who have the honor of protecting that which is worth protecting.”

Staff Sergeant Dan Clay’s wife, Lisa, and his mom and dad, Sara Jo and Bud, are with us this evening. Our Nation is grateful to the fallen, who live in the memory of our country. We are grateful to all who volunteer to wear our Nation’s uniform - and as we honor our brave troops, let us never forget the sacrifices of America’s military families.

Our offensive against terror involves more than military action. Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change. So the United States of America supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East. Elections are vital - but they are only the beginning. Raising up a democracy requires the rule of law, protection of minorities, and strong, accountable institutions that last longer than a single vote. The great people of Egypt have voted in a multi-party presidential election - and now their government should open paths of peaceful opposition that will reduce the appeal of radicalism. The Palestinian people have voted in elections - now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace. Saudi Arabia has taken the first steps of reform - now it can of fer its people a better future by pressing forward with those efforts. Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity.

The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people. The regime in that country sponsors terrorists in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon - and that must come to an end. The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions - and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats. And tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our Nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.

To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress, fighting disease, and spreading hope in hopeless lands. Isolationism would not only tie our hands in fighting enemies, it would keep us from helping our friends in desperate need. We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS, or an infant with malaria, or a refugee fleeing genocide, or a young girl sold into slavery. We also show compassion abroad because regions overwhelmed by poverty, corruption, and despair are sources of terrorism, organized crime, human trafficking, and the drug trade.

In recent years, you and I have taken unprecedented action to fight AIDS and malaria, expand the education of girls, and reward developing nations that are moving forward with economic and political reform. For people everywhere, the United States is a partner for a better life. Short-changing these efforts would increase the suffering and chaos of our world, undercut our long-term security, and dull the conscience of our country. I urge Members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.

Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home. The enemy has not lost the desire or capability to attack us. Fortunately, this Nation has superb professionals in law enforcement, intelligence, the military, and homeland security. These men and women are dedicating their lives to protecting us all, and they deserve our support and our thanks. They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime - so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

It is said that prior to the attacks of September 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al-Qaida operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack - based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute - I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have - and Federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate Members of Congress have been kept informed. This terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaida, we want to know about it - because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

In all these areas - from the disruption of terror networks, to victory in Iraq, to the spread of freedom and hope in troubled regions - we need the support of friends and allies. To draw that support, we must always be clear in our principles and willing to act. The only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world. Yet we also choose to lead because it is a privilege to serve the values that gave us birth. American leaders - from Roosevelt to Truman to Kennedy to Reagan - rejected isolation and retreat, because they knew that America is always more secure when freedom is on the march. Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy - a war that will be fought by Presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. And tonight I ask for yours. Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this wo rld toward freedom.

Here at home, America also has a great opportunity: We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.

Our economy is healthy, and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations. In the last two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs - more than Japan and the European Union combined. Even in the face of higher energy prices and natural disasters, the American people have turned in an economic performance that is the envy of the world.

The American economy is pre-eminent - but we cannot afford to be complacent. In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors like China and India. This creates uncertainty, which makes it easier to feed people’s fears. And so we are seeing some old temptations return. Protectionists want to escape competition, pretending that we can keep our high standard of living while walling off our economy. Others say that the government needs to take a larger role in directing the economy, centralizing more power in Washington and increasing taxes. We hear claims that immigrants are somehow bad for the economy - even though this economy could not function without them. All these are forms of economic retreat, and they lead in the same direction - toward a stagnant and second-rate economy.

Tonight I will set out a better path - an agenda for a Nation that competes with confidence - an agenda that will raise standards of living and generate new jobs. Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it.

Keeping America competitive begins with keeping our economy growing. And our economy grows when Americans have more of their own money to spend, save, and invest. In the last five years, the tax relief you passed has left 880 billion dollars in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses, and families - and they have used it to help produce more than four years of uninterrupted economic growth. Yet the tax relief is set to expire in the next few years. If we do nothing, American families will face a massive tax increase they do not expect and will not welcome.

Because America needs more than a temporary expansion, we need more than temporary tax relief. I urge the Congress to act responsibly, and make the tax cuts permanent.

Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending - and last year you passed bills that cut this spending. This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another 14 billion dollars next year - and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009. I am pleased that Members of Congress are working on earmark reform - because the Federal budget has too many special interest projects. And we can tackle this problem together, if you pass the line-item veto.

We must also confront the larger challenge of mandatory spending, or entitlements. This year, the first of about 78 million Baby Boomers turn 60, including two of my Dad’s favorite people - me, and President Bill Clinton. This milestone is more than a personal crisis - it is a national challenge. The retirement of the Baby Boom generation will put unprecedented strains on the Federal government. By 2030, spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will be almost 60 percent of the entire Federal budget. And that will present future Congresses with impossible choices - staggering tax increases, immense deficits, or deep cuts in every category of spending.

Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security, yet the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away - and with every year we fail to act, the situation gets worse. So tonight, I ask you to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of Baby Boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This commission should include Members of Congress of both parties, and offer bipartisan answers. We need to put aside partisan politics, work together, and get this problem solved.

Keeping America competitive requires us to open more markets for all that Americans make and grow. One out of every five factory jobs in America is related to global trade, and we want people everywhere to buy American. With open markets and a level playing field, no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker.

Keeping America competitive requires an immigration system that upholds our laws, reflects our values, and serves the interests of our economy. Our Nation needs orderly and secure borders. To meet this goal, we must have stronger immigration enforcement and border protection. And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty … allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally … and reduces smuggling and crime at the border.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care. Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility. For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care … strengthen the doctor-patient relationship … and help people afford the insurance coverage they need. We will make wider use of electronic records and other health information technology, to help control costs and reduce dangerous medical errors. We will strengthen Health Savings Accounts - by making sure individuals and small business employees can buy insurance with the same advantages that people working for big businesses now get. We will do more to make this coverage portable, so workers can switch jobs without having to worry about losing their health insurance. And because lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice - leaving women in nearly 1,500 Ameri can counties without a single OB-GYN - I ask the Congress to pass medical liability reform this year.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.

The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly 10 billion dollars to develop cleaner, cheaper, more reliable alternative energy sources - and we are on the threshold of incredible advances. So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative - a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants; revolutionary solar and wind technologies; and clean, safe nuclear energy.

We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years. Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment … move beyond a petroleum-based economy … and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.

And to keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people - and we are going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce the American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our Nation’s children a firm grounding in math and science.

First: I propose to double the Federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next ten years. This funding will support the work of America’s most creative minds as they explore promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing, and alternative energy sources.

Second: I propose to make permanent the research and development tax credit, to encourage bolder private-sector investment in technology. With more research in both the public and private sectors, we will improve our quality of life - and ensure that America will lead the world in opportunity and innovation for decades to come.

Third: We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations. We have made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country. Tonight I propose to train 70,000 high school teachers, to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science … bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms … and give early help to students who struggle with math, so they have a better chance at good, high-wage jobs. If we ensure that America’s children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world.

Preparing our Nation to compete in the world is a goal that all of us can share. I urge you to support the American Competitiveness Initiative … and together we will show the world what the American people can achieve.

America is a great force for freedom and prosperity. Yet our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society.

In recent years, America has become a more hopeful Nation. Violent crime rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the 1970s. Welfare cases have dropped by more than half over the past decade. Drug use among youth is down 19 percent since 2001. There are fewer abortions in America than at any point in the last three decades, and the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.

These gains are evidence of a quiet transformation - a revolution of conscience, in which a rising generation is finding that a life of personal responsibility is a life of fulfillment. Government has played a role. Wise policies such as welfare reform, drug education, and support for abstinence and adoption have made a difference in the character of our country. And everyone here tonight, Democrat and Republican, has a right to be proud of this record.

Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture, and the health of our most basic institutions. They are concerned about unethical conduct by public officials, and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage. And they worry about children in our society who need direction and love … and about fellow citizens still displaced by natural disaster … and about suffering caused by treatable disease.

As we look at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before - and we will do it again.

A hopeful society depends on courts that deliver equal justice under law. The Supreme Court now has two superb new members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. And I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law, and not legislate from the bench. Today marks the official retirement of a very special American. For 24 years of faithful service to our Nation, the United States is grateful to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research - human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids … and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator - and that gift should never be discarded, devalued, or put up for sale.

A hopeful society expects elected officials to uphold the public trust. Honorable people in both parties are working on reforms to strengthen the ethical standards of Washington - and I support your efforts. Each of us has made a pledge to be worthy of public responsibility - and that is a pledge we must never forget, never dismiss, and never betray.

As we renew the promise of our institutions, let us also show the character of America in our compassion and care for one another.

A hopeful society gives special attention to children who lack direction and love. Through the Helping America’s Youth Initiative, we are encouraging caring adults to get involved in the life of a child - and this good work is led by our First Lady, Laura Bush. This year we will add resources to encourage young people to stay in school - so more of America’s youth can raise their sights and achieve their dreams.

A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency - and stays at it until they are back on their feet. So far the Federal government has committed 85 billion dollars to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. We are removing debris, repairing highways, and building stronger levees. We are providing business loans and housing assistance. Yet as we meet these immediate needs, we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived. In New Orleans and in other places, many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country. The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child … and job skills that bring upward mobility … and more opportunities to own a home and start a business. As we recover from a disaster, let us also work for the day when all Americans are protected by justice, equal in hope, and rich in opport unity.

A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented, and treated, and defeated. More than a million Americans live with HIV, and half of all AIDS cases occur among African-Americans. I ask Congress to reform and reauthorize the Ryan White Act … and provide new funding to states, so we end the waiting lists for AIDS medicine in America. We will also lead a nationwide effort, working closely with African-American churches and faith-based groups, to deliver rapid HIV tests to millions, end the stigma of AIDS, and come closer to the day when there are no new infections in America.

Fellow citizens, we have been called to leadership in a period of consequence. We have entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite. We see great changes in science and commerce that will influence all our lives. And sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore.

Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing. Lincoln could have accepted peace at the cost of disunity and continued slavery. Martin Luther King could have stopped at Birmingham or at Selma, and achieved only half a victory over segregation. The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others. Today, having come far in our own historical journey, we must decide: Will we turn back, or finish well?

Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage. Like Americans before us, we will show that courage and we will finish well. We will lead freedom’s advance. We will compete and excel in the global economy. We will renew the defining moral commitments of this land. And so we move forward - optimistic about our country, faithful to its cause, and confident of victories to come.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America.

[0] comments (3619 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Liberal Madness...

Why Liberals Are Hysterical About NSA Wire-tapping

By Thomas E. Brewton

The issue is not national security, but security for socialism.  Liberal-
Progressive-socialists claim unrestrained license to destroy Judeo-Christian
morality, while demanding immunity from scrutiny of their secular atheism, even
when it weakens national security.

-------------------
The following thoughts abstracted from and engendered by “Freedom, Virtue, and
the First Amendment,” by Walter Berns lay out the jurisprudential architecture
of liberalism that leads liberal-Progressives to fight against Judge Alito’s
confirmation to the Supreme Court and against NSA wire-tapping to prevent
repetitions of 9/11.

(1) Absolutely unrestricted freedom of speech, even hateful and destructive
speech, is the cornerstone of liberalism.  Liberals have come to rely upon a
number of Constitutional law devices, including Justice Holmes’s famous Òclear
and present dangerÓ test, procedural due process, and incorporation of the 1st
amendment under the 14th amendment to declare unconstitutional (or to attempt
to do so) a wide range of Federal and state laws that place any restrictions at
all upon free speech.  In addition, the definition of free ÒspeechÓ has been
steadily expanded to include some kinds of harmful actions, as well as
questionable words. 

Ironically, HolmesÕs Òclear and present dangerÓ test was used, not to
invalidate a limitation upon free speech, but to affirm the conviction of the
accused for violating a Federal statute that made it a crime to speak against
or seek to impede the draft during World War I.  Nothing that President Bush
has done, under the Patriot Act or NSA wire-tapping, comes even close to the
result approved by Justice Holmes.

To say the least, the reflexive liberal view since then has led to some bizarre
results.  For example, late Justices William O. Douglas and Hugo Black, in
declaring unconstitutional a 1930s New York state law, stated that they saw no
difference between Shakespeare, the Bible, and magazines devoted to lurid
stories and accounts of crimes of violence, rape, and mayhem (earlier, less
powerful analogs of present-day TV and movie violence and ÔgangstaÕ rap
music). 

In a different Court case, these Justices also perceived no reason to permit
the State of Illinois to restrict public rallies and distribution of literature
by a man whose organization advocated destroying Negroes (immigrating then to
Chicago from southern farms in large numbers) as a way to prevent
ÒmongrelizationÓ of the white race, despite the fact that the City of Chicago
had been compelled to assign more than 1,000 policemen to round-the-clock duty
in a public housing project into which a few black families had moved. 

Noted liberal-Progressives like the late Sidney Hook apparently believed that
the literal essence of the American democratic system is the free and open
exchange of ideas, subject to no restrictions on who may say what, other than
in the case of active criminal conspiracy to overthrow the government.  A
Communist agent may be stopped from speech involving a secret conspiracy, but
he is entitled to a respectful audience if he seeks openly to persuade
Americans of the virtues of Marxism, a doctrine diametrically opposed to the
Lockean philosophy upon which this nation fought for its independence and upon
which its Constitution is based. 

According to Mr. Hook, democracy requires only a free-speech ÒmarketplaceÓ in
which there can be no values and no prejudgments, the assumption being that
what is truth is whatever emerges as majority rule and that what emerges will
in fact be good.  The liberal, however, is not permitted to make a judgment
about what might be defined as Ògood,Ó because Òvalue judgementsÓ are
unscientific. 

In short, for the liberal, American constitutional democracy can be no more
than a process with no connection whatever to moral values.  Thus, were this
process to result in the election of a tyrant like Adolf Hitler (who was
elected with large pluralities in a completely legal fashion under the
constitution of the Weimar Republic), what he represents would have to be
accepted by the liberals as the Òtruth.Ó On the other hand, if, after hearing
all the arguments in a free and open debate, the majority of the people vote to
place some restrictions on ÒdangerousÓ free speech, liberals, by their avowed
standards, will be obligated to accept that decision. 

In fact, however, it doesnÕt work that way, because liberals always want to
fall back on the Federal judiciary, presuming that it will block any such
majority voter decision or any legislation to that effect passed by the
peopleÕs democratically chosen representatives.  This accounts for liberalsÕ
ruthless willingness to attack the personal character and destroy the personal
lives of potential conservative appointees (such as Robert Bork, Clarence
Thomas, or Samuel Alito) to the Federal bench.  Sacrificing any element of
decency and courtesy in the conduct of public business is acceptable if keeping
a liberal majority on the Supreme Court requires it.

(2) Stating the liberal credo in that context makes it clear that some sorts
of values really are lurking somewhere in the background.  Clearly no one,
liberals included, is going to leave his very survival to chance in a game in
which he doesnÕt believe he knows the certain outcome and in which he does not
implicitly believe that the outcome will be to his liking.

(3) My personal hypothesis (for which Professor Berns is not responsible) is
that this liberal confidence in and fixation upon absolute freedom of speech
arises from an amalgam of two historical factors: (a) the Victorian era, 19th
century belief in inevitable economic, scientific, and social progress, with
the implication that society is ultimately perfectible; and (b) the massive, 18-
million-person tidal wave of Italian and Polish-Russian Jewish immigration
between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I here in 1917.

The first of these, 19th century optimism, was expressed in America in the
Transcendental philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1840s, the Pragmatic
philosophy of William James and John Dewey in the 1890s, the Progressive
politics of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson before World War I, and in the
rise of the social sciences and social engineering, epitomized in John DeweyÕs
views on education, from the 1890s through the present day.  What imparted
sweeping power to this phenomenon was its identification with the scientific
approach, the confidence that subjecting all beliefs and social customs to
scientific inquiry ultimately would lead to discovery of scientific truth. 
Americans, with our Òcan doÓ spirit and frontier practicality, have always been
more attuned to finding new and more efficient ways to do things.  We have
alway looked with suspicion upon the philosophies and religious / state
orthodoxies of the Old World.

The fatal error in the whole movement was assuming that the methodologies that
had produced prodigies of discovery and an avalanche of inventions in the
mechanical and physical worlds were of equal validity in the realm of human
social interaction.  Newton had discovered the mathematically-describable laws
that govern the movement of the planets and the stars.  Could not the newly-
emergent academic social sciences (sociology, anthropology, education,
psychology, etc.) discover the same sorts of Òlaws,Ó enabling society to
abandon old ÒsuperstitionsÓ like religion and philosophy from ancient sources
like the Bible and Aristotle?  WouldnÕt growing knowledge lead the people to
reject old ideas like morality and accept social engineers as Philosopher
Kings? 

John DeweyÕs “Reconstruction in Philosophy” (1920) expounds the faith that all
existing philosophy, religion, and social customs are no more than impediments
to scientific inquiry.  Even the Constitution, presumably, is an outmoded
artifact that should give way to formulations that are to evolve from inquiry
by social scientists.  Dewey, though by no means all social scientists, was a
strong believer in socialism and, even into the era of mass population
liquidations by Joseph Stalin, remained a supporter of LeninÕs attempt to
transform Soviet citizens into the ÒNew Soviet ManÓ by restructuring the
elements of society.

The second major historical factor, the huge influx of immigrants, produced a
conservative response as skewed as the liberal view on free speech.  Having 18
million people from totally different cultures descend upon a still largely
English culture in the short span of 30 years was a major disruption that
produced fear and anger in the native population.  The fact that a number of
the Italian and Jewish arrivals were passionate anarchists or Communists didnÕt
help.  Bloody labor actions like the 1894 Chicago Pullman strike, the 1886
Chicago Haymarket Square anarchist bombing, as well as anarchist assassinations
of President Garfield in 1881 and President McKinley in 1901 and the deadly
Wall Street bombing in front of the J. P. Morgan & Co. building in 1920, left
the public in an angry and frightened mood, demanding severe measures to deal
with the threat to social stability.  The situation was not unlike the publicÕs
demand for action against Al Queda today.  Identification of immigrants in the
public mind with anarchist terror led to a series of restrictive immigration
laws culminating in limits by national origin in 1921 and 1927 that essentially
shut the door to foreigners.

Public reaction also took forms like the eugenics movement (created by Darwin’s
cousin Sir Francis Galton as an outgrowth of the hypothesis of evolution) that
declared recent Italian and Jewish immigrants to be inherently ineducable and
of sub-standard intelligence (hence the explosive reaction a few years ago to
“The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein).  Several states
passed laws permitting forcible sterilization of persons so classified. 

At the same time the Ku Klux Klan experienced a big revival, this time mostly
in the Midwest, aimed at political and even terrorist exclusion of undesirable
immigrants and religions like Roman Catholicism .  It was from this cauldron of
unrest that organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and
the Jewish Anti-Defamation League arose.  The ACLU’s primary impetus was
defending anarchist and socialist sabotage of World War I preparations.

By the 1930s, when the Depression put Franklin Roosevelt into the White House
and the New Deal in the political saddle, public opinion had swung in the
direction of the social sciences approach and against the excesses of the ultra-
orthodox reaction to immigration.  Growing unease about the coincident rise of
MussoliniÕs Fascists in Italy in the 1920s and HitlerÕs Nazis in Germany during
the middle 1930s, as well as revelations of StalinÕs ÒtrialsÓ and executions,
also militated for public support of free speech and the Òopen-mindedÓ
scientific approach.

(4) Because WASP cultural values and ideas of morality had been used against
them, the turn-of-the-century immigrants and their heirs remain instinctively
wary of any attempts toward adoption of public standards of morality. 
Understandably, the possibility of prayer in schools brings shivers of fear. 

Unfortunately for them and for everyone else, no society can endure without
commonly held moral principles.  In the final analysis a society is nothing
more than the beliefs to which its members willingly subscribe. 

Humans’ God-given nature causes them to stick together in political societies. 
As Aristotle said, man is by nature a political animal.  The human race could
not survive in a hostile nature as lone individuals. 

All humans have urges to belong to a group, whence youth gangs, Yankee baseball
fans, Rotarians, and political parties.  When such groups cease to represent a
clearly-articulated set of beliefs or activities to which their members are
prepared voluntarily to commit their emotional loyalties, those groups begin to
wither.  Rational or not, it is simply a fact that all peoples everywhere
exhibit and have always exhibited those traits.  No amount of Lamarckian social
engineering by John Dewey or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has been able to alter our
genetic makeup. 

The big question is what kind of political society engenders and supports the
highest qualities of human nature and creates the strongest and most enduring
society.

Western civilization, arising from the Judeo-Christian and Greek philosophical
tradition, says that the best society is one that crafts laws and customs that
support religion and its standards of morality.  This tradition distinguishes
between true happiness and momentary sensual gratification.

True happiness arises from pursuit of moral virtue in all of life’s dealings
with other humans.  Sensual gratification leaves the individual dependent upon
external stimulants and focusing upon it makes people less productive.

The founding traditions of the United States were aimed at true happiness, at
making the New World colonies shining beacons of righteousness to a corrupted
Old World.

The essence of liberal-progressivism, in contrast, is the atheistic belief that
only the material externalities of income and power are real, that the true aim
of political society is to reduce all people to a homogenized mass having
nearly equal income and equal access to all of society’s goods and services. 

Believing, as they do, in only material factors, liberal-progressives are
altogether in favor of hedonistic license for sensual gratification, which they
call liberty.  In order to remove the impediment of western civilization’s
religious morality, they employ their version of free speech (that is, for
liberal-progressives only) to denigrate Judeo-Christianity.

Public policies aimed at multi-cultural education and avoidance of all values
ultimately, however, can have only one result, disintegration of society.  The
loss of a commonly-accepted sense of morality and community standards of
behavior is the explanation for much of the ill that besets the United States
today.  Blind adherence to liberal theories of social welfarism and value-free
expressions of free speech can only make matters worse. 

Liberals need to restudy the scientific method advocated by John Dewey and
remind themselves that this scientific method also requires maintaining an open
mind and a willingness to abandon social welfare and other public policies that
prove to be unworkable or counter-productive. 

More importantly, social stability in a good society requires devotion to
wisdom and an understanding of moral values.  Neither wisdom nor understanding
is a product of a mechanical process called Òdiversity.Ó On the other hand,
wisdom and moral virtue easily embrace all races, sexes, and economic classes. 
As the Declaration of Independence proclaims, in a moral sense, we are all
created equal by our Creator.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New
Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,
journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776
http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------

[0] comments (3739 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks

Letting The People know the Truth...

Telling the People

by

Rob Hood

My personal thoughts regarding the State of the Union address by President Bush is that he done an excellent job in covering the subjects that needed covering the most. He stressed throughout his speech the need for democracy in the Middle East and the need to stay the course in Iraq and not back down.

I am certainly glad he took on the rival factions of liberal Democrats who only applauded for recognizing the death of the Social Security proposal that could have helped people like me. Thank you Mr. Reid and Mrs. Pelosi for taking away my chance at my own private account that I paid for with my tax money that you control. It haunts me to know we live in a politically saturated world of people like these who devote more time to social security issues to win them elections than to actual devote to fixing the problem. I commend Mr. Bush for shaking his finger in their face and telling them that it’s not over yet and the problem is not going away. Thank you, Mr. President, for sticking up for what is right.

Other parts of his speech personally impacted me. I am glad to have elected a President who has not faltered and has not moved an inch on his stance regarding gay marriage, abortion, human cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. Most people who have crumbled under pressure and gave in to these evil actions, but not our president. He has stood strong on every issue and has not backed down one bit and that is certainly admirable and courageous and truly an act of faith.

As for the counterstrike afterwards, Mr. Tim Kaine who is the Democratic Governor of Virginia made his speech. I was expecting a shrill and angry liberal politician like we had last year who were the tag team consisting of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, but did not receive that. Actually Mr. kaine was at one time a Catholic missionary and won his position of Governor based on his moral values and faith. Personally I don’t know where Mr. Kaine stands on important issues like gay marriage, abortion, human cloning, and other such things. He seems like a good man and I certainly hope that he has not sacrificed the teachings of his faith for political gain. I hope that he still heeds the word of God as infallible and incorruptible instead of ever-changing like some of today’s false teachers are preaching on.

What ever the case may be, I know where I stand and I know where my president stands and that’s good enough for me. Thank you Mr. President and our troops for protecting my country and for protecting my values, faith, liberty, and freedom.

[0] comments (3869 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks