"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

Friday, February 24, 2012

Progressives' Demagoguery of Christianity

The left in this country owes much of its success to being able to demagogue whatever the issue of the day is with the help of their willing media accomplices.  Sounds conspiritorial?  No, not really, in fact it really is simple: Take a political ideology whose adherents are willing to lie in order to achieve their desired goal of societal collectivization, add to the mix a profession in journalism which by its own historical polling favors that ideology roughly by a margin of 9:1, and voila... you have an environment where those trusted with providing the public with facts and truths can and routinely do ignore the demagoguery of the left that shapes the opinion of the less informed public.

So, I was not surprised at all when President Obama recently attempted to use the supposed tenets of Christianity in response to criticism of his economic policies, and not a peep came out of main stream media. 

Just as the left likes to distort Ronald Reagan's views, they apparently love to do the same when it comes to Jesus.  So, is it any wonder when the President suggested at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier in the month that his politics of "shared responsibility" and higher taxes for the rich are shaped by the teachings of Jesus?  Obama said: "For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required." 
He based his willingness "as a Christian" to give something up for the common good on "Jesus' teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.' " He went on to state that other policies he has pursued—ranging from fostering lifesaving medical research to preventing violence in Uganda—stemmed from biblical principles: "Treating others as you want to be treated. Requiring much from those who have been given so much. Living by the principle that we are our brother's keeper." And "speak[ing] up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."

Now, I am not a religious person, but a spiritual one who respects religions for the constructive and necessary moral values they espouse.  Even at that, I know that what Obama tried to insinuate is nothing short of damagoguery.  The same Bible pasages the President tried to misconstrue shamelessly condemns the collectivist policies of his party. 

God condemns socialism and establishes capitalism in His word when He said to Moses "Thou shall not steal." This command assumes private property and forbids its confiscation by those who did not earn it.
Regarding giving and charity, God does not want giving to be done under compulsion. In 2 Corinthians 9:7 "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."
Taxation is not giving or charity.  We are to pay our taxes, but in Romans 13:1-7 God only established the civil government to bear the sword against those who do evil.  Giving is clearly an individual choice and is a function of family and church government, not the state.
Whether it is Obama misconstruing the Bible, or likes of Nancy Pelosi chastizing the Church for not conceding in their conviction that abortion (and forced distribution of tax payer funded contraceptives) is wrong, the left has proven once again that nothing is too sacred to demagogue.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A Great (Must See) Motivational Political Speech

The other day one of my favorite politicians of the modern era, along with Reagan, Coolidge, Thatcher, and Churchill, gave an uplifting speech at the CPAC.  Daniel Hannan's insights and warnings were as usual Reaganesque.  No other foreigner, since Tocqueville, has truly comprehended what the U.S. is all about because only a few can truly appreciate what it means to be a truly free individual.  Enjoy:

Saturday, February 11, 2012

FBI Memos on Jobs

Apparently, Steve Jobs, though driven, was not quite the fair visionary we pictured him to be.  I suspected as much as he was an Obama supporter like many of his Silicon Valley contemporaries.

According to the FBI notes that were taken while Jobs was being considered for a position in the Clinton Administration, Jobs was described by friends and colleagues as:
  • Having used illicit drugs in his youth
  • Alienated colleagues
  • Intimidated associates
  • Insisted on getting his way
  • Twisted the truth and distorted reality to get his way
You know the old maxim: Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.
Every one of those allegations listed above apply to the President as well. 
No wonder why Jobs was a die hard progressive in his politics.  He fit the bill to a tee.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Obamacare Chickens Keep Coming Home to Roost

It must be hell for those Democrats like Rep.s Stupak and Dahlkemper who held back their crucial votes for the passage of Obamacare; that is until they were reassured by the shameless liar himself that there would be no public abortion funding or forced participation in the vile practice.  They paid a hefty price for their naïveté.

There was a dead give away that it was all a lie since the president opted for an Executive Order rather than use the power of his office and his political capital to push the U.S. Senate to adopt the Stupak amendment to the bill.  An EO is a joke; not an integral part of a law.  Too bad these naïve (and incompetent) Democrats, without whose votes Obamacare would not have passed, fell for it despite their supposed expertise in these matters.

Yet, those who bothered to read the bill (not Democrats, of course) said abortion funding and forced practice were in the bill all the while being demagogued by the progressive elites in the media, academia, punditry, politics and elsewhere.  As Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” outburst at the SOTU punctuated, they lied about it all: not only the public funding of and forced practicing of abortions regardless of one’s beliefs, but also tax payer funded care for illegals, death panels (which will be apparent in two years unless this thing is overturned), supposed costs that have just been upped again by the CBO for the nth time, impact it will have on private insurance availability, rationing (as physician owned hospitals started disappearing soon after the passage of the bill), etc. etc.

Welcome to utopia, all you remorseful Democrats.  I doubt, however, that any of them will renounce the party of lies they once represented like Senator Zell Miller did.

---

P.S.  You will not read this in the MSM since their sole purpose is to provide cover for the collectivist policies of Democrats.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Is America Finished As We Know It?

I would like to preface my thoughts on whether America is finished as we know it by reitirating my conviction that Americans are the most resiliant people on earth and that freedom and free markets are in our DNA unlike all other peoples of the world.  Having said that, evolution applies to all living things - even Americans.  People can, and do, evolve from self reliant creatures to something akin to a zoo animal waiting for his next meal.  Just look at Greece.  So, personally I will refrain from cockiness and admit that even we are in danger of evolving into something other than we are used to.

History is not kind to the self destructive nature of human beings. 
Every great empire has its heyday before it inevitably decays and self destructs.  The parallels between the reasons for the decay of great empires is oft times eerily similar - perhaps none more so than those of the great Roman Empire and the United States of America.

First, what do these two great constitutional  republics that existed nearly two millenia apart have to do with each other one might wonder.  If you will remember from your high school history classes, Rome had a constitution that essentially later served as a rough guideline for the constitutional republic that our founding fathers conceived.  Roman constitution created a similar seperation of powers between its governmental branches as did ours.  Rather than creating a government that was primarily a democracy (as was ancient Athens), an aristocracy (as was ancient Sparta), or a monarchy (as was Rome before and, in many respects, after the Republic), the Roman constitution mixed these three elements, thus creating three separate branches of government.   And thus was born the greatest governmental system known to man - one that we would model our own constitutional republic after.

In a nut shell, both were essentially meritocracies that greatly valued virtue at the height of their greatness relative to their respective eras, and both became collectivist, morally deprived welfare states.  In other words, both transitioned from societies that valued and rewarded individual excellence to collectivism which only fosters the break-down of societal value systems, mediocrity, and reliance on a central government.  Although one might argue that the U.S. has not reached the level of deprevation or degradation that Rome reached during its rapid decline started in the era of Diocletian (fifth century A.D.), we have been undergoing the same transformation for the past century since Presidents Wilson and TR got the ball rolling down the progressive slope.  Couple short decades later, Hoover and FDR institutionalized progressivism by plunging the dagger further in to the heart of the American constitutional republic.  Since than, progressives from both political parties (most notably LBJ, Nixon, GWB, and Obama) as well as the judiciary have twisted the dagger in a final attempt to vanguish the single most successful meritocracy this world has ever known.  At the same time, fabian socialists masquerading as progressives have corrupted our public and higher educational institutions while media has engaged in a decades long propaganda war against everything held sacred by our founding fathers.

So, are the progressives winning the hearts and souls of Americans?  If so, how can that happen in a country where free market capitalism (or at least a bastardized version) is figuratively in the DNA of its people?

Simple.  Human spirit is corruptable as history has shown us.  Alongside our yearning for freedom from oppression, people have a needy or what I would call a weak side.  Fabian socialists disguised as progressives have patiently and gradually corrupted the human spirit by creating a permanent dependancy class over the past century.  This has been accomplished through governmental policies, courts, public education (as well as academia in general), media, and other societal institutions like pop culture.

So how successful has this bloodless coup has been?  In a Pew Poll about a month ago, it was found that, although capitalism still enjoyed a slim favorability advantage over socialism among those surveyed, a slight plurality of the young adults (described as those between 18 and 29 years old) have a favorable view of socialism.  Just as bad, if not worse, is the alarming favorability rating of progressivism which stands for european style fabian socialism.  Although one must chalk this up to the poor educational level of many in our society, this neverthless is also the inevitable result of cultural Marxism that plagues our school system from the earliest grades all the way through to graduate school.  By undermining the learning process, Marxists ensure that the society gradually undergoes a genetic reengineering of sorts.

Ever since in the 1920s and 1930s Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the father of cultural Marxism who argued that traditional values must be obliterated in order to free “oppressed” social groups, called for eliminating social decorum and glorifying perverse behavior in order to destroy the Western middle class and collapse society from within (guess where Cloward and Piven got their strategy from), the radical teacher unions in the U.S. have adopted his blueprint to undermine free market capitalism as the enemy of a "socially just" political and economic system.

As such, schools have given up on developing critical thinking skills that usually take place during the second stage of one's education - the logic (or dialectic) stage. The reason is as obvious as day: teach a child to think critically and you will lose a future progressive. 
Here is the math.  The future of America - the youth - views socialism, and just as alarmingly progressivism, as being acceptable.  This can only be translated as such: majority of people in the longer range will prefer collectivism to individualism. 

Just like todays OWS movement, participants of which want freedom from their student loans and right to "good jobs" that pay a "living wage" among other things that are essentially non-rights (but rather "wants"), a progressively larger portion of society will come to expect the government to fill the role of a surrogate that is tasked with providing these wants.  Already over 40% of the working age population pays no federal income taxes under our progressive tax code, which was determined by OECD to be the most progressive of any developped nation. 

Through disingenuous initiatives like amnesty for illegal aliens and anti-voter ID measures, progressives are making the last push to get America over the line wher a critical mass will have been achieved so that classical liberal views like ours will be in permanent minority.  This is the exact the reason why Obama cannot be allowed to win another election.  He has proven time after time that even without congressional authority, he is willing to break the rules and rule like a benevolent dictator.
 
 
Can America survive the entitlement mentality fostered by our progressive education and policies?  That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question.  History is against us but we have no other choice than to fight back against the ever creeping tentacles of progressivism.  Can people be weaned off dependancy on the government?  Late 1990s experiment with welfare reform showed that it can be accomplished.  So, there may be hope after all.  And, should our attempts prove to be in vain, I am confident America will rise from ashes once again -- even if it means fighting a second American revolution as Thomas Jefferson seemed to predict: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."