If you can get elected President twice
By doing nothing more than sounding nice
If you can insult both your friends and your foes
While allowing that your foes would make better bros
If you can say of Government spending “We need More”
While on Healthcare.gov sits Error 404
If you can give yourself credit while nothing is working
While in the Crimea the Russians are lurking
If for a stimulus you spend a trillion dollars WITH A “T”!
And there is nothing to show for it except a golf trip to Hawaii
If you can spend money for Solyndra and not for XL Keystone
And there’s no money for ships but y’all get a free phone
If from a terrorist attack in Benghazi, you do not fear
You look at the teleprompter and smile from ear to ear
And then say, No it’s really a video. That’s what I hear
While of lives lost you don’t shed a tear
If you can talk to dictators and Moolahs and keep an open mind
But can’t talk to republicans ‘cause you know their evil kind
For there will be doubters and haters, it’s true
For that there’s the IRS and the NY Times too
If you can listen to people talk using the NSA
While talking about freedom to marry if you’re gay
And complaining about women’s lack of equal pay
If you can do all that and still pay women less than men
You need not worry. You have a phone. You have a pen
If you can blame all your problems on Talk Radio or Fox News
By saying about them – they’re no more than a ruse
If you can say to people “Your doctor you can keep”
While people needing doctors sit at home and weep
And the Unions who supported you, ahead of the line they leap
If after all the good this country has done
All you see is some yokel with a gun
If you can take a great constitutional republic
And risk it all on an untried game of economic pitch-and-toss
And never breathe a word about the country’s loss
There’s nothing to fear. You won the election. You’re the boss
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Friday, July 8, 2011
Methods Of Deception – The Radicals Of The Left And The Radicals Of Islam
People on the left have often appeared to excuse Muslim acts of terror saying things such as “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” At the same time, the left has seemingly become more anti-Israel and anti-American. It seems as if it is a contradiction that people on the left, who supposedly have gay rights, women’s rights, and separation of church and state as their core values, would so often side with a group that goes against all these main principles.
One of the areas where radical Muslims and the left have found common ground is in their hatred of western style culture -- America and Israel, in particular. In their view, America and Israel are the true evil in the world. Both groups speak of America and Israel in such a way as to create caricatures of exploitation and colonialism.
Radical Muslims refer to America as the Big Satan and to Israel as the Little Satan. Radical leftists spell America with a K or three Ks to illustrate its supposed racism. Both groups seem to enjoy burning American flags. The leftist dominated United Nations is quick to condemn Israel and Zionism, in particular, as racism but at the same time will appoint countries such as Syria to head groups on human rights! American intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky have been rabidly anti-American and anti-Israeli.
It is even worse in the case of education because an entirely new generation is trained in the illogical and self destructive hatred of America and Israel. Noam Chomsky teaches college kids that “The Arab-Islamic world has a long history of democracy. It's regularly crushed by western force”. Clearly kids in Chomsky’s classrooms don’t hear about the women who get stoned to death for adultery. Nor do they hear about the fate of a person who dares commit the horrible offense of changing his religion from Islam to Christianity.
Directly in the Muslim world, the indoctrination of children begins at younger ages and is more violent but the methods are essentially the same. Young children are not taught facts. They are shown maps of the Middle East where Israel doesn’t even exist – not in the present, past or future. Children are given textbooks claiming that some Jews were transformed into pigs and apes. They are told to read excerpts from the known forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which claims that Jewish people are intent on world domination. In some cases, young children are trained in suicide bombing!
Both of these radical groups want to create mindless foot soldiers who are ready to do battle on their behalf. The training of the foot soldiers begins at a young age -- But what of the battle itself? What are the plans and how is this battle to be fought?
One of the leftist heroes is community organizer Saul Alinsky. In ‘Rules for Radicals’, Alinsky laid out his battle plan. In comparing Alinsky’s rhetoric with that coming out of the radical Muslim world there are startling similarities. Both leftist and Muslim radicals rely on deception. Alinsky said “Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” In the Koran it says “War is deception”.
Alinsky said "In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems." This is exactly what the left is doing today in the flotilla that is going to Gaza. Both the Muslims and the left know that Israel cannot let ships pass through uninspected to the Gaza strip because of past and current weapons smuggling. The people heading out on this flotilla are following Alinsky’s statement to the letter! In this case, acting in unison, both radical groups are forcing Israel into a public high profile action meant to make it look cruel and violent. By sending out the flotilla in this way, they put Israel in a no-win situation. This is exactly what Alinsky meant when he said “create the issues or problems”.
In the Koran, it says “The necessities justify the forbidden.” Alinsky said about means and ends:
“’Does the end justify the means?’ is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, ‘Does this particular end justify this particular means?’”
The Koran forbids certain actions but allows for exceptions in cases where there is a perceived threat to Islam or where Muslim goals can be achieved. The fact that these exceptions are open to interpretation means that there is basically nothing forbidden in the Koran which is why radical Muslims can justify suicide bombers and the targeting of innocents. Alinsky said “In war, the end justifies almost any means”.
Both radical Islam and radical leftists use fear and intimidation to keep both their friends and their enemies in line. Alinsky said “It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.” He also said "Society has good reason to fear the Radical … He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous ... Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives." The Koran says “slay the Pagans wherever ye find them”, and "Fight those who believe not in Allah”.
The result of these policies of intimidation in the Muslim world is that those peaceful loving Muslims that we keep hearing so much about are never heard from. They have been intimidated into silence. Similarly, people in the western world have been intimidated into silence or at best, feeling they have to rationalize their views. While threats of death are the methods in the radical Muslim world, in the west the threat is more subtle. Out of control political correctness has caused people to become afraid to speak about common sense issues while the radical and the insane become more normalized.
Both radical Islam and radical leftists fear the power of the individual while glorifying death and martyrdom. Alinsky said “The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.” He also said “Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.” A Taliban spokesman said “There are thousands of youth who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living.” Muslim children are taught to give their life for a greater power and rewards in heaven. Leftists are taught to give their lives for their utopian paradise.
Both radical Islam and radical leftists have contempt for the average person. They have contempt for both their enemies AND their friends. People are looked on as beings that need to be led, not as people who are capable of finding their own way. The Koran says “Believers! Do not ask questions about things which if made plain and declared to you, may vex you, causing you trouble." They are told to accept everything that is spoon-fed to them on faith and to not seek answers or to even ask questions!
Alinsky said about the average person: “Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.” Alinsky also felt that a “target” was needed to inspire the emotion needed to get people organized. Radical Muslims have that target in Israel, America and the west. Leftists in the United States rely on class warfare and tend to pick out a ‘Darth Vader’ like embodiment of evil. Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney, Haliburton and Walmart (corporations are often cast as the ‘Darth Vader of the day’) have all been targeted for attack.
Alinsky said “An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises”. In the case of Alinsky and the left, they have to tear down and discredit the free market in order to build something back in their own image. Therefore, their policies are destructive. In the case of radical Islam, in order to use the people’s dissatisfaction and discontent, they have to keep the Palestinians in a state of poverty in order to use them for propaganda value. The Arab and Muslim world could have easily absorbed Palestinian refugees but that would have taken away their most important leverage tool.
Radical Muslims and radical leftists have many differences but they also have a lot in common.
One of the areas where radical Muslims and the left have found common ground is in their hatred of western style culture -- America and Israel, in particular. In their view, America and Israel are the true evil in the world. Both groups speak of America and Israel in such a way as to create caricatures of exploitation and colonialism.
Radical Muslims refer to America as the Big Satan and to Israel as the Little Satan. Radical leftists spell America with a K or three Ks to illustrate its supposed racism. Both groups seem to enjoy burning American flags. The leftist dominated United Nations is quick to condemn Israel and Zionism, in particular, as racism but at the same time will appoint countries such as Syria to head groups on human rights! American intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky have been rabidly anti-American and anti-Israeli.
It is even worse in the case of education because an entirely new generation is trained in the illogical and self destructive hatred of America and Israel. Noam Chomsky teaches college kids that “The Arab-Islamic world has a long history of democracy. It's regularly crushed by western force”. Clearly kids in Chomsky’s classrooms don’t hear about the women who get stoned to death for adultery. Nor do they hear about the fate of a person who dares commit the horrible offense of changing his religion from Islam to Christianity.
Directly in the Muslim world, the indoctrination of children begins at younger ages and is more violent but the methods are essentially the same. Young children are not taught facts. They are shown maps of the Middle East where Israel doesn’t even exist – not in the present, past or future. Children are given textbooks claiming that some Jews were transformed into pigs and apes. They are told to read excerpts from the known forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which claims that Jewish people are intent on world domination. In some cases, young children are trained in suicide bombing!
Both of these radical groups want to create mindless foot soldiers who are ready to do battle on their behalf. The training of the foot soldiers begins at a young age -- But what of the battle itself? What are the plans and how is this battle to be fought?
One of the leftist heroes is community organizer Saul Alinsky. In ‘Rules for Radicals’, Alinsky laid out his battle plan. In comparing Alinsky’s rhetoric with that coming out of the radical Muslim world there are startling similarities. Both leftist and Muslim radicals rely on deception. Alinsky said “Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” In the Koran it says “War is deception”.
Alinsky said "In the beginning the organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems." This is exactly what the left is doing today in the flotilla that is going to Gaza. Both the Muslims and the left know that Israel cannot let ships pass through uninspected to the Gaza strip because of past and current weapons smuggling. The people heading out on this flotilla are following Alinsky’s statement to the letter! In this case, acting in unison, both radical groups are forcing Israel into a public high profile action meant to make it look cruel and violent. By sending out the flotilla in this way, they put Israel in a no-win situation. This is exactly what Alinsky meant when he said “create the issues or problems”.
In the Koran, it says “The necessities justify the forbidden.” Alinsky said about means and ends:
“’Does the end justify the means?’ is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, ‘Does this particular end justify this particular means?’”
The Koran forbids certain actions but allows for exceptions in cases where there is a perceived threat to Islam or where Muslim goals can be achieved. The fact that these exceptions are open to interpretation means that there is basically nothing forbidden in the Koran which is why radical Muslims can justify suicide bombers and the targeting of innocents. Alinsky said “In war, the end justifies almost any means”.
Both radical Islam and radical leftists use fear and intimidation to keep both their friends and their enemies in line. Alinsky said “It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.” He also said "Society has good reason to fear the Radical … He hits, he hurts, he is dangerous ... Radicals are most adept at breaking the necks of Conservatives." The Koran says “slay the Pagans wherever ye find them”, and "Fight those who believe not in Allah”.
The result of these policies of intimidation in the Muslim world is that those peaceful loving Muslims that we keep hearing so much about are never heard from. They have been intimidated into silence. Similarly, people in the western world have been intimidated into silence or at best, feeling they have to rationalize their views. While threats of death are the methods in the radical Muslim world, in the west the threat is more subtle. Out of control political correctness has caused people to become afraid to speak about common sense issues while the radical and the insane become more normalized.
Both radical Islam and radical leftists fear the power of the individual while glorifying death and martyrdom. Alinsky said “The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.” He also said “Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.” A Taliban spokesman said “There are thousands of youth who look forward to death like the Americans look forward to living.” Muslim children are taught to give their life for a greater power and rewards in heaven. Leftists are taught to give their lives for their utopian paradise.
Both radical Islam and radical leftists have contempt for the average person. They have contempt for both their enemies AND their friends. People are looked on as beings that need to be led, not as people who are capable of finding their own way. The Koran says “Believers! Do not ask questions about things which if made plain and declared to you, may vex you, causing you trouble." They are told to accept everything that is spoon-fed to them on faith and to not seek answers or to even ask questions!
Alinsky said about the average person: “Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.” Alinsky also felt that a “target” was needed to inspire the emotion needed to get people organized. Radical Muslims have that target in Israel, America and the west. Leftists in the United States rely on class warfare and tend to pick out a ‘Darth Vader’ like embodiment of evil. Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney, Haliburton and Walmart (corporations are often cast as the ‘Darth Vader of the day’) have all been targeted for attack.
Alinsky said “An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent… He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises”. In the case of Alinsky and the left, they have to tear down and discredit the free market in order to build something back in their own image. Therefore, their policies are destructive. In the case of radical Islam, in order to use the people’s dissatisfaction and discontent, they have to keep the Palestinians in a state of poverty in order to use them for propaganda value. The Arab and Muslim world could have easily absorbed Palestinian refugees but that would have taken away their most important leverage tool.
Radical Muslims and radical leftists have many differences but they also have a lot in common.
Monday, June 20, 2011
The Man To Beat in 2012
Many pundits have said that Barack Obama will be difficult to defeat in the 2012 presidential election. They say that on a personal level, people still like the president and that the republican field is weak. People may not agree with everything Obama has done but many are still willing to give him a pass based on situations he inherited from the previous president.
One group that may be somewhat reluctant to give Obama a pass is doctors. Obama has said that there are doctors who cut out healthy tonsils, even healthy limbs in order to earn extra money. He said this as if it was common practice and that such procedures are encouraged by the medical profession. Obama’s casting of all medical professionals with this slanderously broad brush may anger those doctors and nurses who truly care about helping and curing people.
Police officers may also not be too thrilled to support Obama in 2012. Police officers and police unions spoke out angrily when Obama said the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. He made this comment only moments after he said that he didn’t know all the facts of the case. His rush to judgment on the ‘stupidity’ of the police officer involved shows an inherent distrust of police, in general.
Another group that may be somewhat distrustful of Obama is the British. Obama made a point of packing up and sending back a bust of Winston Churchill. If he truly didn’t like the bust of Churchill, he could have simply put it in a closet. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that by sending it back, Obama actually WANTED to insult the British. He also has insulted the Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He has sided with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. He called France America’s strongest ally and has also challenged British influence in NATO.
But other than doctors, police and British people, everyone likes Obama -- Unless you are a member of the Supreme Court or are a person who believes in a constitutionally mandated balance of power between different branches of government. When Obama insulted a Supreme Court decision during a state of the union address, he insulted more than just the decision and the members of the court who made that decision -- he insulted the very idea of what the United States is as a Constitutional Republic. By calling on congress to overturn a Supreme Court decision he showed a lack of grace and civility that is certain to lose votes among people who believe in and cherish the constitution.
People in the United States generally think that America is an inherently good and moral country. When Obama went to Egypt and to countries in Europe and said that in the past, America has acted arrogantly, he insulted all the people who felt that America has done an incredible service to the world. Isn’t America insulted enough by Europe and by Muslim countries in the Middle East? Does the United States need to be insulted by its own president? How about the president bringing up all the American people that have died protecting people in other countries? How about his bringing up all the technology invented by Americans that have saved lives? How about his bringing up all the wealth American policy has created for the world and the generosity of Americans in freely giving that wealth to countries? Other countries, by the way, who continue to criticize the methods of that wealth creation which they are the beneficiaries of!
Obama has insulted the military and the CIA which, after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, has worked tirelessly and effectively to prevent another attack. President Obama said “Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained”. According to Marc Thiessen’s brilliant book “Courting Disaster”, an officer at one of the detention camps said “I’m not doing anything to create terrorists”. Another said “I take offense at that. The detainees here are better fed and live in better conditions than prisoners anywhere in the world. Some have had the opportunity to leave, and chose not to.” Other prisoners have been transferred to other detention camps and asked to be returned to Guantanamo. Officers at Guantanamo have done an incredibly difficult job. They’ve been harassed mercilessly by their captives and have shown incredible restraint and professionalism only to be insulted by their very own commander-in-chief.
During the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama skipped a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the Pentagon would not allow campaign staff or media to accompany him into the hospital. It would seem as if Obama only cares to show support for wounded veterans if he can gain political mileage out of it. This is a truly amazing display of arrogance and lack of respect to the US military and all wounded veterans.
President Obama has also insulted Christians. He refused to issue an Easter or Good Friday greeting to the nation as other presidents have done, but he is quick to recognize holidays of other religions. He has openly mocked the bible, in particular Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In addition, he has remained eerily silent as Christians are being persecuted TODAY in Iraq, Egypt and other North African countries.
Obama has insulted rural Americans creating a caricature of them as ignorant unthinking people “clinging to their guns and religion”.
Obama has insulted the surviving relatives of the 9-11 attacks and all New Yorkers by having his justice department propose bringing the trials of accused terrorists to New York. Though popular demand ended that ridiculous idea, there is still the travesty of a mosque purposely being proposed in the sacred ground of the World Trade Center.
Obama has insulted Poland on more than one occasion. He pulled out of the agreement over Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, forcing the Poles to rethink their deployment in Afghanistan. At first he wasn’t going to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. He later changed his mind on this but couldn’t get there due to the grounding of planes due to volcanic activity. In addition, rather than Obama paying his respects to the Polish fallen by visiting the recently erected Victims of Communism memorial in Washington, or at the very least, signing the condolence book at the Polish Embassy, he chose to play a round of golf.
Obama has also insulted Jewish Americans and other Americans who support the state of Israel. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel, a country that wants to live in peace, and only acts in its own defense, with groups of terrorists such as Hamas which are bent on its destruction and the killing of innocents. He has insulted the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on more than one occasion. He has made the ridiculous request that Israel retreat to the indefensible borders of 1967. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel’s building of settlements (houses!) for people to live in with people walking around with suicide belts. He has tried to push Israel to suicidal peace agreements with Syria. He has made the accusation, directly and indirectly, that Israel is the cause of instability in the Middle East. He has referred to Israel as occupied territory when, in fact, much of that land is disputed territory which Israel has more of a legitimate and historic claim to than anyone. It’s difficult to say who he has insulted more, Israel or Britain!
OK, so Obama has insulted doctors, police, the British, the Supreme Court, Constitutionalists, people who are proud -- not ashamed of America, the CIA, the military, wounded veterans, Christians, rural Americans, family members of 9-11 victims, Polish Americans and Jews. The cliché goes that ‘you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet. Obama should be judged by the job he’s done as president and not by the many groups he has offended.
Rather than end wars, he has added a new one. Rather than reduce the debt, he has raised it to a level that is so unsustainable it threatens the very future of the country. Unemployment has skyrocketed from 6 percent, when he took over, to 9 percent. The housing market is in shambles. Terrorism remains as big a threat as it’s ever been. The Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the Middle East while moderates such as Mubarak are gone and Iran is getting ready to go nuclear.
Barack Obama is a lock to win the 2012 election? On what planet?
One group that may be somewhat reluctant to give Obama a pass is doctors. Obama has said that there are doctors who cut out healthy tonsils, even healthy limbs in order to earn extra money. He said this as if it was common practice and that such procedures are encouraged by the medical profession. Obama’s casting of all medical professionals with this slanderously broad brush may anger those doctors and nurses who truly care about helping and curing people.
Police officers may also not be too thrilled to support Obama in 2012. Police officers and police unions spoke out angrily when Obama said the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. He made this comment only moments after he said that he didn’t know all the facts of the case. His rush to judgment on the ‘stupidity’ of the police officer involved shows an inherent distrust of police, in general.
Another group that may be somewhat distrustful of Obama is the British. Obama made a point of packing up and sending back a bust of Winston Churchill. If he truly didn’t like the bust of Churchill, he could have simply put it in a closet. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that by sending it back, Obama actually WANTED to insult the British. He also has insulted the Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He has sided with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. He called France America’s strongest ally and has also challenged British influence in NATO.
But other than doctors, police and British people, everyone likes Obama -- Unless you are a member of the Supreme Court or are a person who believes in a constitutionally mandated balance of power between different branches of government. When Obama insulted a Supreme Court decision during a state of the union address, he insulted more than just the decision and the members of the court who made that decision -- he insulted the very idea of what the United States is as a Constitutional Republic. By calling on congress to overturn a Supreme Court decision he showed a lack of grace and civility that is certain to lose votes among people who believe in and cherish the constitution.
People in the United States generally think that America is an inherently good and moral country. When Obama went to Egypt and to countries in Europe and said that in the past, America has acted arrogantly, he insulted all the people who felt that America has done an incredible service to the world. Isn’t America insulted enough by Europe and by Muslim countries in the Middle East? Does the United States need to be insulted by its own president? How about the president bringing up all the American people that have died protecting people in other countries? How about his bringing up all the technology invented by Americans that have saved lives? How about his bringing up all the wealth American policy has created for the world and the generosity of Americans in freely giving that wealth to countries? Other countries, by the way, who continue to criticize the methods of that wealth creation which they are the beneficiaries of!
Obama has insulted the military and the CIA which, after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, has worked tirelessly and effectively to prevent another attack. President Obama said “Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained”. According to Marc Thiessen’s brilliant book “Courting Disaster”, an officer at one of the detention camps said “I’m not doing anything to create terrorists”. Another said “I take offense at that. The detainees here are better fed and live in better conditions than prisoners anywhere in the world. Some have had the opportunity to leave, and chose not to.” Other prisoners have been transferred to other detention camps and asked to be returned to Guantanamo. Officers at Guantanamo have done an incredibly difficult job. They’ve been harassed mercilessly by their captives and have shown incredible restraint and professionalism only to be insulted by their very own commander-in-chief.
During the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama skipped a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany because the Pentagon would not allow campaign staff or media to accompany him into the hospital. It would seem as if Obama only cares to show support for wounded veterans if he can gain political mileage out of it. This is a truly amazing display of arrogance and lack of respect to the US military and all wounded veterans.
President Obama has also insulted Christians. He refused to issue an Easter or Good Friday greeting to the nation as other presidents have done, but he is quick to recognize holidays of other religions. He has openly mocked the bible, in particular Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In addition, he has remained eerily silent as Christians are being persecuted TODAY in Iraq, Egypt and other North African countries.
Obama has insulted rural Americans creating a caricature of them as ignorant unthinking people “clinging to their guns and religion”.
Obama has insulted the surviving relatives of the 9-11 attacks and all New Yorkers by having his justice department propose bringing the trials of accused terrorists to New York. Though popular demand ended that ridiculous idea, there is still the travesty of a mosque purposely being proposed in the sacred ground of the World Trade Center.
Obama has insulted Poland on more than one occasion. He pulled out of the agreement over Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, forcing the Poles to rethink their deployment in Afghanistan. At first he wasn’t going to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish First Lady, and 94 senior officials who perished in the Smolensk air disaster. He later changed his mind on this but couldn’t get there due to the grounding of planes due to volcanic activity. In addition, rather than Obama paying his respects to the Polish fallen by visiting the recently erected Victims of Communism memorial in Washington, or at the very least, signing the condolence book at the Polish Embassy, he chose to play a round of golf.
Obama has also insulted Jewish Americans and other Americans who support the state of Israel. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel, a country that wants to live in peace, and only acts in its own defense, with groups of terrorists such as Hamas which are bent on its destruction and the killing of innocents. He has insulted the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on more than one occasion. He has made the ridiculous request that Israel retreat to the indefensible borders of 1967. He has drawn moral equivalencies with Israel’s building of settlements (houses!) for people to live in with people walking around with suicide belts. He has tried to push Israel to suicidal peace agreements with Syria. He has made the accusation, directly and indirectly, that Israel is the cause of instability in the Middle East. He has referred to Israel as occupied territory when, in fact, much of that land is disputed territory which Israel has more of a legitimate and historic claim to than anyone. It’s difficult to say who he has insulted more, Israel or Britain!
OK, so Obama has insulted doctors, police, the British, the Supreme Court, Constitutionalists, people who are proud -- not ashamed of America, the CIA, the military, wounded veterans, Christians, rural Americans, family members of 9-11 victims, Polish Americans and Jews. The cliché goes that ‘you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet. Obama should be judged by the job he’s done as president and not by the many groups he has offended.
Rather than end wars, he has added a new one. Rather than reduce the debt, he has raised it to a level that is so unsustainable it threatens the very future of the country. Unemployment has skyrocketed from 6 percent, when he took over, to 9 percent. The housing market is in shambles. Terrorism remains as big a threat as it’s ever been. The Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the Middle East while moderates such as Mubarak are gone and Iran is getting ready to go nuclear.
Barack Obama is a lock to win the 2012 election? On what planet?
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Common Sense And So Called Gay Marriage During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender Month
What is gay marriage? A marriage consists of a wife (the woman) and a husband (the man). Can one person be a wife one day and a husband the next day? Is it decided at the time of this marriage that one person will be always be the husband and the other the wife? Or are the concepts of husband and wife to be thrown away like so many other outdated and useless old concepts?
Two people of the same sex committing their lives to each other constitutes a friendship, not a marriage. People often ask why it has to be that way. If two people love each other why shouldn’t they have the right to get married? The fact is, if two people of the same sex want to have a ceremony and dedicate their lives to each other, they can call it a marriage and no one will come and knock on their doors to stop them. The United States is a tolerant country and Americans are a tolerant people who accept the fact that people are different.
But people want same sex marriage to be recognized by the law and this means that other people have to accept the idea that a man can marry a man or a woman can marry a woman which to most people, on the face of it, is ridiculous. There is a difference with identifying your own relationship as a marriage and forcing other people to abide by that classification.
Liberals on the left and libertarians on the right may ask why the government should be in the marriage business anyway? Andrew Napolitano of Fox news said government should not try to stand in the way of a marriage between two people. So in his mind, as long as a marriage is between two people, it doesn’t matter if they are of the same sex.
If that is the case, why does the definition of marriage have to stop at two people? In fact, in this day and age, when a husband and wife often both have to work, why not have a husband and two wives? Instead of sending kids to get day care by strangers or hiring a nanny, the kids can have two legitimate mothers. One mother can work and the other can take care of the children.
Changing the definition of marriage can be rationalized in many different ways. At some point, if it is to have any meaning, it has to have a definition. Every relationship between individuals does not constitute a marriage.
Some people look at same sex marriage as a civil rights issue. This is incorrect as well. There are no separate rules for straight people vs. gay people. Every man has the right to marry every woman and every woman has the right to marry every man. It is not as if one group has one set of rules and another group has a different set of rules. If a man doesn’t want to marry a woman, he doesn’t have to do so. No one in society is forced to get married.
That marriage exists between a man and a woman is a self evident truth that most people, whether they want to admit it or not, know instinctively to be true. All the rationalizations and twisting of logic and the calling of people who feel that same sex marriage is a ludicrous idea ‘Homophobes’ does not change this reality.
At the heart of the movement to legalize same sex marriage is something far more insidious than the idea that two people of the same sex should be allowed to get married. Same sex marriage is an attack on the institutions, traditions and stability of the country.
Aldous Huxley, in his forward to a “Brave New World” wrote the following:
“In a few years, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator … will do well to encourage that freedom … it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”
In the classic novel “Brave New World”, history and traditions are wiped out. Classic works of literature are eliminated. The only thing that matters is stimulation of the senses where promiscuity is encouraged and rewarded. Thus this conversation from the book:
Lenina: “Somehow… I hadn’t been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately.”
Fanny: “But one’s got to make the effort … After all, every one belongs to every one else.”
We are constantly hearing from the left about how we need to think less of ourselves and sacrifice more for others. They never talk about the successful traditions of the past. They don’t talk about religion or God. The left seems to have an inherent hatred for all religious and time tested traditions. Gay marriage is their perfect vehicle to diminish these traditions.
For a dictatorship to thrive, all the traditions that came before must be discredited. One of the most important traditions in any civilized society is the idea of the family. By blurring the most basic, common sense idea – that marriage is between a man and a woman, you are opening up the door to making everything subjective. Some things ARE black or white with no gray in between.
Barack Obama mentor and left wing agitator/community organizer Saul Alinsky understood this all too well when he said: "An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.”
At some point people have to make a stand for reality and truth. Some things are so obvious that there is no rational argument to be made. The left has made people question their own gut instincts. A country is more than a group of people living within defined boundaries. A country is defined by ideas and values. When a dictator wants control of a country he must attack it at its foundation. Make a country mean nothing, make it stand for nothing, and there is nothing left to fight to preserve – nothing to stand in the way of the would-be dictator because nothing is left worth defending.
When you walk into a corporate building in the month of June, you are likely to see a sign that says the following:
“XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender month.”
Is XYZ Company proud to celebrate this or is it afraid NOT to celebrate it? At the risk of attracting the wrath of all the compassionate people out there, if you’re going to celebrate Transgender month, how about a celebration for schizophrenia? Where is the month celebrating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? How about signs in the corporate lobby saying “XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Bipolar Manic-depressive month”?
We have become a society of people that enjoy the thrill of a 3-D movie but can’t name any Supreme Court justices. We are a society of people that know all the contestants on American Idol but can’t name the current Vice President (of course many people who DO know who the Vice President is often wish they were part of the group that didn’t). In short, this is a society made up of people who have become gullible to the stimulus around them provided by the left. They have been told to be tolerant and non-judgmental. By the way, every time people use their brains they are being judgmental so when people tell you to stop being judgmental they are basically telling you to stop thinking. We are getting closer and closer to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.
Is same sex marriage an important enough issue to debate and legislate? Is it even worth writing about while so many really dangerous things are happening? People were asked to tolerate differences, and most agreed that it was the right thing to do. But toleration is not celebration.
The United States is a country of individual rights and individual responsibilities. Though many have tried to pervert what the framers of the constitution meant, their main idea was that human rights come from our Creator, not from other people. In other words, the founding of this country had a religious and moral beginning and it is that idea that has been the backbone of the country’s success. That success will not continue if we abandon those principles.
Two people of the same sex committing their lives to each other constitutes a friendship, not a marriage. People often ask why it has to be that way. If two people love each other why shouldn’t they have the right to get married? The fact is, if two people of the same sex want to have a ceremony and dedicate their lives to each other, they can call it a marriage and no one will come and knock on their doors to stop them. The United States is a tolerant country and Americans are a tolerant people who accept the fact that people are different.
But people want same sex marriage to be recognized by the law and this means that other people have to accept the idea that a man can marry a man or a woman can marry a woman which to most people, on the face of it, is ridiculous. There is a difference with identifying your own relationship as a marriage and forcing other people to abide by that classification.
Liberals on the left and libertarians on the right may ask why the government should be in the marriage business anyway? Andrew Napolitano of Fox news said government should not try to stand in the way of a marriage between two people. So in his mind, as long as a marriage is between two people, it doesn’t matter if they are of the same sex.
If that is the case, why does the definition of marriage have to stop at two people? In fact, in this day and age, when a husband and wife often both have to work, why not have a husband and two wives? Instead of sending kids to get day care by strangers or hiring a nanny, the kids can have two legitimate mothers. One mother can work and the other can take care of the children.
Changing the definition of marriage can be rationalized in many different ways. At some point, if it is to have any meaning, it has to have a definition. Every relationship between individuals does not constitute a marriage.
Some people look at same sex marriage as a civil rights issue. This is incorrect as well. There are no separate rules for straight people vs. gay people. Every man has the right to marry every woman and every woman has the right to marry every man. It is not as if one group has one set of rules and another group has a different set of rules. If a man doesn’t want to marry a woman, he doesn’t have to do so. No one in society is forced to get married.
That marriage exists between a man and a woman is a self evident truth that most people, whether they want to admit it or not, know instinctively to be true. All the rationalizations and twisting of logic and the calling of people who feel that same sex marriage is a ludicrous idea ‘Homophobes’ does not change this reality.
At the heart of the movement to legalize same sex marriage is something far more insidious than the idea that two people of the same sex should be allowed to get married. Same sex marriage is an attack on the institutions, traditions and stability of the country.
Aldous Huxley, in his forward to a “Brave New World” wrote the following:
“In a few years, marriage licenses will be sold like dog licenses, good for a period of twelve months, with no law against changing dogs or keeping more than one animal at a time. As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator … will do well to encourage that freedom … it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”
In the classic novel “Brave New World”, history and traditions are wiped out. Classic works of literature are eliminated. The only thing that matters is stimulation of the senses where promiscuity is encouraged and rewarded. Thus this conversation from the book:
Lenina: “Somehow… I hadn’t been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately.”
Fanny: “But one’s got to make the effort … After all, every one belongs to every one else.”
We are constantly hearing from the left about how we need to think less of ourselves and sacrifice more for others. They never talk about the successful traditions of the past. They don’t talk about religion or God. The left seems to have an inherent hatred for all religious and time tested traditions. Gay marriage is their perfect vehicle to diminish these traditions.
For a dictatorship to thrive, all the traditions that came before must be discredited. One of the most important traditions in any civilized society is the idea of the family. By blurring the most basic, common sense idea – that marriage is between a man and a woman, you are opening up the door to making everything subjective. Some things ARE black or white with no gray in between.
Barack Obama mentor and left wing agitator/community organizer Saul Alinsky understood this all too well when he said: "An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.”
At some point people have to make a stand for reality and truth. Some things are so obvious that there is no rational argument to be made. The left has made people question their own gut instincts. A country is more than a group of people living within defined boundaries. A country is defined by ideas and values. When a dictator wants control of a country he must attack it at its foundation. Make a country mean nothing, make it stand for nothing, and there is nothing left to fight to preserve – nothing to stand in the way of the would-be dictator because nothing is left worth defending.
When you walk into a corporate building in the month of June, you are likely to see a sign that says the following:
“XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender month.”
Is XYZ Company proud to celebrate this or is it afraid NOT to celebrate it? At the risk of attracting the wrath of all the compassionate people out there, if you’re going to celebrate Transgender month, how about a celebration for schizophrenia? Where is the month celebrating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? How about signs in the corporate lobby saying “XYZ Company is proud to celebrate Bipolar Manic-depressive month”?
We have become a society of people that enjoy the thrill of a 3-D movie but can’t name any Supreme Court justices. We are a society of people that know all the contestants on American Idol but can’t name the current Vice President (of course many people who DO know who the Vice President is often wish they were part of the group that didn’t). In short, this is a society made up of people who have become gullible to the stimulus around them provided by the left. They have been told to be tolerant and non-judgmental. By the way, every time people use their brains they are being judgmental so when people tell you to stop being judgmental they are basically telling you to stop thinking. We are getting closer and closer to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.
Is same sex marriage an important enough issue to debate and legislate? Is it even worth writing about while so many really dangerous things are happening? People were asked to tolerate differences, and most agreed that it was the right thing to do. But toleration is not celebration.
The United States is a country of individual rights and individual responsibilities. Though many have tried to pervert what the framers of the constitution meant, their main idea was that human rights come from our Creator, not from other people. In other words, the founding of this country had a religious and moral beginning and it is that idea that has been the backbone of the country’s success. That success will not continue if we abandon those principles.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
A Modest Proposal To Heal The Earth
For Returning Our Planet To Its Pristine And Natural State Of Being
(Based on the Essay “A Modest Proposal”, by Jonathan Swift in 1729)
Our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP) was founded a few years ago on the West side of Manhattan. We are dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.
The organization is staffed by people from all walks of life as well as by experts in all areas of importance. We have spoken on a variety of subjects in the past and proposed many progressive solutions to the planet’s problems and dilemmas. None of the issues that we have spoken about in the past, however, has the magnitude of the issue we intend to tackle here.
All the problems on the planet can be traced to one thing – too many people. Overpopulation is depleting the planet’s resources, heating the globe to unsustainable levels, polluting the water, encroaching on the territory of the earth’s native inhabitants, causing many of them to become extinct.
The chief purveyor of these and all other planetary problems is one species – humanity. The main problem within humanity is the philosophy and economic system that has come to be known as “capitalism”.
It is capitalism, with its maddening obsession with technology and innovation, which is primarily responsible for the overpopulation of the earth by homo sapiens. The insidious technology of capitalism has created situations where babies born with birth defects now live long, healthy lives, wasting precious resources in the process. People who at one time may have lived into their 60s are now living will into their 80s, even their 90s! Thus millions of people are using resources that years ago would have been used more efficiently by the planet.
Hence, the first step in our multi-faceted plan is to rid the earth of capitalism. We must start by teaching our children at young ages not to be capitalists. The focus of schools should not be to teach disciplines such as mathematics that might encourage kids to want to create businesses or new ideas. Education should focus on kids getting along with each other and with nature. Here we applaud Barack and Michelle Obama for being so forward thinking. Both have emphasized that students should stop striving for that corner office and that big salary and instead look to serve others, to sacrifice for the betterment of society.
Unfortunately, simply leaving this up to the whims and desires of people themselves has shown to be ineffective. Humans are selfish creatures and will need to be pushed in the proper direction. Children will need to be shown how people have all but destroyed the planet in their egotistical desires to develop products and machines. These kids need to be taught how these selfish beings have found ways to grow staggering amounts of food causing an even greater increase in the population. Everything associated with capitalism seems to cause more people while increasing the longevity of the ones already here! This evil must be stopped.
What is needed is de-industrialization which can only come about by a cataclysmic change in the ways people think about their lives. The symbols of industrialization are all around us -- big tall buildings, air conditioners, cars, cell phones, ipods, ipads, blackberries, kindles, plasma TVs, HD TVs, planes above us, trains below us, laptops in our backpacks, some have technology inside their bodies replacing the very organs they were born with, buses move people across town while ferries move them across rivers, people can take out a small device and read any newspaper in the world. All this must stop if the planet is to survive.
If people won’t give up these trivial things willingly, then they must be forced to do so. Currently there is a fictional worldwide war on terror. The effort that is going on in that war needs to be brought to bear on capitalism – the real enemy!
Rich people who disproportionally exploit the world’s resources must be the first target in the war on capitalism. Our experts here at our organization (BURP) feel that the predator drones currently being used in Afghanistan could be put to excellent use in this theater. Once predator drones and all their fire power is brought to bear on capitalists, they will think twice before exploiting resources.
Imagine a barbecue on a sunny 4th of July. Here is a holiday celebrating the creation of the worst capitalist offender and the most wasteful nation of all, the United States. A family of 5 is grilling the flesh of a poor animal on their grill while celebrating this heretical holiday. This family is in their backyard laughing, playing games while somewhere else in the world there is a family starving on a couple of grains of rice. The capitalistic family has a huge back yard all to itself while somewhere else in the world there is a small room with 18 people living in squalor. But justice is done when the predator drone comes in and eliminates this wasteful wealthy family. The war on capitalism has begun.
Yes we know it seems somewhat harsh but is there any other method that has worked? Once rich people get the message that they must give up their big homes, their swimming pools, their SUVs, their big screen TVs, their computers and internet access, their satellite radio, their running water and their sewage system, then the predator drones can stop.
Once capitalists are brought in line it will be time to take down all capitalist symbols. While it was capitalists who built these structures, they won’t be needed to take them down. Only the heavens know what methods the capitalists used to selfishly build such wasteful structures but it will be much easier to destroy them than to build them.
In a world finally free of capitalism, its technology and its buildings, the planet can start to heal. Imagine how happy the planet will be when instead of taking raw sewage and treating it with naturally occurring enzymes and chemicals to break it down and recycle it the way the capitalists did, we take it all in its raw form (both human and horse waste since there will be no cars by then) and bury tons and tons of it in the earth.
Of course, there may be an outbreak of dysentery. Typhus might also become a problem from all the raw sewage. There won’t be a lot of doctors either to cure all of this and it could turn into a full blown epidemic, the likes of which has not been seen since the bubonic plague. Water might become polluted from all the sewage as well.
But in any situation there is some give and take. While there will be no doctors, technology, drugs or hospitals to treat the dysentery and typhus outbreaks, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will go down and start the planet on its healing journey.
We here at our organization (BURP) are aware of the tragic loss of life that will occur in this future world. We feel this loss and regret it but at the same time, we know that humans are a cancer to the planet. Should we mourn the death of a cancer cell?
A scientific expert on our staff points out that there is an inverse relationship between human population and planetary health. As all the capitalist ideas are eliminated the planet will have a chance to breathe again. However, the people left will still try to eat the native inhabitants. They will still try to grow food and reclaim land in order to do so. Therefore, it may be necessary to completely eliminate the human population.
We propose a no child policy. We are caring people and do not want to be judge, jury and executioner for the people who survive the elimination of capitalism. However, they cannot be allowed to bring more people to the planet because this could start the evil cycle all over again.
Some people, those who have demonstrated a progressive, caring and forward thinking approach, will be allowed to reproduce in order to act as stewards of the planet. We here at our organization (BURP) are imminently qualified to make this decision.
We understand that many of you may have some trepidation concerning this proposal but those of you who feel that way ought to re-think your priorities. It is not right to put the perpetuation of your gene pool above the health of the planet. We have made our choice. It is either the planet or humanity and we choose the planet.
(Based on the Essay “A Modest Proposal”, by Jonathan Swift in 1729)
Our organization, the Bastion of Urban Renewal and Progress (BURP) was founded a few years ago on the West side of Manhattan. We are dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the cleanliness of the earth and the causes of equality within and between all nations.
The organization is staffed by people from all walks of life as well as by experts in all areas of importance. We have spoken on a variety of subjects in the past and proposed many progressive solutions to the planet’s problems and dilemmas. None of the issues that we have spoken about in the past, however, has the magnitude of the issue we intend to tackle here.
All the problems on the planet can be traced to one thing – too many people. Overpopulation is depleting the planet’s resources, heating the globe to unsustainable levels, polluting the water, encroaching on the territory of the earth’s native inhabitants, causing many of them to become extinct.
The chief purveyor of these and all other planetary problems is one species – humanity. The main problem within humanity is the philosophy and economic system that has come to be known as “capitalism”.
It is capitalism, with its maddening obsession with technology and innovation, which is primarily responsible for the overpopulation of the earth by homo sapiens. The insidious technology of capitalism has created situations where babies born with birth defects now live long, healthy lives, wasting precious resources in the process. People who at one time may have lived into their 60s are now living will into their 80s, even their 90s! Thus millions of people are using resources that years ago would have been used more efficiently by the planet.
Hence, the first step in our multi-faceted plan is to rid the earth of capitalism. We must start by teaching our children at young ages not to be capitalists. The focus of schools should not be to teach disciplines such as mathematics that might encourage kids to want to create businesses or new ideas. Education should focus on kids getting along with each other and with nature. Here we applaud Barack and Michelle Obama for being so forward thinking. Both have emphasized that students should stop striving for that corner office and that big salary and instead look to serve others, to sacrifice for the betterment of society.
Unfortunately, simply leaving this up to the whims and desires of people themselves has shown to be ineffective. Humans are selfish creatures and will need to be pushed in the proper direction. Children will need to be shown how people have all but destroyed the planet in their egotistical desires to develop products and machines. These kids need to be taught how these selfish beings have found ways to grow staggering amounts of food causing an even greater increase in the population. Everything associated with capitalism seems to cause more people while increasing the longevity of the ones already here! This evil must be stopped.
What is needed is de-industrialization which can only come about by a cataclysmic change in the ways people think about their lives. The symbols of industrialization are all around us -- big tall buildings, air conditioners, cars, cell phones, ipods, ipads, blackberries, kindles, plasma TVs, HD TVs, planes above us, trains below us, laptops in our backpacks, some have technology inside their bodies replacing the very organs they were born with, buses move people across town while ferries move them across rivers, people can take out a small device and read any newspaper in the world. All this must stop if the planet is to survive.
If people won’t give up these trivial things willingly, then they must be forced to do so. Currently there is a fictional worldwide war on terror. The effort that is going on in that war needs to be brought to bear on capitalism – the real enemy!
Rich people who disproportionally exploit the world’s resources must be the first target in the war on capitalism. Our experts here at our organization (BURP) feel that the predator drones currently being used in Afghanistan could be put to excellent use in this theater. Once predator drones and all their fire power is brought to bear on capitalists, they will think twice before exploiting resources.
Imagine a barbecue on a sunny 4th of July. Here is a holiday celebrating the creation of the worst capitalist offender and the most wasteful nation of all, the United States. A family of 5 is grilling the flesh of a poor animal on their grill while celebrating this heretical holiday. This family is in their backyard laughing, playing games while somewhere else in the world there is a family starving on a couple of grains of rice. The capitalistic family has a huge back yard all to itself while somewhere else in the world there is a small room with 18 people living in squalor. But justice is done when the predator drone comes in and eliminates this wasteful wealthy family. The war on capitalism has begun.
Yes we know it seems somewhat harsh but is there any other method that has worked? Once rich people get the message that they must give up their big homes, their swimming pools, their SUVs, their big screen TVs, their computers and internet access, their satellite radio, their running water and their sewage system, then the predator drones can stop.
Once capitalists are brought in line it will be time to take down all capitalist symbols. While it was capitalists who built these structures, they won’t be needed to take them down. Only the heavens know what methods the capitalists used to selfishly build such wasteful structures but it will be much easier to destroy them than to build them.
In a world finally free of capitalism, its technology and its buildings, the planet can start to heal. Imagine how happy the planet will be when instead of taking raw sewage and treating it with naturally occurring enzymes and chemicals to break it down and recycle it the way the capitalists did, we take it all in its raw form (both human and horse waste since there will be no cars by then) and bury tons and tons of it in the earth.
Of course, there may be an outbreak of dysentery. Typhus might also become a problem from all the raw sewage. There won’t be a lot of doctors either to cure all of this and it could turn into a full blown epidemic, the likes of which has not been seen since the bubonic plague. Water might become polluted from all the sewage as well.
But in any situation there is some give and take. While there will be no doctors, technology, drugs or hospitals to treat the dysentery and typhus outbreaks, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will go down and start the planet on its healing journey.
We here at our organization (BURP) are aware of the tragic loss of life that will occur in this future world. We feel this loss and regret it but at the same time, we know that humans are a cancer to the planet. Should we mourn the death of a cancer cell?
A scientific expert on our staff points out that there is an inverse relationship between human population and planetary health. As all the capitalist ideas are eliminated the planet will have a chance to breathe again. However, the people left will still try to eat the native inhabitants. They will still try to grow food and reclaim land in order to do so. Therefore, it may be necessary to completely eliminate the human population.
We propose a no child policy. We are caring people and do not want to be judge, jury and executioner for the people who survive the elimination of capitalism. However, they cannot be allowed to bring more people to the planet because this could start the evil cycle all over again.
Some people, those who have demonstrated a progressive, caring and forward thinking approach, will be allowed to reproduce in order to act as stewards of the planet. We here at our organization (BURP) are imminently qualified to make this decision.
We understand that many of you may have some trepidation concerning this proposal but those of you who feel that way ought to re-think your priorities. It is not right to put the perpetuation of your gene pool above the health of the planet. We have made our choice. It is either the planet or humanity and we choose the planet.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Sacrifice, Guilt And Giving Back - The Three Stooges Of Leftist Politics
There are phrases and ideas that are often accepted without question. The notion that people need to ‘give back to society’ is uttered by many people who have been successful. Athletes and actors have often expressed this idea when establishing some charity or fund that helps the communities they grew up in.
While giving to charity or setting up an organization that helps people is a noble cause, there is an inherent illogic and dangerous precedent in the phrase ‘giving back to the community’. First, the idea assumes that the community has given people something to begin with. Second, it assumes that people have a right to expect something from the community.
Barack Obama seems to be a firm believer in the ‘giving back’ idea. At various times he has spoken about people who have done well in the United States:
“They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.”
In contradiction to the previous quote, he also said about the ‘rich’:
"Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I have taken from this country… Their notion is despite the fact that I have benefited from all of these investments… that somehow I have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me. And I have no real obligation to future generations to make sure they have a better future.”
So in one comment, rich people want to give more and in the other comment he presents the rich as a bunch of selfish people who want to keep all their money. Whatever Obama actually believes about the things the rich want to do with their money, he clearly believes that it is their obligation to give more of it away to government. He said:
“This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. “
The idea of ‘giving back’ is a diversion. It betrays the way of thinking of people on the left as well as on people who have been successful and who feel guilty about their success. With the left it is a matter of retribution and payback while with the successful, it is a matter of guilt, which presupposes that their success is somehow immoral.
While giving to charities is a noble idea and should be encouraged, giving BACK is an abomination. The ‘community’ did not create the success of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The ‘community’ did not make Michael Jordan a great basketball player. It is wonderful of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan to give their money to causes that they believe in. It is criminal if they are forced to give money to this fictitious entity called ‘community’.
Community is nothing but a euphemism for government. The whole idea of our constitutional republic is limited government. All the rights are placed in the hands of individual people. The government rules by the consent of those people. It can’t give people anything because it has nothing to give. All it can do is to take from some to give to others. The prosperity of the United States was created by individuals, not government.
Bill Gates may owe his parents and he may owe friends who inspired him. Most of all, he should feel pride in himself. He has created a company that provides millions of new jobs. He has created powerful products that people can obtain at reasonable prices that make them more productive. If anything, it is the community that owes Bill Gates, not the other way around.
‘Giving back’ is a better way of saying that paying more taxes is patriotic. Joe Biden said that rich Americans would gladly pay more:
“It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
Biden could not be more wrong. Paying more taxes to is like giving $20 to a kid to buy milk, eggs and orange juice. After he comes back saying that he spent the $20 on video games you give him another $20. This time he comes back saying that he went to McDonalds. So you give him another $20 and he comes back and says he went to the movies. When do you stop giving him $20?
It is not patriotic to pay more taxes and it is not patriotic to give money to a government that has proven time and again that it doesn’t know what to do with that money when it has it. All the talk about having the rich pay their ‘fair share’ presupposes that if the government had that money it would use it in a more beneficial way.
Barack Obama said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:
“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. “
There is so much that is misleading about this statement. First of all, conservatives are not asking anyone, rich or poor to sacrifice. Obama and the left are so used to their own rhetoric that they can’t seem to think or speak without these toxic ideas seeping in to everything they say and do. If money is spent on things that are not achieving results, it is not a sacrifice to stop spending money on those things, it is common sense.
It is beneficial to everyone, rich and poor alike, to stop wasting money on union subsidies and tax breaks for unions that do not even use those tax breaks for the benefit of their own members. It is beneficial to stop spending so much money on an education system that is clearly broken. It is beneficial to look at Medicare and social security and our entire safety net system and deal with the realities of the financial mess they are in.
Another misleading idea of Obama’s statement (more of an outright lie) is the claim of a tax cut for millionaires. Republicans are proposing to keep the same rate that has been in effect for the last ten years -- that is clearly not a cut. But more important is the idea of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘giving back’. It is ironic that Obama wants to eliminate the tax cut for charitable giving. Does he really want to encourage people to ‘give back’ or does he want to have a government that has more control over the people? The idea of ‘giving back’ seems to only get its moral cache if it is forced upon individuals by an intrusive government.
Ayn Rand once asked “in a society where everybody sacrifices, who wins?” She said "The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice'...If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral.” And she also said “Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values.”
Obama said: “The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.” And he said “This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.
Exactly what America does Barack Obama believe in? Is it one where the people are helpless and need his help to survive? Americans sacrifice every day. They crowd into trains at 5:30 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep in order to give their kids a better life. They don’t need lectures from Barack Obama on sacrificing. Forcing people to spend money on ideas that are inimical to the ideas of the constitution and freedom is not a sacrifice, it is theft.
While giving to charity or setting up an organization that helps people is a noble cause, there is an inherent illogic and dangerous precedent in the phrase ‘giving back to the community’. First, the idea assumes that the community has given people something to begin with. Second, it assumes that people have a right to expect something from the community.
Barack Obama seems to be a firm believer in the ‘giving back’ idea. At various times he has spoken about people who have done well in the United States:
“They want to give back to the country that’s done so much for them. Washington just hasn’t asked them to.”
In contradiction to the previous quote, he also said about the ‘rich’:
"Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I have taken from this country… Their notion is despite the fact that I have benefited from all of these investments… that somehow I have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me. And I have no real obligation to future generations to make sure they have a better future.”
So in one comment, rich people want to give more and in the other comment he presents the rich as a bunch of selfish people who want to keep all their money. Whatever Obama actually believes about the things the rich want to do with their money, he clearly believes that it is their obligation to give more of it away to government. He said:
“This is not because we begrudge those who’ve done well – we rightly celebrate their success. Rather, it is a basic reflection of our belief that those who have benefitted most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back. “
The idea of ‘giving back’ is a diversion. It betrays the way of thinking of people on the left as well as on people who have been successful and who feel guilty about their success. With the left it is a matter of retribution and payback while with the successful, it is a matter of guilt, which presupposes that their success is somehow immoral.
While giving to charities is a noble idea and should be encouraged, giving BACK is an abomination. The ‘community’ did not create the success of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. The ‘community’ did not make Michael Jordan a great basketball player. It is wonderful of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan to give their money to causes that they believe in. It is criminal if they are forced to give money to this fictitious entity called ‘community’.
Community is nothing but a euphemism for government. The whole idea of our constitutional republic is limited government. All the rights are placed in the hands of individual people. The government rules by the consent of those people. It can’t give people anything because it has nothing to give. All it can do is to take from some to give to others. The prosperity of the United States was created by individuals, not government.
Bill Gates may owe his parents and he may owe friends who inspired him. Most of all, he should feel pride in himself. He has created a company that provides millions of new jobs. He has created powerful products that people can obtain at reasonable prices that make them more productive. If anything, it is the community that owes Bill Gates, not the other way around.
‘Giving back’ is a better way of saying that paying more taxes is patriotic. Joe Biden said that rich Americans would gladly pay more:
“It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”
Biden could not be more wrong. Paying more taxes to is like giving $20 to a kid to buy milk, eggs and orange juice. After he comes back saying that he spent the $20 on video games you give him another $20. This time he comes back saying that he went to McDonalds. So you give him another $20 and he comes back and says he went to the movies. When do you stop giving him $20?
It is not patriotic to pay more taxes and it is not patriotic to give money to a government that has proven time and again that it doesn’t know what to do with that money when it has it. All the talk about having the rich pay their ‘fair share’ presupposes that if the government had that money it would use it in a more beneficial way.
Barack Obama said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:
“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. “
There is so much that is misleading about this statement. First of all, conservatives are not asking anyone, rich or poor to sacrifice. Obama and the left are so used to their own rhetoric that they can’t seem to think or speak without these toxic ideas seeping in to everything they say and do. If money is spent on things that are not achieving results, it is not a sacrifice to stop spending money on those things, it is common sense.
It is beneficial to everyone, rich and poor alike, to stop wasting money on union subsidies and tax breaks for unions that do not even use those tax breaks for the benefit of their own members. It is beneficial to stop spending so much money on an education system that is clearly broken. It is beneficial to look at Medicare and social security and our entire safety net system and deal with the realities of the financial mess they are in.
Another misleading idea of Obama’s statement (more of an outright lie) is the claim of a tax cut for millionaires. Republicans are proposing to keep the same rate that has been in effect for the last ten years -- that is clearly not a cut. But more important is the idea of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘giving back’. It is ironic that Obama wants to eliminate the tax cut for charitable giving. Does he really want to encourage people to ‘give back’ or does he want to have a government that has more control over the people? The idea of ‘giving back’ seems to only get its moral cache if it is forced upon individuals by an intrusive government.
Ayn Rand once asked “in a society where everybody sacrifices, who wins?” She said "The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice'...If you wish to save the last of your dignity, do not call your best actions a 'sacrifice': that term brands you as immoral.” And she also said “Sacrifice” is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man’s virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values.”
Obama said: “The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.” And he said “This is who we are. This is the America I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country. To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m President, we won’t.
Exactly what America does Barack Obama believe in? Is it one where the people are helpless and need his help to survive? Americans sacrifice every day. They crowd into trains at 5:30 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep in order to give their kids a better life. They don’t need lectures from Barack Obama on sacrificing. Forcing people to spend money on ideas that are inimical to the ideas of the constitution and freedom is not a sacrifice, it is theft.
Friday, April 22, 2011
A Political Strategy For Conservatives
Former NFL coach of the NY Jets Herm Edwards uttered the words “You play to win the game” at a press conference in response to a question about the Jets playing “not to lose” rather than aggressively playing to win. The Edwards quote is funny in the way he says it but playing to win is not as obvious as his quote makes it seem.
In sports, there are some teams or individuals who play aggressively, trying to force their opponents into mistakes while risking mistakes themselves. Other teams don’t take chances, playing less aggressively while waiting for a mistake from their opponents that they can pounce on. Some teams try to outsmart their opponents, some use gimmicks while others try to physically intimidate.
One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. It depends on the personnel of the team and the personnel of its opponent, as well as weather conditions and other considerations. One thing is clear in sports – you find your own strength and your opponent’s weakness and try to maximize your strengths while exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses.
In U.S. politics, one of the biggest strengths of democrats vs. republicans is that the democrats get to frame the rules of the debate. This is helped by a media that is mostly made up of democrats. There are narratives and cliché’s that are accepted as absolute truths such as: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Republicans are the party of the rich and corporations while democrats are the party of the working class. Democrats care about the elderly, minorities, children, women, gays, transgender people and the physically handicapped while republicans care about the religious right and gun fanatics. Democrats are thoughtful, thinking people while republicans are back woods people ready to support war and killing in the name of blind patriotism.
Republicans need to attack these clichés at their core before they can go into specific debates about policy. As long as republicans are portrayed in this way, they will not be successful. The worst part of these clichés is that the republicans often lend credibility to the stereotypes by trying to put themselves above other republicans.
For example, when republicans use a term such as “compassionate conservatism”, they lend legitimacy to the idea that most conservatives are not compassionate. Instead of a candidate saying that as an individual, he is a compassionate conservative, the candidate needs to say that conservatism, itself, is compassionate. The candidate needs to be able to display how and why conservatism is compassionate. Before conservatives and republicans can become the political force they need to be, they have to change the take on who they are perceived to be.
Republicans are afraid to defend anything that took place during the Bush administration and that continues to be used against them. Some political strategists, no doubt making a lot of money and being experts in their field, have decided that the past is the past and that political debates must be based on a vision of the future. But when your vision of the future is consistently compared to what you have done in the past you are put in a position where you HAVE to defend the past whether you want to or not.
An honest analysis of what took place during the Bush administration would show that Bush and the republicans were the only ones who saw the impending disaster of Freddie and Fannie, along with the housing market collapse. There are democrat politicians from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Barack Obama, himself, actually on tape saying that Freddie and Fannie were not in trouble. They are on tape saying they wanted to continue the course of sub-prime loans. These are the same sub-prime loans that were the driving force behind the economic collapse.
The republicans know the complete playbook of democrats. It’s class warfare, lying about actual facts, and portraying the republicans as mean. There is no ingenuity behind that playbook. The republicans know that an 85 mile per hour straight fastball is coming straight down the center of the plate belt high but they refuse to hit it! Since they are already being sold to the public as mean, republicans are careful not to hit the ball too hard because then they might be perceived as even more mean! Yet people would respect and like republicans more if they fought for their issues rather than ran away from them.
When Barack Obama states “But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking” -- or when Obama says that republicans have driven the car into the ditch and he is trying to get the car out -- or when he says about republicans that “they can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back”. All of these comments are based on the assumption that the Bush administration, the republican congress and the republican senate created the economic mess the U.S. is in.
When the entire strategy of the democrats is based on the idea that Bush and republicans “drove the bus into a ditch” then it is incumbent on the republicans to show that they were screaming to stop the bus while the democrats kept driving. In fact, there is a rumor that while the bus was speeding toward the cliff, it was stopped by a traffic cop but when the officer asked for a license and registration, Barack Obama chided him for being extreme. Apparently the officer let the bus go after Obama showed him an old learner’s permit from the state of Hawaii.
Obama was recently caught off camera by CBS and said “Go at it” in referring to republicans attempt to repeal his health care plan. If Obama wants a fight, the republicans should give him one. Start by isolating the lies constantly being told by the left and then attack the motivation for saying the lies, as well as the substance of the lies themselves. It can’t get done through the media and must come in a “mano a mano” challenge directly to Obama. Obama will get angry and will try to hide it by his signature smile. Nevertheless, if he is really challenged, he will come across as bitter and vengeful.
A quick word about the “Birther” issue – a friend recently applied for a job at a large financial firm. He had to provide: Proof of citizenship, A full college transcript, Allow the company to do a full credit check, Show documentation and proof of all residences for the last ten years, Copies of passport and drivers license, Get a drug test. Why does a person applying for a job at a financial institution need to show more proof than the person who has the most powerful position on earth?
The President works for the people and we have a right, actually an obligation, to make sure that he is who he says he is. In fact, we know he has a large collection of friends (too numerous to name here) who have anti-American sentiments. Is it unreasonable to ask to see what he wrote during his informative years in college, especially given who his friends are? Every other president has released his transcripts, why not Obama?
As to the birth certificate, if it has been lost then say so and tell us why. Obama has spent about 2 million dollars fighting lawsuits that want him to simply show the birth certificate. He clearly does not want to show this document. Maybe he is a citizen and maybe he isn’t but he clearly seems to be hiding something.
George Bush had about 10 minutes unaccounted for from his service in the National Guard and every media company in the world tried to find out what went on in those 10 minutes. Now we have a president who hasn’t released his medical records, college transcript and writings, and birth certificate. Where is the media curiosity? Republicans need to (pardon the expression) grow a set on this one and simply demand that Obama release these documents as all other presidents have done.
The republicans have to fight on their terms. Despite an antagonistic media, there is no need for trick plays. All republicans have to do is toss the ball down the field and they will win. There is no need to take a call on a cell phone in the middle of a news conference. Leave this kind of idiocy to the democrats. Are you listening Rudy Giuliani? Don’t insult the intelligence of the citizens of this country with silly games. State your case honestly and without fear, with humor if possible but not with gimmicks. Play to win the game.
In sports, there are some teams or individuals who play aggressively, trying to force their opponents into mistakes while risking mistakes themselves. Other teams don’t take chances, playing less aggressively while waiting for a mistake from their opponents that they can pounce on. Some teams try to outsmart their opponents, some use gimmicks while others try to physically intimidate.
One strategy is not necessarily better than the other. It depends on the personnel of the team and the personnel of its opponent, as well as weather conditions and other considerations. One thing is clear in sports – you find your own strength and your opponent’s weakness and try to maximize your strengths while exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses.
In U.S. politics, one of the biggest strengths of democrats vs. republicans is that the democrats get to frame the rules of the debate. This is helped by a media that is mostly made up of democrats. There are narratives and cliché’s that are accepted as absolute truths such as: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Republicans are the party of the rich and corporations while democrats are the party of the working class. Democrats care about the elderly, minorities, children, women, gays, transgender people and the physically handicapped while republicans care about the religious right and gun fanatics. Democrats are thoughtful, thinking people while republicans are back woods people ready to support war and killing in the name of blind patriotism.
Republicans need to attack these clichés at their core before they can go into specific debates about policy. As long as republicans are portrayed in this way, they will not be successful. The worst part of these clichés is that the republicans often lend credibility to the stereotypes by trying to put themselves above other republicans.
For example, when republicans use a term such as “compassionate conservatism”, they lend legitimacy to the idea that most conservatives are not compassionate. Instead of a candidate saying that as an individual, he is a compassionate conservative, the candidate needs to say that conservatism, itself, is compassionate. The candidate needs to be able to display how and why conservatism is compassionate. Before conservatives and republicans can become the political force they need to be, they have to change the take on who they are perceived to be.
Republicans are afraid to defend anything that took place during the Bush administration and that continues to be used against them. Some political strategists, no doubt making a lot of money and being experts in their field, have decided that the past is the past and that political debates must be based on a vision of the future. But when your vision of the future is consistently compared to what you have done in the past you are put in a position where you HAVE to defend the past whether you want to or not.
An honest analysis of what took place during the Bush administration would show that Bush and the republicans were the only ones who saw the impending disaster of Freddie and Fannie, along with the housing market collapse. There are democrat politicians from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Barack Obama, himself, actually on tape saying that Freddie and Fannie were not in trouble. They are on tape saying they wanted to continue the course of sub-prime loans. These are the same sub-prime loans that were the driving force behind the economic collapse.
The republicans know the complete playbook of democrats. It’s class warfare, lying about actual facts, and portraying the republicans as mean. There is no ingenuity behind that playbook. The republicans know that an 85 mile per hour straight fastball is coming straight down the center of the plate belt high but they refuse to hit it! Since they are already being sold to the public as mean, republicans are careful not to hit the ball too hard because then they might be perceived as even more mean! Yet people would respect and like republicans more if they fought for their issues rather than ran away from them.
When Barack Obama states “But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking” -- or when Obama says that republicans have driven the car into the ditch and he is trying to get the car out -- or when he says about republicans that “they can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back”. All of these comments are based on the assumption that the Bush administration, the republican congress and the republican senate created the economic mess the U.S. is in.
When the entire strategy of the democrats is based on the idea that Bush and republicans “drove the bus into a ditch” then it is incumbent on the republicans to show that they were screaming to stop the bus while the democrats kept driving. In fact, there is a rumor that while the bus was speeding toward the cliff, it was stopped by a traffic cop but when the officer asked for a license and registration, Barack Obama chided him for being extreme. Apparently the officer let the bus go after Obama showed him an old learner’s permit from the state of Hawaii.
Obama was recently caught off camera by CBS and said “Go at it” in referring to republicans attempt to repeal his health care plan. If Obama wants a fight, the republicans should give him one. Start by isolating the lies constantly being told by the left and then attack the motivation for saying the lies, as well as the substance of the lies themselves. It can’t get done through the media and must come in a “mano a mano” challenge directly to Obama. Obama will get angry and will try to hide it by his signature smile. Nevertheless, if he is really challenged, he will come across as bitter and vengeful.
A quick word about the “Birther” issue – a friend recently applied for a job at a large financial firm. He had to provide: Proof of citizenship, A full college transcript, Allow the company to do a full credit check, Show documentation and proof of all residences for the last ten years, Copies of passport and drivers license, Get a drug test. Why does a person applying for a job at a financial institution need to show more proof than the person who has the most powerful position on earth?
The President works for the people and we have a right, actually an obligation, to make sure that he is who he says he is. In fact, we know he has a large collection of friends (too numerous to name here) who have anti-American sentiments. Is it unreasonable to ask to see what he wrote during his informative years in college, especially given who his friends are? Every other president has released his transcripts, why not Obama?
As to the birth certificate, if it has been lost then say so and tell us why. Obama has spent about 2 million dollars fighting lawsuits that want him to simply show the birth certificate. He clearly does not want to show this document. Maybe he is a citizen and maybe he isn’t but he clearly seems to be hiding something.
George Bush had about 10 minutes unaccounted for from his service in the National Guard and every media company in the world tried to find out what went on in those 10 minutes. Now we have a president who hasn’t released his medical records, college transcript and writings, and birth certificate. Where is the media curiosity? Republicans need to (pardon the expression) grow a set on this one and simply demand that Obama release these documents as all other presidents have done.
The republicans have to fight on their terms. Despite an antagonistic media, there is no need for trick plays. All republicans have to do is toss the ball down the field and they will win. There is no need to take a call on a cell phone in the middle of a news conference. Leave this kind of idiocy to the democrats. Are you listening Rudy Giuliani? Don’t insult the intelligence of the citizens of this country with silly games. State your case honestly and without fear, with humor if possible but not with gimmicks. Play to win the game.
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Big Government Virus
A biological virus is defined, according to Dictionary.com as: “an ultramicroscopic … metabolically inert, infectious agent that replicates only within the cells of living hosts, mainly bacteria, plants, and animals … composed of an RNA or DNA core, a protein coat, and, in more complex types, a surrounding envelope. “A computer virus is defined as “a segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, often to damage or shut down a system or network.
There is a new type of virus known as BGV (The Big Government Virus). This is a virus that combines the maliciousness of a computer virus with the heartbreaking reality of a biological virus. BGV is similar to a computer virus in that it is caused by people and planted in hosts with purposeful intent. It is similar to a biological virus in the way it replicates itself in the body politic.
There is no cure for BGV. There is no treatment, antibiotic, or anti-virus software that will remove it once it takes hold. The virus reproduces itself on a geometric scale. The best way of dealing with this treacherous disease is to prevent it from infecting the host in the first place. Like all viruses, BGV is a parasite that needs to feed off of a living host in order to survive and spread.
The good news is that BGV is completely preventable. It requires education from a young age and continuing vigilance throughout a person’s life but as long as people are aware of the warning signs, they can prevent the infection from contaminating them and their neighbors.
Schools have started many education programs for the prevention of viruses such as AIDS. They have handed out condoms to young children and explained to these young kids how to have sex so that it is less risky. Now with this new wicked virus, young children will need to be educated to how BGV works, how it spreads and how it can be prevented.
Like many viruses, at first BGV seems harmless. Its danger is in its deceptive nature. It often fools people into thinking that it is beneficial. This is why education of BGV is so important. People first need to identify carriers of the virus. There are people who knowingly carry this virus and purposely spread it to others. Most of these people are democrat politicians. The virus works thusly:
A democrat politician such as Barack Obama will say something such as “The rich need to pay their fair share”. This is the entry point of BGV. Taxes then get raised. At this point the BGV bug takes hold. People will naturally try to prevent giving their hard earned money to the government. They may try to put it in tax shelters. So, a new government agency needs to be created in order to monitor the economic activity of citizens. A certain amount of freedom is lost as this new agency tells people how and where they can invest their money.
This new agency costs money as well. Hundreds of new IRS agents need to be hired. Therefore, the raising of taxes has an expense associated with it as a portion of the new taxes has to go into paying for the new agency.
Then the people who have to pay the extra taxes have to change their plans. Not having the money to invest the way they want, they have to cancel certain expenditures. A person planning to buy a BMW puts those plans off until the economic situation is better. Other people do the same. Soon there is extra inventory at BMW. Sales people are let go as cars are not selling.
The sales people who are let go from BMW file for unemployment. Now, instead of the government receiving taxes from all those BMW sales people, the government has to pay them unemployment checks. So the extra revenue from raising taxes now has another bill associated with it. There are less people paying taxes because less people are working and not only are there less tax payers, but the government goes from receiving money from those people to PAYING money to those people.
The trucking companies that deliver BMW cars, the mechanics that repair them, the suppliers who supply the steel, computer components, electrical equipment, and leather for the seats all let people go because demand is so low. Now the unemployment rate is really starting to rise and in an act of compassion, the unemployment insurance period is increased by six months which causes government to pay out even more money.
Now the BGV illness has completely infected the body politic. People have less money because the government is confiscating more and more. In addition, the government is telling them how and where they can invest the money they are allowed to keep. This loss of freedom and individual wealth is not offset by any gains in government revenue because whatever new money the government hoped to obtain is paid out in new expenses that didn’t exist before the tax increase.
This is only the beginning of the damage caused by the BGV virus. Not only is there a bunch of new expenses, but there isn’t any new economic growth. A person who was planning to create an extra room in his home puts those plans off because after paying the extra taxes, he doesn’t have enough money left. The construction firm that would have gotten the job and would have paid taxes on it now pays no taxes and goes out of business because no one else is adding rooms to their homes either.
The insidious virus is now in full replication mode. Politicians see the infection spreading but instead of trying to treat it, they perpetuate it with more of the same. With unemployment levels skyrocketing and debt growing, the politicians decide to create new government jobs. The people who do these jobs go off of unemployment but their very salary is still paid by other tax payers! These jobs cost money and produce little. In addition, the people who do these jobs become dependent on the very system that gave them the jobs in the first place. A vicious cycle begins as the people who work for the government become permanent perpetuators of the BGV disease!
With all the new government jobs, there is no innovation by individuals. People who may have come up with inventions and ideas that could improve the lives of others don’t have the money to invest. There is no entrepreneurialism because not only do people lack the money to invest but they also know that even if they manage to scrape up the money, come up with a great idea, work hard and have success, they still won’t get to keep the fruits of their hard work! Soon people become dependent on other countries for products because the cost of producing them here and taking risks versus the potential rewards becomes prohibitive.
At this point the BGV germs are circulating all through the body politic. The infection is severe. Debt and unemployment are high. Individual freedom is in danger. There is no growth in the economy. Opportunities are few and innovation is null. So what do the politicians do? They ask to raise taxes again! This is similar to an endless loop in the worst computer virus. A loop is a piece of computer code that repeats itself over and over until some condition is finally met to stop it. But with another rise in taxes, there is no exit to the loop as it repeats again and again while doing more damage each time it runs through. The patient, already infected with a severe case of BGV, will not survive if the loop continues to run.
Awareness of diseases is important. People have cancer walks and AIDS walks in order to prevent the spread of diseases and to raise consciousness. They remind people to see doctors and get checked for breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer. The time has come for a BGV walk to create awareness and to put a definitive end to this horrific epidemic. It is now time to educate the public to the scourge known as the BGV (Big Government) virus. This self perpetuating disease has always been around in one form or another. It can be reasonably argued that this disease has caused more death and destruction than any other. The infection rate has, hitherto, been kept in check in the United States. Now the country is in danger of a BGV epidemic. It must be stopped.
There is a new type of virus known as BGV (The Big Government Virus). This is a virus that combines the maliciousness of a computer virus with the heartbreaking reality of a biological virus. BGV is similar to a computer virus in that it is caused by people and planted in hosts with purposeful intent. It is similar to a biological virus in the way it replicates itself in the body politic.
There is no cure for BGV. There is no treatment, antibiotic, or anti-virus software that will remove it once it takes hold. The virus reproduces itself on a geometric scale. The best way of dealing with this treacherous disease is to prevent it from infecting the host in the first place. Like all viruses, BGV is a parasite that needs to feed off of a living host in order to survive and spread.
The good news is that BGV is completely preventable. It requires education from a young age and continuing vigilance throughout a person’s life but as long as people are aware of the warning signs, they can prevent the infection from contaminating them and their neighbors.
Schools have started many education programs for the prevention of viruses such as AIDS. They have handed out condoms to young children and explained to these young kids how to have sex so that it is less risky. Now with this new wicked virus, young children will need to be educated to how BGV works, how it spreads and how it can be prevented.
Like many viruses, at first BGV seems harmless. Its danger is in its deceptive nature. It often fools people into thinking that it is beneficial. This is why education of BGV is so important. People first need to identify carriers of the virus. There are people who knowingly carry this virus and purposely spread it to others. Most of these people are democrat politicians. The virus works thusly:
A democrat politician such as Barack Obama will say something such as “The rich need to pay their fair share”. This is the entry point of BGV. Taxes then get raised. At this point the BGV bug takes hold. People will naturally try to prevent giving their hard earned money to the government. They may try to put it in tax shelters. So, a new government agency needs to be created in order to monitor the economic activity of citizens. A certain amount of freedom is lost as this new agency tells people how and where they can invest their money.
This new agency costs money as well. Hundreds of new IRS agents need to be hired. Therefore, the raising of taxes has an expense associated with it as a portion of the new taxes has to go into paying for the new agency.
Then the people who have to pay the extra taxes have to change their plans. Not having the money to invest the way they want, they have to cancel certain expenditures. A person planning to buy a BMW puts those plans off until the economic situation is better. Other people do the same. Soon there is extra inventory at BMW. Sales people are let go as cars are not selling.
The sales people who are let go from BMW file for unemployment. Now, instead of the government receiving taxes from all those BMW sales people, the government has to pay them unemployment checks. So the extra revenue from raising taxes now has another bill associated with it. There are less people paying taxes because less people are working and not only are there less tax payers, but the government goes from receiving money from those people to PAYING money to those people.
The trucking companies that deliver BMW cars, the mechanics that repair them, the suppliers who supply the steel, computer components, electrical equipment, and leather for the seats all let people go because demand is so low. Now the unemployment rate is really starting to rise and in an act of compassion, the unemployment insurance period is increased by six months which causes government to pay out even more money.
Now the BGV illness has completely infected the body politic. People have less money because the government is confiscating more and more. In addition, the government is telling them how and where they can invest the money they are allowed to keep. This loss of freedom and individual wealth is not offset by any gains in government revenue because whatever new money the government hoped to obtain is paid out in new expenses that didn’t exist before the tax increase.
This is only the beginning of the damage caused by the BGV virus. Not only is there a bunch of new expenses, but there isn’t any new economic growth. A person who was planning to create an extra room in his home puts those plans off because after paying the extra taxes, he doesn’t have enough money left. The construction firm that would have gotten the job and would have paid taxes on it now pays no taxes and goes out of business because no one else is adding rooms to their homes either.
The insidious virus is now in full replication mode. Politicians see the infection spreading but instead of trying to treat it, they perpetuate it with more of the same. With unemployment levels skyrocketing and debt growing, the politicians decide to create new government jobs. The people who do these jobs go off of unemployment but their very salary is still paid by other tax payers! These jobs cost money and produce little. In addition, the people who do these jobs become dependent on the very system that gave them the jobs in the first place. A vicious cycle begins as the people who work for the government become permanent perpetuators of the BGV disease!
With all the new government jobs, there is no innovation by individuals. People who may have come up with inventions and ideas that could improve the lives of others don’t have the money to invest. There is no entrepreneurialism because not only do people lack the money to invest but they also know that even if they manage to scrape up the money, come up with a great idea, work hard and have success, they still won’t get to keep the fruits of their hard work! Soon people become dependent on other countries for products because the cost of producing them here and taking risks versus the potential rewards becomes prohibitive.
At this point the BGV germs are circulating all through the body politic. The infection is severe. Debt and unemployment are high. Individual freedom is in danger. There is no growth in the economy. Opportunities are few and innovation is null. So what do the politicians do? They ask to raise taxes again! This is similar to an endless loop in the worst computer virus. A loop is a piece of computer code that repeats itself over and over until some condition is finally met to stop it. But with another rise in taxes, there is no exit to the loop as it repeats again and again while doing more damage each time it runs through. The patient, already infected with a severe case of BGV, will not survive if the loop continues to run.
Awareness of diseases is important. People have cancer walks and AIDS walks in order to prevent the spread of diseases and to raise consciousness. They remind people to see doctors and get checked for breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer. The time has come for a BGV walk to create awareness and to put a definitive end to this horrific epidemic. It is now time to educate the public to the scourge known as the BGV (Big Government) virus. This self perpetuating disease has always been around in one form or another. It can be reasonably argued that this disease has caused more death and destruction than any other. The infection rate has, hitherto, been kept in check in the United States. Now the country is in danger of a BGV epidemic. It must be stopped.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Neocons, Teabaggers and Chickenhawks - The Methods of Saul Alinsky and the Demonization of Political Opponents
Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules For Radicals” was published in 1971. Its methods have become synonymous with leftist political strategy. Even people who never read the book have been so ingrained by the techniques outlined within its pages that they use its methods without realizing it. Both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are admirers of Saul Alinsky.
A 21 year old Hillary Rodham was offered a job with the Alinsky Community Organizing group and later wrote her thesis on Alinsky. Obama’s early community organizing started when he was 24 years old in the Alinsky groups “Developing Communities Project (DCP)” and the “Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC)”.
In the first chapter of “Rules For Radicals” called “The Purpose”, Alinsky writes:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
Who is supposed to have power in the United States? According to the Constitution, the people hold power and are governed by their consent. The government must answer to the people, not the people to the government. So who, exactly, does Alinsky want to take power from and who is supposed to get this power? This idea of “holding power” is always couched in terms such as the “Have-Nots” or the “Poor” but in reality it seeks to fundamentally change the government of the United States.
In speaking about the Constitution, Barack Obama said “It says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” It would be easy to say that Obama lacks an understanding of the constitution but he probably understands it all too well. Trained in Alinsky tactics, Obama wants to change the power structure and will use the structure (the constitution and free markets) only insofar as it can be used to achieve his ends.
Alinsky said “All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” So it is not just about creating new ideas, it is about discrediting the ones already in place, as Obama does when he criticizes the constitution. When people refer to the constitution as a “Living Document” they make the constitution “pliable”. A “pliable” constitution is easier to bend to the desires of those who wish to remodel it in such a way that the original intent is unrecognizable.
Ironically, according to Alinsky, it is the very idea of being a “radical” or a dangerous “enemy” to the status quo that gives the community organizer his credibility. Alinsky said that the “establishment” must fear the organizer and label him as “DANGEROUS”:
“for in that one word the establishment reveals its fear of the organizer, its fear that he represents a threat to its omnipotence. Now the organizer has his ‘birth certificate’ and can begin.”
And you silly people thought Obama didn’t have a birth certificate!
Alinsky understood that in order to gather a following, the organizer needed to inspire confidence to a core group. While Obama fights charges that he is not a radical and tries to minimize his associations with people such as Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, he revels in it at the same time, giving a nod and a wink to those who openly or secretly adhere to the same agenda. He also has the added benefit of ridiculing those who point out these things as being out of touch or conspiracy mongers.
In the chapter “Of Means and Ends”, Alinsky utters his “Rules of Ethics”. In the eleventh rule of ethics he states “goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, “Of the Common Welfare”. It’s easy to see his influence in current mindless clichés such as ‘the rich get richer while the poor get poorer’. Mostly in this chapter, Alinsky justifies any means if it leads to the desired end. He points out that morality is flexible, depending upon the time of occurrence, who commits a particular act, and how the act is sold or marketed. It is a war mentality, as he states in his third rule of ethics, “in war the end justifies any means”. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Rahm Emanuel’s voice saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
Alinsky’s “power tactics” can be seen in almost everything the left does. For example, the fourth tactic is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules”. Conservatives always moan about double standards. The reason that there are double standards is because conservatives have standards. It is impossible to always live up to high standards but the admirable part about having high standards is to try. Failing is not a crime but in the view of the left and of Alinsky, it is an opportunity. Therefore, if Bill Clinton has affairs or is accused of sexual harassment, it is a personal matter since he never had any standards to begin with, but a conservative such as Clarence Thomas is expected to walk on water or be viewed as a hypocrite.
The fifth rule states “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky goes on to say “It is almost impossible to counter attack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition who then react to your advantage.” When the Tea Party rose to prominence in response to Obama’s radical agenda, the left came up with terms such as “tea bagger”. They thought themselves very clever in their use of that vulgar term. They have also shown fondness for the term “Neo-con”, giggling like 10 year old children when using that witty phrase. They use terms such as “Chicken Hawks” if a person who never served in the military should dare say that maybe military use is needed in a certain situation.
The thirteenth rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The left constantly looks for the latest “boogeyman/boogeywoman”. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and many others all fall into this category. In this tactic, the left doesn’t seek to find truth -- They seek to create a living caricature of evil, incompetence and cruelty and they don’t care how cruel they are in slandering people who have families and loved ones as long as it serves the purpose of mitigating an effective voice of the right.
The dirty little secret about Alinsky and his approach to “change” is that he has contempt for the average person. In the thirteenth rule above, for example, Alinsky explains that a person or “target” is needed because it is difficult to get people organized and excited about a concept or policy. It’s almost as if he views people as children, who need a cartoon character to understand his point.
In fact, Alinsky says about average people:
“Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.”
Alinsky shows his contempt for his own followers. When reading his book, you get a sense that he is out to manipulate people, not to inspire them.
Yet Alinsky does understand the need to inspire. His form of inspiration, however, does not appeal to the best in people, it appeals to their worst – their fears, their envy and their jealousies. It is inspiration by trickery. In order to inspire by trickery, a good salesperson is needed. Along comes Barack Obama and he is perfect for the job. In the chapter titled “Communication”, Alinsky states:
“the organizer will have a pretty good idea about what the community should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action. He will never seem to tell the community what to do. Instead he will use loaded questions. If possible, he will get someone in the audience to faint in order to accentuate his point.”
OK, I made the last one up but certainly Obama is Alinsky’s ideal communicator.
The founders of the United States didn’t base the constitution on trickery or manipulation. They created an idea that has survived and prospered based on the concept that people do not owe their existence to others and that they are responsible for their own happiness and well being. Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky is a recipe for agitation, not for prosperity and certainly not for morality. Anyone in a position of power who follows the teaching of Alinsky is someone who should not be in a position of power.
A 21 year old Hillary Rodham was offered a job with the Alinsky Community Organizing group and later wrote her thesis on Alinsky. Obama’s early community organizing started when he was 24 years old in the Alinsky groups “Developing Communities Project (DCP)” and the “Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC)”.
In the first chapter of “Rules For Radicals” called “The Purpose”, Alinsky writes:
What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
Who is supposed to have power in the United States? According to the Constitution, the people hold power and are governed by their consent. The government must answer to the people, not the people to the government. So who, exactly, does Alinsky want to take power from and who is supposed to get this power? This idea of “holding power” is always couched in terms such as the “Have-Nots” or the “Poor” but in reality it seeks to fundamentally change the government of the United States.
In speaking about the Constitution, Barack Obama said “It says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” It would be easy to say that Obama lacks an understanding of the constitution but he probably understands it all too well. Trained in Alinsky tactics, Obama wants to change the power structure and will use the structure (the constitution and free markets) only insofar as it can be used to achieve his ends.
Alinsky said “All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new.” So it is not just about creating new ideas, it is about discrediting the ones already in place, as Obama does when he criticizes the constitution. When people refer to the constitution as a “Living Document” they make the constitution “pliable”. A “pliable” constitution is easier to bend to the desires of those who wish to remodel it in such a way that the original intent is unrecognizable.
Ironically, according to Alinsky, it is the very idea of being a “radical” or a dangerous “enemy” to the status quo that gives the community organizer his credibility. Alinsky said that the “establishment” must fear the organizer and label him as “DANGEROUS”:
“for in that one word the establishment reveals its fear of the organizer, its fear that he represents a threat to its omnipotence. Now the organizer has his ‘birth certificate’ and can begin.”
And you silly people thought Obama didn’t have a birth certificate!
Alinsky understood that in order to gather a following, the organizer needed to inspire confidence to a core group. While Obama fights charges that he is not a radical and tries to minimize his associations with people such as Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, he revels in it at the same time, giving a nod and a wink to those who openly or secretly adhere to the same agenda. He also has the added benefit of ridiculing those who point out these things as being out of touch or conspiracy mongers.
In the chapter “Of Means and Ends”, Alinsky utters his “Rules of Ethics”. In the eleventh rule of ethics he states “goals must be phrased in general terms like “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, “Of the Common Welfare”. It’s easy to see his influence in current mindless clichés such as ‘the rich get richer while the poor get poorer’. Mostly in this chapter, Alinsky justifies any means if it leads to the desired end. He points out that morality is flexible, depending upon the time of occurrence, who commits a particular act, and how the act is sold or marketed. It is a war mentality, as he states in his third rule of ethics, “in war the end justifies any means”. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear Rahm Emanuel’s voice saying “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
Alinsky’s “power tactics” can be seen in almost everything the left does. For example, the fourth tactic is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules”. Conservatives always moan about double standards. The reason that there are double standards is because conservatives have standards. It is impossible to always live up to high standards but the admirable part about having high standards is to try. Failing is not a crime but in the view of the left and of Alinsky, it is an opportunity. Therefore, if Bill Clinton has affairs or is accused of sexual harassment, it is a personal matter since he never had any standards to begin with, but a conservative such as Clarence Thomas is expected to walk on water or be viewed as a hypocrite.
The fifth rule states “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky goes on to say “It is almost impossible to counter attack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition who then react to your advantage.” When the Tea Party rose to prominence in response to Obama’s radical agenda, the left came up with terms such as “tea bagger”. They thought themselves very clever in their use of that vulgar term. They have also shown fondness for the term “Neo-con”, giggling like 10 year old children when using that witty phrase. They use terms such as “Chicken Hawks” if a person who never served in the military should dare say that maybe military use is needed in a certain situation.
The thirteenth rule is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The left constantly looks for the latest “boogeyman/boogeywoman”. The viciousness of the attacks on Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and many others all fall into this category. In this tactic, the left doesn’t seek to find truth -- They seek to create a living caricature of evil, incompetence and cruelty and they don’t care how cruel they are in slandering people who have families and loved ones as long as it serves the purpose of mitigating an effective voice of the right.
The dirty little secret about Alinsky and his approach to “change” is that he has contempt for the average person. In the thirteenth rule above, for example, Alinsky explains that a person or “target” is needed because it is difficult to get people organized and excited about a concept or policy. It’s almost as if he views people as children, who need a cartoon character to understand his point.
In fact, Alinsky says about average people:
“Their lives have been 90 per cent unfulfilled dreams. To escape their frustration they grasp at a last hope that their children will get that college education and realize those unfulfilled dreams. They are a fearful people who feel threatened from all sides.”
Alinsky shows his contempt for his own followers. When reading his book, you get a sense that he is out to manipulate people, not to inspire them.
Yet Alinsky does understand the need to inspire. His form of inspiration, however, does not appeal to the best in people, it appeals to their worst – their fears, their envy and their jealousies. It is inspiration by trickery. In order to inspire by trickery, a good salesperson is needed. Along comes Barack Obama and he is perfect for the job. In the chapter titled “Communication”, Alinsky states:
“the organizer will have a pretty good idea about what the community should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action. He will never seem to tell the community what to do. Instead he will use loaded questions. If possible, he will get someone in the audience to faint in order to accentuate his point.”
OK, I made the last one up but certainly Obama is Alinsky’s ideal communicator.
The founders of the United States didn’t base the constitution on trickery or manipulation. They created an idea that has survived and prospered based on the concept that people do not owe their existence to others and that they are responsible for their own happiness and well being. Rules For Radicals by Saul Alinsky is a recipe for agitation, not for prosperity and certainly not for morality. Anyone in a position of power who follows the teaching of Alinsky is someone who should not be in a position of power.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Choices, Transformations And Observations
I’m tired of being told that my way of looking at the world is less moral than the ways of other people. I’m tired of being told to disregard what my eyes are seeing because other people may find it offensive.
I am the child of people who survived the Holocaust. My mother was first taken from her home in a small village called Nisni Slatina and taken along with other Jewish people to a decaying, disease ridden ghetto. From there she was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. As she arrived in Auschwitz, she asked a woman Gestapo where her parents were. The woman Gestapo pointed to the smoke bellowing from the chimneys and said, “You want to know where your parents are? That is your parents.” My mother was wearing earrings and the Gestapo pulled down on them, splitting her ears and creating the scars that she still bears today, at 92 years old.
My mother was taken out of Auschwitz as one of 300 girls to do slave labor in a factory called Telefunken. She was treated better at Telefunken doing slave labor than she was at Auschwitz. She was lucky to be sent there. As the tide of the war started to turn, my mother was sent to Bergen Belsen, where she was lying among the dead and dying when the camp was liberated by the British. My mother survived, as did three of her sisters. Two other sisters and her brother, along with both of her parents, were killed.
My mother told me of her experiences often. She told me about how when she entered Auschwitz, she saw the women there behaving like animals, fighting for every scrap of dirty food and swore she would never act that way. But hunger was the over-riding emotion and one day when she spotted a dirty potato skin on the floor, she grabbed at it. She said this to me many times with a lot of emotion in her voice; “Howard, that dirty potato skin tasted like an apple to me.”
As a child, I never fully understood the significance of the Holocaust. I knew it was bad. My mother would have nightmares where she would scream in such a horrified way and you couldn’t wake her up! I would run into their room and literally shake the bed. My father was always afraid that waking her up from these dreams would be too sudden and traumatic. She would finally wake up and start to relax, though with tears in her eyes. I would ask her what happened in the dream. All she would ever say was that big dogs were chasing her. She never went into more details about those nightmares and would just say that she didn’t remember the rest.
As I started to get a little older I started asking questions. What about all the other people? Didn’t anyone see that what was going on was wrong? My mother told me one story about how the neighbors in Nisni Slatina, people who had been over for dinner, people who they had been friends with, took advantage of the growing anti-semitism and started to steal things from their home. This outraged me. The evil of the Nazis was self-evident, though hardly explainable. But that average people would not only do nothing to help, but actually use the situation for petty thievery – that just stuck in my craw.
Some thoughts that you have as a child stay with you forever. Perhaps it is because these are your formative years and you are thinking things out for the first time. As you get older, thoughts come into your mind and leave and you never even knew they were there! The thought that stayed with me and shaped me forever is this; I would never be a person who would allow other people to intimidate me into going against what I knew instinctively to be true or morally correct. I didn’t always live up to this idea but it is the idea that shaped who I am.
As I grew up, it seemed obvious that a liberal ideology was morally correct. Liberals were supposed to stand up for what was right. But as I grew older I started to see things in a different way than many of my friends. I think it started with the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. President Carter was so inept and then Ronald Reagan came in and talked about peace through strength. No one wants war but there is honor in defending what is right. Cowering and hoping that things will change is what led to the Holocaust. I long ago made a pledge to myself that I would see the world as it was and not how other people said it was, and now for the first time, I was forced to act on that pledge.
Even little things started to irk me in their inconsistencies and misrepresentations. In 1984, when Walter Mondale was pressured to pick a woman as his running mate, he chose Geraldine Ferraro. Everyone said how courageous he was for picking a woman and I thought that given the NY Times and every liberal organization was pressuring him to pick a woman, courage at that point would have been to pick a man! It’s not that he was wrong for picking a woman, just that it wasn’t courageous; given the pressure he was under to do so.
It’s funny because people on the left point to the new media and say that these outlets preach to people who don’t know any better, thereby belittling people like me as being easily deceived when the exact opposite is true. My observations of the world led me to becoming conservative before there was a conservative media and when I saw the new conservative media pop up, I was happy to know that there were more people out there who saw the world the way I saw it.
Now in 2010, I’ve seen what my parents saw -- the resurgence of anti-semitism. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime but I always promised myself that if I did see it, I would do what I could to fight against it. This anti-semitism is coming from the Muslim community and from left-wing groups and it makes no sense to try and be politically correct and pretend it is something else.
In the UK, many schools have dropped the Holocaust from history lessons because of fears that it might offend Muslims. Why would Muslims be offended by the teaching of the Holocaust? The fact that the UK education system has given in to this re-writing of history is shameful and eerily reminiscent of the giving in to nazism in the 1930s.
People keep saying that all Muslims are not terrorists, but was every German a nazi? Did people say “Don’t judge all Germans by the actions of a few”? The fact was that the few controlled the many and unfortunately, it’s the same today with the Muslim religion. I will believe that the Muslim religion is a religion of peace when people of the Muslim faith come out to protest the radicalism among them with the same fervor that they protest against a cartoon of Muhammad.
Recently, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for saying what everyone instinctively knows to be true – on airplanes, people will look at Muslims with suspicion and fear. While it’s true that most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims and they, not other people, are responsible for that reaction. I would like to see the people who fired Juan Williams take a lie-detector test and be asked the question of whether or not they do a double take when a person with Muslim garb walks onto a plane. I would bet that they would fail the test if they said anything other than “Yes”.
In New York, people who call themselves liberal stand up for the rights to build a mosque near the World Trade Center. Does it matter that the people building the mosque don’t condemn the acts of terrorist organizations such as Hamas? Does it matter that it is being funded by anti-semitic organizations?
In Palestinian classes, Jewish people are portrayed to children as less than human. There are cartoons portraying Jewish people as money grubbers and monkeys. Why isn’t the world angered by these portrayals? Is it because the Jewish people haven’t threatened anyone? Are Jewish people worth less than others? These cartoons are no different than that of nazis. They would make Joseph Goebbels proud.
Ayn Rand once said “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see”. It is exhausting trying to explain something that seems so self-evident yet it is an obligation, especially for me, to keep trying. I owe this to all the relatives of mine who died in the Holocaust.
I am the child of people who survived the Holocaust. My mother was first taken from her home in a small village called Nisni Slatina and taken along with other Jewish people to a decaying, disease ridden ghetto. From there she was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. As she arrived in Auschwitz, she asked a woman Gestapo where her parents were. The woman Gestapo pointed to the smoke bellowing from the chimneys and said, “You want to know where your parents are? That is your parents.” My mother was wearing earrings and the Gestapo pulled down on them, splitting her ears and creating the scars that she still bears today, at 92 years old.
My mother was taken out of Auschwitz as one of 300 girls to do slave labor in a factory called Telefunken. She was treated better at Telefunken doing slave labor than she was at Auschwitz. She was lucky to be sent there. As the tide of the war started to turn, my mother was sent to Bergen Belsen, where she was lying among the dead and dying when the camp was liberated by the British. My mother survived, as did three of her sisters. Two other sisters and her brother, along with both of her parents, were killed.
My mother told me of her experiences often. She told me about how when she entered Auschwitz, she saw the women there behaving like animals, fighting for every scrap of dirty food and swore she would never act that way. But hunger was the over-riding emotion and one day when she spotted a dirty potato skin on the floor, she grabbed at it. She said this to me many times with a lot of emotion in her voice; “Howard, that dirty potato skin tasted like an apple to me.”
As a child, I never fully understood the significance of the Holocaust. I knew it was bad. My mother would have nightmares where she would scream in such a horrified way and you couldn’t wake her up! I would run into their room and literally shake the bed. My father was always afraid that waking her up from these dreams would be too sudden and traumatic. She would finally wake up and start to relax, though with tears in her eyes. I would ask her what happened in the dream. All she would ever say was that big dogs were chasing her. She never went into more details about those nightmares and would just say that she didn’t remember the rest.
As I started to get a little older I started asking questions. What about all the other people? Didn’t anyone see that what was going on was wrong? My mother told me one story about how the neighbors in Nisni Slatina, people who had been over for dinner, people who they had been friends with, took advantage of the growing anti-semitism and started to steal things from their home. This outraged me. The evil of the Nazis was self-evident, though hardly explainable. But that average people would not only do nothing to help, but actually use the situation for petty thievery – that just stuck in my craw.
Some thoughts that you have as a child stay with you forever. Perhaps it is because these are your formative years and you are thinking things out for the first time. As you get older, thoughts come into your mind and leave and you never even knew they were there! The thought that stayed with me and shaped me forever is this; I would never be a person who would allow other people to intimidate me into going against what I knew instinctively to be true or morally correct. I didn’t always live up to this idea but it is the idea that shaped who I am.
As I grew up, it seemed obvious that a liberal ideology was morally correct. Liberals were supposed to stand up for what was right. But as I grew older I started to see things in a different way than many of my friends. I think it started with the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. President Carter was so inept and then Ronald Reagan came in and talked about peace through strength. No one wants war but there is honor in defending what is right. Cowering and hoping that things will change is what led to the Holocaust. I long ago made a pledge to myself that I would see the world as it was and not how other people said it was, and now for the first time, I was forced to act on that pledge.
Even little things started to irk me in their inconsistencies and misrepresentations. In 1984, when Walter Mondale was pressured to pick a woman as his running mate, he chose Geraldine Ferraro. Everyone said how courageous he was for picking a woman and I thought that given the NY Times and every liberal organization was pressuring him to pick a woman, courage at that point would have been to pick a man! It’s not that he was wrong for picking a woman, just that it wasn’t courageous; given the pressure he was under to do so.
It’s funny because people on the left point to the new media and say that these outlets preach to people who don’t know any better, thereby belittling people like me as being easily deceived when the exact opposite is true. My observations of the world led me to becoming conservative before there was a conservative media and when I saw the new conservative media pop up, I was happy to know that there were more people out there who saw the world the way I saw it.
Now in 2010, I’ve seen what my parents saw -- the resurgence of anti-semitism. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime but I always promised myself that if I did see it, I would do what I could to fight against it. This anti-semitism is coming from the Muslim community and from left-wing groups and it makes no sense to try and be politically correct and pretend it is something else.
In the UK, many schools have dropped the Holocaust from history lessons because of fears that it might offend Muslims. Why would Muslims be offended by the teaching of the Holocaust? The fact that the UK education system has given in to this re-writing of history is shameful and eerily reminiscent of the giving in to nazism in the 1930s.
People keep saying that all Muslims are not terrorists, but was every German a nazi? Did people say “Don’t judge all Germans by the actions of a few”? The fact was that the few controlled the many and unfortunately, it’s the same today with the Muslim religion. I will believe that the Muslim religion is a religion of peace when people of the Muslim faith come out to protest the radicalism among them with the same fervor that they protest against a cartoon of Muhammad.
Recently, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for saying what everyone instinctively knows to be true – on airplanes, people will look at Muslims with suspicion and fear. While it’s true that most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists are Muslims and they, not other people, are responsible for that reaction. I would like to see the people who fired Juan Williams take a lie-detector test and be asked the question of whether or not they do a double take when a person with Muslim garb walks onto a plane. I would bet that they would fail the test if they said anything other than “Yes”.
In New York, people who call themselves liberal stand up for the rights to build a mosque near the World Trade Center. Does it matter that the people building the mosque don’t condemn the acts of terrorist organizations such as Hamas? Does it matter that it is being funded by anti-semitic organizations?
In Palestinian classes, Jewish people are portrayed to children as less than human. There are cartoons portraying Jewish people as money grubbers and monkeys. Why isn’t the world angered by these portrayals? Is it because the Jewish people haven’t threatened anyone? Are Jewish people worth less than others? These cartoons are no different than that of nazis. They would make Joseph Goebbels proud.
Ayn Rand once said “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see”. It is exhausting trying to explain something that seems so self-evident yet it is an obligation, especially for me, to keep trying. I owe this to all the relatives of mine who died in the Holocaust.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Truth And Nothing But The Truth
I recently saw a movie called “The Invention of Lying” with Ricky Gervais. The movie took place in a mythical society where there was no concept of lying. I wondered what a speech by Barack Obama would look like if he had lived in this mythical society and had to tell the truth as he saw it. The speech might go something like this…
Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Two years ago I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Now let me be clear, I would have never been elected if everything was running smoothly in the country. I was elected because I promised that I would change and improve these things. I offered hope.
It’s been two years and while we are still at war, while our unemployment has skyrocketed up to almost 10%, and while our debt has grown to unsustainable levels, I am amazed that I can still get away with blaming the previous administration.
America elected me because we decided to move forward as one nation and one people. But some of you have decided you do not want to be one nation. Selfish people who watch FOX news and listen to talk radio -- unpatriotic people who have formed tea parties are trying to misrepresent and ruin the change I have proposed. If we are truly to become one nation and one people, then those of you who have ideas that are different than mine need to shut up and stop standing in the way.
People need to understand that I, as President of the United States, know better than you about what is good for the country. We need to get away from our colonial, imperialistic and nationalistic way of thinking about our country and about the world. We need to understand that we are world citizens, not just citizens of one country. We cannot afford the arrogance that has marred this country in the past. We are just one country out of many and we need to have relationships with other countries based on mutual trust and mutual respect.
As to the economy, we cannot afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from last decade – what some call the "lost decade”. I don’t personally know anyone who actually called it the “lost decade” but after this speech, there will be people who will start to use the term “the lost decade” and it will seem as if that phrase has been around for a while. It’s a little trick that I and my speech writers use to fool people. We create a new term and make it seem as if others have been saying it all along.
The economic expansion of the last decade was built on a housing bubble that was unsustainable. I have said in the past that the bursting of the housing bubble was caused by Wall Street greed and unregulated financial speculation. What I haven’t said, but what is no less true, is that by forcing banks to give loans to people who had bad credit and little assets, was that we were creating a situation whereby if the housing bubble burst, a lot of innocent people would be left holding the bag. As an advisor to ACORN, I personally played a big role in seeing that this policy of bad loans continued. This, of course, was done with the best of intentions.
In fact, many of my close associates have also played a part in the forcing of banks to give bad loans with the goal that home ownership is a right, rather than a privilege. These include Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines and many others. The reasons for the financial collapse are very complicated and I rely on most of you to not take the initiative to look into what actually caused the crisis.
I know that most of you are tired if the partisanship, the shouting, and the pettiness in Washington. So in order to have a more civil and bi-partisan tone, people need to believe in me. I ask for your trust. My opponents on the other side of the aisle try to bring up facts to confuse people. We will have a much more civil and democratic society if my opponents would stop trying to throw their opinions into the political debate. This only serves to create a partisan tone in Washington. It would be much more beneficial to the country if you would simply accept that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and leave it at that.
We all hated to have to bail out the banks. It was about as popular as a root canal but it needed to be done. So I supported the last administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. I know that I bring up the previous administration quite a lot. There are two reasons for this. Number one: When I do something unpopular or reckless, it is beneficial to me if the previous administration has also done something unpopular or reckless. Number two: If the unpopular and reckless thing I have done doesn’t work out, I get to blame the previous administration but if it does work out, I get to take credit for it.
We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. From this point forward, I will see to it that only government will be allowed to take risks that threaten the whole economy.
In fact, many companies have now paid back their loans so it has been a complete success in staving off financial disaster. Therefore, tonight I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. Because I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to take that money and give it back to its rightful owners – you the people.
As to international issues, as most of you probably know, I was against the Iraq war right from the beginning. What many of you may not realize is that I was just as firmly against the surge strategy in Iraq that brought us the ultimate victory there. Nevertheless, I have ended the conflict in Iraq and see no reason to give credit to anyone other than myself (well maybe the soldiers deserve a little credit as well). The war, after all, did end on my watch.
Illegal immigration is looked at by some as a problem. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. We need to get more immigrants to come to the US, to offer their hard labor, to pay taxes, to fill jobs that Americans won’t do, and to register as democrats.
As to my healthcare plan, if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. I will listen to your ideas before I dismiss them completely. I will then point out that elections have consequences and that I am the president. If you continue to make noise challenging that my healthcare plan will do all that I say it will do, I will make sure that you are portrayed as an out of touch troglodyte who doesn’t care about average working people.
Now I will be the first to admit that my administration has had some political setbacks and some of them were deserved. My administration should have done a better job of communicating how bad things were. In short, we didn’t take enough advantage of the economic and international crises both at home and abroad.
I did not come here to do what was easy and I did not say that change would happen overnight. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high or we can do what's best for the next generation. Or we can create a crisis that we can use to our political advantage. We can spend so much money that we dig a hole so deep it is impossible to get out of and when we’re done spending us into insolvency we can blame it all on George Bush.
Thank you. God Bless You. And God Bless the United States of America.
Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Two years ago I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Now let me be clear, I would have never been elected if everything was running smoothly in the country. I was elected because I promised that I would change and improve these things. I offered hope.
It’s been two years and while we are still at war, while our unemployment has skyrocketed up to almost 10%, and while our debt has grown to unsustainable levels, I am amazed that I can still get away with blaming the previous administration.
America elected me because we decided to move forward as one nation and one people. But some of you have decided you do not want to be one nation. Selfish people who watch FOX news and listen to talk radio -- unpatriotic people who have formed tea parties are trying to misrepresent and ruin the change I have proposed. If we are truly to become one nation and one people, then those of you who have ideas that are different than mine need to shut up and stop standing in the way.
People need to understand that I, as President of the United States, know better than you about what is good for the country. We need to get away from our colonial, imperialistic and nationalistic way of thinking about our country and about the world. We need to understand that we are world citizens, not just citizens of one country. We cannot afford the arrogance that has marred this country in the past. We are just one country out of many and we need to have relationships with other countries based on mutual trust and mutual respect.
As to the economy, we cannot afford another so-called economic "expansion" like the one from last decade – what some call the "lost decade”. I don’t personally know anyone who actually called it the “lost decade” but after this speech, there will be people who will start to use the term “the lost decade” and it will seem as if that phrase has been around for a while. It’s a little trick that I and my speech writers use to fool people. We create a new term and make it seem as if others have been saying it all along.
The economic expansion of the last decade was built on a housing bubble that was unsustainable. I have said in the past that the bursting of the housing bubble was caused by Wall Street greed and unregulated financial speculation. What I haven’t said, but what is no less true, is that by forcing banks to give loans to people who had bad credit and little assets, was that we were creating a situation whereby if the housing bubble burst, a lot of innocent people would be left holding the bag. As an advisor to ACORN, I personally played a big role in seeing that this policy of bad loans continued. This, of course, was done with the best of intentions.
In fact, many of my close associates have also played a part in the forcing of banks to give bad loans with the goal that home ownership is a right, rather than a privilege. These include Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo, Chris Dodd, Franklin Raines and many others. The reasons for the financial collapse are very complicated and I rely on most of you to not take the initiative to look into what actually caused the crisis.
I know that most of you are tired if the partisanship, the shouting, and the pettiness in Washington. So in order to have a more civil and bi-partisan tone, people need to believe in me. I ask for your trust. My opponents on the other side of the aisle try to bring up facts to confuse people. We will have a much more civil and democratic society if my opponents would stop trying to throw their opinions into the political debate. This only serves to create a partisan tone in Washington. It would be much more beneficial to the country if you would simply accept that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and leave it at that.
We all hated to have to bail out the banks. It was about as popular as a root canal but it needed to be done. So I supported the last administration's efforts to create the financial rescue program. I know that I bring up the previous administration quite a lot. There are two reasons for this. Number one: When I do something unpopular or reckless, it is beneficial to me if the previous administration has also done something unpopular or reckless. Number two: If the unpopular and reckless thing I have done doesn’t work out, I get to blame the previous administration but if it does work out, I get to take credit for it.
We need to make sure consumers and middle-class families have the information they need to make financial decisions. We can't allow financial institutions, including those that take your deposits, to take risks that threaten the whole economy. From this point forward, I will see to it that only government will be allowed to take risks that threaten the whole economy.
In fact, many companies have now paid back their loans so it has been a complete success in staving off financial disaster. Therefore, tonight I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. Because I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to take that money and give it back to its rightful owners – you the people.
As to international issues, as most of you probably know, I was against the Iraq war right from the beginning. What many of you may not realize is that I was just as firmly against the surge strategy in Iraq that brought us the ultimate victory there. Nevertheless, I have ended the conflict in Iraq and see no reason to give credit to anyone other than myself (well maybe the soldiers deserve a little credit as well). The war, after all, did end on my watch.
Illegal immigration is looked at by some as a problem. And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. We need to get more immigrants to come to the US, to offer their hard labor, to pay taxes, to fill jobs that Americans won’t do, and to register as democrats.
As to my healthcare plan, if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. I will listen to your ideas before I dismiss them completely. I will then point out that elections have consequences and that I am the president. If you continue to make noise challenging that my healthcare plan will do all that I say it will do, I will make sure that you are portrayed as an out of touch troglodyte who doesn’t care about average working people.
Now I will be the first to admit that my administration has had some political setbacks and some of them were deserved. My administration should have done a better job of communicating how bad things were. In short, we didn’t take enough advantage of the economic and international crises both at home and abroad.
I did not come here to do what was easy and I did not say that change would happen overnight. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high or we can do what's best for the next generation. Or we can create a crisis that we can use to our political advantage. We can spend so much money that we dig a hole so deep it is impossible to get out of and when we’re done spending us into insolvency we can blame it all on George Bush.
Thank you. God Bless You. And God Bless the United States of America.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Anti-Americanism --- The Radical Religion Of The Left
In Poker, the hierarchy goes something like this:
Two Pairs beats a pair. 3 of a kind beats 2 Pairs. A Straight beats 3 of a kind. A Flush beats a Straight. A Full House beats a Flush. 4 of a Kind beats a Full House. A Straight Flush beats 4 of a Kind. Finally, a Royal Flush beats a Straight Flush.
In the liberal world view, the hierarchy goes something like this:
Free speech beats Religious rights. General Feminist rights (not including abortion) beats Free speech. Gay rights beats General Feminist rights (not including abortion). Environmentalism beats Gay rights. Union rights beats Environmentalism. Abortion rights beats Union rights. Racial Equality or preferences beats Abortion rights. Finally, Anti-Americanism beats Racial Equality or preferences.
Seems ridiculous you say? Tammy Bruce, who was the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), wrote about how she thought that the OJ Simpson case was a prime example of violence against women, and how the OJ case should have been publicized by feminists to generate an understanding of the issue of spousal abuse.
Here was OJ, a man in power, systematically beating his wife and getting away with it. Eventually, of course, his wife wound up dead. The powers that be at NOW, however, didn’t want to use this case as an example of domestic violence. The reason? -- It conflicted with the racial aspect. In fact, Patricia Ireland publicly censured Tammy Bruce by name for damaging “political alliances”.
Tammy Bruce also wrote about how rap music routinely objectifies and promotes violence against women. Again, this was not acceptable at NOW. Though the mission of NOW is to promote women’s issues, there is a bigger issue that trumps the main mission of NOW. Hence racial sensitivity, in both the OJ case and in rap music, prevents bringing up and dealing with the very circumstances that NOW is supposedly in existence to deal with! Incidentally, Tammy Bruce, after seeing this hypocrisy, became a conservative.
And who can forget the feminist reaction to Bill Clinton? Clinton was accused of not just having an affair, as with Jennifer Flowers, not just accused of inappropriate behavior and possible abuse of power, as with Monica Lewinsky, but of sexual assault and worse! These accusations came long before anyone ever heard of Ken Starr. Juanita Broaddrick, Eileen Wellstone, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Regina Hopper Blakely, Kathleen Willey, Sandra Allen James, Kathy Bradshaw, Cristy Zercher, Paula Jones, and Carolyn Moffet were some of the women that came forward with assault or harassment accusations. It would be difficult to imagine that each of these women made up these incidents. We’ll never get to the truth behind these accusations because there wasn’t enough of a demand to find out what the truth was.
Time contributor and White House correspondent Nina Burleigh said
"I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a [crude word for oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs."
So Nina Burleigh seems to accept the fact that Clinton abuses women and is even willing to participate in that abuse because it furthers a bigger cause – Abortion. Hence, in the liberal Hierarchy of Needs, feminism without abortion is separated from abortion as a separate issue and Abortion as a separate issue trumps all other feminist issues.
The “Holy Grail” of the liberal Hierarchy, to be treated with reverence and never questioned, is anti-Americanism. It is the Royal Flush of the left. It is important to define anti-Americanism because people on the left will say that they only want to improve the country; that we are an imperfect people and should always strive to get better. Who would argue with that?
But anti-Americanism, as it has come to be practiced and perfected by the left, is not about improving America, it is about re-making it in a new image. Barack Obama has said himself, on more than one occasion that he wants to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” If the United States is a good country, does it need to be transformed? – Fundamentally no less?
The anti-Americanism which is at the top of the liberal food chain is rooted in hatred of the history, the morals, the religion, and the very people who created the unique idea of the United States as a country. The most important of these rights is the idea that freedom and liberty are not passed to people from the government but that freedom and liberty are “inalienable” rights. The most unique and beautiful part of the US Constitution is that it doesn’t say what government can do; it says what government can NOT do.
Barack Obama spoke about the idea that there are restrictions on what government can do, and he called it “negative liberty”. But as Bruce Walker said in an article in American Thinker, “How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control.” Obama said that sometimes government needs to do things in order to improve the lot of ordinary people. The problem is where does that idea end? And what should government do and what should it not do? Once you accept government as the solution to problems, then you open the door to tyranny because in order for government to deal with problems for one group of people, it inevitably has to invade the rights of a different group of people.
In a recent survey, about 20% of Americans said they were unsure of Barack Obama’s religion or thought he might be Muslim. Personally, I don’t think Obama is Muslim or that he is a religious man in any traditional sense. His religion is the ideology of his pastor Jeremiah Wright, not that of any actual religious teachings such as the Bible or even the Koran. It is an ideology that says Supreme Court justices can bypass the legislative process. It is an ideology that says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can act without the input of congress. It is an ideology that forces citizens to buy a product they may not want. In short, it is an anti-religious ideology practiced with fanatical religious zeal that has no respect for the traditions of the United States and no understanding of how the country came to generate such unprecedented wealth and freedom.
Perhaps people think Obama is Muslim because he has criticized the New and Old testaments in a way that he has never criticized the Muslim religion. He criticized Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the Sermon on the Mount by saying that a civilized country can’t be based on such ideas. No religious text has as many violent passages as the Koran but Obama has had nothing but praise for the Muslim religion – why?
In countries that practice strict Muslim law (Sharia law), every doctrine that liberals supposedly hold dear is trampled upon. There is no free speech or freedom of or from religion. A woman is considered at fault if SHE is raped and can be stoned to death if caught committing adultery. Women have their genitals mutilated so that it will be difficult for them to have sex. This way they can fulfill their one real purpose – having babies. Men have the legal right to beat their wives. Women do not even have the right to file grievances in court except under very stringent circumstances. But enough of the wonderful lives women have in these countries, what about gays? At Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there are no gays in Iran. He’s probably right – they’ve all either disappeared or kept very silent. In countries that have Sharia law, the rich live in castles, the poor live in tents.
You could go on and on with this but the question is why do Barack Obama and the left feel so at ease criticizing Judeo-Christian values and feel so uncomfortable criticizing the religion of Islam? The answer is anti-Americanism. The United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The left does not like the United States as it is. In a chicken or the egg scenario, it’s difficult to determine if their dislike of Judeo-Christian values is due to hatred of America or if their hatred of America causes them to have hatred of Judeo-Christian values.
The Muslim religion has constantly criticized the west and America – to the point where many Muslims consider themselves to be at war with the west. Every doctrine held dear by the left is trampled upon by Muslim countries (even moderate ones). Yet the left continues to defend Muslims and blame America. The left seems to share the same anti-Americanism as radical Muslims and that anti-Americanism trumps everything else that they claim to stand for as supposed liberals.
Two Pairs beats a pair. 3 of a kind beats 2 Pairs. A Straight beats 3 of a kind. A Flush beats a Straight. A Full House beats a Flush. 4 of a Kind beats a Full House. A Straight Flush beats 4 of a Kind. Finally, a Royal Flush beats a Straight Flush.
In the liberal world view, the hierarchy goes something like this:
Free speech beats Religious rights. General Feminist rights (not including abortion) beats Free speech. Gay rights beats General Feminist rights (not including abortion). Environmentalism beats Gay rights. Union rights beats Environmentalism. Abortion rights beats Union rights. Racial Equality or preferences beats Abortion rights. Finally, Anti-Americanism beats Racial Equality or preferences.
Seems ridiculous you say? Tammy Bruce, who was the head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW), wrote about how she thought that the OJ Simpson case was a prime example of violence against women, and how the OJ case should have been publicized by feminists to generate an understanding of the issue of spousal abuse.
Here was OJ, a man in power, systematically beating his wife and getting away with it. Eventually, of course, his wife wound up dead. The powers that be at NOW, however, didn’t want to use this case as an example of domestic violence. The reason? -- It conflicted with the racial aspect. In fact, Patricia Ireland publicly censured Tammy Bruce by name for damaging “political alliances”.
Tammy Bruce also wrote about how rap music routinely objectifies and promotes violence against women. Again, this was not acceptable at NOW. Though the mission of NOW is to promote women’s issues, there is a bigger issue that trumps the main mission of NOW. Hence racial sensitivity, in both the OJ case and in rap music, prevents bringing up and dealing with the very circumstances that NOW is supposedly in existence to deal with! Incidentally, Tammy Bruce, after seeing this hypocrisy, became a conservative.
And who can forget the feminist reaction to Bill Clinton? Clinton was accused of not just having an affair, as with Jennifer Flowers, not just accused of inappropriate behavior and possible abuse of power, as with Monica Lewinsky, but of sexual assault and worse! These accusations came long before anyone ever heard of Ken Starr. Juanita Broaddrick, Eileen Wellstone, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Regina Hopper Blakely, Kathleen Willey, Sandra Allen James, Kathy Bradshaw, Cristy Zercher, Paula Jones, and Carolyn Moffet were some of the women that came forward with assault or harassment accusations. It would be difficult to imagine that each of these women made up these incidents. We’ll never get to the truth behind these accusations because there wasn’t enough of a demand to find out what the truth was.
Time contributor and White House correspondent Nina Burleigh said
"I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a [crude word for oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs."
So Nina Burleigh seems to accept the fact that Clinton abuses women and is even willing to participate in that abuse because it furthers a bigger cause – Abortion. Hence, in the liberal Hierarchy of Needs, feminism without abortion is separated from abortion as a separate issue and Abortion as a separate issue trumps all other feminist issues.
The “Holy Grail” of the liberal Hierarchy, to be treated with reverence and never questioned, is anti-Americanism. It is the Royal Flush of the left. It is important to define anti-Americanism because people on the left will say that they only want to improve the country; that we are an imperfect people and should always strive to get better. Who would argue with that?
But anti-Americanism, as it has come to be practiced and perfected by the left, is not about improving America, it is about re-making it in a new image. Barack Obama has said himself, on more than one occasion that he wants to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” If the United States is a good country, does it need to be transformed? – Fundamentally no less?
The anti-Americanism which is at the top of the liberal food chain is rooted in hatred of the history, the morals, the religion, and the very people who created the unique idea of the United States as a country. The most important of these rights is the idea that freedom and liberty are not passed to people from the government but that freedom and liberty are “inalienable” rights. The most unique and beautiful part of the US Constitution is that it doesn’t say what government can do; it says what government can NOT do.
Barack Obama spoke about the idea that there are restrictions on what government can do, and he called it “negative liberty”. But as Bruce Walker said in an article in American Thinker, “How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control.” Obama said that sometimes government needs to do things in order to improve the lot of ordinary people. The problem is where does that idea end? And what should government do and what should it not do? Once you accept government as the solution to problems, then you open the door to tyranny because in order for government to deal with problems for one group of people, it inevitably has to invade the rights of a different group of people.
In a recent survey, about 20% of Americans said they were unsure of Barack Obama’s religion or thought he might be Muslim. Personally, I don’t think Obama is Muslim or that he is a religious man in any traditional sense. His religion is the ideology of his pastor Jeremiah Wright, not that of any actual religious teachings such as the Bible or even the Koran. It is an ideology that says Supreme Court justices can bypass the legislative process. It is an ideology that says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can act without the input of congress. It is an ideology that forces citizens to buy a product they may not want. In short, it is an anti-religious ideology practiced with fanatical religious zeal that has no respect for the traditions of the United States and no understanding of how the country came to generate such unprecedented wealth and freedom.
Perhaps people think Obama is Muslim because he has criticized the New and Old testaments in a way that he has never criticized the Muslim religion. He criticized Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the Sermon on the Mount by saying that a civilized country can’t be based on such ideas. No religious text has as many violent passages as the Koran but Obama has had nothing but praise for the Muslim religion – why?
In countries that practice strict Muslim law (Sharia law), every doctrine that liberals supposedly hold dear is trampled upon. There is no free speech or freedom of or from religion. A woman is considered at fault if SHE is raped and can be stoned to death if caught committing adultery. Women have their genitals mutilated so that it will be difficult for them to have sex. This way they can fulfill their one real purpose – having babies. Men have the legal right to beat their wives. Women do not even have the right to file grievances in court except under very stringent circumstances. But enough of the wonderful lives women have in these countries, what about gays? At Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said there are no gays in Iran. He’s probably right – they’ve all either disappeared or kept very silent. In countries that have Sharia law, the rich live in castles, the poor live in tents.
You could go on and on with this but the question is why do Barack Obama and the left feel so at ease criticizing Judeo-Christian values and feel so uncomfortable criticizing the religion of Islam? The answer is anti-Americanism. The United States of America was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The left does not like the United States as it is. In a chicken or the egg scenario, it’s difficult to determine if their dislike of Judeo-Christian values is due to hatred of America or if their hatred of America causes them to have hatred of Judeo-Christian values.
The Muslim religion has constantly criticized the west and America – to the point where many Muslims consider themselves to be at war with the west. Every doctrine held dear by the left is trampled upon by Muslim countries (even moderate ones). Yet the left continues to defend Muslims and blame America. The left seems to share the same anti-Americanism as radical Muslims and that anti-Americanism trumps everything else that they claim to stand for as supposed liberals.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Tolerance For Intolerance Is Not a Virtue
A phobia is an irrational fear. When people use words such as “Islamaphobe” or “homophobe”, they are implying an irrational fear of Muslim or gay people. The “phobia” implication is misleading. If a person disagrees with policies (say gay marriage), that does not mean that the person fears gay people, yet he is likely to be hit with the “Homophobe” slander for that opinion.
Recently, with the Islamic “Cultural Center” being proposed near the World Trade Center, people have had to ask some poignant questions about why it shouldn’t be built. Is there an irrational fear of the Muslim religion and are people who want to prevent this Cultural Center/Mosque from being built truly “Islamaphobes”? Are they judging the Islamic religion in a different way than they would judge other religions and if so, is that justified?
Both George Bush and Barack Obama made the point that Islam is a religion of peace that has been co-opted and used by those who want to pervert the religion. But if the people who have co-opted the religion are the ones in charge of the religion, and if the people who have co-opted the religion are the ones who are making the rules, then the religion, itself, is not a religion of peace. If the people who practice the religion are afraid of those who have co-opted it, and have no power to change it, then why pretend that the religion is something that it clearly is not?
In a book titled “The Trouble With Islam”, the author Irshad Manji brings up a term that should be better known and understood, yet it is rarely mentioned. The term is “ijtihad”. According to Manji:
“Not jihad, but ijtihad…the Islamic tradition of independent reasoning…allowed every Muslim…to update his or her religious practice in light of contemporary circumstances.”
Unfortunately, the radical ayatollahs and imams have crushed the idea of ijtihad.
Every religion is filled with some contradiction and, to some extent, has to grapple with interpretations of religious texts as times change. People have always struggled trying to maintain their faith and meaning in a constantly changing world. For true believers of a religion, science and changing times don’t change the intent of religious texts. They can interpret their religion to the changing times while maintaining the faith, the meaning and the good of what the religion stands for.
Unfortunately when radical imams took control of Islam and took it upon themselves to determine the meaning of that faith, they created a religious dictatorship. In getting rid of “ijtihad” they put themselves in a position where they couldn’t be questioned or contradicted. In so doing they didn’t take the best of the Muslim religion, they took the worst of it and institutionalized it so that theirs was the only interpretation possible.
There are passages in the Koran and in the hadith that speak of Jews and Christians in praiseworthy ways as “People of the Book”. In other passages, Jews and Christians are described as inferior and sometimes, even subhuman. This is where a rational and sane interpretation would be needed but that is exactly what the people who are in control of the religion are NOT doing.
Even outright lying in negotiations and breaking signed treaties has been deemed acceptable if it furthers Muslim goals. This goes back to an interpretation of the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. This treaty was signed in 628 AD and declared a truce between the Meccan tribe of Quraish and the Muslim community in Medina. It was a 10 year treaty but was broken when Muhammad invaded Mecca and forced the people there to convert to Islam.
The imams who make the rules for Islam constantly refer to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya when they negotiate with those whom they consider to be their enemies such as Israel. How can any sane person or country negotiate with people who say right up front that they have the right to break a treaty any time it is convenient for them to do so? Their word is worth nothing and that is their official stated policy!
In every country where Islam has become part of official government policies, there is cruelty and intolerance, even in the so called moderate ones. Those who write books critical of Islam such as The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, get contracts put out on their lives. A simple cartoon critical of the religion causes riots and death threats. A film maker, Theo Van Gogh, who made a film that was critical of the way women are treated in Muslim countries, is murdered for daring to tell the truth. Van Gogh’s film was based on actual facts of the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who writes in her book “Infidel” about how she was genitally mutilated and about how women are told to bear the treatment of being beaten by their husbands because that is what the religion demands of them.
The Muslim religion has become a cruel, cultish nightmare for those who are forced to live in countries where the religion works its way into government policies. Terrorism is just a natural byproduct of a religion where a few “privileged” people get to rationalize any behavior, no matter how cruel or immoral, if it is deemed to advance the cause if the Islamic religion.
Countries, in general, and the U.N., in particular seem very selective in how they condemn the actions of different nations. They rightly condemned South Africa for practicing apartheid but where is their condemnation to Muslim countries that routinely discriminate against non-Muslims? Non Muslims living in Muslim countries live in Dhimmi status which means they are officially second class citizens and have inferior rights to Muslims. Why won’t the U.N. condemn the concept of “Dhimmi” status as the discriminatory policy that it is?
The sad reality is that the U.N. and many nations are afraid of the Muslim religion. Perhaps, even though they may disagree with the cruel treatment of women and non-Muslims, they have a common enemy with them in their hatred of America, Israel and, in some cases, the west in general. It’s been said that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” so many excuse the behavior of crazy Jihadists in the name of some perceived greater good and end up rationalizing and excusing the behavior of these crazy imams and Ayatollahs.
They are doing no one a favor by turning a blind eye to this radicalism. The people who live under these religious dictatorships, those who want to raise a family and make a better life for themselves and their children, are not helped by this pandering to the crazy imams. The people of Iran tried their best to let the world know they wanted freedom but the world, to its everlasting shame, did nothing. By doing nothing they sided with the bad guys.
George Bush had it right and hopefully history will correct the record on his Presidency. Help the people who want freedom, give them reliable support and the Muslim religion can get rid of the crazy imams and ayatollahs that are making these people (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) live in misery. When the people of Iran saw what happened in Iraq they were inspired. They wanted their chance at freedom. Unfortunately, things have gone back in the other direction. The people in these Islamic dictatorships know that they can’t count on reliable help from the US and from the west, in general, and therefore are forced, out of fear, to submit to the crazy imams.
So now the crazy imams want to build a 13 story “cultural center” near the site of the World Trade Center. People who have tried to bury Jewish history by building mosques on top of Jewish shrines and temples, people who have taken over the city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, and created an atmosphere where Christians are afraid to be in their holiest site, people who have destroyed ancient Buddhist statues and artifacts that could never be reproduced now have the unmitigated gall to talk about tolerance?
Muslims need to clean their own house before lecturing others on tolerance. It is not for the US to show that it is tolerant of the Muslim religion. The burden of proof is on the Muslim religion to show that it is tolerant of others. Perhaps one day when “ijtihad” returns and Muslims can be allowed to interpret their religion in a way that is not so cruel, then there can be a “cultural center” near the WTC. In the meantime, the one being proposed is nothing more than a tribute to the worst, not the best, of the Muslim faith. It is a tribute to the very imams that have taken this religion back to the seventh century and it should not even be considered to be built at the holy site of the WTC.
Recently, with the Islamic “Cultural Center” being proposed near the World Trade Center, people have had to ask some poignant questions about why it shouldn’t be built. Is there an irrational fear of the Muslim religion and are people who want to prevent this Cultural Center/Mosque from being built truly “Islamaphobes”? Are they judging the Islamic religion in a different way than they would judge other religions and if so, is that justified?
Both George Bush and Barack Obama made the point that Islam is a religion of peace that has been co-opted and used by those who want to pervert the religion. But if the people who have co-opted the religion are the ones in charge of the religion, and if the people who have co-opted the religion are the ones who are making the rules, then the religion, itself, is not a religion of peace. If the people who practice the religion are afraid of those who have co-opted it, and have no power to change it, then why pretend that the religion is something that it clearly is not?
In a book titled “The Trouble With Islam”, the author Irshad Manji brings up a term that should be better known and understood, yet it is rarely mentioned. The term is “ijtihad”. According to Manji:
“Not jihad, but ijtihad…the Islamic tradition of independent reasoning…allowed every Muslim…to update his or her religious practice in light of contemporary circumstances.”
Unfortunately, the radical ayatollahs and imams have crushed the idea of ijtihad.
Every religion is filled with some contradiction and, to some extent, has to grapple with interpretations of religious texts as times change. People have always struggled trying to maintain their faith and meaning in a constantly changing world. For true believers of a religion, science and changing times don’t change the intent of religious texts. They can interpret their religion to the changing times while maintaining the faith, the meaning and the good of what the religion stands for.
Unfortunately when radical imams took control of Islam and took it upon themselves to determine the meaning of that faith, they created a religious dictatorship. In getting rid of “ijtihad” they put themselves in a position where they couldn’t be questioned or contradicted. In so doing they didn’t take the best of the Muslim religion, they took the worst of it and institutionalized it so that theirs was the only interpretation possible.
There are passages in the Koran and in the hadith that speak of Jews and Christians in praiseworthy ways as “People of the Book”. In other passages, Jews and Christians are described as inferior and sometimes, even subhuman. This is where a rational and sane interpretation would be needed but that is exactly what the people who are in control of the religion are NOT doing.
Even outright lying in negotiations and breaking signed treaties has been deemed acceptable if it furthers Muslim goals. This goes back to an interpretation of the Treaty of Hudaybiyya. This treaty was signed in 628 AD and declared a truce between the Meccan tribe of Quraish and the Muslim community in Medina. It was a 10 year treaty but was broken when Muhammad invaded Mecca and forced the people there to convert to Islam.
The imams who make the rules for Islam constantly refer to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya when they negotiate with those whom they consider to be their enemies such as Israel. How can any sane person or country negotiate with people who say right up front that they have the right to break a treaty any time it is convenient for them to do so? Their word is worth nothing and that is their official stated policy!
In every country where Islam has become part of official government policies, there is cruelty and intolerance, even in the so called moderate ones. Those who write books critical of Islam such as The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, get contracts put out on their lives. A simple cartoon critical of the religion causes riots and death threats. A film maker, Theo Van Gogh, who made a film that was critical of the way women are treated in Muslim countries, is murdered for daring to tell the truth. Van Gogh’s film was based on actual facts of the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who writes in her book “Infidel” about how she was genitally mutilated and about how women are told to bear the treatment of being beaten by their husbands because that is what the religion demands of them.
The Muslim religion has become a cruel, cultish nightmare for those who are forced to live in countries where the religion works its way into government policies. Terrorism is just a natural byproduct of a religion where a few “privileged” people get to rationalize any behavior, no matter how cruel or immoral, if it is deemed to advance the cause if the Islamic religion.
Countries, in general, and the U.N., in particular seem very selective in how they condemn the actions of different nations. They rightly condemned South Africa for practicing apartheid but where is their condemnation to Muslim countries that routinely discriminate against non-Muslims? Non Muslims living in Muslim countries live in Dhimmi status which means they are officially second class citizens and have inferior rights to Muslims. Why won’t the U.N. condemn the concept of “Dhimmi” status as the discriminatory policy that it is?
The sad reality is that the U.N. and many nations are afraid of the Muslim religion. Perhaps, even though they may disagree with the cruel treatment of women and non-Muslims, they have a common enemy with them in their hatred of America, Israel and, in some cases, the west in general. It’s been said that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” so many excuse the behavior of crazy Jihadists in the name of some perceived greater good and end up rationalizing and excusing the behavior of these crazy imams and Ayatollahs.
They are doing no one a favor by turning a blind eye to this radicalism. The people who live under these religious dictatorships, those who want to raise a family and make a better life for themselves and their children, are not helped by this pandering to the crazy imams. The people of Iran tried their best to let the world know they wanted freedom but the world, to its everlasting shame, did nothing. By doing nothing they sided with the bad guys.
George Bush had it right and hopefully history will correct the record on his Presidency. Help the people who want freedom, give them reliable support and the Muslim religion can get rid of the crazy imams and ayatollahs that are making these people (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) live in misery. When the people of Iran saw what happened in Iraq they were inspired. They wanted their chance at freedom. Unfortunately, things have gone back in the other direction. The people in these Islamic dictatorships know that they can’t count on reliable help from the US and from the west, in general, and therefore are forced, out of fear, to submit to the crazy imams.
So now the crazy imams want to build a 13 story “cultural center” near the site of the World Trade Center. People who have tried to bury Jewish history by building mosques on top of Jewish shrines and temples, people who have taken over the city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, and created an atmosphere where Christians are afraid to be in their holiest site, people who have destroyed ancient Buddhist statues and artifacts that could never be reproduced now have the unmitigated gall to talk about tolerance?
Muslims need to clean their own house before lecturing others on tolerance. It is not for the US to show that it is tolerant of the Muslim religion. The burden of proof is on the Muslim religion to show that it is tolerant of others. Perhaps one day when “ijtihad” returns and Muslims can be allowed to interpret their religion in a way that is not so cruel, then there can be a “cultural center” near the WTC. In the meantime, the one being proposed is nothing more than a tribute to the worst, not the best, of the Muslim faith. It is a tribute to the very imams that have taken this religion back to the seventh century and it should not even be considered to be built at the holy site of the WTC.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)