With These Four Bottles- the Arrogance of Man
The Man of Science was at the height of his glory as the spotlights glared, the cameras clicked and the national press assembled to hear his announcement. He had discovered the origins of life. It was a monumental day in the history of Humankind and he was proud of his accomplishment. His story went viral on the internet and made the newspaper headlines; even Good Morning America led with a story on his accomplishment. It was heady stuff all right.
Yes, it was 2010 and the mystery of life had finally been solved. He had created man-made DNA—an artificial life form—and had solved the age old mystery of the universe. Where did we all come from? How did it all start? He was certain he had the answer; it was so simple in the end. All this time, and the answer lie in his lab. All one had to do—indeed, all that the universe had to do—was to mix the right four chemicals together, introduce an electrical charge (or boot it up as one might say) and voila—life!
“I have taken the mystery out of life,” he trumpeted before an adoring press. “All we need are these four bottles, a chemical synthesizer, a computer and we can create the basic building blocks of life.” Of course, this begged the question as to whether the “God” that mankind had believed in for centuries was necessary at all. In fact, with the correct mixture of the right four substances, perhaps a random lightning strike, and nature itself (or the Man of Science) could easily create life. After all, this Man of Science had done it—he had the proof. Now it was time to demystify the origin of life and announce it to the world. “God” was irrelevant. No sir, the right combination of four chemicals plus electricity, at the right moment in history, plus several billion years and here we are. Here it all is—through the miracle of chemistry.
Of course, this Man of Science had the right to be proud—he had discovered the origin of life. He looked forward to a lifetime of honors, grants and awards, lectures and a prestigious appointment to some Science Chair at some institution of higher learning, where he could hold forth on the meaning and origins of life and teach future generations of humans the real truth behind their existence. Creationism, a Divine Being—all were seemingly irrelevant and meaningless. The answer lie in science. Clearly the primordial swamp of chemicals and a lighting bolt—these were our mother and father, our creators. The Man Upstairs—had nothing to do with it. Science had seemingly rendered Him irrelevant.
As the weeks went by, the Man of Science settled into his busy routine. There were scientific papers to write, calls to return, interviews to give, and lectures to book. He was much in demand, this Man of Science, because he knew how to create artificial life in a test tube. His formerly mundane life had taken a new turn. He was the man of the hour, his upcoming work, With These Four Bottles: The Origin of Life was already planned; he had secured a publisher and a fat advance check. He was on top of his game and looking forward to his new celebrity. Fitting, after all, because he was a Man of Science, who had explained the meaning of life and taken the mystery out of it. He was busy traveling around the world lecturing to audiences who listened intently as he held forth and demonstrated how to make life in a tube. The applications were manifold; the potential uses for artificial life endless. There was not only honor and glory, but the promise of untold riches as well. All because of these four bottles. “What was origin of life?” The question was so profound, yet the answer so mundane. It was about the miracle of chemistry all along.
One night, deep in study, working on his fourth chapter of With These Four Bottles the Man of Science was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was very late and he rarely had visitors at such an hour. He approached the door and squinted through the glass peep hole in the middle to see who was bothering him at this hour. “What do you want?” he asked the slightly disheveled grey-haired man standing outside. He seemed harmless enough. His slightly wrinkled face and his warm smile spoke of wisdom and honesty somehow. “Just a few moments to discuss your work, if I may,” the stranger replied. The Man of Science opened the door as far as the chain would allow, and questioned the stranger further. “Who are you?” He asked. “Just an old man intently interested in your research, with a few questions about your work, that is all,” he replied. “Questions about what?” the Man of Science pressed him further. “The origins of life, how it all started—things that only you, a man of science, could answer,” he replied. “There are things I need to understand.” “Very well,” replied the Man of Science. There was something oddly compelling about the stranger and he seemed innocuous enough. Besides, to a man of science who spent hours in the lab creating life, human contact was refreshing now and then. It was fun to hold forth on the work he had performed and good for the ego to lecture those less knowledgeable in such matters.
The Man of Science invited the stranger in and offered him a cup of tea. The stranger politely refused. There was something odd and slightly unsettling about the stranger, but the Man of Science could not put his finger on it. His piercing black eyes seemed to look through the Man of Science. He smiled slightly at the Man of Science and thanked him for his offer. “Too late for tea I am afraid and I do thank you for your time. If I drink stimulants at this hour I would never sleep tonight.” The stranger leaned back in the overstuffed chair and studied the Man of Science. It was not so much his black penetrating eyes, as the fact that the stranger seemed to search his soul. There was something slightly other-worldly about the stranger. Not malevolent but other worldly.
The Man of Science broke the uneasy silence.” So,” he began, “what can I do for you?”
“I have read of your work,” he replied, “and am fascinated by what you have done. Impressive, I hasten to say. You solved the mystery of life and all.”
“Yes,’ the scientist replied, trying not to appear too haughty, “with these four bottles and that apparatus over there,” he said pointing at the chemical synthesizer and the computer with which he booted up the chemical brew that created his life form, “I can indeed produce life. I have done it and can prove it. I have taken pictures of this life form I have created. The only thing that stands between this simple artificial life form and Mankind is time. The right mix and a few billion years and this little life form ends up our brother our sister, a dog or a cat, monkey or a tree. Left to the vagaries of time, happenstance, and the chaos of nature, it could develop into anything. This right here is the genesis of life.”
“How profound, mysterious, and amazing that you—a mere human being, though brilliant I might add—were able to solve this mystery when for thousands of years mankind has pondered the meaning and origins of life and could never, until now, figure it out.”
“Well,” the scientist replied, doing his best to remain humble in the face of his unquestionably brilliant discovery, “I am rather humbled by this all and grateful that I was able to stumble onto this, really.”
“Is it, however, a bit of a stretch to suggest that you have solved the mystery of life?” the stranger asked politely. “Even Diane Sawyer scoffed at this idea on television the other day.”
“Not so much I think,” the Man of Science replied, miffed by skepticism of his guest, “after all, this does explain that which was necessary to create life and all that we see could easily have been derived from this. Indeed this could easily be, and I daresay was, the source of all we survey.”
“And the world as we know it?”
“Created by Man of course—the highest form of life and the end product of the process I demonstrated with these four bottles. It was inevitable that, in time, eons ago, the right combination of chemicals were charged by lightning or static electricity and led to the creation of simple life forms, which in time led to you and me and all we survey. All quite logical if you think about it. I mean given time and circumstance and the accident of fate, it was bound to happen. I just stumbled across the secret in my lab.”
The stranger listened in respectful silence as the scientist held forth on his theory. The hour was late and the stranger had to take his leave. But something troubled the stranger. He needed an answer from the Man of Science.
“I so much appreciate your time and your explanation. What you have done is indeed amazing, the implications for science are inestimable, and your work is truly impressive. Your discovery has the potential to shake the foundations of science, religion, and history. What you have done may cause us to change textbooks, discard our religious teachings, and rethink how we got here and where we came from…”
“Well, thank you but…”
“…yet I wonder if you could answer one question for me,” the stranger inquired.
“Of course I will try,’ said the Man of Science.
“Would you indulge me by stepping outside for a moment?” the stranger inquired.
Puzzled, the scientist agreed. Besides, a breath of fresh air on this beautiful starlit night would be welcome before he turned in. “Of course.”
The two stepped outside, bathed in the silver light of a magnificent full moon. Above them shone a universe of countless celestial bodies stretching across a sky with no end and no beginning.
“So?” the Man of Science asked of the stranger.
With that, the stranger leaned his head back. His face to the sky, and arms outstretched, he traced a wide sweeping arc across the heavens with his hands, and yelled to the Man of Science: “Can you create that with your four bottles?” Not waiting for an answer, the stranger melted into the night, leaving the Man of Science alone, staring skyward.
A billion stars and a billion solar systems, stretching forever, with no end and no beginning—a creation so vast that the human mind cannot fathom its expanse—waited for the answer that never came. And the Man of Science returned to his lab with his four bottles, and booted up another batch of chemical brew.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30538?loc=interstitialskip
Tales From the Crypt: To Attract New Blood, Church Joins Club Scene
With the approval of his superiors, Fr. Maurizio Mirilli, head of youth ministry in Rome, opened a nightclub in the crypt of the Basilica of St. Charles Borromeo on Via del Corso in downtown Rome, just a few miles away from the Vatican. Mirilli’s initiative is meant to attract youth to church, or at least to its basements…
This Basilica, built in the 1600s, houses relics of St. Charles Borromeo, St. Ambrose and St. Olav. Its crypt is also the burial place for important Cardinals of the Church. Mirilli adapted it by raising some temporary walls to create space for a stage band, a bar, tables and a center dance floor.
The nightclub is named GP2 after John Paul II (Giovanni Paolo II in Italian). It is accessed by a side door that leads to the basement crypt. It is open every night from 7 p.m. to midnight, Sundays included.
When reporters from the Wall Street Journal visited the crypt on Saturday night, October 30, 2010, no disco lights were displayed and “Christian inspired” pop music was pulsing. The club serves wine and beer at competitive prices, but not hard liquor. “Being Catholic doesn’t mean to be serious or sad,” Fr. Mirilli explained. “Christian young people need to find a way to own the night again.” According to customers they go to GP2 to “get to know” a girl at the church nightclub, rather than “pick her up”…
Asked about the approval of Benedict XVI for GP2, Fr. Mirilli answered: “This place wouldn’t exist if the Pope weren’t OK with it.”
The photos below shows the bar in GP2; , nightclub patrons enter through a side door and go down the stairs to the crypt; the disco room under regular lighting; a bar sign that says “Give me to drink” (Dammi da bere) – a play on Our Lord’s words when He asked for water, interpreted to invite the youth to consume alcohol.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/RevolutionPhotos/A390rCrypt.html
The Rise of Unchecked Presidential Power
In order to achieve a dictatorship in a country, you have to go one of two ways. Either you have to foment a violent revolution, using the power of the military to seize the government, or you have to be voted into the position and seize the power slowly. In the USA, it is all but impossible to achieve the takeover via violent overthrow, and the separation of powers makes it difficult to take over via slow seizure of power. However, the plans of the progressives have been working steadily since the Woodrow Wilson administration, and the task is almost complete.
The legislative branch, for example, has ceded vast parts of its authority voluntarily. According the to the Constitution, only the legislature can make laws. Although not the first example of such an agency, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 is a good example. The EPA was founded by an act of the legislature and charged to protect the environment. Since then, the EPA has been writing “regulations” which are, in fact, laws. You can be prosecuted and deprived of freedom or assets for disobeying the regulations of the EPA. Instead of going through all the trouble itself, Congress has delegated the passing of environmental laws to an agency not beholden to the will of the voting public. There are dozens of other agencies so empowered to regulate everything from food and medicine (FDA) to airplane travel (NTSB and FHA) — all making laws without even a tacit nod to the citizens.
In fact, there are, according to a recent article in the Washington Post, 1.43 million civilians working for the federal government in various bureaucracies, and if state and local governments are taken into account, the number spikes to near 21 million by some estimates. Contrast this with the mere 535 elected members of the federal legislature. Many of these agencies require Senate approval for the presidential appointee to lead them. However, others require no such Senate approval, and presidents often get around the approval process via “recess appointments” such as the one used by Obama in 2010 to install a new chief of Medicare.
Through the passage of the legislation known as ObamaCare, Congress has ceded all regulation of the health insurance and medical industries to the Department of Health and Human Services and the latter’s presidential appointee. The financial services reform bill created the Financial Services Oversight Council and literally gave that council the power to regulate and monitor any financial transaction in America without a court order, as well as the ability to summarily seize businesses without judicial review or public disclosure. If passed, the cap and trade bill would give even more sweeping powers to the EPA.
However, the Federal Reserve is probably the single most dangerous entity in existence in America. The Federal Reserve has the power to create money electronically at will, set interest rates, and buy whatever it wants in the economy with practically no need to consult Congress for approval.
When it comes to violating the separation of powers and seizing executive power, no president has done more since FDR than Obama. What is more, Obama doesn’t even try to hide the maneuvering, but instead does it out in the public eye. By his first state of the union speech, Obama had successfully passed TARP II and III, giving the secretary of treasury (executive branch) sole discretion over a sum of money equal to the budget of some small countries, and passed the stimulus bill, giving presidential allies big payouts. During the state of the union speech, the president brazenly said that he would establish his debt commission by executive order because the Senate refused to pass the bill that would have allowed it.
It is worth noting that an Executive Order is issued solely by the president and is virtually impossible to overturn. In order to overturn an executive order, the Supreme Court would have to strike it down (which has happened only twice) or the Congress would have to muster enough votes to overcome a presidential veto of a bill passed in direct contrast to the executive order. Therefore, an executive order is not really that far from a dictatorial edict, and Obama has made frequent use of the technique.
However, the Obama administration isn’t picking on only the legislative branch. When the Supreme Court ruled that corporations should have the same freedom of speech in political campaigns as labor unions, Obama took the opportunity to publicly chastise the Supreme Court in his second state of the union address, while announcing his plans to circumvent the decision. The DISCLOSE Act, passed in 2010, went a long way toward that goal.
Obama’s political appointees have also been active in the field of law enforcement. In August 2010, the Houston Chronicle reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ordered the dismissal of cases for deportation of illegal aliens who do not have felonies (other than the felony of illegal reentry) on their record. Furthermore, when two thugs with nightsticks from the New Black Panther Party were intimidating voters at a polling place, the Department of Justice charged the two defendants and received a summary judgment but were then ordered by political appointees to drop the case. According to whistle-blower DOJ Attorney J. Christian Adams, DOJ lawyers were ordered to not pursue any case for voter intimidation in which the defendant was black.
Never in the history of man has a government with highly centralized powers and minimal checks and balances ended well. Today, the executive branch in the USA has the power to do almost anything it wants. The legislature is all but powerless, having ceded all their authority to the executive-appointed bureaucracy. The judicial branch is still alive and kicking feebly, but the death or retirement of one conservative justice will put a stop to that. The law enforcement political appointees have become arbitrary in their enforcement of the law and politically motivated. Never has America faced such troubling times. All of this has been accomplished slowly and cautiously to avoid raising the alarm, because the powers involved definitely do not want to raise that alarm.
The only weapon left against the rise of the autocracy is the light of truth. If the vast majority of Americans, your neighbors and coworkers, knew all of this was going on, they wouldn’t stand for it. Constitutional amendments would be passed, politicians would be dismissed, and corrupt politicians would be tried and jailed. We can only hope that the sword of truth can yet prevail. However, there is not much time left, and it is time we get to work in earnest.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_rise_of_unchecked_presiden.html
The China Nightmare
U.S. Secretary Hilary Clinton has recently called upon Communist China to be a “responsible player” in regional and global affairs. Clinton’s hopes, however, are in vain. The truth of the matter is that China is an aggressive Communist power bent on intimidation and domination, and that the United States is engaged in a grave, four-decade long error in accurately assessing what the Chinese leadership intends both for China and the people of the United States.
If America does not quickly change its course of action, we run the very real risk of becoming little more than a province of the world’s largest Communist nation.
The members of the newly elected, conservatively-oriented U.S. Congress have the opportunity to take a new look at the fast-deteriorating position of American power vis-à-vis the growing power and sophistication of the Chinese military. The question is: will they?
America is increasing its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has stated that the expanding U.S. role in the region is ” not about China.” America must, however come to the conclusion that it is “about China.”
The dream, so cherished by many think-tankers, of a democratic, responsible China is becoming a nightmare. Communist China’s spying against the United States is at Cold War levels, and Beijing is frightening its neighbors with the growing capability of projecting its military strength well beyond its borders. The harsh reality is that America is fast losing its lead in science and technology to a ruthless Chinese government, aided immensely by the U.S. head-in-the-sand foreign policy.
China’s success – Made in the U.S.A.
Ironically, China’s new Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which surpasses any U.S. machine, was made possible by the use of a processor chip manufactured by a U.S.-based entity, the NVidia corporation. Other U.S. corporation have been instrumental in assisting the Communist Chinese in keeping an authoritarian eye on their people.
Unwittingly, the U.S. consumer has, in large part, financed the strengthening of the Chinese dictatorship through their purchases of cheap products made in China, which, in turn, has helped to destroy America’s manufacturing sector and the jobs associated with it.
America’s self-destructive relationship with the Peoples Republic of China began in the early 1970s with the “opening of China” by then-U.S. president Richard M. Nixon, and has been followed by every administration since then.
The American political elite is having difficulty in realizing that China is not simply an economic rival, one of many nations playing by internationally recognized rules. It is, instead, a nation dominated by a Communist privileged class with a collective will of iron — and a plan of action.
The China plan
Despite some rumblings in the Chinese media, China’s Communist Party is firmly in control of the nation, and has even launched the “Marx Project” to ensure that the ideas of Marx and Lenin are brought clearly and directly to Chinese youth, through new translations and intensified instruction .
Censorship, qualitatively aided by U.S. technology, assists the Party in keeping competing ideas away from the general population, while China’s newspapers continue to degrade the ideals for which America stands and for which so many Americans have died.
U.S. analysts have long believed that China’s change in economic policy would inevitably lead to the collapse of the Communist regime, as the rise of the French merchant class in the 18th century led to the end of the French absolutist monarchy.
Lenin set the precedent
The Chinese false elite, however, are being guided by a political experiment of another nation, a chapter in history which remains unfamiliar to most in the West. The Communist Chinese have analyzed and are adapting the principles involved in the decision by Communism’s first successful revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, to use capitalism to advance the cause of Communism.
In the early 1920s, Lenin recognized that Soviet Russia was on the verge of collapse, not on account of its enemies, but because of its internal economic failures. Looking back to Karl Marx’s basic theorizing, Lenin came to the conclusion that Communism had come too quickly and that the Russian state must go through a controlled period of capitalist growth before Communism could truly come into being in Russia and around the world.
To put his new theory to work — and save the Bolshevik revolution — Lenin embarked on a stunning domestic policy reversal. Political and business leaders were caught by surprise, and many experts in the West, including influential Russian exile leaders, predicted the speedy demise of the Bolshevik regime.
Branded the New Economic Policy (NEP), Lenin allowed a degree of capitalist enterprise to revive the fast failing Bolshevik regime. To avoid any agitation for democracy, however, Lenin demanded that his dreaded secret police, originally referred to as the Cheka, be extra vigilant — and brutal.
Although Lenin was quoted in the press as stating that Communist economics would return as soon as possible, the West believed what it wanted to believe, and many predicted the imminent demise of Russian Communism.
The Western political elite has never fully appreciated Lenin’s strategy. The NEP did revive Soviet Russia, but later fell victim to the “Socialism in one nation” dogma of Josef Stalin, who murdered and intimidated his way into Soviet leadership several years after Lenin’s death. Many Communists then and now believe that Stalin interrupted what could have been a successful strategy by which Communism would have evolved in the Soviet Union and then throughout the world.
Following Lenin…
Communist China’s false elite are a sophisticated, well tailored group, knowledgeable about Western history and culture. They are aware of the lessons of the French Revolution, but follow Lenin. They also know that ruthlessness is key, both to Lenin’s original NEP ploy as well as to today’s Communist Chinese strategy. This privileged group of Marxists, as Lenin taught, must maintain control so as to lead the masses. A degree of dissent may be tolerated, but nothing that would endanger the regime.
Today’s Chinese dissidents are learning the stark limits of freedom of expression existing under the current period of economic liberalism.
China’s version of Lenin’s NEP is allowing the implementation of a long-term international strategy which includes intimidation of its neighbors, the occupation of the free island of Taiwan, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Asia-Pacific region, and the extension of Communist China’s power into outer space — which translates into dominance on earth.
The question for America is this: will we awaken to the danger Communist China poses to the U.S. and the world, or will we continue to follow the disastrous pro-Communist Chinese policy which began in the Nixon years and continues unabated to the present? Our future and that of many generations hang in the balance
A needed perspective on how another American generation was willing to face the threat of an aggressive Communist China is provided in The 1958 Quemoy Crisis, An Oral History, available through Amazon. This unique volume describes the now almost forgotten confrontation in 1958 between U.S. forces and the Communist Chinese military thorough accounts of American and Republic of China (Taiwan) personnel those who participated in it.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/i99ht_025_Nightmare.html
Freezing Citizens to Death to Stop Global Warming
A leading U.K. fuel poverty charity is predicting deaths to skyrocket this winter as over 5 million homes struggle to pay rising fuel bills.
The Express is reporting that energy prices “have soared more than 80 per cent in the last five years,” and singles out British Gas for announcing a seven per cent hike when “the number of families struggling to pay their heating bills reaches 5.5 million and excess winter deaths this year are expected to be higher than ever.”
What the article failed to explain, or even mention, is the primary reason energy costs have become so dangerously prohibitive in the U.K: Green energy policy.
According to British Gas managing director Phil Bentley, not only is the price of wholesale gas up since spring, but the company is also fighting the ever-increasing costs of meeting its “environmental obligations.”
E.U. targets require the U.K. to produce 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, a sevenfold jump from 2008 implementation. And Britain has set an even loftier goal for its electricity production, mandating 35 percent be derived from renewables by 2020.
To meet those stringent targets, the average British household has been forced to pay roughly £100 a year in green energy subsidies. That’s about 9 percent of the average bill.
But that’s just the beginning. Last December, Alistair Buchanan, chief executive of the country’s energy regulator, Ofgem, told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee that the costs of switching to a “low-carbon economy” will mean even higher bills.
In order to subsidize economically nonviable green-friendly sources such as wind turbines and tidal power stations, Brit’s will be expected to pay an annual £500 green subsidy by 2030. That means nearly a third of the average fuel bill will represent useless increases specifically slated to fund the construction of inefficient renewable energy sources.
The Daily Mail quoted Buchanan saying “the levy was necessary to fight global warming and leave the country ‘a nicer place to live for our children and grandchildren.’ “
Meanwhile, millions won’t be able to afford heating their homes and “will struggle to stay warm this winter and the number of people likely to die in freezing temperatures is set to rise sharply.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/freezing_citizens_to_death_to.html
Want Human Rights? Leave the United Nations
Saudi Arabia now has a seat on the women’s board at the United Nations. That’s right, a regime where it’s illegal for women to drive or leave the house without being accompanied by a male guardian, where girls were pushed into a burning building because they were trying to flee without covering their ‘obscene’ female faces… will be a key player in the international effort to empower women.
I don’t know what contribution the Saudis can make to the project, since in Ridyah, empowering women usually means strapping them into an electric chair. But in the Muslim world, human rights is usually read to mean banning criticism of Islam under the guise of Islamophobia. In Europe, Islamists are calling the Burqa a human right. That’s probably what the Saudis will bring to the table, along with the condemnations of Israel that are De rigueur in every UN group and body.
Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, called the Saudi win, “a very good outcome”. I’m not sure what she would consider a bad outcome. Given her role in kneecapping Canada for the Security Council seat, Rice would probably have considered a victory by a country that actually gives women full equal rights to be a defeat. When your only goal is to pander to the Third World, particularly the Muslim parts of it, in order to defy the colonialist and phallocratic Western patriarchy, handing over power to a phallocratic Eastern patriarchy is just a means to an end. At least until it actually becomes the end. The end of everything.
The fallacy of the United Nations is its assumption that every member of the UN is morally equal. The truth is that the majority of the world’s nations are dictatorships with limited human rights. The UN is nothing more than the representatives of dictatorships trying to talk about human rights without breaking up into gales of laughter. If you replaced 75 percent of the UN’s representatives with members of American street gangs, you would still end up with a more civilized body.
But we look the other way. And now Saudi Arabia, along with the likes of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Libya are on the board. Their mission will be to promote global standards for gender equality. Which should in theory disqualify countries who don’t believe in gender equality from membership. Of course since this is the UN, UN Women will have little to do with its stated mission.
Chilean leftist Michelle Bachelet, who heads up UN Women, praised Sudan for its commitment to gender equality in her opening statement. Yes, Sudan, a genocidal state which uses mass rapes as part of its ethnic cleansing campaign. And it’s already clear that the focus of UN Women isn’t to promote gender equality, but to intervene in conflict areas. Which means the odds are excellent that UN Woman will be used to crank out an endless stream of condemnations of countries that fight Muslim terrorists, while cloaking those condemnations in the name of the rights of women in the affected areas. And the Saudis are perfectly positioned to guide UN Women down that road.
Because the UN is not a tool for human rights, it is a tool of tyranny. From being a Soviet patsy to being a Muslim patsy– the UN empowers dictatorships and promotes tyranny. It is a giant hive of lawfare directed against the free world, and funded by the free world.
Human rights don’t come from international bodies. They emerge from freeing ordinary people to live the way they want to live. To choose their own systems and their own leaders. The UN does not represent those people, but the systems that rule over them. It is a vehicle for those people to make war on countries where individuals actually do have rights. The UN has done nothing to bring rights to the Muslim world, but it has taken away rights from Americans and other people in the free world.
The best thing we could do for human rights is to toss away the UN and its armies of bureaucrats and useless blue helmeted peacekeepers. Leave them by the side of the road, along with the World Bank and the WTO and all the rest of it, and actually build an alliance of civilizations based on countries that practice democracy and human rights. If you want a loan, don’t cry to us about your poverty or your starving children. Hold free and open elections. Toss away your blasphemy laws and free your political prisoners. That is a lot more likely to bring about human rights, than funding building after building of scuttling bureaucrats moving around pieces of paper and dining out in posh restaurants.
But of course we won’t do that, because the real goal is not human rights. It’s the phantasm of world government. The great mirage of a united world and a united humanity. A Fourth Reich that will finally demolish nations and borders, and teach everyone to live just like in a Benetton ad. It’s an ideologically driven goal, and like most such goals, leads to tyranny. The larger the system, the harder it is to maintain the rights of the individual within its spinning cogs and wheels. That is why the UN’s only redeeming quality is its powerlessness. It’s a pawn of international conflicts, rather than a king or a queen.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used the common element of Communism and Socialism to create a powerful coalition within the UN. Today Muslim countries use the common bond of Islam to create their own dominant coalition within the UN. The Free World could counter them, but it’s run by leaders who no longer believe that they share a common set of values. Instead they focus on outreach to the Muslim world. And that’s as good as writing up a document of surrender, sealing and stamping it, and then waving a white flag in the air.
By taking the UN seriously, we become the pawn of a pawn. The tool of a tool. We allow a puppet to pull our strings. When we listen to the UN, we’re listening to its leftist and Muslim puppet masters. And when we give up our freedom in the name of human rights, then we will have neither freedom, nor human rights.
The left insists that human rights can only come from giving up freedom, and accepting government authority. That is the opposite of the principles on which America was founded. To give it credence, is to drink of the poisoned well of tyranny. The Obama administration shares with the UN a strong belief that freedom is antithetical to human rights. And that therefore free nations are rights abusers, while unfree nations, such as Saudi Arabia, are rights givers.
When compliance with the UN becomes the standard of human rights, then slavery replaces freedom. And the truth is that there can be no human rights without freedom. True human rights are not given, but taken. They are not created by “empowering” people, but by ending their disempowerment, by the same forces and organizations that take away their rights in the guise of “empowering” them. And the UN is one of those forces. The first step in fighting for human rights, is leaving the UN.
”…Perils of Revolution”
While many would broadly characterize the “ruling class” as the Progressive Movement tied significantly with the Democratic Party, it actually transcends both political parties. Its roots were developed in connection with the ever-growing government and by a certain “attitude.”
Inclusion in the “ruling class” requires much more than professional prominence or position, it requires social harmony. This includes sharing the same manners and same tastes, supporting the interests of the class, giving lip service to its ideals and slogans, and being willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members.
In other words, the “ruling class” recruits and renews itself “not through meritocracy, but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in.” Ironically, the more the thought process is dumbed down by this negative selection, the more demanding their presumption of intellectual superiority and control of all things considered “science.” One cannot help but ponder the full impact of Romans 1:22: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
The Attitude
Codevilla succinctly describes the attitude of this bipartisan “ruling class.” By hijacking and removing the Founding generation’s belief that “all men are created equal,” the concept of two distinct classes have been ingrained in their hearts and minds. The “ruling class” believes they “are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained.”
President Woodrow Wilson openly disparaged America’s Founding Fathers for depriving the federal government of the power to reshape American society. Thus, he perpetuated the move to nullify the Constitutional precepts and to blame the “backward” American people for all of the failures to enlighten an “educated class” of society.
The Country Class
Unfortunately, education in terms of the “ruling class” actually means indoctrination into the precepts of their acceptability. This is a foreign concept to members of the “country class.” That is why it is difficult to actually define the members of the “country class.” The most defining principles upon which to unite this heterogeneous group are the foundations of marriage, children, and religious practice. But even within these foundations, the beliefs are varied and focus squarely upon individual rights.
The concept of unity appears difficult for the “country class.” Unity of purpose is usually derived from joining in the fight against the ideas and proclivities of the “ruling class”; e.g., approval of abortion, higher taxes and bigger government, social engineering, and subsidized social agendas. While the “country class” is waking up, many are asking if while they have been focused on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the endgame has been taken out of their reach. As Codevilla explains:
In general, the country class includes all those in stations high and low who are aghast at how relatively little honest work yields, by comparison with what just a little connection with the right bureaucracy can get you. The country class is convinced that big business, big government, and big finance are linked as never before and that ordinary people are more unequal than ever. [emphasis mine]
The Battle
As Dr. Chuck Missler so aptly points out, “The election of 2008 was an I.Q. test for America.” While so many are aghast at the speed with which the administration’s agenda is progressing, the “ruling class” simply believes they have finally been given the mantle to impose the society they have envisioned for generations.
To the “country class” it is unconscionable to believe laws are passed without being read. In truth, reading is not required because the backroom deals are already in place. Government officials know “modern laws are primarily grants of discretion; all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower.”
Unlike the simplicity of the Constitution, the incredible lengths of these new regulations are required to specify how people will be treated unequally. This is exemplified in the health care bill of 2010. Its more than 2,700 pages, that Congress admittedly did not read, codified bargains between government and various elements of the health care industry, state governments, large employers, public employee unions, and auto workers.
The critical point of all new regulatory legislation is that both Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses are empowering “countless boards and commissions to arbitrarily protect some persons and companies, while ruining others.” While not being able to completely nullify the Constitution and its “country class,” the “ruling class” has chosen to break its back with the weight of endless bureaucracy.
The Future
The disdain of America that permeates the current administration has long roots. The cultural divide between what Codevilla calls the “ruling class” and the “country class” crystallized in the period between the two World Wars. Like a malignant growth, the lies of the adversary began choking out the Biblical truths that brought life to this country.
In fact, the battle to establish the “ruling class” has had a deep impact in the spirit of the Christian mindset. Many are no longer engaging in the public forum or debate for the rights and responsibilities assigned to the American citizenry by the U.S. Constitution. Many are convinced that Scriptures such as Romans 13 admonish us to refrain from the selection of our representative government because we are not to interfere with those whom God has chosen to put in charge. So complete is the indoctrination of the American mindset that we have an elite “ruling class” that we forget that “We the People” were given the assignment of power.
In their book “Who Killed the Constitution?…,” Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R.C. Gutzman also make an interesting observation of the issue of power in America today:
We hasten to note that this is not fundamentally a Left-Right is-sue…. As the great Virginian John Taylor of Caroline noted, the problem is not the character of members of one party or the other, one section of the country or the other, but the effect of power on the human ego, regardless of party or section. People in power exercise all the power they can get, even after they have howled in the wilderness against legislating judges, imperial presidents, and the death of states’ rights. That is why Taylor’s friend Jefferson believed the Constitution must act as a set of chains to bind down the federal government. [emphasis mine]
The struggle for power, the love of money, and the division of men have plagued societies from the earliest times of history. However, Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3 deserve special attention and reflection as Americans of both “classes” war through this particular stage in American history.
While greater in number, the “country class” has felt the loss of influence. Whether it is called revival, restoration, or revolution, “change” is in the wind. As Codevilla reflects in closing:
Suffice it to say that the ruling class’s greatest difficulty—aside from being outnumbered—will be to argue, against the grain of reality, that the revolution it continues to press upon America is sustainable. For its part, the country class’s greatest difficulty will be to enable a revolution to take place without imposing it. America has been imposed on enough.
Indeed, America and its “country class” has been imposed on enough. So what remains is the question Scripture does not answer: Is America not mentioned in the prophetic end times passages because we allow the “ruling class” to meld us into the global conglomerate; or does the “country class” exist as that ever present thorn in the flesh of the world until His re-turn?
Based on an article by Angelo M.Codevilla- America’s Ruling Class and The Perils of Revolution. American Spectator, July 2010-August 2010, http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class
“Environmentalism- Return to Eden, or Ticket to Hell?”
Protecting natural resources is what environmentalism is supposed to be about, but today the field is dominated chiefly by political ideology. To advance a particular political (anti-capitalist) agenda, radical environmentalists commonly cite the dire warnings of junk science to paint the bleakest possible picture of conditions in the natural world. They contend, by logical extension, that the best remedy for the environmental ills allegedly caused by capitalism would be a changeover to a socialist economic system.
Consider the following: The Index of Leading Environmental Indicators shows that since 1980, air quality in the U.S. has improved by more than 40 percent. Between 1970 and 1995, emissions of sulfur dioxide, the chief cause of acid rain, fell by 32.2 percent; the threat of lead poisoning disappeared almost entirely, with ambient lead concentration falling by 97.1 percent; the amount of particulates spewed into the air fell by 64 percent; carbon monoxide emissions dropped by 38 percent; releases of volatile organic compounds fell by 29 percent; ocean dumping of industrial wastes was reduced by 94 percent; and the number of cities without adequate sewage treatment plants declined by 84 percent.
Yet despite these measurable improvements in the world around us, we are everyday bombarded with gloom and doom on the environmental front. We are told, for instance, that global warming is happening as we speak, in spite of the fact that the government’s own satellite measurements in recent times show a very slight cooling trend — of .037 degrees Celsius per decade (or 1/3 degree every 100 years).
As it has become politicized by the environmental movement, the world of legitimate science has been contaminated by junk science. This has been a persistent issue in the national environmental dialogue at least since the Alar scare in 1989. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Ralph Nader called Alar a carcinogen and, using the TV program Sixty Minutes as a megaphone, tried to have the substance banned. In a report titled “Intolerable Risk: Pesticides In Our Children’s Food,” the NRDC called Alar “the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply.” The truth turned out to be quite different: If a person were to drink a six-ounce glass of apple juice each day during a lifetime of 70 years, the possible carcinogenic potential is 0.0017.
Many other scare stories, as well, turned out to be based not on legitimate science but on junk science — Love Canal, Times Beach, DDT, Radon, the ozone hole, the greenhouse effect, Bovine Growth Hormone, the coming Ice Age, the population bomb, etc. Thus the average citizen has not only a right but a duty to be skeptical of all scare stories circulated by the radical environmental movement.
Environmentalists want people to be afraid of what is happening around them, so they will be willing to be taxed and regulated even more than they already are to provide for environmental protection. Environmentalists view such taxation as a justifiable means of punishing those who have become wealthy within America’s capitalist economic system — a system that is, in the worldview of radical environmentalism, inherently destructive of the natural world:
Peter Berle, the recent past-president of the National Audubon Society has said, “We reject the idea of private property.”
According to Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…. Capitalism is destroying the earth.”
Maurice Strong, primary designer of the Earth Summit, asked, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Judi Bari of Earth First! said, “I think if we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it is possible under capitalism.”
Do the leaders of the environmental movement really believe that capitalism and private property are detrimental to a clean earth? More importantly, do they really think that socialism will cure all our ecological ills? If so, they are unaware of one of the great environmental object lessons of the last century, a lesson that became obvious when the fall of communism exposed the enormous environmental degradation that covered much of the habitable portions of the former Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe. The horrible conditions in those places were typical by-products of socialist policies, not anomalies. Environmental degradation was the norm.
To goad people into accepting that socialism will solve all of their environmental problems — and even their social problems — environmentalists will stick with the tool they have used so often to great effect: fear. And they have no qualms about promoting the dubious claims of junk science to cultivate that fear.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=156
The Trashing of Truth
Lying — The Heartbeat Of Lawlessness
“Evil has many doors and lying is the one key that fits them all.”
You can no more expect the “rule of law” to function without a core precept centering on truth than you could expect your human body to function without a heart. The two are inseparable. Those who treat casually the truth governing a society formed around the “rule of law” are inviting a lawlessness (anarchy), which will inevitably follow. Law and order cannot coexist with condoned falsehood.
Lying is a particularly vicious and destructive fault. There is no doubting that in times of weakness or imprudence most all of us have employed a lie on occasion. But it is only the depraved or demented that would not come to realize its insidious properties. Indeed, lying is one evil equally condemned by not only God, beginning with the Eighth Commandment,1 but by all secular cultures that wisely give preeminence to the “common good” and “right reason,” based on the natural law in their governing policies.
Any nation or culture that comes to granting license to lying has initiated its own death warrant. Yet, that very process is well on the way in our nation today. Don’t look around for some thing or some one to point to. It is we who have allowed this to come about and it is only we, the citizenry, that can remove the lying rabble we’ve allowed to infest our governing offices and that have turned on us, our families and our nation.
In our times, lying in the public arena has become so commonplace that numerous have become inured to its extremely deadly properties. Moreover, one’s indifference to lying as an “everybody does it” syndrome is an assurance that they themselves have become worthless citizens.
Do you take these comments as being possibly exaggerated in concept? What would be your reaction to being informed that a State Supreme Court had overturned laws that protected the citizenry from false testimonial and claims (under penalty of heavy fines) and ruled that politicians cannot be held punitively accountable for false statements (lies) employed by them in their own campaign material? Bizarre?
This is precisely what occurred in June, 1998 in a ruling put forth by the Washington State Supreme Court in a document entitled: “STATE OF WASHINGTON ex rel. Public Disclosure Commission” (http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980630/64332.htm) In this lengthy document (32,000 + words — 53 Pages) you will find such Orwellian argumentation as the following:
“Therefore, the Supreme Court has recognized that to sustain our constitutional commitment to uninhibited political discourse, the State may not prevent others from “resort{ing} to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church and state and even to false statement.” Id. (emphasis added). At times such speech seems unpalatable, but the value of free debate overcomes the danger of misuse. McIntyre, 514 U.S. at 357. For even false statements make valuable contributions to debate by bringing about “the clearer and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
This judicial travesty was adopted in a 5-4 decision by the 9-judge panel. One of the dissenting judges factually saw it for what it was and wrote: “the first court in the history of the Republic to declare First Amendment protection for calculated lies.”
Some Background to Our Days
Although lying is a fault that all of society has occasion to confront, it is noted to be particularly focused in our day with the practitioners of the ideology which is now popularly referred to as “liberalism.” In fact, the ideologies of liberalism, socialism, Marxism, and communism are all wedded, and proceed from the same brood house. It should be pointed out that “liberal” is a term adopted by the socialists themselves in seeking to disassociate from the stigma that had become attached to that ideology. I need not here reiterate what recent history has revealed pertaining to the lethal properties of these particular “…ism’s”. “Evil empire(s)” is one apt description of their outcomes when allowed to assume power.
Lying is an acknowledged tool of socialism/Marxism as not only taught by Marx but as incorporated in certain Marxist constitutions. Vladimir Lenin, a devoted follower of Marx and a father of the societal and world-wide disaster that came to be known as Communism, had the following words to say of their governmental intentions: “The lie is sacred, and deception will be our principal weapon.”
Liberalism has its postulants wherever right reason is discarded, with the Democratic Party in the U.S. now demonstrating to being one of its strongholds. That was not so 40 years ago. Furthermore, having premeditated deception as an adopted commandment, its adherents are ruthless adversaries with literally no constraints applied to the disseminating of falsehood. One will ask: “Why would they consider lying necessary to their advancement?”
Liberalism, quite frankly, will not stand up to the scrutiny of reasoning and logic. The object of proper reasoning, of course, is truth. The dissection of socialism in its many faces reveals that it is not a champion of the person but rather an exploiter of factions and resources to the detriment of persons. When its bones are exposed, it shows to being totalitarianism in its final result. Nazism was factually a form of socialism! Those facts, however, are not going to “play in Peoria” and so enters: evasion = obfuscation = misrepresentations = LYING! Once embraced, lying goes on to entrap. “This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.”
Liberalism seeks and attains its power through the development of a constituency lured or attracted to dependence. A mirror, if you will, of the “bread and circus” provided to the unruly masses of the old Roman Empire. Reality discloses that dependence does not germinate from the productive but wealth does. To the socialist, that wealth is absolutely necessary to provide the “bread and circus” for their developing debtor multitude. It does not take a rocket scientist to compute the economics from there. The producers must be made to provide for those who do not and the liberalist demands the empowerment to assure that he shall be its administrator. The liberalist thus sets themselves up as the power broker between these two contrived enmities, which they spawn and nurture.
The whole sordid history of socialist philosophy has been none other than an unbroken path of human suffering and disaster. Why then the attraction? Maybe that would best be answered by asking the question: “How many would be attracted to that which promised to provide from another’s coffers?” The temptation to the weak or slothful is undoubtedly considerable and the attraction to the unscrupulous seeking power has demonstrated to be irrepressible.
There is also a superficial emotion that liberalism attracts to itself. There is a contemporary saying that describes this well. “Show me a young person who is not a liberal and I will show you he who is heartless. Show me a mature person who is a liberal and I will show you he who is brainless!”
The young idealist who looks to being challenged in bettering the world rushes to the battlements where the bugles are sounding a call to save the so-called downtrodden. It takes the discomfort of discovering their Robin Hood leaders as being real hoods to awaken them. As Abraham Lincoln declared, however, “You can fool some of the people all of the time…”
We in the U.S., however, have endured the best efforts of the liberalists over the years without seriously succumbing to their perennial mendacities. What, then, is accounting for their very real upsurge of influence and conviction in our day?
There has come about a particular phenomenon on the American scene, which I do not pretend to have an answer for, but which does account for the liberalists’ ascent of recent decades. A force that has been “tipping the scales,” so to speak. That dynamism is the big news media (print and electronic), which has departed from its historical (legitimate) function of reporting to that of advocacy. From that of “calling a spade a spade,” to that of openly advancing a liberalist culture. In times past the news media, for the most part, functioned well as a watchdog on abuses in government. Immoral and bad acts or activity were quickly brought to the attention of the citizenry, and as a consequence the unprincipled were held considerably restrained. The media then, in the mold of the great and memorable Will Rogers, were the champions of the populace who, of course, were their purpose in being.
The 50’s found our institutions of higher learning being literally glutted with tenured faculty who were liberalists to the core. Their yield of young leftist ideologues into society was extraordinary and its effect was bound to come to fruition. This surfaced in the form of the considerable societal disruption of the 1960’s. The moral degradation and debauchery publicly exhibited by such events as “Woodstock.” The civil disobedience associated with Viet Nam and Kent State. The “don’t trust anyone over thirty” gaggle, and so on.
Rebellion was the creed of the young intellectuals. As was pointed out earlier that which most effectively awakens misled activists is the painful teacher best known as “reality.” Those with the vital and essential responsibilities of raising families or running their own businesses, get into reality (maturity) very swiftly. The preeminent worth of the individual, as differentiated from special interest groups or causes (liberalism), comes to the forefront quite emphatically! So what we find ourselves with, then, in our contemporary liberalist cadres are essentially the immature and the ideologues so obsessed with control and power as to have despoiled their standards to that of a brown-shirt thuggery! For those who would assert that this description (thuggery) is heavy handed, I would inform them that lying is violence by stealth and any who employ it in matters of public morals and governance are a deadly citizenry.
I do not claim the competency to analyze all the forces that have come into play and which have produced such a converging of liberalists in the cores of the communications industry. On the other hand, it is well known that militant activists are attracted to media, which gives them a platform for their burning adolescence, or ideology as in the instance of zealots. In any event, one can be assured that the environment of the liberalist media is not going to produce the reality check that the real world imposes.
Coming from the cornerstone of sound reason and logic, this marriage of the media to liberalism would appear an exercise in self-destruction. If there was any industry that has access to the worldwide statistics which lay bare the abominations of socialism, it is the news media. Empirical data in the hands of these organizations (or freely available to them) proves without exception that socialism has been a disaster to the peoples and economies of all nations succumbing to its embrace. Moreover, the facts show the first sector that shall be confiscated and subjected is that of the public media in all its forms. (Buying the rope by which to hang themselves?) Such, however, is all-typical of the foresight of the ideologically blind.
As has been demonstrated, lying is part and parcel of the operating mechanics of liberalism in our day. That media personages and organizations would embrace such behavior is particularly arrogant and audacious. Theoretically the “Achilles heel” of the news media is its credibility. Without credibility their worth diminishes drastically in the market place. Yet we see their consolidated efforts at not only reporting falsehood but also manufacturing it, all to the service of liberalist ideology. The only reasoning that would support such insolence must be their convictions that they have such control of the dissemination of information that the greater populace will not become aware of their collective chicanery. They have been “leading with their chin,” however, for as this counterfeit front continues to become breached (as the New York Times and CBS News are learning), their devastation is going to be quite thorough.
This may in fact be coming to critical mass at this very time with the spectacle now playing of the assemblage of major media displayed as braying asses bellowing their absurdities. This holds true also of all politicians and their bureaucracies, regardless of their party affiliation. These assaults on sanity and the common good, however, are performing the public service of revealing the true corruption of character that so infests the general media of our day.
Until recent times, the monopoly and control of information disseminated to the public by the major media has been a formidable force. Those recognizing the assault on truth being promulgated by these forces found an impenetrable wall in attempting any rebuttal to this injustice. With such power it is not difficult to conceive the “public be damned” demeanor that has dominated media comportment of the recent past. That milieu is now changing, however, and at a pace that has the powers of the liberal media looking on in horror.
The dual phenomena which has come on the scene and which is evermore perforating the walls of the aberrant media is that of conservative “talk radio” and what has come to be known as the “Internet.” Liberalism can get no traction on talk radio because experience is showing them no one will listen to it, and millions of persons are now able to impart and acquire information (facts) on a massive scale via the Internet. The media are finding they cannot money or muscle their way over these mediums and their consequent rage is truly a joy to behold. So much for the “best laid plans of media and men.”
Let me close with a repeat from the mouth of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, a real life Twentieth Century destroyer of nations: “The lie is sacred, and deception will be our principal weapon.” There is a secondary message in this statement that is every bit as revealing as the first. That is: by proclaiming the “lie is sacred,” it assures that these words come straight from the “Father of Lies,” Satan himself. Lying sanctioned has Gulags, genocide, death and destruction written all over it, and it will be our fate if we permit it. We have it confronting us right now and if we allow it to continue on its course, we are worthless citizens indeed!
The Keynesians Get Their Wish
The Keynesians finally got their wish. The Federal Reserve plans to inject $600 billion of the most caustic debt imaginable into the economy. This is the Agent Orange of monetary policies that has the potential to wreak financial havoc. In the hope of generating inflation, the central bank is going to enable deficit spending by buying treasury bonds. You read that correctly: the primary goal is to erode the value of the dollar, and we get to watch our currency and wealth literally dissolve before our eyes. Only a desperate government would consider debasing its own currency. The resulting inflation will be an insidious tax on every American who will suffer as wages lag behind increasing prices.
It is doubtful that countries like China will react favorably to the precipitous drop in the value of the debt owed to them. This strategy of monetary sabotage will punish savers and creditors, but Keynesians simply will not tolerate anything that impedes deficit spending. Since deflation hamstrings spending, they will stop at nothing to reverse deflationary pressures. Despite the misinformation propagated by these big-spending liberals, deflation has existed during extraordinary periods of economic growth and did not adversely affect consumers or wage earners. In fact, deflation is not only a common occurrence in a free economy, but it is also indicative of a vibrant and healthy economic expansion where the innovations and efficiency that competition engenders lower the costs of production.
These lower costs translate into lower product prices benefiting the consumer. Consumers were not harmed by the significant deflation of personal computers prices over the last two decades, and despite these falling prices, there has been explosive growth and profits. No credible economist could argue that consumers, manufacturers, or the economy would have been better-served if the government intervened and forced computer prices higher. Yet Keynesians propose that our economic woes can be ended by forcing the price of all products higher. And in spite of the fact that the government intrusion in the market was the root cause of the mortgage crisis, Keynesians continue to affirm that capitalism and central planning can coexist. This is patently false. You can have either a centrally planned economy or a free economy, but not both. Like all Keynesian economic theories, our mixed economy has failed in its real-world application. It is unworkable because of the extreme market distortions caused by policymakers and regulators who continually demand more control to “fix” the problems their social engineering schemes caused in the first place. Justifications for more interventions are just excuses to incrementally take over the economy and demolish any remnants of capitalism. And without capitalism, there are no individual rights.
Even though the U.S. economy has been steadily devolving into either socialism or fascism for over a century, the dramatic acceleration of change has caught the attention of unsuspecting Americans. But make no mistake: the economy would have eventually reached this point with or without the housing crisis. It is astonishing to watch the self-proclaimed experts preach the falsehood that the fascist polices of the FDR administration that was enamored with the “triumphs” of Stalin and Mussolini successfully ended the Great Depression. Quite to the contrary, they were a colossal failure that resulted in years of unnecessary misery. 
And these same charlatans credit the recent multi-trillion-dollar spending orgy with preventing a depression even though they cannot produce a shred of evidence that it yielded any sustainable economic growth or created a single long-term job. In actuality, the only thing the abhorrent spending accomplished is an historic theft of wealth from future generations, who will bear the awful burden of our malfeasance. Now there are troubling signs that indicate that the crisis has entered a coffin corner, where any corrective action will lead to catastrophe. Deficit spending to increase aggregate demand will eventually bankrupt the nation, while budget cuts will cripple our increasingly fascist economy that has grown dependent on government spending.
Unfortunately, with the student pilot who fancies himself an airline captain currently at the controls, the prospects of avoiding a financial crisis that could dwarf FDR’s man-caused disaster of the 1930s would be a miracle at this point. There is one ray of hope, however. Americans are beginning to shrug off the fallacy that government spending and other interventionist measures improve the economy over the long term. Many now understand that it is the government that is causing the increasing amplitude and frequency of boom and bust cycles. They also recognize that floating prices in response to competition for limited capital resources is a far better regulator of economic activity than these central planners could ever dream of becoming. Whatever remedial action is taken, there are very scary times ahead that will test the steadfastness of even the most ardent supporters of capitalism and limited government. Panic-stricken policymakers will undoubtedly act irrationally in trying to prevent the inevitable plunge off the cliff. We reach the edge of the cliff when the interest on national debt exceeds approximately 18 percent of GDP.
According to the Heritage Foundation, total tax revenues historically average 18% of GDP no matter how high the tax rates are set. When interest expenses equal 18 percent of GDP, then every dollar collected by the government will be consumed by interest alone. The federal government will literally have to borrow money just to turn on the lights. 
Does anyone think private property rights will have any meaning when the federal government runs out of money to fund its own existence? Nobel laureate economist Edmund Phelps: “I’m hoping that the weakening dollar that quantitative easing brings will finally be a chance for the U.S. to pump out exports.” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: “Quantitative easing that is sufficiently aggressive and that is perceived to be long-lived may have expansionary fiscal effects.” Nouriel Roubini: “The worst of the coming fiscal train wreck will be prevented by the Fed’s easing.” Paul Krugman: “Deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger.” http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_keynesians_get_their_wish.html
Communist Goals (1963)
- We currently live in a communistic ‘construct’ that was created by increments from one generation to the next.
- Go down this list and ask yourself, how many of these have already been accomplished since this list first surfaced in 1963?
- Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35
- Thursday, January 10, 1963
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen: [From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNISTS GOALS
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force ” to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Communism Is Not Dead!
An outstanding salesman is one who can tell another to go to hell and make him feel very happy that he is on his way. Such a feat requires intense creativity, deceptive semantics, and the ability to lie creatively and utter warm, loving words to the victim while concealing the intense hatred the perpetrator feels for him. The victim must be convinced he’s going to a warm, wonderful place and not understand until too late what is really happening to him.
Satan is a master at this. After all, it’s his job and he’s been at it for a long time. It is amusing nevertheless that generation after generation continues to fall prey to the same old tricks. But then again, fighting off old lies in new packaging is a full-time job, which requires effort, and few seem to muster the courage to do it.
Contrary to popular belief, communism is not dead! Rather, it is invading the West at an alarming pace – either overtly or covertly. China is a solidly communist country. Cuba remains communist and Venezuela is becoming such. The majority of southern Africa – South Africa included – is either controlled by communists or moving rapidly in that direction.
The new communists may not proclaim themselves to be such. They use other terms such as socialism, etc., but communist thought is alive and well in the halls of academia. The communist collective process has invaded our governments, schools, state, provincial and county governments, businesses and even Bible-based churches. Few pastors and Christians in churches utilizing the popular church growth programs realize they are based on the collective process designed by atheist Vladimir Lenin to brainwash the masses and impose Marxist control on society.
Something should be wrong with this picture, given communism’s record of death and disaster and its persecution of Christians and Jews, but because of the nature of how the transition has occurred – repacking old ideas in new wrapping – few have noticed. In this article, we’ll look at how socialism, communism’s wicked stepsister, has replaced capitalism as the dominant economic and political paradigm in the West.
The Circle of Socialism
Most Westerners believe that fascism is extreme-right and socialism is far-left. Perhaps a more realistic model would be a circle at the top of which stands a free market economy, private enterprise, and a limited constitutional government with a bill of rights for the individual as a cornerstone of freedom. At the bottom of the circle rests a dictatorship, individual or oligarchic, sham rights revocable at any time by the state, and where the rule of law means everything is state controlled. The only practical difference between fascism and socialism is that in a communist society government owns all property and directs all enterprise, whereas in a fascist society private property ownership continues, but entrepreneurs must submit to government’s ideologies and goals – chief of which is the task of funding government programs with the proceeds of private enterprise. Today’s socialism is striving to straddle both models.
Socialism and fascism only appear different when they’re sliding down the outside of their respective circles. Once they arrive at the bottom, both are functionally and historically alike. Both societies believe in total government control of the economy, education, and morals, suppression of free speech and other rights, imposition of a politically correct ideology, subordination of citizens’ rights to the goals of the state or collective, and the use of law to coerce and prosecute those who dissent.
Bottom line: At the top of the circle is a free state, where the laws protect the people from government. At the bottom of the circle is a socialist or fascist state, where the laws protect government from the people.
100% Successful Failure
Much of public debate today is not about whether we’re going to have a free society vs. state control, but simply about which side of the circle we’re going to slide down during the move away from freedom towards a global, state-controlled society. Despite socialism’s 100% track record of failure, the entire Western world seems determined to do it again, sliding down the left side of the circle, screaming epithets at fascism as it disappears around the curve, unaware that its current course leads to a head-on encounter with fascism going the other way at the bottom. Thereafter, both movements unite, causing their citizens to live miserably ever after. Few apprehend the inherent evil and diminishing rights in the emerging political structures or understand why they are inimical to the free society they are happily leaving behind. Since we’re heading towards a global pantheistic socialism, it might be advisable to examine its three fundamentals: elitism, expropriation, and exemption.
1) Elitism
Genuine socialists are, above all, elitist. Socialists conceive themselves to be bright shining Quijotes,1 tilting with windmills, saving humanity from itself, the planet from humanity, the economy from capitalism, and from everything else except big government, which socialists love. On the other hand, they view the putrid pile of pusillanimous pus we call society as the unwashed ignorant who must be saved from themselves. In this capacity, the opinions of the unwashed are to be ignored.
There is a difference between hard-core socialist academics or politicians (ideologues) and the socialazzi (Lenin’s “useful idiots”), the average Joe and Jane, who think government social programs are great, but never investigate to see if socialism delivers its promises, which it never does. To his credit, Joe Socialazzi is bothered that the rich seem to be getting richer and he seems to be getting poorer but he just can’t figure it out. After all, Joe Socialazzi genuinely cares about people, but he doesn’t understand that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The hard-core ideologues, however, understand it’s all about power, money, and control.
La Visin Grande
Socialist Quijotes [1] usually have their gran visin del mundo, [2] and ride in on the back of white Rocinantes [3] – a glittering response to appalling social conditions or the environmental crisis du jour. However, socialist solutions always ignore basic rules of both human nature and economics. As such they not only absolutely fail but also create far worse problems than existed before they started, which is why socialism always collapses of its own weight, but only after much damage has been wrought on the little guy.
Socialists do not like opinions in variance with the grand vision. Thus, high priority on the socialist docket is to suppress free speech by whatever method feasible. Suppression of speech in the elitism phase is important. By the time everyone arrives at the exemption phase, everyone knows socialism is a lie, but they can no longer say so. Indeed, a hallmark of Soviet society was that everyone had to give lip service to a series of official lies, which everyone knew were false but couldn’t say so.
2) Expropriation
Once the socialist is in a position to implement the grand vision, he immediately faces a critical problem: funding. Grand designs require grand amounts of money. However, the ignorant unwashed masses don’t like to work for free or have their hard-earned money taken from them. So the socialist creates warfare between classes of people. He demonizes the haves and sanctifies the haves-not. He demonizes those who don’t see the wisdom in the grand vision. Then he tells the haves-not it is moral, just, and good to seize what the haves have by force and give it to the haves-not. He also says it is wrong for the haves to even try to earn what they have. Soak the rich and save the planet. Viva el free lunch!
Here lies the core contradiction of socialism: socialists demonize capitalism but always require the wealth capitalism generates in order to implement and perpetuate their political schemes. The double speak must be maintained if socialists are to remain in power! The socialazzi never learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch until late in the game, when it’s too late.
As socialist programs are created in rapid succession, a staggering bureaucracy comes into existence to support the administration of it, which siphons off the lion’s share of what is supposed to be transferred from the haves to the haves-not. Once entrenched, this new bureaucracy has a vested interest in 1) perpetuating the problems it is supposed to be fixing, in order to 2) sustain its cash flow, in order to 3) keep itself in existence, regardless of who gets soaked. Remember, socialism is about power and control.
Socialism continues to exist as long as two factors remain in play:
1) The underlying capitalism is resilient enough to bear the load. This involves being able to pay increasing levels of confiscatory taxation and deal with a crushing regulatory burden or a horribly corrupt political system. Note that these factors always eliminate the little guy from the game! Little guys do not have the financial resources to fight an increasingly abusive system, resulting in one of socialism’s most important dicta: Under socialism the middle class always disappears!
2) The masses must continue believing that there is a free lunch and that only rich people are being soaked.
3) Exemption
While the game is ongoing, socialists always exempt themselves from the restrictive laws and confiscations they impose on everyone else. In essence they become exactly what they preach against, but more importantly, once the jig is up, a more pernicious form of exemption sets in as socialists make themselves immune from responsibility for the havoc they have caused: morally, legally and above all, politically. Sooner or later even the most mentally challenged becomes dimly aware that socialists look a lot like the rich haves they perpetually promise to soak. The socialazzi discover their money has been devalued, their assets seized, their freedoms quashed, their economy wrecked, they’re broke and the system is out of control.
At this point, revolutions – bloody or not – usually occur and exemption kicks in. When the economic horse collapses from abuse and overwork, socialists adamantly refuse to dismount, even when confronted with a very angry populace (vis a vis Argentina). First they try to convince the public that evil rich capitalists are responsible for the horse’s ill health and that the horse will recover if the people just make more sacrifices of their money and property. Occasionally the socialazzi are stupid enough to believe this and the horse can be kept alive for a little while longer, but it never regains its former health. Invariably the games socialists play to keep Rocinante [3] alive radically exacerbate an already desperate situation to its ultimate conclusion. In the end, the poor horse simply dies, leading socialists to the major challenge of their dubious careers. It is now impossible to convince the public that the bad smell isn’t rotting horse carcass and that they’re not responsible. Disaster is at hand when lo and behold, socialism meets its old enemy fascism going the other way in an encounter called by Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Third Way. Others refer to it as capitalistic communism.
Since the socialists don’t want to give up money and power, they cut a deal with the big-time capitalists. The socialists make laws that are favorable only to the big guys, excluding the little guys from the game. At the same time the big capitalists agree to fund the socialists’ dreams and agendas as long as they get exclusive preferential treatment.
It’s a marriage made in political hell. When things go wrong, the socialists can blame the capitalists all the while they pound the bejeebers out of capitalist enterprise to pay for their socialist dreams. As such they are never held accountable for the horrible state of affairs that inevitably results from socialism in the first place! But now we must ask: When this socialist round collapses – which it will as all its ancestors did – given that this is the first time socialism will be implemented on a global scale, there will be no remaining source of external free-market capitalism to stop the endgame chaos, so what will the global dictatorship look like?
[1] Quijote: Ref. the novel Don Quijote by Miguel de Saavedra. The modern spelling of his demented hero’s name was spelled “Quixote” at the time Cervantes wrote his magnum opus but has subsequently been changed in modern Spanish.
[2] Sp: grand vision of the world.
[3] Rocinante was the name of Don Quijote’s horse. In Spanish, the word “rocín” means “nag.” When Quijote named his horse “Rocinante,” it was a comic effort to make something noble which by its very nature is ignoble
Why Believe in God?
There are two types of men, those who are afraid to lose God, and those who are afraid that they might find Him…
–Blaise Pascal, philosopher and scientist
Does God exist?
This is surely a fundamental question that nearly all humans have pondered with throughout human history. The vast array of religions are a testimony to the human tendency to grasp at the divine. This in itself is perhaps the strongest testimony to God’s existence. It can be said that all humans have an innate desire; an emptiness that they feel must be filled. The human quest for power, riches, sensual pleasure, security, fame and indulgence in natural pleasures is a response to the heartfelt desire for a higher goodness. Temporal pleasures and even natural love is often transitory and ultimately unfulfilling. As humans indulge in their passions their desires continue to go unfulfilled. Many attempt to fill the void with increasing worldly pleasures with little results.
Such powerful and elusive desires are a cry from the soul which seeks something that can not be gratified by the things of this world. For the moment we will consider discontent of the heart as a mark of God calling us to embrace him.
But I demand physical proof!
St. Thomas Aquinas proposed five proofs in which humans can use natural reason to prove the existence of God through extrinsic evidence. Through the use of natural reason we can logically conclude in the existence of God. Yet strictly speaking, God’s existence cannot be definitively proven through laboratory tests and experimental science. Not all things are subject to experimental science. It is illogical to say, “If I can not see, taste, touch, feel or hear something it must not exist!” Reason and extrinsic evidence must also be considered. Experimental science and intrinsic evidence cannot definitively prove historical events, and yet by reason we know they have occurred. And surely were science falters and extrinsic evidence fail, reason and intrinsic evidence can prove the spiritual which can not be measured by material sciences.
St. Thomas Aquinas five proofs of the existence of God
Aquinas’ first proof is through the argument of motion. It can be noted that some things in the universe are in motion and it follows that whatever is in the state of motion must have been placed in motion by another such act. Motion in itself is nothing less then the reduction of something from the state of potentiality to actuality. Because something can not be in potentiality and actuality simultaneously, it follows that something can not be a mover of itself. A simple example of this is a rubber ball motionless on a flat surface. It has the potential for motion, but is not currently in the state of actual motion. In order for this to happen, something else in motion must set the ball in motion, be that gravity, another moving object or the wind. And yet something must have set that object in motion as well (even gravity, a force caused by matter warping the space-time fabric, attributes its existence to pre-existing matter and the exchange of pre-existing graviton particles). Thus pre-existing motions cause all motions. Yet, this chain can not extend into infinity because that would deny a first mover that set all else in motion. Without a first mover, nothing could be set in motion. Thus we acknowledge the first and primary mover as God.
The second proof follows closely with the first and expounds the principle of causality. St. Thomas explains that in the world of sense there is an order of causes and effects. There is a cause for all things such as the existence of a clock. And nothing can cause itself into existence. A clock cannot will itself into existence, it must be created and caused into existence by something else. A clockmaker creates a clock and causes its existence, and yet the material of the clock and the clockmaker did not cause themselves to exist. Something else must have caused their existence. All things can attribute their existence to a first cause that began all causes and all things. We call this first cause God.
Aquinas next explains that things of this universe have a transitory nature in which they are generated and then corrupt over time. Because of this the things of nature can be said to be “possible to be and possible not to be”. Since it is impossible for these things always to exist, then it indicates a time when they did not exist. If there are things which are transitory (and are possible not to be) then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. However, as was already explained in his second proof, there must have been a first cause that was not of transitory nature that could have generated the beginning of nature.
In his fourth point Aquinas notes that there is a certain gradation in all things. For instance we can group things that are hot according to varying degrees of the amount of heat perceptible in that object. In classifying objects there is always something which displays the maximum fullness of that characteristic. Thus universal qualities in man such as justice and goodness must attribute their varying qualities to God; the source of maximum and perfect justice and goodness.
Finally, Thomas Aquinas says that the order of nature presupposes a higher plan in creation. The laws governing the universe presuppose a universal legislature who authored the order of the universe. We cannot say that chance creates order in the universe. If you drop a cup on the floor it shatters into bits and has become disordered. But if you were to drop bits of the cup, they would not assemble together into a cup. This is an example of the inherent disorder prevalent in the universe when things are left to chance. The existence of order and natural laws presupposes a divine intelligence who authored the universe into being.
Conclusions from St. Thomas Aquinas’ proofs
These proofs reveal many truths about the divine God. The existence of life and the order of creation can be attributed to God; the cause and creator of the universe. From the principal of causality we know that God is infinite and beyond the laws of nature and our human universe. In order for him to be the first cause, he must have been in existence before all else in the universe. We know that nature is composed of things that are not eternal but are transitory. Thus the universe attributes its transitory nature to a first cause that cannot be defined as transitory and is thus not a part of nature. So God is neither of a finite lifetime, nor is he “inseparably a part of nature”. Nature by itself is not God. We also know that God is the divine source of justice and goodness; attributes found in all men and woman in varying degrees. In fact our universal feelings of justice demand a God. Justice is not a human attribute created by us, it is a quality imprinted in our very being by our creator. A being who must also posses the very quintessence of justice in order to endow us with justice.
Finally, we know that God is personal. It can be likewise argued that the qualities that make humans personal and conscience are what place us above other created things such as plants and animals. Since God is a higher order of being, he is likewise the very quintessence of a personal being.
But why do bad things happen to good people?
So where is this supremely good, personal and just God in our world? Why so much misery and suffering? This is a fundamental mystery for which human reason cannot fully explain. Although we can reasonably conclude to the existence of God we cannot hope to fully fathom the infinite and divine intellect of our creator with finite human minds.
However, we can reason that God has decided to endow us with free will, a tremendous gift that gives humans the freedom to choose between love of God and hatred of him. We can choose between good and evil. So why did he decide to give us the freedom to choose evil? It is enough to say that God created us as human beings and not as preprogrammed robots. In his infinite goodness he desired the free love of humanity over forced obedience to his will. For love cannot be forced, it must be given by desire and choice.
Because of our free will, some people have embraced evil and selfishness to satiate themselves at the expense of others. True evil is a result of desire of oneself over that of God, and thus sin and evil is a rejection of God. Because God is of infinite perfection, beatitude, and justice, he cannot allow sin to go unpunished. Neither can he allow sinful people to embrace him in his fullness in heaven. Thus our world, tainted by sin, is racked with much sadness and suffering. Sin separates us from the all-pleasing and loving God.
As emphasized before, the simultaneous existence of good and evil is a mystery to human intelligence, but it in no way proves that God does not exist. It only points to our own finite and limited existence. Our God is infinitely good and just, and thus as the source of our lives were are created to be his friends and children. We are called to live in goodness and justice as a response to our love of God. God loves us, but it is up to us to return his love.
The Department of Free
Years ago, a wiser man
than you or I devised a plan
to dole out goods at zero cost
to those of us whose jobs were lost.
It seemed benign, so nice and kind
the plan grew to include the blind,
the old the lame then you and me,
and they called this plan
The Department of Free.
It started as a helping hand
to needy folks across the land,
so those who could not make ends meet
would not be forced out on the street.
Unemployment benefits
were just a start, because now it’s
free food, free homes, free surgery,
rebates, bailouts, loans — all free.
Now half of us just stand in line
all day long and gripe and whine
about the stuff we feel we’re owed
the list of which has growed and growed.
The line wends hither, the line wends yon,
and by and by it comes upon
a door above which we can see
those magic words:
Department of Free.
Once inside: a shopping spree
of endless handouts: it’s all free!
Drunken on entitlement
we grab a meal, a house, a stent.
The other half? We’re all employed!
Hearing this, you’re overjoyed
to know that at least some of us
have jobs and never cause a fuss.
But one last thing you ought to know,
our economic Alamo:
The place where we all work, you see,
is in the accursed Department of Free!
I push papers,
while he counts beans.
She helps seniors
and they help teens.
It takes a village to raise a child;
it takes a nation to run hog-wild.
Paul pays Peter, and Peter pays Paul,
yet neither makes anything at all.
Round and round the money goes
but where it comes from no one knows.
It all runs out eventually,
can’t simulate prosperity.
The shopping spree was just a dream,
a baseless potlatch Ponzi scheme.
With nothing left to give away,
The Department of Free itself must say,
“We’re all laid off, the end is near.
There’s no point working, even here.”
The last employed man not offshore
has just one more remaining chore:
Switch off the lights
and turn the key
in the broke
Department of Free.
From Medicare and Medicaid
came Medicould and Medishould
now Medimust and we’ve gone bust
we’re trust-fund kids without a trust.
http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/10/31/the-department-of-free/
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