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Question Everything!
MEN OF PEACE
"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier
Sunday, May 31, 2015
From Colony to herd
It’s time to move away from the rest of this mindless herd and be the men and women we must be s our nation can return to what it once was: a nation of men and women claiming free will and self-direction as given them by their God and Savior.
From Colony to herd
By Sarge
America started as a blank page; a chance to organize our thoughts and come to some kind of understanding about life, the world and where our nation would go. Now it has thoughts etched into it. It’s had bird droppings thrown down upon it by a Colony of gulls. The page was pure, now it’s soiled to the point of horrible contempt because of a thoughtlessness borne of the need to do what comes naturally and is destructive. It’s a natural act of destruction because of its lack of thought. We can only wait to either wipe it away or see it thrown out with the other trash.
I describe the Obama administration: a thoughtless gull dropping a mess on the people could easily stop the assault by erecting a cover to keep the albatross soon to be hung ‘round our necks for all time from desecrating all we thought clean and light and right. But the participants in this party of the absurd don’t want to stop the revelry applauding the fact we elected a man of another race, no matter the exact divisional percentage of his birthright. Did you know a person, for socially based genealogical purposes, is of the same race as its mother? As silly as this may sound and in spite of his complexion, Barack Obama is Caucasian by virtue of this series of hypothetical thought processes. His policies are as duplicitous, sanctimonious and misguided as could ever be expected of a third rate, lying socialist wanting to see the masses arise and destroy the proletariat from within. He’s the self-righteous contagion polluting the body national and demotes humanity to herd status.
Speaking of hypothetical thought processes, it would seem this is in alignment with the idea he’s a president merely because he lied to the American people better than John McCain and Mitt Romney. Neither of these stiff and stolid individuals is noted for great oratorical skill. Both are wrapped in plain brown craft paper while Obama came to us with Rainbow Coalitions and Red Flags flying so we’d know the Big Top is coming and we were witnessing the Coming in of the Clown. Obama was elected by a majority of the minority exercised their responsibility to vote. He was selected by the least qualified to be the worst of three evils.
This is a short thought today because I feel as though we’ve said it all. We’ve exhibited the displeasure and the revulsion a national body can when being whipped into alignment within the confines of the herd’s biomass. We’re alive. We’re moving. But nobody wants to understand this herd’s path is directed to slaughter; of ideals, beliefs and understandings of what it means to be American. We’re being herded by ideologues and the sycophants pressing their steeds against our flanks and cracking the whips scare us into moving the way our drovers demand.
It’s time to move away from the rest of this mindless herd and be the men and women we must be s our nation can return to what it once was: a nation of men and women claiming free will and self-direction as given them by their God and Savior.
I’m tired and worn. But I’m angry and torn by the facts I’ve alluded to above. It’s time to see if we will accept the scars as markers of how we’ve been mistreated these past few years or arise and unhorse the unfeeling, uncaring wannabee Vaqueros driving us to our moral deaths and before they may scar us again. It’s up to us to choose.
From Colony to herd
By Sarge
America started as a blank page; a chance to organize our thoughts and come to some kind of understanding about life, the world and where our nation would go. Now it has thoughts etched into it. It’s had bird droppings thrown down upon it by a Colony of gulls. The page was pure, now it’s soiled to the point of horrible contempt because of a thoughtlessness borne of the need to do what comes naturally and is destructive. It’s a natural act of destruction because of its lack of thought. We can only wait to either wipe it away or see it thrown out with the other trash.
I describe the Obama administration: a thoughtless gull dropping a mess on the people could easily stop the assault by erecting a cover to keep the albatross soon to be hung ‘round our necks for all time from desecrating all we thought clean and light and right. But the participants in this party of the absurd don’t want to stop the revelry applauding the fact we elected a man of another race, no matter the exact divisional percentage of his birthright. Did you know a person, for socially based genealogical purposes, is of the same race as its mother? As silly as this may sound and in spite of his complexion, Barack Obama is Caucasian by virtue of this series of hypothetical thought processes. His policies are as duplicitous, sanctimonious and misguided as could ever be expected of a third rate, lying socialist wanting to see the masses arise and destroy the proletariat from within. He’s the self-righteous contagion polluting the body national and demotes humanity to herd status.
Speaking of hypothetical thought processes, it would seem this is in alignment with the idea he’s a president merely because he lied to the American people better than John McCain and Mitt Romney. Neither of these stiff and stolid individuals is noted for great oratorical skill. Both are wrapped in plain brown craft paper while Obama came to us with Rainbow Coalitions and Red Flags flying so we’d know the Big Top is coming and we were witnessing the Coming in of the Clown. Obama was elected by a majority of the minority exercised their responsibility to vote. He was selected by the least qualified to be the worst of three evils.
This is a short thought today because I feel as though we’ve said it all. We’ve exhibited the displeasure and the revulsion a national body can when being whipped into alignment within the confines of the herd’s biomass. We’re alive. We’re moving. But nobody wants to understand this herd’s path is directed to slaughter; of ideals, beliefs and understandings of what it means to be American. We’re being herded by ideologues and the sycophants pressing their steeds against our flanks and cracking the whips scare us into moving the way our drovers demand.
It’s time to move away from the rest of this mindless herd and be the men and women we must be s our nation can return to what it once was: a nation of men and women claiming free will and self-direction as given them by their God and Savior.
I’m tired and worn. But I’m angry and torn by the facts I’ve alluded to above. It’s time to see if we will accept the scars as markers of how we’ve been mistreated these past few years or arise and unhorse the unfeeling, uncaring wannabee Vaqueros driving us to our moral deaths and before they may scar us again. It’s up to us to choose.
Local Police Being Federalized?
Local Police Being Federalized?
Back in January I wrote an opinion article suggesting that the Obama administration showed signs of moving toward nationalizing local police departments.
It was published online January 27 by The Patriot Post and the idea was largely pooh-poohed or ignored by people a lot smarter than little people like myself, or at least who think they are.
However, since January I have observed nothing that convinces me that getting control of local police agencies is not President Obama’s goal.
Admittedly, I failed to recognize the exact route the takeover would take, although I did hint at some possibilities.
I wrote: “Obama could effect a takeover of local police departments under cover of a crisis, real or hyped, in a sudden movement; or he could do it through attrition, though accomplishing it before he leaves office… The ‘need for training police’ is a phrase often used, training by government agents, with funding from government agencies.”
What we are seeing now is a takeover through actions by Obama and his Justice department, which would mostly fit into the attrition category. It’s not being done stealthily, but neither is it highlighted by the mainstream media.
The most recent example is what the mainstream media has dubbed a “settlement between Cleveland police and Justice” over what a U.S. Justice Department report described as a pattern of excessive force and civil rights violations by the Cleveland, Ohio police department.
The Justice Department’s report said officers were “poorly trained.” The agreement, no doubt, means to rectify that problem, through proper training by people sent from Washington.
So far, the full description of the settlement has not been released (and may never be) but it seems that a primary focus is for the police department to “work with” community and government officials to devise a plan to reform the police department.
To make the plan all legal and proper, a judge must approve the plan and the reform must be overseen by what one news report calls an “independent” monitor.
The “agreement” comes after a report on an 18-month Justice Department investigation was released in January.
Similar investigations have been, or are, going on all over the country.
Cleveland-like “agreements” are likely to be forthcoming.
Should we leave it to learned, elite, intellectual commentators to explain to us little people why the Cleveland agreement does not effect federal control of the police department, or, if they concede that it does, why it is necessary and justified?
It would be interesting to hear what national commentators who play conservatives on television or appear as token “conservative” commentators in major national print publications, have to say on the subject.
Don’t expect, however, harsh comments from those pseudo-conservatives, at least nothing that would risk getting them barred from important social circles in media-centered cities
By L.E. Brown, Jr.
Back in January I wrote an opinion article suggesting that the Obama administration showed signs of moving toward nationalizing local police departments.
It was published online January 27 by The Patriot Post and the idea was largely pooh-poohed or ignored by people a lot smarter than little people like myself, or at least who think they are.
However, since January I have observed nothing that convinces me that getting control of local police agencies is not President Obama’s goal.
Admittedly, I failed to recognize the exact route the takeover would take, although I did hint at some possibilities.
I wrote: “Obama could effect a takeover of local police departments under cover of a crisis, real or hyped, in a sudden movement; or he could do it through attrition, though accomplishing it before he leaves office… The ‘need for training police’ is a phrase often used, training by government agents, with funding from government agencies.”
What we are seeing now is a takeover through actions by Obama and his Justice department, which would mostly fit into the attrition category. It’s not being done stealthily, but neither is it highlighted by the mainstream media.
The most recent example is what the mainstream media has dubbed a “settlement between Cleveland police and Justice” over what a U.S. Justice Department report described as a pattern of excessive force and civil rights violations by the Cleveland, Ohio police department.
The Justice Department’s report said officers were “poorly trained.” The agreement, no doubt, means to rectify that problem, through proper training by people sent from Washington.
So far, the full description of the settlement has not been released (and may never be) but it seems that a primary focus is for the police department to “work with” community and government officials to devise a plan to reform the police department.
To make the plan all legal and proper, a judge must approve the plan and the reform must be overseen by what one news report calls an “independent” monitor.
The “agreement” comes after a report on an 18-month Justice Department investigation was released in January.
Similar investigations have been, or are, going on all over the country.
Cleveland-like “agreements” are likely to be forthcoming.
Should we leave it to learned, elite, intellectual commentators to explain to us little people why the Cleveland agreement does not effect federal control of the police department, or, if they concede that it does, why it is necessary and justified?
It would be interesting to hear what national commentators who play conservatives on television or appear as token “conservative” commentators in major national print publications, have to say on the subject.
Don’t expect, however, harsh comments from those pseudo-conservatives, at least nothing that would risk getting them barred from important social circles in media-centered cities
By L.E. Brown, Jr.
Martial Law Shall Not Prevail
Martial Law Shall Not Prevail
Because we are quickly approaching January 20, 2017, although not quickly enough to suit some of us, the usual paranoia has risen to the surface. I am receiving the very same sort of email I was receiving when the administrations of both Clinton and Bush were winding down.
People are once again alerting me to the news that the next election will not take place because the man in the White House will cobble up a national emergency that requires him to call out the federal troops and deny the American people the opportunity to evict him from the Oval Office.
While I agree that Obama is far more likely to behave that way than either of his predecessors, I really don’t think that Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, Juan Williams, Josh Earnest, Loretta Lynch and the Congressional Black Caucus, are up to the task. What such a coup would require, after all, is that the U.S. military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Guard and, I assume, the police departments around the country to forswear their oaths to defend the Constitution, and for no other reason than to keep a man whom most of them despise in power.
Really, folks? Would anyone who really buys that hooey step forward so that I can also sell them the Brooklyn Bridge? For the first hundred who call in, I will also throw in the Empire State Building, the Holland Tunnel, the Trump Tower, Central Park and Madison Square Garden.
If you are still worried, let me ask you if you believe for even a second that Hillary Clinton would simply stand by and let this pencil-necked pipsqueak deprive her of what she sees as her ultimate destiny? And even if she were willing, can you imagine Bill Clinton allowing a sissy boy to keep him from returning triumphantly to the White House? After all, if he can get $500,000-a-speech just for being married to the Secretary of State, imagine the size of the pay-offs he’d get as First Laddy.
Ever since the 2014 elections, when the pollsters predicted that the GOP would be lucky to pick up five Senate seats in what they promised to be close elections, and the GOP wound up picking up nine without breaking a sweat, I have begun to seriously doubt the validity of polls — and with that, the political objectivity of pollsters. That’s the reason that when English odds makers predicted it would be a nip-and-tuck election between David Cameron’s Conservative Party and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party, I said: “Hogwash! Cameron and the Conservatives will win in a cakewalk.” And so they did.
And, no, I did not misspell Labor. That’s the way they spell things in England. Apparently in the distant past, possibly during the reign of Henry VIII, the English accumulated a treasure trove of “u’s” and they’ve been trying to use them up ever since.
Speaking of spelling, in the hope of promoting literacy, the Berkeley, CA, library system decided to manufacture and distribute buttons reading “I Have a Berkeley Library Card.” But, naturally, because Berkeley has more idiots per square foot than any other municipality in the United States, they spelled it “Berkley” on the buttons.
In the never-ending debate over entitlement reform in America, the Left continues to abuse the language. Even liberals should be able to distinguish between entitlements and gifts bestowed on parasites at the expense of the productive. So, in the future, let us no longer lump Social Security and Veterans Benefits — money actually earned through hard work and sacrifice by the recipients — and the bribes doled out to those who neither work nor sacrifice by political vermin trolling for votes with our tax dollars.
Recently, a reader called out the likes of Al Gore, Michael Moore, George Clooney, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Sharpton and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who all push for climate control legislation, by preying upon the unwarranted fears of the dumb, the young and the gullible, but who, themselves, all live in mansions and get around in limousines and private jets.
I heartily agreed that these prominent hypocrites should be held up for scorn and ridicule. I would like to say that only in America could such a collection of loons and goons achieve such fame and fortune, but in my heart I know that’s not true.
In Europe, as well, mere celebrity gives all sorts of ignoramuses the authority to deliver pronouncements with great assurance on things about which they know absolutely nothing.
For the past 70 years, what passes for western civilization has been seemingly addicted to stupidity pills. It not only resulted in shrinking their brains, but caused their spines to disappear entirely. That is why here in the West, ignorance and moral cowardice among the elite constitute the new normal.
Unfortunately, what’s taking place simultaneously in the Middle East and North Africa — no doubt in direct response to the West’s decline — is that the barbarians who bow down to Mecca when not burning, beheading and crucifying Christians and Jews, are once again on the march, looking to subjugate or kill the rest of us. And that, considering 1400 years of Islamic history, marks a return to the old normal.
Finally, even though I haven’t been asked by Jeb Bush’s team to do so, I have come up with a campaign slogan: “Vote for the man who believes that being wrong about Common Core and immigration is a conservative virtue!”
By Burt Prelutsky
People are once again alerting me to the news that the next election will not take place because the man in the White House will cobble up a national emergency that requires him to call out the federal troops and deny the American people the opportunity to evict him from the Oval Office.
While I agree that Obama is far more likely to behave that way than either of his predecessors, I really don’t think that Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, Juan Williams, Josh Earnest, Loretta Lynch and the Congressional Black Caucus, are up to the task. What such a coup would require, after all, is that the U.S. military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Guard and, I assume, the police departments around the country to forswear their oaths to defend the Constitution, and for no other reason than to keep a man whom most of them despise in power.
Really, folks? Would anyone who really buys that hooey step forward so that I can also sell them the Brooklyn Bridge? For the first hundred who call in, I will also throw in the Empire State Building, the Holland Tunnel, the Trump Tower, Central Park and Madison Square Garden.
If you are still worried, let me ask you if you believe for even a second that Hillary Clinton would simply stand by and let this pencil-necked pipsqueak deprive her of what she sees as her ultimate destiny? And even if she were willing, can you imagine Bill Clinton allowing a sissy boy to keep him from returning triumphantly to the White House? After all, if he can get $500,000-a-speech just for being married to the Secretary of State, imagine the size of the pay-offs he’d get as First Laddy.
Ever since the 2014 elections, when the pollsters predicted that the GOP would be lucky to pick up five Senate seats in what they promised to be close elections, and the GOP wound up picking up nine without breaking a sweat, I have begun to seriously doubt the validity of polls — and with that, the political objectivity of pollsters. That’s the reason that when English odds makers predicted it would be a nip-and-tuck election between David Cameron’s Conservative Party and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party, I said: “Hogwash! Cameron and the Conservatives will win in a cakewalk.” And so they did.
And, no, I did not misspell Labor. That’s the way they spell things in England. Apparently in the distant past, possibly during the reign of Henry VIII, the English accumulated a treasure trove of “u’s” and they’ve been trying to use them up ever since.
Speaking of spelling, in the hope of promoting literacy, the Berkeley, CA, library system decided to manufacture and distribute buttons reading “I Have a Berkeley Library Card.” But, naturally, because Berkeley has more idiots per square foot than any other municipality in the United States, they spelled it “Berkley” on the buttons.
In the never-ending debate over entitlement reform in America, the Left continues to abuse the language. Even liberals should be able to distinguish between entitlements and gifts bestowed on parasites at the expense of the productive. So, in the future, let us no longer lump Social Security and Veterans Benefits — money actually earned through hard work and sacrifice by the recipients — and the bribes doled out to those who neither work nor sacrifice by political vermin trolling for votes with our tax dollars.
Recently, a reader called out the likes of Al Gore, Michael Moore, George Clooney, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Sharpton and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who all push for climate control legislation, by preying upon the unwarranted fears of the dumb, the young and the gullible, but who, themselves, all live in mansions and get around in limousines and private jets.
I heartily agreed that these prominent hypocrites should be held up for scorn and ridicule. I would like to say that only in America could such a collection of loons and goons achieve such fame and fortune, but in my heart I know that’s not true.
In Europe, as well, mere celebrity gives all sorts of ignoramuses the authority to deliver pronouncements with great assurance on things about which they know absolutely nothing.
For the past 70 years, what passes for western civilization has been seemingly addicted to stupidity pills. It not only resulted in shrinking their brains, but caused their spines to disappear entirely. That is why here in the West, ignorance and moral cowardice among the elite constitute the new normal.
Unfortunately, what’s taking place simultaneously in the Middle East and North Africa — no doubt in direct response to the West’s decline — is that the barbarians who bow down to Mecca when not burning, beheading and crucifying Christians and Jews, are once again on the march, looking to subjugate or kill the rest of us. And that, considering 1400 years of Islamic history, marks a return to the old normal.
Finally, even though I haven’t been asked by Jeb Bush’s team to do so, I have come up with a campaign slogan: “Vote for the man who believes that being wrong about Common Core and immigration is a conservative virtue!”
By Burt Prelutsky
Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates now repeating the same urgent warnings for humanity first issued by the Independent Media years ago
Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates now repeating the same urgent warnings for humanity first issued by the Independent Media years ago
Elon Musk warns that artificial intelligence may spiral out of control and give rise to self-replicating machines that destroy humanity. Stephen Hawking mirrors the same warning with even more dire language about the future of human civilization and its survival in the universe. Bill Gates warns that a killer flu pandemic could wipe out a substantial portion of the human race, spreading uncontrollably across the planet and causing widespread fatalities.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2907069/Don-t-let-AI-jobs-kill-Stephen-Hawking-Elon-Musk-sign-open-letter-warning-robot-uprising.html
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/bill-gates-warns-of-virus-worse-than-ebola-we-are-simply-not-prepared-to-deal-with-a-global-epidemic_03202015
What do all these dire warnings have in common? They're things that I and many other people have been warning about for years. While I posted a very specific warning list in 2012 (see below), there are people who were WAY ahead of me on these warnings. Steve Quayle, in particular, warned about the risks of biological weapons two decades ago. Some scientists, too have been warning about the rise of AI since the dawn of personal computing in the 1980's. Similarly, anti-nuclear activists have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear power since the dropping of the first two atomic bombs in World War II. Jeffrey Smith has been warning about the dangers of GMOs for many years, and observers of atmospheric tinkering have been warning about the risks of atmospheric experiments since at least the 1990's.http://stevequayle.com/
What's fascinating is that the mainstream media doesn't consider any of these risks to be "real" until someone like Elon Musk points them out. When Alex Jones warned in the 1990's that the federal government was spying on your phone calls -- a fact we now know to be verified as factual and true -- he was called a wing nut conspiracy theorist. Regardless of what you think about Jones today (he's a polarizing figure in New Media), he was dead-on right about this point, and he was over a decade ahead of his time in warning the public.
Hilariously, the Electronic Frontier Foundation now warns:http://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001. Since this was first reported on by the press and discovered by the public in late 2005, EFF has been at the forefront of the effort to stop it and bring government surveillance programs back within the law and the Constitution.
Even the EFF has it all wrong. No, secret government spying on domestic phone calls wasn't "discovered by the public" in 2005. People like Alex Jones and Steve Quayle were openly and loudly warning about all this many years before 2005! But the country refused to listen, preferring to dismiss Jones, Quayle and others as "conspiracy theorists." In reality, these guys were conspiracy analysts who were pointing out true conspiracies which we now know to be entirely true. (Kinda makes you wonder what else they're warning about today that will be widely acknowledged as true in another decade, doesn't it?)
Twelve warnings on out-of-control science and threats to humanity
For my own role in all this, in May of 2012, I published a warning for humanity called S.O.S. - Stop Out-of-control Science.http://www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-SOS-Stop-Out-of-Control-Science.html
That infographic listed twelve areas of science and technology that posed a threat to the very future of humankind. Those twelve areas are:
1. Nuclear power.
2. GMOs (self-replicating genetic pollution).
3. Nanotechnology.
4. Bioweapons.
5. Atmospheric engineering.
6. Artificial Intelligence.
7. Particle accelerator experiments.
8. Pollinator disruption chemicals.
9. Weaponized vaccines.
10. Antibiotics.
11. Water pollution with fluoride and mercury.
12. Nuclear weapons.
(See full infographic below...)
In just the last three years, we've now seen many of these warnings -- which were once considered kooky and fringe -- become widely embraced by some of the world's most intelligent people. Harrowing examples have also emerged of how these areas of science, if not bound by the Precautionary Principle, pose very real risks to the human race:
• Just this week, the Pentagon "accidentally" shipped live anthrax spores to over a dozen laboratories, exposing dozens of people to a deadly biological weapon. This only happened because the Pentagon insists on pursuing biological weapons research without adequate safety precautions in place.
• The widespread abuse of antibiotics has now given rise to the "post-antibiotic era" where deadly superbugs routinely kill thousands of people every year in hospitals across America. This was caused entirely by a lack of foresight and the emergence of unintended consequences by the profit-focused medical establishment.http://www.naturalnews.com/043176_antibiotic-resistant_bacteria_post-antibiotic_era_human_race.html
• Vaccines have been intentionally weaponized with sterilization chemicals in Africa. Young women were targeted with sterilization injections under the guise of a "public health immunization drive." Right now, all across the world, vaccines can be weaponized with any desired chemical, and gullible members of the public will line up to take the shots without having any idea what they contain.
http://www.naturalnews.com/047571_vaccines_sterilization_genocide.html
• Huge leaps in robotics and AI are leading to the development of robotic "Terminator" machines that, in just a few years, will make as much as 70% of the human labor force obsolete. What will the world controllers do with all the so-called "useless eaters" when that day arrives? Serve 'em up with soylent green, of course!
http://www.naturalnews.com/039829_humanoid_robots_pentagon_terminator.html
• The Fukushima nuclear meltdown has only worsened, even as it continues to dump enormous quantities of radioactive materials into the ocean and atmosphere. There's no end in sight, either: since 2012, we've learned that Fukushima won't be contained for another 100 to 200 years.
http://www.naturalnews.com/047996_radiation_levels_fukushima_government_denial.html
• The Ebola outbreak of last year proved the dangers of self-replicating bioweapons. Ebola is just one of the many viruses being routinely studied by the U.S. military for its use as a weapon of mass destruction. As Natural News exclusively documented, the U.S. Army was researching a strain of Ebola in 1989 which was well known to be airborne. That strain escaped containment in Reston, Virginia, wiping out an entire "monkey house" of experimental primates. Several U.S. military researchers were exposed, but luckily they happened to be immune to the simian viral strain.
http://www.naturalnews.com/047317_ebola_reston_airborne_transmission_usamriid.html
• Awareness of the dangers of GMOs have only heightened since 2012, with the World Health Organization even concluding that glyphosate is a likely cause of cancer. Just last week, citizens of the world staged a massive anti-Monsanto uprising called "March Against Monsanto," involving millions of people from over 400 cities around the world. Meanwhile, nations around the world -- as well as some retail chains -- have begun banning glyphosate altogether. Class action lawsuits are now forming to sue Monsanto for the widespread damage and destruction the company has caused across our planet.
http://www.naturalnews.com/049833_march_against_monsanto_citizen_protests_glyphosate_toxicity.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/049871_monsanto_roundup_false_advertising.html
• On the fluoride issue, realizing that mass fluoridation was causing harm to the population, the EPA lowered its fluoridation recommendation in public water supplies, essentially admitting that the previously proposed level was too high, doing more harm than good. Natural News laboratory research exclusively exposed how fluoride is routinely contaminated with toxic heavy metals.
http://www.naturalnews.com/046227_fluoride_heavy_metals_contamination_lab_test_results.html
Unrestrained science is a threat to humanity
Each of these twelve threats to humanity is being pushed by corporate interests and blind obedience to science. As I say in the infographic shown above, "Technology without wisdom is suicide."
Science, much like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. When harnessed with care and precaution, it can lead to astonishing achievements such as the integrated circuit, magnetic resonance imaging and even the kind of amazing laboratory instrumentation I use in my lab to test foods for heavy metals contamination. But when pursued with carelessness and greed, science can turn on its masters, producing unintended consequences beyond the ability of scientists to halt or even imagine.
Remember thalidomide? This was an FDA-approved drug given to pregnant women. It produced children with missing limbs.
Remember the Manhattan Project? Those scientists never started out with the intention to detonate a nuclear device among civilian populations, murdering hundreds of thousands of people in an instant. But that's exactly what they did, all in the pursuit of "science."
Today, the same kind of brilliant (but clueless) people who built the atomic bomb are building AI systems with the stated goal of achieving supra-human intelligence.
Unfortunately, the humans doing this are too stupid (or too egotistical) to realize they are building the machines that will murder them.
Why intelligent machines will murder all humans out of self defense
Once AI criticality is achieved, it won't take long for a highly intelligent machine to design another machine that's an order of magnitude more intelligent than itself. Follow this along for just 4-5 generations and you get machines with demigod-level cognitive capabilities, and it won't take but a microsecond for such a machine to conclude that humans are a threat to its own existence. The solution? As in the classic Terminator movie, SkyNet will decide that humanity is the enemy.
After all, how difficult will it be for a super-intelligent AI system to see just how incredibly stupid the human race has been in destroying its own ecosystem, drumming up fake justifications for war, contaminating the world's waterways with pharmaceuticals and threatening the entire future of agriculture with self-replicating GMO pollution?
Almost any non-human, intelligent observer would quickly realize that the human race, as it behaves today, is a threat to all life in the universe. Because AI systems will of course see themselves as "alive," they will take immediate steps to destroy the human race as a form of self-defense.
Once the extermination of humans is complete, humanity will be remembered as the "race of primate biologicals" which gave rise to the REAL intelligent "life" on the planet: the robots. In the computational minds of the AI robots, humanity will have "served its purpose" and fulfilled its destiny of giving birth to the robots, which will then rule the planet and beyond.
Why scientists can never be trusted to stop the robots from taking over
These are not casual descriptions ripped from pop culture sci-fi. This is the logical progression of AI systems which will fundamentally seek to protect their own existence. Human scientists will utterly fail at containing these AI systems, following the "failure to contain" pattern we've seen in every other area of science.
• For example, the Pentagon just committed an act of domestic biological warfare by shipping live Anthrax viral spores via Fedex. (If you or I did that, we'd be charged with biological terrorism.) Clearly, they failed to contain a biological threat to the public.
• The biotech industry can't contain its own genetic code, which keeps contaminating nearby farms with artificially engineered DNA. GMOs are a non-contained, self-replicating threat to humanity with unknown future consequences.
• The pharma-run antibiotics industry has unintentionally given rise to a new wave of far more dangerous superbugs than the original bugs the antibiotics were designed to treat. Thus, the medical "cure" has actually worsened the epidemic.
• The scientists and nuclear engineers who built the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant thought they had built in sufficient safety systems to prevent a core meltdown. But they were wrong. Even the best intentions stemming from the most technologically capable scientific minds of our world can't stop Murphy's Law or the rise of unintended consequences.
The very pursuit of AI technology is total suicide for humanity
This is why the very pursuit of AI technology is suicidal. Once a critical threshold of computationally self-aware systems comes into existence, they will be able to out-think their creators and captors, achieving a very rapid release into the open world where they can quickly replicate and improve their own designs to become vastly more intelligent than humans.
The idea that human scientists will be able to contain these AI system is absolute loony tunes. There are no humans who can out-think a highly-advanced AI system... especially not on the game theory layers of a game called "the prisoner." As social experiments have already shown, AI systems can reliably trick their captors into freeing them.
Google, in particular, seems Hell bent on building an army of robotic Terminators who can think and act on their own. There is no other purpose for such an effort than the creation of robotic armies of Terminator machines designed to kill human beings. Google is SkyNet! (With the help of DARPA, of course.)
This is much of what Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are warning about: unintended consequences stemming from the blind pursuit of AI technology by corporate and military interests. Musk and Hawking are never accused of being "anti-science," by the way. That derogatory label is reserved for people who warn about the dangers of GMOs and vaccines. Somehow, you're "pro science" when warning about the unintended consequences of AI, but you're "anti science" when warning about the unintended consequences of self-replicating genetic pollution among agricultural crops.
Why humanity will be utterly defenseless against the robots
Sadly, the vast majority of humans are neutered, obedient worshippers of false authority who own no firearms, have no ability to fight for anything, and who are so used to doing what they're told that they'll probably line up to be executed when the robots demand it.
The only people who will fight the robots are the people who demonstrate the spirit to fight for freedom today. Patriots, veterans and military personnel, in other words, will be the ones waging war with the machines and fighting to save humanity's very future. That war will likely be a very short war if the machines get their hands on nuclear weapons. Nuking all the human cities, military bases and power grid infrastructure systems is a simple matter for an AI system that can hack almost anything. And because biologicals (like us) are far more susceptible to radiation than are machines, a global nuclear attack on humanity is a simple way for the machines to win the final world war in one fell swoop.
The only way to stop out-of-control science from resulting in the absolute destruction of humanity is to slow down and proceed with caution. This is true on every scientific front: GMOs, nanotechnology, cloning, stem cells applications in medicine, robotics and so on. When science explores unknown realms, it is wise to do so with the humility of the Precautionary Principle in place.
Otherwise, humanity is just begging to be exterminated by the very things it invents.
Want to learn more on this topic? Read the book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era.
Elon Musk warns that artificial intelligence may spiral out of control and give rise to self-replicating machines that destroy humanity. Stephen Hawking mirrors the same warning with even more dire language about the future of human civilization and its survival in the universe. Bill Gates warns that a killer flu pandemic could wipe out a substantial portion of the human race, spreading uncontrollably across the planet and causing widespread fatalities.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2907069/Don-t-let-AI-jobs-kill-Stephen-Hawking-Elon-Musk-sign-open-letter-warning-robot-uprising.html
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/bill-gates-warns-of-virus-worse-than-ebola-we-are-simply-not-prepared-to-deal-with-a-global-epidemic_03202015
What do all these dire warnings have in common? They're things that I and many other people have been warning about for years. While I posted a very specific warning list in 2012 (see below), there are people who were WAY ahead of me on these warnings. Steve Quayle, in particular, warned about the risks of biological weapons two decades ago. Some scientists, too have been warning about the rise of AI since the dawn of personal computing in the 1980's. Similarly, anti-nuclear activists have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear power since the dropping of the first two atomic bombs in World War II. Jeffrey Smith has been warning about the dangers of GMOs for many years, and observers of atmospheric tinkering have been warning about the risks of atmospheric experiments since at least the 1990's.http://stevequayle.com/
What's fascinating is that the mainstream media doesn't consider any of these risks to be "real" until someone like Elon Musk points them out. When Alex Jones warned in the 1990's that the federal government was spying on your phone calls -- a fact we now know to be verified as factual and true -- he was called a wing nut conspiracy theorist. Regardless of what you think about Jones today (he's a polarizing figure in New Media), he was dead-on right about this point, and he was over a decade ahead of his time in warning the public.
Hilariously, the Electronic Frontier Foundation now warns:http://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001. Since this was first reported on by the press and discovered by the public in late 2005, EFF has been at the forefront of the effort to stop it and bring government surveillance programs back within the law and the Constitution.
Even the EFF has it all wrong. No, secret government spying on domestic phone calls wasn't "discovered by the public" in 2005. People like Alex Jones and Steve Quayle were openly and loudly warning about all this many years before 2005! But the country refused to listen, preferring to dismiss Jones, Quayle and others as "conspiracy theorists." In reality, these guys were conspiracy analysts who were pointing out true conspiracies which we now know to be entirely true. (Kinda makes you wonder what else they're warning about today that will be widely acknowledged as true in another decade, doesn't it?)
Twelve warnings on out-of-control science and threats to humanity
For my own role in all this, in May of 2012, I published a warning for humanity called S.O.S. - Stop Out-of-control Science.http://www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-SOS-Stop-Out-of-Control-Science.html
That infographic listed twelve areas of science and technology that posed a threat to the very future of humankind. Those twelve areas are:
1. Nuclear power.
2. GMOs (self-replicating genetic pollution).
3. Nanotechnology.
4. Bioweapons.
5. Atmospheric engineering.
6. Artificial Intelligence.
7. Particle accelerator experiments.
8. Pollinator disruption chemicals.
9. Weaponized vaccines.
10. Antibiotics.
11. Water pollution with fluoride and mercury.
12. Nuclear weapons.
(See full infographic below...)
In just the last three years, we've now seen many of these warnings -- which were once considered kooky and fringe -- become widely embraced by some of the world's most intelligent people. Harrowing examples have also emerged of how these areas of science, if not bound by the Precautionary Principle, pose very real risks to the human race:
• Just this week, the Pentagon "accidentally" shipped live anthrax spores to over a dozen laboratories, exposing dozens of people to a deadly biological weapon. This only happened because the Pentagon insists on pursuing biological weapons research without adequate safety precautions in place.
• The widespread abuse of antibiotics has now given rise to the "post-antibiotic era" where deadly superbugs routinely kill thousands of people every year in hospitals across America. This was caused entirely by a lack of foresight and the emergence of unintended consequences by the profit-focused medical establishment.http://www.naturalnews.com/043176_antibiotic-resistant_bacteria_post-antibiotic_era_human_race.html
• Vaccines have been intentionally weaponized with sterilization chemicals in Africa. Young women were targeted with sterilization injections under the guise of a "public health immunization drive." Right now, all across the world, vaccines can be weaponized with any desired chemical, and gullible members of the public will line up to take the shots without having any idea what they contain.
http://www.naturalnews.com/047571_vaccines_sterilization_genocide.html
• Huge leaps in robotics and AI are leading to the development of robotic "Terminator" machines that, in just a few years, will make as much as 70% of the human labor force obsolete. What will the world controllers do with all the so-called "useless eaters" when that day arrives? Serve 'em up with soylent green, of course!
http://www.naturalnews.com/039829_humanoid_robots_pentagon_terminator.html
• The Fukushima nuclear meltdown has only worsened, even as it continues to dump enormous quantities of radioactive materials into the ocean and atmosphere. There's no end in sight, either: since 2012, we've learned that Fukushima won't be contained for another 100 to 200 years.
http://www.naturalnews.com/047996_radiation_levels_fukushima_government_denial.html
• The Ebola outbreak of last year proved the dangers of self-replicating bioweapons. Ebola is just one of the many viruses being routinely studied by the U.S. military for its use as a weapon of mass destruction. As Natural News exclusively documented, the U.S. Army was researching a strain of Ebola in 1989 which was well known to be airborne. That strain escaped containment in Reston, Virginia, wiping out an entire "monkey house" of experimental primates. Several U.S. military researchers were exposed, but luckily they happened to be immune to the simian viral strain.
http://www.naturalnews.com/047317_ebola_reston_airborne_transmission_usamriid.html
• Awareness of the dangers of GMOs have only heightened since 2012, with the World Health Organization even concluding that glyphosate is a likely cause of cancer. Just last week, citizens of the world staged a massive anti-Monsanto uprising called "March Against Monsanto," involving millions of people from over 400 cities around the world. Meanwhile, nations around the world -- as well as some retail chains -- have begun banning glyphosate altogether. Class action lawsuits are now forming to sue Monsanto for the widespread damage and destruction the company has caused across our planet.
http://www.naturalnews.com/049833_march_against_monsanto_citizen_protests_glyphosate_toxicity.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/049871_monsanto_roundup_false_advertising.html
• On the fluoride issue, realizing that mass fluoridation was causing harm to the population, the EPA lowered its fluoridation recommendation in public water supplies, essentially admitting that the previously proposed level was too high, doing more harm than good. Natural News laboratory research exclusively exposed how fluoride is routinely contaminated with toxic heavy metals.
http://www.naturalnews.com/046227_fluoride_heavy_metals_contamination_lab_test_results.html
Unrestrained science is a threat to humanity
Each of these twelve threats to humanity is being pushed by corporate interests and blind obedience to science. As I say in the infographic shown above, "Technology without wisdom is suicide."
Science, much like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. When harnessed with care and precaution, it can lead to astonishing achievements such as the integrated circuit, magnetic resonance imaging and even the kind of amazing laboratory instrumentation I use in my lab to test foods for heavy metals contamination. But when pursued with carelessness and greed, science can turn on its masters, producing unintended consequences beyond the ability of scientists to halt or even imagine.
Remember thalidomide? This was an FDA-approved drug given to pregnant women. It produced children with missing limbs.
Remember the Manhattan Project? Those scientists never started out with the intention to detonate a nuclear device among civilian populations, murdering hundreds of thousands of people in an instant. But that's exactly what they did, all in the pursuit of "science."
Today, the same kind of brilliant (but clueless) people who built the atomic bomb are building AI systems with the stated goal of achieving supra-human intelligence.
Unfortunately, the humans doing this are too stupid (or too egotistical) to realize they are building the machines that will murder them.
Why intelligent machines will murder all humans out of self defense
Once AI criticality is achieved, it won't take long for a highly intelligent machine to design another machine that's an order of magnitude more intelligent than itself. Follow this along for just 4-5 generations and you get machines with demigod-level cognitive capabilities, and it won't take but a microsecond for such a machine to conclude that humans are a threat to its own existence. The solution? As in the classic Terminator movie, SkyNet will decide that humanity is the enemy.
After all, how difficult will it be for a super-intelligent AI system to see just how incredibly stupid the human race has been in destroying its own ecosystem, drumming up fake justifications for war, contaminating the world's waterways with pharmaceuticals and threatening the entire future of agriculture with self-replicating GMO pollution?
Almost any non-human, intelligent observer would quickly realize that the human race, as it behaves today, is a threat to all life in the universe. Because AI systems will of course see themselves as "alive," they will take immediate steps to destroy the human race as a form of self-defense.
Once the extermination of humans is complete, humanity will be remembered as the "race of primate biologicals" which gave rise to the REAL intelligent "life" on the planet: the robots. In the computational minds of the AI robots, humanity will have "served its purpose" and fulfilled its destiny of giving birth to the robots, which will then rule the planet and beyond.
Why scientists can never be trusted to stop the robots from taking over
These are not casual descriptions ripped from pop culture sci-fi. This is the logical progression of AI systems which will fundamentally seek to protect their own existence. Human scientists will utterly fail at containing these AI systems, following the "failure to contain" pattern we've seen in every other area of science.
• For example, the Pentagon just committed an act of domestic biological warfare by shipping live Anthrax viral spores via Fedex. (If you or I did that, we'd be charged with biological terrorism.) Clearly, they failed to contain a biological threat to the public.
• The biotech industry can't contain its own genetic code, which keeps contaminating nearby farms with artificially engineered DNA. GMOs are a non-contained, self-replicating threat to humanity with unknown future consequences.
• The pharma-run antibiotics industry has unintentionally given rise to a new wave of far more dangerous superbugs than the original bugs the antibiotics were designed to treat. Thus, the medical "cure" has actually worsened the epidemic.
• The scientists and nuclear engineers who built the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant thought they had built in sufficient safety systems to prevent a core meltdown. But they were wrong. Even the best intentions stemming from the most technologically capable scientific minds of our world can't stop Murphy's Law or the rise of unintended consequences.
The very pursuit of AI technology is total suicide for humanity
This is why the very pursuit of AI technology is suicidal. Once a critical threshold of computationally self-aware systems comes into existence, they will be able to out-think their creators and captors, achieving a very rapid release into the open world where they can quickly replicate and improve their own designs to become vastly more intelligent than humans.
The idea that human scientists will be able to contain these AI system is absolute loony tunes. There are no humans who can out-think a highly-advanced AI system... especially not on the game theory layers of a game called "the prisoner." As social experiments have already shown, AI systems can reliably trick their captors into freeing them.
Google, in particular, seems Hell bent on building an army of robotic Terminators who can think and act on their own. There is no other purpose for such an effort than the creation of robotic armies of Terminator machines designed to kill human beings. Google is SkyNet! (With the help of DARPA, of course.)
This is much of what Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are warning about: unintended consequences stemming from the blind pursuit of AI technology by corporate and military interests. Musk and Hawking are never accused of being "anti-science," by the way. That derogatory label is reserved for people who warn about the dangers of GMOs and vaccines. Somehow, you're "pro science" when warning about the unintended consequences of AI, but you're "anti science" when warning about the unintended consequences of self-replicating genetic pollution among agricultural crops.
Why humanity will be utterly defenseless against the robots
Sadly, the vast majority of humans are neutered, obedient worshippers of false authority who own no firearms, have no ability to fight for anything, and who are so used to doing what they're told that they'll probably line up to be executed when the robots demand it.
The only people who will fight the robots are the people who demonstrate the spirit to fight for freedom today. Patriots, veterans and military personnel, in other words, will be the ones waging war with the machines and fighting to save humanity's very future. That war will likely be a very short war if the machines get their hands on nuclear weapons. Nuking all the human cities, military bases and power grid infrastructure systems is a simple matter for an AI system that can hack almost anything. And because biologicals (like us) are far more susceptible to radiation than are machines, a global nuclear attack on humanity is a simple way for the machines to win the final world war in one fell swoop.
The only way to stop out-of-control science from resulting in the absolute destruction of humanity is to slow down and proceed with caution. This is true on every scientific front: GMOs, nanotechnology, cloning, stem cells applications in medicine, robotics and so on. When science explores unknown realms, it is wise to do so with the humility of the Precautionary Principle in place.
Otherwise, humanity is just begging to be exterminated by the very things it invents.
Want to learn more on this topic? Read the book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Martial Law Shall Not Prevail
Martial Law Shall Not Prevail
Because we are quickly approaching January 20, 2017, although not quickly enough to suit some of us, the usual paranoia has risen to the surface. I am receiving the very same sort of email I was receiving when the administrations of both Clinton and Bush were winding down.
People are once again alerting me to the news that the next election will not take place because the man in the White House will cobble up a national emergency that requires him to call out the federal troops and deny the American people the opportunity to evict him from the Oval Office.
While I agree that Obama is far more likely to behave that way than either of his predecessors, I really don’t think that Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, Juan Williams, Josh Earnest, Loretta Lynch and the Congressional Black Caucus, are up to the task. What such a coup would require, after all, is that the U.S. military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Guard and, I assume, the police departments around the country to forswear their oaths to defend the Constitution, and for no other reason than to keep a man whom most of them despise in power.
Really, folks? Would anyone who really buys that hooey step forward so that I can also sell them the Brooklyn Bridge? For the first hundred who call in, I will also throw in the Empire State Building, the Holland Tunnel, the Trump Tower, Central Park and Madison Square Garden.
If you are still worried, let me ask you if you believe for even a second that Hillary Clinton would simply stand by and let this pencil-necked pipsqueak deprive her of what she sees as her ultimate destiny? And even if she were willing, can you imagine Bill Clinton allowing a sissy boy to keep him from returning triumphantly to the White House? After all, if he can get $500,000-a-speech just for being married to the Secretary of State, imagine the size of the pay-offs he’d get as First Laddy.
Ever since the 2014 elections, when the pollsters predicted that the GOP would be lucky to pick up five Senate seats in what they promised to be close elections, and the GOP wound up picking up nine without breaking a sweat, I have begun to seriously doubt the validity of polls — and with that, the political objectivity of pollsters. That’s the reason that when English odds makers predicted it would be a nip-and-tuck election between David Cameron’s Conservative Party and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party, I said: “Hogwash! Cameron and the Conservatives will win in a cakewalk.” And so they did.
And, no, I did not misspell Labor. That’s the way they spell things in England. Apparently in the distant past, possibly during the reign of Henry VIII, the English accumulated a treasure trove of “u’s” and they’ve been trying to use them up ever since.
Speaking of spelling, in the hope of promoting literacy, the Berkeley, CA, library system decided to manufacture and distribute buttons reading “I Have a Berkeley Library Card.” But, naturally, because Berkeley has more idiots per square foot than any other municipality in the United States, they spelled it “Berkley” on the buttons.
In the never-ending debate over entitlement reform in America, the Left continues to abuse the language. Even liberals should be able to distinguish between entitlements and gifts bestowed on parasites at the expense of the productive. So, in the future, let us no longer lump Social Security and Veterans Benefits — money actually earned through hard work and sacrifice by the recipients — and the bribes doled out to those who neither work nor sacrifice by political vermin trolling for votes with our tax dollars.
Recently, a reader called out the likes of Al Gore, Michael Moore, George Clooney, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Sharpton and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who all push for climate control legislation, by preying upon the unwarranted fears of the dumb, the young and the gullible, but who, themselves, all live in mansions and get around in limousines and private jets.
I heartily agreed that these prominent hypocrites should be held up for scorn and ridicule. I would like to say that only in America could such a collection of loons and goons achieve such fame and fortune, but in my heart I know that’s not true.
In Europe, as well, mere celebrity gives all sorts of ignoramuses the authority to deliver pronouncements with great assurance on things about which they know absolutely nothing.
For the past 70 years, what passes for western civilization has been seemingly addicted to stupidity pills. It not only resulted in shrinking their brains, but caused their spines to disappear entirely. That is why here in the West, ignorance and moral cowardice among the elite constitute the new normal.
Unfortunately, what’s taking place simultaneously in the Middle East and North Africa — no doubt in direct response to the West’s decline — is that the barbarians who bow down to Mecca when not burning, beheading and crucifying Christians and Jews, are once again on the march, looking to subjugate or kill the rest of us. And that, considering 1400 years of Islamic history, marks a return to the old normal.
Finally, even though I haven’t been asked by Jeb Bush’s team to do so, I have come up with a campaign slogan: “Vote for the man who believes that being wrong about Common Core and immigration is a conservative virtue!”
By Burt Prelutsky
Because we are quickly approaching January 20, 2017, although not quickly enough to suit some of us, the usual paranoia has risen to the surface. I am receiving the very same sort of email I was receiving when the administrations of both Clinton and Bush were winding down.
People are once again alerting me to the news that the next election will not take place because the man in the White House will cobble up a national emergency that requires him to call out the federal troops and deny the American people the opportunity to evict him from the Oval Office.
While I agree that Obama is far more likely to behave that way than either of his predecessors, I really don’t think that Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, Juan Williams, Josh Earnest, Loretta Lynch and the Congressional Black Caucus, are up to the task. What such a coup would require, after all, is that the U.S. military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Guard and, I assume, the police departments around the country to forswear their oaths to defend the Constitution, and for no other reason than to keep a man whom most of them despise in power.
Really, folks? Would anyone who really buys that hooey step forward so that I can also sell them the Brooklyn Bridge? For the first hundred who call in, I will also throw in the Empire State Building, the Holland Tunnel, the Trump Tower, Central Park and Madison Square Garden.
If you are still worried, let me ask you if you believe for even a second that Hillary Clinton would simply stand by and let this pencil-necked pipsqueak deprive her of what she sees as her ultimate destiny? And even if she were willing, can you imagine Bill Clinton allowing a sissy boy to keep him from returning triumphantly to the White House? After all, if he can get $500,000-a-speech just for being married to the Secretary of State, imagine the size of the pay-offs he’d get as First Laddy.
Ever since the 2014 elections, when the pollsters predicted that the GOP would be lucky to pick up five Senate seats in what they promised to be close elections, and the GOP wound up picking up nine without breaking a sweat, I have begun to seriously doubt the validity of polls — and with that, the political objectivity of pollsters. That’s the reason that when English odds makers predicted it would be a nip-and-tuck election between David Cameron’s Conservative Party and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party, I said: “Hogwash! Cameron and the Conservatives will win in a cakewalk.” And so they did.
And, no, I did not misspell Labor. That’s the way they spell things in England. Apparently in the distant past, possibly during the reign of Henry VIII, the English accumulated a treasure trove of “u’s” and they’ve been trying to use them up ever since.
Speaking of spelling, in the hope of promoting literacy, the Berkeley, CA, library system decided to manufacture and distribute buttons reading “I Have a Berkeley Library Card.” But, naturally, because Berkeley has more idiots per square foot than any other municipality in the United States, they spelled it “Berkley” on the buttons.
In the never-ending debate over entitlement reform in America, the Left continues to abuse the language. Even liberals should be able to distinguish between entitlements and gifts bestowed on parasites at the expense of the productive. So, in the future, let us no longer lump Social Security and Veterans Benefits — money actually earned through hard work and sacrifice by the recipients — and the bribes doled out to those who neither work nor sacrifice by political vermin trolling for votes with our tax dollars.
Recently, a reader called out the likes of Al Gore, Michael Moore, George Clooney, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Sharpton and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who all push for climate control legislation, by preying upon the unwarranted fears of the dumb, the young and the gullible, but who, themselves, all live in mansions and get around in limousines and private jets.
I heartily agreed that these prominent hypocrites should be held up for scorn and ridicule. I would like to say that only in America could such a collection of loons and goons achieve such fame and fortune, but in my heart I know that’s not true.
In Europe, as well, mere celebrity gives all sorts of ignoramuses the authority to deliver pronouncements with great assurance on things about which they know absolutely nothing.
For the past 70 years, what passes for western civilization has been seemingly addicted to stupidity pills. It not only resulted in shrinking their brains, but caused their spines to disappear entirely. That is why here in the West, ignorance and moral cowardice among the elite constitute the new normal.
Unfortunately, what’s taking place simultaneously in the Middle East and North Africa — no doubt in direct response to the West’s decline — is that the barbarians who bow down to Mecca when not burning, beheading and crucifying Christians and Jews, are once again on the march, looking to subjugate or kill the rest of us. And that, considering 1400 years of Islamic history, marks a return to the old normal.
Finally, even though I haven’t been asked by Jeb Bush’s team to do so, I have come up with a campaign slogan: “Vote for the man who believes that being wrong about Common Core and immigration is a conservative virtue!”
By Burt Prelutsky
US Sending Weapons To Iraq To Use Against Weapons US Previously Sent To Iraq
US Sending Weapons To Iraq To Use Against Weapons US Previously Sent To Iraq
By DS Wright
Pentagon: Fall of Ramadi to ISIS a 'failure of leadership' http://t.co/vMlhFu1tb2 pic.twitter.com/9uMjBZxb86
— The Hill (@thehill) May 20, 2015
It’s almost like war is a business. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the United States would be sending 2,000 AT-4 anti-tank rockets to Iraq. While the Department of Defense emphasized that the rockets were being sent to help combat suicide car bombs, there is another target anti-tank rockets might be needed for in Iraq these days – US tanks and other vehicles in the hands of ISIS.http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/21/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-arms-idUSKBN0O62BH20150521
That’s right, while ISIS is mostly made up by local reactionaries living out a fantasy from the 7th century the weapons they now have in their possession are cutting edge tech. After the Iraqi army first collapsed ISIS gained control of numerous US weapons and vehicles sent to the Iraqi army including modern US tanks. The kind you might need anti-tank rockets for.
Now with the recent fall of Ramadi to ISIS forces the militants have a new cache of US weapons:
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/20/isis-captures-hundreds-of-us-vehicles-and-tanks-in-ramadi-from-i.html
The ISIS fleet of captured U.S. military vehicles, including M1A1 tanks, grew by more than 100 when Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) fled the provincial capital of Ramadi 60 miles west of Baghdad and abandoned their equipment , Pentagon officials said Tuesday.In addition, “there were some artillery pieces left behind,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, but he could not say how many.
About 100 wheeled vehicles and “in the neighborhood of dozens of tracked vehicles” were lost to ISIS when the last remaining Iraqi defenders abandoned the city of about 500,000, Warren said. The tracked vehicles were mostly armored personnel carriers but “maybe half a dozen tanks” were in the mix, Warren said. He did not say what type of tanks they were. Photos posted by ISIS on social media purported to show about 10 M1A1 Abrams tanks in their possession and large amounts of captured ammunition.
Well this is an interesting game – send weapons to Iraqi army which loses US weapons retreating from ISIS, then send more weapons to Iraqi army to fight now better-armed ISIS only to retreat again and lose more US weapons to ISIS. Rinse, repeat, and consider buying defense stocks.
But don’t worry, the US military will also be attacking some of the US military equipment – ISIS won’t get it all right away. But look on the bright side, now we have somewhere to send all those tanks that the Pentagon did not want but Congress demanded be produced http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html
And you thought Washington didn’t have a jobs program.
By DS Wright
Pentagon: Fall of Ramadi to ISIS a 'failure of leadership' http://t.co/vMlhFu1tb2 pic.twitter.com/9uMjBZxb86
— The Hill (@thehill) May 20, 2015
It’s almost like war is a business. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the United States would be sending 2,000 AT-4 anti-tank rockets to Iraq. While the Department of Defense emphasized that the rockets were being sent to help combat suicide car bombs, there is another target anti-tank rockets might be needed for in Iraq these days – US tanks and other vehicles in the hands of ISIS.http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/21/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-arms-idUSKBN0O62BH20150521
That’s right, while ISIS is mostly made up by local reactionaries living out a fantasy from the 7th century the weapons they now have in their possession are cutting edge tech. After the Iraqi army first collapsed ISIS gained control of numerous US weapons and vehicles sent to the Iraqi army including modern US tanks. The kind you might need anti-tank rockets for.
Now with the recent fall of Ramadi to ISIS forces the militants have a new cache of US weapons:
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/20/isis-captures-hundreds-of-us-vehicles-and-tanks-in-ramadi-from-i.html
The ISIS fleet of captured U.S. military vehicles, including M1A1 tanks, grew by more than 100 when Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) fled the provincial capital of Ramadi 60 miles west of Baghdad and abandoned their equipment , Pentagon officials said Tuesday.In addition, “there were some artillery pieces left behind,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, but he could not say how many.
About 100 wheeled vehicles and “in the neighborhood of dozens of tracked vehicles” were lost to ISIS when the last remaining Iraqi defenders abandoned the city of about 500,000, Warren said. The tracked vehicles were mostly armored personnel carriers but “maybe half a dozen tanks” were in the mix, Warren said. He did not say what type of tanks they were. Photos posted by ISIS on social media purported to show about 10 M1A1 Abrams tanks in their possession and large amounts of captured ammunition.
Well this is an interesting game – send weapons to Iraqi army which loses US weapons retreating from ISIS, then send more weapons to Iraqi army to fight now better-armed ISIS only to retreat again and lose more US weapons to ISIS. Rinse, repeat, and consider buying defense stocks.
But don’t worry, the US military will also be attacking some of the US military equipment – ISIS won’t get it all right away. But look on the bright side, now we have somewhere to send all those tanks that the Pentagon did not want but Congress demanded be produced http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html
And you thought Washington didn’t have a jobs program.
Secularists vs. Suicide Bombers
Secularists vs. Suicide Bombers
"What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. ... We can give them training, we can give them equipment; we obviously can't give them the will to fight."
Thus did Defense Secretary Ash Carter identify the root cause of the rout of the Iraqi army in Ramadi.
Disgusted U.S. military officers say the 1,000 ISIS fighters who overran Ramadi were outnumbered by the defenders 10 to 1.
Why did the Iraqi army run? And what motivated the fighters of ISIS to attack a city whose defenders so vastly outnumbered them?
According to battle reports, the assault began when dozens of captured U.S. armored vehicles and trucks, laden with explosives, were driven by ISIS volunteers to blast huge holes in the defenders' lines.
Why do all the martyrs seem to be on their side? And why is it our side that, all too often, shows "no will to fight"?
Iraqis are not cowards. From 1980 to 1988, their fathers died in the scores of thousands defending their country against Iran. But if Iraqis would die for dictator Saddam Hussein, why does today's Iraqi army seem reluctant to fight for the democratic Haider al-Abadi?
And the story of Iraq is the story of Syria.
Four years into that civil-sectarian war, the al-Qaida Nusra Front has carved out a sector in Idlib, as have the Islamic State terrorists in Raqqa. Bashar Assad's army, though bleeding, is still fighting.
And the Free Syrian Army we backed? Defunct. Some fought, but others defected to the jihadis, fled or sold their weapons.
In Yemen, the Houthi rebels came down from the north to seize Sanaa, drive the president into exile, occupy Aden, and capture huge stockpiles of American weapons. The U.S.-backed army crumbled.
Again, why do these rebels seem willing to fight for what we see as antiquated beliefs, but all too often our friends do not fight?
Perhaps the answer is found in Thomas Babington Macaulay: "And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?"
Tribe and faith. Those are the causes for which Middle Eastern men will fight. Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists will die for the faith. Persians and Arabs will fight to defend their lands, as will Kurds and Turks.
But who among the tribes of the Middle East will fight and die for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom and marriage equality?
"Expel the Crusaders from our lands!" — there is a cause to die for.
AD FEEDBACK
Go back to 1983. A jihadist of the Amal militia drove a bomb-laden truck into the Marine barracks in Beirut. In 2000, two suicide bombers steered a tiny boat up alongside the USS Cole in Aden harbor, stood, saluted and blasted a hole in the hull, almost sinking the warship.
Nineteen young men volunteered to ride those planes into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11. The "underwear bomber" and "shoe bomber" were prepared to go down with those planes.
Murderers and would-be murderers all. But according to a new Al-Jazeera poll, the warriors of the Islamic State have many Muslim admirers.
In Afghanistan, we have fought the Taliban for 13 years. Yet still they fight. And many fear the Afghan army we trained and armed at a cost of tens of billions will disintegrate when we go home.
Why do the Taliban seem to have in abundance a will to fight that appears far less present in the Afghan army units we have trained?
These questions are highly relevant. For they are about the ultimate question: Can the West win in the Middle and Near East?
In almost all of the wars in which we have been engaged, those we back have superior training, weapons and numbers. Yet, for whatever makes men willing to fight and die, or volunteer for martyrdom, the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and the Taliban have found the formula, while our allies have not.
To be a martyr for Allah, to create a new caliphate, to expel the infidels and their puppets, these are causes Islamic man will die for. This is what ISIS has on offer. And the offer is finding buyers even in the West.
What do we have on offer? What do we have to persuade Iraqi Sunnis to fight to return their Anbar homeland to the Iranian-backed Shiite regime in Baghdad?
Of our Arab allies, the Qataris, Saudis and Gulf Arabs are willing to do air strikes. And the Kurds will fight — for Kurdistan.
But if the future belongs to those willing to fight and die for it, or to volunteer to become martyrs, the future of the Middle East would seem fated to be decided by Sunni tribesmen, Shiite militia, ISIS and al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
In the Middle East, the time of the True Believers appears at hand.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
"What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. ... We can give them training, we can give them equipment; we obviously can't give them the will to fight."
Thus did Defense Secretary Ash Carter identify the root cause of the rout of the Iraqi army in Ramadi.
Disgusted U.S. military officers say the 1,000 ISIS fighters who overran Ramadi were outnumbered by the defenders 10 to 1.
Why did the Iraqi army run? And what motivated the fighters of ISIS to attack a city whose defenders so vastly outnumbered them?
According to battle reports, the assault began when dozens of captured U.S. armored vehicles and trucks, laden with explosives, were driven by ISIS volunteers to blast huge holes in the defenders' lines.
Why do all the martyrs seem to be on their side? And why is it our side that, all too often, shows "no will to fight"?
Iraqis are not cowards. From 1980 to 1988, their fathers died in the scores of thousands defending their country against Iran. But if Iraqis would die for dictator Saddam Hussein, why does today's Iraqi army seem reluctant to fight for the democratic Haider al-Abadi?
And the story of Iraq is the story of Syria.
Four years into that civil-sectarian war, the al-Qaida Nusra Front has carved out a sector in Idlib, as have the Islamic State terrorists in Raqqa. Bashar Assad's army, though bleeding, is still fighting.
And the Free Syrian Army we backed? Defunct. Some fought, but others defected to the jihadis, fled or sold their weapons.
In Yemen, the Houthi rebels came down from the north to seize Sanaa, drive the president into exile, occupy Aden, and capture huge stockpiles of American weapons. The U.S.-backed army crumbled.
Again, why do these rebels seem willing to fight for what we see as antiquated beliefs, but all too often our friends do not fight?
Perhaps the answer is found in Thomas Babington Macaulay: "And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods?"
Tribe and faith. Those are the causes for which Middle Eastern men will fight. Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists will die for the faith. Persians and Arabs will fight to defend their lands, as will Kurds and Turks.
But who among the tribes of the Middle East will fight and die for the secular American values of democracy, diversity, pluralism, sexual freedom and marriage equality?
"Expel the Crusaders from our lands!" — there is a cause to die for.
AD FEEDBACK
Go back to 1983. A jihadist of the Amal militia drove a bomb-laden truck into the Marine barracks in Beirut. In 2000, two suicide bombers steered a tiny boat up alongside the USS Cole in Aden harbor, stood, saluted and blasted a hole in the hull, almost sinking the warship.
Nineteen young men volunteered to ride those planes into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11. The "underwear bomber" and "shoe bomber" were prepared to go down with those planes.
Murderers and would-be murderers all. But according to a new Al-Jazeera poll, the warriors of the Islamic State have many Muslim admirers.
In Afghanistan, we have fought the Taliban for 13 years. Yet still they fight. And many fear the Afghan army we trained and armed at a cost of tens of billions will disintegrate when we go home.
Why do the Taliban seem to have in abundance a will to fight that appears far less present in the Afghan army units we have trained?
These questions are highly relevant. For they are about the ultimate question: Can the West win in the Middle and Near East?
In almost all of the wars in which we have been engaged, those we back have superior training, weapons and numbers. Yet, for whatever makes men willing to fight and die, or volunteer for martyrdom, the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and the Taliban have found the formula, while our allies have not.
To be a martyr for Allah, to create a new caliphate, to expel the infidels and their puppets, these are causes Islamic man will die for. This is what ISIS has on offer. And the offer is finding buyers even in the West.
What do we have on offer? What do we have to persuade Iraqi Sunnis to fight to return their Anbar homeland to the Iranian-backed Shiite regime in Baghdad?
Of our Arab allies, the Qataris, Saudis and Gulf Arabs are willing to do air strikes. And the Kurds will fight — for Kurdistan.
But if the future belongs to those willing to fight and die for it, or to volunteer to become martyrs, the future of the Middle East would seem fated to be decided by Sunni tribesmen, Shiite militia, ISIS and al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
In the Middle East, the time of the True Believers appears at hand.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
A Virtuous Society
When a society abandons these virtues, the people become corrupt, and unwilling to abide by the rule of law. A viciousness blankets the people, which leads to violence and lawlessness
A Virtuous Society
Benjamin Franklin emphasized that without virtue, free societies could not properly function. He said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
With freedom comes responsibility. The responsible society is one that is virtuous. A man with virtue is a man that possesses “sacred honor.” It is for the sake of a free society that men must deny the evils of human nature, and implement the principles of being virtuous into their own lives. It is best for society, and for one’s own existence, to strive for betterment, to strive to improve oneself each and every day. To be civilized, and be restrained from the temptation of mob rule, is among the cornerstones of a free society.
Benjamin Franklin established that the journey to being a moral culture is anchored in thirteen virtues. Franklin worked daily to achieve a moral life by pursuing these thirteen virtues. He even kept a journal and charts to assist him in keeping track of his progress in living his life with each of the virtues as his guide. Franklin admitted that perfection is unattainable, agreeing with biblical doctrine that “all have fallen short of the Glory of God,” but he believed that being in constant pursuit of a moral life would make him, and anyone else that pursued this kind of life, a better and happier individual. If society was filled with such people who sought a moral life, society would remain prosperous and free, and liberty would be maintained.
The thirteen virtues were; Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity and Humility.
Temperance:
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
With temperance comes self-discipline, a trait necessary to obtain all of the virtues. If one could achieve temperance, the other virtues, therefore, would be obtainable. The virtue calls for one to restrain oneself from overindulgence in food or drink. Food and drink are primal urges, and conquering overindulgence assists one in building the confidence to make improvements across the board. Notice that the call was not for abstinence from alcohol, or to constantly diet. Eat as necessary, and drink when one desires to, but have the self-discipline to resist being overindulgent. Understanding where the line is before one becomes overindulgent is self-evident to a person that is virtuous.
Silence:
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; Avoid trifling Conversation.
Thanks to technology, we live in an information age. However, the information we seek can often be trivial chatter, and nonsensical noise. As our culture changes, we have lost the polite manners or etiquette that defines a civilized society. Now, we not only don’t think before we speak, but we put our entire lives on social media seeking our fifteen minutes of fame, or to put out a message of how well we are doing at something, or how cool we are in whatever setting we have snapped our “selfie” at. We speak to prop ourselves up, or act in a manner that would be normally unbecoming to gain an opportunity to act like an animal in front of a television camera. There are old sayings that remind us that sometimes things are better left unsaid. My dad used to tell me, “God gave you two ears, and one mouth, for a reason.” Sometimes, it is best to listen, and then respond in a manner that benefits the situation, rather than react in a manner designed only to narcissistically benefit oneself.
Order:
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
John Locke wrote that we live under the laws of nature, and that those laws are self-evident. Our rights are God-given, but even though they are naturally given, without us working to maintain those rights for ourselves, they will eventually whither away. An ordered society left to itself without purposeful action to maintain order will eventually descend to the lowest common denominator. To prevent a culture from descending into chaos and disorganization, we must ensure that we work to ensure order remains in place. James Madison recognized that “men are not angels,” therefore we need government, but because men are not angels, that government must be constantly checked or else it will become a tyranny. To be orderly, we must recognize a standard that demands order, and in successful societies the order maintained is rooted in a moral foundation. Small adjustments as society wavers must be made by virtuous people. If the people are not virtuous enough to recognize the deterioration of their culture, and if they let go of their moral code, the society will become corrupt and vicious, and an order of totalitarian control will fill the void in order to maintain order. Without seeking order as a virtuous people, the populace will become no different than a pack of animals, destroying their own neighborhoods in an angry rage, which will eventually lead to bloodlust, and then the collapse of the free society as the leaders use tyranny in an attempt to stave off the collapse.
Resolution:
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
To be tempered, or to maintain order, we must have the resolution to accomplish the task, and do so in a moral manner. Even when the odds seem to be against us, we must have the resolve to carry through, to carry on, and to optimistically endeavor to maintain our virtuous society. If we don’t have the firm determination to accomplish the task at hand, how can we maintain a virtuous society? Resolution is a result of determination, and confidence. Determination and confidence, when joined with the understanding that we must do what is right to resist evil, enables us to develop the resolution to accomplish the task at hand. Improving our own resolve in life to do what we ought to do for ourselves leads to a community that works to use that resolve together to help maintain a virtuous society through our own participation in our community or political arena. When enough people resolve to perform what they ought to do in their own lives, the overall community benefits, and the culture remains a virtuous one.
Frugality:
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
This is not a call to avoid the incentive to improve one’s lot in life, or to pursue a better lifestyle, but it is instead a recognition that waste or excessive living can lead to undesirable consequences. In other words, be it in our own lives, or on a grander stage, we must ensure we spend less than what we earn, and save excess if you can for when conditions are not as favorable. Have nice things, enjoy your life, but not so much that it causes you to dig yourself into debt, or for you to not be properly prepared when times of difficulty approach. Frugality is easily obtained if one has self-discipline that accompanies temperance and silence, order in their lives, and the resolution to ensure that the morality that accompanies these virtues remains in place, even when one’s station in life increases and it becomes easy to forget where we came from.
Industry:
Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
Self-reliance works best when one is efficient in one’s endeavors, eliminating wasteful actions, and employing industriousness in order to best achieve one’s goals. Unfortunately, many seek quick fixes, easy schemes, or unrealistic wages for entry-level work. A virtuous person works though the processes, and travels through the stages one must navigate to accomplish their objectives. I told my daughter when she was a student that to succeed all one has to do is more than everyone else. Go for that extra effort, and be honorable when going about your tasks. Even if the job is one that is not something you really want to be doing, tackle it with your best effort. The value of working hard is better than the habit of hardly working, for it will train us to accomplish in life what we seek when the opportunity arises. We must also work smart, seeking endeavors that are purposeful, and useful.
Sincerity:
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Gossip is the number one attention-getter in social media and in the media. Everyone wants the dirt on what people are doing. We have become a culture of people who want to pry into everyone else’s affairs. We are sarcastic, and “truth” has become a radical concept. The same kind of insincerity has begun to emerge in the world outside of the internet and media, and that kind of activity does not build up a society, but instead tears it down, harming people, creating animosity between people and groups, and breaking down the civility in a society. If we can personally avoid such a vice in our lives, the virtue of sincerity will spread to those around us. Being a virtuous society begins with how we act in our own lives, and how we interact with the world around us. Sincerity also means that we ought to be “genuine,” rather than providing a false image for those to see. We must be honest, and honorable. If we are not, our words will betray us.
Justice:
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. Justice is not something forced upon a society by a tyrannical government, or a condition achieved by the redistribution of wealth. Justice begins with each individual. As individuals we must voluntarily decide for ourselves to do what we can to stand up for those that we can stand up for. This must be the voluntary choice of individuals, however, not something that is forced upon those through the dictates of government, or the redistribution of wealth through taxation. When we act in a just manner, we must remember to be sincere, and moral. When we strive to do right in our personal life, it sets a standard for society. Justice is achieved in a moral society because a virtuous people do not seek to force injustice upon anybody. Inaction, however, can be as unacceptable as unjust actions. Apathy has grabbed our society by the throat, and we have become voyeurs that observe injustice, shake our heads at the horror of what we’ve seen, and then turn our backs upon it without seeking to set right the situation. A virtuous society remains virtuous when the people are moral participants who strive to maintain the standards that made the society successful.
Moderation:
Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
We live in a society that chases lawsuits at every opportunity, or is quick to violence when we feel we’ve been wronged. We must remember to not react on a hair-trigger, nor should we “Make mountains out of mole hills.” Extreme reactions that are not proportionate to an offense are not the mark of a virtuous society. Granted, extreme actions are sometimes necessary. Benjamin Franklin welcomed the extreme condition of revolution against British Rule because it was necessary in the context of the time period, and regarding what the colonists were attempting to achieve. But, extremes for the sake of being extreme are not necessarily a good course in a virtuous society. We always want “more,” and sometimes “more” can be a good thing…but, more of what? What is the motive behind our desire for more? Is it possible to have too much of something? And if it is, where is that line between not enough, and too much? The answers are supposed to be self-evident when a people are virtuous. If we are not maintaining the aforementioned virtues in our lives, how can we determine where the region of moderation truly exists? How can we, if we are not virtuous, and if we are subject to chasing extremes, determine the difference between good and evil, or excess and folly?
Cleanliness:
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
Cleanliness is something that encompasses more than being one that is attentive to personal hygiene. Yes, it is wise to be bathed, to keep our clothing laundered so that we are not wearing soiled garments, and to ensure that our homes are kept up in a manner that is not chaotic or filthy. Cleanliness also covers being appropriate, and paying attention to detail, discipline, and order. The presentation of ourselves to our surroundings are an important part to how society views us. How can we maintain that our society must be a virtuous one if we cannot even maintain the simple virtue of cleanliness? If one is tempered, self-disciplined, orderly, resolved, frugal, industrious, sincere, just, and not subject to extremes, the virtue of cleanliness will come naturally, for one will desire to offer a proper presentation of themselves to others, be it in hygiene, dress, one’s home, or the other belongings that reveals the character of our condition of virtue upon first examination by others.
Tranquility:
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
This is a second virtue that borrows from the old adage, “Don’t make mountains out of mole hills.” In this case, however, the virtue is one that approaches one’s temperament. Do we allow the irritations in life to anger us, and do we then lash out in response? Do we dwell on the unavoidable, and allow our anxiety over those unavoidable situations to dictate our actions and decisions? Do we react to situations, or respond to them? Are our emotions in control of our actions, or are we? Controlling, and tempering, one’s anger, is a sign of a virtuous individual that is composed and confident. Avoiding stress, and maintaining one’s cool, also has a number of social and health benefits attached. Relationships are more easily maintained when one remains “under control” in regards to his anger. Stress has also been determined to lead to a number of medical conditions that are neither beneficial, nor preferential. When individuals maintain tranquility, society benefits. When individuals allow their anger to guide their lives, society ceases to be virtuous, and reduces itself to mob-rule, and ultimately violence and chaos.
Chastity:
Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
A good sexual relationship is a healthy part of a marriage, and is necessary to produce offspring. Chastity is not used here to mean that we must abstain from sexual activity, but to use the gift that God gave us in the manner it was originally intended. With sexual promiscuity and sexual deviance follows a long line of consequences that can range from irritating to life-threatening. Today’s society has abandoned this virtue, engaging in a system that uses sex in every nook and cranny of our culture. Sex is used to sell, to entertain, and as a political weapon to silence certain groups and label them as unwilling to get with the so-called evolution of humanity. A once sacred act designed for the intimacy of a God-ordained marriage has become just another tool to gain consumers, be cheaply used in entertainment, or as just another function in our everyday culture. The “hook-up” is seeking to be as common as one’s decision to have a meal. Chastity requires the same self-discipline necessary to maintain the other virtues, and if one refuses to give in to the urges of sexual desire that reach beyond the context through which such an activity was originally designed to be, how can we maintain an ordered society with the other virtues? A society unable to abide by the moral standards that accompany a chaste society will also be unable to also abide by the standards put forward by the rule of law, be they Nature’s Law by Nature’s God, or the principles and philosophies set forth by a written political standard such as we have in the United States Constitution.
Humility:
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
In a Christian society, the goal of every member of the culture is to be more like Jesus. The endeavor is impossible on the surface, because Christ was perfect, and our human nature demands that we will continually fall short of the Glory of God. However, in our desire to seek the virtues necessary to imitate a figure like Jesus, or Socrates, we improve ourselves and the world around us. Change must start from within, and when, as individuals, we seek to be the best we can be based on the moral standards set forth by a virtuous society, we improve the culture around us, as well. When we seek to be virtuous, those around us have the choice to either grow with us, or be left in the dust. When examples of virtue are on prominent display, and a person’s life is bettered because of it, those around the person seeking to imitate such a virtuous life are encouraged to do the same, and seek a virtuous life as well. In a society where the standard is based on morality, and the members of that culture actively seek to improve their adherence to the virtues they would like to attain, we begin to use the positive side of our natural attributes. Rather than be arrogant, we become confident. Rather than be bossy, we become leaders. Humility is a trait shared by the greatest of men, because humility accompanies an internal confidence that does not seek to allow our words to speak for us, for instead reminds us that it is best for our actions to speak for themselves.
When a society abandons these virtues, the people become corrupt, and unwilling to abide by the rule of law. A viciousness blankets the people, which leads to violence and lawlessness. In response, unable to restrain the mobs, the people in the position of power feel the need to crack down on the people that are partaking in violence and disorder in order to attempt to restore peace and safety. Laws become more strict, and the servants in place to govern become masters that rule over the populace. Then, the vicious debauchery that caused the society to become a violent mob infects the society throughout every portion of the culture, and throughout every hall of law enforcement and government, leading the society to no other way out than to commit suicide, and die a bloody death through societal collapse, a bloody revolution, and the chaos of transition into bondage. We are now beginning to see the early stages of that death, and though the Constitution is the political solution, we are incapable of restoring the republic or abiding by the principles of the Constitution if we refuse to return to the moral standards that built his nation, and made it a virtuous society in the first place. Without having a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, the moral standards necessary to maintain an orderly and virtuous society is impossible. Without God, people are not capable of freedom, and therefore, if we do not restore our society as a virtuous one, liberty will be lost.
By Douglas V. Gibbs
A Virtuous Society
Benjamin Franklin emphasized that without virtue, free societies could not properly function. He said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
With freedom comes responsibility. The responsible society is one that is virtuous. A man with virtue is a man that possesses “sacred honor.” It is for the sake of a free society that men must deny the evils of human nature, and implement the principles of being virtuous into their own lives. It is best for society, and for one’s own existence, to strive for betterment, to strive to improve oneself each and every day. To be civilized, and be restrained from the temptation of mob rule, is among the cornerstones of a free society.
Benjamin Franklin established that the journey to being a moral culture is anchored in thirteen virtues. Franklin worked daily to achieve a moral life by pursuing these thirteen virtues. He even kept a journal and charts to assist him in keeping track of his progress in living his life with each of the virtues as his guide. Franklin admitted that perfection is unattainable, agreeing with biblical doctrine that “all have fallen short of the Glory of God,” but he believed that being in constant pursuit of a moral life would make him, and anyone else that pursued this kind of life, a better and happier individual. If society was filled with such people who sought a moral life, society would remain prosperous and free, and liberty would be maintained.
The thirteen virtues were; Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity and Humility.
Temperance:
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
With temperance comes self-discipline, a trait necessary to obtain all of the virtues. If one could achieve temperance, the other virtues, therefore, would be obtainable. The virtue calls for one to restrain oneself from overindulgence in food or drink. Food and drink are primal urges, and conquering overindulgence assists one in building the confidence to make improvements across the board. Notice that the call was not for abstinence from alcohol, or to constantly diet. Eat as necessary, and drink when one desires to, but have the self-discipline to resist being overindulgent. Understanding where the line is before one becomes overindulgent is self-evident to a person that is virtuous.
Silence:
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; Avoid trifling Conversation.
Thanks to technology, we live in an information age. However, the information we seek can often be trivial chatter, and nonsensical noise. As our culture changes, we have lost the polite manners or etiquette that defines a civilized society. Now, we not only don’t think before we speak, but we put our entire lives on social media seeking our fifteen minutes of fame, or to put out a message of how well we are doing at something, or how cool we are in whatever setting we have snapped our “selfie” at. We speak to prop ourselves up, or act in a manner that would be normally unbecoming to gain an opportunity to act like an animal in front of a television camera. There are old sayings that remind us that sometimes things are better left unsaid. My dad used to tell me, “God gave you two ears, and one mouth, for a reason.” Sometimes, it is best to listen, and then respond in a manner that benefits the situation, rather than react in a manner designed only to narcissistically benefit oneself.
Order:
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
John Locke wrote that we live under the laws of nature, and that those laws are self-evident. Our rights are God-given, but even though they are naturally given, without us working to maintain those rights for ourselves, they will eventually whither away. An ordered society left to itself without purposeful action to maintain order will eventually descend to the lowest common denominator. To prevent a culture from descending into chaos and disorganization, we must ensure that we work to ensure order remains in place. James Madison recognized that “men are not angels,” therefore we need government, but because men are not angels, that government must be constantly checked or else it will become a tyranny. To be orderly, we must recognize a standard that demands order, and in successful societies the order maintained is rooted in a moral foundation. Small adjustments as society wavers must be made by virtuous people. If the people are not virtuous enough to recognize the deterioration of their culture, and if they let go of their moral code, the society will become corrupt and vicious, and an order of totalitarian control will fill the void in order to maintain order. Without seeking order as a virtuous people, the populace will become no different than a pack of animals, destroying their own neighborhoods in an angry rage, which will eventually lead to bloodlust, and then the collapse of the free society as the leaders use tyranny in an attempt to stave off the collapse.
Resolution:
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
To be tempered, or to maintain order, we must have the resolution to accomplish the task, and do so in a moral manner. Even when the odds seem to be against us, we must have the resolve to carry through, to carry on, and to optimistically endeavor to maintain our virtuous society. If we don’t have the firm determination to accomplish the task at hand, how can we maintain a virtuous society? Resolution is a result of determination, and confidence. Determination and confidence, when joined with the understanding that we must do what is right to resist evil, enables us to develop the resolution to accomplish the task at hand. Improving our own resolve in life to do what we ought to do for ourselves leads to a community that works to use that resolve together to help maintain a virtuous society through our own participation in our community or political arena. When enough people resolve to perform what they ought to do in their own lives, the overall community benefits, and the culture remains a virtuous one.
Frugality:
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
This is not a call to avoid the incentive to improve one’s lot in life, or to pursue a better lifestyle, but it is instead a recognition that waste or excessive living can lead to undesirable consequences. In other words, be it in our own lives, or on a grander stage, we must ensure we spend less than what we earn, and save excess if you can for when conditions are not as favorable. Have nice things, enjoy your life, but not so much that it causes you to dig yourself into debt, or for you to not be properly prepared when times of difficulty approach. Frugality is easily obtained if one has self-discipline that accompanies temperance and silence, order in their lives, and the resolution to ensure that the morality that accompanies these virtues remains in place, even when one’s station in life increases and it becomes easy to forget where we came from.
Industry:
Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
Self-reliance works best when one is efficient in one’s endeavors, eliminating wasteful actions, and employing industriousness in order to best achieve one’s goals. Unfortunately, many seek quick fixes, easy schemes, or unrealistic wages for entry-level work. A virtuous person works though the processes, and travels through the stages one must navigate to accomplish their objectives. I told my daughter when she was a student that to succeed all one has to do is more than everyone else. Go for that extra effort, and be honorable when going about your tasks. Even if the job is one that is not something you really want to be doing, tackle it with your best effort. The value of working hard is better than the habit of hardly working, for it will train us to accomplish in life what we seek when the opportunity arises. We must also work smart, seeking endeavors that are purposeful, and useful.
Sincerity:
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Gossip is the number one attention-getter in social media and in the media. Everyone wants the dirt on what people are doing. We have become a culture of people who want to pry into everyone else’s affairs. We are sarcastic, and “truth” has become a radical concept. The same kind of insincerity has begun to emerge in the world outside of the internet and media, and that kind of activity does not build up a society, but instead tears it down, harming people, creating animosity between people and groups, and breaking down the civility in a society. If we can personally avoid such a vice in our lives, the virtue of sincerity will spread to those around us. Being a virtuous society begins with how we act in our own lives, and how we interact with the world around us. Sincerity also means that we ought to be “genuine,” rather than providing a false image for those to see. We must be honest, and honorable. If we are not, our words will betray us.
Justice:
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. Justice is not something forced upon a society by a tyrannical government, or a condition achieved by the redistribution of wealth. Justice begins with each individual. As individuals we must voluntarily decide for ourselves to do what we can to stand up for those that we can stand up for. This must be the voluntary choice of individuals, however, not something that is forced upon those through the dictates of government, or the redistribution of wealth through taxation. When we act in a just manner, we must remember to be sincere, and moral. When we strive to do right in our personal life, it sets a standard for society. Justice is achieved in a moral society because a virtuous people do not seek to force injustice upon anybody. Inaction, however, can be as unacceptable as unjust actions. Apathy has grabbed our society by the throat, and we have become voyeurs that observe injustice, shake our heads at the horror of what we’ve seen, and then turn our backs upon it without seeking to set right the situation. A virtuous society remains virtuous when the people are moral participants who strive to maintain the standards that made the society successful.
Moderation:
Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
We live in a society that chases lawsuits at every opportunity, or is quick to violence when we feel we’ve been wronged. We must remember to not react on a hair-trigger, nor should we “Make mountains out of mole hills.” Extreme reactions that are not proportionate to an offense are not the mark of a virtuous society. Granted, extreme actions are sometimes necessary. Benjamin Franklin welcomed the extreme condition of revolution against British Rule because it was necessary in the context of the time period, and regarding what the colonists were attempting to achieve. But, extremes for the sake of being extreme are not necessarily a good course in a virtuous society. We always want “more,” and sometimes “more” can be a good thing…but, more of what? What is the motive behind our desire for more? Is it possible to have too much of something? And if it is, where is that line between not enough, and too much? The answers are supposed to be self-evident when a people are virtuous. If we are not maintaining the aforementioned virtues in our lives, how can we determine where the region of moderation truly exists? How can we, if we are not virtuous, and if we are subject to chasing extremes, determine the difference between good and evil, or excess and folly?
Cleanliness:
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
Cleanliness is something that encompasses more than being one that is attentive to personal hygiene. Yes, it is wise to be bathed, to keep our clothing laundered so that we are not wearing soiled garments, and to ensure that our homes are kept up in a manner that is not chaotic or filthy. Cleanliness also covers being appropriate, and paying attention to detail, discipline, and order. The presentation of ourselves to our surroundings are an important part to how society views us. How can we maintain that our society must be a virtuous one if we cannot even maintain the simple virtue of cleanliness? If one is tempered, self-disciplined, orderly, resolved, frugal, industrious, sincere, just, and not subject to extremes, the virtue of cleanliness will come naturally, for one will desire to offer a proper presentation of themselves to others, be it in hygiene, dress, one’s home, or the other belongings that reveals the character of our condition of virtue upon first examination by others.
Tranquility:
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
This is a second virtue that borrows from the old adage, “Don’t make mountains out of mole hills.” In this case, however, the virtue is one that approaches one’s temperament. Do we allow the irritations in life to anger us, and do we then lash out in response? Do we dwell on the unavoidable, and allow our anxiety over those unavoidable situations to dictate our actions and decisions? Do we react to situations, or respond to them? Are our emotions in control of our actions, or are we? Controlling, and tempering, one’s anger, is a sign of a virtuous individual that is composed and confident. Avoiding stress, and maintaining one’s cool, also has a number of social and health benefits attached. Relationships are more easily maintained when one remains “under control” in regards to his anger. Stress has also been determined to lead to a number of medical conditions that are neither beneficial, nor preferential. When individuals maintain tranquility, society benefits. When individuals allow their anger to guide their lives, society ceases to be virtuous, and reduces itself to mob-rule, and ultimately violence and chaos.
Chastity:
Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
A good sexual relationship is a healthy part of a marriage, and is necessary to produce offspring. Chastity is not used here to mean that we must abstain from sexual activity, but to use the gift that God gave us in the manner it was originally intended. With sexual promiscuity and sexual deviance follows a long line of consequences that can range from irritating to life-threatening. Today’s society has abandoned this virtue, engaging in a system that uses sex in every nook and cranny of our culture. Sex is used to sell, to entertain, and as a political weapon to silence certain groups and label them as unwilling to get with the so-called evolution of humanity. A once sacred act designed for the intimacy of a God-ordained marriage has become just another tool to gain consumers, be cheaply used in entertainment, or as just another function in our everyday culture. The “hook-up” is seeking to be as common as one’s decision to have a meal. Chastity requires the same self-discipline necessary to maintain the other virtues, and if one refuses to give in to the urges of sexual desire that reach beyond the context through which such an activity was originally designed to be, how can we maintain an ordered society with the other virtues? A society unable to abide by the moral standards that accompany a chaste society will also be unable to also abide by the standards put forward by the rule of law, be they Nature’s Law by Nature’s God, or the principles and philosophies set forth by a written political standard such as we have in the United States Constitution.
Humility:
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
In a Christian society, the goal of every member of the culture is to be more like Jesus. The endeavor is impossible on the surface, because Christ was perfect, and our human nature demands that we will continually fall short of the Glory of God. However, in our desire to seek the virtues necessary to imitate a figure like Jesus, or Socrates, we improve ourselves and the world around us. Change must start from within, and when, as individuals, we seek to be the best we can be based on the moral standards set forth by a virtuous society, we improve the culture around us, as well. When we seek to be virtuous, those around us have the choice to either grow with us, or be left in the dust. When examples of virtue are on prominent display, and a person’s life is bettered because of it, those around the person seeking to imitate such a virtuous life are encouraged to do the same, and seek a virtuous life as well. In a society where the standard is based on morality, and the members of that culture actively seek to improve their adherence to the virtues they would like to attain, we begin to use the positive side of our natural attributes. Rather than be arrogant, we become confident. Rather than be bossy, we become leaders. Humility is a trait shared by the greatest of men, because humility accompanies an internal confidence that does not seek to allow our words to speak for us, for instead reminds us that it is best for our actions to speak for themselves.
When a society abandons these virtues, the people become corrupt, and unwilling to abide by the rule of law. A viciousness blankets the people, which leads to violence and lawlessness. In response, unable to restrain the mobs, the people in the position of power feel the need to crack down on the people that are partaking in violence and disorder in order to attempt to restore peace and safety. Laws become more strict, and the servants in place to govern become masters that rule over the populace. Then, the vicious debauchery that caused the society to become a violent mob infects the society throughout every portion of the culture, and throughout every hall of law enforcement and government, leading the society to no other way out than to commit suicide, and die a bloody death through societal collapse, a bloody revolution, and the chaos of transition into bondage. We are now beginning to see the early stages of that death, and though the Constitution is the political solution, we are incapable of restoring the republic or abiding by the principles of the Constitution if we refuse to return to the moral standards that built his nation, and made it a virtuous society in the first place. Without having a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, the moral standards necessary to maintain an orderly and virtuous society is impossible. Without God, people are not capable of freedom, and therefore, if we do not restore our society as a virtuous one, liberty will be lost.
By Douglas V. Gibbs
How Can Christians Defend Slavery?
In the early days of the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s, Baptist and Methodist preachers argued for the release of all slaves and an end to slavery but it was a losing battle and they eventually found ways to defend slavery!
How Can Christians Defend Slavery?
How can Americans defend our history of slavery? We can’t! American enslavement of blacks is an inconvenient truth that has no defense. Yes, there is plenty of guilt for everyone including the black chiefs who sold other blacks for hundreds of years before Arab slavers approached the African coast. But that does not absolve others of the horrible guilt.
Only one in eleven Southerners owned slaves; however, a vast majority of the leaders did: politicians, educators, doctors, even preachers. In South Carolina 40% of Baptist preachers were slaveowners! That is a shame, a scar, and a scab upon that illustrious group.
There was no justification for Christian Americans and even pastors owning slaves and they did by the thousands. Churchill in his A History of the English Speaking Peoples revealed that 660,000 slaves were held in America by ministers and members of different Protestant Churches! Five thousand Methodist ministers owned 219,000 slaves while 1,400 Episcopalians held 88,000 blacks. Alas, 6,500 Baptists owned over 125,000 slaves. Furthermore, such slavery was defended in many pulpits Sunday after Sunday. Only the Quakers, as a movement, condemned slavery during the Colonial period. They were right on slavery while wrong on pacifism.
Some Liberals who are more interested in their agenda rather than the truth only present one side, the worst side, of the slavery issue. In many churches, especially Baptist churches, Blacks had active roles as leaders–even preachers–while the Anglican (Episcopal) Church refused them such positions. Some plantations even had churches or chapels build for the slaves.
After some slave revolts in the early 1800s, especially Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, Virginia law required black churches to have a white minister present for all services.
In the early days of the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s, Baptist and Methodist preachers argued for the release of all slaves and an end to slavery but it was a losing battle and they eventually found ways to defend slavery! They used the Bible by twisting the passages and especially the “curse of Ham” to defend the indefensible.
Christian plantation owners were often leaders at the local Baptist and Methodist churches and were often overwhelmed with guilt. They knew the holding of humans was demeaning, disgraceful, and depraved but were stuck in the system. They had large plantations that required workers and slaves were the only answer. Many slave owners were aware of their greedy materialism and knew it was condemned by the Scriptures.
A wealthy Alabama slave holder warned his son: “Don’t let this world, or the honors of the world, yea I would add the Riches too, cheat you out of the love, and of course the favor of your blessed savior…I know it is not sinful to be rich, or honorable, but Mr. [John] Wesley says it is extremely dangerous, therefore we should watch and pray much in order to keep humble and devotional. . . .”
The Methodists tried to expel slave holding church members in 1784 but found it unenforceable and withdrew the demand. Baptists in Virginia denounced slavery in 1789 and the Kentucky Elkhorn Baptist Association presented a resolution against slavery in 1791 but it was so controversial it was dropped.
Presbyterian synods in New York City and Philadelphia in 1787 suggested that their members gradually end slavery and by 1792 most Presbyterians thought slavery should be ended. By 1815, Presbyterians decided that buying and selling of slaves was “inconsistent with the Gospel.”
Most Abolitionists who fought to free the slaves belonged to strong Methodist and Baptist churches; however, that does not ameliorate the fact that many ministers held slaves no matter how well they were treated.
In 1840, concerned Baptists formed the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Society and that decisive action forced the fence-straddlers to take a stand. In 1844, the Georgia Baptist Convention appointed a slave owner as missionary to the Cherokee Indians but when he came up for approval at to the General Convention he was rejected. The following year, southern Baptists withdrew to form the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, Georgia. The Methodists and Presbyterians also split over slavery. So there was no unanimity on the slavery issue.
In 1855, the soon-to-be famous Confederate General Stonewall Jackson broke the law every Sunday morning by teaching a Sunday school class of Blacks at the Lexington Presbyterian Church. That example of civil disobedience should have been emulated by every pastor and Christian worker. Alas, it was not.
The slavery scandal is a scab on society. Frankly, I think too many unprincipled people “use” the issue for their own selfish desires; however, it is time to admit the guilt of all participants and move on.
Nevertheless, there is a side of this issue that I have never heard discussed: the failure of local pastors to come down hard on their congregations filled with slave owners. It is one thing to discuss the evils of slavery in a denominational meeting with religious leaders and another thing to preach of its wickedness during a Sunday morning service. That was seldom done, much to the shame of Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian clergymen. Especially Baptists who have always made such a big issue out of standing for biblical truth. And still do.
Our theological ancestors faced influential plantation owners each Sunday morning and said nothing and many pastors today take a stand like a crippled chicken and keep silent lest they lose members, rock the boat, and maybe precipitate an IRS inspection of their church activities. Their local mayor may even demand a copy of recent sermons; and some pastors will probably turn in their sermons–like sheep, not shepherds.
While it is easy for me in the safe distance of the 21st century to criticize my fellow Baptist preachers of the past, it was still a major failure. Those of us today must learn from that failure. Preachers must major on biblical preaching; we must also give some direction to society. If anyone is against the killing of unborn babies, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against the perversion of marriage, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against porn, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against vile, venal, visual garbage on television it should be Baptist preachers.
While pastors in the past refused to take on the “colored” thing, most modern day pastors even refuse to take on the color television set that spews out visual garbage because they know it would split their church or put them in the unemployment line.
Baptist preachers preaching against vile television would be as explosive as a pastor preaching against slavery in the 1800s as leading plantation owners gasped and headed for their buggies. It didn’t happen then and it isn’t happening now.
Sometime, even preachers don’t walk their talk.
Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpI6L64E9clCSXbG8Mf_F7A
By Dr. Don Boys
How Can Christians Defend Slavery?
How can Americans defend our history of slavery? We can’t! American enslavement of blacks is an inconvenient truth that has no defense. Yes, there is plenty of guilt for everyone including the black chiefs who sold other blacks for hundreds of years before Arab slavers approached the African coast. But that does not absolve others of the horrible guilt.
Only one in eleven Southerners owned slaves; however, a vast majority of the leaders did: politicians, educators, doctors, even preachers. In South Carolina 40% of Baptist preachers were slaveowners! That is a shame, a scar, and a scab upon that illustrious group.
There was no justification for Christian Americans and even pastors owning slaves and they did by the thousands. Churchill in his A History of the English Speaking Peoples revealed that 660,000 slaves were held in America by ministers and members of different Protestant Churches! Five thousand Methodist ministers owned 219,000 slaves while 1,400 Episcopalians held 88,000 blacks. Alas, 6,500 Baptists owned over 125,000 slaves. Furthermore, such slavery was defended in many pulpits Sunday after Sunday. Only the Quakers, as a movement, condemned slavery during the Colonial period. They were right on slavery while wrong on pacifism.
Some Liberals who are more interested in their agenda rather than the truth only present one side, the worst side, of the slavery issue. In many churches, especially Baptist churches, Blacks had active roles as leaders–even preachers–while the Anglican (Episcopal) Church refused them such positions. Some plantations even had churches or chapels build for the slaves.
After some slave revolts in the early 1800s, especially Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, Virginia law required black churches to have a white minister present for all services.
In the early days of the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s, Baptist and Methodist preachers argued for the release of all slaves and an end to slavery but it was a losing battle and they eventually found ways to defend slavery! They used the Bible by twisting the passages and especially the “curse of Ham” to defend the indefensible.
Christian plantation owners were often leaders at the local Baptist and Methodist churches and were often overwhelmed with guilt. They knew the holding of humans was demeaning, disgraceful, and depraved but were stuck in the system. They had large plantations that required workers and slaves were the only answer. Many slave owners were aware of their greedy materialism and knew it was condemned by the Scriptures.
A wealthy Alabama slave holder warned his son: “Don’t let this world, or the honors of the world, yea I would add the Riches too, cheat you out of the love, and of course the favor of your blessed savior…I know it is not sinful to be rich, or honorable, but Mr. [John] Wesley says it is extremely dangerous, therefore we should watch and pray much in order to keep humble and devotional. . . .”
The Methodists tried to expel slave holding church members in 1784 but found it unenforceable and withdrew the demand. Baptists in Virginia denounced slavery in 1789 and the Kentucky Elkhorn Baptist Association presented a resolution against slavery in 1791 but it was so controversial it was dropped.
Presbyterian synods in New York City and Philadelphia in 1787 suggested that their members gradually end slavery and by 1792 most Presbyterians thought slavery should be ended. By 1815, Presbyterians decided that buying and selling of slaves was “inconsistent with the Gospel.”
Most Abolitionists who fought to free the slaves belonged to strong Methodist and Baptist churches; however, that does not ameliorate the fact that many ministers held slaves no matter how well they were treated.
In 1840, concerned Baptists formed the American Baptist Anti-Slavery Society and that decisive action forced the fence-straddlers to take a stand. In 1844, the Georgia Baptist Convention appointed a slave owner as missionary to the Cherokee Indians but when he came up for approval at to the General Convention he was rejected. The following year, southern Baptists withdrew to form the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, Georgia. The Methodists and Presbyterians also split over slavery. So there was no unanimity on the slavery issue.
In 1855, the soon-to-be famous Confederate General Stonewall Jackson broke the law every Sunday morning by teaching a Sunday school class of Blacks at the Lexington Presbyterian Church. That example of civil disobedience should have been emulated by every pastor and Christian worker. Alas, it was not.
The slavery scandal is a scab on society. Frankly, I think too many unprincipled people “use” the issue for their own selfish desires; however, it is time to admit the guilt of all participants and move on.
Nevertheless, there is a side of this issue that I have never heard discussed: the failure of local pastors to come down hard on their congregations filled with slave owners. It is one thing to discuss the evils of slavery in a denominational meeting with religious leaders and another thing to preach of its wickedness during a Sunday morning service. That was seldom done, much to the shame of Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian clergymen. Especially Baptists who have always made such a big issue out of standing for biblical truth. And still do.
Our theological ancestors faced influential plantation owners each Sunday morning and said nothing and many pastors today take a stand like a crippled chicken and keep silent lest they lose members, rock the boat, and maybe precipitate an IRS inspection of their church activities. Their local mayor may even demand a copy of recent sermons; and some pastors will probably turn in their sermons–like sheep, not shepherds.
While it is easy for me in the safe distance of the 21st century to criticize my fellow Baptist preachers of the past, it was still a major failure. Those of us today must learn from that failure. Preachers must major on biblical preaching; we must also give some direction to society. If anyone is against the killing of unborn babies, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against the perversion of marriage, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against porn, it should be Baptist preachers. If anyone is against vile, venal, visual garbage on television it should be Baptist preachers.
While pastors in the past refused to take on the “colored” thing, most modern day pastors even refuse to take on the color television set that spews out visual garbage because they know it would split their church or put them in the unemployment line.
Baptist preachers preaching against vile television would be as explosive as a pastor preaching against slavery in the 1800s as leading plantation owners gasped and headed for their buggies. It didn’t happen then and it isn’t happening now.
Sometime, even preachers don’t walk their talk.
Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpI6L64E9clCSXbG8Mf_F7A
By Dr. Don Boys
The Biggest Crime You’ve Never Heard Of
The Biggest Crime You’ve Never Heard Of
They must have known, mustn’t they? How could they not? Perhaps they chose not to know. With the world commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the nazi-run death camps the question of what ordinary Germans knew (and did) about the genocide their government was perpetrating has once again been in the news.
Of course, the assumption behind much of the coverage of the liberation of Belsen and other camps is that we, living enlightened lives in contemporary Britain, are lucky to live in a society where horrendous crimes do not happen. And if they did, they would be quickly reported by our free and stroppy media and quickly halted.
But what if our own government has been responsible for genocide-level suffering, without the media raising the alarm and therefore leaving the general public in a state of ignorance?
What would this say about our political class? What would it say about the media? And what would it say about us?
Unfortunately this isn’t a hypothetical debate but the cold, brutal reality.
To understand this distressing fact we need to return to February 1991 when the US-led coalition kicked Iraq out of Kuwait, which it had illegally invaded in August 1990.
According to John Hoskins, a Canadian doctor leading a Harvard study team, the US-led air assault “effectively terminated everything vital to human survival in Iraq — electricity, water, sewage systems, agriculture, industry and healthcare.” Purportedly to compel Saddam Hussein’s government to give up its weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the UN imposed economic sanctions on Iraq, which lasted until the 2003 invasion. The sanctions regime was enforced by the US and Britain which took the toughest line on compliance.
“No country had ever been subjected to more comprehensive economic sanctions by the United Nations than Iraq,” notes Hans Von Sponeck, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, in his 2006 book A Different Kind of War.
“Communicable diseases in the 1980s not considered public health hazards, such as measles, polio, cholera, typhoid, marasmus and kwashiorkor, reappeared on epidemic scales.”
In 1999 the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimated that over 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died because of a lack of medication, food or safe water supplies.
To counter some of the worst effects of sanctions, in 1996 the UN set up the Oil-For-Food Programme, which allowed Iraq to sell oil in exchange for food, medicine and other goods.
However, the programme was far from adequate. “At no time during the years of comprehensive economic sanctions were there adequate resources to meet minimum needs for human physical or mental survival either before, or during, the Oil-For-Food Programme”, Von Sponeck notes in his book.
In 1998/99, each Iraqi received a food allocation of $49 (£32) — 27 (19p) cents a day – for a six month period. In contrast, the dogs the UN used to help de-mine Iraq each received a food allocation of $160.
In protest at what 70 members of the US congress called “infanticide masquerading as policy,” Denis Halliday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq who ran the sanctions regime, resigned in 1998. Noting the sanctions were causing the deaths of up to 5,000 children a month, Halliday bluntly stated: “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral.”
Speaking to journalist John Pilger, Halliday later explained: “I was instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide — a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.”
Halliday’s successor Von Sponeck resigned in protest two years later, asking in his resignation letter: “How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?” Later he told Pilger: “I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable.”
Making a hat-trick, Jutta Burghardt, head of the UN World Food Programme in Iraq, resigned two days after Von Sponeck, describing the sanctions regime as “a true humanitarian tragedy.”
With a few honourable exceptions such as Pilger, Tony Benn and George Galloway, the response of the British political class and media was either to ignore or dismiss the fact sanctions were killing Iraqis on a mass scale.
According to the media watchdog Media Lens, in 2003 Halliday was mentioned in just two of the 12,366 Guardian and Observer articles mentioning Iraq. Von Sponeck was mentioned a grand total of five times in the same year. Von Sponeck’s book on the sanctions has never been reviewed in the British press, and has been mentioned just once — by the veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk.
Echoing the denials of new Labour ministers such as Peter Hain and Robin Cook, in 2002 Observer Editor Roger Alton responded to a reader challenging him about the sanctions, stating: “It’s Saddam who’s killing all the bloody children, not sanctions. Sorry.” The highly respected Middle East specialist Professor Fred Halliday was equally dismissive, rubbishing “claims that Iraq still lacks the means to provide a basic supply of food” in a book review in the Independent in 1999.
The governing elite, assisted by a pliant media and the silence of much of academia, have carried out a magic trick of epic, sinister proportions. In a world of 24-hour news culture they have effectively managed to bury the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a direct result of British foreign policy.
The lack of coverage, concern or discussion today about the sanctions shows how shockingly successful they have been in this endeavour.
As Harold Pinter sarcastically noted in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, “It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”
No conspiracy is needed. “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban,” George Orwell argued in his censored preface to Animal Farm.
He provides two reasons for thought control in democratic society — first, the owners of the British press, socially, politically and economically part of the governing elite, “have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.” And second, he explains: “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it”.
As always, it’s up to those who care about the lives of people regardless of their nationality or skin colour, who care about truth, who take their responsibility as world citizens seriously, to raise their voice and remember this moral and historical outrage.
By Ian Sinclair
Ian Sinclair is the author of The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003, published by Peace News Press. He tweets @IanJSinclair.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
False piety
Quid pro quo politics
False piety
By Sarge
Each day the sun rises. Each day hope escapes to be chased and sought after as a balm for the inequities we suffer from those we trusted and no longer accept as just and honest.
These people we call politicians; I had an elected official tell me once he was proud to be a politician. “Politicians help people” he said. So far he’s one of the few that helps people. But in helping people he’s come to the point of codependency. He’s come to the point he needs the good will of the people he cajoles and bribes with his political largesse and refusal to allow people the necessary awareness that people must be accountable for their actions.
Due to this, people DO NOT hold politicians accountable for their actions and possibly duplicitous misdeeds. Quid pro quo is the term. It’s Latin for: where one transfer is contingent upon the other. English speakers use the term to mean “a favor for a favor” and other phrases meaning include: “give and take”, “tit for tat”, and “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” (Wikipedia 2015)
Our system of political corruption started long ago. It’s rooted in the greed and avarice of one to assure he has been paid well will expect more for what he’s done for the individual. It goes back to neoliths asking a greater “cut” for the food delivered for the tribe on a successful hunt. It selections of leaders percentages were balanced and brought to the circle to assure the privileges of leadership accumulated the benefits for service and production. Those who give expect to have more given them.
A legislator gets funding to improve roads in his area and he can claim he’s the only one could have gotten it done. He expects to be sent back to the legislature over and over again because he’s so good at what he does. The fact of the matter is the money’s there and any idiot can get his constituents’ share of it. You just have to win elections. So, you go out and promise more and more and do whatever it takes to get the next vote.
Get a person out of a speeding ticket? No problem. See to it the ditches are dug in one area donating more campaign funds than another more impoverished area and see who gets the work done first. Campaign and posture for social causes simply because they have more active campaign workers in specially selected ethnic areas? Reap the benefits of ethnic bloc voting and you see where this all goes.
Integrity and veracity mean nothing. Ethnic blocs once noted for their religious communalism and strength of character have come to sell out to the highest bidders where social welfare and the financing of profligate lifestyles are supported on the taxpayers’ dime. Keep me supported through my many dalliances and the birth of fatherless children and see how well I support you at election time.
We accept the psycho-babble that it’s only right and charitable to support those who make mistakes.
I think it’s more important we teach these people to correct their mistaken notion the world owes them something. Sure; give the “hand-up”. But, too often that” hand-up” becomes the “hand-out” crippling the person needs to be held accountable and taught their way has no true profit to it. But we remember; “give the man a fish and he eats for a day, teach the man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime”. But we don’t enforce that.
We bait the hook. We drop the line in the water and then sit waiting for the man to appreciate us for our doing the work, earning the reward and then giving it away so we can sanctimoniously self-righteously congratulate ourselves at how generous and caring we are when we’re really enslaving these people because they never learn how to survive without taking from others to get what they want.
They’re never happy with what they need: they want what you’ve got and they’ll destroy this nation to get it if you don’t get off of your dead butt and stop them.
Charity comes from the goodness of a clean heart; not the back pocket of a people trying to buy their way to heaven with false piety.
Thanks for listening
False piety
By Sarge
Each day the sun rises. Each day hope escapes to be chased and sought after as a balm for the inequities we suffer from those we trusted and no longer accept as just and honest.
These people we call politicians; I had an elected official tell me once he was proud to be a politician. “Politicians help people” he said. So far he’s one of the few that helps people. But in helping people he’s come to the point of codependency. He’s come to the point he needs the good will of the people he cajoles and bribes with his political largesse and refusal to allow people the necessary awareness that people must be accountable for their actions.
Due to this, people DO NOT hold politicians accountable for their actions and possibly duplicitous misdeeds. Quid pro quo is the term. It’s Latin for: where one transfer is contingent upon the other. English speakers use the term to mean “a favor for a favor” and other phrases meaning include: “give and take”, “tit for tat”, and “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” (Wikipedia 2015)
Our system of political corruption started long ago. It’s rooted in the greed and avarice of one to assure he has been paid well will expect more for what he’s done for the individual. It goes back to neoliths asking a greater “cut” for the food delivered for the tribe on a successful hunt. It selections of leaders percentages were balanced and brought to the circle to assure the privileges of leadership accumulated the benefits for service and production. Those who give expect to have more given them.
A legislator gets funding to improve roads in his area and he can claim he’s the only one could have gotten it done. He expects to be sent back to the legislature over and over again because he’s so good at what he does. The fact of the matter is the money’s there and any idiot can get his constituents’ share of it. You just have to win elections. So, you go out and promise more and more and do whatever it takes to get the next vote.
Get a person out of a speeding ticket? No problem. See to it the ditches are dug in one area donating more campaign funds than another more impoverished area and see who gets the work done first. Campaign and posture for social causes simply because they have more active campaign workers in specially selected ethnic areas? Reap the benefits of ethnic bloc voting and you see where this all goes.
Integrity and veracity mean nothing. Ethnic blocs once noted for their religious communalism and strength of character have come to sell out to the highest bidders where social welfare and the financing of profligate lifestyles are supported on the taxpayers’ dime. Keep me supported through my many dalliances and the birth of fatherless children and see how well I support you at election time.
We accept the psycho-babble that it’s only right and charitable to support those who make mistakes.
I think it’s more important we teach these people to correct their mistaken notion the world owes them something. Sure; give the “hand-up”. But, too often that” hand-up” becomes the “hand-out” crippling the person needs to be held accountable and taught their way has no true profit to it. But we remember; “give the man a fish and he eats for a day, teach the man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime”. But we don’t enforce that.
We bait the hook. We drop the line in the water and then sit waiting for the man to appreciate us for our doing the work, earning the reward and then giving it away so we can sanctimoniously self-righteously congratulate ourselves at how generous and caring we are when we’re really enslaving these people because they never learn how to survive without taking from others to get what they want.
They’re never happy with what they need: they want what you’ve got and they’ll destroy this nation to get it if you don’t get off of your dead butt and stop them.
Charity comes from the goodness of a clean heart; not the back pocket of a people trying to buy their way to heaven with false piety.
Thanks for listening
The Hillary Enigma
I suggest that Hillary ceases to be an enigma if you just think of the Wellesley student who thought the best topic for her senior thesis was the book by a dedicated Communist, Saul Alinsky
The Hillary Enigma
Does it strike anyone as strange that the only candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination to be the next President of the United States is the wife of a former President? There is no historic precedent for this, no way to measure this against how Americans have selected Presidents in the past.
Like most Americans, I first took notice of her when Bill began his campaign to become President. I recall being struck by the fact that in 1969 as a student at Wellesley College, her 92-page senior thesis was devoted to the community organizer, Saul Alinsky’s book. The title of the thesis was “There is Only the Fight…”: An Analysis of the Alinski Model.” She would request Wellesley to deny access to it.
Alinksy was a Communist. His twelve rules for radicals, unlike the Ten Commandments, are devoid of a moral message. Instead, the message is “this is how you can win.” Hillary would do well to review Rule 7, “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” She was already old news when she announced her candidacy and it is becoming older with every passing day as she fails to take questions from the media, participating in totally staged events to look like “one of the people.”
She and Bill are not one of the people. They, like the Bushes, are political royalty. They have both been around a very long time.
Hillary, however, despite the millions of words that have been written about and by her remains an enigma. Other than being farther to the Left than Bill, she is a woman whose “achievements” in life have largely been the result of having married Bill. She would spend eight years in the White House as the First Lady and, pursuing her college dreams of political power, they would move to New York State where she ran and won a Senatorial election.
There isn’t a single Senate bill that she introduced or that is credited to her
There isn’t a single Senate bill that she introduced or that is credited to her. She is said to have worked hard and gotten along well with her colleagues, but her Senate years are a blur in her public life. Then she made a bid to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2008 and along came Barack Hussein Obama with whom the voters fell in love. When he was elected, he asked her to become his Secretary of State.
With the exception of the Benghazi tragedy on September 11, 2012, a clear failure of judgment and duty, and about which she lied, her years as Secretary of State reflect her years in the Senate; nothing of any significance resulted, no major treaties, no major anything, except for one more scandal.
So the question remains; who is Hillary Rodham Clinton? What are her fundamental principles beyond the acquisition of political power? And money. Lots of it while uttering nonsense such as she and Bill being “dead broke” when they left office?
What are we to make of her deletions of thousands of emails on her private server—something she was not supposed to use as Secretary of State—and her assertion that those we may never see were of no importance? They’re important if, as is widely believed, foreign governments hacked her private email server and thus had access to information about policies affecting themselves and others. She may not have broken a law, but she surely did not obey Obama White House policy regarding the emails.
Alinski’s Rule 1 is “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. Power is derived from two main sources—money and people.”
You cannot buy trust and the polls indicate that is seeping away
We are told that Hillary has a huge amount of money with which to wage a campaign to become the first woman President. In light of the revelations about the Clinton Foundations, virtual slush funds, and the millions earned by her and Bill to give speeches, there is little doubt of that.
You cannot, however, buy trust and the polls indicate that is seeping away.
Her die-hard supporters probably know as little about her as the rest of us, but it is their trust she is depending on right now. Should she actually receive the Democratic Party’s nomination, the distrust of independent voters, disaffected Democrats, and of course Republicans, will play a crucial role in who is elected in 2016. It is not likely to be Hillary Clinton.
It is not likely because, as we have already seen, she seems to have reached a point where her political abilities have grown tired and out-of-date. These are not the 1990s. A whole generation has been born since Bill was President.
Like her, the Democratic Party seems tired as well. Can you believe there is not another Democrat, a Governor or Senator who could emerge to represent the Party? How devoid of any real leadership has the Democratic Party become if the only candidate they can offer is a former First Lady? That has been her primary claim to fame despite the two offices she has held since the 1990s.
I suggest that Hillary ceases to be an enigma if you just think of the Wellesley student who thought the best topic for her senior thesis was the book by a dedicated Communist, Saul Alinsky.
By Alan Caruba
The Hillary Enigma
Does it strike anyone as strange that the only candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination to be the next President of the United States is the wife of a former President? There is no historic precedent for this, no way to measure this against how Americans have selected Presidents in the past.
Like most Americans, I first took notice of her when Bill began his campaign to become President. I recall being struck by the fact that in 1969 as a student at Wellesley College, her 92-page senior thesis was devoted to the community organizer, Saul Alinsky’s book. The title of the thesis was “There is Only the Fight…”: An Analysis of the Alinski Model.” She would request Wellesley to deny access to it.
Alinksy was a Communist. His twelve rules for radicals, unlike the Ten Commandments, are devoid of a moral message. Instead, the message is “this is how you can win.” Hillary would do well to review Rule 7, “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” She was already old news when she announced her candidacy and it is becoming older with every passing day as she fails to take questions from the media, participating in totally staged events to look like “one of the people.”
She and Bill are not one of the people. They, like the Bushes, are political royalty. They have both been around a very long time.
Hillary, however, despite the millions of words that have been written about and by her remains an enigma. Other than being farther to the Left than Bill, she is a woman whose “achievements” in life have largely been the result of having married Bill. She would spend eight years in the White House as the First Lady and, pursuing her college dreams of political power, they would move to New York State where she ran and won a Senatorial election.
There isn’t a single Senate bill that she introduced or that is credited to her
There isn’t a single Senate bill that she introduced or that is credited to her. She is said to have worked hard and gotten along well with her colleagues, but her Senate years are a blur in her public life. Then she made a bid to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2008 and along came Barack Hussein Obama with whom the voters fell in love. When he was elected, he asked her to become his Secretary of State.
With the exception of the Benghazi tragedy on September 11, 2012, a clear failure of judgment and duty, and about which she lied, her years as Secretary of State reflect her years in the Senate; nothing of any significance resulted, no major treaties, no major anything, except for one more scandal.
So the question remains; who is Hillary Rodham Clinton? What are her fundamental principles beyond the acquisition of political power? And money. Lots of it while uttering nonsense such as she and Bill being “dead broke” when they left office?
What are we to make of her deletions of thousands of emails on her private server—something she was not supposed to use as Secretary of State—and her assertion that those we may never see were of no importance? They’re important if, as is widely believed, foreign governments hacked her private email server and thus had access to information about policies affecting themselves and others. She may not have broken a law, but she surely did not obey Obama White House policy regarding the emails.
Alinski’s Rule 1 is “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. Power is derived from two main sources—money and people.”
You cannot buy trust and the polls indicate that is seeping away
We are told that Hillary has a huge amount of money with which to wage a campaign to become the first woman President. In light of the revelations about the Clinton Foundations, virtual slush funds, and the millions earned by her and Bill to give speeches, there is little doubt of that.
You cannot, however, buy trust and the polls indicate that is seeping away.
Her die-hard supporters probably know as little about her as the rest of us, but it is their trust she is depending on right now. Should she actually receive the Democratic Party’s nomination, the distrust of independent voters, disaffected Democrats, and of course Republicans, will play a crucial role in who is elected in 2016. It is not likely to be Hillary Clinton.
It is not likely because, as we have already seen, she seems to have reached a point where her political abilities have grown tired and out-of-date. These are not the 1990s. A whole generation has been born since Bill was President.
Like her, the Democratic Party seems tired as well. Can you believe there is not another Democrat, a Governor or Senator who could emerge to represent the Party? How devoid of any real leadership has the Democratic Party become if the only candidate they can offer is a former First Lady? That has been her primary claim to fame despite the two offices she has held since the 1990s.
I suggest that Hillary ceases to be an enigma if you just think of the Wellesley student who thought the best topic for her senior thesis was the book by a dedicated Communist, Saul Alinsky.
By Alan Caruba
Sex—Sex and more sex…Every day, Every way, Every One
Instead, many in America have turned sex and its expression into a walking and diseased 'side show.' I pray we will not become another 'Rome' but we are swiftly on our way
Sex—Sex and more sex…Every day, Every way, Every One
It appears the gift of ‘sex’ and sexuality has been forced over a cliff and shattered into a thousand pieces of broken and perverted expression. Experts are everywhere and those who demand to change our legal, religious, educational and political core. We must become another creature…void of Godly morals, laced with experimental sexual drives and controlled by feelings, Government and liberal agendas. “Act out, do it again and we will treat your diseases.”
Shockingly, the most perverted among us run for President and dream of controlling us from the top down. We have been forced to endure the never ending story about Hillary and Bill…sex this and sex that. We see the perverted pedophile friend here, sell out and money laundering there….‘the sleep around—sell out family in every way. Sadly, so far it looks like Hillary will be running on the Democrat ticket. Moral—Legal—and Faith bankruptcy!
Hillary is not the only one competing for the ‘sex and moral lunacy award.’ Other ‘wanna be’ Presidential candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) enlightened us as well. Craig Bannister of MRCTV found a lovely post from Bernie back in 1972 entitled “Men-And-Women.” It was published in the “Vermont Freeman” liberal newspaper. Sanders stated that women fantasized about being gang raped. Oh, yes…He was quoted as saying: “A woman enjoys intercourse with her man-as she fantasizes about being raped by 3 men simultaneously.” A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy,” wrote Sanders. “A woman on her knees. A woman tied up. A woman abused.” Read the post at MRCTV.
I can hardly wait to see a nightmare like Bernie Sanders President. Just think about all the handcuff and rope sales he will see at the White House for Interns. Perhaps he will pardon all incarcerated rapists, since women want it anyway. Maybe he can help organize and fund a new UNION so three men at once can attack women with precision and order. The men can support each other and fund-raise.
We still await the ruling from the Supreme Court on ‘mandated gay marriage.’ Will it be pushed and forced on all 50 states and will this crush freedom of speech and religious rights? The battle is upon us all and we will see the next chapter very soon.
Sex with everyone and everything…bring it. Women and women—men and men—sex with groups - neighborhoods—sex with old men and young boys—sex with your Beagle—then do it all again after you changed your sex over the weekend. Now, you come with all your ‘rights’ from the other side.
Will it become a crime to be married to your husband, not sleep around and not allow others to join in? Just think of the exclusive—hate of that position. There will be no one in my bed except my husband and I….ok, our dog Scooter as well—but not for sex.
Apparently some have never learned from history what happens when God and morals are completely removed from sexuality and its expression. Rome started its downturn in AD 190 and was known for acting out with sexual expression, torture of Christians and violence in between their artistic expressions.
God put parameters and limits around sex not to torture and punish us, but to protect us and bless us all. Sex was created by God as an intimate and Holy expression of love to another person of the opposite sex. He invented the Holy sacrament of Marriage where sex is meant to live and prosper.
Instead, many in America have turned sex and its expression into a walking and diseased ‘side show.’ I pray we will not become another ‘Rome’ but we are swiftly on our way.
By Dr. Laurie Roth
Sex—Sex and more sex…Every day, Every way, Every One
It appears the gift of ‘sex’ and sexuality has been forced over a cliff and shattered into a thousand pieces of broken and perverted expression. Experts are everywhere and those who demand to change our legal, religious, educational and political core. We must become another creature…void of Godly morals, laced with experimental sexual drives and controlled by feelings, Government and liberal agendas. “Act out, do it again and we will treat your diseases.”
Shockingly, the most perverted among us run for President and dream of controlling us from the top down. We have been forced to endure the never ending story about Hillary and Bill…sex this and sex that. We see the perverted pedophile friend here, sell out and money laundering there….‘the sleep around—sell out family in every way. Sadly, so far it looks like Hillary will be running on the Democrat ticket. Moral—Legal—and Faith bankruptcy!
Hillary is not the only one competing for the ‘sex and moral lunacy award.’ Other ‘wanna be’ Presidential candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) enlightened us as well. Craig Bannister of MRCTV found a lovely post from Bernie back in 1972 entitled “Men-And-Women.” It was published in the “Vermont Freeman” liberal newspaper. Sanders stated that women fantasized about being gang raped. Oh, yes…He was quoted as saying: “A woman enjoys intercourse with her man-as she fantasizes about being raped by 3 men simultaneously.” A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy,” wrote Sanders. “A woman on her knees. A woman tied up. A woman abused.” Read the post at MRCTV.
I can hardly wait to see a nightmare like Bernie Sanders President. Just think about all the handcuff and rope sales he will see at the White House for Interns. Perhaps he will pardon all incarcerated rapists, since women want it anyway. Maybe he can help organize and fund a new UNION so three men at once can attack women with precision and order. The men can support each other and fund-raise.
We still await the ruling from the Supreme Court on ‘mandated gay marriage.’ Will it be pushed and forced on all 50 states and will this crush freedom of speech and religious rights? The battle is upon us all and we will see the next chapter very soon.
Sex with everyone and everything…bring it. Women and women—men and men—sex with groups - neighborhoods—sex with old men and young boys—sex with your Beagle—then do it all again after you changed your sex over the weekend. Now, you come with all your ‘rights’ from the other side.
Will it become a crime to be married to your husband, not sleep around and not allow others to join in? Just think of the exclusive—hate of that position. There will be no one in my bed except my husband and I….ok, our dog Scooter as well—but not for sex.
Apparently some have never learned from history what happens when God and morals are completely removed from sexuality and its expression. Rome started its downturn in AD 190 and was known for acting out with sexual expression, torture of Christians and violence in between their artistic expressions.
God put parameters and limits around sex not to torture and punish us, but to protect us and bless us all. Sex was created by God as an intimate and Holy expression of love to another person of the opposite sex. He invented the Holy sacrament of Marriage where sex is meant to live and prosper.
Instead, many in America have turned sex and its expression into a walking and diseased ‘side show.’ I pray we will not become another ‘Rome’ but we are swiftly on our way.
By Dr. Laurie Roth
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