1. society
2. unrest and war

Just for Your Consideration
Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. ― 1 Corinthians 16:13
Compiled by Pastor Greg Wilson, Landmark Baptist Church, Archer, Florida  July 5, 2015
Yankee Supremacists Trash South's Heroes
Offers history lesson on 'sovereigntists' who defended South
By Ilana Mercer
different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future.
This idea was rejected by the Confederate
government. Beauregard then suggested that there
should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the
second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being
completely different from the United States flag.
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to
provide a much-needed history of the muchmaligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it
seemed as though he and his guest, Mark
Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the
veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a
tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army
of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka
Dixiecrats). “I’m too sexy for my sheet,” sneered Steyn.
Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today
was a red square, not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue
Southern Cross. In the cross were – still are – the 13 stars
representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.
It fell to the woman who used to come across as the
consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann
Coulter is indeed lovely:
Wars are generally a rich man’s affair and a poor man’s
fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederate officials in
support of slavery and a war for
slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not
slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting
a “War for Southern Independence.” They rejected central
coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered
voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even
establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, “The
South was protesting not only against the North’s
interference in its ‘peculiar institution’ but against the
growth of government generally.”
Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was “appalled
by” South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call “for the
removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state
Capitol.” As “a student of American history,” Coulter
offered that “the Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about
never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a
battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who
knows the first thing about military history knows that
there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field
than the Confederate Army.”
Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in
predatory boldness.
And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor
knows that there was no man more valorous and
courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose “two uncles signed
the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a
notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.”
“Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,”
wrote the South’s greatest hero, Gen. Lee. He did not go
to war for that repugnant institution. To this American
hero, local was truly beautiful. “In 1861 he was offered
command of all the armies of the United States, the height
of a soldier’s ambition,” chronicles Clyde Wilson,
distinguished professor emeritus of history at the
University of South Carolina. “But the path of honor
commanded him to choose to defend his own people from
invasion rather than do the bidding of the politicians who
controlled the federal machinery in Washington.”
The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia – known
as “Lee’s Army” – is not to be conflated with the “Stars
and Bars,” which “became the official national flag of the
Confederacy.” According to Sons of the South, the “first
official use of the ‘Stars and Bars’ was at the inauguration
of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.” But because it
resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union,
the “Stars and Bars” proved a liability during the Battle of
Bull Run.
To his sister, Lee wrote: “With all my devotion to the
Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American
citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise
my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.”
Lee, you see, was first and foremost a Virginian, the state
The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags
was of great concern to Confederate Gen. P.G.T.
Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate
national flag be changed to something completely
1
that gave America its greatest presidents and the
Constitution itself.
Not quite Leonidas’ 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, but
close.
Lord Acton, the British historian of liberty, wrote to Lee
in praise. The general, surmised Lord Acton, was fighting
to preserve “the only availing check upon the absolutism
of the sovereign will”: states’ rights and secession.
“The U.S. government had quadruple the South’s
resources.” Yet “it took 22 million Northerners four years
of the bloodiest warfare in American history to conquer 5
million Southerners,” who “mobilized 90 percent of their
men and lost nearly a fourth.”
Lee’s inspired reply to Lord Acton:
When they hoist the battle flag of the Army of Northern
Virginia, it is these soldiers Southerners honor.
“… I believe that the maintenance of the rights and
authority reserved to the states and to the people …
are the safeguard to the continuance of a free
government … whereas the consolidation of the
states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive
abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain
precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all
those that have preceded it.”
Unable to defeat the South, the U.S. government resorted
to terrorism—to an unprecedented war against Southern
women and children.
With their battle flag, Southerners commemorate these
innocents.
Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the
U.S. She pens WND's longest-standing, exclusive
paleolibertarian column, "Return to Reason." She is a
fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an
award-winning, independent, nonprofit, free-market
economic policy think-tank. Mercer's latest book is "Into
the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons For America From PostApartheid South Africa."
Another extraordinary Southerner was James Johnston
Pettigrew. He gave his life for Southern
independence, not for slavery. Quoting Pettigrew,
professor Wilson likens the forbearance of his own
Confederate forebears to “the small Greek city-states who
stood against the mighty Persian Empire in the fifth
century B.C.”
Apple Removes All American Civil War Games from the App Store
Because of the Confederate Flag
by Old Rebel (Mike Tuggle)
Yesterday I published a post entitled Taking Down That
Flag Is Just A Start, which discussed the glorious path
leftists think will take us all to Utopia. I agree with the
title of that piece -- taking down the flaw WILL be the
start of something, though probably NOT what the leftists
and statists envision. It's shaping up to be the start of an
energized backlash, as indicated in this story
from Business Insider:
Cultural Revolution? Who said anything about a Cultural
Revolution? Oh, you mean this kind of thing from Apple:
Many large US companies, like Walmart and
Amazon, have already banned the sale of any
Confederate flag merchandise as a reaction to the
recent events. Now, it appears that Apple has
decided to join them by pulling many Civil War
wargames from the App Store. As of the writing of
this story, games like Ultimate General: Gettysburg
and all the Hunted Cow Civil War games are
nowhere to be found. (Torch Arcade)
Amazon's sales of Confederate flags have
skyrocketed by more than 3,000% in the past 24
hours.
People are snatching up the flags online after several
major retailers — including eBay, Wal-Mart, and
Sears — pulled them from shelves.
Things are getting REAL weird out there.
Same-sex "marriage" is now the law of the land. Because in America, we have democracy, and
that means the people are sovereign.
All nine of them.
-- Old Rebel
2
What Confederate Battle Flag Truly Stands For
Decries 'the new dogma of the cultural Marxists'
By Pat Buchanan
Even as ISIS is desecrating tombs in Palmyra, Syria,
the cultural purge of the South has begun.
“I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive
you.”
So said Nadine Collier, who lost her mother in the
massacre at the Emanuel AME Church in
Charleston, South Carolina, offering forgiveness to
Dylann Roof, who confessed to the atrocity that took the
lives of nine churchgoers at that Wednesday night prayer
service and Bible study.
Rep. Steve Cohen wants the name of legendary
cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest removed from
Forrest Park in Memphis and his bust gone from the state
Capitol; Sen. Mitch McConnell wants the statue of
Confederate President Jefferson Davis removed from the
Kentucky Capitol.
If there is a better recent example of what it means to be a
Christian, I am unaware of it. Collier and the families of
those slain showed a faithfulness to Christ’s gospel of love
and forgiveness that many are taught but few are strong
enough to follow, especially at times like this.
Governors are rushing to remove replicas of the battle flag
from license plates, with Virginia’s Terry McAuliffe the
most vocal. Will McAuliffe also demand that the statues
of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson be removed from
Monument Avenue in Richmond?
Their Christian witness testifies to a forgotten truth: If
slavery was the worst thing that happened to black folks
brought from Africa to America, Christianity was the best.
“Take Down a Symbol of Hatred,” rails the New York
Times.
But the battle flag is not so much a symbol of hatred as it
is an object of hatred, a target of hatred. It evokes a hatred
of the visceral sort that we see manifest in Jenkins’
equating of the South of Washington, Jefferson, John
Calhoun, Andrew Jackson and Lee with Hitler’s Third
Reich.
Charleston, too, gave us an example of how a city should
behave when faced with horror.
Contrast the conduct of those good Southern people who
stood outside that church in solidarity with the aggrieved,
with the Ferguson mobs that looted and burned and the
New York mobs that chanted for the killing of cops when
the Eric Garner grand jury declined to indict.
What the flag symbolizes for the millions who revere,
cherish or love it, however, is the heroism of those who
fought and died under it. That flag flew over battlefields,
not over slave quarters.
Yet, predictably, the cultural Marxists, following Rahm
Emanuel’s dictum that you never let a crisis go to waste,
descended like locusts.
Hence, who are the real haters here?
Can the Times really believe that all those coffee cups and
baseball caps and T-shirts and sweaters and flag decals on
car and truck bumpers are declarations that the owners
hate black people? Does the Times believe Southern folks
fly the battle flag in their yards because they want slavery
back?
As Roof had filmed himself flaunting a Confederate battle
flag, the cry went out to tear that flag down from the war
memorial in Columbia, South Carolina, and remove its
vile presence everywhere in America.
Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post appeared front and
center on its op-ed page with this call to healing: “The
Confederate battle flag is an American swastika, the relic
of traitors and totalitarians, symbol of a brutal regime, not
a republic. The Confederacy was treason in defense of a
still deeper crime against humanity: slavery.”
The Times’ editorialists cannot be such fools.
Vilification of that battle flag and the Confederacy is part
of the cultural revolution in America that flowered half a
century ago. Among its goals was the demoralization of
the American people by demonizing their past and
poisoning their belief in their own history.
But if Jenkins’ hate-filled screed is right, if the
Confederacy was Nazi Germany on American soil, then
not only the battle flag must go.
The world is turned upside down. The new dogma of the
cultural Marxists: Columbus was a genocidal racist. Three
of our Founding Fathers – Washington, Jefferson,
Madison – were slave owners. Andrew Jackson was an
ethnic cleanser of Indians. The great Confederate generals
–- Lee, Jackson, Forrest – fought to preserve an evil
institution. You have nothing to be proud of and much to
be ashamed of if your ancestors fought for the South. And,
The Confederate War Memorial on the Capitol grounds
honors the scores of thousands of South Carolinians who
died in the lost cause. And if that was a cause of traitors
and totalitarians and about nothing but slavery, ought not
that memorial be dynamited?
3
oh yes, your battle flag is the moral equivalent of a Nazi
swastika.
Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican
presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate
in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American
Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the
White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV
shows, and is the author of 10 books. His latest book
is "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose
From Defeat to Create the New Majority."
And how is the Republican Party standing up to this
cultural lynch mob? Retreating and running as fast as
possible.
If we are to preserve our republic, future generations are
going to need what that battle flag truly stands for: pride
in our history and defiance in the face of the arrogance of
power.
Good Intentions along the Road to Hell
U.S. will not recover from week's SCOTUS decisions
By Craige McMillan
It’s tempting to say, “I’d like to see their bank
accounts and social calendars,” in trying to
understand such behavior. The truth, I think, lies
more toward the latter. Here is what a very astute
observer of world events had to say about this way
back when (Oct. 15, 1950):
During the last dozen or so years, I have become
more aware of the unseen hands guiding the world’s
affairs. They have a definite destination in mind.
These unseen hands don’t push ours out of the way
as we study the chessboard and ready our next move. No,
more often they arrange the circumstances around us to
guide our own hand in the direction they will.
“Bertrand Russell’s Unpopular Essays please and irritate
at the same time, like so many things. Consider his kind of
mind and point of view, though in a way attractive, the
most ruinous of all, the most destructive, the most
cowardly, the most lamentable. His reason tells him to
seek what pleases and to shun the disagreeable, and,
obeying it, he becomes utterly selfish, indifferent to all
forms of responsibility, person and social – in fact, the
precise opposite of what he intends. Tolerance in excess is
as much a vice as any other virtue in excess.” ["Like It
Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge," William
Morrow and Company Inc., 1982, p. 415]
You may call these hands fate, destiny, God or the devil.
What they are called doesn’t much matter. What they do,
does.
Here, the U.S. Supreme Court’s two recent decisions on
Obamacare and marriage are instructive. As the court had
done the first time Mr. Obamacare appeared in its
courtroom, it simply reinterpreted what Congress had
written so that the benefit to certain people, at the expense
of others, could be preserved. First it wasn’t a tax, then it
was a tax. This time it wasn’t a subsidy, now it is a
subsidy. Ho, hum. Nothing to see here. Next case.
Washington, D.C., is now an echo chamber filled with
pompous people-pleasers and others with checkbooks at
the ready who want to be pleased. With enough money in
hand, voters become irrelevant because they can be
manipulated once every few years.
The whole SCOTUS thing strikes me rather like a
motorist who is stopped for speeding. The man then
invites the officer to walk back to the most recent sign
with the posted speed limit, which was just behind them.
In the policeman’s presence, the motorist withdraws a
spray can and paints a new number on the sign that makes
his rate of travel through town legal. “There. Fixedya.” No
difference between a renegade motorist and our Supreme
Court.
There is no moral compass guiding our nation’s decisions.
The result with these finger-in-the-air types is situational
ethics, contradictory laws and enforcement, and ultimately
chaos – which destroys the many for the benefit of the
few. Therefore, sexual license now automatically entitles
one to a marriage license – which states cannot deny.
Children become chattel. And that most basic right –
conscience – is to be denied the many in service of the DC
cocktail circuit.
For the more thoughtful, the question as to “why” arises.
Did the court learn nothing from its disastrous abortion
decision? That decision led directly to the deaths of 60
million infants. That one court decision alone puts
America right up there with Stalin and Mao in murder and
mayhem. This court doesn’t want to legislate morality – it
wants to legislate human conscience. And legislating is
what it is doing. A simple majority of nine people now
rewrite the law to please themselves.
If there were no supernatural element to this, America
could perhaps at some point recover from these decisions.
There is. She won’t.
Craige McMillan is a longtime commentator for WND.
4
The Undoing of American Government
Reacts to high court's Obamacare ruling
By Joseph Farah
unravel it – claiming the new majority couldn’t do
anything without the presidency. It was nonsense
from the beginning. Funding for implementation
could have been choked off at any time. The new
majority had the power of the purse.
It was a great idea while it lasted.
There would be a Constitution that restrained the
power of government and protected the rights of
individuals.
Most of the traditional governmental powers would be
reserved to the states.
Still, the people challenged the legality of the law in two
cases before the Supreme Court. In the first one, the
majority upheld Obamacare, claiming it was indeed a tax
after all. In the second ruling, six of nine justices twisted
the very clear words of the bill with regard to the state and
federal exchanges that were set up to provide subsidies to
individuals under the law in an effort to legitimize it.
There would be checks and balances on the federal
government’s inclination for exceeding its scope of
authority with a tripartite form of federal government –
executive, legislative, judicial.
In addition, there would be other checks and balances
outside of government, like the protection of what was, at
the time, an unheard of right America’s founders declared
to be “unalienable” – freedom of the press.
The system broke down at every turn.
It broke down in all three parts of government.
One of the premiere checks and balances established by
the founders, the “free press,” also choked – failing to
hold the government accountable to the rule of law.
As ingenious as the plan was – and as well as it served the
country and the people for more than 200 years – it’s time
to recognize what is becoming increasingly obvious to
anyone who understands and appreciates the masterful,
artful, inspired idea behind American government: It has
been deliberately undone. It has been broken intentionally
by those who prefer chains on the people rather than on
government. It has been nuked by those who simply don’t
like liberty or don’t know what it is.
Is this the only time this has happened recently?
Not at all. It is the new normal. It happens every day in
Washington – in most cases with little notice and with
consequences less serious.
What we’ve learned from these exercises – or should have
learned – is that the people have no say in their
government anymore, the two-party system is a joke, the
three branches of government don’t stick to their clearly
defined roles but do whatever they feel like doing
whenever they feel like doing it.
If you needed any more convincing we had reached this
point in history, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on the
legality of Obamacare should surely be the last straw.
From the start, the law was conceived in a plot to ignore
the will of the people. It was unpopular, but was approved
in Congress by members of one party only at the behest of
their fearless leader, Barack Obama. This was to be his
signature presidential accomplishment – and, indeed, you
might say it has been just that. The people didn’t get to
read the bill. They were actually told it would have to be
passed so they could find out what was in it.
There’s no one to stop government from becoming the
unbridled, unchecked tyranny the founders most feared.
There’s no more rule of law.
The will of the people is unimportant.
Goodnight, America. Will the last illegal alien to enter
please turn out the lights?
The people were told repeatedly it was not a tax;
therefore, it didn’t matter that the legislation wasn’t first
passed by the House of Representatives as would be
required by the Constitution.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a
nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News
Service.. He is the author or co-author of 13 books,
including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," and his
classic, "Taking America Back," now in its third edition
and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the
legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market
dailies.
More than any other act of Congress, it prompted an
electoral revolution in which the party solely responsible
for the law was thrown out of power in the House. Four
years later, it would be thrown from power from the
Senate as well.
But the incoming party, riding the popular will against
Obamacare to victory and power, didn’t dare lift a hand to
5
The Real Reason for the Anti-Confederate Flag Hysteria
By Thomas DiLorenzo
private sector only to fatten the government
bureaucracy, depriving all Americans of job
opportunities. What has the Confederate flag
have to do with ANY of this? ALL of this was
done under the auspices of the U.S. flag.
Every couple of years the totalitarian socialist
Left in America (a.k.a., the Democratic Party
and all of its appendages) pretends to be
indignant about the existence of the
Confederate flag somewhere. The lapdog
cultural Marxist media fall in line, treating the
siting of the flag in the same way they would
treat the siting of an Ebola victim in a large
crowd. Americans are reminded once again by
the New York/New England/Ivy League-educated
presstitute class that they should hate Southerners and all
things Southern. As Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart
recently whined in faux horror, Southerners “waged war
against the United States” government! Waaaaaaaaah!
The ideological lynchpin of the cultural
Marxists who dominate so much of American
politics, the media and the universities is the
argument that there is one and only one reason
why there still exists a “black underclass” (mostly) in
American cities, namely, “white privilege” and “the
legacy of slavery.” To cultural Marxists, nothing else
matters, or should even be allowed to be discussed. The
welfare/warfare state, the war on drugs, the public
schools, etc. cannot possibly have had anything but good
effects, they say, because they were all undertaken with
the best of intentions. It’s all the fault of “white
privilege,” say privileged white politicians, privileged
white university administrators, and privileged white
media talking heads.
The anti-Confederate flag hysteria is only one small part
of the Left’s general strategy, however. It is part of their
overriding strategy of diverting the public’s attention
away from all the grotesque failures of leftist
interventionism, form the welfare state to the government
takeover of education to the war on drugs and beyond.
The neocons who run the Republican Party are usually
complicit in all of this.
The Confederate flag, they claim, is the banner of white
privilege, the sole cause of all the problems of the
“underclass”; hence, all the extreme torches-andpitchforks-type behavior over the flag in recent days. The
cultural Marxist Left views it all as an assault on “white
privilege,” the source of all evil in the world.
The welfare state has decimated the black family and is
hard at work destroying the white family as well by
eliminating the stigma against a man’s abandoning his
wife and children with welfare checks (See Charles
Murray, Losing Ground). What does the Confederate flag
have to do with this? The welfare state has destroyed the
work ethic of millions of Americans. What does the
Confederate flag have to do with this? The Fed caused the
biggest depression since the Great Depression with its
latest boom-and-bust-cycle act. What does the
Confederate flag have to do with this?
Another defining characteristic of the cultural Marxist
Left is its hatred of free speech – by those who disagree
with it. Free speech should only be enjoyed by the victims
of white (heterosexual male) oppression, they say.
Allowing white male oppressors to have free speech
simply leads to even more “oppression” of the oppressed
(which now includes everyone who is not a white
heterosexual male). This is why so many university
administrators proudly crack down on academic freedom
with campus speech codes, tolerance of riotous disruptions
of conservative or libertarian campus lecturers, and even
the libeling and slandering of such speakers when they are
allowed to speak. It makes them popular among the
cultural Marxist faculty in the humanities and social
sciences, and therefore makes their jobs and lives more
pleasant. It also helps to cement into place the cultural
Marxist mantra that “white privilege” is the one and only
source of all the world’s problems.
The rotten inner city government schools have enriched
uneducated “teachers” and school bureaucrats but have
ruined the lives of untold numbers of black children with
fraudulent “education.” What does the Confederate flag
have to do with this?
The war on drugs has had a horrific racial effect in that it
has caused the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of
mostly young black men from the inner cities while
creating the reasons for drug-gang violence and all the
death that is associated with it. What does the Confederate
flag have to do with this?
I offer as a personal example of this phenomenon the
malicious libeling of Professor Walter Block several years
ago by one Brian Linnane, the president of Loyola
University Maryland, an ugly event that many readers of
LewRockwell.com will recall. At my invitation, Professor
Block presented a lecture to the undergraduate Adam
The minimum wage law has always had a
disproportionately harmful effect on black teenage
unemployment. What has the Confederate flag have to do
with this? High taxes, onerous regulations, and
uncontrollable government spending by all levels of
government have sucked resources out of the job-creating
6
The libeling occurred when Brian Linnane sent an email
to all of the university’s students, faculty, and alumni
apologizing for the “insensitivity” of Professor Block’s
speech, which he did not personally hear, along with a
sanctimonious proclamation of how devoted he was to the
cause of anti-discrimination. He clearly wanted his
readers to think, incorrectly, that Professor Block must
have uttered some kind of racist epithet.
Smith Club on the evening of their annual dinner. His
topic was the economics of discrimination, a very
mainstream topic that is addressed in all principles of
economics textbooks (I recommend Walter Williams’ new
book on the subject, Race and Economics: How Much
Does Discrimination Explain?). Professor Block is
known as an iconoclast, but in this instance he presented a
very mainstream talk consistent with the ideas of his old
graduate school dissertation chairman, the late Gary
Becker, author of The Economics of Discrimination,
which I believe was Becker’s own dissertation at the
University of Chicago way back when.
The real reason for the malicious libeling of Walter Block
by the Loyola University administration was revealed (to
me, at least) by a statement that one of the undergraduate
students in the room made at the end of Professor Block’s
lecture. “But we want to talk about the legacy of slavery,”
he sheepishly complained, in good politically-correct
fashion. Outside of the economics students in the room,
who knew better, the other students like this one were
thoroughly brainwashed in the cultural Marxist “white
privilege” mantra along with the notion that all other
discussions of the possible causes of black/white wage
differences, unemployment, or anything else, should be
censored by any means possible. They are incapable of
even engaging in a question-and-answer session with
someone like Professor Block, since that would require
the use of logical thought. All they had been taught, for
the most part, was how to mouth left-wing political
platitudes and slogans.
Professor Block did his usual fabulous job of explaining
how racial or sexual discrimination in the workplace is
penalized in a free, competitive market by creating profit
opportunities for competitors. For example, if an
employer pays a white male employee $50,000/year, and
an equally-qualified black or female employee $25,000
for the same job for which each employee is capable of
producing say, $60,000 in revenue for the employer, the
black or female employee is bound to be scooped up by a
competitor. The competing business person can offer
them say, $35,000 and make $25,000 on the deal ($60,000
in revenue minus $35,000 in salary). Then another
competitor may offer $40,000, or $50,000, etc., depending
on the intensity of competition. If there is enough
competition, the “pay gap” will disappear altogether. This
is how free-market competition penalizes racial or sexual
discrimination in the workplace and causes it to diminish
or disappear. The lecture was met with applause by the
students.
Thus, the purpose of Brian Linnane’s malicious libeling of
Walter Block was to send the rest of the campus the
message that such non-cultural Marxist talk would no
longer be tolerated on “his” campus, and that anyone who
attempted it would be smeared as a racist – or worse.
Something like this scenario has been played out at
numerous other American universities. It is all part and
parcel, along with the Confederate flag hysteria, of the
cultural Marxist crusade against “white privilege” in their
campaign of denial of the grotesque failures of
“liberalism.”
But the whole thing was a set-up by the campus cultural
Marxists, led by the university president, Brian Linnane.
They sent a single black student to the lecture who
supposedly complained (not to me, the sponsor of the
lecture, but to the gang of cultural Marxist faculty and
administrators on campus known to some students as the
“social justice crowd”) that Professor Block’s remarks
were “insensitive.” That was seven years ago. To this
day, no one associated with the Loyola University
Maryland administration has ever revealed just what
Professor Block said that was “insensitive,” or why their
students should be treated like imbecilic little infants
whose ears must be protected from ”insensitive” speech
such as Gary Becker/University of Chicago-style
economics. They even refused to answer the question
when a Baltimore Sun reporter asked them about it.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola
College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln;
;Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To
Know about Dishonest Abe, How Capitalism Saved
America, Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy
Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means
for America Today. His latest book is Organized Crime:
The Unvarnished Truth About Government.
7
Take Away Religion and You Can't Hire Enough Police
Sees government fiat replacing citizens' self-control
By Patrice Lewis
Religious parents reinforce this on a daily basis, and
church attendance reinforces this weekly.
Last week I was reading Andre Shea King’s column
entitled “Words of wisdom from a Marxist.” It
included a short video clip of a professor from the
Harvard Business School in Boston named Clayton
Christensen.
Right now in modern America, we are witnessing
what happens when people flout the godly rules our
Founding Fathers used in the writing of the Constitution
and Bill of Rights, which all educated people must agree
has a religious foundation. Like bratty children flouting
the rules of their parents, we think rules are unnecessary
and stifling. People mock, sneer and taunt the Almighty,
yet Americans still feel entitled to receive His blessings.
The video, no more than 90 seconds long, blew me away.
Here is the transcript:
Some time ago I had a conversation with a Marxist
economist from China. He was coming to the end of
a Fulbright Fellowship here in Boston. I asked him if
he had learned anything that was surprising or
unexpected. Without any hesitation he said, “Yeah. I
had no idea how critical religion is to the functioning
of democracy.”
What IS self-control, anyway? And why is it important?
Quite simply, self-control is the ability to regulate our
personal impulses and reactions. It’s the realization that
behavior (not moods or emotions, but behavior) is often
a choice. Self-control is often referred to as selfregulation.
“The reason why democracy works,” he said, “is not
because the government was designed to oversee
what everybody does; but rather, democracy works
because most people, most of the time, voluntarily
choose to obey the law. In your past, most
Americans attended a church or synagogue every
week, and they were taught there by people who
they respected.”
Why is it important? The answer is eerily simple: If you
can’t control yourself, someone else must control
you. This is precisely what the Chinese Marxist economist
observed.
He should know. China is one of the most intensely
government-regulated societies on the planet. Do we
really want that in America? Hmmm. Maybe some of us
do.
My friend went on to say that Americans follow
these rules because they had come to believe that
they weren’t just accountable to society – they were
accountable to God.
It’s clear that our nation as a whole has suffered because
of a lack of individual self-control. When we can’t (or
won’t) control our own behavior, government will often
step in and control that behavior for us.
My Chinese friend heightened a vague but nagging
concern I’ve harbored inside, that as religion loses
its influence over the lives of Americans, what will
happen to our democracy? Where are the institutions
that are going to teach the next generation of
Americans that they, too, must choose to voluntarily
obey the laws?
There are those who applaud this loss of self-control,
preferring instead to revel in their “freedom of expression”
and taunting those who control their own behavior as
“repressed” or “puritanical.” They welcome the idea of
government becoming God. These are the people who like
the fact that government has become the controller, and
welcome public funding of their inability to self-regulate.
They welcome government mandates for how much
power we can use, what kinds of cars we can drive, what
foods we can eat, what medical care options we have, how
we can educate our children … in short, there’s virtually
nothing the government wouldn’t happily take over to
force us to control ourselves in compliance with their
agenda.
Because if you take away religion, you can’t hire
enough police.
Chew on that last statement, folks.
Do you really think it’s an accident that our society is
become more and more lawless as the importance of faith
in our daily lives recedes?
A huge element of a religious people is the self-control
they are taught from toddlerhood. When you think about
it, a Judeo-Christian heritage is all about self-control.
There are rules and regulations laid down by God. He
gave standards of expected behavior. While we all sin and
fall short, that doesn’t mean we are excused from trying.
Atheists will immediately protest that they know right
from wrong and don’t need a “bronze age deity” telling
them what to do in order to be law-abiding citizens. OK,
fine, whatever. But “who” is stopping you from filching
that pack of gum from the grocery store? Is it your
8
Does it really take a Chinese Marxist to point out the
obvious? “I had no idea how critical religion is to the
functioning of democracy,” he said. In the push toward an
atheist, hedonistic culture, we may lose the very thing that
distinguished America from the rest of the world, notably
China.
conscience? What is at the basis of your conscience? Gee,
could it be … God? Nah, can’t be.
As God is taken out or denied in our society, we’re no
longer trying to fight our sinful nature. Instead we
welcome it. We embrace it. We wallow it in. We celebrate
it. Has America become freer and more independent as a
result? Or are we becoming more watched, more
surveyed, more followed, more – controlled?
We may fight religion. We may fight God. But we cannot
fight the fact that America is becoming more obsessively
government-controlled. And as we’re already seeing,
governmental fiat is a very poor replacement for godly
self-control.
I think it was Rush Limbaugh who said something to the
effect that you know you’re successful when half the
country hates your guts. To take this analogy a leap
forward, God must know when His Son is successful
when half the world hates Him. In the gospel of John,
Jesus says: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it
hated me first. … Whoever hates me hates my Father as
well. … [T]hey have seen, and yet they have hated both
me and my Father. But this is to fulfill what is written in
their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’”
Patrice Lewis is a freelance writer whose latest book
is "The Simplicity Primer: 365 Ideas for Making Life more
Livable." She is co-founder (with her husband) of a home
woodcraft business. The Lewises live on 20 acres in north
Idaho with their two homeschooled children, assorted
livestock, and a shop that overflows into the house with
depressing regularity.
Breitbart
American College of Pediatricians on Same-Sex Marriage Ruling:
‘A Tragic Day for America’s Children’
by Dr. Susan Berry
In a statement released Friday, the president of
the American College of Pediatricians said the Supreme
Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage will have a
significantly negative impact on children in the United
States.
In the brief, the amici stated what is often the case when
sound research is ignored by the left when it fails to
support their causes:
Despite being certified by almost all major social
science scholarly associations—indeed, in part
because of this—the alleged scientific consensus that
having two parents of the same sex is innocuous for
child well-being is almost wholly without basis. All
but a handful of the studies cited in support draw on
small, non-random samples which cannot be
extrapolated to the same-sex population at large.
This limitation is repeatedly acknowledged in
scientific meetings and journals, but ignored when
asserted as settled findings in public or judicial
advocacy.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the College, said:
[T]his is a tragic day for America’s children. The
SCOTUS has just undermined the single greatest
pro-child institution in the history of mankind: the
natural family. Just as it did in the joint Roe v
Wade and Doe v Bolton decisions, the SCOTUS has
elevated and enshrined the wants of adults over the
needs of children.
The College, which has members in 44 states and in
several countries outside the U.S., joined in an amici
brief in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that has led to the
legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states of the
nation.
The College itself has maintained that a significant body
of research has demonstrated that “same-sex marriage
deliberately deprives the child of a mother or a father, and
is therefore harmful.”
9
'Gay Marriage' Ruling: Evil With a Silver Lining
'Satan is laughing himself silly right now'
By Matt Barber
decision, he railed, “robs the People of the most
important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of
Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the
freedom to govern themselves.”
Well, that was predictable. On Friday, with its
majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, five
judicial imperialists perched high atop the U.S.
Supreme Court bench called the Supreme Being a
liar. They presumed to invent, out of thin air and
through judicial fiat, a “constitutional right” to sin-based
“gay marriage.” (Father God, as you exact Your perfect
justice on America, please have mercy upon Your
faithful.)
But I promised a silver lining, and there is one – a big one.
One that is sure to infuriate the anti-Christian left. The
majority opinion emphasized that this newfangled “right”
to “gay marriage” should not be construed to trump
religious liberty:
The horrific nature of this illegitimate decision cannot be
overstated. It makes a mockery of the institution of
marriage, something of which God alone has the authority
to design and define. It represents a level of judicial
activism unmatched since Dred Scott, Buck v. Bell or Roe
v. Wade.
“Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those
who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to
advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine
precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The
First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and
persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach
the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their
lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to
continue the family structure they have long revered. The
same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for
other reasons.”
Man-woman marriage, as He designed it, is the metaphor
God uses for the relationship between Christ and His
Church. In addition to mocking marriage, this decision
mocks God.
Which is by spiritual design.
I’m not naïve. We’ll have to see what this actually means
in coming years, but when filtered through any honest
reading of the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause,
what it means is that Christians cannot be forced to violate
their conscience through compulsory participation in, or
recognition of, counterfeit “gay weddings” or “marriages.”
Satan is laughing himself silly right now. His demonic
minions, both above and below, are popping the bubbly
and clinking the champagne flutes.
Evil has triumphed.
For now at least.
Ever.
But not in the end.
Of course there’s nothing honest about the five liberals on
this court, and Chief Justice Roberts makes that point in
his dissent. He expresses skepticism as to the majority’s
sincerity: “The majority graciously suggests that religious
believers may continue to ‘advocate’ and ‘teach’ their
views of marriage,” he writes. “The First Amendment
guarantees, however, the freedom to ‘exercise‘ religion.
Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses.”
Because God will not be mocked.
And victory is His.
Still, on top of being an arrogant affront to Almighty God,
this opinion of five unelected and unaccountable justices
is also a constitutional disaster. “The Court’s decision
fundamentally rewrites the 14th Amendment to the United
States Constitution to radically redefine the cornerstone
institution of marriage, which is older than the Court
itself,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty
Counsel.
“Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise
religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new
right to same-sex marriage,” he continues. “[W]hen, for
example, a religious college provides married student
housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a
religious adoption agency declines to place children with
same-sex married couples. Indeed, the Solicitor General
candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some
religious institutions would be in question if they opposed
same-sex marriage. There is little doubt that these and
similar questions will soon be before this Court.”
The decision also drew sharp criticism from the Court’s
four dissenting justices. Chief Justice John Roberts, for
example, rightly observed that the activist majority
opinion hijacks the democratic process and is not based on
the rule of law: “[D]o not celebrate the Constitution. It had
nothing to do with it,” wrote Roberts.
Justice Scalia similarly called the ruling a “threat to
American democracy.” The “pretentious” and “egotistic”
Little doubt indeed.
10
government for refusing to participate in sin – for
declining to provide goods or services for “gay
weddings,” or for otherwise refusing to recognize “gay
marriage” for anything other than the evil it represents.
As many of us have long warned, all this “gay marriage”
nonsense was never about “marriage equality.” It was, and
remains, a spiritual battle camouflaged in the formal attire
of judicial and public policy wrangling. It was always
about forcing Christ’s faithful followers, under penalty of
law, to abandon biblical truth and embrace sexual sin. The
goal of “LGBT” activists and secular progressives has
long been to pit the government directly against the free
exercise of religion – Christianity in particular – and to
silence all dissent.
Even so, let us not don our rose-colored glasses. Friday’s
ruling comes straight from the pit of Hell. Even with its
religious liberty “silver lining,” it has not ended the
debate; it has only just launched it. It has opened the
floodgates to anti-Christian persecution. Leftist lawsuit
abuse against Christian individuals and organizations will
now flow hot like the River Styx.
Let me be clear. You will never silence us, and we
Christians don’t need liberty crumbs tossed down from
some temporal bench on high. Christians, faithful
Christians (as opposed to the apostate variety), will not,
indeed cannot, have anything whatsoever to do with the
wickedness that is “gay marriage,” and we will disobey
any man-made law or ruling that presumes to make us do
otherwise.
But don’t despair, my brothers and sisters in Christ. For
we who are God’s children have already overcome.
Because greater is He Who is in us, than he who is in the
world.
And greater is He who created marriage, than he who
perverts it.
That said, it does provide some consolation to have, in the
spirit of Hobby Lobby, this court at least pay lip service,
inelegant though it may be, to every American’s Godgiven constitutional right to freedom of conscience. The
one positive thing that came from this ruling is the
reaffirmation of First Amendment protections
guaranteeing, for instance, that the Christian baker, florist,
photographer, et al., cannot be penalized by the
Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief
of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural
analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional
law. Having retired as an undefeated
heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight
from the ring to the culture war.
Confederate flag sales are skyrocketing
by Old Rebel (Mike Tuggle)
Yesterday I published a post entitled Taking Down That
Flag Is Just A Start, which discussed the glorious path
leftists think will take us all to Utopia. I agree with the
title of that piece -- taking down the flaw WILL be the
start of something, though probably NOT what the leftists
and statists envision. It's shaping up to be the start of an
energized backlash, as indicated in this story
from Business Insider:
Amazon's sales of Confederate flags have
skyrocketed by more than 3,000% in the past 24
hours.
People are snatching up the flags online after several
major retailers — including eBay, Wal-Mart, and
Sears — pulled them from shelves.
3,000%? Wow. Let a thousand flowers bloom by flying
the Southern Cross all over the South.
11
The Reset Button
By Mike Vanderboegh, an alleged leader of the merry band of Three Percenters
be no widespread popular resistance to Obergefell.
This is the new normal.
For another, LGBT activists and their fellow
travelers really will be coming after social
conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in
constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is
equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be
a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status
from dissenting religious institutions. The more
immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution
of dissenters within civil society. . .
Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes
to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets
wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is
the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect
declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the
traditional American social, political, and legal
order.
Rod Dreher writes "Orthodox Christians
Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in
Our Own Country."
No, the sky is not falling — not yet,
anyway — but with the Supreme
Court ruling constitutionalizing samesex marriage, the ground under our
feet has shifted tectonically. It is hard
to overstate the significance of the
Obergefell decision — and the seriousness of the
challenges it presents to orthodox Christians and
other social conservatives. Voting Republican and
other failed culture war strategies are not going to
save us now. . .
Dreher's solution is to accept it and pray. I'm certainly not
going to gainsay the value of prayer, but the persecution
of Christians (or Jews or any other religion for that matter)
in the name of political correctness can and must be
resisted, even if by force of arms. These people are going
to be coming at us with the naked force of state violence.
Such violence can and must be resisted, and not just with
prayer. (I was talking with a friend on the phone just today
and he can't believe that they are so stupid as to mess with
people's fundamental religious beliefs, characterizing it as
suicidal. I don't disagree.)
But when a Supreme Court majority is willing to
invent rights out of nothing, it is impossible to have
faith that the First Amendment will offer any but the
barest protection to religious dissenters from gay
rights orthodoxy. Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and
Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious
traditionalists that this decision leaves them
vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used
to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to
the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the
faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out
every vestige of dissent.”
And I have news for our would-be oppressors. When you
come at us with state violence to seize our churches, jail
our pastors, you are going to lose because we will make it
not worth your while to oppress us. And then, after we've
won, we're going to press the reset button.
I was having this conversation with a reader the other day
in reference to the firearm laws we are breaking in the
various states and he asked me what we were going to do
about previous infringements, going back to GCA 68 and
the NFA of 1934. I told him, when they start the shooting
we don't quit until we have pushed the reset button on the
last 100 plus years of infringements. They lose it all -- the
Federal Reserve, fiat currency, the income tax, all the gun
laws, all the nanny state fascism, the murder of innocents
on demand, the tortured rendering of the Interstate
Commerce clause, the bloated federal bureaucracy,
everything. EVERYTHING.
The warning to conservatives from the four
dissenters could hardly be clearer or stronger. So
where does that leave us? For one, we have to accept
that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian
nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long
been able to depend on no longer exist. To be frank,
the court majority may impose on the rest of the
nation a view widely shared by elites, but it is also a
view shared by a majority of Americans. There will
Our enemies will lie and say that we want to roll back the
civil rights laws, put gays back in the closet and re-enslave
black folks but that is a lie. We believe that the
12
Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed,
color or religion -- BUT WITHOUT PREFERRED
CLASSES. In our Constitutional Republic, some animals
are NOT more equal than others. At this remove, nobody
cares who diddles who as long as they are adults and can
give consent. Most of us have become convinced
libertarians on the drug war as well, because it only
empowers two classes of criminal gangs -- the cartels and
the imperial militarized federal government.
So when the reset button gets pushed in the aftermath of
the tyrants' attacks and their defeat, they lose it all.
Everything. Every tool of our oppression. This is
something they should think about before they rouse their
own people to righteous anger. They will lose everything
they hold most dear -- their power over us, their position,
their appetite for our liberty, our property and our lives.
That is what "reset" means to them in the context of the
civil war they are determined to have. Everything.
The Inquisitir
Walmart Makes ISIS Cake for Southerner, but Refuses Confederate Flag
headers of Christians, burners of gays to be made in your
store,” Netzhammer wrote.
He continued, “You also allow offensive Rap music which
sings about cop killing, degrading women, drive by
murder, drug use, selling drugs, prostitution and
repeatably [sic] uses the highly offensive word
‘n***er.’… But you can’t buy a beloved children’s toy car
with a Confederate flag on the roof?”
Here’s the video so you can see it for yourself.
The story attracted the attention of conservative
blog Young Conservatives, which pointed out that in spite
of the refusal by Walmart to sell Confederate
merchandise, it does carry posters and shirts of the
notorious Che Guevara, who is often vilified for his role in
the Communist takeover of Cuba and his racist rhetoric
towards black people.
Walmart could be in hot water with Southerners after
customer Charles Netzhammer posted a video showing
evidence that he had been able to get an ISIS cake made
while having another refused that presented the
Confederate flag.
In an emotional YouTube post that went up June 26,
Netzhammer showed a picture of the Confederate flag he
wished displayed on a cake from the retail giant’s bakery.
In addition to the familiar stars and bars, the statement
“Heritage Not Hate” was to be printed across the front.
Here is a quote frequently attributed to Guevara
via PolitiFact.
“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on
frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking,
organized and intelligent… We’re going to do for
blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban
revolution. By which I mean: nothing!”
Netzhammer then claimed that he was able to go to
another Walmart in the same area and have an ISIS cake
printed for him with no issues.
It’s clear that many on the right, including Walmart
shopper Charles Netzhammer, are starting to feel
disenfranchised and that there is a double standard at work
in society.
After the cake unboxing, he then displayed the “Heritage
Not Hate” refusal form that Walmart had given him along
with documentation and receipts on his ISIS cake.
The experience left the Southerner irate.
But what do you think, readers, particularly about this
refusal of the Confederate cake but the willingness to print
an ISIS cake? Does Walmart truly have some explaining
to do? Sound off in the comments section.
“I am highly offended, distraught, and in tears over the
fact you pull American history off your shelves, but allow
the offensive battle flag of terrorists, sex slavers, be-
13
World Net Daily
Family Group: Marriage 'Persecution' Starts
'Already we see evidence that we will lose our First Amendment right of free speech'
Gramley continued, “Penn/Live/The Patriot-News wants
to end the debate, but it has only just begun. Five
unelected Justices of the Supreme Court cannot redefine
true marriage any more than one unelected judge in
Pennsylvania can. Marriage is still and always will be
between one man and one woman. As pointed out in
Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion, America has always
been about the freedom to debate an issue. To stifle that
debate is to stifle the American way.
At mid-morning on Friday the U.S. Supreme Court
announced that it had created same-sex “marriage” for
homosexuals and lesbians across the United States, using
a convoluted logic from Justice Anthony Kennedy that
included citations to Cicero and Confucius.
Within hours, the persecution of those who disagree had
started, according to a statement from a family group
based in Pennsylvania.
“Already we see evidence right in our state that we will
lose our First Amendment right of free speech simply
because we do not agree with today’s SCOTUS decision
and understand the historic definition of marriage,” said a
statement released by the American Family Association of
Pennsylvania. “What better way to say all are on board
with this decision than to silence
the voices of those not in
agreement?”
“However, we will see an increase in persecution against
those who hold the traditional view of marriage, as
evidenced by the newspaper’s change in policy. This
decision is not a march to progress, but the exact
opposite,” she said.
The Daily Caller jumped on the
controversy, calling the
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
company’s stance “hardcore.”
The comments stemmed from an
announcement from editorialists
at Pennlive.com. that they would
no longer allow opinion or
editorial pieces “in opposition to
same-sex marriage.”
The report said the publication at
first said it would “no longer
accept, nor will it print, op-eds and
letters to the editor in opposition
to same-sex marriage.”
The DC reported newspaper officials later added,
“Clarification: We will not foreclose discussion of the
high court’s decision, but arguments that gay marriage is
wrong/unnatural are out.”
“These unions are now the law of the land,” the
publication said.
And it likened those who still support traditional and
biblical marriage, despite the court’s opinion, to those who
are “racist, sexist or anti-Semitic.”
Commenters, the DC reported, were ticked.
“Nice to see strict speech codes will be enforced by the
‘free’ press,” wrote an anonymous “Big Jasper.” “No need
to worry about that messy ‘freedom of expression’ thing
anymore.”
The family group responded, “Pennlive, the Harrisburg
area news organization, has announced a change in op-eds
and letters to the editor, stating, ‘As a result of Friday’s
ruling, Pennlive/The Patriot-news will very strictly limit
op-eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex
marriage.’”
The newspaper’s reporting followed its editorial policy
already: “In the more than four decades since, a union that
was viewed as unnatural and even a hideous provocation
to violence is now commonplace and celebrated. On
Friday, the United States crossed a similar threshold,
continuing a long road to acceptance of same-sex unions.”
Said Diane Gramley, the organization’s chief, “Already
we see evidence right in our state that we will lose our
First Amendment right of free speech simply because we
do not agree.”
The news organization eventually confirmed “some”
letters critiquing the court decision will be accepted.
The organization said, “This newspaper organization is
equating homosexuality to race – a big mistake as race is
immutable or unchangeable and homosexuality is
changeable as evidenced by the thousands who have left
the lifestyle. PennLive/The Patriot-News has bought into
the lie!”
It did describe some of those submissions with criticisms
as “hate speech.”
14
Doc Faces Boot for Citing 'Gay' Health Dangers
'This is almost a fascist effort at mind control'
By Jack Minor
of our founding hospitals, and an important part of
our mission.”
Citing government statistics and offering warnings
about the dangers of “gay” sex has one prominent
doctor facing the possible loss of his job and what
effectively could be a banishment from his work, and
he’s not taking it without a fight.
He explained to WND that the hospital, by
encouraging staff to participate in “gay” pride events,
was violating both standards.
Dr. Paul Church, a veteran urologist who has been on the
staff of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for nearly
30 years, is appealing a board decision against him, and is
planning for a hearing in July on his fight over his right to
warn people that the facts prove “gay” sex is a dangerous
lifestyle.
The CDC and others have documented that those engaging
in the types of sexual activities practiced predominantly
by the LGBT community lead to psychiatric disorders as
well as an extremely high likelihood of contracting
dangerous and deadly STDs such as HIV/AIDS, anal
cancer, parasitic infections and hepatitis.
Church, who also is a member of the Harvard Medical
School Facility and has conducted life-saving research on
diagnosing bladder and prostate cancer, told WND, “It is
incredible to think they would be able to silence me and
revoke my ability to be on the staff as a result of my
raising valid health concerns over a risky lifestyle.”
“The medical community should be cautioning people to
avoid and abstain from a behavior that is high risk,”
Church said.
“Just because it has become politically correct and sexual
orientation has been written into anti-discrimination laws
is not a reason for the medical profession to be promoting
and encouraging these risky behaviors. On the contrary
they should be cautioning people about it and offer help to
reduce the risk. But the idea that a major medical center is
a propaganda tool for pro-’gay’ activities is just beyond
me.”
He continued, “This is almost a fascist effort at mind
control.”
The facts, he said, are on his side.
“Although it has declined over the past few decades, twothirds of all new HIV/AIDS infections in the U.S. are the
result of men having sex with men. Fifty percent of ‘gay’
men will be infected with HIV by age 50. Those numbers
are out there and they are staggering,” he said.
He continued, “We don’t have a smoker’s celebration so
why do we have a ‘gay’ pride celebration. The political
agenda is superseding common sense.”
The hospital did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
But the facts that Church has used, from the Centers for
Disease Control, appear to matter little in the case, he
suggested.
But Church also tried to remind officials there that among
its employees there were a wide variety of personal and
religious views. Some felt uncomfortable with being told
to support a lifestyle contrary to the basic tenets of their
faith and their advocacy could be considered a form of
harassment against religious people, he said.
He told WND he’s facing dismissal from BIDMC for
speaking out on a subject where he unquestionably has
expertise.
The problem first began more than 10 years ago when
BIDMC began promoting LGBT activities, including
Boston’s annual “Gay Pride Week.
Hospital officials said his complaints about harassment
were … harassment.
Church expressed concerns to hospital officials and on the
hospital’s Intranet, noting that by supporting homosexual
activities and strongly encouraging staff participation the
administration was acting against its mission statement.
“I was told that my comments about the dangers of
homosexual behavior constituted ‘discrimination and
harassment’ and were considered to be ‘offensive to
BIDMC staff’ and would not be tolerated. Yet what was
amazing is no one has ever disputed the accuracy of my
statements regarding the health risks of ‘gay’ sex,” he
said.
After all, medical evidence shows homosexual activities
are destructive, he said.
Amd BIDMC’s mission statement says it exists to “serve
our patients compassionately and effectively, and to create
a healthy future for them and their families.” The hospital
also lays claims to its religious roots, saying, “Service to
community is at the core of the religious tradition of both
An inquiry was held in 2011.
“I made statements to them regarding the medical facts
about the dangers of homosexual sex. I thought that
15
attorneys who advised him under existing civil rights law
and whistleblower legislation he was well within his rights
to discuss hospital policy, he posted comments on the
Intranet discussion board about whether the board should
advocate for the unhealthy lifestyle that comes with
homosexuality.
regardless of a person’s position on homosexuality I
would at least have the ear of my colleagues instead of the
administration since the evidence was on my side. To my
surprise they seemed to ignore the medical evidence and
sided with the administration,” he said.
He was reprimanded.
“Finally, after these legitimate medical concerns were
ignored I decided to post just the scriptural verses from
Leviticus and Romans with no comments on the bulletin
board. I figured if they would come after this then their
issue was with God and not with me, but they didn’t see it
this way.”
“I was told I was prohibited from discussing my views
about homosexuality to members of the staff, visitors, and
patients. It was essentially an all-encompassing gag
order,” he said.
He said he left his own religious views out of the
conversations with patients. But he felt he couldn’t even
provide them with the evidence.
In September 2014 the hospital convened a special
“Investigating Committee” and charges were brought
against him. Church said at the time he felt he would be
vindicated because the medical facts and the law were on
his side.
“I had plenty of patients over the years who self-identified
as LGBT but unfortunately I feel like I cannot counsel
them on risky behaviors that are unique to them because
that would be viewed as advocacy for traditional
marriage,” Church explained. “When I am with them I
provide the same non-judgmental type of care that I
provide to anyone else and ignore their lifestyle issues.”
“I was not worried, thinking it would be obvious that their
promotion of the homosexual lifestyle was contrary to the
hospital’s mission statement which was to watch out for
the public welfare. In addition, I was assured by attorneys
that under existing civil rights law and the whistleblower
act I had the right to speak out on issues of public policy.
In spite of all this, the board sided with the hospital
administration and revoked my medical appointment.”
Church also requested they opt him out of receiving
emails advocating support for “gay” pride events but he
was refused.
“I requested that my name be removed from the directory
and that they have it more of an opt out/opt in type of
arrangement regarding receiving emails supporting the
‘gay’ lifestyle but they ignored me and refused to do that,
so I continued to get stories that praised ‘gays’ whenever
they received an award or advocating for ‘gay’ pride
week.”
His appeal now is pending.
Jack Minor is a journalist and researcher who served in
the United States Marine Corps under President Reagan.
Also a former pastor, he has written hundreds of articles
and been interviewed about his work on many TV and
radio outlets.
Church said after having his requests for religious
accommodation being ignored and after talking to
The Moneychanger
Gramscian consciousness molding
By Franklin Sanders
Y'all, my heart's about to break. I'm so
tired of hearing the Confederate flag
blamed for murder and racism and every
bad thing by politicians wearing out
their knees for votes and people too
ignorant of history & truth to argue with.
This is the same Gramscian
consciousness molding campaign that
was started in the early 1990s by people
who make a living stirring up trouble
between the races. Ignored and largely
unreported in all these terrible events is the majestic and
sublime Christian response by those robbed of their loved
ones and by others in Charleston. THAT
is the Sout h that I love, and the
Confederate flag has never stood for any
other South, regardless how many
lunatics, liars, and murderers have used
it for their own purposes. Lawlessness &
senseless bloodshedding is what 250,000
Confederate soldiers died to prevent.
Franklin Sanders lives on a farm in
Middle Tennessee by choice, deals in
physical gold & silver, and has been writing and
publishing The Moneychanger for nearly 26 years.
16
The Supreme Court Has Ruled: Principled People Will Not Obey!
By Don Boys, Ph.D.
Following the Supreme Court’s illegal, immoral,
and incredible “gay” rights decision, the White
House (owned by the American people, not the
President) was flooded with rainbow-color lights
in celebration of that disgusting, dangerous, and
decadent decision. Such impudence and defiance
was an insult to America and a goading of God.
However, be assured that God sees the evil and
the good and He is involved in our world. Sometime His
judgment seems slow, but it is always sure and severe.
Judgment is on the way!
behavior that is a threat to civilization. Same-sex
‘marriages’ will not be recognized in this state.”
Then, the Court will charge the governors with
contempt (which the governors will be guilty of as
I am but I’m doing my best to conceal my
contempt) and send U.S. Marshalls to arrest them.
The governors can choose to use state troopers in
their defense or choose not to do so. Bad position
to be in but then no one asked for this except homosexuals
and those whose highest ambition and reason for living is
to satisfy homosexuals.
Former U. S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson said
about the Supreme Court’s authority, "We are not final
because we are infallible; we are infallible because we are
final." That attitude is not only arrogant but audacious and
asinine. However, the Supreme Court is not infallible (as
only a fool would say) nor is it final (as only a fanatic
would say). I remind you that their decisions are called,
“opinions” and do not reach the level of the Ten
Commandments–or even the Ten Recommendations.
Same-sex “marriages” will continue to be abnormal,
abominable, and aberrational even as shallow people
applaud them.
I don’t know what governors will do but I know what I
will do and recommend other preachers do. I will not
comply. I will live as if the decision was never made.
Pastors should inform everyone that they will never
perform a same-sex “wedding.” Nor will the church ever
be used for such activity. It is not enough for pastors not
to perform such weddings; they must go on record of that
decision.
Pastors should make it clear that unrepentant homosexuals
will not be accepted as church members just as
unrepentant fornicators, adulterers, thieves, abortionists,
killers, and radical Liberals are rejected. Surely no pastor
has to be convinced that he should never permit any
secular authority to dictate to his church.
Some have said, “The Court has spoken. That settles it.”
Oh, really, what about Dred Scott? The Court, consisting
of appointed, flawed individuals, has reversed itself over
200 times and it must be remembered that the Court is
illegitimate when it usurps the position of legislatures. If
the Court wants to write laws, they should resign, run for
Congress, expose their financial souls and seek approval
from the voters. The Justices are rogues in black robes
drunk with power. The Court thinks it is omnipotent and
omniscient and it seems to be almost omnipresent in our
lives.
Pastors should prepare to lose the 501 (c) (3) tax status.
Pastors have been negligent if they have not prepared
church members for that event. The loss really should be
no big deal since sincere Christians give 10 to 15 percent
of their total income because they want to–not because of
a tax advantage.
Preachers should continue to preach that homosexuality is
perversion and if homosexuals do not repent they will be
cast into Hell as will fornicators. At the same time the
homosexual, like the adulterer, must understand that God
loves him and is willing to forgive him at any time. And
so is the church.
If laws that are contrary to the Constitution can be written
by unelected officials then why do we have a
Constitution? It means we are living under tyranny.
As a consequence of this opinion, everyone and all
organizations will react. U.S. legislators must consider the
“good behavior” clause in Article III, Section I of the
Constitution that requires them to remove an erring justice
from the court. That will happen when Hell has an
enormous drop in temperature which can’t happen
according to my theological beliefs. America will be free
from the tyrants only when some of them reach room
temperature.
Pastors must warn members not to attend same-sex
“marriages” of close friends or family members and refuse
without alienating them if at all possible. With many, it
will not be possible and the loss will be heartbreaking;
however, any kind of approval will make one “a partaker
of his evil deeds.”
Sunday school teachers and Christian school teachers
should continue to teach that any sex outside of manwoman marriage is sinful requiring genuine repentance.
State governors have an opportunity to affirm their
sovereign authority and say, “We will not comply. You
gave an opinion over something beyond your
responsibility. We will not permit or give approval to
17
Christian colleges should continue to refuse homosexuals
as students so housing for same-sex “couples” on their
campus is a moot issue.
will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that
extent practically resigned their Government into the
hands of that eminent tribunal.”
If the Court should rule that gun ownership was illegal or
that freedom of the press was now illegal, would any sane
person comply? It is ridiculous to suggest that the Court
can write law as in this case and in the Obamacare case
then declare that the newly written laws are constitutional!
No one gave these birds such carte blanche authority.
In 1832, President Andrew Jackson's contempt of the
Court's decision in Worchester v. Georgia was on full
display when he allegedly replied, "John Marshall [Chief
Justice] has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
He was acknowledging that the Court does not have an
army to enforce its decisions although it does have a few
U.S. Marshalls that can arrest offending individuals.
In 1804, Jefferson wrote: “The opinion which gives to the
judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and
what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of
action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their
spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic
branch.” That’s where we are today: despots reign.
The Court Jesters have made their ruling, now let them try
to force thinking and committed Americans to accept
perversion as normal, natural, and noble.
Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of
Representatives, author of 15 books, frequent guest on
television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for
USA Today for 8 years. His shocking books, ISLAM:
America's Trojan Horse!; Christian Resistance: An Idea
Whose Time Has Come–Again!; and The God Haters are
all available at Amazon.com.
Abe Lincoln said in his First Inaugural Address “that if the
policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting
the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of
the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary
litigation between parties in personal actions, the people
Newsmax
Southern National Group Leader:
John Wilkes Booth Took Too Long to Kill Lincoln
By Todd Beamon
The chairman of the Southern nationalist group League of
the South* said Saturday that it was "too bad" that John
Wilkes Booth took more than two years to kill President
Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
websites. He is charged with nine counts of murder and a
count of weapons possession and is being held on $1
million bond.
"John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate agent," Pat Hines
told Alan Colmes on his Fox News radio program. "Sadly,
he didn’t fulfill his mission for almost 2 1/2 years.
The League of the South hosts an annual celebration of
Lincoln's assassination. Booth, an actor, shot the president
on April 14, 1865, as he watched a play at Ford's Theater
in Washington. He died the next morning.
"But he was assigned to kill Lincoln," Hines continued.
"And it’s too bad that he took as long as he did to do it."
"He was the most murderous, treasonous president that
ever existed," Hines told Colmes of Lincoln, who led the
nation during the Civil War.
"You’re upset that it took John Wilkes Booth as long as it
did to kill Abraham Lincoln?" Colmes asked.
When asked why he endorsed a presidential assassination,
he responded: "Well, he was a United States president.
Well, he was commander-in-chief, which makes him a
legitimate target immediately."
"Yes," Hines responded.
The interview was first reported by Mediaite, which
published a transcript of that portion of the discussion.
"Is any Commander-in-Chief a legitimate target?" Colmes
then asked.
Hines has been speaking against efforts to remove the
Confederate flag from South Carolina landmarks after
Dylann Roof, 21, allegedly gunned down nine African
Americans in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Charleston on June 17.
"Well, they are," Hines responded.
* Pat Hines is actually State Chairman for South Carolina.
Dr. Michael Hill remains National Chairman for the
League of the South.
Roof, who is white, posed with the flag in pictures posted
on his website and while holding a gun at Confederate
18
Nuking their own legitimacy.
A most sincere, albeit grim, "thank you" to the Supreme Court
and the two predatory political parties of a tyrannical regime.
By Mike Vanderboegh, an alleged leader of the merry band of Three Percenters
flag, both parties have let their joined-at-the-hip symbiotic
conspiracy against the rest of us show for all to see. The
Emperor not only has no clothes, he waving his private
parts at us and expecting us to worship them.
The Orwellian historical cleansing occasioned by the
Charleston shooting is particularly disgusting to watch and
I'm no neo-Confederate. See Memphis Mayor Wants to
Dig Up Dead Confederate War General and The book
burning begins.
"And now it's all so obvious: This isn't tolerance.
This is a new cultural civil war -- a brazen attempt to
marginalize, demonize and ultimately eliminate all
images, symbolism, art and free expression that does
not obediently fall in line with the narrative of the
political left."
Regime, noun
1. a government, especially an authoritarian one.
2. a system or planned way of doing things,
especially one imposed from above.
Were I still a godless Marxist, I would
be thrilled at the self-inflicted wounds
that the regime worked upon itself this
week. Collectivists of all stripes see in
chaos that there is opportunity. They
also know that regime legitimacy is
everything and a collapsed regime is
necessary before people become
desperate enough to entrust their futures
to such jackals.
The participation of both parties in this leads just about
anyone who is paying attention to wonder: If John
Boehner Was a Democratic Plant, What Would He Be
Doing Differently? The answer is nothing.
Listening yesterday to the radio as I traveled, sick as a dog
as I was, to a previously scheduled meeting over in
Georgia, you could hear the anguish and the anger.
Summed up, the comments boiled down to this: "What
will we do now that both political parties and the entire
system seems linked in a conspiracy against our liberties?"
The answer, of course, is resistance -- armed civil
disobedience -- on a vast scale. This is the gift the regime
handed us this week. They convinced an incredible
number of people that previously were complacent and
that we could not reach to seek other remedies, even
Second Amendment remedies. The regime has, by the
events of this week, nuked its own legitimacy. Our jobs
will be easier after this. Get busy.
But even as staunch an anti-communist as I am now -- as
hard-nosed a supporter of the Founders' Republic and the
Constitution as I have become -- I can see that the regime
has dealt itself a crippling blow to its own legitimacy. I
further note with somber acknowledgement that as bad as
this confluence of events is for the country as a whole that
it makes our job easier for it confirms everything we have
been saying about the regime of both corrupt political
parties being destructive of liberty and the rule of law.
This will swell our ranks with people who are finally
convinced that for the purposes of protecting our liberties,
the present system has broken down completely and that
the only thing we can count on from this point on is
ourselves, alone. And our rifles. I will not celebrate this as
a Marxist would but I will give a most sincere, albeit grim,
"thank you" to the Supreme Court and the two predatory
gangs of a tyrannical regime.
From the corrupt deal-making of the ExIm bank and the
"free trade fast-track" authority to the black robed bandits
of the Supreme Court upholding both a patently
unconstitutional Obama Care and equally offensive "gay
marriage" decision, to the hysteria over the Confederate
19
Russia Today
The Pentagon Goes Nuclear on Russia
By Pepe Escobar
So it’s no surprise that in early June, the Pentagon’s
Office of Net Assessment, in itself a think tank, hired
another think tank, the Center for European Policy
Analysis (CEPA) to churn out – what else – a bunch of
war games.
We all remember how, in early June, President Putin
announced that Russia would deploy more than 40 new
ICBMs “able to overcome even the most technically
advanced anti-missile defense systems.”
Oh dear; the Pentagon and their European minions have
been freaking out on overdrive ever since.
CEPA happens to be directed by A. Wess Mitchell, a
former adviser to former Republican presidential
candidate and master of vapidity Mitt Romney. Mitchell –
who sounds like he flunked history in third grade –
qualifies Russia as a new Carthage; “a sullen, punitive
power determined to wage a vengeful foreign policy to
overturn the system that it blames for the loss of its former
greatness.”
First was NATO Secretary-General, Norwegian
figurehead Jens Stoltenberg, who condemned it as
“nuclear saber rattling.”
Then there’s Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, the head of US
Global Air Strike Command – as in the man responsible
for US ICBMs and nuclear bombers – at a recent briefing
in London; “[They’ve] annexed a country, changing
international borders, raising rhetoric unlike we’ve heard
since the cold war times…”
Russian intelligence is very much aware of all these US
maneuvers.So it’s absolutely no wonder Putin keeps
coming back to NATO’s obsession in building a missile
defense system in Europe right at Russia’s western
borderlands; “It is NATO that is moving towards our
border and we aren’t moving anywhere.”
That set up the stage for the required Nazi parallel; “Some
of the actions by Russia recently we haven’t seen since the
1930s, when whole countries were annexed and borders
were changed by decree.”
NATO, meanwhile, gets ready for its next super
production; Trident Juncture 2015, the largest NATO
exercise after the end of the Cold War, to happen in Italy,
Spain and Portugal from September 28 to November 6,
with land, air and naval and special forces units of 33
countries (28 NATO plus five allies).
At His Masters Voice’s command, the EU duly extended
economic sanctions against Russia.And right on cue,
Pentagon supremo Ashton Carter, out of Berlin, declared
that NATO must stand up against – what else – “Russian
aggression” and “their attempts to re-establish a Sovietera sphere of influence.”
NATO spins it as a “high visibility and credibility” show
testing its “Response Force” of 30,000 troops. And this is
not only about Russia, or as a rehearsal in pre-positioning
enough heavy weapons for 5,000 soldiers in Lithuania,
Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Bets are off on what this huffin’ and puffin’ is all about. It
could be about Russia daring to build a whole country
close to so many NATO bases. It could be about a bunch
of nutters itching to start a war on European soil to
ultimately “liberate” all that precious oil, gas and minerals
from Russia and the Central Asian “stans”.
It’s also about Africa, and the symbiosis
NATO/AFRICOM (remember the “liberation” of Libya?)
NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Breedhate, sorry,
Breedlove, bragged, on the record, that, “the members of
NATO will play a big role in North Africa, the Sahel and
sub-Saharan Africa.”
Unfortunately, the whole thing is deadly serious.
Get your tickets for the next NATO movie
Vast desolate tracts of US ‘Think Tankland’ at least admit
that this is partly about the exceptionalist imperative to
prevent “the rise of a hegemon in Eurasia.” Well, they’re
not only “partly” but totally wrong, because for Russia –
and China – the name of the game is Eurasia integration
through trade and commerce.
Feel the love of my S-500
As far as Russia is concerned, all this warmongering
hysteria is pathetic.
Facts: under Putin, Russia has actively rebuilt its strategic
nuclear missile force. The stars of the show are the Topol
M – an ICBM which zooms by at 16,000 miles an hour –
and the S-500 defensive missile system, which zooms by
at 15,400 miles an hour and effectively seals off Russian
airspace.
That condemns the “pivoting to Asia”, for the moment, to
the rhetorical dustbin. For the self-described “Don’t Do
Stupid Stuff” Obama administration – and the Pentagon –
the name of the game is to solidify a New Iron Curtain
from the Baltics to the Black Sea and cut off Russia from
Europe.
20
Russian intelligence identified as early as the dawn of the
new millennium that the weapons of the future would be
missiles; not clumsy aircraft carriers or a surface fleet
which can easily be smashed by top-class missiles (as the
new SS-NX-26 anti-ship, Yakhont missile which zooms
by at 2.9 Mach).
this cleared the Pentagon to build a global anti-missile
system directed against – who else – the only true
“threats” against the hegemon; BRICS members Russia
and China.
The Pentagon knows it – but hubris dictates the “we’re
invincible” posing. No, you’re not invincible; silent
Russian submarines offshore the US could engage in a
nuclear turkey shoot knocking out every major American
city in a few minutes with total impunity. In only fifteen
years Russia has jumped two generations ahead of the US
on missiles and may be on the verge of a first strike
nuclear capacity, while the US can’t retaliate because the
Pentagon can’t get through the S-500s.
Under neocon Ash Carter – compared to whom Donald
Rumsfeld barely qualifies as Cinderella – the Pentagon
wants to go Terminator all the way.
Terminator Ash on a roll
“Options” being considered against Russia are an
offensive missile shield across Europe to shoot Russian
missiles (totally useless against the Topol M); a
“counterforce” (in ‘Pentagonese’) that implies preemptive non-nuclear strikes against Russian military sites;
and “countervailing strike capabilities”, which in
‘Pentagonese’ means pre-emptive deployment of nuclear
missiles against targets – and cities – inside Russia.
Public opinion in the US doesn’t know any of this – so
what’s left is posturing. We’re back to the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey spinning
the US is “considering” deploying land-based missiles –
with nuclear warheads – that could reach Russian cities
across Eurasia.
So we’re talking about the unthinkable here; a pre-emptive
nuclear strike against Russia. There’s only one scenario if
that happens; a full-scale nuclear war. The mere fact that
this is considered an “option on the table” reveals
everything one needs to know about what passes for
“foreign policy” in the heart of the Indispensable Nation.
This does not even qualify as a childish – and
unbelievably dangerous – provocation. These missiles will
be useless. The US has submarine-based missiles
available, and they cannot get through Russian defenses
either; the S-500s will do the job. So if the Pentagon and
NATO really want war, wait until next year or 2017 max –
with ‘The Hillarator’ or Jeb “I’m not Bush” at the White
House – when the S-500 deployment will be completed.
In Iraq, a pre-emptive strike – although non-nuclear – was
“authorized” based on non-existent weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs). So the whole planet knows the
‘Empire of Chaos’ is capable of fabricating any pretext. In
the case of Russia, the Pentagon may play ‘Ultimate
Terminator’ all they want, but it won’t be a walk in the
park; after all in less than two years Russian airspace will
be effectively sealed by the S-500s.
Putin knows extremely well how dangerous is this
posturing. That’s why he emphasized that the US
unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
(ABM) Treaty – which established that neither the US nor
the USSR would try to neutralize each other’s nuclear
deterrence by building an anti-missile shield – is pushing
the world towards a new Cold War; “This in fact pushes
us to a new round of the arms race, because it changes the
global security system.”
Beware of the ‘Shock and Awe’ you want. Still, no chance
the Pentagon will take Putin seriously (Ash Carter, on the
record, is a sucker for regime change.) Recently, the
Russian President couldn’t be more explicit; “This is no
dialogue. It’s an ultimatum. Don’t speak the language of
ultimatums with us.”
MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – is way over. It
kept a somewhat uneasy peace during seven decades of
Cold War. Cold War 2.0 is as hardcore as it gets. And
with all those Breedhate Strangeloves on the loose,
nuclear madness is now at five seconds to midnight.
Washington unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty
during the “axis of evil” Dubya era, in 2002. The pretext
was that the US needed “protection” from rogue states, at
the time identified as Iran and North Korea. The fact is
21
Mining.com
The Forgotten History (and Potential Future) of Silver as Money
By Stefan Gleason
In contemporary discussions of sound money, silver tends
to get short shrift. Even among staunch sound money
advocates, the historic role of silver as money is often
marginalized or ignored altogether.
advantages of the precious metals.” You’ll notice that
Jefferson identified “the precious metals” (plural) –
meaning gold and silver – as being superior to paper
currencies.
People who equate sound money with gold and tout the
advantages of returning to a gold standard should also
embrace silver as a complementary – and necessary –
partner with gold in re-establishing sound money.
But even before the creation of the Federal Reserve in
1913, certain banking and political interests had worked to
undermine silver and re-conceive of the gold-silver
standard asmonometallic gold standard. In 1873, Congress
moved to sideline the silver dollar. That sparked the socalled Free Silver Movement, which stood for allowing
the supply of silver coins to be increased in accord with
demand.
The Founders wrote a bi-metallic gold-silver standard into
the United States Constitution. Article 1, Section 10
makes it explicit: “No State shall… make any Thing but
gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…”
In 1878, the Free Silver Movement got the silver dollar
restored as legal tender. Silver continued to be a hotbutton issue of the day.
The Coinage Act of 1792
defined a dollar in terms of
silver. Specifically, a dollar
was to be 371.25 grains
(equivalent to about threefourths of an ounce) of
silver, in harmony with the
Spanish milled dollar.
Thus, the true foundation
for U.S. circulating
currency was not gold but
silver. The dollar value of
gold coins was ultimately
pegged to silver, and one
ounce of gold was therefore valued at about 16 ounces of
silver, or $20.
The Federal Reserve Notes in circulation today that are
colloquially called “dollars” aren’t Constitutional dollars.
They are bank notes accorded monopoly “legal tender”
status by government fiat.
In 1896, William Jennings Bryan gave his famous “Cross
of Gold” speech before the Democratic National
Convention. The populist orator advocated free coinage of
silver at a ratio to gold of 16:1 (the classic ratio) and a full
restoration of the bi-metallic standard.
When Congress authorized the secretive Federal Reserve
System in 1913, the Fed was sold to the public merely as a
lender of last resort. The Federal Reserve wouldn’t
function as a central bank and wouldn’t replace gold and
silver as money – or so its proponents promised.
The words of William
Jennings Bryan still strike a
chord: “…instead of having a
gold standard because
England has, we shall restore
bimetallism, and then let
England have bimetallism
because the United States
have. If they dare to come
out in the open field and
defend the gold standard as a
good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost… by
saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of
The Fed didn’t eviscerate all sound money precepts
immediately. That would have generated too much of a
backlash. After all, the American people have always had
a sentimental attachment to precious metals and a healthy
suspicion of vested banking interests.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “I believe that banking
institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies.” He also wrote, “The trifling economy of
paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for
transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the
22
In the battle to resurrect sound money, both silver and
gold will play a role. Gold is necessary because it
represents a highly concentrated form of wealth. Gold is
more practical than silver for hoarding by wealthy
individuals, large institutions, and, yes, central banks.
(Despite their push for a 100% electronic cashless global
economy, central banks still hold the world’s largest gold
stockpiles. And more central banks today are net buyers of
gold than net sellers.)
labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind
upon a cross of gold.”
Bryan saw gold at the time as the metal of the elites; silver
as the metal of the masses. But he understood that having
both metals function freely as money was vital. Where
gold and silver compete with each other, internal checks
and balances are built into the system. But Bryan couldn’t
have foreseen that the banking and political elites would
acquire the ability to crucify the people upon a digitized
cross of Quantitative Easing!
Silver is necessary because it’s the historic, and still most
practical, basis for defining a “dollar.” A sound dollar (or
a unit of an alternative private currency) can be a silver
coin, a paper certificate, or a digital credit as long as it’s
ultimately backed by and redeemable in physical silver.
We are, no doubt, living in a completely different era than
the ones William Jennings Bryan and Thomas Jefferson
lived in.
Credit cards, e-commerce, and smartphone payments are
here and here to stay. But that doesn’t mean that silver has
been rendered irrelevant. To the contrary, there are more
ways than ever for silver to reassert itself as the money of
the people.
In an era of runaway government debt levels, zero-tonegative interest rates, and systemic risks in the artificially
propped-up banking system, the case for a new monetary
order based on a gold-silver standard is as strong as ever.
Utah Senator Reed Smoot in 1930 expressed his view that
“something will happen to place silver back in its rightful
place beside gold in the commerce of the world.” Perhaps
that something will be a global loss of confidence in debtbased fiat currencies that are all racing to the bottom.
It isn’t necessary for actual silver dimes and quarters to be
re-introduced into circulation in order for silver to
function again as money. Debit cards and smartphone
apps linked to accounts backed by silver are in
development. Some governments are even considering
proposals to link their currencies partially back to silver.
Given silver’s low price ratio versus gold (currently only
1:73 versus the classic 1:16), it makes a lot of sense to
favor silver as an undervalued monetary asset.
Woe to the Nation Whose Religious Teachers Have
Become Workers of Wickedness
By Herschel Smith
least some of the tragic deaths at Mother Emanuel.
Perhaps so, but it would mean forfeiting the higher
moral ground. I do not believe guns have a place at
church.
Molly Marshall, Baptist News
Global:
This is not the first time a
black church has been the
target of racial terrorism. Is it
because African-American
churches are seen as centers of
power, where prophetic fire continues to burn for
justice? Is it because the black church is outside the
control of majority population? Is it because their
hospitality, a powerful demonstration of gospel
welcome, makes them vulnerable to the
machinations of killers?
A more stunning statement of utter disregard for human
life (in contrast to God’s view) cannot even be found
among the secularists. She states that even if faced with
the situation of saving human lives by the force of arms,
she would rather have seen those black churchgoers perish
so that she can perch herself on the “higher moral
ground.”
I have heard too many people suggest that if the
pastor had been armed, he could have prevented at
Herschel Smith hails from Charlotte, N.C.
Woe to the nation whose religious teachers have become
workers of wickedness.
23
Words No Longer Have Meaning
By Herschel Smith
should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding
prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons
and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying
of fire arms in sensitive places such as schools and
government buildings, or laws imposing conditions
and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected
are those “in common use at the time” finds support
in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying
of dangerous and unusual weapons.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty
Dumpty said in a rather scornful
tone, ‘it means just what I choose it
to mean – neither more nor less.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the
Looking Glass
Scalia dissented from the recent
SCOTUS Obamacare ruling.
“The Court holds that when the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act says ‘Exchange established
by the State’ it means ‘Exchange established by the
State or the Federal Government.’ That is of course
quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of
explanation make it no less so,” Scalia wrote.
“Shall not be infringed” means as little to Scalia as
‘Exchange established by the State’ means to Roberts and
the other progressive justices on the supreme court. Scalia
is clever, witty, smart, fun to read and biting in his
dissents – and just as inconsistent as the rest of them.
Scalia gets a taste of his own medicine in the Obamacare
and same-sex marriage ruling.
Scalia added, “Words no longer have meaning if an
Exchange that is not established by a State is
‘established by the State.’ It is hard to come up with
a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges
than to use the words ‘established by the State.’ And
it is hard to come up with a reason to include the
words ‘by the State’ other than the purpose
of limiting credits to state Exchanges.”
As I listened to the quiet conversation and whispers this
weekend as I went about my business, I thinkMike
Vanderboegh’s words will turn out to be prescient.
But even as staunch an anti-communist as I am now
— as hard-nosed a supporter of the Founders’
Republic and the Constitution as I have become — I
can see that the regime has dealt itself a crippling
blow to its own legitimacy. I further note with
somber acknowledgement that as bad as this
confluence of events is for the country as a whole
that it makes our job easier for it confirms
everything we have been saying about the regime of
both corrupt political parties being destructive of
liberty and the rule of law. This will swell our ranks
with people who are finally convinced that for the
purposes of protecting our liberties, the present
system has broken down completely and that the
only thing we can count on from this point on is
ourselves, alone. And our rifles. I will not celebrate
this as a Marxist would but I will give a most
sincere, albeit grim, “thank you” to the Supreme
Court and the two predatory gangs of a tyrannical
regime.
Roberts also dissented, but of course words weren’t so
important to him when he created rights out of whole cloth
and the supreme court forced every state to accept samesex marriage. He wants to pick and choose when words
mean something, and get his self-righteousness on when
he opposes the policy.
As I had stated to someone else this weekend, you have
the political right to advocate what you want, but God will
judge us – individually and collectively – for our choices.
But constitutionally, the court has absolutely no business
bossing the states around.
This ruling – and many more like it – marks the end of the
state. The grand experiment in states as the laboratories of
democracy is finished. It failed, and not because it
couldn’t have worked. Evil men vandalized the
experiment. If Roberts has his problems, Scalia does too.
In Heller, he stated:
I would add that we can always count on God to honor His
promises. God will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7). His
words never change, and will always mean what they have
always meant.
Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not
unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any
weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and
for whatever purpose: For example, concealed
weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the
Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion
Herschel Smith hails from Charlotte, N.C.
24
World Net Daily
Texas Attorney General: Marriage Ruling 'Lawless'
Pledges to uphold religious liberties, fight coercion against conscience
While reiterating that the ruling “fabricated a new
constitutional right in 2015,” Paxton concluded the
decision “did not diminish, overrule, or call into question
the First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion
that formed the first freedom in the Bill of Rights in 1791.
This newly invented federal constitutional right to samesex marriage should peaceably coexist alongside
longstanding constitutional and statutory rights, including
the rights to free exercise of religion and speech.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Sunday called the
Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges marriage ruling
“lawless” and pledged to uphold religious liberties in his
state and fight any attempts to use coercion that would
violate the conscience of those who oppose same-sex
marriage by forcing them to participate in such unions.
In a blistering critique of the landmark decision, Paxton
wrote: “Friday, the United States Supreme Court again
ignored the text and spirit of the Constitution to
manufacture a right that simply does not exist. In so doing,
the Court weakened itself and weakened the rule of law,
but did nothing to weaken our resolve to protect religious
liberty and return to democratic self-government in the
face of judicial activists attempting to tell us how to live.
Paxton offered the following opinion to guide Texas
officials and those asked to participate in same-sex
marriages they deem inappropriate for religious reasons:
 “County clerks and their employees retain religious
freedoms that may allow accommodation of their
religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage
licenses. The strength of any such claim depends on
the particular facts of each case.”
“Indeed, for those who respect the rule of law, this lawless
ruling presents a fundamental dilemma: A ruling by the
U.S. Supreme Court is considered the law of the land, but
a judge-made edict that is not based in the law or the
Constitution diminishes faith in our system of government
and the rule of law.”
 “Justices of the peace and judges similarly retain
religious freedoms, and may claim that the
government cannot force them to conduct same-sex
wedding ceremonies over their religious objections,
when other authorized individuals have no objection,
because it is not the least restrictive means of the
government ensuring the ceremonies occur. The
strength of any such claim depends on the particular
facts of each case.”
Paxton indicated he is besieged by requests of hundreds of
state officials seeking guidance on how to implement what
he said “amounts to a lawless decision by an activist court
while adhering both to their respective faiths and their
responsibility to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.
“Pursuant to the Court’s flawed ruling, the U.S. District
Court for the Western District of Texas issued an
injunction against the enforcement of Texas marriage laws
that define marriage as one man and one woman and
therefore those laws currently are enjoined from being
enforced by county clerks and justices of the peace,” he
said. “There is not, however, a court order in place in
Texas to issue any particular license whatsoever – only the
flawed direction by the U.S. Supreme Court on
Constitutionality and applicable state laws.
 “It is important to note that any clerk who wishes to
defend their religious objections and who chooses not
to issue licenses may well face litigation and/or a fine.
But, numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks
defending their religious beliefs, in many cases on a
pro-bono basis, and I will do everything I can from
this office to be a public voice for those standing in
defense of their rights.”
Paxton concluded: “Texas must speak with one voice
against this lawlessness, and act on multiple levels to
further protect religious liberties for all Texans, but most
immediately do anything we can to help our County
Clerks and public officials who now are forced with
defending their religious beliefs against the Court’s
ruling.”
“Importantly, the reach of the court’s opinion stops at the
door of the First Amendment and our laws protecting
religious liberty. Even the flawed majority opinion in
Obergefell v. Hodges acknowledged there are religious
liberty protections of which individuals may be able to
avail themselves. Our religious liberties find protection in
state and federal constitutions and statutes. While they are
indisputably our first freedom, we should not let them be
our last.”
25
Zero Hedge
Get Your Money Out of Mutual Funds ASAP
By Tyler Durden
derivatives, which is why Vice Chairman Barbara
Novick has been running around Capitol Hill
working to get a bailout mechanism in place for
the Depository Trust Company’s derivatives
clearing unit.
Via Investment Research Dynamics,
BlackRock Inc. is seeking government
clearance to set up an internal program in
which mutual funds that get hit with client
redemptions could temporarily borrow money
from sister funds that are flush with cash. –
Bloomberg News
BlackRock Changes The Rules Of The Game
Because Of An Outcome It Fears
This move will, in effect, transfer a portion of the risk of
BlackRock’s riskier mutual funds – derivative-laced high
yield and equity funds – to its more “conservative” funds,
like high grade, short duration fixed income funds.
We may have been early on warning about leaving your
savings in the financial system. It’s okay to be too early
getting your money out of the system but it’s fatal to be
just one second too late. The gates are already in place in
money market funds just waiting for the signal to be
lowered
Anyone who invested in less-risky funds did so with an
understanding of the definition and risk parameters of the
funds at the time of investment. But now BlackRock is
changing the rules and risk parameters of those funds by
exposing them to the counterparty risk of the riskier funds
in the BlackRock fund complex which will be able to
borrow money from the less risky funds.
BlackRock’s filing with the SEC to enable “have cash”
funds to lend to “heavy redemption” funds should send
shivers down the spine of anyone with funds invested in
any BlackRock fund. In fact, it should horrify anyone
invested in any mutual fund.
This means that the Treasury fund in which your IRA or
401k is invested will now be “invested” in any fund that
borrows money from the fund with your money. The risk
profile of your “conservative” fund assumes the risk
profile of the riskier fund. Because of this, there is
absolutely no reason for anyone to leave any of their
money in any of BlackRock’s funds.
Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive officer, said in
December that U.S. bond funds face increased
volatility, adding that he expected a “dysfunctional
market” lasting days or even weeks within the next two
years. – Bloomberg
I warned last summer when the money market funds
received authorization to put redemption gates in place
that it was time to remove your money from these
instruments. The only reason a gate would be needed is if
the people running the funds believed that there were risk
events coming that would necessitate the gates.
The SEC should deny BlackRock’s filing. But it won’t
because Wall Street is the SEC.
This move by BlackRock also signals that the elitists at
BlackRock foresee an event that will disrupt the markets
and trigger “bank” run on mutual funds. What or when is
anyone’s best guess. But the fact that Larry Fink has
decided to implement internal lending among funds
indicates that he and his band of merry criminals believe
an event will happen sooner rather than later.
BlackRock has already arranged credit lines from banks to
cover the possibility of a redemption stampede from its
riskier funds. It’s clear the elitists running BlackRock
now foresee events coming that will trigger a redemption
run because the fund company is seeking SEC approval
for the ability to take cash from funds with cash and lend
that cash to funds that will need cash when the redemption
rush begins.
To me, this is the signal that everyone should call up their
mutual fund company, financial adviser or 401k
administrator and get all of their the money out of any
mutual fund. Larry Fink has done everyone invested in
any mutual fund a favor: he’s unwittingly signaled that
it’s time to get out – now. Anyone who is aware of this
and does not take action immediately is either a complete
idiot or simply does not care about having their money
taken from them by the criminal elite.
Rather than let the market decide the value of the
investments in BlackRock’s riskier funds, Larry Fink is
going add even more leverage to the equation by enabling
riskier funds to take on debt in order to avoid having to
sell positions into a market that won’t be able to handle
the selling. This adds yet another layer of fraudulent
intervention to a system that is ready to blow up from
what’s already been done to it.
Tyler Durden is a reference to the lead character in Fight
Club. It's the pseudonym for Zero Hedge's key author(s)
used to hide their identities.
And let’s not forget, as I pointed out last summer, that
BlackRock funds are already riddled with OTC
26
Jeb Bush: Enemy of a Free Society
By Laurence M. Vance
that someone should be forced to participate in a
same-sex or any other kind of wedding.
Jeb Bush, like his father and brother before him,
and like all of the Republicans and conservatives
who, although they may disagree with Jeb on
Common Core and immigration, agree with him
wholeheartedly on this issue, hasn’t the slightest
idea what a free society is.
Is Bush saying that if someone walks into a flower
shop and wants to buy flowers, you should be able
to discriminate against him for other reasons
besides his sexual orientation?
Bush officially declared his candidacy for the
Republican presidential nomination earlier this
month in the small town of Derry, New Hampshire (the
state that holds the first primary). Speaking at a small,
historic opera house known for hosting political events,
Bush promised that if elected he would create sustained
national economic growth of 4 percent, simplify the tax
code, and repeal Obamacare.
If so, then why is it wrong to discriminate on the
basis of sexual orientation but not to discriminate on the
basis of race, gender, or religion?
If not, then does he believe that no business owner should
ever be allowed to refuse to do business with anyone? I
can remember when certain businesses used to post signs
reading: “No shirt, no shoes: no service.” Even now, some
restaurants have a dress code. Heck, even prisons have a
dress code for visitors. Would Bush allow these
exceptions to his “no discrimination policy”?
But when asked how he would balance religious and
personal freedoms, Bush cited the Washington state
flower shop that was sued for refusing to do business with
a same-sex couple that was getting married.
For someone who has given countless numbers of
speeches, press conferences, and interviews, Jeb Bush
should be more clear when he speaks.
In 2013, after florist Barronelle Stutzman refused to
provide flowers for a gay friend’s same-sex wedding, she
was sued by the two men and the attorney general of
Washington for violating the state’s anti-discrimination
law. She was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
I want to say seven things about discrimination.
First, there is nothing inherently wrong with
discrimination. Despite its demonization by the news
media—and Jeb Bush—the word discrimination is not a
dirty word. Discrimination involves choosing between or
among options. To discriminate is to choose one thing and
exclude others. Men used to be lauded for having
discriminating taste.
Said Bush:
If someone walks into a flower shop and says, I’d
like to buy flowers, you shouldn’t be able to
discriminate against them because they are gay. But
if you’re asking someone to participate in a religious
ceremony or a marriage, they should have the right
of conscious to be able to say, I love you, but I can’t
do it because it goes against my religious teachings.
Does that make sense?
If so, then he should choose his words more carefully
because the two things are not necessarily the same.
Buying something from someone ordinarily has nothing to
do with asking someone to participate in an activity. One
can buy flowers from a florist for a wedding or any other
event and not have the florist do anything beyond handing
over the flowers or delivering them to an address you
provide.
Second, Bush is as guilty as anyone when it comes to
discrimination. When he married his Mexican wife
Columba in 1974, he discriminated against every
American woman, every white woman, every blonde, and
every other woman in the world. He discriminated against
the Episcopalian church of his youth when he converted to
Catholicism in 1995. He also discriminated against all
other religions and denominations in the world when he
did this. Bush discriminates every day of his life. He
discriminates against one store when he shops at another.
He discriminates against vanilla ice cream when he eats
chocolate ice cream. He discriminates against one
interviewer when he chooses to do an interview with
another instead. He discriminates against Pepsi when he
drinks Coke. He discriminates against Democrats when he
votes Republican. He discriminates against English when
he speaks Spanish. Bush can’t get through the day without
discriminating against something or someone.
If not, then he makes even less sense because his two
statements would then not be related at all. Even the
staunchest proponent of same-sex marriage would not say
Third, why is it that customers can legally discriminate
against businesses but businesses cannot legally
discriminate against customers? Why is it that customers
No, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t make any sense.
Is Bush saying that asking a florist to provide flowers for a
same-sex wedding is “asking someone to participate in a
religious ceremony or a marriage”?
27
not committing an act of aggression or violence against
him, it should not be prohibited by force of law.
can discriminate against merchants for whatever reason
they want—no matter how irrational, illogical, or
unreasonable—and on any basis they want—no matter
how racist, sexist, or homophobic—but not the other way
around? Does Jeb Bush have an answer for this? No one is
ever charged with violating an anti-discrimination law if
he publicly announces that he will never patronize a
particular business—because there are no such laws. Not
yet.
Sixth, discrimination means freedom. A free society must
include the freedom to discriminate, not only against
someone because he is gay, but because he is straight—or
obese, bulimic, attractive, ugly, handicapped, tall, short,
black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim,
Protestant, agnostic, married, single, divorced,
transgendered, Democrat, Republican, liberal,
conservative, young, old, pregnant, or named Jeb Bush.
Fourth, there is no right to service. Not if the concept of
private property has any meaning. Not if the concept of
freedom of association has any meaning. Not if the
concept of a free market has any meaning. Not if the
concept of freedom of contract has any meaning. In a free
society, business owners have the right to run their
businesses as they choose. Just as homeowners have the
right to exclude anyone they want from entering their
house for any reason, so business owners should have the
right to refuse service to anyone—including Jeb Bush—
for any reason.
And Seventh, to ban discrimination is to ban freedom of
thought. In a free society, everyone has the right to think
what he wants to think about anyone else—including Jeb
Bush—and choose to discriminate or not discriminate
against anyone on the basis of those thoughts. His
thoughts may be erroneous, illogical, irrational, or
unreasonable, but in a free society everyone is entitled to
freedom of thought.
Jeb Bush and the Republicans and conservatives who want
the government to criminalize discrimination are enemies
of a free society just like the Democrats, liberals, and
progressives they castigate for favoring more government
intervention in society.
Fifth, discriminating against someone is not aggressing
against him. Discriminating against Jeb Bush on election
day and voting for someone else is not an act of
aggression against him. No one is entitled to a particular
job. No one is entitled to rent a particular apartment. No
one is entitled to buy a particular house. No one is entitled
to enter anyone else’s property. Not hiring, renting,
selling, or granting the right of entry to someone on the
basis of his race, religion, sex, color, national origin,
political views, or sexual orientation may be wrong,
immoral, hatful, or nonsensical, it may be based on
stereotypes, prejudice, bigotry, or racism, but since it is
Laurence M. Vance writes from central Florida. He is the
author of King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, The
War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom, War, Christianity,
and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian
Militarism and War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on
the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy. His newest
book is The Making of the King James Bible—New
Testament.
WCBI CBS Local News
Grenada Circuit Clerk Resigns
By Robert Davidson
County Circuit Clerk Linda Barnette has resigned her
position effective immediately in reaction to the Supreme
Court ruling on same sex marriages. In her letter to the
board of supervisors Barnette says the court decisions
violates her core values as a Christian and she cannot in
all good conscience issue marriage licenses to same sex
couples under my name because the Bible teaches that
homosexuality is contrary to God’s plan and purpose for
marriage and family.
Barnette has served as circuit clerk for 24 years.
Pastor Wilson’s Comment: Good for her! I would have
preferred for her to have refused and have made them
remove her, but she is the one had to determine that call.
28
Dissecting the Robotic Progressive Response to Mass Shootings
By James Ostrowski
The analytical framework laid out in Progressivism: A
Primer on the Idea Destroying America is extremely
useful for explaining the formulaic reaction of
progressives to mass shootings.
On the other hand, no progressive government policies
may be discussed as possible contributors to this tragedy.
There has been zero or little note taken of these possible
factors:
Keep in mind that progressivism is a kind of self-imposed
mental disability wherein the progressive convinces
himself, without evidence or logic, that government action
is the solution to all human problems and therefore
becomes blind to any evidence that government itself may
be the culprit.
1. The failure of a law restricting guns at church to stop
the shooter.
Also, keep in mind that in order to distract attention away
from prior progressive government failures, the
progressive instinctively resorts to a set of pre-determined
non-governmental or societal scapegoats to be blamed for
any new problems that come along.
3. The deterrent effect of handgun licensing laws in
South Carolina.
2. The deterrent effect of that same law on the victims as
it requires specific consent by the church to carry a
concealed weapon.
4. The ban on open-carry in South Carolina.
5. The fact that the government takes people’s money
and usurps tremendous power and promises to keep
people safe and yet provides little actual protection in
advance of crime as in this case.
What is rarely realized, even by non-progressives, is that
blaming innocent scapegoats for problems created by
government is a pernicious form of hate speech!
6. The fact that the perpetrator was able to freely access
the church from a government-owned street on which
the state allows any and all criminals and terrorists
access. That is, the state guarantees the right of the
most dangerous criminal or terrorist in the land to
come right to the edge of your property.
So, in the South Carolina tragedy, before all the relevant
facts are known, progressives have already trotted out:
white racism (which for all practical purposes means white
people!) and private gun ownership, among other
scapegoats. Although the presence of the Confederate
flag on government property is technically a government
policy, in the present controversy, the flag primarily
serves as an alleged symbol of white racism, thus allowing
progressives to aim their furor at a non-governmental
target.
7. Whether the shooter was under the influence of stateapproved psychotropic drugs prescribed by statelicensed professionals.
8. The fact that the shooter was, after years of
“preparation for life” at government school,
unemployed and aimless.
Ironically, while progressives are doing a victory lap on
the flag issue, the Confederate flag issue actually shows
the failure of progressivism to achieve social harmony
among diverse groups. Democracy creates winners and
losers in every one of its policies. When the predominant
view was that the flag was hoisted in honor of brave
Confederate soldiers or in opposition to federal
omnipotence, the minority who viewed the flag differently
were forced to endure the majority’s decision. Now, the
former majority is forced to endure the majority’s edict
that deems them racist “redneck” haters. Each side will
now look at the other as a threat to their culture and
values. Thus it is that the progressive’s beloved
democracy creates not harmony among racial, ethnic and
religious groups, but continuous and escalating conflict.
This point is explored in detail in my book.
9. The fact that the shooter may have been riled up by
his recent felony drug arrest. The progressives
invented the war on drugs. Violence breeds violence.
10. The fact that the shooter attended government school
for many years and thus the state itself helped shape
his mindset, character and values and subjected him to
the pro-drug culture common in government schools.
See, Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids,
Chapter 3, “The Best Drug Store in Town.”
11. Finally, the fact that progressives promised us that if
their various policies and programs to improve race
relations and improve the social and economic welfare
of African-Americans were enacted, that enormous
progress would be made. In 2015, it is obvious that
they have failed and that race relations are getting
worse and large segments of the black community are
stagnating or declining and in despair.
A phenomenon I identified a few years ago and spelled
out in the book, “liberty reduction as a form of grieving,”
is ongoing with the President calling for reducing the
liberty of innocents to own guns.
29
groups against each other in the pursuit of power. All
over the world and in the United States, the state system
has failed and is failing to bring peace and harmony
among different racial, ethnic and religious groups. Only
liberty can bring us all together. Progressive government
guns never have and never will.
The self-imposed mental disability of progressivism is
very destructive. It prevents progressives from properly
analyzing the underlying causes of social problems, blinds
them to the role of government in generating such
problems and, finally, it encourages them to find innocent,
non-governmental scapegoats to blame for the problem of
the day and to engage in hate speech against them,
subjecting them to the risk of violent retaliation.
James Ostrowski is an attorney in Buffalo, New York and
author of Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids:
What You Need to Know and Political Class Dismissed:
Essays Against Politics. His latest book is Direct Citizen
Action: How We Can Win the Second American
Revolution Without Firing a Shot.
The fact is that people who differ from each other in many
ways do get along in the free marketplace but not in the
government-place where government and politicians
divide people into winners and losers and play various
Newsmax
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore: Same-Sex Licenses Not Yet Required
By Greg Richter
A federal judge in Mobile County already has ordered
same-sex licenses to be given throughout the state in
February, but Moore issued a stay on that ruling, too,
saying state supreme courts trump federal judges until a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling has been made.
"The Alabama Supreme Court did not direct probate
judges to delay compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court's
decision," Shannon Minter of National Center for Lesbian
Rights told AL.com. "This order has no practical effect.
U.S. District Court Judge Callie (Ginny) Granade already
ordered Alabama's probate judges to stop enforcing the
marriage ban as soon as the Supreme Court rule, and that
is binding immediately."
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore
Moore became nationally known over his fight to display
the Ten Commandments at the state Supreme Court
building.
The Alabama Supreme Court has told the state's probate
courts they are not required to issue licenses for same-sex
marriages for 25 days, AL.com reports.
Former federal judge John Carroll, who now teaches at
Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham told AL.com
that the Alabama Supreme Court was not required to issue
the order allowing for counties to hold off on licenses for
25, but added, "Were they within their rights? I guess."
Citing a rule that parties have 25 days to contest a U.S.
Supreme Court ruling before it becomes a mandate,
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore initially issued a
statement that sounded like probate judges were forbidden
from issuing the licenses. He later clarified his remarks,
saying "What the order means is that within that 25-day
period no (probate judge) HAS to issue a marriage license
to a same-sex couple."
30
Obamacare’s Best Allies: The Courts and the Republicans
By Ron Paul
By ruling for the government in the case of
King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court once again
tied itself into rhetorical and logical knots to
defend Obamacare. In King, the court
disregarded Obamacare’s clear language
regarding eligibility for federal health care
subsides, on the grounds that enforcing the
statute as written would cause havoc in the
marketplace. The court found that Congress
could not have intended this result and that the
court needed to uphold Congress’s mythical
intention and ignore Obamacare’s actual language.
Republicans’ failure to advocate for a freemarket health care system is not just rooted in
intellectual error and political cowardice. The
insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry,
and the other special interests that benefit from a
large government role in health care are just as
— or perhaps even more — influential in the
Republican Party as in the Democratic Party.
The influence of these interests is one reason
why, despite their free-market rhetoric,
Republicans have a long history of expanding
the government’s role in health care.
While Obamacare may be safe from court challenges, its
future is far from assured. As Obamacare forces more
Americans to pay higher insurance premiums while
causing others to lose their insurance or lose access to the
physicians of their choice, opposition to Obamacare will
grow. Additional Americans will turn against Obamacare
as their employers reduce their hours, along with their
paychecks, because of Obamacare’s mandates.
Those who think a Republican president and Congress
will enact free-market health care should consider that the
last time Republicans controlled Congress and the White
House their signature health care achievement was to
expand federal health care spending and entitlements.
Furthermore, Richard Nixon worked with Ted Kennedy to
force all health care plans to offer a health maintenance
organization (HMO). Even Obamacare’s individual
mandate originated in a conservative think tank and was
first signed into law by a Republican governor.
As dissatisfaction with Obamacare grows, there will be
renewed efforts to pass a single-payer health care system.
Single-payer advocates will point to Obamacare’s
corporatist features as being responsible for its failures
and claim the only solution is to get the private sector
completely out of health care.
Instead of Obamacare Lite, Congress should support
giving individuals direct control over their health care
dollars through individual health care tax credits and
expanded access to health savings accounts. Other reforms
like long-term group insurance could ensure that those
with “pre-existing conditions” have access to care.
Another good reform is negative outcomes insurance that
could help resolve the medical malpractice crisis.
Unfortunately, many Republicans will inadvertently aid
the single-payer advocates by failing to acknowledge that
Obamacare is not socialist but corporatist, and that that the
pre-Obamacare health care system was hobbled by
government intervention. In fact, popular support for
Obamacare was rooted in the desire to address problems
created by prior government interference in the health care
marketplace.
America’s health care system is just as unsustainable as
our foreign policy and our monetary system. At some
point, the financial and human costs of Obamacare will
prove overwhelming and Congress will be forced to
replace this system. Hopefully, before this happens, a
critical mass of people will convince Congress to replace
Obamacare with a truly free-market health care system.
Republicans also help the cause of socialized medicine by
pretending that Obamacare can be fixed with minor
reforms. These Republicans do not understand that
replacing Obamacare with “Obamacare Lite” will still
leave millions of Americans with inadequate access to
quality health care, and could strengthen the movement
for a single-payer system.
Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician,
author, and former Republican congressman, two-time
Republican presidential candidate, and the presidential
nominee of the Libertarian Party in the 1988 U.S.
Presidential Election.
31
The Emergence of Orwellian Newspeak and the Death of Free Speech
By John W. Whitehead
We have entered a new age where, as
commentator Mark Steyn notes, “we have to
tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells” and “the
forces of ‘tolerance’ are intolerant of anything
less than full-blown celebratory approval.”
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically,
don’t give him two sides to a question to
worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him
none. Let him forget there is such a thing as
war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than
that people worry over it…. Give the people
contests they win by remembering the words to
more popular songs or the names of state capitals or
how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full
of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full
of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’
with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking,
they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And
they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t
change.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
In such a climate of intolerance, there can be no
freedom speech, expression or thought.
Yet what the forces of political correctness fail to realize
is that they owe a debt to the so-called “haters” who have
kept the First Amendment robust. From swastika-wearing
Neo-Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois, and
underaged cross burners to “God hates fags” protesters
assembled near military funerals, those who have
inadvertently done the most to preserve the right to
freedom of speech for all have espoused views that were
downright unpopular, if not hateful.
How do you change the way people think? You start by
changing the words they use.
Until recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has reiterated that
the First Amendment prevents the government from
proscribing speech, or even expressive conduct, because it
disapproves of the ideas expressed. However, that longvaunted, Court-enforced tolerance for “intolerant” speech
has now given way to a paradigm in which the
government can discriminate freely against First
Amendment activity that takes place within a government
forum. Justifying such discrimination as “government
speech,” the Court ruled that the Texas Dept. of Motor
Vehicles could refuse to issue specialty license plate
designs featuring a Confederate battle flag. Why? Because
it was deemed offensive.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where
conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a
loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and
cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides
behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance,
the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and
thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated
reorientation of societal language appear wellintentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence,
denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end
result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and
infantilism.
The Court’s ruling came on the heels of a shooting in
which a 21-year-old white gunman killed nine AfricanAmericans during a Wednesday night Bible study at a
church in Charleston, N.C. The two events, coupled with
the fact that gunman Dylann Roof was reportedly pictured
on several social media sites with a Confederate flag, have
resulted in an emotionally charged stampede to sanitize
the nation’s public places of anything that smacks of
racism, starting with the Confederate flag and ballooning
into a list that includes the removal of various Civil War
monuments.
It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility
and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of
free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run
counter to the cultural elite.
As a society, we’ve become fearfully polite, careful to
avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled
intolerant, hateful, closed-minded or any of the other toxic
labels that carry a badge of shame today. The result is a
nation where no one says what they really think anymore,
at least if it runs counter to the prevailing views.
Intolerance is the new scarlet letter of our day, a badge to
be worn in shame and humiliation, deserving of society’s
fear, loathing and utter banishment from society.
These tactics are nothing new. This nation, birthed from
puritanical roots, has always struggled to balance its love
of liberty with its moralistic need to censor books, music,
art, language, symbols etc. As author Ray Bradbury notes,
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the
world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
For those “haters” who dare to voice a different opinion,
retribution is swift: they will be shamed, shouted down,
silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated
to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are
guilty of various “word crimes.”
Indeed, thanks to the rise of political correctness, the
population of book burners, censors, and judges has
greatly expanded over the years so that they run the gamut
32
Already, the outrage over the Charleston shooting and
racism are fading from the news headlines, yet the
determination to censor the Confederate symbol remains.
Before long, we will censor it from our thoughts, sanitize
it from our history books, and eradicate it from our
monuments without even recalling why. The question, of
course, is what’s next on the list to be banned?
from left-leaning to right-leaning and everything in
between. By eliminating words, phrases and symbols from
public discourse, the powers-that-be are sowing hate,
distrust and paranoia. In this way, by bottling up dissent,
they are creating a pressure cooker of stifled misery that
will eventually blow.
For instance, the word “Christmas” is now taboo in the
public schools, as is the word “gun.” Even childish
drawings of soldiers result in detention or suspension
under rigid zero tolerance policies. On college campuses,
trigger warnings are being used to alert students to any
material they might read, see or hear that might upset
them, while free speech zones restrict anyone wishing to
communicate a particular viewpoint to a specially
designated area on campus. Things have gotten so bad that
comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld refuse to
perform stand-up routines to college crowds anymore.
It was for the sake of preserving individuality and
independence that James Madison, the author of the Bill
of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the
“minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the
face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even
one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still
have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely,
challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views
in the press freely.
This freedom for those in the unpopular minority
constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society.
Conversely, when we fail to abide by Madison’s dictates
about greater tolerance for all viewpoints, no matter how
distasteful, the end result is always the same: an
indoctrinated, infantilized citizenry that marches in
lockstep with the governmental regime.
Clearly, the country is undergoing a nervous breakdown,
and the news media is helping to push us to the brink of
insanity by bombarding us with wall-to-wall news
coverage and news cycles that change every few days.
In this way, it’s difficult to think or debate, let alone stay
focused on one thing—namely, holding the government
accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the
powers-that-be understand this.
Some of this past century’s greatest dystopian literature
shows what happens when the populace is transformed
into mindless automatons. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit
451, reading is banned and books are burned in order to
suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is
used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily
pacified, distracted and controlled.
As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War
on the American People, regularly scheduled trivia and/or
distractions keep the citizenry tuned into the various
breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and
tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on
our freedoms. These sleight-of-hand distractions and
diversions are how you control a population, either
inadvertently or intentionally, advancing a political
agenda agenda without much opposition from the
citizenry.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, serious literature,
scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as
subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through
the use of conditioning, social taboos and inferior
education. Likewise, expressions of individuality,
independence and morality are viewed as vulgar and
abnormal.
Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of
overwhelming news, short memories and the use of
propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought
drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,”
wrote Ellul.
And in George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away
with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings,
even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and
punish “thoughtcrimes.” In this dystopian vision of the
future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of
Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war
and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic
affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love
deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and
the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment,
education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania:
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Under these conditions there can be no thought.
And, in fact, modern man does not think about
current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he
does not understand them any more than he takes
responsibility for them. He is even less capable of
spotting any inconsistency between successive facts;
man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of
the most important and useful points for the
propagandists, who can always be sure that a
particular propaganda theme, statement, or event
will be forgotten within a few weeks.
All three—Bradbury, Huxley and Orwell—had an
uncanny knack for realizing the future, yet it is Orwell
33
who best understood the power of language to manipulate
the masses. Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to
eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained
of unorthodox meanings and make independent, nongovernment-approved thought altogether unnecessary. To
give a single example, as psychologist Erich Fromm
illustrates in his afterword to 1984:
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the
face of elected officials who refuse to represent us,
helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the
face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like
enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face
of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we
have nowhere left to go. Our backs are to the walls. From
this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting,
or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and
our selves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston
Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does
equal 5.
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could
only be used in such statements as “This dog is free
from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.” It
could not be used in its old sense of “politically free”
or “intellectually free,” since political and
intellectual freedom no longer existed as concepts….
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak
(where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous)
and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and
“accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite
has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and
prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that
challenge their authority.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is
founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is
the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging
American Police State and The Change Manifesto
(Sourcebooks).
Florida Times-Union
Backing into your own driveway could cost you
under proposed bill before Jacksonville Council
By David Bauerlein
information in order to write a citation. If they cannot see
the tags from the street because the car is backed in, they
cannot go onto private property to get a closer look at the
front of the vehicle.
The bill filed by City Councilman Warren Jones says that
if a vehicle’s tag isn’t visible from the street, the owner
must write down that information with 2-inch tall letters
and post it in a location that inspectors can easily see from
the street.
The bill also says that if an owner puts a cover over the
vehicle, the license tag must either be visible or the tag
information must be posted.
The bill also would crack down on the outdoor storage of
disabled refrigerators and freezers along with “equipment,
furnishings, furniture, appliances, construction materials
or any other items which are not designed to be used
outdoors.”
For those who prefer to back vehicles into their driveways,
a proposal pending before City Council would make it
illegal to park their cars that way unless their license plate
information is clearly visible from the street.
The bill number is 2015-377.
The proposed bill is aimed at cracking down on the visual
blight that occurs when vehicle owners store cars that
don’t work on their property.
Pastor Wilson’s Comment: There is no limit to what our
collectivist masters will attempt to control if they are not
stopped by the people!
Proponents say it’s needed because city code enforcement
inspectors face problems cracking down on abandoned
vehicles because they need to get the license plate
34
Truth Is a Crime Against the State
By Paul Craig Roberts
Thus, the Western World is ruled by propaganda.
Truth is excluded. Fox “news,” CNN, the NY
Times, Washington Post, and all the rest of the
most accomplished liars in world history, repeat
constantly the same lies. For Washington, of
course, and the military/security complex.
The entire Western edifice rests on lies. There is
no other foundation. Just lies.
This makes truth an enemy. Enemies have to be
suppressed, and thus truth has to be suppressed.
Truth comes from foreign news sources, such as
RT, and from Internet sites, such as this one.
War is the only possible outcome of propaganda in
behalf of war. When the irresponsible Western
media brings Armageddon to you, you can thank the New
York Times and the rest of the presstitutes for the
destruction of yourself and all your hopes for yourself and
your children.
Thus, Washington and its vassals are busy at
work closing down independent media.
Washington and its vassals have redefined propaganda.
Truth is propaganda if it is told by countries, such as
Russia and China, that have independent foreign policies.
Stephen Lendman, who comprises a good chunk of the
remaining moral conscience of the West, explains the
situation:
Propaganda is truth if told by Washington and its puppets,
such as the EU Observer.
The EU Observer, little doubt following Washington’s
orders, has denounced RT and Sputnik News for
“broadcasting fabrications and hate speech from their
bureaus in European Union cities.”
EU Bashes “Russian Propaganda” – by Stephen
Lendman
Western major media march to the same drummer –
dutifully regurgitating managed news misinformation
garbage, willfully burying hard truths on issues mattering
most.
Often I appear on both RT and Sputnik. In my opinion
both are too restrained in their reporting, fearful, of
course, of being shut down, than full truth requires. I have
never heard a word of hate speech or propaganda on
either. Washington’s propaganda, perhaps, but not the
Russian government’s.
Alternative sources beholden to truth and full disclosure
operate by different standards – engendering ire among
Western nations wanting their high crimes suppressed –
bashing sources revealing them.
In other words, the way Washington has the news world
rigged, not even independent news sites can speak
completely clearly.
The EU Observer (EUO) claims independent credentials
while supporting policies responsible news sources
denounce.
The Western presstitutes have succeeded in creating a
false reality for insouciant Americans and also for much
of the European Union population.
Independently reporting hard truths isn’t its long suit. Its
editor, Lisbeth Kirk, is the wife of former Danish
European Parliament member Jens-Peter Bonde. Human
Rights Watch’s European and Central Asian advocacy
director Veronika Szente Goldston calls its journalists “the
most in-your-face in Brussels.”
A sizable percentage of these insouciant peoples believe
that Russia invaded Ukranine and that Russia is
threatening to invade the Baltic States and Poland. This
belief exists despite all intelligence of all Western
governments reporting that there is no sign of any Russian
forces that would be required for invasion.
EUO irresponsibly bashed Russia’s Sputnik News and RT
International – two reputable sources for news,
information and analysis – polar opposite Western media
propaganda.
The “Russian invasion,” like “Saddam Hussein’s weapons
of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections,” like
“Assad of Syria’s use of chemical weapons against his
own people,” like “Iranian nukes,” never existed but
nevertheless became the reality in the Western media. The
insouciant Western peoples believe in non-existent
occurrencies.
It shamelessly called their reporting valued by growing
millions “broadcasting fabrications and hate speech from
their bureaus in EU cities.”
It touted plans by EU officials to counter what they called
“use and misuse of communications tools…play(ing) an
important role in the dramatic political, economic and
security-related developments (in) Eastern (European
countries) over the past 18 months.”
In other words, just to state the obvious noncontroversial
fact, the Western “news” media is a propaganda ministry
from which no truth emerges.
35
It drafted a nine-page “action plan” intended to convey
“positive” messages. It’ll increase funding to blast out
Europe’s view of things more effectively.
of newspapers, television channels and radio stations,
which set out only one point of view on what is happening
in the world.”
It wants EU policies promoted in former Russian republics
the old-fashioned way – by repeating Big Lies often
enough until most people believe them.
The BBC is Fox News with an English accent. US socalled public radio and broadcasting are no different –
telling listeners and viewers everything except what they
most need to know.
A new EU foreign service cell called East StratComTeam
operating by September will run things – functioning as a
European ministry of propaganda.
Simonyan explained “Britain (has) an entire army brigade
of 1,500 men…whose tasks include the fight against
Russia on social networks. NATO has a task force aimed
at countering Russian influence throughout the world.”
It’ll “develop dedicated communication material on
priority issues…put at the disposal of the EU’s political
leadership, press services, EU delegations and EU
member states.”
“Only recently, Deutsche Welle launched a 24-hour
television channel in English to counter RT. At the same
time, nearly all the major Western media, including the
BBC, DW and Euronews have long disseminated their
information in the Russian language, while Radio Liberty,
funded directly by the US government, broadcasts in
Russian.”
Material circulated in Russia and other EU countries aims
to let news consumers “easily understand that political and
economic reforms promoted by the EU can, over time,
have a positive impact on their daily lives” – even though
precisely the opposite is true.
“(I)f after all this, the EU still complains that they are
losing the ‘information war’ against Russia, perhaps it’s
time to realize that” growing numbers of people are fed up
with being lied to.
It wants so-called benefits Europeans enjoy explained to
people continent-wide. Will millions of unemployed,
underemployed and impoverished people buy what’s
plainly untrue from their own experience?
People want reliable sources of news, information and
analysis unavailable through mainstream Western sources
using propagandists masquerading as journalists.
Sputnik News, RT, US independent sources like the
Progressive Radio Network and numerous others steadily
gain audience strength at the expense of scoundrel media
people abandon for good reason.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the
US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall
Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of
prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his
book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with
Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how
americans lost the protection of law, has been released by
Random House.
Growing numbers want truth and full disclosure on things
affecting their lives and welfare. Politicians in Western
countries want ordinary people treated like mushrooms –
well-watered and in the dark.
RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said “the
European Union is diligently trying to stifle the alternative
voice of RT, at a time when in Europe there are hundreds
The Confederate flag and cultural fascism
by Old Rebel (Mike Tuggle)
Here's a nice segue from my previous post. Brent
Bozell looks behind the highfalutin rhetoric of the Social
Justice Warriors and their boosters in the corporate media
and exposes the totalitarian impulses that actually
motivate these people:
Now it’s the Confederate flag.
I don’t know what’s more offensive, your disgusting
character assassination or the outright
embarrassment of politicians and businesses quaking
in their shoes at the thought they might be next on
your hit list. (Fox News)
You cultural fascists have struck again.
You have shown you will say most anything, and do
most anything to advance your radical agenda. But
that’s not enough, is it? Your intent is to ban any
opposition. Your goal is to ban even the expression
of dissension. ...
He's right. As demonstrated countless times, the SJWs
want any who disagree to lose jobs, to be silenced, and to
be permanently banished from the marketplace of ideas.
Their totalitarian thugs, period.
36
Radar Love
By Eric Peters
A bullet-proof vest does not mean you’re bulletproof. It just means most bullets won’t penetrate
the vest.
Your detector will detect the instant-on being
directed at the car ahead of you. Which will give
you time enough to cut your speed. This is why it’s
wise policy to always find – and follow – a blocker
car. Some other guy who is driving at about the
speed you’d like to maintain. Let him take the
bullet (so to speak) for you.
But some will.
Same with radar detectors. You’ll be less
vulnerable – but you won’t be able invulnerable.
Laser is another big problem – even more so than
instant-on radar because you will get absolutely no
warning (the beam is virtually instantaneous) and also
because – unlike radar – it is very specific. The light beam
doesn’t diffuse as it reaches out to your car. If the
revenuer is pointing his rig at your car, there will be no
doubt (in court) that it was your car he ID’d as “speeding.”
Probably the greatest threat – the one radar detectors are
least able to protect you from – is so-called “instant- on”
radar. The problem isn’t that your detector won’t detect
that you’ve been targeted. The problem is not detecting
the radar in time to do much about it.
Here’s how it works:
Revenue collector parks on the shoulder or some other
such place where – ideally, from his point of view – he
can see oncoming cars before they can see him. He waits,
finger on the proverbial trigger. His radar gun’s trigger.
When he sees you coming, he pulls
the trigger and a brief burst of radar
emanates from his gun. Just as your
radar detector detects the signal, it’s
already bounced back to him, giving
up your speed. You hit the brakes,
but it’s too late.
High-end radar detectors can detect laser, but see points
above. Times two. You will get no warning at all. Not
even the little bit of warning you’d get if the cop was
using instant-on (some of which would “leak” beyond the
targeted car because – again – radar
cannot focus on a specific car).
Thankfully, laser speed enforcement
is fairly rare. So also instant-on. Most
revenuers prefer to sit in their cars
with their radar constantly on – and
so, constantly radiating signal. A
detector will pick up the signal while
you’re still on the periphery of pork –
leaving you time to adjust your speed
before he gets a “lock” on you.
He’s got you.
Most radar detectors need about 0.81.5 seconds (the better units being
more sensitive) of radar signal before
they’ll alert. The problem is the latest
instant-on police radar can hit you
with a burst so brief in duration – as little as .016 seconds
– that your detector either won’t detect the signal or won’t
detect it quickly enough to give you time to react.
Hence the value of the detector.
Look at it this way: A quality radar detector costs about
$400 or thereabouts. If it saves you from getting even one
speeding ticket, the thing will have paid for itself.
Anything after that is putting money in your pocket by
keeping it from being taken out of your pocket by
they who exist to harass and collect.
Instant-on is most effective on lightly traveled roads,
where there’s not much traffic. Because until it’s
activated, you will get no warning – no matter how
sensitive your radar detector is. And if you’re the only car
on the road, the cop activating it has already drawn a bead
on you. While radar is by nature diffuse – unlike a laserbased speed detection system – and so cannot tell which
car is “speeding,” if you’re the only car around, it’s a
difference without a distinction.
Keep in mind that it’s not just the money you’ll be forced
to fork over to the state/county (to help fund the
revenuers, so they can collect more revenue). It’s also the
hit you’ll likely take from the other half of this odious tag
team.
You know – the insurance mafia.
Busted.
Even one ticket for “speeding” can result in a not-small
rate hike – whether you’ve ever filed a claim (or had one
filed against you) or not. A perfect record – in terms of not
having ever damaged your car or anyone else’s – is largely
irrelevant. Insurance is not about “safety.” It is about
legalized extortion. Traffic tickets provide the pretext for
Instant-on is less effective when there’s traffic in the sense
that there are more potential victims. Thus, the chances of
it being you are lessened.
There’s also another reason.
37
the theft (which, never forget, you’re not legally permitted
to say “no” to – hence, theft) and the mafiosi of the
insurance industry will seize any opportunity to jack up
your rates.
This is why it’s critical to avoid that first ticket – and
while a radar detector won’t grant you absolute immunity,
it will absolutely increase the odds in your favor.
Personally, I think anyone who drives – and “speeds”
(which is pretty much all of us) without a radar detector is
like a person who goes for a walk through a really bad
neighborhood in the middle of the night wearing nice
clothes – and without a gun (or bodyguards with guns).
Also keep in mind that while having one ticket
(conviction) on your DMV record may not trigger the
surcharge tsunami, a second one absolutely will. And in
most states, a conviction remains “live” on your record for
three years; sometimes five. That means if you get another
ticket while the first one’s still active… you’re toast. And
will be paying an extra 5 or 10 or perhaps even 20 percent
more annually for “coverage” you cannot refuse.
Eric Peters is an automotive columnist and author of
Automotive Atrocities and Road Hogs (2011).
Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.
Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the
pools. -- Psalm 84:5, 6
By J.C. Philpot (1802-1869)
David casts a glimpse here at those pilgrims who were
taking their upward journey to worship God in Zion. He
marks their road, and takes occasion to spiritualize it; for
he says, "In whose heart," in whose experience, in whose
soul, "are the ways" of these pilgrims Zionward.
One feature of the "valley of Baca" was, that the burning
sun above, and the parched ground beneath, at the time of
year when the pilgrims travelled, made the whole valley
arid and dry. But "they made it a well." There were wells
dug in this valley of Baca for the pilgrims to slake their
thirst at. And David, looking at these wells dug for the
pilgrims, applies them spiritually to the refreshment that
the Lord's people meet with in their course Zionward.
"Make it a well;" that is, there are from time to time sweet
refreshments in this valley of tears; there are bubblings up
of divine consolation; there are fountains of living waters,
streams of heavenly pleasures.
What are these "ways?" It is this, that "passing through the
valley of Baca, they make it a well." This valley of Baca
appears to have been a very perilous pass, through which
pilgrims journeyed toward Jerusalem; and on account of
the difficulties, dangers, and sufferings that they met with,
it was named "the valley of Baca," or "the valley of
weeping," "the vale of tears."
I remember a friend of mine telling me, that once while
journeying through one of the deserts in Asia, he and his
companions came to a well; and their disappointment
when they found the well was dry he said no language
could depict; their grief and trouble when, after hours'
travelling, they came at night to encamp by the well, and
found that the sun had dried it up, were indeed most acute.
As, therefore, none but pilgrims through the dry and
parched valley could adequately feel the sweetness of the
natural well; so none but spiritual pilgrims, afflicted,
exercised, and harassed, can appreciate the sweetness of
the "pure water of life" with which the Lord at times
refreshes the soul.
But the Psalmist says, "Blessed is the man in whose heart
are the ways of them, who passing through the valley of
Baca make it a well." Here is the distinctive character of
the true pilgrim. Not that he is journeying merely through
the "valley of Baca;" not that his eyes are drowned in
tears; not that his heart is filled with sorrows; not that his
soul is cut with temptations; not that his mind is tried by
suffering. But this is his distinctive feature—he "makes it
a well." This the ungodly know nothing of; this the
professing world, for the most part, are entirely
unacquainted with; but this is the secret which "no fowl
knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen."
38
Greece Is the Canary in the Coal Mine
By Bill Bonner
And now Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras
says Greek banks will be shut, and that capital
controls will be imposed, until July 7.
This is an “Amber Alert” day in the markets.
“Greeks Line Up at Banks; ATMs Run Dry” was
the headline over at the Drudge Report. Versions
of it ran throughout the financial media.
Greeks will only be allowed to take out a
maximum of €60 ($67) a day. And they’re
banned from moving their savings to accounts
outside of Greece.
Greece is the canary in the coal mine for what
could one day happen to your savings.
You’ll recall our prediction: In a crisis, banks will move
fast to block access to your money.
How Not to Manage a Bubble
First, they will limit withdrawals. Then they will either
close their doors or run out of cash.
The sense of panic and impending doom over the weekend
was heightened, as the Chinese government took action to
halt a stock market plunge.
Capital Controls Have Arrived…
In the last two weeks, the Shanghai Composite Index has
lost 20% of its value. That’s the equivalent of the Dow
losing 3,600 points. It’s the kind of thing that makes
investors nervous. Or desperate.
That’s what’s happening in Greece right now…
The showdown going on there for months is reaching a
climax.
If that happens in the U.S. – which it surely will – you can
bet your bippy that the feds will intervene. The Chinese
are doing the same. They’ve just cut the central bank
lending rate to the lowest level ever.
The Greek government has announced it will put creditor
demands to a popular vote.
“Hey, how do you feel about paying our national debt?”
they’re going to ask the hoi polloi.
Will that do the trick?
And how do you think the hoi polloi are going to respond?
From John Rubino at DollarCollapse.com:
The best guess is they’re going to say: Let’s not.
China, meanwhile, has spent the past couple of
decades directing an infrastructure build-out that in
retrospect was maybe twice as big as it should have
been.
Which will leave the banks cut off from new funds… and
short of old ones.
Smart depositors figured this out long ago. They took their
money out of Greek banks. But the rest of the people are
now wising up. In effect, they’re voting with their money
– getting it out while they still can.
Now it’s fiddling with all kinds of imperfectly
understood fiscal and monetary levers, trying to
maintain a 7% growth rate that is looking more and
more fictitious.
Naturally, the banks tried to protect the money that isn’t
theirs. Piraeus Bank and Alpha Bank limited the amount
you could take out. All you could get from a Piraeus
ATM, for example, was €600 ($667).
Here again, the best way to deal with a bubble is to
not let it happen in the first place. The second best
way is to let it pop and allow the market to clean up
the mess.
This made people more eager than ever to get their hands
on their money. Lines formed at ATMs on Saturday. One
banker estimated that €110 million ($122 million) left the
banks by 11:30 a.m.
The absolute wrong way to manage a bubble is to
intervene from the top to keep it going. Look where
that has gotten Japan and the U.S.
Bill Bonner is an American author of books and articles
on economic and financial subjects. He is the founder and
president of Agora Publishing, and author of a daily
financial column, Diary of a Rogue Economist.
Not all banks are open on Saturday. But even those that
were normally open stayed shut.
39
Pentagon Urged to Boot Chaplains Who Oppose 'Gay' Marriage
By Jack Minor
away with a certain group of chaplains in its entirety is
just ridiculous.
“It’s like he never learned a thing in law school about the
Constitution and about why chaplains exist.”
Lee contends one cannot say chaplains have no right to
oppose homosexuality based on the teachings of their faith
while also supporting their right to stand by other tenets,
such as refusing to marry those outside of their faith.
“A chaplain cannot do something against his faith tenet
such as marrying someone who has different religious
beliefs if that is a tenet of their faith. They cannot be
asked to do it, and they cannot be required to do it.”
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to
redefine marriage in all 50 states, the Pentagon is
now being urged to “cleanse itself” of chaplains who
refuse to support same-sex marriage.
Lee told WND that those who think a chaplain must
affirm or support the beliefs of everyone who comes
for counseling or teaching misunderstand the purpose of
chaplains.
Atheist Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military
Religious Freedom Foundation, is demanding the U.S.
military conduct a purge of chaplains who holds to the
traditional teaching of homosexuality and marriage
espoused by the first commander in chief, George
Washington.
“The job of a chaplain is to provide religious support or
perform religious support. The ‘provide’ part is to help a
person find someone who can meet the individual’s
spiritual needs. For example, I would not prepare a
Passover meal for a Jewish service member, but I will
direct them to a rabbi who can address that area. But when
I do perform religious support, whether it be to teach,
preach or counsel, I do so from my faith perspective.”
Weinstein claims chaplains who are “maintaining the state
of antagonism between their religion and the
sexual/gender identities of service members” have no
business serving in the military.
“Nobody is arguing that these losers don’t have a right to
their religious beliefs,” wrote Weinstein in an op-ed.
For his part, Weinstein said he’s looking forward to
ending the conservative influence in the military.
“At this stage, the only honorable thing that these losers
can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers,
and get the hell out of the American military chaplaincy.
If they are unwilling or too cowardly to do so, then the
Department of Defense must expeditiously cleanse itself
of the intolerant filth that insists on lingering in the ranks
of our armed forces.”
“What will become of their once-ironclad dominance of
fundamentalist Christian privilege within the Department
of Defense?” said Weinstein.
Lee insists chaplains don’t use their pulpit and position to
call on service members to disobey orders regarding the
treatment of “gay” service members.
While Weinstein frequently calls for the court-martialing
of military members who attempt to share their faith with
others, he is now calling for an entire class of chaplains to
be fired regardless of whether their beliefs affect their job
performance or not.
“For the vast majority of chaplains in the military, their
faith groups believe that homosexuality is a sin and so
they believe marriage is between a man and a woman as
Christians have believed for thousands of years,” Lee
explained to WND. “But the chaplains are saying that if
someone comes to them for counseling with the
homosexual partner they won’t ignore that person’s
concerns, instead they will refer them to someone who can
help with their specific needs because that’s part of
providing religious support.”
Brig. Gen. Doug Lee, now chairman of the executive
committee for the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty,
said Weinstein’s views are extreme, showing a lack of
understanding of a chaplain’s mission.
“His comments are so vitriolic and dividing that they are
hardly worth responding to. He seems to feel the need to
push his conspiracy theory about certain chaplains in the
military,” Lee told WND. “In addition, I don’t think he
understands that the job of chaplain exists in a pluralistic
military so that people have religious support, and to do
WND reported how the military tried to silence opposition
to repeal of the Revolutionary War ban on homosexuals
serving in the military during a lame-duck session of
Congress, after tea-party voters gave Republicans control
of the House of Representatives in 2010.
40
In 2013, soldiers were given a training brief stating
evangelical Christians were the No. 1 extremist threat to
America, ahead of groups such as the Muslim
Brotherhood, Ku Klux Klan, Nation of Islam, al-Qaida
and Hamas.
Wilson told Quinn that if a chaplain would proselytize, it
would be a workplace violation. Weinstein went even
further and said it was a “national security threat” and
amounted to “spiritual rape.” He said the chaplain’s role is
to minister to spiritual needs.
Catholicism and ultra-orthodox Judaism were also on the
list of religious extremist organizations.
Weinstein said military leaders need to understand “there
is systematic misogyny, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
in the military.”
As WND reported, Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff
to Colin Powell, told the Washington Post in 2013 the
biggest problems faced by the military were sexual assault
and what he described as proselytizing by Christians.
“What the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is
sedition and treason. It should be punished.”
Jack Minor is a journalist and researcher who served in
the United States Marine Corps under President Reagan.
Also a former pastor, he has written hundreds of articles
and been interviewed about his work on many TV and
radio outlets.
Wilkerson’s comments were made to Sally Quinn in an
interview that also featured former ambassador Joe
Wilson and Weinstein as they were on their way to a
meeting at the Pentagon.
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. -- Galatians 6:14
By J. C. Philpot (1802-1869)
An experimental knowledge of crucifixion with his
crucified Lord made Paul preach the cross, not only in its
power to save, but in its power to sanctify. But as then, so
now, this preaching of the cross, not only as the
meritorious cause of all salvation, but as the instrumental
cause of all sanctification, is "to them that perish
foolishness." As men have found out some other way of
salvation than by the blood of the cross, so have they
discovered some other way of holiness than by the power
of the cross; or rather have altogether set aside obedience,
fruitfulness, self-denial, mortification of the deeds of the
body, crucifixion of the flesh and of the world. Extremes
are said to meet; and certainly men of most opposite
sentiments may unite in despising the cross and counting
it foolishness. The Arminian despises it for justification,
and the Antinomian for sanctification. "Believe and be
holy," is as strange a sound to the latter as "Believe and be
saved" to the former. But, "Without holiness no man shall
see the Lord," is as much written on the portal of life as,
"By grace are ye saved through faith." Through the cross,
that is, through union and communion with him who
suffered upon it, not only is there a fountain opened for all
sin, but for all uncleanness. Blood and water gushed from
the side of Jesus when pierced by the Roman spear.
"This fountain so dear, he'll freely impart;
Unlock'd by the spear, it gushed from the heart,
With blood and with water; the first to atone,
To cleanse us the latter; the fountain's but one."
"All my springs are in thee," said the man after God's own
heart; and well may we re-echo his words. All our springs,
not only of pardon and peace, acceptance and justification,
but of happiness and holiness, of wisdom and strength, of
victory over the world, of mortification of a body of sin
and death, of every fresh revival and renewal of hope and
confidence; of all prayer and praise; of every new budding
forth of the soul, as of Aaron's rod, in blossom and fruit;
of every gracious feeling, spiritual desire, warm
supplication, honest confession, melting contrition, and
godly sorrow for sin—all these springs of that life which
is hid with Christ in God are in a crucified Lord. Thus
Christ crucified is, "to them who are saved, the power of
God." And as he "of God is made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption," at the cross
alone can we be made wise unto salvation, become
righteous by a free justification, receive of his Spirit to
make us holy, and be redeemed and delivered by blood
and power from sin, Satan, death, and hell.
41
World Net Daily
NEA 'Attack' on Homeschoolers Blasted as 'Outrageous'
Writers rebuff idea 'comprehensive education experience' lacking
By Paul Bremmer
“To the frustration of the NEA, homeschoolers have
become well-known for their academic strengths,” she
said. “This has been demonstrated over and over again
when homeschoolers whup the fannies of publicly
educated kids on standardized test scores.”
The National Education Association has launched an
attack on the practice of homeschooling, and one leading
education expert is not taking it lying down.
“The National Education Association’s radical attacks on
constitutionally protected liberties and homeschooling
families in particular are outrageous and should be
vehemently denounced by every real educator and every
real American,” internationalist journalist and educator
Alex Newman declared.
Indeed, the National Home Education Research Institute
reports homeschooled students typically score 15 to 30
percentile points higher than public-school students on
standardized academic achievement tests. And this is
regardless of the parents’ level of formal education or the
family’s household income.
The NEA’s 2014-2015 resolution on
homeschooling begins like this: “The National Education
Association believes that home schooling programs based
on parental choice cannot provide the student with a
comprehensive education experience.”
Lewis noted homeschooled children earn higher GPAs in
college and graduate at higher rates than their publicschooled peers despite the supposed lack of socialization
associated with homeschooling. But the fact is they’re
actually more socialized than other kids, she said.
Freelance writer Patrice Lewis, who homeschools her
children, seethed at that line.
“That’s because homeschoolers aren’t
locked in the artificial environment of
classrooms, and instead are out in the
real world, making friends of all ages
and experiencing life outside of
structured field trips,” Lewis
explained.
“Who has the authority to define
‘comprehensive?’” Lewis asked. “The
NEA? Why should they be the ones to
define comprehensive and not the
parents? Each family may define a
‘comprehensive’ education
differently, and each parent should
have the right to choose how they
want their children educated.
“Additionally, and unlike many
public-schooled kids, homeschooled
children are almost uniformly mature,
socially capable, polite, well-spoken,
ethical and hard working. These
intangible benefits are every bit as
important as the tangible academic
subjects for a well-rounded ‘comprehensive’ education,
and in fact arguably are more important in terms of longterm job prospects and security.”
“‘Comprehensive’ as defined by a farleft progressive agenda-driven union
and special interest-supported
legislators and bureaucrats is almost
guaranteed to fly in the face of the morals, values and
traditions of parents who don’t have similarly leftwing
progressive agenda-driven views.”
Newman, who co-authored the book “Crimes of the
Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools
to Destroy America’s Children,” pointed out that if
homeschooled children weren’t getting a good enough
education, they wouldn’t be beating public school students
like they are now.
The NEA actually wants to discourage homeschooled kids
from socializing with their public school peers. Part of the
organization’s resolution states, “The association also
believes that homeschooled students should not participate
in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.”
Lewis’ reaction was, “Um, who’s paying for public
schools in the first place? Answer: taxpayers, which
include homeschooling parents. They should have every
right to participate in extracurricular activities they’ve
paid for.”
“The undeniable fact is that homeschooled children
outperform victims of NEA-controlled government
schools on every objective metric by huge margins,”
Newman claimed. “The NEA knows this, and it is
undoubtedly one of the association’s central motivations
for this reckless attack.”
Lewis said it makes no sense for schools to bar
homeschooled children from extracurricular activities,
because even if those students participate, they are still
Lewis, a WND columnist, seconded that point.
42
Newman, for his part, believes giving government schools
an even greater monopoly over education would be “the
worst possible education policy.” But he thinks more
Americans will begin to homeschool as they realize the
public schools are failing their children.
using far less of the school’s resources than regular
public-school students, even though the parents of the
homeschoolers are still paying the same amount in taxes.
“The fact that the NEA is against such homeschooling
participation in extracurricular activities smacks of petty
vindictiveness and a punitive, spiteful attitude, rather than
intelligent reasoning or – more likely – the lost
opportunity to indoctrinate another child into the
progressive brainwashing,” Lewis opined.
“As more and more Americans – people of every race,
religion, political creed, and socio-economic background –
realize what a disaster government schools have become,
the homeschooling movement will continue to grow by
leaps and bounds,” Newman predicted.
Furthermore, the NEA homeschooling resolution states:
“Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the
appropriate state education licensure agency, and a
curriculum approved by the state department of education
should be used.”
The author said he would like to be able to laugh off the
NEA’s resolution, but the association is so powerful that
he must take it seriously.
“The fact is that, through compulsory unionism and dues,
this extremist outfit has amassed a vast fortune and an
army of lobbyists to attack educational liberty,” Newman
said. “The NEA and its agenda must be exposed and
stopped. In the meantime, serious educators who value
freedom and quality education should immediately
distance themselves from the NEA and its disgusting
attacks on educational freedom, the American people and
unalienable rights.”
But if every child learned from a state-approved teacher
and a state-approved curriculum, the results would be
similar to what is seen in communist countries, according
to Lewis.
“We would have dismally identical uniformity of thought,
behavior and morals,” Lewis said. “We would have no
creativity, no diversity, no thinking outside the box. We
would crush the spirits of children whose interests, skills
and abilities fall outside what the NEA deems acceptable.”
Lewis believes the bottom line is the NEA doesn’t want
any children to escape government control, thus the attack
on homeschooling.
America is such a diverse land, according to Lewis, that
uniformity in education makes no sense.
“They abhor the thought of allowing children to be
‘brainwashed’ into sincere religious beliefs, conservative
or traditional values, and – heaven forbid – a biblical
worldview (which to progressives is a fate worse than
death for those poor kids),” Lewis exclaimed. “Instead,
the NEA and the government want children ready for the
‘Brave New World’ where the state is the supreme
authority, values and morals are fluid and situational, and
the worldview is based on ‘Fifty Shades of Gray.’”
She said, “No one wants to have their children shoehorned
into an educational system that gives no variety, no
opportunities for the exceptionally gifted or exceptionally
slow; a place with no permitted variation in opinions,
learning methods or viewpoints. That’s what communist
schools do. Does America really want rigid uniformity in
its youth? I thought the left was all about ‘diversity.’ Why
not in education? Or are progressives lying when they
claim to support diversity?”
43
The Formal End to Judeo-Christian America
More and more of us rely on feelings to make moral decisions
By Dennis Prager
that marriage should remain a man-woman institution
the most vilified group in America today.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the redefinition
of marriage seals the end of America as the founders
envisioned it.
It is the heart – not the mind, not millennia of human
experience, nor any secular or religious body of
wisdom – that has determined that marriage should no
longer be defined as the union of a man and a woman.
From well before 1776 until the second half of the
20th century, the moral values of the United States were
rooted in the Bible and its God.
It is the heart, not the mind, that has concluded that gender
has no significance. That is the essence of the Brave New
World being ushered in. For the first time in recorded
history, whole societies are announcing that gender has no
significance. Same-sex marriage is, above all else, the
statement that male and female mean nothing, are
completely interchangeable, and, yes, don’t even
objectively exist, because you are only the gender you feel
you are. That explains the “T” in “LGBT.” The case for
same-sex marriage is dependent on the denial of sexual
differences.
Unlike Europe, which defined itself as exclusively
Christian, America became the first Judeo-Christian
society. The American founders were Christians – either
theologically or culturally – but they were rooted in the
Hebrew Scriptures. Even Americans who could not affirm
traditional Christian or Jewish theology affirmed the
centrality of God to ethics. Americans, from the founders
on, understood that without God, there is no moral truth,
only moral opinion – and assumed that those truths were
to be gleaned from the Bible more than anywhere else.
Beginning with the Supreme Court’s ban on
nondenominational school prayer in 1962, the same-sex
marriage decision has essentially completed the state’s
secularization of American society. This is one thing
about which both right and left, religious and secular, can
agree. One side may rejoice over the fact, and the other
may weep, but it is a fact.
It is the heart, not the mind, that has concluded that all a
child needs is love, not a father and mother.
And therein lies one of the reasons that the notion of
obedience to religion is so loathed by the cultural left.
Biblical Judaism and Christianity repeatedly dismiss the
heart as a moral guide.
And what has replaced Judaism, Christianity, JudeoChristian values and the Bible?
Moreover, the war to replace God, Judeo-Christian values
and the Bible as moral guides is far from over. What will
this lead to?
The answer is: feelings. More and more Americans rely on
feelings to make moral decisions. The heart has taken the
place of the Bible.
Here are three likely scenarios:
Years ago, I recorded an interview with a Swedish
graduate student. I began by asking her whether she
believed in God. Of course not. Did she believe in
religion? Of course not.
1. Becoming more and more like Western Europe, which
has more or less created the first godless and religion-less
societies in history. Among the consequences are less
marriage and the birth of far fewer children.
“Where, then, do you get your notion of right and wrong?”
I asked.
2. More and more ostracizing – eventually outlawing – of
religious Jews and Christians, clergy and institutions that
refuse to perform same-sex weddings.
“From my heart,” she responded.
3. An America increasingly guided by people’s hearts.
That is why five members of the Supreme Court have
redefined marriage. They consulted their hearts.
If you trust the human heart, you should feel confident
about the future. If you don’t, you should be scared.
Judeo-Christian values have made America, despite its
flaws, uniquely free and prosperous and the greatest force
for good in the world. Without those values, all of that
will change.
That is understandable. Any religious conservative who
does not acknowledge homosexuals’ historic persecution
or does not understand gays who desire to marry lacks
compassion.
But let’s be honest. This lack of compassion is more than
matched by the meanness expressed by the advocates of
same-sex marriage. They have rendered those who believe
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio show host
and creator of PragerUniversity.Com. His latest book is
"Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American
Values to Triumph."
44
Judgment, Not Justice, Comes Like Thunderbolt
Interprets Obama 'victory' on marriage through Romans 1 lens
By Joseph Farah
them. For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even his
eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without
excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they
glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart
was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they
became fools. …”
Barack Obama pondered the Supreme Court edict
pronouncing as discriminatory the institution of
marriage, as it has been known for 6,000 years of
human history – with men and women joined
together in sacred unions.
From the White House Rose Garden he spoke in slow,
deliberate, carefully chosen words suggesting America
had just triumphed over an enemy of unimaginable evil
and ignorance – that right had won over wrong, that
justice had prevailed over oppression.
That’s what we saw last Friday in the hallowed chambers
of the Supreme Court.
“Progress on this journey often comes in small
increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back,
propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens,”
Obama said. “And then sometimes there are days like this,
when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that
arrives like a thunderbolt.”
But there’s more.
You see, judgment doesn’t always come with a
thunderbolt. It sometimes comes when God simply allows
people to have the desires of their heart.
As Paul continues in Romans 1:24-32 – which is like a
word-picture of what is happening within American
society today: “Wherefore God also gave them up to
uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to
dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who
changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto
vile affections: for even their women did change the
natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise
also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman,
burned in their lust one toward another; men with men
working that which is unseemly, and receiving in
themselves that recompence of their error which was
meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their
knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to
do those things which are not convenient; Being filled
with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate,
deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God,
despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things,
disobedient to parents, Without understanding,
covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable,
unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they
which commit such things are worthy of death, not only
do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”
I found that last line to be revealing.
In the Bible, justice indeed can come swiftly as an act of
God. But the only time the word “thunderbolt” is used in
Scripture, in Psalm 78:48, is to describe judgment on the
land of Egypt during the Exodus.
That’s what I believe hit America like a thunderbolt
Friday – not justice, but judgment.
God is giving America over to her lusts and pride because,
like ancient Israel, she has turned away her heart from
Him, though He was like a faithful husband to them both.
America is, indeed, getting justice, but not the way Obama
and the moral anarchists think of it. They are getting their
just deserts, as are the rest of us who have not been the salt
and light needed to hold back judgment.
Judgment isn’t just coming. It is here. This is it. It could
get worse, but the Supreme Court ruling on marriage was,
in fact, itself a form of divine judgment on America.
Let me risk prosecution for “hate thoughts” by raising
what the Bible says about homosexuality, the behavior
that opened this spiritual Pandora’s box.
Paul wrote in Romans 1:17 that “the just shall live by
faith.” That suggests that justice can only be reckoned
through the prism of faith in the One True God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the God of the Bible.
Reject God and you will accept anything. That’s the
message here. And that is precisely what America has
done, as have so many nations and empires before her.
He continues in the Romans 1:18-22: “For the wrath of
God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of
God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto
It’s not about justice, which is defined only by God. It’s
about judgment. God will accept you just the way you are
should you reject Him. But you won’t like what that
means, because it means living apart from truth and
45
justice. It means existence in a living hell. That’s what it
means to be apart from God.
never have reached this breaking point. And until and
unless we, “His people,” do humble ourselves and
pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked
ways, judgment will increase.
There are two important lessons to be drawn:
 Obama and those rebelling against God and His ways
There were no thunderbolts last week. But, rest assured,
they are coming.
will have their moment of celebration over their
“victory.” But it will be short-lived. They will not be
satisfied. Look what comes next for them in Romans
1. They will not be joyous for long. They will turn
fierce – especially against their “enemies,” the people
of God.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a
nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News
Service.. He is the author or co-author of 13 books,
including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," and his
classic, "Taking America Back," now in its third edition
and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the
legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market
dailies.
 For the people of God, don’t think your hands are
clean. Had we been following the 2 Chronicles 7:14
prescription for revival and restoration, America could
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach
Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks
foolishness. -- 1 Corinthians 1:22, 23
By J.C. Philpot (1802-1869)
The mystery of the cross can be received only by faith. To
the Jews it was a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks
foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
When, then, we can believe that the Son of God took part
of our flesh and blood out of love and compassion for our
souls; that there being no other way which even heaven
itself could devise, no other means that the wisdom of
God could contrive whereby sinners could be saved, but
by the death of the cross, then the mystery shines forth
with unspeakable lustre and glory. The shame, the
ignominy, what the Apostle calls the "weakness" and
"foolishness" of the cross disappear, swallowed up in a
flood of surpassing grace; and faith views it as a glorious
scheme of God's own devising, and of the Son of God's
approving and accomplishing. Viewed in this light how
glorious it appears, that by suffering in our nature all the
penalties of our sin, Jesus should redeem us from the
lowest hell and raise us up to the highest heaven. How full
of unspeakable wisdom was that plan whereby he united
God and man by himself becoming God-man;
empowering poor worms of earth to soar above the skies
and live for ever in the presence of him who is a
consuming fire. How glorious is that scheme whereby
reconciling aliens and enemies unto his heavenly Father,
he summons them, when death cuts their mortal thread, to
mount up into an eternity of bliss, there to view face to
face the great and glorious I AM; to be for ever
enwrapped in the blaze of Deity, and ever folded in the
arms of a Triune God. It is this blessed end, this reward of
the Redeemer's sufferings, bloodshedding and death,
which lifts our view beyond the depths of the fall and the
misery of sin, as we see and feel it in this miserable world.
It is this view by faith of the glory which shall be revealed
which enables us to see what wisdom and mercy were in
the heart of God when he permitted the Adam fall to take
place. It is as if we could see the glory of God breaking
forth through it in all the splendour of atoning blood and
dying love, securing to guilty man the joys of salvation,
and bringing to God an eternal revenue of praise.
46
Does Moral Truth Really Change, America?
On 'gay' marriage: Why have no previous successful societies thought of it?
By Pat Buchanan
We are told that America has “evolved” on issues like
abortion and homosexuality. But while thinking may
change, beliefs may change, laws may change, and
the polls have surely changed, does moral truth
change?
“Natural law – God’s law – will always trump
common law,” said Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. and a Christian leader in her own
right, “God will have the final word in this matter.”
But, for now, Justice Anthony Kennedy has the final
word.
Are the Ten Commandments and Christian tradition and
Natural Law as defined by Aquinas just fine for their time,
but not for ours?
Same-sex marriage is the law of the land, as the right of
gays and lesbians to marry is right there in the 14th
Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in
1868. We just didn’t see it.
If what Justice Kennedy wrote Friday represents moral
truth, what can be said in defense of a Christianity that has
taught for 2,000 years that homosexual acts are socially
destructive and morally decadent behavior?
Tony Kennedy spotted what no previous court had
detected.
Three decades ago, this columnist was denounced for
writing that homosexuals “have declared war on human
nature. And nature is exacting an awful retribution.”
Hateful speech, it was said.
The absurdity of the decision aside, it represents another
stride forward for the revolution preached by Antonio
Gramsci. Before we can capture the West, the Italian
Marxist argued, we must capture the culture.
For only if we change the culture can we change how
people think and believe. And then a new generation will
not only come to accept but to embrace what their fathers
would have resisted to the death.
Yet, when I wrote that line, AIDS victims in America
numbered in the hundreds. Worldwide today they number
in the millions. And there is a pandemic of STDs among
America’s young who have joined the sexual revolution
preached in the 1960s.
Consider the triumphs of the Gramscian revolution in our
lifetime.
Can true “social progress” produce results like that?
And if it is an enlightened thing for a society to welcome
homosexual unions and elevate them to the status of
marriage, why have no previous successful societies
thought of so brilliant a reform?
First, there is the total purge of the nation’s birth faith,
Christianity, from America’s public life and educational
institutions. Second, there is the overthrow of the old
moral order with the legalization, acceptance and even
celebration of what the old morality taught was socially
destructive and morally decadent.
The late Roman Empire and Weimar Germany are the two
examples of indulgent attitudes toward homosexual
conduct that come to mind.
How dramatic have the changes been?
“No-fault” divorce was an early social reform championed
by our elites, followed by a celebration of the sexual
revolution, the distribution of condoms to the poor and the
young, and abortions subsidized by Planned Parenthood
when things went wrong.
Until the early 1970s, the American Psychiatric
Association regarded homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Until this century, homosexual actions were regarded as
perverted and even criminal.
Now, homosexuality is a new constitutional right, and
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is marrying homosexuals
in front of Stonewall Inn, the site of the famous 1969 gay
riot against police harassment.
How has that worked out for America?
Anyone see a connection between these milestones of
social progress and the 40 percent illegitimacy rate
nationwide, or the 50 percent rate among HispanicAmericans, or the 72 percent rate among AfricanAmericans?
Similarly with abortion. It, too, was seen as shameful,
sinful and criminal until Harry Blackmun and six other
justices decided in 1973 that a right to an abortion was
hiding there in the Ninth Amendment.
Any connection between those fatherless boys and the
soaring drug use and dropout rates and the near
quadrupling of those in jails and prisons over the last third
of a century?
Did the Constitution change? No, we did, as Gramsci
predicted.
47
One notes a headline the other day, that, among whites in
America, deaths now outnumber births. This has been true
for decades in Europe, where all the native-born
populations are shrinking as the Third World crosses over
from the Mahgreb and Middle East.
Our utopian president may see ours as an ever “more
perfect union.”
Yet, America has never been more disunited and divided –
on politics and policy, religion and morality. We no longer
even agree on good and evil, right and wrong.
Any connection between the legalization of abortions – 55
million in the USA since Roe – and the shrinkage of a
population?
Are we really still “one nation under God, indivisible”?
Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican
presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate
in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American
Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the
White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV
shows, and is the author of 10 books. His latest book
is "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose
From Defeat to Create the New Majority."
“God will have the final word in this matter,” says King.
Certainly, in the world to come, He will. Yet, even in this
world, it is hard to recall a civilization that rejected its
God, repudiated the faith and morality by which it grew
great, embraced what was previously regarded as
decadence, and survived.
School District OKs Mandatory LGBT Class for 7th-Graders
Protester: 'These intellectuals, we elect too many of them'
By Cheryl Chumley
right to opt out,” said dissenting School Board member
Elizabeth Schultz, in a statement to the Daily Caller.
Parents, angered by the move, protested at the board’s
most recent meeting by wearing T-shirts with the phrase,
“Respect parents’ rights.” Others, meanwhile, wore
slogans upholding the other point of view: “Teach the
facts,” the Daily Caller reported.
The curriculum switch had been an item of school
controversy for some time. At a meeting a week earlier,
several residents spoke their minds about the new course
material – and many were shaking their heads.
A school district in Virginia voted to include transgender
classes as part of the health curriculum for seventhgraders.
“These intellectuals, we elect too many of them,”
said Freddy Burgos of the school choice advocacy
outlet, SEEDS, to the Daily Caller. “We don’t elect
the average common ordinary man. There are people
on that school board that have never had children in
their lives and they want to tell us how to raise our
children.”
The nation’s tenth largest school district, Fairfax
County in Fairfax, Virginia, voted 10-to-2 to teach
gender identity and transgender issues as part of
seventh-through-tenth-grade sex education
curriculum.
Parents angered by the move pointed out the vote also
means the course material is mandatory because Fairfax
County School Board members shifted the curriculum
from Family Life Education to health – meaning, students
can’t easily opt out of the class, the Daily Caller reported.
Cheryl K. Chumley is a staff writer for WND and author
of "Police State USA: How Orwell's Nightmare is
Becoming our Reality." Formerly with the Washington
Times, she is a journalism fellow with The Phillips
Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she spent a year
researching and writing about private property rights.
“Once you move something out of family life, the family
life education curriculum delivery method and into a
health curriculum, by default, a parent no longer has the
48
Newsmax
Charleston Speech, SCOTUS Decisions Bolster Obama's Confidence
By Melissa Clyne
During his speech, Obama issued what The Washington
Post describes as a "call to action" on gun control and
race,
Buoyed by the recent Supreme Court decisions on
Obamacare and same-sex marriage — coinciding with the
racially motivated killings of nine black parishioners in a
Charleston, South Carolina, church, an act that sparked
national outrage over the Confederate flag — President
Barack Obama has re-emerged as a "full-throated
progressive" whose message of hope and change during
the 2008 presidential campaign won the hearts and votes
of the American electorate, according to The Guardian.
The rousing delivery helped the president recover "some
credibility from the vindication of his policy stances and
moral authority from his powerful statement following the
Charleston killings," University of Texas at Austin
professor Bruce Buchanan, a specialist in presidential
politics, told the Guardian. "It remains to be seen if he can
use either as leverage to press his remaining policy
ambitions."
"In the past 10 days, through the intervention of
America’s top judges combined with public revulsion
towards the murderous actions of a
white supremacist, Obama has seen
the national mood shift sharply in his
direction," the newspaper reports.
Last summer, CNN ran a piece
examining whether Obama was a
"powerless lame duck."
The Guardian notes that "Obama has
in the past expended so much
political capital with so little result
that he has looked like a president
who had recognized he was on the
losing side of the argument, and
bowed out," citing the his failure to
move gun control reform following
the December 2012 Newtown,
Connecticut, school shooting in which 20 children and six
adults were shot dead.
"His signature healthcare reform,
Obamacare, has been secured at least
for now; gay marriage has been
elevated into a constitutional right;
and the Confederate flag has been
torn down across the deep South."
While delivering the eulogy "to a
dazzled crowd of black mourners"
and a national television audience for the pastor slain in
the Charleston massacre, Obama "metaphorically and
literally found his voice."
But he has emerged reinvigorated since his
administration’s Supreme Court victories and the broad
support for his Charleston eulogy. He’s exuding the bold
confidence Americans first saw in 2008 and touting, with
assurance, his progressive agenda.
USA Today points out that the president framed his speech
around its dramatic ending, singing "Amazing Grace," by
using the word "grace" 35 times while characterizing how
the victims’ families offered forgiveness to the accused
killer, the peaceful unity of the city of Charleston in the
shootings’ aftermath, and bipartisan calls to remove the
Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol.
Over the weekend, Obama’s personal political listserv sent
an email calling for supporters to "stand against gun
violence," according to The Guardian.
"As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited
grace upon us," Obama preached. "For he has allowed us
to see where we've been blind — He has given us the
chance, where we've been lost, to find our best selves."
Politico writes that the president has been "reborn" and
that his "voice broke through in a way that it hasn’t,
maybe, since the 2004 keynote address that introduced
him to America."
The president peppered the word "blind," or a variation of
it appeared eight times, the newspaper continued, when
describing how the killings "opened Americans' eyes to a
litany of ongoing social changes, from the scourge of gun
violence to the minefield of race relations."
The past week has been "an exclamation point on already
historic and satisfying paragraphs," Obama’s 2008
campaign manager, David Plouffe, told the website, a
reference to the president’s assertion that via his
presidency, he wants to "write his paragraph in history."
49
Love of Power Wins – Now the Yezhovschina Can Begin
By William Norman Grigg
organizations that dissent from settled public policy
on matters of race or sexuality.” Invoking the
standard collectivist fallacy that the State
subsidizes anyone it doesn’t dispossess outright,
Oppenheimer groused that conservative churches
are among the “rich organizations [that] horde
plentiful assets in the midst of poverty.”
The Secret Police in Orwell’s dystopian society
were employed by the Ministry of Love. In that
ironic designation we find the genuine meaning
of the insistent refrain that “love” triumphed
when the US Supreme Court consummated the
long campaign to bring the most intimate human
institution fully under the state’s control.
Only those organizations offering “an
indispensable, and noncontroversial, public good”
should be exempt, decrees Commissar Oppenheimer, who
like his comrades is serenely confident that the present
who/whom alignment can be made permanent.
Those presently celebrating the state’s
“affirmation” of same-sex relationships are
intoxicated by the knowledge that they are the “who”
rather than the “whom” in Lenin’s famous formula (which
defines the essential political question as “who does what
to whom”). Like countless others they have been beguiled
into believing that “liberation” is achieved by identifying
with the exercise of state power, rather than being
protected against it.
To him and those of his persuasion, the services of an
abortion clinic would likely be regarded as “indispensable
and noncontroversial,” and thus worthy of an exemption.
Those provided by a crisis pregnancy center offering
material aid and moral encouragement to women choosing
to give birth would be neither, and thus subject to being
pillaged by the IRS — and, most likely, regulated out of
existence. Similar outcomes would be imposed on
contending activist groups deployed on opposing sides of
every culture war fault line.
The Stonewall Riot occurred because a minority rebelled
against the routine abuses committed by police who used
the leverage provided by liquor licenses to justify
harassment of people who privately engaged consensual
behavior. The movement that coalesced after Stonewall
loudly proclaimed the desire to be left alone, even as it
was co-opted by the institutionalized “civil rights”
movement, which seeks to abolish freedom of association.
The power to tax is the power to destroy, and withdrawing
the exemption would effectively extinguish religious
liberty by replacing it with a revocable state-issued
license. The ultimate objective is not co-existence with
conservative or traditionalist religious believers, but their
subjugation – in the name of “love,” naturally. “Hate” is
already being defined as disagreement with “settled public
policy,” and it would have no legitimate place in public
discourse – or refuge in private life, once privacy had been
effectively abolished.
That movement is now pursuing that objective with
unprecedented vigor.
As the New York Times reports, “gay rights leaders have
turned their sights to what they see as the next big battle:
obtaining federal, state and local legal protections in
employment, housing, commerce and other arenas” – a
crusade that will mean constricting the exercise of
religious liberty and other elements of property rights.
One small but telling illustration of how this will work
was provided by a celebratory house editorial published
by Regime-centric publication called the Patriot-News.
In 1993, the ACLU supported the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act (RFRA), which the group recently
invoked in a successful defense of the religious liberties of
a Sikh serviceman. That case was decided shortly before
the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling on same-sex
marriage, which made it clear that the who/whom polarity
had shifted. The ACLU is now demanding modification of
the RFRA to allow the federal government to punish
businessmen, clergymen, and other people whose exercise
of religious freedom is deemed “discriminatory” by the
state-licensed custodians of correct sentiments, at least
some of whom aren’t content with the piecemeal
approach.
State-recognized homosexual unions “are now the law of
the land,” observed the paper’s editorial collective,
announcing that henceforth “we will not publish “op-Eds
and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage
… any more than we would publish those that are racist,
sexist or anti-Semitic.” An addendum to the online version
of that editorial advised readers that “complaining about
our moderation policy or comments being deleted” was a
violation of the paper’s new “community rules.”
Every publication has an unqualified right to establish and
enforce its own rules of rhetorical comity. We shouldn’t
be surprised if – or when– the same Progressives who are
seeking modifications to the RFRA and an end to tax
exemption for non-Progressive religious groups would
Within hours of the Obergefell ruling, New York Times
contributor Mark Oppenheimer used a Time magazine oped column to demand enactment of a measure that would
“abolish, or greatly diminish” the tax-exempt status “for
50
The only way to forestall such “inevitable” revolt would
be to identify and neutralize what were called “socially
dangerous persons” under the Soviet Union’s
Fundamental Principles of Penal Legislation. Article 58 of
the penal code, observes the authoritative Black Book of
Communism, dealt with “any activity that, without directly
aiming to overthrow or weaken the Soviet regime, was in
itself ‘an attack on the political or economic achievements
of the revolutionary proletariat.’ The law thus not only
punished intentional transgressions but also proscribed
possible or unintentional acts.”
likewise seek to fashion an exception to the First
Amendment for media outlets that publish opinions of the
kind the Patriot-News will no longer carry. This would
require a comprehensive national inventory of political
and cultural opinions – and as something other than luck
would have it, the Obama administration is contemplating
an initiative of that kind.
During a conversation with Charleston Mayor Joe Riley,
Mr. Obama disclosed that the administration “is keen to
introduce tough new laws which will force the KKK and
other extreme right-wing groups to disclose the identity of
their members,” Riley told the Daily Mail of London.
In defining “socially dangerous persons” the Soviet
regime used “extremely elastic categories” that permitted
pre-emptive incarceration “even in the absence of guilt.”
This is because that the Soviet rulers were pleased to call
“the law” specified that imprisonment, exile, or execution
could be employed as means of “social protection” against
“anyone classified as a danger to society, either for a
specific crime that has been committed or when, even if
exonerated of a particular crime, the person is still
reckoned to pose a threat to society.”In 1935, a figure who
became known as “Stalin’s Poison Dwarf” contributed
another refinement to the architecture of state terror.
Nikolai Yezhov, an intimate associate of Stalin, wrote a
pseudo-academic paper contending that anyform of
political opposition should be treated as incipient
terrorism – a position that differs little, in principle, from
that of the above-cited Jay Michaelson. Yezhov had long
aspired to become head of the Soviet secret police, and he
ascended to that role following the assassination of
Stalin’s rival Sergei Kirov, an act of terrorism orchestrated
by Stalin himself. This inaugurated a short but bloody
period of purges and persecution known as the
Yezhovschina – the “Era of Yezhov.” The Poison Dwarf
began by denouncing his predecessor as head of the
KNVD, Genrikh Yagoda, for his inadequate zeal in
identifying and eliminating enemies of the regime.
Yezhov’s appetite for bloodshed and oppression grew in
crescendo until he, too, was denounced, tortured into
multiple confessions, and executed.
“One of the things we need to do is for the national
government to give resources and expose these hate
groups,” Riley elaborated. “We need a national council on
these hate groups. The President is talking about that.”
“In America we worship the First Amendment and
anybody can say anything they want,” Riley told the
paper, a statement anticipating the familiar, self-nullifying
use of the conjunction “but.” “But” – there it is! – “we
need to shine the spotlight on them [racists and other
extremists, presumably], so at least we know where they
are among the public. Neighbors should be able to know
that the person living next to them is an absolute bigot.”
Perhaps the administration – which is already seeking to
fine-tune to social, economic, and ethnic composition of
residential neighborhoods – envisions a comprehensive
census of political attitudes, as well. One approach might
be to scrutinize social media for postings containing
favorable quotes from dissenting opinions in the
Obergefell ruling.
Writing in The Daily Beast, LBGT activist Jay
Michaelson describes the dissenting opinions in
Obergefell, especially that of Antonin Scalia, as
“‘stochastic terrorism,’ the broadcasting of a message so
incendiary as to inspire some ‘lone wolf’ to violence – if
not actual violence, then precisely the kinds of antidemocratic, anti-American defiance we have already seen
among some politicians.”
Yezhov’s fate offered a stark demonstration of the
unyielding reality of the “who/whom” dichotomy, which
is best expressed in the words of the Book of Proverbs:
“Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and the stone will
come back on whoever starts it rolling” (26:27, ISV).
Whatever one’s views of traditional marriage, the ancient
wisdom contained in that passage is unassailable – and
should be remembered by those who are presently
enraptured by the prospect of exercising state power in the
name of “love.”
John Roberts, who is obviously no stranger to judicial
sophistry, produced a modulated and temperate dissection
of the majority’s “act of will.” Scalia, predictably, was
gloriously intemperate in assailing the majority’s social
re-engineering. Michaelson, who didn’t rebuke the Left
for its splenetic reaction to the Hobby Lobby and Citizens
United rulings, indicted Roberts and Scalia as accessories
before the fact to incipient (albeit unpredictable) acts of
domestic terrorism: “It seems inevitable that rhetoric like
this will stir the next Confederate flag-waving zealot to an
act of, if not domestic terrorism, at least outrageous revolt.
How could it be otherwise?”
William Norman Grigg publishes the Pro Libertate blog
and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.
51
The Truth about Guns
Random Thoughts about the Possibility of a Second Civil War
By Robert Farago
America is, once again, two Americas: states that are
[relatively] freedom-loving and [somewhat] laissezfaire vs. states that are endlessly intrusive and mindlessly
invasive. Never mind the party split. Never forget that
Ronald Reagan expanded the federal government
exponentially, and signed gun control laws without a
qualm. More than that, there are plenty of Big Government
types in red states, and limited government lovers “trapped
behind enemy lines.”
Since 1855, the U.S. political scene has been divided
between Democrats and Republicans. While there’s no
question which party works harder to degrade and destroy
Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected
right to keep and bear arms, I reckon the two-party
political divide is a distinction without a difference. Both
sides are part of the same political establishment.
Maintaining the status quo – the system itself – is job one.
Ideology is a merely a means to that end. A more
fundamental fracture in the body politic lies beneath the
surface . . .
On its face this divide is OK, the states being the
“laboratories of democracy” and all. Truth be told, Uncle
Sam is the real problem. The federal bloat in power and
reach and cost has been stupendous. Monumental.
Practically inconceivable. How do you get your head
around the fact that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives – an agency elevated by the
aforementioned President Reagan without
a justifiable raison d’etre – has a $1.2 billion dollar
budget?
It’s the gulf between citizens who believe in Big
Government and those who favor small government.
Those who want government to sort sh*t out and those
who want the government to GTFO.
As the recent decisions on Obamacare and gay marriage
illustrate, Big Government believers have champions in
the President, the Supreme Court and the entirety of the
political establishment, including every government
agency in existence, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and the rest
of the fauxConservatives seeking a seat at the table of
power and/or a lease on Air Force One. Small government
supporters have . . . Ted Cruz? Rick Perry? No one, really.
Make no mistake: the federal government is on an ongoing
irreversible collision course with “don’t tread on me” style
states, and [the mostly rural] and inhabitants of other states
who adhere to the limited government philosophy. The
ever-expanding federal government and its supporters in
states like California, New York and Massachusetts have
turned limited government types into the proverbial frog in
the pot of water slowly moving towards boiling point.
No surprise there. People who want a
radically limited government are not a prize demographic.
Though large in number, they’re politically disengaged.
Why participate in a system that never listens to your
desire to reduce the size of the system? Look at our
national debt. Consider The Great Society’s never-ending,
staggeringly ineffective welfare waterfall. Check your tax
bill. Small government supporters have been losing for a
long, long time.
These two approaches to government cannot coexist
forever. There will be a showdown.
I believe the fight over gun rights will be the flashpoint. At
some point, most likely (but not necessarily) following a
series of terrorist attacks, Big Government will move to
“win” the gun rights battle. To establish its authority once
and for all. The Bundy Ranch confrontation foreshadows
that fateful day. As does Waco and Ruby Ridge and the
internment of Japanese Americans.
I don’t need to tell TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia that Big
Government is the enemy of freedom. American gun
owners have lost their Constitutional right to keep and bear
arms without government infringement over decades. The
National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of
1968 and the Brady Bill of 1993 are all clear violations of
the Second Amendment. Not to mention thousands of local
and state gun control laws, some historic, some recent.
I have no idea how or when it will play out. Privately
owned guns will be involved. It won’t be pretty and it
won’t be resolved quickly. I do not wish for that day. The
vast majority of freedom-loving Americans do not, either.
But not even America can be two things at once. Despite
our beloved tradition of democracy, history tells us that
politics is the problem, not the solution. Am I wrong?
This loss of gun rights is part of the larger trend of
expanding government interference in all aspects of
American life. Thankfully, it’s not happening
everywhere. Some states are restoring gun rights, just as
some states are returning to solid fiscal principles of
balanced budgets and low[er] taxes. They’re hardly
shining examples of limited government, but they’re at
least holding steady against government encroachment and
incipient tyranny. (Yes, I used the “t” word.)
Robert Farago is the Publisher of The Truth About Guns
(TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality,
business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy,
dangers and fun of guns.
52
Obama Issues 19 Classified Directives Changing Laws Passed by Congress
by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
the Oval Office, the USA Today provides a bit of historical
context for the documents:
What Obama calls PPDs have gone by different
names by different presidents back to the Truman
Administration. President George W. Bush called
them National Security Presidential Directives
(NPSDs). President Clinton called them Presidential
Decision Directives (PDDs). President Nixon called
them National Security Decision Memoranda.
Whatever they're called, Obama has been less
prolific than his predecessors. George W. Bush
issued 66 such orders, plus 25 more Homeland
Security Presidential Directives. President Reagan
issued at least 325.
Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of
justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear
discussion and publicity.” — Lord Acton
Since being inaugurated in 2009, President Barack Obama
has issued 30 Presidential Policy Directives (PPD), 19 of
which he has ordered to be kept secret from Congres and
the American people.
Some, going back as far as the Lyndon Johnson
administration, remain classified.
Even the existence of the latest PPD issued by President
Obama was unknown until another document referenced
it, perhaps by accident. Again, from the USA Today:
Barack Obama campaigned for president promising to
usher in an era of transparency in government. That
promise stands next to “if you like your doctor you can
keep your doctor” in the Barack Obama Presidential Hall
of Shame.
A one-digit correction to President Obama's
directive on hostage policy Wednesday had the
effect of disclosing the existence of a previously
unknown — and still-secret — Obama order on
national security.
No less than USA Today called attention to these secret
orders in an article published on June 24. The article
explained:
The hostage policy was originally released
Wednesday as a presidential policy directive
numbered PPD-29. When the White House corrected
that number to PPD-30, it meant Obama had issued
a secret directive as PPD-29 sometime in the past 17
months.
Of the 30 PPDs issued by Obama, 19 have not been
released. And for 11 of those, the White House has
not disclosed even the subject of the order.
"It's not only the public that doesn't have copies. It's
also Congress that doesn't have copies," Aftergood
said. "It's a domain of largely unchecked presidential
authority. It doesn't mean it's bad, but it's lacking in
independent oversight.”
Obama signed PPD-28, an order on electronic
eavesdropping in the wake of revelations by Edward
Snowden, in January 2014.
So what is PPD-29? No one's talking. A spokesman
for the National Security Council declined to
comment of the existence of classified PPDs
Wednesday.
But they have the same legal force as an executive
order, forming a body of largely secret law, said
Harold Relyea, a political scientist who advised
Congress on national security directives before
retiring from the Congressional Research Service.
One of the most egregious examples of President Obama’s
duplicity is the way he and his administration have
responded to the roster of revelations that have come from
Snowden’s leaks of documents defining the surveillance
activities of the National Security Agency (NSA).
"The difference is that while executive orders are
public by law — they must be published in the
Federal Register to be effective — PPDs are not,"
he said. "It is a kind of secret law. People have to
obey it. But it's a directive that can allocate money,
direct people or take a course of action.”
As he continues burrowing deeper and deeper into the
sands of secrecy, President Obama seems not to realize
that soil shifts, and there will always be those committed
to digging around until the truth is uncovered.
Lest anyone believe that the practice of ruling by this
particular form of fiat began with the current occupant of
53
James Madison, writing as "Publius," wrote in The
Federalist, No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers
legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands,
whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary,
self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the
very definition of tyranny. “
McClatchy writes:
Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, said he doesn’t expect the
administration to change much even amid the
intense criticism. This administration, he said, has
always held fast against similar criticism. For
example, it resisted for years bipartisan pressure to
release more information about its top-secret
targeted killing program.
Madison himself was restating in his inimitable style, one
facet of federalism that was universally considered to be
an essential pillar of liberty.
As the venerable French philosopher Baron de
Montesquieu wrote in his influential treatise l'Esprit des
Lois (The Spirit of the Laws), “When the legislative and
executive powers are united in the same person, or in the
same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because
apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate
should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a
tyrannical manner.”
“It’s a pattern of the Obama administration,” he said.
Tech Dirt recognizes the problem for the president:
Extreme secrecy may seem like the easier short-term
strategy, but it's just digging an ever deeper hole that
the administration is going to have to try to climb
out of in the long-term. Hiding reality from a public
that's going to find out eventually is just making the
problem worse.
"Centinel," the nom de guerre of an anti-Federalist
opposed to ratifying the new Constitution, rephrased for
his readers what was already, in the 18th century, a wellsettled aspect of good government, “This mixture of the
legislative and executive moreover highly tends to
corruption. The chief improvement in government, in
modern times, has been the complete separation of the
great distinctions of power; placing the legislative in
different hands from those which hold the executive.”
The secret PPD issued earlier this week by President
Obama replaced a still-classified directive issued by
George W. Bush in 2002.
A look at the list of PPDs issued by Obama reveals that
there is much “secret law” that binds the American people
without having ever been approved by their elected
representatives.
The existence of these documents — along with the scores
of executive orders and signing statements — represent a
corpus of presidential fiats masquerading as laws. As
demonstrated in the history of these directives, for
generations, presidents have carried out a plan to
consolidate all functions of government into the hands of
one “unitary” executive, aggrandizing the office of the
president and reducing Congress to mere plaintiffs in
lawsuits challenging that all but unlimited authority.
Another anonymous anti-Federalist commented, “Liberty
therefore can only subsist, where the powers of
government are properly divided, and where the different
jurisdictions are inviolably kept distinct and separate.”
If the opinions of these men are a worthy metric of the
size of the impending threat of despotism, then President
Obama is filling the shoes of a tyrant heel to toe. And the
Presidential Policy Directives issued by him and his
predecessors help demolish the walls of history, law, and
constitutional enumerations that separate the executive
and legislative powers.
It would do well for Americans concerned about this
consolidation to study the words and warnings of our
Founding Fathers and their political and philosophical
influences regarding the primacy of the separation of
powers in a good government.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New
American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on
topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance
state.
54
The Euro Crisis
By Alasdair Macleod
France, you will rest easy. This surely is how the ECB
would like to represent the situation. If on the other hand
you suspect that the collapse of the Greek banking system,
plus their sovereign default, together with a knock-on
effect in derivative markets, have important implications
for euro-denominated bond markets, you will probably run
for the hills. The latter being the case, highly geared
Eurozone banks are likely to face difficulties, and they
will affect the ECB’s own holdings of all bonds, both
owned outright and held as collateral against loans to
rickety banks.
Make no mistake; the Greek crisis is a euro crisis that
threatens the solvency of the ECB itself, and therefore
confidence in the currency.
Before going into why, a few comments on Greece will
set the scene.
Last weekend it became clear that Greece is heading for
both a default on its government debt and also a failure of
its banking system. With the benefit of hindsight it
appears that the Greek government was unwilling to
pretend that it was solvent and extend its financial support
as if it was. The other Eurozone finance ministers and the
troika were not prepared to accept this reality.
In short, the ECB’s balance sheet, which is heavily
dependent on Eurozone bond prices not collapsing, is
itself extremely vulnerable to the knock-on effects from
Greece. As the situation at the ECB becomes clear to
financial markets, the euro’s legitimacy as a currency may
be questioned, given it is no more than an artificial
construct in circulation for only thirteen years.
There is no immediate benefit from debating why. What
matters now are the economic and financial consequences,
which are basically two: the Eurozone’s banking system is
very fragile and cannot absorb any sovereign default
shocks easily, and the ECB itself now needs refinancing.
Let’s concentrate on the ECB first.
In conclusion, the upsetting of the Greek applecart risks
destabilising the euro itself, and a sub-par rate to the US
dollar beckons.
The losses the ECB face from Greece alone are about
twice its equity capital and reserves. The emergency
liquidity assistance (ELA) owed by Greece to the ECB
totals some €89bn, and the TARGET2 balance owed by
the Bank of Greece to the other Eurozone central banks is
a further €100.3bn, which at the end of the day is the
ECB’s liability. The total from these two liabilities on
their own is roughly twice the ECB’s equity and reserves,
which total only €98.5bn. Given the likely collapse of the
Greek banking system and the government’s default on its
debt, we can assume any collateral held against these
loans, as well as any Greek bonds held by the ECB
outright are more or less worthless.
End note on gold
This week should see the dollar strong against the euro
and the euro price of gold can be expected to rise. The
extent to which these happen may depend on whether or
not central banks intervene. For what it’s worth last time
this happened (over Cyprus February 2013) Europeans
were reported to be requesting physical delivery against
their unallocated gold accounts. The following April a coordinated bear raid of unprecedented size pushed the gold
price down from $1580 to a low of $1183. The purpose of
the raid was to disabuse investors of the safe-haven trade,
in which it succeeded.
The ECB has two courses of action: either it continues to
support Greece to avoid crystallising its own losses or it
recapitalises itself with a call upon its shareholders. The
former appears to have been ruled out by last weekend’s
events. For the latter a rights issue looks challenging to
say the least, because not all the EU national central banks
are in a position to contribute. Instead it is likely that some
sort of qualifying perpetual bond will be issued for which
there should be ready subscribers.
There is little such appetite for gold bullion today so a
similar move is probably viewed by central banks as
unnecessary; but if the gold price was to move
significantly higher attempts to defuse the rise are less
likely to succeed because there are very few sellers in
western markets and the short positions on Comex in the
Managed Money category start at record levels.
How this is handled is crucial, because there is
considerable danger to the ECB from the instability of the
whole Eurozone banking system, which is highly geared
and extremely vulnerable to any reassessment of
sovereign credit risk. If you believe that the Greek crisis
has no implications for Italy, Spain, Portugal and even
Alasdair Macleod runs FinanceAndEconomics.org, a
website dedicated to sound money and demystifying
finance and economics. Alasdair has a background as a
stockbroker, banker and economist. He is a Senior Fellow
at the GoldMoney Foundation.
55
The Purge Has Begun
Envisions traditional Americans soon being labeled 'dangerous'
By Morgan Brittany
Just this week, Donald Trump was told that his Miss
Universe and Miss USA pageants were no longer
welcomed on the Univision and NBC television
networks, just because he happened to tell the
truth and state some accurate facts about illegal
immigration. He said something that did not go along with
the left’s playbook, so they shut him down. On the flip
side, after Brian Williams was caught lying and George
Stephanopoulous was caught up in the Clinton Foundation
scandal, both either kept their jobs or were given others.
Subject closed. Donald Trump isn’t so lucky because he
sits on the wrong side of the issue. Fortunately for him, he
can fight it; an average mom and pop bakery can’t.
It is happening everywhere. With the taking down
and banning of the Confederate flag last week, along
with calls to prohibit the viewing of “Gone with the
Wind,” taking down statues of Southern Civil War
heroes and even a newspaper suggesting banning any
op-ed pieces that dissent from the gay marriage verdict,
we are rapidly sliding down a slippery slope. One by one,
large corporations buckled under to pressure from loud
groups that threatened and shamed them into submission.
Have we reached the point of no return?
Every day there is another step toward the world of
“1984″ and “Fahrenheit 541″ where the thought police
censor your words and the government decides what
books or films are acceptable. There is no room for
opinion anymore unless it is the opinion the state or the
liberal left accepts. There is no room for truth anymore if
it counteracts the mantra of the left. The latest frightening
example of this is when EPA Administrator Gina
McCarthy told a group she was addressing this:
Father Jonathan Morris who is a regular contributor on the
Fox News Network, was spat upon during a gay pride
parade this past weekend. He did nothing to provoke the
attack other than walk down the street as a recognizable
religious figure. How long will it be before pastors,
priests, rabbis or any other religious figures are heckled in
their own houses of worship for giving sermons based on
their beliefs if they differ from the current government
playbook?
“When I put a report out on acting on climate like we did
yesterday that shows how dramatically our world will
change if we don’t act, and just the benefits we can deliver
if we do, I am doing that not to push back on climate
deniers.
How long will it be before faith-based films, television
shows and books are no longer allowed to be viewed or
distributed just because they speak
about traditional values, morals and ways of life?
“You can have fun doing that if you want, but I’ve batted
my head against the wall too many times – and if the
science already hasn’t changed their mind, it never will.
The radicals in this country have convinced us that the
thoughts and policies they are pushing represent the
majority view in this country. That is an out and out lie. If
you look at the statistics, it is a very small minority of
people who are changing the landscape of this country.
Unfortunately for us, they have control over the
mainstream media, social media, the entertainment
industry and now the Supreme Court, pushing their
message down our throats, ignoring the Constitution and
turning America on its head. It isn’t that I don’t ever want
to see change, but it needs to be done in a sane, legal,
constitutional manner and not bullied through in a
tyrannical way.
“But in any democracy, it’s not them that carries the day.
It is normal human beings that haven’t put their stake into
politics above science. It’s normal human beings that want
us to do the right thing, and we will if you help us.”
So according to her, those of us who have a differing view
on global warming and wish to express our opinions are
“not normal.” We are being categorized as a “crazy,
lunatic fringe” that should not be listened to and should be
dismissed like a “batty old aunt” who will eventually end
up in the looney bin. And don’t doubt me when I say that
that is what they really want. They would like nothing
better than to have everyone shun and fear us – and
eventually they will add the word “dangerous.” When that
happens, you can bet that if you are a God-fearing,
churchgoing, gun-owning, American flag-waving
citizen, you are dangerous. It has already been established
that there are government documents with lists of the
types of people who should be looked at as potential
terrorists, and I can bet you and I fit in to many of their
categories.
The fundamental transformation of this country is moving
at breakneck speed now that Obama is heading to the
finish line. The remaining months he has left in office will
more than likely be filled with head-spinning, mindboggling decisions that are completely out of our control
and completely alien to our way of life.
The purge of our constitutional rights has begun because
there is no rule of law anymore. We are no longer a
country of laws, we are now a country of men – and our
ruling class continues to ignore the laws it finds
56
inconvenient. A government that is not restrained by clear
and unbreakable laws is both inefficient and immoral, and
sadly, that is where we are today.
Morgan Brittany is the anchorwoman for the webcast talk
show PolitiChicks, a longtime actress and conservative
activist. She is the coauthor of "What Women Really
Want."
Constitutional Ignorance and Dereliction
By Walter E. Williams
Richard Henry Lee said, “To preserve liberty, it is
essential that the whole body of the people always
possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when
young, how to use them.”
The nation’s demagogues and constitutionally
ignorant are using the Charleston, South
Carolina, AME church shooting to attack the
Second Amendment’s “right of the people to
keep and bear Arms.” A couple of years ago,
President Barack Obama said, “I have a profound
respect for the traditions of hunting that trace
back in this country for generations.” That’s a
vision shared by many Americans, namely that
the Constitution’s framers gave us the Second
Amendment to protect our rights to go deer and duck
hunting, do a bit of skeet shooting, and protect ourselves
against criminals. That this vision is so widely held
reflects the failure of gun rights advocates, such as the
NRA and Gun Owners of America, to educate the
American people. The following are some statements by
the Founding Fathers. You tell me which one of them
suggests that they gave us the Second Amendment for
deer and duck hunting and protection against criminals.
Here’s a much more recent statement from a
liberal, bearing no kinship to today’s
liberals/progressives: The late Vice President
Hubert H. Humphrey said, “Certainly, one of the
chief guarantees of freedom under any
government, no matter how popular and respected, is the
right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of
the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against
arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the
tyranny which now appears remote in America but which
historically has proven to be always possible.”
There are some historical anti-gun statements that might
please America’s gun grabbers. “Armas para que?”
(Translated: “Guns, for what?”) That’s how Fidel Castro
saw the right of citizens to possess guns. There’s a more
famous anti-gun statement: “The most foolish mistake we
could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to
possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have
allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared
their own downfall by so doing.” That was Adolf Hitler.
Alexander Hamilton said, “The best we can hope for
concerning the people at large is that they be properly
armed,” adding later, “If the representatives of the people
betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but
in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which
is paramount to all positive forms of government.” What
institution was Hamilton referring to when he said “the
representatives of the people”?
At the heart of the original American ideal is the deep
distrust and suspicion the founders of our nation had for
Congress, distrust and suspicion not shared as much by
today’s Americans. Some of the founders’ distrust is seen
in our Constitution’s language, such as Congress shall not
abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, violate or deny. If the
founders did not believe Congress would abuse our Godgiven rights, they would not have provided those
protections.
Thomas Jefferson: “What country can preserve its liberties
if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their
people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take
arms.” Who are the rulers Jefferson had in mind?
James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” said,
“(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being
armed, which the Americans possess over the people of
almost every other nation … (where) the governments are
afraid to trust the people with arms.”
Maybe there are Americans who would argue that we are
moving toward greater liberty and less government control
over our lives and no longer need to remain an armed
citizenry. I’d like to see their evidence.
George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights,
which served as inspiration for the U.S. Constitution’s Bill
of Rights, said, “To disarm the people — that was the best
and most effectual way to enslave them,” later saying, “I
ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except
for a few public officials.”
Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished
professor of economics at George Mason University, and
a nationally syndicated columnist.
57
Fewer Traditional Values Means More Government
On moral free fall: 'The degradation of marriage is but the latest chapter'
By Star Parker
It has been a long but not so winding road as the
moral fiber of our nation has come apart. The
degradation of marriage is but the latest chapter.
More unsettling than the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision in Obergefell v. Hodges directing states to
recognize same-sex marriage is the reasoning that
went into the decision.
Kennedy is so absorbed in creating reality that he
appears oblivious that any reality might exist outside his
own imagination. He notes “deep transformations” in our
understanding of marriage, and that “these new insights
have strengthened, not weakened, the institution of
marriage.”
It would be nice to believe that the men and women who
wear black robes and occupy seats on America’s highest
court are serious people – or that they are wise.
But going forth, unfortunately, it should be clear that the
real thought leaders of America are in Hollywood, and
that our Supreme Court, save three conservatives, is just a
ship that rides the wave of public opinion.
Really? In 1960, 9 percent of American adults over 25 had
never married. Today it is 20 percent. In a recent Pew
Research survey, only 47 percent said it is “very
important” that a couple legally marries if they plan to
spend the rest of their lives together.
A good deal of the court’s opinion, written by Justice
Anthony Kennedy, gets into the history of marriage, what
it is and what it’s for. But when I read Article III of the
U.S. Constitution, which defines our judicial branch, I see
nothing that says it’s the job of judges to explain to the
American people why institutions like marriage, that have
defined and long preceded our nation, exist and what they
mean.
In 1960, about 5 percent of our babies were born to unwed
mothers. Now it is 41 percent. Sixty-one percent of
Americans now say out-of-wedlock birth is morally
acceptable.
Justice Clarence Thomas zeroed in on the truth in his
dissent on the court’s opinion: “Since well before 1787,
liberty has been understood as freedom from government
action, not entitlement to government benefits.”
We actually have a source that defines marriage for us. In
the Book of Genesis, the first of the five biblical books
that form the foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition
that has guided Western civilization, it says that God
created woman from man, and that “a man shall leave his
father and his mother and cling to his wife and they shall
become one flesh.”
The marriage-redefinition movement has been driven by
two motivations: 1) de-legitimization of religion, and 2)
expansion of the welfare state.
It is no accident that as marriage has broken down,
dependence on government has exploded. The percentage
of our national budget consisting of transfer payments to
individuals has expanded from less than 30 percent in
1960 to around 70 percent today.
So with all the to-do on this issue, the choice before our
nation has been simple and clear. Is marriage defined by
the Bible or by Justice Kennedy? Now we have the
answer: Justice Kennedy.
Does it matter?
The idea of American freedom was that by living by Godgiven prior truths and designing a Constitution to secure
them and limit government, we could live free.
Let’s grasp the whole picture. Although many note the
quickness of the change in public opinion on marriage,
this is really a process that has been going on for many
years. Perhaps we might start in 1962, when the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that prayer in school is
unconstitutional. Another milestone was in 1973, when
the court discovered a right in our Constitution for women
to destroy their unborn children.
Now arbitrary political power fills the vacuum of
degraded truths and a degraded Constitution. We’ll see
how long Americans will continue to think this is a good
idea.
Star Parker is president of CURE, the Center for Urban
Renewal and Education, and author of the recently rereleased "Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government
Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It."
58
Hillary’s Secret War
By Andrew P. Napolitano
Libya in an effort to overthrow the governments of
those countries.
In the course of my work at Fox News, I am often
asked by colleagues to review and explain
documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction
with my colleagues Catherine Herridge, our chief
intelligence correspondent, and Pamela Browne,
our senior executive producer, I read the
transcripts of an interview Browne did with a man
named Marc Turi, and Herridge asked me to
review emails to and from State Department and
congressional officials during the years when Hillary
Clinton was the secretary of state.
Many of the rebels Clinton armed, using the
weapons lawfully sold to Qatar by Turi and others,
were terrorist groups who are our sworn enemies.
There was no congressional declaration of war, no
congressional vote, no congressional knowledge
beyond fewer than a dozen members, and no
federal statute that authorized this.
When Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Clinton at a public
hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan.
23, 2013, whether she knew about American arms shipped
to the Middle East, to Turkey or to any other country, she
denied any knowledge. It is unclear whether she was
under oath at the time, but that is legally irrelevant. The
obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth to Congress pertains to all witnesses who testify
before congressional committees, whether an oath has
been administered or not. (Just ask Roger Clemens, who
was twice prosecuted for misleading Congress about the
contents of his urine while not under oath. He was
acquitted.)
What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt
and to a moral certainty that Clinton provided material
assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue
where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the
backstory.
Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011,
he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for
approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is
a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so
entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always
will do what American government officials ask of it.
In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that
might harm Americans and American interests, Congress
has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to
be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group
to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or
facilitating the sale of arms to them is a felony. They also
can license dealers to sell.
Here is her relevant testimony.
Paul: My question is … is the U.S. involved with any
procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons … buying,
selling … anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey … out
of Libya?
Clinton: To Turkey? … I will have to take that question
for the record. Nobody’s ever raised that with me. I, I…
Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to
the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of
American government officials, were sold, bartered or
given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the
groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list.
Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that
licensed the sales also prohibited them.
Paul: It’s been in news reports that ships have been
leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons …
and what I’d like to know is … the (Benghazi) annex that
was close by… Were they involved with procuring,
buying, selling, obtaining weapons … and were any of
these weapons transferred to other countries … any
countries, Turkey included?
How could that be?
Clinton: Senator, you will have to direct that question to
the agency that ran the (Benghazi) annex. And I will see
what information is available and … ahhhh…
That’s where Clinton’s secret State Department and her
secret war come in. Because Clinton used her husband’s
computer server for all of her email traffic while she was
the secretary of state, a violation of three federal laws, few
in the State Department outside her inner circle knew what
she was up to.
Paul: You are saying you don’t know…
Clinton: I do not know. I don’t have any information on
that.
Now we know.
At the time that Clinton denied knowledge of the arms
shipments, she and her State Department political
designee Andrew Shapiro had authorized thousands of
shipments of billions of dollars’ worth of arms to U.S.
enemies to fight her secret war. Among the casualties of
She obtained permission from President Obama and
consent from congressional leaders in both houses of
Congress and in both parties to arm rebels in Syria and
59
Hillary Clinton lied to Congress, gave arms to terrorists
and destroyed her emails. How much longer can she hide
the truth? How much longer can her lawlessness go
unchallenged and unprosecuted? Does she really think the
American voters will overlook her criminal behavior and
put her in the White House where she can pardon herself?
her war were U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens
and three colleagues, who were assassinated at the
American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, by rebels Clinton
armed with American military hardware in violation of
American law.
This secret war and the criminal behavior that animated it
was the product of conspirators in the White House, the
State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice
Department, the CIA and a tight-knit group of members of
Congress. Their conspiracy has now unraveled. Where is
the outrage among the balance of Congress?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior
Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox
News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books
on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact:
The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the
Lethal Threat to American Liberty.
Poll: Majority sees Confederate flag as Southern pride symbol
by Old Rebel (Mike Tuggle)
The poll shows that 57% of Americans see the flag
more as a symbol of Southern pride than as a symbol
of racism, about the same as in 2000 when 59% said
they viewed it as a symbol of pride. Opinions of the
flag are sharply divided by race, and among whites,
views are split by education.
Among African-Americans, 72% see the
Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, just 25% of
whites agree. In the South, the racial divide is even
broader. While 75% of Southern whites describe the
flag as a symbol of pride...
Note that this is from scientific polling, not a selfselected Internet poll, so we can accept it as
representative of the general population.
Despite the constant drumbeat of anti-Southern
propaganda from the corporate media, government, and
the government schools, most folks see the Confederate
flag for what it is, a distinctive and proud symbol of the
South. From CNN:
This must be REALLY frustrating for those whose agenda
depends on manufacturing Black outrage and White selfloathing. Remember: They're not attacking a piece of
cloth. They're attacking an entire culture. The agenda is to
erase a vibrant, historic culture, which is thefoundation of
a free social and political order so Big Governemnt can
step in and impose its own order. THEY know what
they're doing, and WE must wake up to what's going on.
American public opinion on the Confederate flag
remains about where it was 15 years ago, with most
describing the flag as a symbol of Southern pride
more than one of racism, according to a new
CNN/ORC poll. And questions about how far to go
to remove references to the Confederacy from public
life prompt broad racial divides.
60
The Week that Changed this Country -- And Our Lives -- Forever
By William L. Anderson
earth. Whether one holds to the Bible or to some
other ancient text, we see that marriage has been a
part of human society. To put it another way,
marriage existed long before even the ancient state
was in place, and certainly long before the modern
state came into being.
It really was The Week That Was. Where do I
begin? The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down
all prohibition of gay marriage in the manner that it
struck down state laws forbidding abortion in 1973,
and the ramifications for that will be around for the
rest of our lives.
Thus, for the modern State to "redefine" marriage is
a bit of an absurdity, should one hold to the belief that
human institutions have been around pre-state. Likewise,
when conservatives pushed through various marriage
amendments and the Defense of Marriage Act in the
1990s, they were doing, at least in principle, what gay
marriage proponents have done through the legislatures
and through the courts: using the state to define marriage.
In response to the murders of the nine black
Christians in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, the
Confederate battle flag and, indeed, pretty much anything
that has to do with the old Confederacy, from flags to
statues of Confederate Civil War generals, to monuments
to names on schools and public buildings, are being
banned or are likely to be removed. Activists are
demanding that the Jefferson Memorial in Washington be
torn down because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. This
one seems like a prairie fire that won't be going out for a
while.
I don't think I am making an absurd argument, and I
certainly am not claiming that SCOTUS has done
anything that is particularly revolutionary. After all, the
State has always tried to reframe reality even if it was
obvious that the real world was behaving differently than
what state agents have been trying claim. Remember all of
those non-existent harvests during Mao's Great Leap
Forward, when millions of Chinese were starving to death
despite Mao's claims otherwise?
Then there was the Supreme Court's decision that pretty
much ended all formal legal opposition to ObamaCare,
save what would be an unsuccessful attempt at repeal, and
that would have to be done legislatively, not through the
courts. One can say that this was a very successful week,
politically speaking, for President Barack Obama and the
political Left.
Likewise, when conservatives tried to use to law to define
marriage, they essentially were deferring to the
government to declare the bounds and meaning of
matrimony. While they might claim that they only were
having the state affirm what already was in existence and
understood to be true, once they permitted the state to
write a definition, then it de facto was opening up things
to where the state could change its definition. Which it
did.
Not surprisingly, the Left has launched an immediate
victory lap. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post wrote
that he "cheered the results" and called it an "acceleration
of history." What he really meant was an acceleration of
state power, and as a good Progressive, Dionne cannot
enjoy enough statism.
However, while in today's society we tend to measure the
success of things via political standards, that does not
mean that the Law of Unintended Consequences is
eliminated or that these events should be viewed in
entirely negative or positive ways. The kind of political
victories won by the Left means that there is going to be
hell to pay for the losers, and I doubt the Left will waste
any time. In today's post, I deal with the gay marriage
decision.
And don't think that the Left does not believe that the
State is the true arbiter of marriage. The hardcore Leftist
feminist Amanda Marcotte claims that any attempt to get
the State out of marriage is an attempt to get rid of
marriage altogether.
Unfortunately, we are not dealing in simple intellectual toand-fro. The SCOTUS decision is going to have severe
consequences for people who do not believe that marriage
is whatever the legislature claims it is, and especially for
people who define marriage through the Bible. Christians
who do not believe that same-sex marriage is in
accordance with the Scriptures will not face attacks solely
from the non-believers; indeed, others who say they are
Christians also will team up with the Left to go after them
and their institutions. Even conservative/libertarian
supporter of gay marriage, David Harsanyi, now admits
that the legal fallout is going to be brutal.
Gay Marriage and its Aftermath
At one level, I believe that SCOTUS made the obvious
decision regarding gay marriage and it is this: if people
want for the State to define marriage, then we should not
be surprised when political forces within the State decide
to change its long-held meaning. After all, the State is
justified by...the State.
What do I mean? Marriage is an ancient institution, and it
has been practiced since humanity has appeared on the
61
“whom” in Lenin’s famous formula (which defines
the essential political question as “who does what to
whom”). Like countless others they have been
beguiled into believing that “liberation” is achieved
by identifying with the exercise of state power,
rather than being protected against it.
In the aftermath of the SCOTUS decision on marriage,
Sojourners, a publication of the "Evangelical Christian
Left," declared: "This debate, at long last, is done." Please
understand what this publication is saying: The STATE is
the final arbiter of truth. That is the only interpretation.
After all, when SCOTUS in 1973 ordered all states to
allow abortion on demand, that hardly ended the debate,
but if Sojourners' logic is extended, then there is no more
debate permit on the question of abortion. For that matter,
any SCOTUS decision by definition ends all debate.
In one way, Sojourners is correct. The "official" debate is
over, and as far as the American Left is concerned, anyone
whose beliefs on same-sex marriage clash with those of
the Left must be uprooted, hounded, forced out of their
jobs, and perhaps into prison itself. We are not dealing
with "tolerance" or anything like it. The Left now controls
the American State wholly and demands nothing less than
total subservience; even silence or holding quietly to a set
of beliefs that contrast with the sexual views held by
Barack Obama no longer will be tolerated.
People who think like that, no matter how conciliatory the
language might be on the Sojourners website, are not
going to be sympathetic when the feds come knocking at
church doors and at the doors of Christian colleges and
parachurch organizations. In 1983, the Presbyterian
Church USA (which is the "liberal" Presbyterian
denomination) filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting
the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University when the
Internal Revenue Service accused it of racial
discrimination and stripped it of that status. (The
SCOTUS upheld that ruling.)
That the present institutional structure of American law
does not yet allow for wholesale arrests individuals and
closure of churches and other institutions which might
disagree with Obama on sex and marriage does not mean
very much. We know what representatives of this
government have said in public, and we already know that
Hillary Clinton has called for churches to change their
theology on abortion.
The PCUSA filed the brief on the principle of religious
freedom and the realization that the federal government
should not be in the business of determining proper
theology. I doubt seriously that when the IRS starts to act
against churches and Christian colleges that don't support
gay marriage, the PCUSA will be there to defend those
organizations. Instead, the PCUSA, as well as most
mainstream churches and outfits like Sojourners, will side
fully and forcefully with the State.
It no longer matters what people actually might believe
regarding same-sex marriage, whether or not they believe
it to be a good thing. As a Christian who holds to the
Scriptures, I do not see the Bible affirming such a marital
relationship or even calling it marriage, but I also believe
that if Christians want the State to define marriage, then
they will have to live with whatever the State calls it. If
my gay friends wish to call themselves married and are
joined in matrimony by a State agents, so be it. However,
we are long-past any point where any set of beliefs that
might contrast with those held by the Powers That Be are
going to be respected, and the adherents of those beliefs
left alone. That I am willing to abide by the current State
directives even if I do not believe Scripture condones such
a marital relationship does not matter to the Left. I am an
enemy and must be treated as such.
Don't be deceived. The Obergefell ruling is not an
expansion of freedom; it is a vast expansion of state
power, and it will unleash the State to force conformity
among people whose sets of beliefs do not coincide with
those of Barack Obama and others in his administration.
Will Grigg has stated it in a way that only he can
articulate:
The Secret Police in Orwell’s dystopian society were
employed by the Ministry of Love. In that ironic
designation we find the genuine meaning of the
insistent refrain that “love” triumphed when the US
Supreme Court consummated the long campaign to
bring the most intimate human institution fully under
the state’s control.
The Left that once was not afraid of opposing views no
longer exists. The gloves are off, and SCOTUS has just
given the State permission to begin to enforce a new
sexual order.
William L. Anderson, Ph.D., teaches economics at
Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct
scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He also is a
consultant with American Economic Services.
Those presently celebrating the state’s “affirmation”
of same-sex relationships are intoxicated by the
knowledge that they are the “who” rather than the
62
Sputnik News
Are the American Youth Ready for Conscription?
By Jay Johnson
possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you
are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the
news — currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million
Americans are either out of work or severely
underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t
throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.” He
goes on to note another reason behind the misleading
numbers — “Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or
healthcare worker or construction worker or retail
manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work
in a week and are paid at least $20 — maybe someone
pays you to mow their lawn — you’re not officially
counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%.” But,
it doesn’t stop there. He lists the third reason — “….those
working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have
a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours
part time because it is all you can find — in other words,
you are severely underemployed — the government
doesn’t count you in the 5.6%.” He sums up his article
by saying — “The official unemployment rate, which
cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often
permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly
underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.”
The shining future that America once had is all but a
page note in the history books now. Record
unemployment, failed foreign policies and domestic
strife is the new normal. And how is the brain trust in
DC going to solve these problems? National service for
all 18 – to 28-year-olds!
All across the land, people were smiling and laughing.
World War II had just ended and America suddenly found
itself to be the manufacturing capital of the world. There
were plenty of jobs for the average man and the future was
bright, even if you didn’t have a college degree. In fact,
not many people had a degree, and yet, for those that
didn’t, they were still able to buy a car, a house, take
several weeks of vacation a year and still be able to have
food on the table. Although this was the new normal at the
time, today’s new normal is something quite different.
In America today, there are close to 50 million people
living in poverty and there are more than 100 million
people that get money from the federal government every
month. As the middle class continues to disintegrate,
poverty is climbing to unprecedented levels. Even though
the stock market has been setting record high after record
high, the amount of anger and frustration boiling just
under the surface in our nation grows with each passing
day.
So, there you have it. The Obama recovery is a big scam.
Propaganda, some might say. A facade hiding the
festering sore below the surface of polite society. But
actually, it is possible to see this by just looking at the
headlines over the last few years — “Five teenagers were
arrested when a 600-person brawl broke out in a Florida
movie theater’s parking lot on Christmas night” or —
“Hundreds of teens trash mall in wild flash mob”. In fact,
the list goes on and on. What at one time would have been
a huge talking point in the media circuit has now just
become back page article. So, with the sky-rocketing
youth unemployment rate, many government officials are
asking what can be done. Not necessarily to provide workbut to create a safety valve for society. And it appears that
the answer to this question is — “National service for all
18- to 28-year-olds”.
As an example of just how bad off joe-sixpack is these
days, the WSJ notes that — “Only 38% said they could
cover a $500 repair bill or a $1,000 emergency room visit
with funds from their bank accounts.” A person quoted
in that article said — “A solid majority of Americans say
they have a household budget, but too few have the ability
to cover expenses outside their budget without going
into debt or turning to family and friends for help.”
Further on in that article a survey noted that — “… an
unexpected bill would cause 26% to reduce spending
elsewhere, while 16% would borrow from family or
friends and 12% would put the expense on a credit card.
The remainder didn’t know what they would do or would
make other arrangements.” Basically, people don’t have
any money. But how can that be? Hasn’t Obama saved the
American economy? Isn’t the official unemployment rate
near 5 1/2 %?
That’s right. It’s called national service. Not the draft, or
conscription or any other word that would have negative
connotations. National Service! For your patriotic duty!
National Review addressed this issue when it wrote —“
Require virtually every young American — the civicminded millennial generation — to complete a year
of service through programs such as Teach for America,
AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, or the U.S. military, and
two things will happen:
To answer this question, Jim Clifton over at Gallup
wrote — “if you, a family member or anyone is
unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a
job — if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve
stopped looking over the past four weeks — the
Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed.
That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can
1. Virtually every American family will become
intimately invested in the nation’s biggest challenges,
63
including poverty, education, income inequality, and
America’s place in a world afire.
around more failed foreign policies to make sure that
everyone suffers. Just like Status Quo sang in that song —
“A vacation in a foreign land, Uncle Sam does the best he
can.You’re in the army now, oh-oo-oh you’re in the army
now. Now you remember what the draft man said, nothing
to do all day but stay in bed. You’re in the army now, ohoo-oh you’re in the army now.”
2. Military recruiting will rise to meet threats posed
by ISIS and other terrorist networks, giving more people
skin in a very dangerous game.”
So, there you have it. Instead of creating real jobs and
rebuilding America and by employing a clever use
of language to not call it what it really is — forced slave
labor, the brain trust in DC is going to wrap the flag
So, what do you think dear listeners, “Are the American
youth ready for conscription?”
Why Not an ‘Independence from the State’ Day?
By Roger Young
I’m about to witness my 61st “Independence Day” in the
US Collective. And all I see forthcoming is still another
celebration of failure, still another empty gesture from
clueless citizen/slaves who have no independence.
only threatens complete evisceration of individual wealth
and liberties within its declared territory, but also the
lives, wealth, property, and security of people throughout
the world.
The supposed “independence” noted and celebrated is
recorded in the document known as The Declaration of
Independence. Those enslaved by a king at that time,
declared themselves subjects instead to some, as yet,
undefined government master (later to be defined as a
“republic”). The document rails about such worthy goals
as equality among men, inalienable rights of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness, and government operating
only at the consent of the governed.
Seeing that that such a large, powerful and centralized
political structure is not only inadequate, but inherently
dangerous toward the stated goal of preserving liberty,
aware individuals can only view celebrating such a
structure as utterly senseless.
Perhaps a new way to celebrate Independence Day is to
shift the focus of collective independence to individual
independence. The idea that claiming a collective
independence will protect our inalienable liberties seems
to have failed. How about a more individually oriented,
decentralized approach- all based on the sanctity of
individual sovereignty and the truth that no man is born
another man’s subject or slave?
But when present day loyalists view their present day
reality through their star spangled eyes, do they see the
ultimate achievement of these documented goals?
Once the hot dogs and beer are digested and the fireworks
smoke clears, what do they have? Freedom?
Independence? Liberty? Quite the contrary.
Claim true independence by withdrawing your consent
and allegiance to a criminal regime posing as a benevolent
master. Separate yourself mentally and emotionally from
the death cult that values human sacrifice for the
collective over the life giving accomplishments of free
living individuals.
What they in reality have is a multi-century, linear
regression from a declaration of the sanctity of the natural
rights of man and the glory of individualism to an annual
affirmation of conformity, unquestioned loyalty, collective
obedience, and the glorification of human sacrifice when
committed in the name of the king.
And why stop there? Why not expand the scope from a
localized effort to reassert our rights as freeborn
sovereigns to a worldwide campaign of individual
empowerment and liberation?
And not the old king, but the new one.
What in reality they have is the unfortunate opportunity to
witness a spectacular, historical failure. The institution
created and charged with protecting those declared,
natural rights has instead morphed into the greatest threat
toward their weakening and eventual abolition. Words on
parchment outlining law, custom and structure regarding
such an institution have been proven impotent to restrain
the growth of a predator so large and menacing, that it not
Instead of foolishly celebrating a past independence from
one king, just to become enslaved by another, let’s
actively declare and celebrate an independence to all
present day state masters.
Roger Young writes from US occupied Texas and has a
blog.
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Gun Owners' Strategy 'Kills' New Registration
Move called 'stunning repudiation' of Democrat governor, allies
By Bob Unruh
So in the time since adoption, 23,847 New Yorkers have
registered the weapons they believe fall into the category
of assault weapons. But the GOA said there are an
estimated “at least” 1 million firearms that fall under the
definition in the state.
The law went into effect in January 2013, and the numbers
were given to attorney Paloma Capanna in a recent lawsuit
action.
“Folks, this is stunning, [by] any measure,” the GOA
commentary said. “As Frank Minister noted last
year just days before the registration deadline, the
National Shooting Sports Foundation
conservatively estimated the number of firearms
that qualify as ‘assault weapons’ under New
York’s law were ‘at least’ one million.”
In a move described as a “stunning repudiation” of
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his “anti-gun
Democrat allies,” residents of the state have issued
a “veto” of a new gun regulation.
By simply ignoring it.
The law was adopted by lawmakers on Jan. 25, 2013, in
the middle of the night and described as so critical that a
three-day review period was waived.
The impact of the move was described recently by
the Gun Owners of America.
“We now know that less than 4.5 percent of the ‘assault
weapons’ in New York were registered with the state as
required by the draconian 2013 law, despite threats and
warnings from hysterical New York Democrats and their
allies in the media,” said a posting from Bob Owens on
the GOA website.
It bans “high-capacity magazines,” imposes new
background check requirements, requires stolen guns to be
reported, requires “safe storage” and increases penalties
for taking a gun on school property.
Cuomo said it “stops criminals and the dangerously
mentally ill from buying a gun by requiring universal
background checks on gun purchases, increases penalties
for people who use illegal guns, mandates life in prison
without parole for anyone who murders a first responder,
and imposes the toughest assault weapons ban in the
country.”
“This is an even greater refusal rate than was experienced
in next door Connecticut, where anti-gun [advocates]
rammed through a similar law in the wake of Sandy Hook
[and] saw at least 85 percent of the Constitution State’s
gun owners defiantly refuse to register their firearms,
some going so far as to dare Gov. Dannel Malloy … to
attempt confiscation,” GAO said.
The Times-Union reported critics of the law contending
that the low level of compliance “was proof of a
widespread boycott.”
GAO called it a “stunning repudiation” of Cuomo.
The revolt began in 2013 when New York, like
neighboring Connecticut, adopted a number of gun
measures after the Sandy Hook school shooting in which
one man shot and killed 20 children and six adults before
killing himself.
“The people of New York state who have been calling for
a repeal (of the SAFE Act) have decided to repeal it on
their own by not complying,” Tom King, president of the
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, told the paper.
In Connecticut, a similar ban resulted in the registration of
50,016 “assault weapons.”
One of the requirements was that people who own what
the state newly defined as an “assault weapon” register it
with the state. Such weapons were defined by certain
characteristics, some of which were cosmetic. For
example, triggering features include a detachable
magazine or a pistol grip.
But Connecticut has 3.6 million residents to New York’s
19.5 million.
Associated Press reported a state group, NY2A, called the
law a failure because of the low compliance level.
At the time, the move drew the opposition of the state
sheriff’s association, which said the wording prevents the
possession of “many weapons that are legitimately used
for hunting, target shooting and self-defense.”
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three
decades with the Associated Press, as well as several
Upper Midwest newspapers.
65
Americans More Dependent than Ever on Independence Day
Total cost of food-stamp program doubles under Obama
By Jerome R. Corsi
But the program also doubled under Bush, whose term
began in 2001 with just over 17 million receiving food
stamps.
Still, the Obama administration promotes the idea the U.S.
economy is in recovery.
“Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our
economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace
since 1999,” the president said in his Jan. 20 State of the
Union address.
“Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before
the financial crisis,” he continued. “More of our kids are
graduating than ever before. More of our people are
insured than ever before. And we are as free from
the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30
years.”
NEW YORK – Three years ago, when 44.7
million – or one in seven Americans – were on
food stamps, former House Speaker New Gingrich
dubbed Barack Obama the “Food Stamp
President.”
Poverty and income inequality grow
Despite the trillions of dollars spent in anti-poverty
programs since President Lyndon Johnson launched “The
Great Society” in 1964, the U.S. under President Obama
has just seen the highest spike in poverty since the
1960s, leaving approximately 50 million Americans living
below the poverty line, defined as a family of four earning
less than $23,021 a year.
Indeed, the cost of the U.S. Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has doubled
under President Obama’s leadership, indicating poverty
has continued to grow despite administration claims the
U.S. economy is recovering from the depths of the 20072008 recession.
The underlying concern is that the United States is
transforming from a robust private-enterprise economy
capable of achieving “full employment” to an
unemployed, under-employed or unemployable population
dependent on government programs for survival.
As measured by the Census Bureau, median U.S.
household income fell for the fifth straight year in 2012, to
$51,759. It rose only to $51,939 in 2013, an increase the
Census Bureau dismissed as “not statistically different” in
real terms from the 2012 median, the lowest annual
income adjusted for inflation since 1995. Consequently,
income inequality intensified, with the top 5 percent of
households earning 22.3 percent of the nation’s income in
2012.
Food-stamp dependency soars
U.S. Department of Agriculture data showed 46.1 million
Americans were receiving food stamps as of March 2015,
the latest month for which statistics were available. One in
five American families were receiving food
stamps as compared to the 1970s, when about one out of
every 50 Americans was on food stamps.
Today, there are more Americans on welfare than those
working full time, according to Census Bureau statistics.
There were 108,592,000 people in the U.S. in the fourth
quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more
means-tested government benefit programs, compared to
the 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round
in 2011, including both private sector and government
workers. Some observers, however, consider the
comparison unfair, because the welfare numbers include
both children and senior citizens who cannot work.
In February 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the
number of children receiving food stamps remained higher
than it was before the start of the recession in 2007,
with an estimated 16 million children, fully one in every
five in the United States, receiving food stamps. That’s up
from 9 million children, or one in every eight, prior to the
recession.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported in October 2013 that
nearly half (49.2 percent) of Americans in 2011 were
receiving benefits from at least one government program,
with 84,457,000 Americans, 26.9 percent of the
During Obama’s presidency, the cost to the U.S. taxpayer
for the food-stamp program has doubled, from $37.6
billion in 2008, the last full year of the presidency of
George W. Bush, to $74.1 billion in 2014.
66
population, living in households where one or more
persons received Medicaid benefits.
Foundation authors David Muhlhausen, Ph.D., and Patrick
Tyrrell.
The figures indicate money does not solve poverty.
“Government programs not only crowd out civil society,
but too frequently trap individuals and families in longterm dependence, leaving them incapable of escaping their
condition for generations to come. Rebuilding civil society
can rescue these individuals from the government
dependence trap,” they stressed.
Since Obama took office, the federal government has
spent a total of $3.7 trillion on approximately 80 different
means-tested poverty and welfare programs, excluding
Social Security and Medicare. The sum is nearly five
times greater than the federal government spent on NASA,
education and all federal transportation projects over that
time, according to research reported in 2013 by the GOP
members of the Senate Budget Committee.
Prelude of economic and social collapse?
“Virtually no issue so dominates the current public policy
debate as the future financial health of the United States,”
the Heritage Foundation authors continued. “Americans
are haunted by the specter of growing mountains of debt
that sap the economic and social vitality of the country.”
The Heritage Foundation has compiled a set of economic
indicators into an “Index of Dependence on Government.”
Unfortunately, the economic issues are interrelated, they
said.
In 2013, the Heritage Foundation reported the index was
reaching alarming levels. The percentage of the population
paying no federal income taxes remained above 40 percent
while the amount of federal spending devoted to
dependence programs had risen to nearly 70 percent of
total federal spending, including both discretionary and
non-discretionary spending.
“The enormous growth in debt is largely driven by
dependence-creating government programs,” Muhlhausen
and Tyrrell continued. “Only the painfully slow labor
market recovery garners more attention, and many are
beginning to believe that even that sluggishness is tied to
the nation’s growing burden of publicly held debt.”
“America is increasingly moving away from a nation of
self-reliant individuals, where civil society flourishes,
toward a nation of individuals less inclined to practicing
self-reliance and personal responsibility,” wrote Heritage
Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff
writer. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y.
Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for
Command." Corsi's latest book is "Who Really Killed
Kennedy?"
Marxists Plan to Burn American Flags
by Old Rebel (Mike Tuggle)
“There will be no peace until we tear down this
system of oppression,” the group wrote on
Facebook. “It isn’t enough to take the flag down; we
must put an end to white supremacy once and for
all.” (The Blaze)
This story should clarify things for the near-sighted. If you
think the escalating jihad against the Confederate
Battleflag is based only on the desire not to offend those
delicate souls who cower and whimper when they see one,
guess again. It's not an attack on a piece of cloth, it's an
attack on us, against Western Civilization. These Social
Justice Warriors spell it out for the learning impaired:
"White Supremacy" is the modern-day equivalent of
"Capitalism" as shorthand for what today's radicals hate
and are hell-bound to destroy. While old-time communists
portrayed their agenda in terms of economic conflict, with
the "dictatorship of the proletariat" over the bourgeoisie as
their ultimate goal, our much scruffier SJWs seek racial
conflict aimed at a dictatorship of peoples of color over
eeeevil Whites.
“Disarm NYPD” announced the “Burn the American
Flags” event on Facebook, inviting individuals to
join the organization at Fort Greene Park to “set fire
to this symbol of oppression.”
Organizers said accused Charleston shooter Dylann
Roof wasn’t an “isolated actor,” but a “product of a
consistent pattern of state-sponsored terrorism and
radicalized dehumanization in America.” The event
originally was aimed at burning the Confederate
flag, but later changed to focus on the stars and
stripes.
It's time to start paying attention to the true motivations
behind all the shouting and cursing. And to pick a side.
67
The Silencing of America's Majority
Envisions citizens hiding offenders 'in their cellars and walls'
By Erik Rush
There are at least two other reasons liberals
overlooked their hatred of Christians in the case of
the Charleston shootings. One is that those on the left
view blacks as a primitive breed to begin with, so
their Christianity is of no more concern than if they
were practicing Santeria, Voodoo, or worshiping The
Great Bright Disk That Crosses The Sky.
Four days after nine people were gunned down at the
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston,
South Carolina, the church’s doors opened to an
overflow crowd of congregants and supporters.
Since Senior Pastor Clementa Pinckney was among
those killed on June 17, the Rev. Norvel Goff, a former
New York pastor and presiding elder at another South
Carolina AME Church, led the service.
Another reason is that in having managed to control
blacks politically (as well as subverting many through
false Christian doctrines like Liberation Theology), what
they actually believe doesn’t matter as long as they
continue to provide the requisite political support. Blacks
have given leftist leaders no indication that they will cease
doing so.
Goff provided abundant commentary on the surviving
family members’ displays of dignity and their willingness
to forgive the shooter, Dylann Storm Roof. His oratory
both reflected and underscored the sentiment behind this
community of Christians that, instead of degenerating into
anger and hatred over Roof’s foul deeds, came together in
fellowship.
The agitators finally did make it down to South Carolina,
because two days after the Charleston AME church reopened and a block away, the former head of the New
Black Panther Party, Malik Zulu Shabazz, and Shaka
Shakur, another black nationalist, were calling for war
against whites. Shabazz is the president of an organization
called Black Lawyers for Justice, the group that was
instrumental in spurring on rioters in Baltimore following
the death of Freddie Gray.
The reverend also remarked that the doors of the church
opening so soon after the tragedy was sure to have sent “a
message to the demons in Hell.”
Excuse me?
A message to whom?
“Demons in Hell,” did he say?
Well, let’s see … he is a Christian pastor after all – so who
should we suppose his adversaries might be – Snidely
Whiplash? The Riddler?
In front of a crowd of several hundred black Charleston
residents, Shakur declared in urban patois that Dylann
Roof ‘s attack had been a coordinated plan, that he was “a
solider” who carried out “his mission.”
Whereupon we shall commence with this week’s object
lesson, which once again features liberal racism and
hypocrisy.
Shakur then asked the crowd, “When you gonna carry out
yours?”
According to the emergent leftist doctrine, people who
actually believe in primitive twaddle like demons are on a
par with the developmentally disabled; they certainly have
no right to participate in public discourse. Recall how
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was raked across
the coals by the liberal press recently for statements
concerning his Catholic beliefs.
Shakur said that Roof had been trained and equipped by
shadowy white boogeymen whom he could not identify.
Both he and Shabazz suggested that audience members
“complete the work” of Denmark Vesey, who led a violent
slave revolt in 1822 and killed a bunch of white people.
So if that’s the case, then why should the usual liberal
detractors care if Dylann Roof ventilated a bunch of these
mentally retarded cavemen?
Shakur had no proof whatsoever of anything he said – yet
he and Shabazz were allowed to stand there at length and
incite Americans to kill other Americans. Conversely, a
white individual cannot criticize our president’s tie
without being pilloried for racism.
Well, since they were black, of course the crime fits very
nicely into the narrative the left is currently pushing, that
we have a serious problem with “right-wing racist
domestic terrorism” and white supremacy in general.
Simply put, they elected to set aside their antipathy for
Christians so that they might capitalize on the racial
aspects of Roof’s crime.
This double standard is quite similar to that of militant
homosexuals being allowed to call for the complete
disenfranchisement of Christians, the burning of their
businesses and even violent action against them – yet woe
be unto the Christian who criticizes homosexuals or their
attendant political agenda, no matter how diplomatically it
is done.
68
however, will buy our enemies enough time to codify their
perversities into law with the cooperation of the weak, the
corrupted and cowards in high places.
A majority of Americans who do not subscribe to the
left’s racial orthodoxy or the legitimacy of the homosexual
agenda continue to be intimidated into submission through
nothing more than invective and lies. The pace of this
project (which also involves other demographic
subgroups) has been accelerated and its strength fortified
by the Obama administration, whose noxious domestic
agenda demands division and dysfunction.
Then, as occurred once before, while some citizens hide
neighbors now legally considered persona non grata in
their cellars and walls, others will dutifully turn them over
to authorities to face a grim fate because, after all …
“It’s the law of the land.”
The sad irony is that substantial gains could still be made
against the left if more of us were willing to go on the
offensive and stop dreading their empty screeches of
“homophobe” or “racist” as though they were the Wicked
Witch of the West in a water balloon fight.
Erik Rush is a columnist and author of sociopolitical fare.
His latest book is "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to
Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession." In 2007, he was
the first to give national attention to the story of Sen.
Barack Obama's ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, initiating a media feeding frenzy. Erik
has appeared on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," CNN,
and is a veteran of numerous radio appearances.
Little do those who have given in and now hold their
beliefs in abeyance know that they have fallen for a cheap
communist tactic crafted by a cheap communist twerp
(“Rules for Radicals” author Saul Alinsky). Their silence,
69
Their Next Goal: Put Christian 'Bigots' in Jail
By Michael Brown
Another individual commented on one of our
Facebook posts (that talked about God’s design for
marriage), “God’s design for Christian haters is to
end up in prison.”
A few years ago, while talking with a leading
Christian attorney, I repeated to him my statement
that those who came out of the closet want to put us
in the closet. He remarked, “There’s one more step.
In the beginning, they were put in jail for their
actions. In the future, we’ll be put in jail for ours.”
These sentiments are rising like a tidal wave, as many
Americans now think it is open season on Christians and
Christian beliefs, as if the Supreme Court’s reckless and
lawless decision is the final word and as if all those who
oppose the court’s new definition of marriage should be
punished by the law as bigots.
Shortly after our conversation, I was on Christian TV and
quoted his words, and the response from some gay
activists and their allies was almost hysterical, mocking
the idea that there could be any scenario in which
Christians would be put in jail for refusing to affirm gay
activism.
Already, Mark Oppenheimer, who writes the biweekly
“Beliefs” column for the New York Times, has penned an
op-ed piece for Time magazine titled, “Now’s the Time
To End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.” He
argues that, “The Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage
makes it clearer than ever that the government shouldn’t
be subsidizing religion and non-profits.”
Today, in the aftermath of the disastrous Supreme Court
ruling, people are starting to clamor for that very thing.
Is this really any surprise?
Writing in 2007 with reference to LGBT activist goals in
ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act), New
Testament scholar Robert Gagnon warned, “The bill
will virtually codify you as a bigot so far as the federal
government is concerned if you oppose homosexual
practice on moral grounds. The biggest fallout from the
bill is the establishment of ‘sexual orientation’ (defined as
‘homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality’) as a
specially protected category of federal law. As sure as
night follows day, this will be the proverbial foot in the
door by proponents of homosexual practice that will lead,
eventually but irrevocably, to ‘gay marriage’ (mandated
by the U.S. Supreme Court), a nationally enforced
indoctrination of children into the homosexualist agenda
in schools and the criminalizing of opposition to
homosexual practice at the national level.”
To repeat my question: Is anyone really surprised?
Conservative leaders have been warning about this for
years now, and the only surprise is that anyone is
surprised.
There’s no question that believers across America are
waking up and that leaders who have been reluctant to
take a stand are beginning to raise their voices. But there’s
the real possibility that, once the outrage passes, we will
fall back into our comfortable complacency, in which case
we will have no one to blame but ourselves when the
worst-case scenario unfolds.
In my new book, due out in September, I explain why I
believe gay activism has within itself the seeds of selfdestruction, and I lay out eight principles by which we
can outlast the gay revolution.
How eerily prophetic do these words sound now?
That’s just one reason why personally I am overflowing
with confidence in the Lord in the midst of the darkness
and chaos: It is a dark day today, yet it is not the last day.
Four years earlier, in 2003, Christian attorneys Alan Sears
and Craig Osten published their important book “The
Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to
Religious Freedom Today,” making their case with
example after example from the courts. And I remind you:
This was in 2003.
But am I sobered by the moment, and to my fellow
believers I say this: If you’re still slumbering, wake up.
And if you’re awake and alert, give yourselves to prayer,
determine not to compromise, reach out to all people with
love and prepare for a protracted battle.
Why did so few of us pay attention? The handwriting has
been on the wall for years.
No sooner, then, was the court’s decision announced last
week than I began to receive tweets like this: “MOVE TO
THE MOON, RELIGIOUS TERRORIST AND HATER,”
followed immediately by, “Christian hater riffraff like
@DrMichaelLBrown @PeterLaBarbera @BryanJFischer
must be brought to justice … zero tolerance for this
scum.”
The coming onslaught will be intense.
Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages
and Literatures from New York University. He is the
author of 25 books, including "Can You Be Gay and
Christian?" and "A Queer Thing Happened to
America," and he hosts the nationally syndicated, daily
talk-radio show, "The Line of Fire."
70
71
Marriage Makes Rude, Crude, and Lewd Men into Softies!
By Don Boys, Ph.D.
Since single people are not as contented as married
people, the singles are more lonely and at higher
risk of depression. Furthermore, “couples who
cohabit before marriage are much more likely to
split up later. And 86 percent of couples in
unhappy marriages report being happier five years
later if they stay married.” Women who live with a
boyfriend are four times more likely to be abused
and their children are 40 times more likely to be
physically abused!
Marriage for centuries has made rude, crude, and
even lewd men into softies and developed a
stable, normal, decent society where women are
cherished and exalted and children are trained and
protected–until recent years.
Marriage and the family survived 6,000 years, yet
in the last 60 years both have been damaged,
denigrated, almost destroyed; however, marriage
should be the most cherished function in society since in
establishing marriage God provided for the continuation
of the human race. Marriage is a safe haven on a
tempestuous sea of troubles, trials, and temptations and
has been known for thousands of years to have a civilizing
effect on men. Men have been known traditionally to
“clean up their act” when they took a wife. Marriage also
tends to protect women and children physically,
emotionally, and financially. The “civilizing effect” has
made an incredible impact upon every nation.
Married people far surpass unmarried people in
accumulating and maintaining their wealth and worldly
possessions. In fact, married people are worth twice what
unmarried people are worth.
Married people say that married sex is better than
unmarried sex according to a report by Linda Waite and
Maggie Gallagher in their The Case for Marriage.
"Married women are almost twice as likely as divorced or
never-married women to have a sex life that (a) exists and
(b) is extremely emotionally satisfying." The message is to
choose your spouse carefully, stay faithful, and stay
married.
Marriage and the family are under attack from hedonists,
homosexuals, and humanists, and since marriage is our
most important social act, we should know its source and
foundation. Most people would agree that whatever the
kind of wedding, the key should be commitment. Not like
a movie star and her famous fiancé who announced at
their engagement that their marriage would be different.
They each had a tattoo of the other's name on their rears,
but they didn’t even make it to the altar! Without
commitment, even branding on the rear end does no good.
Everyone, except rabid fanatics, agree that children do
better in homes where there are married two-parent (male
and female) families. The children have greater success in
school, experience fewer problems with the legal system,
and are less likely to use drugs, tobacco or be
promiscuous. They are also 20 times less likely to be
physically abused. God’s plan for the family works!
Marriage with commitment also adds zest, excitement,
pleasure, contentment, and is very rewarding to each
person. Married people are twice as happy as divorced and
cohabitating couples and married people also live longer
and are healthier than unmarried people. Single men drink
twice as much as married men and also smoke more, so it
is not surprising that married men live longer. There is
less suicide and mental illness among married people, and
there is also less likelihood of contracting a sexually
transmitted disease within marriage than outside marriage.
The studies that have been done show that throughout
Scandinavia (and the West) cohabiting couples with
children break up at two to three times the rate of married
parents. So marriage pays in every way.
I suggest that government stay out of marriage and family
and permit rude, crude, and lewd men to continue to be
influenced and civilized by decent, dedicated, and
determined ladies.
Young people growing up in a normal family are less
likely to be involved in homosexual activity since they
have a strong male image and observe and understand
what a normal family should be. It also helps if they are
taught that God forbids such sinful activity. According to
the American Medical Association "homosexual youth are
23 times more likely to contract sexually transmitted
diseases than heterosexuals." Sounds to me like a good
reason to be married to one of the opposite sex!
Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of
Representatives, author of 15 books, frequent guest on
television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for
USA Today for 8 years. His shocking books, ISLAM:
America's Trojan Horse!; Christian Resistance: An Idea
Whose Time Has Come–Again!; and The God Haters.
72
Changing of Our Guards
By Eric Peters
This weekend we celebrate the
changing of our guard.
 Contract your labor without permission – and under
Which, when you stop to think about
it, is more than a little odd. Do the
inmates of Rikers Island throw a party
when they get a new warden? To
celebrate the changing of the color of
the uniforms worn by their cagers?
 Elect not to provide the government with evidence (the
“terms and conditions” decreed by the government.
income tax form) that can and will be used against
you, despite the Fifth Amendment.
 Produce and sell milk and other farm products that
haven’t been “inspected” by the government and
without the permission of the government.
And yet, we do.
 Defend oneself against even the most egregious
violation of the law by the law’s enforcers.
 Rent a room or apartment you own to whom you wish.
 Fish (or hunt) without a license… even on your own
land.
 Use your car to provide taxi service.
 Collect rainwater for personal use.
 Opt not to have your home connected to “grid”
electricity.
 Have your young daughters set up a curbside
lemonade stand on a hot July afternoon.
The “long train of abuses” (as Jefferson described them
239 years ago this Saturday) is extensive. Far more so
today than it was back then. And yet, we – most
Americans – continue to play their part in the annual July
Fourth kabuki theater. We pretend we’re “free” – and the
government pretends it has the “consent of the governed.”
This coming weekend, Americans will celebrate not being
free to – among other things:
 Buy and display fireworks themselves.
 Choose whether to wear a seat belt.
Few stop to ask themselves: If the Fourth Amendment
guarantees that we are to be “free from unreasonable
searches and seizures” how it can be that all of us are
legally subject to completely random searches – without
even a whiff of individualized suspicion – whenever we
go for a drive in our cars or travel by airplane?
 Say “no thanks” to the health insurance mafia.
 Travel without permission (and decline to produce
your “papers” on demand).
 Smoke in a privately owned bar or pool hall.
 Freely associate – or not.
 Ever truly own a home or land outright, free from
yearly rent payments (in the form of real estate taxes)
to the government.
 Educate your children as you (rather than strangers in a
distant capital city) see fit.
 Consume substances decreed (arbitrarily) to be
“illegal.”
 Possess “contraband” items (including firearms,
without which the right to self-defense is a nullity).
If the Bill if Rights – which is legally part of the
Constitution – is (as we are told) the law of the land, how
is it that other laws – “interpretations” issued by judges at
 Open a business without permission.
73
odds with the crystal clear language of the Constitution –
have come to supersede it?
was then – and ever since – denied the individual. We, as
Americans, have no more right to say “no thanks” – to go
our way in peace, to be left in peace provided we
ourselves our peaceful – than an inmate of Rikers Island.
How does one “consent” without actually having given
consent? How does the fact that a question was put to a
vote – and some people voted in favor – come to mean
that you have given your consent to the measure?
You may reply: The inmates of Rikers Island have
committed – and been convicted of – crimes. They
deserve to be caged, their liberty taken. Fair enough,
perhaps. But what crime have you committed?
Try quoting the Constitution – the Bill of Rights – in
court.
Whom have you harmed by not wearing a seatbelt?
1776 began nobly enough – but by 1787, the revolution
was over. Meeting in secret conclave – what was that
about the “consent of the governed”? – the elite of
colonial America met for the sole purpose of re-creating
what had been overthrown, only with themselves in charge
of the operation rather than the English monarch. “The
people” – held in contempt by men like Alexander
Hamilton – never gave their consent to these
“representatives,” who proceeded to enact the 18th
century version of a Beer Hall putsch. Charged with
amending the Articles of Confederation – nothing more –
they proceeded to rip it to shreds and in its place,
substituted the “vigorous” and “energetic” (Hamilton’s
words) Constitution we suffer under today. The sole
purpose of which was to establish a federal leviathan of
in-principle unlimited power. Which – exactly as intended
– grew into a leviathan of unlimited-in-fact power. One so
unlimited, even your “health care” is now its business
rather than your own.
Why should innocent people – who’ve given no reason to
even suspect them of having committed any offense – be
subject to random stops and searches?
How is it that armed men can threaten you with lethal
violence for deciding it’s ok to let people who freely wish
to enter (and who may just as freely leave) your privately
owned bar or pool hall smoke, if they wish to?
Have you hurt your neighbor by selling him milk he freely
wished to buy at a price mutually agreeable to both
parties?
Why do any of us “owe” money to people we’ve never
met, never injured, never agreed to pay?
If we are free, why are we so controlled, regulated,
micromanaged? Under almost constant threat of
harassment, fining – and caging? Why is there literally
almost no decision – even to the extent of what goes on in
our own homes and bedrooms – that’s left entirely up to
us?
Alexander Hamilton was many things, but not a fool. He –
and his fellow “federalists” – knew precisely what they
were doing. In private conversation, some (including
Hamilton and also John Adams) admitted their admiration
of the British system. That is, of an authoritarian
mercantilist (what we would today call corporatist) state,
directed by a coterie of Wise Men (themselves) who knew
better than the public what was in the “public interest.”
The truth is we’re in the same prison as the inmates of
Rikers Island – only our “yard” is (for now) a bit more
generous. This is an uncomfortable fact, but no less true
because it is uncomfortable. The differences are merely of
degree, not of principle. The guards at Rikers are the
absolute masters and the prisoners are free to do as they
are told.
And told them so.
Our “freedoms” are of a piece.
Thus it has been ever since. Especially since the failure of
the southern states – which realized what had happened
but reacted to it too late and not adroitly when they finally
did react – to rescind their purported “consent” and go
their separate way in peace. What was denied the states
Happy Changing of the Guard Day.
Eric Peters is an automotive columnist and author of
Automotive Atrocities and Road Hogs (2011).
74
10 Egregious Abuses of Civil Asset Forfeiture
By J. Francis Wolfe
would be seizing the property that had been the home of
Leon and Mary Adams since 1966.
In the United States, law enforcement agencies have the
power to seize the assets of those suspected of criminal
activity. On its face, this seems somewhat reasonable.
However, the threshold for suspicion of criminal
involvement is perilously low and allows law enforcement
agencies to abuse the power afforded through civil
forfeiture. Many innocent citizens have had their property
seized as a result, and the following instances of civil
forfeiture abuse are particularly egregious.
According to the Philadelphia Police Department, Leon Jr.
had sold $20 worth of marijuana to a police informant on
multiple occasions. After the first sale, the informant went
to the porch of the Adams home on two more occasions to
again buy $20 worth of marijuana. With evidence in the
form of marked bills and the ostensible testimony of the
informant, Philadelphia Police used a SWAT team in riot
gear to break down the door of the home and arrest Leon
Jr. A month later, Leon and Mary Adams were informed
that in addition to their son being in jail while awaiting
trial, their home would also be seized under civil forfeiture
laws.
10 - DEA Agents Seize $16,000 from Amtrak Traveler
After saving up enough money to pursue a career in the
music industry, Joseph Rivers, 22, bought a one-way train
ticket to Los Angeles. For DEA agents, that act alone—
along with the fact that he was traveling with such a large
amount of cash—was enough to suspect that Rivers was
involved in drug trafficking or some other “narcotic
activity.”
The profits from the sale of the seized home would be split
between the police and the district attorney’s office after it
was sold at auction. The only reason police didn’t evict
Leon and Mary Adams before they could challenge the
civil forfeiture claim was that the elder Leon Adams was
enduring a host of health problems and was undergoing
treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Other passengers traveling on the Amtrak train noted that
Rivers, a young African-American man, was the only
passenger to be singled out by the DEA. His attorney,
Michael Pancer, suggested Rivers’s race may have played
a role, as he was the only black passenger on his section of
the train.
The forfeiture case is still pending. During an early court
appearance, the assistant district attorney assigned to the
Adams case brought the wrong folder to court, causing a
further delay in the process.
During the search and subsequent seizure of his cash,
Rivers has said that he was completely cooperative and
even allowed the DEA agents to contact his mother to
corroborate his story. Rivers pleaded with agents that he
would be penniless upon his arrival in California with no
means of survival and no way of returning home.
According to Rivers, “[The DEA agents] informed me that
it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to
do that.”
8 - Driver Loses $3,500 for ‘Looking Like a Drug
Dealer’
In a case highlighted in an NAACP letter to Congress, an
African-American man was pulled over traveling from
Virginia to Delaware, allegedly for having a taillight out.
The taillight had actually been functioning properly, but
this ploy allowed the officer to size up the driver for a
potential search and seizure through the use of civil asset
forfeiture. The driver, according to the officer, “looked like
a drug dealer,” which was apparently reason enough for the
officer to enlist a drug-sniffing dog to search the man’s car.
Rivers was not charged with any crime, and there is no
indication that he ever will be, but the DEA was still able
to legally seize all of the $16,000 he carried. The DEA’s
explanation for the seizure was particularly troubling: “We
don’t have to prove that the person is guilty. It’s that the
money is presumed to be guilty.”
After the search did not turn up any drugs or any other
evidence of illegal activity, the officer asked if the driver
was carrying any guns, drugs, or money. Though the driver
had no firearms and no drugs, he did state that he had
$3,500 in cash. The officer promptly seized the driver’s
cash. Despite not finding any evidence that could support
an arrest, they said that the money could only be the profits
of drug dealing and was thus subject to legal seizure under
civil forfeiture laws. The driver was never charged with
any crime.
9 - Philadelphia Couple’s Home Seized after Son
Arrested for Marijuana
In 2012, Leon and Mary Adams had their property seized
because their son, Leon Jr., had allegedly been selling
marijuana from their front porch without their knowledge.
Though Leon Jr. was indeed charged with a crime, he was
alleged to have sold very small quantities—a “few $20
marijuana deals”—and the couple had nothing to do with
the criminal activity. Leon Jr. had not yet been convicted of
the criminal activity when the police asserted that they
7 - Motel Seized from Owner Due to Drug Arrests of
Patrons
75
In 2009, Russ Caswell was informed by federal agents that
his motel was being seized because the property had been
used during the commission of drug crimes. The crimes
cited by the federal agents occurred over a 20-year period
and included 15 arrests in total, but all of the arrests were
of patrons of the motel, not of Caswell or any of his
employees. So though Caswell and his staff had actually
helped police in securing many of these arrests and had not
been even remotely implicated in any criminal activity, the
federal agents still sought to seize his property.
5 - Philadelphia Family Has Home Seized Due to Son’s
Drug Use
After their son Yianni was arrested for possession of $40
worth of heroin, Christos and Markella Sourovelis had
their home seized by officials in Philadelphia, who
contended that not only was Yianni in possession of heroin
but that he was also selling it. The sales allegedly took
place in the home or in front of the home, and though the
Sourovelis family had no knowledge of the criminal
activity, civil asset forfeiture laws allowed officials to evict
the Sourovelis family from the home with no prior notice.
Even though the case seemed “ludicrous” to Caswell, he
was still forced to endure three years of litigation in which
the government tried to permanently seize his property,
which he owned outright and was worth in excess of $1
million. He paid $60,000 to fight the suit, and even then,
Caswell had to rely on pro bono work from an attorney to
continue to plead his case. After three years of court
battles, the forfeiture case was ultimately dismissed.
However, as is true of all forfeiture cases, the onus was on
Caswell to prove his innocence rather than on the
government to prove his guilt.
Though the Sourovelis family was ultimately able to return
to their home eight days after they were evicted, the district
attorney’s office used the forfeited house as leverage to
ensure that Yianni, who was 22 at the time, would be
permanently banned from the home to prevent future drug
sales. While the Sourovelises were back in the home
relatively quickly, the process of resolving the case took
several months of court proceedings to determine whether
or not they would be able to permanently remain in their
home.
6 - Traveler Has $11,000 Seized from Luggage Alleged
to Smell of Marijuana
4 - Donald Scott Killed during Drug Raid Aimed at
Seizing 250-Acre Malibu Property
Charles Clarke was waiting to board a flight to Orlando
when police approached him and questioned him about the
contents of his luggage. A police dog had detected the
smell of marijuana in a bag checked by Clarke, and Clarke
admitted that he had smoked marijuana on the way to the
airport. He also asserted to police that there was no
marijuana in the bag itself.
In October 1992, multiple law enforcement agencies
executed a search warrant on the home of Donald Scott, a
somewhat reclusive millionaire who had rejected repeated
overtures made by federal officials to sell his property. The
property, which had archaeological ties to the Chumash,
was believed by federal officials to be the site of a large
marijuana growing operation. During the raid on the home,
Scott’s wife screamed, “Don’t shoot me! Don’t kill me!”
after deputies entered the home, which led Scott, who had
been sleeping, to check on the disturbance while carrying a
revolver.
Knowing that there was nothing illegal in the bag, Clarke
consented to a search of its contents. When the police
asked if Clarke was carrying any cash with him, he
willingly informed officers that he had $11,000 and even
showed them where it was. Since he could not provide any
immediate documentation proving the $11,000 was
lawfully earned, the police seized the money under the
assumption that it was either the profits of narcotics
trafficking or was being carried with the intent of
purchasing narcotics.
When deputies encountered Scott, they demanded that he
lower his gun. As he lowered the handgun, deputies opened
fire and killed him on the spot. The deputies and other law
enforcement officials then began their search of the home,
leaving Scott on the floor unattended. In a recorded phone
call from a neighbor that took place shortly after the
shooting, the sheriff’s deputy who answered the phone told
the neighbor that Scott, whose body was still lying in a
pool of his own blood, was “busy.”
Since Clarke was unaware that police could lawfully seize
what amounted to his life savings without any tangible
evidence of wrongdoing, he became combative when
officers informed him they would be taking his money. In
trying to keep the officers from his cash, he pushed one of
them away, leading police to charge him with assault of a
police officer, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.
During the subsequent search of the property, officials
turned up no evidence of any marijuana on the property.
While the search for marijuana was used as the rationale
for the raid on Scott’s home, it was later discovered that
officials from multiple law enforcement agencies had
discussed seizing the home and had even researched
appraisals of similar properties in the area before executing
the raid. In a report written by Michael Bradbury, the
District Attorney of Ventura County, it was determined
The assault charge was immediately dismissed, but Clarke
had to agree to perform community service to get the
disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges dropped. Of
course, the $11,000 will remain with law enforcement
unless Clarke is able to successfully contest the legality of
the forfeiture.
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that they would face charges for money laundering and for
engaging in organized criminal activity, and the baby
would be turned over to Child Protective Services. The car,
the $50,000, six cell phones, and an iPod were all seized.
that property forfeiture was indeed one of the primary
motivations for the raid.
3 - Couple Forced to Choose between $6,037 and
Custody of Their Children
When Agostini learned that he was being jailed and his
child was being taken away, he asked if he could kiss his
son goodbye, a request that was summarily denied. Russell
was later heard on tape coldly joking about Agostini’s
request, recalling that she said, “No, kiss me.” Agostini
also asked to be permitted to speak with a lawyer, only to
be told such a request could not be granted until he had
spent at least four hours in jail. No criminal charges were
ever filed.
When Ron Henderson was pulled over by police in Tenaha
while traveling from Houston to Linden, Texas, the officer
informed him that he had been pulled over for traveling in
the left lane for over half a mile without passing. During
the stop, the officer claimed to smell marijuana. When
asked if there were any drugs in the car, Henderson and his
girlfriend, Jennifer Boatright, replied that there were not.
The couple then consented to a search of the car, which
yielded a glass pipe and $6,037 in cash, which the couple
said they intended to use to buy a car when they arrived in
Linden. No drugs of any kind were found in the vehicle.
1 - Father and Son Subjected to ‘Profiling for Profit’
Stephen Skinner and Jonathon Brashear were passing
through New Mexico on a road trip to Las Vegas, when
they were pulled over for traveling 8 kilometers (5 mi) over
the speed limit. The New Mexico state trooper who made
the initial stop issued a written warning for the speed
infraction and then asked for permission to search the
vehicle, which was a rental car.
The officers escorted Boatright and Henderson to the local
police station, where they met with the county’s district
attorney, Lynda K. Russell. The DA informed the couple
that they had two options: They could be charged with
money laundering and child endangerment, or they could
simply sign a waiver to turn the $6,037 over to the city.
The DA informed the couple that being charged with
multiple felonies would land Henderson and Boatright in
jail, and Child Protective Services would take custody of
their children as a result, so the couple signed the cash over
to the city rather than lose their children and face felony
charges.
A drug dog was called in, and the trooper dismantled parts
of the vehicle during the course of the search but did not
find any evidence of drugs. The trooper did note, however,
the presence of nearly $17,000 in cash. The trooper
detained Skinner and Brashear for two hours, referring to
Skinner pejoratively by calling the 60-year-old AfricanAmerican man “boy,” before telling him upon his release
that “it wasn’t over yet.”
The situation experienced by Boatright and Henderson is a
common one in Tenaha, as officers take full advantage of
civil forfeiture laws as a means of generating revenue.
After the city marshal fielded constant complaints from
drivers passing through Tenaha who had endured similar
circumstances, he simply complimented the officer on a
job well done, saying, “Be safe, and keep up the good
work.”
Once the pair reached Albuquerque, they were pulled over
again—this time for an improper lane change by the
Albuquerque Police Department. This stop, however, was
supported by the presence of an officer with the
Department of Homeland Security, who promptly seized
the cash and the car, dropping off Skinner and Brashear at
the airport with no money and no means of transportation.
2 - Restaurateur Has One-Year-Old Baby Taken away
and $50,291 Seized
It took two years and the intervention of the ACLU before
the money was returned to Skinner and Brashear, and the
incident was not the first time that Albuquerque officials
faced criticism for abusing forfeiture laws: Bernalillo
County and Darren White, the former sheriff, were
required by a judge to pay in excess of $3 million in
damages to people who had cash seized by sheriff’s
deputies, as it had been determined that this money was
seized with the primary intent of supplying additional
funds for the police budget.
In another incident involving the same Tenaha police
officer and district attorney, restaurant owner Dale
Agostini was pulled over on the same stretch of highway as
Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson for the same reason:
driving in the left lane without passing. After using what
turned out to be an untrained police dog to sniff the
vehicle, officers found over $50,000 in cash but no
evidence of drugs. Agostini explained to the officers that
he had family in the area and he intended to buy restaurant
equipment at a local auction with the cash he was carrying.
At the time, Agostini was traveling with his fiance and
their one-year-old child, along with a cook who worked at
Agostini’s restaurant.
J. Francis Wolfe is a freelance writer and a noted dreamer
of dreams. When he’s not writing, he is most likely waiting
for “just one more wave,” or quietly reading under a
shady tree.
Agostini and the passengers were informed by Lynda K.
Russell, the district attorney who had arrived on the scene,
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Case SCOTUS Didn’t Hear Points to Larger Concern for Gun Owners
By David Codrea
naturalization of legal permanent residents [LPRs]
before the 2016 election,” a move that will
overwhelmingly favor Democrats.
The fallout from two recent Supreme Court
rulings is receiving needed attention, as it’s up to
activist gun owners to keep apprised of looming
threats and opportunities, and to minimize
damage/maximize gains of case outcomes. For one
decision, Gun Owners of America has been at the forefront
of warning against the anti-gun dangers hidden in
Obamacare. On the flip side, some are looking at thesame
sex marriage ruling to prompt states to recognize concealed
carry permits. But as important as those concerns are, they
may ultimately become moot points if a case SCOTUS
declined to hear is an indicator of things to come . . .
That’s especially dangerous, because the Democrat
Party includes “gun control” as a central part of its
national platform:
We can focus on effective enforcement of existing laws,
especially strengthening our background check system, and
we can work together to enact commonsense
improvements—like reinstating the assault weapons ban
and closing the gun show loophole…
“The Supreme Court … refused to accept a case which
sought to allow states to supplement a federal voter
registration form so as to require proof of citizenship to
vote,” Legal Insurrection reported Monday. “This is not
just a battle of forms. It’s a battle for preventing theft of
elections.”
“With 29 electoral votes, it is generally believed that one
must win Florida to win the presidency,” Oltman’s analysis
explains. “If only 10 percent of those who are eligible
become citizens/voters, it could put Florida out of reach for
the Republican candidate. This will affect the 2016 U.S.
Senate race in Florida, also.
“A new study … indicated that 6.4 percent of all noncitizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election,
and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterm,” National Review
reported in November. “Given that 80 percent of noncitizens lean Democratic … Al Franken’s 312-vote win in
the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race [is] one likely tipped
by non-citizen voting.”
“In the 20 states with the most LPRs, there are 14 U.S.
Senate races in 2016: 8 Democrats and 6 Republicans,” he
elaborates. “Marco Rubio (R-FL) certainly looks to be at
risk, and perhaps the Arizona race whether John McCain
(R-AZ) is the incumbent or not.”
Whether Oltman’s numbers play out as feared in 2016 or
are delayed an election cycle or two, all credible polls and
predictors point to an ultimate unchallengeable Democrat
majority, meaning all legislative gains enjoyed over the
past few decades will be erased. Likewise, with anti-gun
Democrats controlling the advice and consent process, the
make-up of the federal courts will soon allow for judicial
gains to be reversed.
While Obamacare is cited as a law that was passed by
adding Franken’s 60th vote to the total, his hostility to gun
rights and his affirmation of anti-gun nominees to
administration and federal court positions were also
enabled by his questionable win. A co-sponsor of the
“Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act,” which
called for up to a 10-year prison sentence for violations,
Franken is rated “F” by both the National Rifle Association
and Gun Owners of America.
As a heretofore alien political view of the relationship of
government with the people gains majority dominance,
legal recourse against infringements, may be lost — with
most gun owners not even recognizing there’s a danger
until it’s too late.
Still, the High Court’s deliberate indifference may have
been based on recognizing that ascertaining proof of
citizenship may itself soon be a moot point if establishment
Democrats and Republicans have their way. That’s because
the Obama administration is paving a “pathway to
citizenship” for foreign nationals illegally residing in the
U.S. Likely Democrat presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton has pledged that as a priority. And GOP leadership
and current flip-flopping frontrunner Jeb Bush are
servicing their Chamber of Commerce patrons to ensure a
continued source of “cheap” (meaning paid for by
everyone else) labor.
Thus far, out of all national gun groups, only Gun Owners
of America has warned its members of these dangers, as
well as gone the additional and critical next step: On March
1, I joined host Mark Walters and guest GOA Executive
Director Larry Pratt on the nationally-syndicated Armed
American Radio program, and in response to my question
(46 minutes into the segment), Pratt pledged GOA will
begin including amnesty for illegal aliens as a factor in
scores it assigns politicians.
David Codrea blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the
Resistance (WarOnGuns.com), and is a field
editor/columnist for GUNS Magazine.
Add to that an overlooked but undeniable danger identified
by activist and journalist Rick Oltman in an exclusive
report the media and political establishments have ignored,
but that merits widespread attention: Expect a “massive
78
Romans Attacking Israel Again
Declares pope 'has soiled his hands' in siding with terrorists
By Joseph Farah
The Vatican’s deal was brokered with Mahmoud Abbas,
the organizer of the Munich Olympics terrorist attack on
Israeli athletes, a man who wrote his doctoral thesis
denying the Holocaust – and still denies the Jewish death
toll to this day.
Pope Francis announced an agreement had been reached
with the barbaric leadership of the Palestine Liberation
Organization recognizing “Palestine,” as defined by pre1967 Israeli borders, as a sovereign state.
Given the checkered history of Rome and the Catholic
Church with the Jewish state, this is a hideous act
rewarding decades of terrorist attacks by the PLO, vicious
anti-Semitism by the Palestinian Authority and antiChristian persecution that has cause
tens
of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to
flee
from the Muslim-dominated PA.
But it gets worse.
The Vatican’s statement calls for the new Palestinian state
to have its capital in Jerusalem – Israel’s capital since the
time of King David. It calls for the Palestinian state, run
by the same people who have overseen the destruction of
Jewish religious and historical sites in its own territories,
to be responsible for holy sites in Jerusalem and
elsewhere.
It’s a barbarous act of political and
historical tone deafness by the pope that puts the
beleaguered Jewish state, the only reliable refuge for
outnumbered, forgotten and abandoned Middle East
Christians, deeper into the cross-hairs of international
busybodies.
This action by the Vatican hardly serves to facilitate
serious negotiations on a peace settlement between Israel
and the Palestinian Authority, an autonomous entity Israel
unilaterally established in its goodwill efforts of neverending talks with the unrepentant terrorist leadership of
the Palestinian Arabs.
Does Francis not understand history?
Some 2,000 years ago, Rome conquered the Jewish state
of Israel and occupied it. It crucified the Jewish Messiah
called Jesus there. It oversaw the looting and destruction
of the Jewish Temple, many of whose artifacts remain in
the Vatican to this day. It slaughtered hundreds of
thousands of Jews – men, woman and children, as they
fled during the siege of Jerusalem. It conducted a
scorched-earth policy against the rest of Israel, killing
Jews, enslaving them and dispersing them throughout the
empire. It renamed the state of Israel “Palestine” so the
world would forget the Jewish state ever existed.
What the Vatican did here was declare its unilateral and
unconditional support of the terrorist Palestine Liberation
Organization founded by Yasser Arafat.
There’s no other way to interpret this except as a onesided hostile action against Israel.
This pope has far exceeded his spiritual authority as leader
of the Roman Catholic Church here and directly entered a
worldly political dispute that is, frankly, none of his
business. Worse yet, he has entered that dispute on the
wrong side – the one refuses to forsake violence and
terrorism and Jew hatred, which is taught like a religion in
every Palestinian school and preached on Palestinian TV
nightly.
That’s the back story of plunder and violence and theft of
identity perpetrated by the Romans of the first century.
And that’s the back story that the Roman Catholic pope
has just inherited as a de facto historical successor to
Pontius Pilate and Nero and Titus.
Pope Francis has soiled his hands and stained his
reputation with the signing of this misbegotten document.
Palestine has never been a nation-state in the history of the
world. It was an invention of the Romans, a fanciful
allusion to the land of the Philistines – long-before extinct
by the time of Rome’s genocide against the Jews.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a
nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News
Service.. He is the author or co-author of 13 books,
including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," and his
classic, "Taking America Back," now in its third edition
and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the
legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market
dailies.
Imagine with that historical backdrop, a Roman pope who
speaks of love, peace and rainbows has become one of the
first leaders in the modern world to recognize terrorist
“Palestine” as a lawful, sovereign state at the expense,
once again, of the Jews.
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Europe's Real Existential Crisis
Momentum is now toward separation and dissolution
By Pat Buchanan
They have another concern in common. Their
continent is being invaded. From the failed states of
the sub-Sahara to the war-torn nations of the Mahgreb
and Middle East, the Third World is coming to
occupy the Mother Continent.
However the Greek crisis ends, whether with Athens
leaving the eurozone or submitting and accepting
austerity at the dictates of its creditors, the European
Union appears headed for an existential crisis.
Greece borrowed and spent beyond its means, like New
York City in the ’70s, and Detroit, Illinois and Puerto Rico
today. But the crisis of Europe is about more than budget
deficits and bad debts.
On July 2, the New York Times had several stories on the
Greek crisis, but several also on Europe’s immigration
crisis.
All the momentum toward One Europe – the dream of the
generation of Jean Monnet that drove Europeans toward
ever-deeper union – seems to have dissipated. The
momentum is now toward separation and dissolution.
Some 8,000 trucks were stranded at Calais and Dover, the
opposite ends of the Channel Tunnel, as migrants piled
onto the vehicles crossing into England. The threatened
drivers could do nothing to prevent it.
The Greek crisis exposed one fault line in the union, the
desire of the Mediterranean nations to build welfare states
that their economies could not sustain without huge
borrowing abroad.
“Migrants are streaming into Europe from North Africa
and the turbulent Middle East,” said the Times. “The
European Union has been trying to force countries to
share the burden. But the bloc has so far failed to agree on
how to do so. In Britain, the issue is particularly charged,
and euroskeptic politicians are pushing for the country to
leave the union, with immigration a chief complaint.”
Paying these debts is going to force ever-greater austerity
on those nations. Eventually, their peoples may choose, as
debtors do, to walk away, rather than pay.
Another headline on the same page read, “Russia Sees an
Especially Potent Threat in Its Converts to Islam.” The
story related the fears of a jihadist uprising within her
borders as ethnic Russians convert to militant Islam and
join the 15-20 million Muslims inside Russia already, and
the 2 million in Moscow alone.
But not only economics imperils the EU. There is the call
of tribe and nation that has often before torn the Old
Continent apart.
The U.K. Independence Party and National Front in
France, both of which want out of the EU, have millions
of supporters, and emulators across Europe. These parties
appeal to national histories, heroes and cultures, while
acolytes of the EU and eurozone sound like editorials in
the Financial Times. Who would fix bayonets for Brussels
and the European Commission?
Russia and Europe have more in common than they
realize – the same existential threat.
Another story in the Times, “Europe to Fight Islamic
Radicals on Social Media,” reported on jihadist
recruitment inside Europe.
NATO is a shell of what it once was. It is today a virtual
fraternity of freeloaders. With exceptions, like the Poles,
Estonians and Turks, European nations have all slashed
their defense budgets to beneath 2 percent of GDP. Angela
Merkel is described as the Iron Chancellor for facing
down Greece’s Alexis Tsipras, but she seems more like
Willy Brandt when talking to Vladimir Putin.
A leader of Europol, said the Times, “has estimated that
up to 5,000 people from Western Europe have traveled to
Syria and Iraq, many to join the Islamic State. British
officials believe that at least half of the 500 or so Britons
who have done so have already returned home and
represent potential threats. …”
Europe has survived depression and the worst wars in
modern history, though her wounds are terrible and
lasting. But can Europe, with native-born populations that
are aging, shrinking, and dying, survive a never-ending
invasion of Third World peoples that Europe has never
assimilated before? Especially when millions of these
people profess a militant faith that has historically been
alien and hostile to Europe?
A century ago, after Lloyd George and Clemenceau did
their map work in Paris, one could walk from Baghdad to
Cairo, turn south, and walk 5,000 miles to Cape Town,
without leaving British territory.
Today, Britain and France, the imperial powers of SykesPicot, would prefer to have the Americans police the
Middle East. Our allies have terrible memories of
European wars that produced no comparable gains, and
none of them, understandably, wants to fight again.
The birth dearth in Europe has endured for 40 years. There
is no end in sight to the Third World invasion, as the lands
80
of the Middle East and sub-Sahara descend ever more
deeply into tribal, sectarian and civil war, and send new
millions of refugees streaming toward the Mediterranean
coast.
Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican
presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate
in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American
Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the
White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV
shows, and is the author of 10 books. His latest book
is "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose
From Defeat to Create the New Majority."
Who or what will stop them? As Gen. Petraeus said on
that road to Baghdad: “Tell me how this ends.”
Virginia Flaggers
Sticks and Stones… And Why They Really Hate the Confederate Battle Flag
By Susan Hathaway
In 1863, Lincoln was losing an unpopular war and needed
a "Cause" to rally his citizens, and convince Congress to
continue funding his invasion of the Southern States. He
found one in the issue of slavery.
Only when we find the courage and fortitude of our
ancestors, and refuse to let these false accusations and
fabricated labels deter us from our duty, will we
effectively take back our heritage.
The same man who, just two years earlier, supported an
amendment that would have made slavery permanently
legal if the Southern States would simply agree to stay in
the Union, suddenly changed course and issued a
proclamation that effectively freed slaves in territories
over which he had no control, and left them enslaved in
the locations where he actually had authority to free them.
My Great- Great Grandfathers believed it was a Cause
worth dying for. The least I can do to honor their memory
and defend their good name, is stand up to name calling
and derision.
A propaganda machine was set in motion, the effects of
which were magnified with Yankee victory and
subsequent subjugation, and continue to this day.
Even so, and in spite of their best efforts, there a still a
great number of folks who know the truth and are not
afraid to speak out. Losing its effectiveness over time, the
"it's all about slavery" mantra needed updating.
It didn't take long for the enemy to find that new
smokescreen... "racism". The fear of having that label
applied was enough to make even some in our own
heritage organizations cower, capitulate, and compromise
to the point that the Confederate battle flag quickly
became an endangered species, even at our own events.
These attacks have been deliberate and largely successful
as a means to an end...one which has absolutely nothing to
do with the American institution of slavery or "racism".
"We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our
God we will set up our banners..." Psalm 20:5
The Confederate Battle Flag is hated today for the same
reason it was hated in 1861...because it is a universal
symbol of resistance to tyranny and defiance of an
overreaching and oppressive federal government.
81
Free
Florida
First
For a Free, Independent, Godly, Prosperous
and Traditionally Southern Florida
Next Meeting: Monday, July 20th at 7:30pm
Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 20 at 7:30pm at
the church meeting house, circle the date on your calendar today,
and plan to be with us.
Free Florida First is an independent organization advocating the
secession of Florida from the United States and its subsequent
independence.
If you agree, we invite you to join the Southern resistance.
Visit us on the web at:
www.freefloridafirst.org
Just for Your Consideration is compiled by Pastor Greg Wilson of Landmark Baptist
Church, Archer, Florida. The articles contained within do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Pastor Wilson or of Landmark Baptist Church.
Much of what you will find is not available via the so-called “main stream media.”
The articles are presented just for your consideration, education and edification.
For more information about our church, please visit our web site at:
www.libcfl.com
The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee,
and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and
give thee peace.
-- Numbers 6:24-26
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