Obama Youth

Obama’s plan leaked for ‘civilian security force’

Nation of Sheep: Andrew Napolitano

Nation of Sheep

Republicans Had to Lose

From Why Republicans Had to Lose Before Conservatives Could Win by Jack Hunter

Conservatives shouldn’t be upset that Obama won. They should rejoice. The Republican Party needed to get its ass kicked before anything might improve. If Sarah Palin was ever worth anything to the Right, she undoubtedly would have been damaged goods after four years of McCain. In getting away from McCain, perhaps she can salvage what made her politically attractive in the first place. Only time will tell and now conservatives have it.

Throughout this election, arguing over whether Barack Obama or John McCain was better for America’s future was like arguing whether the Backstreet Boys or ‘N Sync would be better for the future of rock ‘n’ roll. Eventually fans of both groups grew up, realized they sucked, and made more substantive selections.

It’s time for conservatives to do the same.

One of the best commentaries I’ve seen on the delection so far. This guy from Charleston, SC, who’s roughly the same age as me, gets it.

Since I started voting in 1992, I’ve found the political world a fascinating place full of both hope and fear, silliness and sincerity. It’s pretty much like everyday life, but without the media.

One thing’s for sure, this is the most apathetic I’ve ever been about an election. Ironically, it’s the most sincere I’ve been in 16 years regarding the direction our beloved society is going. I guess I’m losing hope in the corrupt political system that is dubbed the United States of America.

I’ve toyed with descriptions for my political philosophy, and there is no accurate description. The best I’ve seen comes from a list: libertarian, paleolibertarian, conservative, paleoconservative, capitalist, anarcho-capitalist, and the list grows. I am all of the above and then some.

I’m an individual as God created me. (I’m not a Calvinist, mind you, but I believe that God has a designed me and every other individual for a purpose.)

Now I have to wonder what’ll happen in the next four years under the Obama regime. Honestly, I’m not sure other than the fact that we can expect business as usual: more abortions, more violence, more war, more moral decline, more economic decline, and maybe even another terror attack or two just to keep us in line.

I used to put my hope in Constitutional Republicanism. I woke up from that dream a long time ago. I trust in God, my family, and my own potential to make a better world around me. That’s really about it.

I hope the best for America, and I hope my pessimism is proven wrong.

“Catholic” Priest Denies Divinity of Christ

Jesus Not God: Bathurst Priest:

“No human being can ever be God, and Jesus was a human being. It is as simple as that,” Bathurst priest Fr Peter Dresser argues in a booklet on sale in several Catholic parishes, including South Brisbane’s St Mary’s.

“This whole matter regarding Jesus being God … not only does violence to my own intelligence, but must be a sticking point for millions of people trying to make some kind of sense of the Christian religion … No human being can ever be God, and Jesus was a human being. It is as simple as that,” Fr Dresser of Coonamble argues, a report in The Australian says.

Okay, this is the sort of thing anyone with a miniscule knowledge of Church history can expect now and then. Some priest or religious leader will submit to one of the various modernist theories regarding the nature of Christ. But it’s nothing new under the sun.

In this case, Fr Robbie hit the nail on the head:

“What a breathtaking know all, to claim he knows the mind of Christ contrary to scripture and tradition. His words rob Christianity entirely of its meaning and purpose. . . . The Council of Nicaea settled the question that Christ was God in 325, so he is 1,700 years out of date. The rest is a regurgitation of every discredited 19th century liberal Protestant German cliche in the book.”

I’m no expert, but isn’t the belief in the Holy Trinity the mainstay of the Catholic faith? I mean why bother even being a priest to begin with? Unless, of course, there’s some sort of agenda he wishes to impose on the world.

While there may be some room in the Catholic Church for disagreements on a few issues, I’m pretty certain that the Word Made Flesh is not one of them.

Neal Boortz: “Voting your principles is never throwing your vote away”

Audio of Neal Boortz addressing a Bob Barr supporter:

Of every poll I’ve seen, McCain has pretty much zero chance of winning this election. Republicans and Neocons will try to blame this or that, but they will not face up to the reality that the GOP’s neglect of Reaganite era economic principles is the reason they are going to lose all branches of federal government.

If you want to change things on that level, I would look to 2010 and 2012.

Unfortunately for all of us, 2008 is going to the greater of two evils.

Obama’s Buffet Contributed Millions to Pro-Abortion Groups

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) – During the third and final presidential debate last week, Barack Obama mentioned investment guru Warren Buffet as a financial advisor. Obama called Buffet a “my friend and supporter,” but failed to mention Buffet has given millions of dollars to pro-abortion groups. [continue reading]

A History Lesson and Diplomacy

From Smithsonian Magazine:

Inside Iran’s Fury

by Stephen Kinser

No American who was alive and alert in the early 1980s will ever forget the Iran hostage crisis. Militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, captured American diplomats and staff and held 52 of them captive for 444 days. In the United States, the television news program “Nightline” emerged to give nightly updates on the crisis, with anchorman Ted Koppel beginning each report by announcing that it was now “Day 53″ or “Day 318″ of the crisis. For Americans, still recovering from defeat in Vietnam, the hostage crisis was a searing ordeal. It stunned the nation and undermined Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Many Americans see it as the pivotal episode in the history of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Iranians, however, have a very different view.

Bruce Laingen, a career diplomat who was chief of the U.S. embassy staff, was the highest-ranking hostage. One day, after Laingen had spent more than a year as a hostage, one of his captors visited him in his solitary cell. Laingen exploded in rage, shouting at his jailer that this hostage-taking was immoral, illegal and “totally wrong.” The jailer waited for him to finish, then replied without sympathy.

“You have nothing to complain about,” he told Laingen. “The United States took our whole country hostage in 1953.”

Few Americans remembered that Iran had descended into dictatorship after the United States overthrew the most democratic government it had ever known. “Mr. President, do you think it was proper for the United States to restore the shah to the throne in 1953 against the popular will within Iran?” a reporter asked President Carter at a news conference during the hostage crisis. “That’s ancient history,” Carter replied.

Not for Iranians. “In the popular mind, the hostage crisis was seen as justified by what had happened in 1953,” says Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts. “People saw it as an act of national assertiveness, of Iran standing up and taking charge of its own destiny. The humiliation of 1953 was exorcised by the taking of American hostages in 1979.”

This chasm of perception reflects the enormous gap in the way Americans and Iranians viewed—and continue to view—one another. It will be hard for them to reconcile their differences unless they begin seeing the world through each other’s eyes. [full article]

When Congressman Ron Paul brought up 1953 and its consequent repercussions to Bill O’Reilly more than a year ago, Mr. O’Reilly responded, “We don’t need the history lesson.”

After several interruptions, Paul responded, “You have to understand the history. If you don’t understand the history . . .”

In typical O’Reilly style, he interrupted again and said, “But we don’t have time to do the history lesson tonight.”

I can’t help but fear that this is the attitude of too many Americans today. So many don’t care to understand the how’s and why’s of a current situation. They prefer to act on compulsion and emotions rather than intellect, knowledge and of course, understanding.

One candidate seeking the presidency this election, Bob Barr, seems to be the only one with this understanding:

“Talking does not mean sacrificing U.S. interests. Rather, talking is a means to further U.S. interests,” Barr explains. . . .

“Imagine if the U.S. had not had any contact with Moscow during the Cold War,” says Barr. “The opportunity to resolve problems with the Soviet Union, and prevent them from turning into crises, would have been greatly diminished, if not lost entirely. And the likelihood of ultimately negotiating a peaceful end to the Cold War would have been very remote,” Barr explains.

“The most obvious reason to engage Iran is that the other options, especially military action, are so poor,” Barr warns. “Military action would destabilize the entire Persian Gulf and beyond. American troops in Iraq likely would come under intense assault. And America’s reputation throughout the world would suffer.”

“To take such a step without even attempting a diplomatic resolution would be foolhardy in the extreme,” says Barr. “There is no guarantee of success, of course, but in 2003, Iran indicated its willingness to deal. The Bush administration refused to even entertain Tehran’s offer. The situation is even more critical now, five years later. We should wait no longer to engage Tehran.” [full article]

This is the kind of reasoning ability one should expect from a head of state.

You Owe $3,278 to Wall Street

Excerpted from Andrew Davis’ entry on the LP Blog:

Dear American Taxpayer,

Like most Americans, I’m sure you were glued to the news about the “financial crisis” and the government’s “fix” for the problem.  You probably heard that the government was going to come in and save the mortgage industry by bailing out failing corporations.  And, you probably heard both Barack Obama and John McCain say that this bailout was necessary, and good for the economy.

What you probably didn’t hear was that it was going to cost up to $1 trillion dollars, and you were responsible for this money. . . .

This is how much the government is going to cost you (roughly $3,278 for every man, woman and child in the United States). . . .

“No one voted to pour taxpayer funds into Wall Street,” says Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee, “and no one voted for the government to take over an insurance company.  If the Federal Reserve can spend as much money as it desires to bail out any company that it desires, is there anything that it cannot do with taxpayer funds?” . . . [full post]

According to Rasmussen Reports:

Only seven percent (7%) of voters think the federal government should use taxpayer funds to keep a large financial institution solvent. Sixty-five percent (65%) say let the company file for bankruptcy.

In an America where 43% of consumers spend more than they earn, the average household carries about $8,000 in credit card debt, and collectively already owe $2 trillion what’s another trillion? Right?

What are we to make of all this? Should we look to the government to solve the problems it created? Will this election matter?

I’m forced to believe it will not. The monopolistic perpetual bureaucracy will not change with a new figurehead on the throne. Lew Rockwell characterizes the current state this way:

The people making the decisions and conducting policy were not elected by anyone. They report to no one. They are the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the Fed, and each represents certain private sector interests among the financial elite. They conduct their policies based on their private assessment of what is good for those they represent, and they do it in cooperation with the permanently entrenched bureaucracy and financial managers who rule the country.

Both of the major parties in the U.S. support the perpetuity of this doomed to fail system.

Hope?

While I’ll vote this election based on my principles, I have absolutely zero faith in the system and no hope in government. It’s a waste of energy and resources to do so. Instead my hope is in God and those Americans who do the same. It’s my hope that We the People will cast off these bonds and through voluntary cooperation work to build a brighter tomorrow.

Can this happen? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it’s better than the dark times that would lie ahead, as is evident from history, relying on a corrupt and broken governmental system to heal itself of its self inflicted wounds.

He who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

- Ecclesiastes 9:4.

21st Century Fascism?

We throw around the term fascism all the time usually referring to what we may perceive as any authoritarian practices. The Merriam-Websters definition is thus:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

The most prominent example of fascism is that of Mussolini’s Italian regime in the middle part of the 20th Century. Thomas J. DiLorenzo posted on the LRC Blog this quote from Gaetano Salvemini’s Under the Axe of Fascism (1936), p. 380.:

“The Italian Charter of Labour says that private enterprise is responsible to the state . . . [but] it is the state, i.e., the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. . . . Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.”

How fitting is this assessment of Fascist Italy to the current economic and political situation in 21st Century America?

Observations and Lamentations

More Observations and Lamentations on the Way We Are Now

Clyde N. Wilson

Are you enjoying your New American Century?

You may as well enjoy it.  It is all you are getting instead of your “peace dividend.”

Justice Ginsberg has recently invoked the laws of some foreign states in justification of her Supreme Court decisions.  The Founding Fathers and subsequent generations would have found this impeachable and treasonous.  We are supposed to be governed by a Constitution approved by the people—of the United States.

The same can be said of Georgie Bush’s obeisance to a foreign government in trying to prevent a State’s execution of a Mexican murderer. [continue reading]