Saturday, March 30, 2013

Let Them Be Heard Again-I

The most important part of any building is the foundation.  It must be strong, firm, and capable of lasting a long time.  When the foundation crumbles and or is willingly destroyed, the building obviously collapses into a heap of rubble, dust, and carnage.  The greater the building, the mightier the destruction.

This analogy is true for nations, too.  There is a reason why Rome became a long-lasting republic and empire and the Girgashites didn’t.  And much of that is to be found in the foundations Rome was built upon.  The Romans were far from perfect, of course, and could be brutally cruel and barbaric.  But they understood character and moral worth, the value of family, law, and tradition, and they survived 1,000 years because of it.

America is changing, and I would argue, given history, headed for either utter ruin, or worldly irrelevancy, like modern England.  Remember, 100 years ago, it was the British Empire that ruled the globe.  The Germans had a lot to do with destroying that, but so did the quality and character of the British people.  Read the great British novels of the late 19th century—20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, the Sherlock Holmes novels, etc.—and you see a completely different people than today.  You see a religious people, a nation with character, strength, duty, moral values, and earthly perception—no egalitarian nonsense.  Today England has sacrificed itself on the altar of political correctness, and it is a bankrupt country in all the ways that matter.  And, as I noted, largely irrelevant in world affairs.  Who fears the British today?

The United States was not founded by perfect men, of course; there are no such creatures.  But they were, by far, the most perceptive and perspicacious men who ever established a country.  They founded America on Christian principles—and they made no bones about it.  Christianity was the substance upon which America was established.  And Christianity is, of course, the mortal enemy of today’s “progressive,” the thing he hates with the greatest vilification, the one element of society he wants to destroy more than anything else.
 
And he is succeeding, right now, almost beyond his wildest dreams.

And with it, he is destroying America, because he is abolishing that upon which the country was founded.  Destroy the foundation…and the building disintegrates.

Nobody will listen because it is too late, but we need to hear—again—the men who founded the United States.  So I propose to write, over the coming weeks, a series of articles quoting the great, far-sighted, historically-brilliant architects of the United States.  Oh, yes, they knew history, they knew it well.  And they built the greatest national structure in the totality of mankind’s existence.  The only thing they couldn’t do—try though they did—was protect it from wicked, power-hungry human beings.  Abraham Lincoln destroyed the governmental foundation—and today’s liberals are using what Lincoln put in place to destroy the moral one.  No nation can survive that.

History doesn’t work fast—or I perhaps should say, God moves at His own pace.  It was right after the fall of man that He announced a Savior would come (Genesis 3:15); it was 1,000s of years later before He sent Him (Galatians 4:4).  Isaiah predicted the destruction of Babylon almost 200 years in advance of the event (Isaiah 13).  Hosea uttered Israel’s downfall a full generation before it happened (Hosea 1).  We cannot rush the Almighty, for His purposes are as far above ours as heaven is above the earth (Isaiah 55:8-9).  All we can be assured of is that He will not acquit the wicked (Nahum 1:3).  But He will do it in His own time.

America’s founders pointed the way.  We will see what they said.  And the wise will discern why America is in the forlorn condition she now finds herself.  The foolish will discern nothing.

Tea Party Republican, Right?

Here's a quote for you.  See if you can guess who said it: 

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest [the republic] become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Who said it?  Sarah Palin, right?  Nope.  Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter?  Uh-uh.  Ted Cruz?  Rand Paul?  Ron Paul?  Wrong again.  Mark Lewis????  Closer, but only because of the name....

No, none of those right-wing nutcases enunciated (or wrote) those words.  They were indeed spoken before the Senate, though.  However, it was the Roman Senate, in 55 B.C.  By Marcus Tullius Cicero. 

28 years before the fall of the Roman Republic. 

More from Cicero soon on why the Roman Republic fell.  And how America, recklessly, foolishly, sadly--stupidly--is trotting right along behind.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

They Really Can't Find Anything to Cut?

Quite frankly, it is very, very difficult not to have to strong feelings of animosity and loathing towards Barack Obama and the Democrats especially, along with the Democrats’ liberal allies in the media, and to a lesser degree, Republicans in Congress. The recent…discussion?...over the sequester indicates the utter contempt Obama has for the American people and their intelligence (to be honest, some of his contempt is, I suppose, justified, because the people re-elected the guy). To say that the sequester would bring automatic cuts that would harm the people, that would take away necessary services, that would create pain and hardship is cynical to the "nth" degree. Well, "cynical" is a nice word. It’s a downright lie, is what it is, and how can anybody have respect for liars?

Here is a small list—a very small list—of things Congress has wasted American tax dollars on in recent years. You tell me these things are "essential"??  This can’t be cut without doing permanent, irreparable damage to the United States of America?   Read and weep, and in some cases, laugh, and try to rein in your temper:

--$60,000 for Belgian endive research for the University of Massachusetts;
--$107,000 to study the sex life of Japanese quail;
--$4.3 million for a privately owned museum in Johnstown, PA;
--$3.1 million to convert a ferry boat into a crab restaurant in Baltimore;
--$11 million for a private pleasure boat harbor in Cleveland;
--$150,000 to study the Hatfield-McCoy feud;
--$320,000 to purchase President McKinley’s mother-in-law’s home;
--$84,000 to find out why people fall in love;
--$1 million to study why people don’t ride bikes to work;
--$19 million to examine gas emissions from cow flatulence;
--$144,000 to see if pigeons follow human economic laws….

I’m not making this up, folks. Your tax dollars at work. Here are some more:

--$219,000 to teach college students how to watch television;
--$500,000 to build a replica of the Great Pyramid of Egypt in Indiana;
--$2 million to construct an ancient Hawaiian canoe;
--$350,000 to renovate the House Beauty Salon;
--$20 million for a demonstration project to build wooden bridges;
--$6 million to upgrade the two-block long Senate subway;
--$160,000 to study if you can hex an opponent by drawing an "X" on his chest;
--$800,000 for a restroom on Mt. McKinley;
--$100,000 to study how to avoid falling spacecraft;
--$16,000 to study the operation of the komungo, a Korean stringed instrument;
--$6,000 for a document on Worcestershire sauce;
--$1 million to preserve a Trenton, New Jersey, sewer as a historic monument;
--$10,000 to study the effect of naval communications on a bull’s potency;

And here is one of my favorites: $57,000 spent by the Executive Branch for gold-embossed playing cards on Air Force Two…$57,000 of taxpayer money for a deck of cards for the Vice-President!! (To be fair, I believe this was spent under a Republican administration.)

Every bit of that, of course, can be found in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution, the powers given to Congress…….(I’m being sarcastic, just in case there are Obama voters reading this….)

19 million dollars to study cow farts…….but there is no place to cut the budget.

In his own day, Thomas Jefferson complained of federal politicians who seemed "at a loss for objects whereon to throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury." It obviously hasn’t gotten any better in 200 years, even worse, because much of this money is borrowed and will have to be paid back—or defaulted on—by the next generation of American taxpayers.

Loathing? Obama and his liberal, big government, anti-god allies really, really test my Christianity. My brother and wife tell me I should just ignore them because I can’t do anything about it, and they are right. It’s not worth losing my soul over.

But, I’m a teacher and an educator, so I guess my nature is to do something, regardless of how futile.

To end this, here is another great quote from Thomas Sowell, in his most recent article, "Budget Politics":

"Back in my teaching days…one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do?

The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place."

To Obama, the purpose of "sequestration" was not to cut the government budget and help the American people, but to create panic and expand government spending. As Sowell says later in the article, "Democrats prefer to get the political benefits from handing out goodies, while Republicans can be blamed for not subsequently raising enough taxes to pay for the Democrats' spending spree."   He is exactly right.

And that is why "loathing" is perhaps too gentle a word…

 

Monday, March 4, 2013

Headlines....

School started last week, so I'm busy again doing something other than studying Chinese.  I thought I would check in with a couple of headlines that noted my attention today:

"Kerry Hands Out $250 Million to Egypt"

With all the recent talk of the sequester, and the doomsday scenarios that Obama and the Democrats were throwing out, one would think the United States government wouldn't have enough money left to feed a baby.

But we've got enough left to give Egypt $250 million.

How can anybody, who pays the least bit of attention to what is going on in Washington, D.C., have an ounce of respect for any politician there?  I do think the Republicans--at least some of them--would like to rein in spending some.  The Democrats have absolutely no desire to do anything but build government as big as they possible can, to make as many people as possible dependent on government, because that's the way they get votes. 

So much for freedom in America.  I don't want to cry a river here, but I do feel the sadness perhaps more acutely than many others because I'm an historian, well-versed in what the men who founded America intended for it to be.  Their vision was brilliant, and I really need to get it down on this blog so that more people can know it, because I see very, very few people who have even the minutest understanding of what they intended.  These Chinese students are spellbound when I explain it to them.  They've never heard anything like it.  And, well, for that matter, most Americans now haven't, either.

"Farrakhan:  White People Fear Becoming Minority"

I didn't bother reading the article so I don't know what Farrakhan's rationale for saying that was (and don't care).  My thought immediately was, Why? Why should white people fear becoming a minority, unless the non-white majority intends to use their majority numbers to kill off the whites in a brutal race war?  Is there something whites have to fear from non-whites?

Well, yes, probably.

But my fear, for when whites become a minority, is for the country.  All you have to do is look at the way Africa, Mexico, Latin and South America are governed and you have a pretty good idea of how America will be governed, too.  Not to mention Detroit, Newark, Washington, D.C. and every other city in America where black liberals have held the power in the last generation.  Given the demographics and my age, I'll probably be dead before whites are a minority.  If not, I'll just stay in China.  I'm a minority here, of course, but if you whine about it, you get shot.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Women in Combat

I'm being lazy, for the most part, during our current semester break, at least as far as writing is concerned, but I'm still reading my favorites.  And I have another great quote from Walter Williams, in his most recent article, "Women in Combat."  The article opens with the following words:

"A senior Defense Department official said that the ban on women in combat should be lifted because the military's goal is 'to provide a level, gender-neutral playing field.'  I'd like to think the goal of the military should be to have the toughest, meanest fighting force possible."

Read the rest of Dr. Williams' article and then I will give you the rest of your life to try to convince me that there is anybody in government with enough brains to fill a thimble.  And these are people that more and more Americans want to give more and more control over their lives.  THIS is why America will not survive.

(http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/13/WomenInCombat.htm)

Friday, January 18, 2013

Customs, Traditions, and Moral Values

From Dr. Walter Williams most recent article, "Are Guns the Problem?" (Jan. 16, 2013): 

"Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society.  These behavioral norms--transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings--represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works.  The importance of customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching.  Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society.  At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society.  The more uncivilized we become the more laws that are needed to regulate behavior."

Of course, I have been saying that for years, and writing exactly that on this blog since I started it.  I provide Dr. Williams' quote just so readers will know that I am not the only one who is saying it.

What Williams describes is the fundamental core of "conservatism"--that there are certain values, customs, traditions, etc. that have, over time, proven essential in promoting and sustaining a civilized society.  I argue, of course, that those values, customs, traditions--moral laws--come from God.  When a people reject them, there is bedlam in that country, as we see happening in the United States today.  Modern liberalism, based upon the mythical, unscientific Darwinian theory, rejects that there are any absolute values or morals, and asserts that everything is "evolving", which means morality evolves, too, and will be decided by man, not God.  Thus, the fundamental, foundation disagreement between modern conservatism and liberalism is over the existence of the Christian God; if He does exist, then obviously, liberalism is, in its very essence, wrong and destructive.  If He does not exist, then there are indeed no absolute values, and society can be ruled by popular will--or, more often, by tyrants (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, et al)--not eternal, moral law, or even wise, historical traditions.  To the liberal, everything is subject to change because that is the very "law" (Darwinism) of existence.  But, given this crucial, fundamental difference--a belief in God--it is profoundly manifest why liberalism hates God and Christianity, and must do everything it can to destroy traditional religious belief in America.  Decent, moral people, in history, have nearly always lost such a war, because they have God-given, or conscientious, restraints on their behavior; the wicked can be as ruthless as necessary, because they have no moral values.  It is why Ho Chi Minh defeated Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam; it is why Mao Zedong, one of the most consciousless, brutal, pitiless human beings to ever walk the face of the earth, defeated Chiang Kai-Shek in the Chinese civil war in the 1940s.  Mao and Ho didn't care how many people they killed; Johnson and Chiang had at least some scruples.  And, as of 2013, in the American godless left, scruples are conspicuously absent; the decent right, by philosophy, must restrict itself.  It's not a good omen for the near future.

To see just a small sampling of the effects of liberalism in American society, I encourage you to read the remainder of Dr. Williams' article:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/13/AreGunsTheProblem.htm

His article, "A Hundred Percent of Nothing," is also a grand expose' of liberal policies as they have affected a once great American city, Detroit, Michigan:  http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/12/AHundredPercentOfNothing.htm

Believe me, the information provided by Dr. Williams is only a small sampling of the degeneration of American society under liberalism.  It's plain to see, but you have to dig a little bit to get statistics like those Dr. Williams presents, because the "mainstream" American media is, full throttle, in complicity with the liberal agenda.  The media are no longer journalists reporting the news; they are co-conspirators, left-wing ideologues, deliberately, forcefully, hatefully, and persistently pushing the anti-Christian liberal Democratic agenda.  And, with the help of the government-run education system, they are succeeding in indoctrinating vast numbers of people--apparently now, a majority.  Even the strongest rock can be worn down, in time, by a consistent dripping of water.  In this case, it hasn't been a drip, it's been a pounding.  And too few Americans have the intelligence, and moral integrity, to resist it and to continue honoring their Creator.  Even most Republicans now are totally gutless.

As the Bible and history both show, most humans will try to find excuses for sin; wickedness has always existed.  What liberalism has done, over the last 50 years in America, is make it easier for Americans to find those excuses--and, worse, to rationalize them.  At least before the modern left took over the culture in the United States, people knew what sin was, knew it was evil and destructive, often hid when they did it, and at least had the common sense, intelligence, and decency to know you don't exalt it (Bill Clinton), flaunt it (Barney Frank), and make it public policy (abortion and "gay" marriage) and the foundation of your culture (Hollywood).  But we live in a different world now, and only the wicked revel in it and think it is a better one.

The answer...to Detroit...is more liberalism?  More "progressivism"?  Less God and Christianity?  Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all in America is that truth is hated so vitriolically by the left that they would rather destroy the lives of countless millions of people than accept the truth that will make all men free. 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

It's Not About Guns, It's About Control

Quotes can be tedious, so I don't want to overdo it here, but, just for reference, here are some "fer" and "agin" regarding private ownership of guns:

"The rifle and pistol are equally indispensable.  The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference, they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."--George Washington

"The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms.  If they did, they people would surely shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did."--James Madison

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."--Thomas Jefferson (emphasis added.  Were these guys brilliant, or what?)

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth."--George Washington (Do you think liberals don't know this?)

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?  Let them take arms."--Thomas Jefferson

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed...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"--Alexander Hamilton.  (Who do you reckon he meant by "the representatives of the people"?)

Of course, there are people who don't agree with the above sentiments....

"Guns, for what?"--Fidel Castro

"We don't let them have ideas.  Why would we let them have guns?"--Joseph Stalin

"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."--Adolf Hitler

"Control of guns was watertight." (This is speaking of Mao Zedong's China in the early 1940s, Mao:  The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, p. 272.  Especially in the countryside, because all arms had been confiscated, wolves and leopards roamed freely, including into people's yards.  Mao told the people to bring their precious livestock directly into their homes to protect them from predators.  The resultant filth and lack of hygiene led to many diseases and deaths.  Mao was ingenious is his ways of killing people.)

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles ... that we are unable to think about reality."--Bill Clinton

"Gun registration is not enough."--Janet Reno

"Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority. Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew's possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation ... Whoever willfully or negligently violates the provisions ... will be punished with imprisonment and a fine."--Nazi law, 1938

Never forget, folks, this debate in America over "gun control" is not about guns, it is forever, and only, about control.  Please...please...look at the history of the left since the French Revolution.  Their aim is totalitarian control!  It is no different--NO DIFFERENT!!--in the American left!  This is the crucial issue that absolutely must be understood, but so few people do.  If we think Barack Obama is different from Joseph Stalin just because Obama is an "American", then we are fools of the highest order.  It has nothing to do with country, and everything to do with ideology.  When it comes time to put guns to the back of people's necks, they don't want the people shooting back.

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."--Adolf Hitler

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."--Benjamin Franklin