Bye-Bye Miss American Pie

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"What?!?!"

"Oh, screw that. Put up a wall, and send us only your very best, the ones who can really help turn a buck for us. You keep the wretched refuse on your teeming shore, we'll skim the cream off the top."

America... I don't know you anymore.... 

Captain Hook Goes Fishing

Was Andrew Breitbart set up to look like a racist? The evidence is building that this is EXACTLY what happened. Consider the timeline laid out by Noel Sheppard (Newsbusters) and others: 

1.  Breitbart receives word of the video several months ago, but sits on it because he can't verify the source. 
2.  Nancy Pelosi deliberately walks black Congressmen through a crowd of Tea Partiers trying to get them to say "Nigger." 
3.  As dozens of videos show, no one says the word, but several people, including Congressmen, accuse the Tea Partiers of having used that word anyway. When the video evidence comes forward, along with eye witnesses swearing that the word was never used, the Congressman back off their accusations, but the MSM continues to lay the claim as if it had been substantiated. 
4.  Breitbart, looking for some way to show the hypocrisy, remembers the video and contacts the source for the video. After receiving and viewing it, he decides there is enough there to do a compare-contrast. He throws up the video with no commentary. He does NOT call for anyone's resignation - in typical Breitbart fashion, he lets the video speak for itself. 
5.  The NAACP, which has the full video in its possession, is the first to condemn Sherrod. 
6.  The White House sends a henchman down to make sure she resigns.
7.  Sherrod resigns BEFORE ANYONE calls for her resignation (didn't SHE know what was on the video either?). 
8.  Fox and its commentators begin calling for a resignation, not knowing it has already happened.
9.  Only after Fox and commentators are on public record calling for the resignation, does the NAACP suddenly release the full video and instantly start piling on Fox and Breitbart for having destroyed a "good woman."
10.  Notice - it was literally only a few hours after everyone the liberals wanted dead had made a commitment that the NAACP released the video. They waited until the bait was taken, then they SET THE HOOK. 
11.   Sherrod, this post-racial "good woman" now claims that Breitbart's intent is to bring back slavery: in short, the classic liberal craptrap now has a hook. 

So, a few questions. Now, how is it that the White House that took weeks to get a "beer summit" together and months to actually NEVER get the nation's 20,000 oil skimmers to the Gulf, how is it that this same absolutely inept White House was able to act within HOURS to get Sherrod's resignation on its desk? 

 These people barely know what day it is, they let the Black Panthers walk for violation of voters rights DESPITE video evidence AND a conviction, but Sherrod they want hung? Square that circle for me, someone. 

Why hang Sherrod so swiftly when so many other blacks have been given a free pass? When Justice has been explicitly told never to prosecute a black person? When ACORN was given months of rope to try to unhang themselves after a whole SERIES of previous Breitbart videos? THIS is the White House that nailed Sherrod to the wall within an hour or so of a single five minute video hitting Breitbart's site? It boggles the imagination. 

The only time the White House has moved THIS fast was when it sent Russian spies back home to keep them from testifying to how many Democratic fundraisers and Congressmen they had suborned. Obama only moves fast on an issue when it suits him - not otherwise. And why is it that the NAACP couldn't find the video until AFTER Sherrod resigned? Why did they condemn a black person so quickly, so adamantly?

This is the same NAACP that has NEVER condemned Louis Farrakhan, but they want Sherrod on a rail with tar and feathers? C'MON! Why has no one in the MSM noticed the unusual competencies and failures here? OK, that's the easiest question to answer - they're all incompetent themselves. But, now that Journolist conspiracy has been exposed, along with nearly every prominent reporter in the media, someone needed to nail the conservative media equally hard, to take the Journolist media conspiracy out of the headlines. And they have. 

Sherrod is at least an unwitting victim, and at worst she's in on the scheme. But in any case, this was definitely a scheme and it has definitely worked. Journolist and the oil leak are off the table. Reagan was the Teflon President. Obama is Captain Hook.

Why The Left Loves Islam

On the surface, it seems a great mystery. Why would the leftist liberals who embrace abortion, homosexual rights, pornography, free love, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll find Islam so endearing?

The Fort Hood massacre has made it abundantly clear. Liberals display a motherly, protective attitude towards a religion which:

• flogs sodomites,
• executes raped women for having had sex outside of marriage,
• forbids females from showing their face, much less their fundamentals,
• virtually enslaves women inside their own homes by forbidding them to walk in public without the accompaniment of a male relative,
• displays the height of patriarchy in its polygamous culture,
• essentially forbids musical instruments of any kind, much less Western rock-n-roll,
• denounces not only hard drugs, but even the use of alcohol as a violation of morality.
• permits, indeed, tacitly encourages, the removal of every young girl's clitoris by the age of seven without benefit of anesthesia.
  

Why would leftists who hold candle-lit vigils outside American penitentiaries constantly coddle men who publicly, and with great fanfare, chop hands, feet and heads from their own criminals?

Why allow the name of Allah and the practice of Ramadan into public schools while forbidding the name of Jesus and the practice of Christmas?

David Kupelian, of WorldNetDaily, argues that the left does this because they are spineless cowards, afraid of coming under the threat of deadly fatwah. But this cannot be the case.

After all, look at the leftist embrace of abortionists, men and women who wear body armor to their place of work. Even though you are much more likely to end up dead from being pro-life than you are from being pro-abort, the left constantly touts the dangers of being in favor of abortion. Liberals love to point to the possibilities of martyrdom inherent in promoting the "right to choose."

They can be brave when it comes to supporting their own principles. So why don't they bravely stand up to the Muslims who so clearly, so stridently, oppose so many of the things liberals claim to stand for?

The answer is simple.

Liberals and Muslims differ in their external expressions of how to live out their common fundamental value, but they do share a common, fundamental value.

Army Major Nidal Hakim Hasan was not the first to name the value, but he is certainly one of the more memorable: "We Love Death More Than You Love Life."

The liberals and the Muslims are both, at bottom, nihilists.
Like calls to Like across the deep.
They know each other, they have known each other since before either was born.

It has been said of the promoters of atheistic evolution, "They think nothing made everything." Stuck with the cosmological fact of the Big Bang, the universe-creating primordial explosion that recalls Scripture's "Let There Be Light", the atheist recoils.

The universe can't be from God.
God couldn't create out of Nothing because, while there certainly is Nothing, there certainly is not God.

"No, no, no... no... you see... listen to me.... listen.... if you fold, spindle, punch and mutilate that original Nothing enough, it will explode (enraged by its own victim status, probably) and produce everything. That's what happened. Not God. Just an explosion. That's all. Billions of years ago. Billions."

The "billions" is important. While even atheists agree a Studebaker could not assemble itself out of window dust over the course of a thousand years, when the numbers start to climb, things change. Perhaps it could in the course of a billion years... a billion years... maybe...

The numbers are the thing. Whether talking about billions of years or trillions of dollars, once the big numbers come into play, the liberal atheist gets that far-away glint in his eyes. He falls into a trance as the numbers increase beyond his comprehension. Atheists are worshipers in the cult of the number, followers of a strange new sort of kabalah in which incomprehensibly huge numbers arrange themselves to form a comprehensible, finite and controllable universe. They are slaves to the numbers just as certainly as Muslims are slaves to Allah.

And, from an atheist's point of view, Allah has a marvelous attribute: Allah can change his mind. Allah turns good into evil and evil into good by simply commanding it. And for the liberal atheist, this is very comforting. Sure, Allah doesn't like homosexuality or rape today, but He might change His mind tomorrow. My self-destructive behaviour today may turn out to be a wonderful moral good tomorrow.

If God exists, I want him to be Allah. I will follow only the God of Mohammed, for Mohammed has shown the way. Indeed, Mohammed discovered this marvelous quality: I don't need to change, Allah will change the universe for me, to suit me. And if Allah does not? It does not matter. There is no Allah. Allah changes, morality changes. The universe is what we make of it. This is the liberal atheist's hope.

With Judeo-Christianity, no such possibility exists. God will never change His mind because God does not change. But with Islam all bets are off. Allah may decide tomorrow that rape is perfectly fine, that homosexuality is the preferred form of sexual expression. All we liberal atheists need to do is convince the imams that this is so. And how tough can that be? We will speak honeyed words, show them that we share their understanding of the universe.

They love death more than Christians love life.
They are our co-travellers, for we love death and nothingness more than Christians love life.
We are the same, you and I, Muslim and liberal.
True, you flog and kill me today, and I sneer at your silly theistic beliefs today, but ultimately, we are fellow travelers, on a long desert trek to the same destination. Like the sadist and the masochist, we make a perfect couple.

Major Hasan has to be protected and excused because Major Hasan is a liberal at heart.

He did to the soldiers at Fort Hood what every good atheist liberal has always wanted to do to those Christian, God-fearing, courageous American soldiers - he shot them through the head. He shot them through the heart. He drove a stake into them, chased them down while they were wounded and pumped more bullets into them. He shot them and shot them and shot them until their blood flowed like water, until their blood clotted on the floor, and then he shot them again. He destroyed them, he vented his rage upon them, he annihilated them for daring to question the annihilation that is coming to us all. He ground them to dust, the dust of the universe.

Major Hasan is a comfort to the liberals, he is the teddy bear they haven't had since they were six.
They want him to win, because when he wins, everyone loses.
We lose hope, we lose our belief in the True, the Good and the Beautiful, we lose our contact with God, with Life Himself. And isn't that annihilation of the bond worth a little bloodshed?

No, the Left does not fear Islam.
It adores Islam.
Islam does what the Left wants to do but cannot yet accomplish - it destroys.
Islam is the hero, the superman.
One day, the Left in the United States will do what Islam does today.

One day.
Soon.
Insha'Allah.


For more information on Islam, the Fort Hood Massacre, current events and Faith in the news, read Culture War Notes, the Catholic news site.

Update: Following the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam to Detroit flight on Christmas Eve, National Review On-Line notes that the most serious and violent radical Muslims have backgrounds indistinguishable from our ultra-leftist colleagues.

Shrink to Win Works

Peggy Noonan, bless her heart, doesn't get it.

She argues that the Republican party needs to become a "big tent" if it is to successfully combat the Democrats. She argues that kicking people out is no way to become popular. She is wrong in every respect.

"Shrink to Win" is a marvelously effective strategy, used constantly throughout history. Lenin followed this course when he named his party "the Bolsheviks", which means "the majority", even though they were NEVER a majority prior to their takeover of power. He wrote "Better Smaller, But Better" - a screed with insisted that a small party was more effective than a large one.

Hitler and Stalin did the same, restricting party membership for the same reason Lenin did - to maintain ideological purity. Napoleon pointed out that firmness of purpose is to numbers of troops as three is to one.

Every successful leader recognizes that force of purpose makes more difference than force of numbers. A small group of people with a single purpose accomplishes more than a large group of people whose motivations are diffused and obscure.

Barack Obama understands this. He has surrounded himself with fellow travelers, people who think exactly as he do on every issue. That's how he has managed to ram through so much in such a short period of time. He tells everyone what they want to hear, but he does only what he wants to do. He makes sure those in positions of power think exactly as he does.

The masses don't matter - they can be manipulated to run in any direction.
They won't buck the system because they rate their families, their obligations to relatives and friends, higher than they do the harm that would accrue to them by bucking the system. "If I just keep my head down, I can keep my family/friends/myself safe, and we can ride this out."

That kind of attitude is exactly what dictators love.
A dictator doesn't give a damn about family, friends, anyone. All of these are thrown overboard in pursuit of what matters: power.

Normal people protect people. That's their priority: saving people from immediate harm. Unfortunately, operating for the short term protection from harm often opens everyone up to long-term harm.

Dictators, on the other hand, protect power from entangling ties with people.
If everyone around you believes that power's the thing, then you will get and hold power.

Oh, yes, Peggy, Shrink to Win works.
Just look up.

Swine Flu - Something Smells

First, Mexico said over a hundred were dead.
Then the World Health Organization said 7.
But even as it revised the death figures down, it raised the pandemic rating UP.

Why?

Everyone agrees that there are no difference between the Mexican and US viral strains, but Mexicans are dying and being hospitalized, US patients aren't. If the strains aren't different, then there must be a difference in medical care, patient nutrition or some other aspect of immuno-competency. That is, the Mexicans are deficient in something that none of the US patients are deficient in. But no one is saying there ARE any such differences.

And if there were, what would the difference(s) be?

Everyone is saying that we have to quarantine now because it will otherwise enter the population and emerge much more virulent in a year or two.

That's just stupid.

No one has explained why a virus would get MORE virulent over time. Virii don't get more virulent over time. The idea that it would is completely counter to evolutionary theory.

Killing/incapacitating your host doesn't bode well for you, if you're a virus/bacteria. When the host dies, you die. The more virulent strains die with their hosts. The more incapacitating strains don't spread as efficiently because the host is flat on his back, vomiting into a bucket by himself. It's the weak strains that spread efficiently, not the virulent ones. And if the strains are virtually identical, then when a weaker, more efficiently spread virus gets fought off by a host, the host will be immune to the more virulent strain.

So, if this virus does anything, it will become adapted to the host, and thus LESS virulent over the next few months/years, not more virulent. That's how the Black Death disappeared, that's how a whole host of nasty diseases went away.

Strains always become less virulent over time unless you are attacking them, as with the MRSA bacteria. They get more virulent because we attack the bacteria with antibiotics until only the really virulent ones are left. But antibiotics don't work on virii because antibiotics attack cell membranes - that works great for cells like bacteria, but virii are just DNA strands. Antibiotics can't touch them.

So why is everyone worried about this thing getting more virulent?

The prevalence is microscopic, the flu isn't very virulent, it isn't going to get more virulent, and no one is interested in border control, although everyone seems interested in shutting down schools. Why is it that border control will NOT work and shutting down large public gatherings WILL work?

If wearing scarfs works, then have everyone at school wear scarfs. If it doesn't work, why are people being told it does?

What's the difference between the border around the mouth, around a school, around a church or around a country? Why are some kinds of border control encouraged, others not? And I'm asking this question as someone who has always opposed national border patrols. I don't see the logic in the arguments.

Very little of what I've heard in the news about this virus makes any sense. We've got enormous governmental response to essentially no serious numbers of cases. This whole thing smells to high heaven.

Why Liberal Talk Radio Fails

There are a lot of theories floating around about why liberal talk radio always fails.

People say liberals aren't interesting, liberals aren't funny, liberals scream too much, they act like the victim too often, etc.

While liberals certainly are and do all of these things, I don't think that's the reason.
The real reason liberal talk radio isn't successful is that liberals don't work for a living.

Think about it.

Of all the political persuasions, liberals are the largest group because they encompass both the wealthiest and the poorest among us. Liberal leaders are rich fat cats screaming about how they care about the poor while they simultaneously raise consumption taxes every chance they get. These kind of people watch television talking heads and read the New York Times. They are never in a car unless they are being chauffeured to the airport or the golf course. When they are in a car, they are on their cell phones schmoozing their next deal, they are most definitely not listening to the radio.

Welfare recipients don't listen to radio, they watch TV or play stupid video games.

The only people who listen to the radio are the people driving themselves, alone in a car, stuck in a traffic jam. By definition, that ain't rich people or welfare recipients.

It's working stiffs, grinding out their nine to five job and grinding out their one hour commute each way each day to make it a full-bodied ten-hour workday, five days a week.

These are the people who are working with their hands, people who have to keep their eyes on their work or on the road, but who want to occupy their minds while their hands and eyes stay busy. In a multi-media environment, radio is the only source of entertainment for blue-collar workers for most of the day. It's the only thing available for white collar workers at least two or three hours of the day.

People who work for a living aren't interested in George Soros, Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi.
They want someone who understands what it means to gain your bread in the sweat of your brow.

That won't change any time soon.

Economics 101

Killing your customer is generally not good for business. It is amazing how many people don’t understand this.

Take, for instance, the French. The November 24th issue of Medical News Today reports on French abortion advocates who argue that French women encounter many obstacles when seeking an abortion. Abortion units have closed in 40% of private clinics in Paris for financial reasons and the number of doctors willing to do abortions is decreasing. According to certain lights, this is a Bad Thing. What Medical News Today failed to point out was the obvious: France has a total fertility rate of 1.9. Nations require a TFR of 2.1 just to keep from depopulating itself through natural death. It apparently has not occurred to them that this may have some small bearing on the availability of abortion.

It is, perhaps, picayune to point out niggling details, but medical experts agree it is extremely difficult to abort a fetus that has never been conceived. Given that the French are barely conceiving any children at all, it is hardly surprising to discover that the demand for abortion services is not what it once was.

Similarly, leading scientists have, through rigourous double-blind studies, almost conclusively demonstrated that it is impossible to perform an abortion on a woman who doesn’t exist. Put another way, every successful abortion kills a potential client – either a man who might otherwise impregnate a woman or a woman who might otherwise be impregnated. The problem reminds one of the old joke from the popular television show M*A*S*H. When an officer remarked he could do anything in the line of duty, up to and including committing suicide, his opponent replied, "If there were more people like you, there would be less people like you."

Contraception and abortion work with exactly that mindset. If either is widely available, its use is eventually self-limiting. That little boy who was never conceived will likewise never use a condom. That little girl who was never birthed will never grow up to ask for an abortion. Thus, as the abortion clinics decimate their way through the population – not quite a fair word, since clinics kill one in three, not one in ten – they eventually find their client base drops. Now, in order to stay in business, they need to drum up more business. If they are successful in drumming up more business, they will depress their own business even further. The process is simply ravenous.

But it is actually worse than that. Contracepters and abortionists are, in this sense, like a slow-release neutron bomb. They not only destroy their own business, they destroy every business near their own. After all, when someone is contracepted or aborted out of existence, it isn’t just the abortionist who permanently loses a potential customer. Every other business in the country permanently loses that customer as well. Do this often enough and it likely will erode the bottom line.

It is, of course, well-known that Democrats and Republicans hold wildly different positions on this issue. Few people stop to consider why. The contemplation is instructive.

Clearly, capitalists with a long-term view of wealth accumulation like neither contraception nor abortion. Annihilating customers is bad for business. But, from a socialist perspective, there is no particular downside to death. Killing customers cannot hurt the socialist state because the socialist state has no customers. It has only citizens, who each live in order to serve the whole, to serve the state. So, in a state that finds it difficult to feed and clothe people under even the best of conditions, the annihilation of citizens is actually a positive good. The remaining citizens will fare better. Only capitalist societies would be harmed by these practices, since contraception and abortion would reduce the number of workers the capitalists can exploit.

That is why Russia, on November 18, 1920, became the first country to legalize abortion. Lenin saw it as a tool to keep the kulaks down. Japan legalized abortion in 1948 as the Cold War began, while the occupied countries of Eastern Europe did so in the 1950s as the USSR tightened its death grip on those states.

Only with the spreading of socialism and the intensification of the Cold War through the 1960’s and 70’s did Europe and America legalize the practice, and it was largely through an imposition by idealogues. When we look at the major proponents of legal abortion in the United States, we find a roll call of prominent socialists. Betty Friedan joined the Communist party in 1948, Gloria Steinem served as honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, Patricia Ireland’s autobiography, What Women Want, details her support for the Communist party and her participation in Miami’s pro-Communist rallies. Conversely, when we look at the major proponents of capitalism, men like Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and George Bush, we find them all opposed.

When two Muslims killed civilians with a high-powered rifle from the trunk of a car in the Washington D.C. area a few years ago, the nation was aghast. It was clearly seen as a terrorist attack, an attack on our way of life. However, if they had been employed as abortionists, they would have been able to kill a lot more Americans and they would have had an exponentially more negative effect on the American way of life. Best of all, they would have been immune from prosecution, as our courts and media protect their right to kill future producers, consumers and the American economy entire.

It is said that we need to separate Church and state, that arguments based in religion have no basis in American politics. Fine. Let us enter the debate from a purely secular political perspective. Abortion attacks the basis of capitalism, it attempts to impose a socialist world-view upon Americans. It is advocated by the socialists precisely because the socialists understand that big business cannot continue in business if enough of its customers are killed. The socialists may have lost the Cold War, but as the world population inexorably ages, they are clearly winning the Demographic War.

It’s a Religious War

It’s a Religious War

Miguel Estrada, the Hispanic Catholic judge whose nomination was put on hold seven times, is the latest victim of the latest religious war. He was left hanging for over two years, his nomination put on hold seven times, simply because he wouldn’t deny his faith. He recently withdrew his nomination in order to get on with his life.

Attorney General William Pryor made similar refusal to deny his faith and has suffered a similar filibuster. Thomas Ashcroft, Clarence Thomas, and others have also been subject to it. Apparently, the Democrats believe only Christians who do not hold serious Christian beliefs can hold office. One might call it the “Christians Resembling Avowed Pagans” (CRAP) campaign.

Reports on this issue always return to the phrase, “separation between church and state.” Ignore the fact that this phrase appears in neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence. Ignore the fact that several states, including Jefferson’s Virginia, had religious tests for office holders for years after the Constitution was ratified. Where did this idea of church-state separation come from? Prior to The American Constitutional Convention of 1787, every country in the world, every culture known to man, required its office holders to at least affirm the existence of a Supreme Being (seven U.S. states still have this requirement). Even John Locke, probably the biggest influence on Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, denied atheists (and Catholics) the right to hold office.

This opposition to faith in the public square is founded in part on the Reformation and its wars of religion. Even Islam did its part. It laid siege to Vienna, with armies composed in part of enslaved Christians, not once but twice in one hundred and sixty years. Indeed, the 1683 siege was so effective that, if it were not for Catholic Poland and her soldiers, most of Europe would now speak Arabic and live under sharia. These wars resulted in tens of thousands injured and killed, hundreds of villages burned to the ground, general famine in large areas of western Europe. It wasn’t pleasant.

People saw religion as the cause of the problem. Remove religion from the public sphere, and war would leave with it. Modern historians recognize there is some truth to this, but not much. When there is no formal science of economics or biology, when there is no enormous difference between the living standards of one country and another, what can motivate people to war? Whatever the king's real motivation might be, the public reasons have to resonate with the culture. When the culture is steeped in religion, the public reasons given for war will likewise tend to be steeped in religion. A ruler can’t appeal to the fall in gross national product when no one, including him, knows what that is.

The French Revolution became the first attempt to throw religion out of the public square. It enthroned a prostitute as a “goddess”, followed that with a public debauch and guillotines that rose and fell from sunrise to sunset for weeks on end. It also resulted in Napolean and the Napoleanic Wars, the first totalitarian and the first European experience of total war.

The Constitutional Convention tried a similar tactic. We had only slightly better luck. Within thirty years, we fought the War of 1812 and began the long series of Indian and other wars that would keep our army, navy, and now air force, busy right up to the present day.

Today, we are told a non-religious society is more peaceful. It isn’t. It’s bloodier. In Christian society, wars were governed by certain rules: no fighting on Sundays or holy days. No fighting on fast days. No fighting during Advent or Lent. War still wasn’t a holiday, but it did not involve the whole of society. Often, the inhabitants of two countries at war were only barely aware of the fact. The two groups of citizens often continued visiting each other as if nothing were wrong. Nothing was.

Science is not so indifferent. The Franco-Prussian war (1871) was fought to validate Darwinian theory that only the strongest races survive. Both the French and the Germans thought of their nations as “races”. That war led directly to World War I. Anglo-American legislation and eugenics theory gave Hitler the law and the science to support his ideas on race, World War I gave him the reason. Now the “superior” Germans fought the “inferior” Slavs and Jews, the “superior” white Americans fought the “inferior” yellow Japanese horde. With World War II, the world-wide race war, we discovered that science provides not only the rationale to fight a war, but the means to exponentially increase the violence. In terms of body bags, one hundred years of scientific wars, particularly those based on American eugenics and Marxist economics, have killed many times more people than all the religious wars combined ever have.

Maybe it’s time we divorced economics and biology from public life, and put religion back in.