OneNews Now has this amazingly scary story that reflects where we are headed:
…A lesbian couple filed a formal complaint against “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” in Portland after the owners – Aaron and Melissa Klein – declined on the basis of their Christian faith to provide services for a lesbian “wedding.” A report in a state newspaper says Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries plans to investigate if the business violated a 2007 state law that protects the rights of LGBT people in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
Reacting to that report, Matt Barber, vice president of Liberty Counsel Action, tells OneNewsNow “the thought police are at it again, but now they’ve stepped it up to the next level.”
“We have been saying this all along: that they insist that people who embrace the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic abandon scriptural truth and adopt a worldly, secularist, postmodern view of sex and sexuality or else,” says Barber.
The Oregonian quotes Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian as saying: “The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate.”
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, says in light of that comment Commissioner Avakian should resign immediately.
“To say that this couple needs to be ‘rehabilitated’ for believing and practicing the values on which this nation was founded is entirely beyond the pale,” says the pro-family leader. “This sounds like Stalinist Russia or China under Mao, where those who thought for themselves were forced under government coercion into re-education camps. This is not the America that was given to us by our Founders.”
Barber says the “rehabilitation” remark connotes some kind of ailment, mental illness or physical ailment. “You know, we rehabilitate criminals,” he explains. “Are they saying that Christianity is criminal here and we have to rehabilitate those who embrace the Christian sexual ethic? That’s what this official in Oregon is saying.”
Wildmon wonders what might follow if the bakery owners refuse to be “rehabilitated.”
“What happens if they maintain their faith and their values, and refuse to convert to political correctness?” he asks. “The next logical step would be for the government to shut down their business altogether, which would be an act of Nazi-esque tyranny.”…
In this installment of my series dealing with a local small papers regular article, I respond to the misdirection of energies to ideas surrounding religious and political extremism. A proper understanding of both history and one’s own political leaders can direct one’s energies to properly deal with the issues that animate so many.
I only have the patience and time to correct a couple of items in the above (as usual, you may click the graphic to ENLARGE it). This will again fit into the category of Mr. Huizum not knowing history well, and based on such bad historical referencing making broad claims that hurt healthy dialogue. This is a common practice in higher education, and Professor Mike S. Adams comments on what affect this has on young students:
They motivate some students to dedicate their professional lives to finding solutions to non-existent problems.
They cause many students to become angry over things that aren’t even true.
“Life is too short to spend being angry about things that aren’t even true” (43). Similarly, one should put one’s energies towards the right area of focus. So for instance, when John states,
The Oklahoma bombing was perpetrated by a right-wing militia member, so politics was involved in that incident.
He has in his mind a picture of a religious right-winger. When in fact Timothy McVeigh was an atheist who renounced the Judeo-Christian God and said his “god” was science. So in reality, McVeigh’s motivations line up closer with John’s political (and some would say, religious… because “atheism” is a metaphysical viewpoint) views rather than the “religious-right.” And most of the violence has been committed by people who have left leaning political views.
(SEE BIOS OF SHOOTERS HERE, AND HERE; AS WELL AS THE MANY OCCUPY STORIES HERE; HERE, AS WELL AS THE VIOLENCE IN OPPOSITION TO BUSH AND PALIN.)
In other words, John Huizum’s focus is wrongly placed, and so his outrage in the past has not only been misplaced, but infective as well.
Another portion that I wish to point to along a similar vein is this statement:
The Crusades were motivated by Christians hating Muslims and vice versa, so a difference in religious beliefs caused those wars.
Again, some history will benefit the discussion. The following is from a recent post on Pope Francis canonizing some Christians who were killed in Muslim/Christian conflicts:
In case those here are not aware of this violent history intrinsic to Islam, here are some previous “clashes” that led to the West defending themselves:
The Third Crusade (1188-1192). This crusade was proclaimed by Pope Gregory VIII in the wake of Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem and destruction of the Crusader forces of Hattin in 1187. This venture failed to retake Jerusalem, but it did strengthen Outremer, the crusader state that stretched along the coast of the Levant.
The Politically incorrect guide to Islam (and the Crusades), by Robert Spencer, pp. 147-148.
The almost Political Correct myth is that the crusades were an unprovoked attack by Europe against the Islamic world are dealt with in part:
The conquest of Jerusalem in 638 stood as the beginning of centuries of Muslim aggression, and Christians in the Holy Land faced an escalating spiral of persecution. A few examples: Early in the eighth century, sixty Christian pilgrims from Amorium were crucified; around the same time, the Muslim governor of Caesarea seized a group of pilgrims from Iconium and had them all executed as spies – except for a small number who converted to Islam; and Muslims demanded money from pilgrims, threatening to ransack the Church of the Resurrection if they didn’t pay. Later in the eighth century, a Muslim ruler banned displays of the cross in Jerusalem. He also increased the anti-religious tax (jizya) that Christians had to pay and forbade Christians to engage in religious instruction to others, even their own children.
Brutal subordinations and violence became the rules of the day for Christians in the Holy Land. In 772, the caliph al-Mansur ordered the hands of Christians and Jews in Jerusalem to be stamped with a distinctive symbol. Conversions to Christianity were dealt with particularly harshly. In 789, Muslims beheaded a monk who had converted from Islam and plundered the Bethlehem monastery of Saint Theodosius, killing many more monks. Other monasteries in the region suffered the same fate. Early in the ninth century, the persecutions grew so severe that large numbers of Christians fled to Constantinople and other Christians cities. More persecutions in 923 saw additional churches destroyed, and in 937, Muslims went on a Palm Sunday rampage in Jerusalem, plundering and destroying the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection.
The Politically incorrect guide to Islam (and the Crusades), by Robert Spencer, pp. 122-123.
One person (my pastor at the time) said to paint a picture of the crusaders in a single year in history is like showing photo’s and video of Hitler hugging children and giving flowers to them and then showing photo’s and video of the Allies attacking the German army. It completely forgets what Hitler and Germany had done prior.
What did I mean by “intrinsic”? When I talk to a Muslim I make sure I compare Jesus to Muhammad, and the Trinitarian God to the Islamic unitarian god.
MUHAMMAD ordered his followers (and participated in) the cutting of throats of between 600-to-900 persons. Not all men, but women and children. He was a military tactician that lied and told others to use deception that ultimately led to the death of many people (taqiyya). We never see any depictions of Muhammad with children, we just know that he most likely acquired a gal at age 6 and consummated the “marriage” when she was nine. He was a pedophile in other words. While the Qu’ran states that a follower of this book should have no more than 4 wives, we know of course that he had many more. Many more.
JESUS, when Peter struck off the ear of the soldier, healed it. Christ said if his followers were of any other kingdom, they would fight to get him off the cross. Christ invited and used children as examples of how Jewish adults should view their faith… something culturally radical – inviting children into an inner-circle of a group of status oriented men as the Pharisees were and using them as examples to learn from. Jesus, and thusly us, can access true love because the Triune God has eternally loved (The Father loves the Son, etc. ~ unlike the unitarian God of Islam). Love between us then, my wife and I, the love in community/Body of Christ, has foundations in God. Even the most ardent Muslim still leaves his or her entrance into “heaven” as an arbitrary choice of “god.” The love of Christ and the relationship he offers is bar-none the center piece of our faith… something the Muslim does not have. Which is why the Church evolved because they have a point of reference in Christ to come back to. We would not want the Muslim to fall back to his point of reference but to look to Jesus as a referent.
The Quran, Haditha, and other sources make clear that Muhammad was a sinner, and had to repent FOR his sins… while the same sources say Jesus was sinless, confirming Biblical doctrine.
Which leads me to one of my favorite quotes:
The nine founders among the eleven living religions in the world had characters which attracted many devoted followers during their own lifetime, and still larger numbers during the centuries of subsequent history. They were humble in certain respects, yet they were also confident of a great religious mission. Two of the nine, Mahavira and Buddha, were men so strong-minded and self-reliant that, according to the records, they displayed no need of any divine help, though they both taught the inexorable cosmic law of Karma. They are not reported as having possessed any consciousness of a supreme personal deity. Yet they have been strangely deified by their followers. Indeed, they themselves have been worshipped, even with multitudinous idols.
All of the nine founders of religion, with the exception of Jesus Christ, are reported in their respective sacred scriptures as having passed through a preliminary period of uncertainty, or of searching for religious light. Confucius, late in life, confessed his own sense of shortcomings and his desire for further improvement in knowledge and character. All the founders of the non-Christian religions evinced inconsistencies in their personal character; some of them altered their practical policies under change of circumstances.
Jesus Christ alone is reported as having had a consistent God consciousness, a consistent character himself, and a consistent program for his religion. The most remarkable and valuable aspect of the personality of Jesus Christ is the comprehensiveness and universal availability of his character, as well as its own loftiness, consistency, and sinlessness.
Robert Hume, The World’s Living Religions (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 285-286.
So the Crusades were motivated by Muslims hatred for civilization, and this political view entwined in Sharia is still stuck in the barbarism of the 600’s and is still at war with civilized society. I am not saying of course the Church is blameless, do not get me wrong. What I am saying is that people (fallen and infallible) responded at times wrongly in a correct situation that needed to be handled with military power… not ecumenism. Ecumenism was the root cause for Muslim’s to take over large swaths of land. Just war stopped this onslaught and many centuries later we are still reaping the net benefit of this larger good that kept a large portion of the world free enough to allow maximal liberty. Even if this liberty was slow and gradual, it sill allowed the laboratory for experiments in political and religious philosophy that led to our current situation.
Although there were some forms of democratic government in local areas in ancient and medieval history (such as ancient Athens), when the United States began as a representative democracy in 1776, it could be called the “American experiment,” because there were at that time no other functioning national democracies in the world. But after the founding of the United States, and especially in the twentieth century, the number of functioning national democracies grew remarkably. The World Forum on Democracy reports that in 1950 there were 22 democracies accounting for 31% of the world population and a further 21 states with restricted democratic practices, accounting for 11.9% of the globe’s population. Since the turn of the century, electoral democracies now represent 120 of the 192 existing countries and constitute 58.2% of the world’s population.
Therefore, when people today complain to me that they don’t want to get involved in politics because they think that politicians are too corrupt (or arrogant, greedy, power-hungry, and other forms of being “unspiritual”), I want to remind them that although democracy is messy, it still works quite well, and all the alternative forms of government are far worse. We should be thankful for those who are willing to be involved in it, often at great personal sacrifice.
Otherwise, most of the world would still practice keeping Africans in slavery, like in Muslim countries.
John, in the above and previous articles, has made clear he disdains political and religious extremism — explicitly and implicitly. Again, I will include a recent conversation from my Hawaiian vacation that speaks to John not applying his concerns to the proper areas — religious extremism:
….But every point of disagreement or complaint Walter had focused around racism. Which led me to my final point of the discussion with his. I asked him why he was so sensitive to the topic of race/racism. He responded that he had a family member who passed in a concentration camp during WWII, mentioning his Jewish roots. Awesome!
This led me to my favorite analogy, which I asked Walter to allow me time to build. He agreed, revealing ultimately his political inconsistencies:
Walter, I will use Bush in my analogy. Let us say for twenty years Bush attended a church that twice prominently displayed David Dukes likeness on the cover of their church’s magazine which reaches 20,000 homes, and a third time alongside Barry Mills (the founder of the Aryan Brotherhood). Even inviting David Duke to the pulpit to receive a “lifetime achievement award.” Even selling sermons by David Duke in the church’s book store. Authors of sermons sold in Bush’s church’s bookstore teach in accordance with Christian Identity’s view that Jews and blacks are offspring of Satan and Eve via a sexual encounter in the Garden of Eden. In the church’s bookstore, the entire time Bush attended, books like Mein Kampf, My Awakening (David Duke), and other blatantly racist books. Even members of the Aryan Brotherhood felt comfortable enough to sit in the pews at times… being that the pastor of the church was once a reverend for the group.
Now Walter, if Bush had gone to a church like that I would walk arm-n-arm with my Democratic comrades in making sure he would never be President. You would expect me to I am sure?
He confirmed my suspicion. I then shared my knowledge of Obama.
I purchased from Obama’s church’s bookstore online 3-books: A Black Theology of Liberation, Black Theology & Black Power, and Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. In these books Walter, God is said to be against white people, and mirror in their hatred of whites to that of Jews in Mein Kampf, calling both devils.
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” ~ Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64
Obama’s pastor not only was a minister in The Nation of Islam, an anti-Semitic/racist group, but the church’s book store sells sermons by Louise Farrakhan, who teaches that the white man was created on the Island of Cyprus by a mad scientist, Yakub. (Mr. Farrakhan also believes he was taken up on a UFO to meet God, and was told he was a little messiah, take note also that he was directly involved in the deaths of police officers as well.) Louise Farrakhan was featured twice on the church’s magazine which reach 20,000[plus] homes in the Chicago area. Even placing on the cover with Louise Farrakhan a third time the founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad likewise taught that the white man was created by Yakub 6,600 years ago. Walter, Louise Farrakhan teaches that the Jews in Israel do not belong there, and that the true Jews are the black people. Louise Farrakhan was invited into Obama’s church, to the pulpit and given a “lifetime achievement award.” In fact, the New Black Panthers and members of the Nation of Islam often times sat in the pews for sermons by Rev. Wright, whom Obama called a mentor.
Mouse Over To See
Another was a montage of faces – black leaders, past and present, with the title “The legacy lives on” – that included Wright, Farrakhan, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Rosa Parks and even O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochran. (Weekly Standard; WND)
So I expect you, Walter, to join arm-and-arm with me on finding out why the media, and Democrats who are so concerned about racism let such a man into office, when, if the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want in office.
Do you know the next thing out of Walter’s mouth was?
✫ “Didn’t Bush speak in a church that forbid interracial marriage?”
I responded that no, it was a speech at Bob Jones University…
… and you are making my point Walter. If that bugs you soo much to mention it during the course of a conversation, why doesn’t Obama’s history more-so irk you? Not to mention the university overturned its silly rule, even Bob Jones said he couldn’t back up that policy with a single verse in the Bible (CNN). Obama’s CHURCH OF TWENTY YEARS has made no such concession.
At this point Walter started to get out of the hot-tub finishing with “well, that’s just your opinion” (meaning my carefully laid out facts and years of study combined with an analogy was hogwash. Walter went his way, and even avoided me when he saw me in the international caffe — even though our conversation was calm, rational, and reasoned. I even asked him permission twice to make my analogies, being polite and respecting his age. Walter is a great example of how Democrats ignore following their own concerns to their logical conclusions, when applied to their own candidate. Sad.
So it is apparent the bomb at Boston is leaning towards Arabs (Muslims) working out their “non-violent” jihad… new info is seemingly showing white guys… so I bet when found they have leftist leanings (like Occupy or something similar) — I may be wrong, but it is typically either/or.
UPDATE:
The suspects were identified to The Associated Press as coming from the Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars. (Libertarian Republican)
The ricen letter dude is confirmed to be a Democrat activist, and he can added to the list of Democratic terrorists of the 21st Century (also Gunmen bio’s [old blog] here, [new blog] here). As one travels to the left of the spectrum, “Leftism” proper replaces religious tenants with its own.
….Years ago, I debated one of the most prominent rabbis in the Conservative movement of Judaism on the issue of whether morality must be God-based. The Ivy League Ph.D., yarmulke-wearing rabbi argued that God was not morally necessary. If you want to understand why so many Jews vote left while nearly all the Western world’s opposition to — and frequently hatred of — Israel emanates from the left, one explanation is this: For most American Jews, their religion is leftism, while Judaism is their ethnicity and culture. The Reform, and increasingly the Conservative, movements have, to a large extent, become political movements that use Hebrew and Jewish rituals to equate Judaism with progressive politics.
Within mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism, the same dominance of leftist values exists. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops largely holds the same social and economic views as the Democratic Party and The New York Times editorial page. It differs with the left with regard to same-sex marriage, abortion and religious freedom issues such as those pertaining to Catholic hospitals and government-funded contraception. As for mainstream Protestant denominations, they, too, are largely indistinguishable from leftism. Proof? Ask a liberal Protestant minister to name one important area in which he and leftism differ. Ask a liberal Reform or Conservative rabbi the same question. Their silence will be telling.
The truth is that the left has been far more successful in converting in converting Jews and Christians to Leftism than Christianity and Judaism have been in influencing leftists to convert to Christianity or Judaism….
I am reading a great review of a book on my reading list in the Journal of Creation, Volume 27, Issue 1 (Published April 2013) entitled, “Metaphors for mankind? A review of Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin” ~ Book Review by Marc Ambler. I loved the review, and it is right up my “religio-political alley. Here is an excerpt (pp. 27-29) that I found fascinating and will undoubtedly add to the general knowledge of the reader:
From Darwin to Dachau
Eugenics and belief in racial supremacy eventually led to the horrors of Nazism on the European continent. In a later chapter, Zubrin argues that the evil deeds of the Nazis in occupied Europe, far from being done under cover, and without the awareness of the majority of the German population, was carried out with the complicity and knowledge of the majority. Thoroughly indoctrinated by ‘scientific’ racism, the German people would see Hitler’s actions as at minimum a necessary evil, or even for the ultimate ‘good’ of the Nordic Aryan people. Hitler is quoted as saying in 1941, “The law of existence prescribes uninterrupted killing, so that the better may live” (1. 984). As proof of his argument, Zubrin relates that
“At the height of the Third Reich, there were over 20,000 death camps, and most were discovered by Allied forces within hours of their entering newly liberated territory-as the stench of the camps’ crematoria made them readily detectable. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were employed operating these facilities, and several million more were members of armed forces or police units engaged in or supporting genocidal operations”
The idea that the general populations of Germany and other European countries where this was being carried out were unaware of the Holocaust stretches credulity.
As a further proof of the acquiescence of these peoples due to social Darwinian indoctrination, the writer gives the account of the White Rose resistance group. These Munich based, college students, mainly Lutheran and Catholic, began a campaign of leaflet distribution throughout Germany in 1942.5 Some quotes from their leaflets illustrate their awareness of what was going on:
“Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible crimes-crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure-reach the light of day?”
“Since the conquest of Poland, three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings … . All male offspring of the houses of the (Polish) nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS! Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them? … . Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? … . Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!”
These brave students were captured and tortured in 1943 and some beheaded, some imprisoned. By highlighting this awareness, Zubrin is preparing us for what is possible when men lose their perception of who we are through Darwinian (he would not use the term evolutionary) indoctrination. As another White Rose leaflet declares,
“… when of his (man’s) own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil … . We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!” The thesis of Zubrin’s book is that, under the same belief system as the Nazis, genocide has taken place throughout the world over the decades since the war, though by different, less obvious means.
Eugenics in America
Eugenic societies and ideas also began to increasingly manifest themselves with a `back-to-nature’, `Darwinian antihumanism’. Notable disciples in America were such influential individuals and families as the Roosevelts; Henry Fairfield Osborn; and Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League who argued for legal abortion as a means of “eliminating undesirable racial stock”. In the build-up to WWII, blind eyes were turned in America to what Hitler was doing. Eugenic and population concerns lead to the obstruction of European Jews trying to flee, and even to refugees being turned back from American shores, as it turned out to the ovens of German. The Darwinian, Malthusian, eugenic influence continued after the war, though subdued due to the devastating fruits seen during the war, in such organisations as Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club and the Club of Rome, as well as many influential global organisations such as the World Bank and UN.
One of the recurring themes of this book, is of how pseudo-scientific, eugenic books and publications such as that of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler referred to as his ‘bible,’ became populist propaganda tools under which devastating policies were justified and implemented. Grant was the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League and a trustee of the Museum of Natural History. This use of eugenic-inspired media was also key in ‘numbing’ the public to other policies later described in the book Man and Earth, a neo-pagan tract written in 1913, was influential in the birth of another child of Malthus’s theory of limited resources—”This twin was environmentalism” (1. 1056), closely linked philosophically to eugenics in both Germany and the USA. It was reprinted in 1980 as one of the founding documents of the West German Green Party, whose founder and first chairman was August Haussleiter, a former SS officer.
Our Plundered Planet, written in 1948 by Fairfield Osborn, the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn. was a 3-million copy bestseller “which became the founding manifesto of the postwar environmentalist movement” (I. 1185). These movements and foundations such as the Conservation Foundation, Sierra Club and the Environmental Defence Fund, had population control as their primary focus. This was especially for developing nations, but was also promoted in post-war Japan where key American eugenic advocates were placed in influential positions, and forced ‘population control’ measures on the Japanese people.
Commissioned by The Sierra Club, The Population Bomb, written by Paul Ehrlich in 1967 amidst much publicity (figure 2), became the “new Malthusian bible for modern times”. Typical of this type of propaganda, prophecies of impending doom were used to induce a popular panic which became a smokescreen for increased government interference in people’s lives.
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death … . We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail” (1. 1584). –A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people … . We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense” (1. 1605).
Under the hysteria of this type of propaganda (proven false by history), measures were taken throughout the world to coerce people into population control measures. As an example, Zubrin documents the World Bank’s making loans to third world countries, often ruled by corrupt leaders. The loans were subject to the implementation of broad, coerced programs including abortion, sterilisation and involuntary insertion of IUD’s. These programs often meant that while normal healthcare facilities were neglected and underfunded, `population control’ staff, facilities and resources were state of the art.
Anti DDT, Nuclear, GM and CO2; pro-nature or anti-human?
The writer begins in Chapter 6, entitled “In Defence of Malaria”, to document another post war implementation of eugenic ideology. Most telling is a quote from Alexander King, a co-founder of the Club of Rome, who said “my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it has greatly added to the population problem” (1. 1350). DDT began to be used by the Allies in WWII in areas where malaria threatened to derail the campaign against the Nazis and Japanese, with dramatic effect. After the war, DDT programs in the Southern USA, Ceylon, South Africa, and other countries reduced malarial deaths and incidence to almost zero. Alarmed by the implications to population growth, particularly in third world countries, alarm bells again began to be rung by influential eugenicists. If eradicating DDT programs had been overtly sold as a means of reducing population, Western sensibilities would not have accepted it. In what has become a predictable routine, an environmental reason was given to halt DDT use. The marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson was contracted to write Silent Spring (figure 2). In it she warned of the dangers of DDT to wildlife, particularly birdlife. The evocative title says it all, if DDT programs were continued, one day mankind would awake to a ‘silent spring’ bereft of the sound of birdlife. Zubrin goes on to show that the various claims were totally unscientific and cites a number of scientific studies to document this. The environmentalist campaign was successful and DDT was banned in western countries and aid to third world countries again made subject to their suspending the use of DDT. Today, “Malaria kills more than a million people worldwide each year-90 percent of them in Africa; 70 percent children under the age of five.”‘ This is more deaths than due to AIDS, but receives far less media attention; while the cheapest and most effective remedy available to African countries, DDT, is denied them.
The next leftist, environmental cause that Zubrin examines is ‘The Anti-Nuclear Crusade’ …
One sign of an over oppressive movement is illustrated in The Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Napoleon, one of the main characters, concerns himself with the education of the young, and forcefully takes two litters of puppies away as soon as they’re weaned, saying he’ll educate them. In effect the “State” are the ones who are charged with educating and rearing them. Now compare this to a statement made by feminist Mary Jo Bane, assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman, and the lesson taught in Animal Farm:
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”
“Mary Jo Bane, formerly of the Clinton Administration Department of Health and Human Services one of the major voices in the Boston Globe against the average Catholic’s right to freedom of religion. Bane’s most famous quote is ‘We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. … In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.’”
In posting this today, I have found that Cesar Chavez was not a radical’s radical. But much like history, the left warps people and event to fit their ideology. Obviously, however, he is not a match for the Holiday today. For instance, he agreed that the La Raza movement was racist and spoke out against it:
… while reading a memoir/history of the immigration-reform movement by retired historian Otis Graham… I find out that even Cesar Chavez rejected the “la raza” idea as inherently racist. Graham quoted a 1969 New Yorkerprofile by Peter Matthiessen:
“I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride, you know,” Chavez told me. “Some people don’t look at it as racism, but when you say ’la raza,’ you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won’t stop there. Today it’s anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro, and the day after it will be anti-Filipino, anti-Puerto Rican. And then it will be anti-poor-Mexican, and anti-darker-skinned Mexican. … La raza is a very dangerous concept. I speak very strongly against it among the chicanos.”
“That’s one of the reasons he is so upset about la raza. The same Mexicans that ten years ago were talking about themselves as Spaniards are coming on real strong these days as Mexicans. Everyone should be proud of what they are, of course, but race is only skin-deep. It’s phony and it comes out of frustration; the la raza people are not secure. They look upon Cesar as their ‘dumb Mexican’ leader; he’s become their saint. But he doesn’t want any part of it. He said to me just the other day, ‘Can’t they understand that that’s just the way Hitler started?’ A few months ago the Ford Foundation funded a la raza group and Cesar really told them off. The foundation liked the outfit’s sense of pride or something, and Cesar tried to explain to them what the origin of the word was, that it’s related to Hitler’s concept.”
In other words, Cesar Chavez would have agreed that the Democrats keynote speaker (2012 DNC), Julian Castros, was a racist and would — I assume — speak out against this! FrontPage Magazine as well talks about Chavez’s faith and his views that were opposite of modern liberalism/the Democrat Party:
…. But Chavez’s faith, more than his ethnicity or his labor affiliations, informed his activism. Inspired by Christ’s example, Chavez became famous through fasting (and through boycotts of grapes). He held religious masses at the California state capitol in Sacramento. He even once used his union connections to keep a plane grounded so that he could make his flight to see the pope. Chavez told his biographer in the mid 1970s that “my need for religion has deepened. Today I don’t think that I could base my will to struggle on cold economics or on some political doctrine. I don’t think there would be enough to sustain me. For me the base must be faith.”
Fittingly, UFW’s headquarters bears a religious name. The president referred to Chavez’s Central Valley sanctuary as “La Paz.” Its full name is Nuestra Señora Reina de La Paz—Our Lady Queen of Peace. In making a national monument of a religious retreat named in honor of Jesus’s mother, the president risks irritating one constituency as he courts another. Surely the American Civil Liberties Union can’t be thrilled with a mystical Catholic, and his outpost named for Mary, receiving official recognition from the U.S. government.
Alas, there is an election to win. Disrupting the president’s fragile coalition over principles normally fiercely fought for on matters as unobtrusive as nondenominational graduation prayers and Christmastime nativity scenes just won’t do when it comes to nationalizing a religious leader’s religious retreat named for a religious saint. Here, activists, normally incapable of looking the other way, mute their objections.
“Cesar feels that liberals are liberal right up to the steps of the Catholic church,” explained Dorothy Huerta, co-founder of the UFW, during Chavez’s ’70s heyday. “Guys can be liberal about homosexuality, about dope, about capital punishment, about everything but the Catholic church. There the liberalism ends.”
However, I doubt Google knows this about Chavez, and buys into the Huffington Post or modern liberal interpretation of Chavez, like they do the Vietnam War (the Cold War), Reagan’s time in office, and the like.
H.G. Wells
“I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”
In order to understand the differing views between Google and Bing, one has to realize that because religion is less practiced on the left, something has to take its place:
You cannot understand the Left if you do not understand that leftism is a religion. It is not God-based (some left-wing Christians’ and Jews’ claims notwithstanding), but otherwise it has every characteristic of a religion. The most blatant of those characteristics is dogma. People who believe in leftism have as many dogmas as the most fundamentalist Christian.
One of them is material equality as the preeminent moral goal. Another is the villainy of corporations. The bigger the corporation, the greater the villainy. Thus, instead of the devil, the Left has Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the “military-industrial complex,” and the like. Meanwhile, Big Labor, Big Trial Lawyers, and — of course — Big Government are left-wing angels.
And why is that? Why, to be specific, does the Left fear big corporations but not big government?
The answer is dogma — a belief system that transcends reason. No rational person can deny that big governments have caused almost all the great evils of the last century, arguably the bloodiest in history. Who killed the 20 to 30 million Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago — big government or big business? Hint: There were no private businesses in the Soviet Union. Who deliberately caused 75 million Chinese to starve to death — big government or big business? Hint: See previous hint. Did Coca-Cola kill 5 million Ukrainians? Did Big Oil slaughter a quarter of the Cambodian population? Would there have been a Holocaust without the huge Nazi state?
Whatever bad things big corporations have done is dwarfed by the monstrous crimes — the mass enslavement of people, the deprivation of the most basic human rights, not to mention the mass murder and torture and genocide — committed by big governments.
How can anyone who thinks rationally believe that big corporations rather than big governments pose the greatest threat to humanity? The answer is that it takes a mind distorted by leftist dogma. If there is another explanation, I do not know what it is.
Ethnically European High school kids encouraged to wear special symbols of identification in public schools
From EAGNews.org, “Wis. education officials want students to wear ‘white privilege’ wristbands”:
an Americorps operation called VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) – may go a bit overboard by encouraging white students to wear a white wristband “as a reminder about your (white) privilege.”
Geared towards high school students, the program “seeks to build capacity in schools and districts serving low-income families to develop an effective, sustainable, research-based program of family-school-community partnerships,” according to its Facebook page. The webpage also offers a series of suggestions for high schools students to become more racially sensitive. They include:
✪ Wear a white wristband as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.
Gateway Pundit points out some more craziness involved in this program:
The website also offers a series of suggestions for high schools students to become more racially sensitive including the suggestion that white students wear white wristbands to remind them of their white privilege.
Another CRAZY thing I noticed on the Wisconsin Department of Education where the program has its genesis, is this quote by Gloria Steinem:
Lets look at some other “insights” by Gloria:
…Well-known feminist author and co-founder/editor of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem, said the following about feminisms end game: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole #@*! patriarch!”
[….]
Alternatively, Gloria Steinem declared: “By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.”
[….]
Marilyn French, feminist author calls all men rapists: “All men are rapists and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.”
Let us allow Gloria Steinen, feminist extraordinaire, to set the stage with the following praises about her contemporary, Andrea Dworkin, “In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.” Why preface Andrea Dworkin? Because she has this to say about men in general: “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.”
Which is why feminist Tammy Bruce says that what “Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland and all the rest have presented to you over the last [30-years] years has not been feminist theory.” I might add that what they have offered is radicalism in freedoms clothing.
As coverage of last week’s flare-up between Bob Woodward and the White House devolved into the granular parsing of words and implications and extrapolations and possible intent, the larger point was roundly missed: the increasing pressure that White House correspondents feel when dealing with the Obama administration — to follow their narrative, to be properly deferential (!), to react to push-back by politely sitting down and shutting up.
“The whole Woodward thing doesn’t surprise me at all,” says David Brody, chief political correspondent for CBN News. “I can tell you categorically that there’s always been, right from the get-go of this administration, an overzealous sensitivity to any push-back from any media outlet.”
A brief recap: After the Washington Post ran a Woodward op-ed in which he claimed that the administration was “moving the goalposts” on the eve of the potential sequester, the veteran journalist went on to assert that economic adviser Gene Sperling said, in an e-mail, “I think you will regret staking out this claim.”
While Woodward spent a lot of the week on cable news going back and forth on whether that was a threat, few reporters, if any, asked why a high-level administration official spent so much time — Sperling admittedly shouted at Woodward during a 30-minute phone call, followed by that e-mail — attempting to control an opinion expressed in a newspaper.
The answer, say former and current White House correspondents, is simple: This administration is more skilled and disciplined than any other in controlling the narrative, using social media to circumnavigate the press. On the flip side, our YouTube culture means even the slightest gaffe can be devastating, and so you have an army of aides and staffers helicoptering over reporters.
Finally, this week, reporters are pushing back. Even Jonathan Alter — who frequently appears on the Obama-friendly MSNBC — came forward to say he, too, had been treated horribly by the administration for writing something they didn’t like.
“There is a kind of threatening tone that, from time to time — not all the time — comes out of these guys,” Alter said this week. During the 2008 campaign swing through Berlin, Alter said that future White House press secretary Robert Gibbs disinvited him from a dinner between Obama and the press corps over it.
“I was told ‘Don’t come,’ in a fairly abusive e-mail,” he said. “[It] made what Gene Sperling wrote [to Woodward] look like patty-cake.”
“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c–t, a–hole.” He complained and was told the matter would be investigated: “They were hemming and hawing, saying, ‘We’ll look into it.’ Nothing happened.”
I know that this does not need repeating, but if this were a Republican administration, the media would be burning the Commander-in-Chief at the stake. Instead, these tools continue to polish his knob in an advanced case of Stockholm Syndrome. They sacrifice their integrity, their objectivity, and their principles for an enemy administration whose collectivist goals they share.
Any decent American journalist would have run the emails referred to in this article on the front page. But instead, they cover for the Stalinist tactics of the thug in the White House.
Ron Suskind lifted the curtain back a bit in 2011 with his bookConfidence Men, which ABC reported on then:
President Obama, who rose to power on a message of inclusion and equality, came under fire this week when an author quoted female members of his administration as saying the White House was a sexist and “hostile” work environment.
Since excerpts leaked from the book “Confidence Men,” journalist Ron Suskind’s take on how the Obama administration handled the financial crisis, Anita Dunn, former White House communications director, and Christina Romer, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, have denied the substance of their remarks and said they were misquoted.
“I felt like a piece of meat,” Romer was quoted in the book as saying of one meeting with Larry Summers, former chairman of the National Economic Council, complaining she was “boxed out” of the discussion.
According to the Washington Post, Dunn says in the book: “This place would be in court for a hostile workplace because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”
The two women seemed to briefly open a window on the White House, giving a rare glimpse inside a tightly messaged administration, only to quickly close it. Accusations, however, that Obama favors male staffers have dogged him since his election when reporters noticed he spent critical face time on the basketball court and the golf course exclusively with men.
Here’s one of the emails to Bob Woodward from Gene Sperling, via the Politico:
From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb. 22, 2013
Bob:
I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall — but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here.
But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)
I agree there are more than one side to our first disagreement, but again think this latter issue is diffferent. Not out to argue and argue on this latter point. Just my sincere advice. Your call obviously.
My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.
WASHINGTON — Bob Woodward isn’t the only person who’s received threats for airing the Obama administration’s dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days – even former senior members of the Clinton administration.
A day after Woodward’s claim that a senior White House official had told him he would “regret” writing a column criticizing President Obama’s stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL’s Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington Times.
Davis told WMAL that his editor, John Solomon, “received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn’t like some of my columns, even though I’m a supporter of Obama. I couldn’t imagine why this call was made.” Davis says the Obama aide told Solomon, “that if he continued to run my columns, he would lose, or his reporters would lose their White House credentials.”….
…but on social matters she has also been vehemently leftist and occasionally odd. “It’s unconscionable to breed, with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries,” Judd told the Sunday Mail in 2006 (this from a woman who put up for sale her second home in Scotland earlier this year for about $5.9 million).
Comparing(Taken Down, can be found also at HotAirand here at Weasel Zippers) mountaintop removal to the Rwandan genocide:
President Clinton has repeatedly said doing nothing during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is the single greatest regret of the Presidency. Yet here at home, there is full blown environmental genocide and collapse happening, and we are doing nothing. Naturally, I accept that I set myself up for ridicule for using such strong terms, or perhaps outrage from human victims of slaughter.
Janette Jude, a 6th grade language arts teacher in Kentucky, furiously denounced Judd in 2010: “I recently listened to your luncheon speech on press.org and I must say I was appalled by your words.”
Lambasting fathers for giving away daughters at weddings:
To this day, a common vestige of male dominion over a woman’s reproductive status is her father ‘giving’ away her away to her husband at their wedding, and the ongoing practice of women giving up their last names in order to assume the name of their husband’s families, into which they have effectively been traded.
Tweeting that the coal industry should be eliminated: “The era of coal plant is over, unacceptable.”
Eviscerating Christianity for perpetuating “male power”:
Patriarchal religions, of which Christianity is one, gives us a God that is like a man, a God presented and discussed exclusively in male imagery, which legitimizes and seals male power. It is the intention to dominate, even if the intention to dominate is nowhere visible.
Comparing George W. Bush to a historic barbarian based on social issues:
Throughout history, men have tried to control the means of reproduction, which means trying to control woman. This president is a modern day Attila the Hun.
Blaming society’s problems throughout history on… men:
I’d like to propose that the society in which we live is, in fact, extremist and radical. It is so skewed, massively out of balance; the result of one sex ruling and objectifying another for at least the last millennia.
