Black Sabbath Gets It

This is Heaven and Hell, but Sabbath wrote it.

Site Redirect

This site is to be redirected and merged with Point/Counterpoint: http://ptvscpt.blogspot.com/

It will remain open for archiving and linking purposes.

Thank you, The Management

The Commie Castro Regime is for Racial Equality? The Real Story of Cuba

Congressional Black Caucus Smitten With Castro

By Humberto Fontova, Friday, April 10, 2009

Last week the Stalinist regime that jailed and tortured the longest suffering black political prisoner in modern history (Eusebio Penalver) rolled out the red carpet for 6 smitten members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus. All of these U.S. legislators met with “President” Raul Castro while a lucky three secured back-stage passes to meet Fidel himself.

Not since Ann Margaret’s reaction to Conrad Birdie’s kiss has anything been recorded to match these U.S. legislators’ reaction to these meetings.

“He looked directly into my eyes!”gasped Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.) “and then he asked: how can we help President Obama? Fidel Castro really wants President Obama to succeed."(no doubt!)

“It was quite a moment to behold!” hyperventilated Rep. Barbara Lee. (D-CA) “Fidel Castro was very engaging and very energetic.”

“He’s one of the most amazing human beings I’ve ever met!” gushed Emanuel Cleaver(D-Mo)

“Raul Castro was a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man,” according to Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) “someone who I would favor as a neighbor. It was almost like visiting an old friend,” (a Freudian slip, perhaps? Bobby Rush, after all, was a card-carrying Black Panther who did prison time)

Lest we forget: these black U.S. legislators were raving about a Castro regime that in its first three years jailed more political prisoners and executed more people per capita than Stalin's regime; and Hitler's in its first six years. [Edited]

“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent… We’re going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: NOTHING!"(Ernesto “Che” Guevara.)

Che was much too modest. “Nothing”is not exactly accurate for Castroite treatment of Cuba’s blacks. In fact, these lily-white European soldier’s sons (Fidel and Raul) forcibly overthrew a Cuban government where Cuban Blacks served as President of the Senate, Minister of Agriculture, Chief of Army, and Head of State (Fulgencio Batista), a grandson of slaves who was born in a palm-roofed shack. Not that you’ll learn any of this from the liberals’ exclusive educational source on pre-Castro Cuba: Godfather II.

Today the prison population in Stalinist/Apartheid Cuba is 90 percent black while only 9 percent of the ruling Stalinist party is black. As these Black legislators cavorted in Cuba, a Black Cuban anti-communist named Antunez, who suffered 17 years in Castro’s dungeons (essentially for quoting Martin Luther King and the UN Declaration of Human Rights in a public square), was on a hunger strike against Castroism. I will quote his sister from a samizdat smuggled out of Cuba last year while he was still in prison:

“The Cuban government tries to fool the world with siren songs depicting racial equality in our country. But it is all a farce, as I and my family can attest, having suffered from the systematic racism directed at us by Castro’s regime. My brother suffers the scourge of racial hatred every day. The beatings are always accompanied by racial epithets. They set dogs on him. They deny him medical attention. They kept him from attending his mother’s funeral.”

“The racist mentality is so ingrained among Cuba’s agents of repression that when mixed race groups are stopped on the street, only the blacks are asked for their identification papers.The only think I have to thank the Cuban revolution for,” she quoted her brother, “is for restoring the yoke of slavery that my ancestors lived under.”

Needless to say, Antunez and his family were “overlooked” during the CBC visit to Cuba, as was the black Cuban doctor, who Amnesty International highlights as a Prisoner of Conscience, who President Bush honored (in absentia) with the U.S. Congressional Medal of Freedom last year, and who presently suffers a sentence of 25 years in Castro’s torture chambers, Dr Elias Biscet. This man’s crimes consist essentially of saying things in Cuban public about Castro similar to what Nancy Pelosi, John Stewart and Bill Maher say on major networks about former President Bush.

Dr Biscet also denounced the Castro regime’s policy of forced abortions. This latter “crime” goes a long way towards explaining why you’ve never heard of him (and wont) in the MSM.

“I’m convinced Raul Castro wants a normal relationship with the United States,” said Rep. Barbara Lee after finally catching her breath this week. Rep Lee assures us that her Stalinist Cuban hosts “do want dialogue. They do want talks. They do want normal relations.”

Fine, and so did South African president Pik Botha in 1986. So I will now quote Rep. Lee’s very Congressional Black Caucus regarding “normal relations” between the U.S. and segregationist South Africa.

“The U.S. has held ideals of freedom for more than 200 years and we should not tolerate their abrogation by any other country!’ Thundered CBC founder Charles Rangel in 1986. “In any business dealings with (South Africa)we become tainted by association. We urge a policy of comprehensive sanctions. Of total disinvestment, a complete ban on imports and exports,” implored CBC co-founder Ron Dellums...”in other words I urge adoption of a policy that demonstrates our total abhorrence of apartheid!”

But, given the Congressional Black Caucus’ recent pronouncements, no abhorrence of Stalinism (total or even partial) seems to figure in their program?

Granted, major differences abound between Stalinist Cuba and the late segregationist South Africa. The segregationists, for instance, jailed at most 5000 political prisoners (the Castroites 300,000.) The segregationists also never tried to nuke the U.S., never tortured and murdered U.S. citizens, never stole $2 billion from U.S. stockholders at Soviet gunpoint, never trained and financed the world’s most murderous terrorist groups.

Indeed apartheid South Africa tried to hold the line against Soviet imperialism in southern Africa. The Congressional Black Caucus (and liberals in general) will never forgive them for that.

Interestingly, last week Castro’s Congressional Black Caucus guests did meet with the families of some prisoners. But these prisoners were serving time in U.S. prisons, after conviction by free and independent judiciaries—quite unlike Castro’s prisoners who to this day are convicted based on Che Guevara’s famous legal dictum: “judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. We prosecute and execute from revolutionary conviction!”

Some background: On September 14, 1998, the FBI uncovered a Castro spy ring in Miami and arrested ten of them. Four others managed to scoot back to Cuba. These became known as the “Wasp Network,” or “The Cuban Five” in Castroite parlance.

According to the FBI’s affidavit, these Castro agents were engaged in, among other acts:

*Gathering intelligence against the Boca Chica Air Naval Station in Key West, the McDill Air Force Base in Tampa and the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Homestead, Florida.

*Compiling the names, home addresses and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers, along with those of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica.

*Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.

*Sending letter bombs to Cuban-Americans.

*Spying on McDill Air Force Base, the U.S. armed forces’ worldwide headquarters for fighting “low-intensity” conflicts.

*Locating entry points into Florida for smuggling explosive material.

These Castro agents also infiltrated the Cuban-exile group Brothers to the Rescue, who flew unarmed planes to rescue Cuban rafters in the Florida straits. From these spies, Castro got the flight plan for one of their flights and sent up MIGS to shoot down their planes and murder four of them

Three of these men were U.S. citizens, the other a legal U.S.resident.

“I will ask President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and First Lady Michelle Obama for the judicial process against the five Cuban men (the above-mentioned Castroite spies) to be reconsidered,” promised Rep. Laura Richardson to her beaming hosts and these spies families’ while in Havana last week.

Apparently it was too much to ask Rep. Richardson to ask her Stalinist hosts if the “judicial process” responsible for the highest political incarceration rate of the century might also be "reconsidered.”

ZING!

The Tyranny of the Least and the Dumbest

Socialism—as the logical conclusion of the tyranny of the least and the dumbest, i.e., those who are superficial, envious, and three-quarters actors-is indeed entailed by “modern ideas” and their latent anarchism; but in the tepid air of democratic well-being the capacity to reach conclusions, or to finish, weakens. One follows —but one no longer sees what follows. Therefore socialism is on the whole a hopeless and sour affair; and nothing offers a more amusing spectacle than the contrast between the poisonous and desperate faces cut by today’s socialists—and to what wretched and pinched feelings their style bears witness!—and the harmless lambs’ happiness of their hopes and desiderata. Nevertheless, in many places in Europe they may yet bring off occasional coups and attacks: there will be deep “rumblings” in the stomach of the next century, and the Paris commune, which has its apologists and advocates in Germany, too, was perhaps no more than a minor indigestion compared to what is coming. But there will always be too many who have possessions for socialism to signify more than an attack of sickness—and those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: “one must possess something in order to be something.” But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, “one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more—growth, in one word—that is life itself. In the doctrine of socialism there is hidden, rather badly, a “will to negate life"; the human beings or races that think up such a doctrine must be bungled. Indeed, I should wish that a few great experiments might prove that in a socialist society life negates itself, cuts off its own roots. The earth is large enough and man still sufficiently unexhausted; hence such a practical instruction and demonstratio ad absurdum would not strike me as undesirable, even if it were gained and paid for with a tremendous expenditure of human lives. In any case, even as a restless mole under the soil of a society that wallows in stupidity, socialism will be able to be something useful and therapeutic: it delays “peace on earth” and the total mollification of the democratic herd animal; it forces the Europeans to retain spirit, namely cunning and cautious care, not to abjure manly and warlike virtues altogether, and to retain some remnant of spirit, of clarity, sobriety, and coldness of the spirit- it protects Europe for the time being from the marasmus femininus that threatens it.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the Will to Power

Enough is Enough: "Climate Change" is Oxymoronic

My normal reaction to a "news" story that bears are dying (as they do sometimes), from hunters and "climate change" no less, is to laugh it off or shrug it off. But as the day draws nearer when the libs start handing us a bill for something nature does on its own, I am not so predisposed to chuckle. Recently, Energy Secretary Steven Chu "informed" Caribbean nations that soon their nations would be underwater if "we" did not act on "man-made" climate change. The madness ensuing from such unsubstantiated clap-trap ranges from "cow flatulence" bags, to eating less can save the planet, to "cap and trade" carbon taxes that may harm developing as well as developed nations. When looking at the evidence with an open skeptical mind, as opposed to simply drinking the Kool-aid of government-funded bureaucrats, the very idea that libs can come up with an idea like "climate change," indoctrinate our schoolchildren into it, and then bill us for it causes me great concern.

"Climate" presupposes change, Dr. Sociobiology, Phd. And among the factors involved in your oxymoronic term of "climate change" are: the radiation of the sun, itself affected by sunspot patterns that are a reflection of the magnetic depressions that come from fluctuations in the hydrogen fusion cycle; solar flares; solar winds; cosmic rays; in turn affecting cloud formation; this in turn affects the amount of surface radiation; this affects solar trapping; and the radiation exposure on the earth varying due to, season, tilt, and position, this often modeled by Milankovitch rhythms; furthermore, you have the amount of greenhouse gases, which are not only CO2, in fact, this is less than 1% of the so-called "greenhouse" effect; you have water vapor; CH3 and other volcanic gases; you have the matter of CO2 solubility in the oceans and seas, which rises with a warming cycle; you have significantly increased vegetation growth in response to higher CO2 levels (this is FACT, not speculation); you have evidence that so-called "global warming" is not global, and not warming; increasing Antarctic ice mass; the fact that arctic ice may be thinning in part due to oceanic geothermal emissions; you have satellite data that shows that we have not been in a "warming" pattern since 1998, and the "contradicting" data being land-based and thus, subjected to urban heat-trapping (in concrete, e.g.), and the inconvenient fact that increasing surface temperatures are theoretically irrelevant for greenhouse effect models when upper atmosphere temperatures (particularly the troposphere) are relatively cooler; and then you have the matter that many planets outside of the earth have been warming also fairly recently; in regards to Venus, the favorite of the "greenhouse effect" apocalyptos, the atmosphere on that planet is over 90 times as dense as ours, and thus is a poor model for the earth to compare to; take all of this into consideration and then we can assess the impact of man living on the earth, which turns out to be miniscule in comparison to the effect of natural forces. As far as the evidence presented to the contrary by the "climate change" shills, we must take into consideration that the past few winters have seen record low temperatures and snowfall in many regions of the world and that weather and climactic computer models have failed repeatedly to explain these cold spells. And then we have the spurious charge by government and grant-funded "scientists" (many of them not climatologists) that those who deny that manmade climate change is "real" are (talk about the pot calling the kettle black) corporate-funded hacks or "heretics" (the "heretics'"counter-argument being, actually, that climate change would exist without man, and that man's effect on the environment is demonstrably insignificant).

One could also point out past phony alarmism by the climate "science" community such as Paul Erlich's "The Population Bomb," the global cooling prognosis by Newsweek in the early 1970s, and Rachel Carson's disastrous "Silent Spring"; more recently, we could look at "killer bees," genetically modified foods (which justified EU trade barriers for U.S. produce) and the UN's transparent and fabricated alarmism over avian flu.

Then again, the "climate change" aka "global warming" hype has never been about science but about economics and power. That anyone with any education could be taken in by such a racket, that is, someone who doesn't stand to directly gain from it, is beyond me. But that many blindly follow the left's lead is all a result of the modern liberals' "war on reason." Liberals are convinced that the average person does not even possess the faculty to reason (witness Janeane Garofalo's risible "limbic brain" slurs of the right, something I thought I'd never hear from a knee-jerk, mamby-pamby leftist). Modern liberals display the anti-thesis of the humility needed to approach truth, as beautifully laid out in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. These liberals do not believe in truth, and pose that facts are negotiable, evidence is spurious unless it fits their template for power and control, and reason is prostrate. That the left, especially Algore, would dare to hijack the mantle of science and reason, shows their utter contempt for truth and the average reasonably educated citizen.

These leftists are not jokers, they are traitors. They are power-hungry, and will not be sated until we are all their tax slaves. They have nothing but contempt for the truth and for reasoned discourse. They are dangerous and must be vehemently exposed for the lying, contemptible charlatans that they are.

Obama's Message to the Canine Minority

A Tribute

The Red Thread: Obama, Chavez and Gramsci

Obama and Chavez's hand-jive at the Summit of the America(s) on April 18th, 2009 triggered a cascade of stunned analyses on the right. Yet the "extremist" right (defined de facto as anyone who disagrees with Obama's policies) need not be so surprised; the red thread was there all along, right in front of us, and his name is Antonio Gramsci.

Antonio who? Yes, I know, he's got one of those weird Italian names, and a reference to him is a little too obscure in everyday conversation to legitimate a "conspiracy theory." Yet there seems to be a shroud of silence surrounding his name; but I assure you it is out there, and he has been referenced by none other than Obama's new pal Hugo Chavez.

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Communist revolutionary who wrote a somewhat famous diary termed the Prison Notebooks and is actually the coiner of the term "hegemony"; which is itself nearly ubiquitous in modern international relations literature, and whose meaning is something akin to "domination." Gramsci poses that there is a cultural superstructure and an economic base, the state itself being the site of class struggle. His program for realizing the failed Leninist dream of implementing a socialist classless world by infiltrating and subverting advanced Western countries was to take over their cultural spheres and the channels of upward mobility for the middle class; meanwhile, ever exerting downward economic pressure on the upper classes through progressive income taxes, meanwhile redistributing wealth and agitating the lower and lower-middle classes.

One of the best examples of how half-baked leftist pseudo-intellectuals use Gramsci can be appreciated by reading a university memorandum on Chavez and the 1970s leftist Nicos Poulantzas, which explicitly ties Gramsci to Hugo Chavez. It was while searching for Hugo Chavez' quotes of Gramsci that I ran across this letter. It clearly demonstrates the irrationality, delusion and smug self-confidence of the left.

A deconstruction of a few choice passages may help illuminate just exactly what these leftists believe:

It is a masterly response to Venezuelan's situation, in which US attempts at destabilisation through financial support for colour (counter)-revolution-style "civil society" are obviously ongoing, and the "tyrannical, totalitarian" state they are trying to overthrow is one which is beginning to take the steps to empower the people to liberate themselves from the "civil society" (in Marx's sense) of the oligarchy, dominated by the US.

The leftist here implies that "civil society" is simply a cultural sphere, which rich "capitalists" dominate to maintain the status quo of upper class exploitation of the poorer lower classes. Yet there is a rich vein of civil society literature, going back to Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and George Hegel, which completely refutes this interpretation. Hegel's formulation of civil society in Philosophy of Right is perhaps one of the most famous: It defines civil society as a public sphere between the Family and the State. Civil society in Hegel is the embodiment of the satisfaction of the bourgeois class's needs in Geselleschaft, as opposed to the basis of the Old World social order in Gemeinschaft.

Yet to those who see the natural propensity of man to exchange goods (and indeed the central ordering principle of private property in a "capitalist system") as a global conspiracy, this interpretation fails to persuade.

There is also the left's "misinterpretation" of a fiat currency issuing central bank as a "capitalist" organ.

The separation of ever-larger segments of the state from formal democratic accountability which culminated in the 1980s/90s monetarist enshrinement of central banks as supposedly impartial arbiters of monetary policy free from political interference (aka democratic accountability) meant that capturing power means a lot more than simply achieving a majority in the legislature, or even capturing the executive...

Yet a legally-sanctioned central banking system issuing currency backed only by the state's power to tax (or alternatively, by social debt) is clearly an instrument of state policy, and indeed represents a transitional stage to communism, as expressed by Marx's 10 planks in his Communist Manifesto.

A few central ideas of Gramscian theory may provide further elucidation of the thinking and behavior of the left:

1. War of position and maneuver. As Lipsitz briefly encapsulates the idea, "(Antonio Gramsci) described a 'war of position' where aggrieved populations seek to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant ideology, rather than just a 'war of maneuver' aimed at seizing state power."
2. State frames the:

• Acceptable
• Desirable
• Possible

As one can deduce, the implications of the latter is that the state constrains "the possible" through law and order, which is merely a reflection of "class interests." This interpretation, one consistent with other neomarxist schools such as the Frankfurt School, as well as the thinking of Noam Chomsky, leads directly to conflation in an adherent's mind between reality and the state, that is, "capitalist oppression." The need to resolve the cognitive dissonance and the mental warfare that arises from the disavowal of "reality," the myth of a rationality that perceives this reality, and the willful ignorance of history's lessons, is reconciled through "post-modernism" and even further through "post-structuralism" deteriorating steadily into solipsism. This disbelief in reality also leads directly to sophistry and a continual assault on language as the "terrain of the mind" in the left's class warfare.

So what does all of this have to do with Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama?

Referring again to the university memorandum, the following was revealed in an article about a demonstration that took place in Venezuela in 2007:

As several hundred thousand Chavez supporters rallied in Venezuela's largest avenue on Saturday, President Chavez rejected all international interference with his decision not to renew a television station's broadcast license. Referring to the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, Chavez also spoke at length about how private media maintains a cultural hegemony that must be broken.

"Go to hell, representatives of the global oligarchy, we are a free country!" said Chavez to wild applause, once marchers reached the Avenida Bolivar in the center of Caracas.

The irony here is that Chavez is clearly referring to his own "freedom" to rule unchecked by the market or the ideas and wishes of the Venezuelan people in a spontaneously ordering, that is, a truly free civil society. Chavez sees "freedom" as the complete totalitarian integration of his rule and the regulation of society by controlling the means of production. Of course, the dirty little secret of Marxism is that a people could never themselves control the means of production uncoordinated by "interest" as this would lead to instant anarchy, shortages, and economic implosion. Ironically, the left's "totalitarian" conclusion of integrating the state with society comes from reading Hegel, who has been appropriated by a segment of the radical left, whose ideology is often referred to as "Left Hegelianism." Thus Chavez' war on the market necessitates ever greater regulation and control of people at the core, that is, at the life level of a people. If you don't obey, you starve.

Even more directly to the point, a sympathetic article entitled "Antonio Gramsci as Key for Understanding Events in Venezuela" had the following to say about Chavez:

The thought of the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci is fundamental,according to Chavez, for making sense of what is happening in Venezuela today. "I want to refer to the thought of Gramsci, to use his ideas, using the light of his thought, every day we understand better what is happening here today in Venezuela."

There cannot be an anymore blatant articulation of the heavy influence of Gramsci's thinking on Hugo Chavez'. For an example of Gramscian thought in action (I recommend reading the entire article), again I quote Chavez:

The conflict in Venezuela can thus be understood as one between the institutions of the state, which used to be controlled by this civil society, but no longer is, and the old civil society. To this old civil society, according to Gramsci, belong the Catholic Church hierarchy, the mass media, and the education system as the principal institutions. The dominant classes use these institutions to disseminate their ideologies, explained Chavez.

This clearly explains Obama's affinity with Hugo Chavez, whose modus operandi is eerily similar to his own. Obama's attacks on, and subversion of the church (his "cling to guns and religion" quote; his support of a church that was anti-American; and his Stalinist erasure of a figure of Jesus from a picture taken at Georgetown University, e.g.); the media obeisance and hero worship of Obama (as detailed in Bernie Goldberg's A Slobbering Love Affair and by organizations like Newsbusters); and the complete infiltration and domination of the universities by radical leftists.

Who is the hero of whom?

Here are just a few links to university and education center works and correspondence that refer to Antonio Gramsci by name, in a laudatory, tacitly approving or accepting manner (there are around 750,000 hits for "Gramsci" and "education"):

• "COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY" (Arizona State University; University of California-Los Angeles)
• University of Notre Dame (sponsored Italian "non-profit" organization International Gramsci Society)
  
• University of California-Berkeley (and University of California-Santa Cruz; University of Nottingham; University of Kentucky; The New School; ; Meiji University; IIRE in Amsterdam)
  
• Harvard University
• Michigan State University
• Syracuse University
  
• University of Colorado at Denver
  
• Montclair State University
• Emory University
• City College of San Francisco
  
• George Mason University
• The International Institute for Research in Education
  
• The University of Utah
• University of Nevada-Las Vegas
• Brigham Young University
  
• McMaster University (Ontario, Canada)
• The University of Winnipeg
• University of Wollongong (Australia)
• University of Southampton (U.K.)
• University College London
• The University of Nottingham
• University of Sussex
  
• University of Wales, Absterwyth
  
• University of Huddersfield (U.K.)
  
• University of Malta
• University of Seoul
  

Clearly the "hegemony" of the left is nearly complete in Western education and the media, which is why the left has become more brazen and more vicious in its hatred of the right, centering in on personalities like Rush Limbaugh and media organizations like Fox News. Yet the left's constructed "false consciousness" has not been enough to dispel reality in the minds of the "Lockean" heartland (to borrow a felicitous phrase from a Gramscian) as the recent "tea parties" demonstrated, and the scores more who displayed their sympathy with the "right-wing extremists."

The left's paranoiac death cult has alarmed rational citizens far and wide. Indeed, the left disavows that there is any such thing as "rational" or an "individual" citizen, so encompassing is its totalitarian ideology. The implications of the realization of their worldview is a return to power in the West of the once-vanquished absolutist state, a consequence of which the soon-to-be-vanquished useful idiots on the left may live to find out personally, like their communist comrades Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky and Bukharin.

[More Gramsci links]

IMF Admits Credit Boom Fueled Conditions for Worldwide Depression

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph reports that the IMF has issued a "warning" that current world economic conditions parallel those of the Great Depression. The IMF then goes on to state that this time a depression would be worse because effects of the "credit boom" in the United States have gone global.

Now, the IMF apparently argues that this "credit boom" was beamed in from outerspace, as they do not cite the irrefutable prime cause of the credit boom - a progressive slashing of interest rates by the central banks of the world; most importantly, in the U.S. beginning with the Greenspan Fed of 1987.

To quote the news article:

The IMF said the US is at the epicentre of this crisis just as it was in the Depression, setting the two episodes apart from normal downturns. However, the risks are greater this time. "While the credit boom in the 1920s was largely spec­ific to the US, the boom during 2004-2007 was global, with increased leverage and risk-taking in advanced economies and many emerging economies. Levels of integration are now much higher than during the inter-war period, so US financial shocks have a larger impact," it said.

Now if only the IMF had the sense to develop the implications of their report further and conclude with the Austrian argument as to how this"crisis" can be (very painfully) corrected and avoided in the future (return to sound money that cannot be inflated at will by central banks). Instead we get more of the same proposals by the statists: That what we need is more centralization, more credit, more economic malinvestment. Thus they not only pour gasoline on top of the fire, like many argue; they start the fire, pour gasoline on top and then point, "The free market did it."

I can only imagine an Austrian economist going up to the IMF and the Fed, briefly looking over the pages and pages of documents, looking over the computer files, nodding his head, uh-huh uh-huh, scribbling down a few notes..."Got it! Got it! There it is...Bernie here's been running his Keynesian economic stimulus equations using 1970s-era programming, which does not account for the contradictory phenomena of concurrent economic stagnation and inflation. You'll find if you run these numbers again, correcting for the government intervention that leads to malinvestment and the maldistribution of resources, and reprogram in the algorithm using a little method we like to call 'the right way' - the market will correct itself. And...voila! We get incremental touchdown instead of a market crash."

An Argument for Texas' Right to Secession

In a fascinating poll, Rasmussen is reporting that 31% of Texans believe they have a right to secede, but certainly there is no question that they do have such a right as premised by the United States' "right" to secede from Britain.

As the Declaration of Independence clearly stipulates:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

A list of offenses by the federal government of the United States against "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," all non-negotiable rights, would be at least as lengthy and as grievous as the colonies' against Great Britain, if not more so. If I were making a case for the state of Texas, these might include:

Unchecked federal spending;
Unapportioned and progressive taxation on labor;
Double and sometimes triple taxation - including "income," subsidiary taxes, and death taxes;
The complete dismissal of the concerns of Americans, such as ignoring the offense of illegal immigration, which under the current system directly costs Americans the fruits of their labor;
The unopposed deterioration of U.S. sovereignty through world bodies, and the threat of future integration into schemes of world governance, such as the requirement of "cap and trade" taxes on carbon emissions to pay for the fiction of manmade global warming;
The manipulative policies of the secretive central bank, which destroys savings through an intentional and unabated inflationary policy, and which has never been audited by the Congress, granted such right by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913;
The proven surveillance of peaceful Americans by the various security and intelligence agencies;
The political indoctrination of students under the unduly centralized education system;
The judicial activism of the courts;
The overregulation of public and private life through an opaque and overly complex body of laws;
The general obstruction of commerce, industry and trade through regulation;
More particularly, the support of monopolies that further the cause of federal government control, and the interference in state and local business, for example, the forbidding of petrochemical production and manufacturing, which directly undermines and threatens national security;
The spending of American wealth on European and Asian security, whose burden can and rightly should be borne by the citizens of those nations whose interests are most directly involved;
To sum, the descent of the political system into an aristocratic, kleptocratic tyranny, supported by a constituency of dependent citizens, whose direct interests are to wither away the Constitutional government that is a guarantor of the United States' security, prosperity and guarded liberty;
And in due consideration of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee the rights of the people, and the states, respectively, unless otherwise stipulated;
That therefore under due consideration given to the legislature, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government of the United States;
Which, if neglecting to redress the just and Constitutionally protected grievances of the people of the State of Texas (or otherwise stipulated) as put forth in this document;
We the people of Texas should conclude that we are well within our rights to institute notice of secession to the federal government of the United States (should the train of abuses and usurpations continue forthwith unaddressed).

Texans are well within their rights to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another" if the federal government continues to ignore that this is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." A tyranny of any kind must not be tolerated by freedom-loving people in perpetuity without resistance.

Never seek to use authority where there is question only of reason

Voltaire on reason and authority:

Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to suffer public hatred as the most unjust.

A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office:

"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because they were ignorant."

There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different from that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two councils.

Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree against innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the said faculty being informed by its beadles what an idea is.

In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against the circulation of the blood.

An action was started against innoculation, and parties have been subpoenaed.

At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have three angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost her virginity before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an oak leaf.

In another year was judged the action: Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones, and was decided in the affirmative.

In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes, Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University quarter.

Voltaire on the Nature of Faith

" Eh! how can you believe such folly? "

" I believe it through faith."

" But do you not know quite well that a man who is impotent does not make children?"

" Faith consists," returned Pic, "in believing things because they are impossible; and, further, the honour of your house demands that Lucretia's son shall not pass as the fruit of an incest. You make me believe more incomprehensible mysteries. Have I not to be convinced that a serpent spoke, that since then all men have been damned, that Balaam's she-ass also spoke very eloquently, and that the walls of Jericho fell at the sound of trumpets? " Pic forthwith ran through a litany of all the admirable things he believed.
(…)
Alexander could take a jest. " Let us talk seriously," he said to Prince della Mirandola. "Tell me what merit one can have in telling God that one is persuaded of things of which in fact one cannot be persuaded? Wbat pleasure can that give God? Between ourselves, saying that one believes what is impossible to believe is lying."

Pico della Mirandola made a great sign of the cross. " Eh! Paternal God," he cried, " may your Holiness pardon me, you are not a Christian."

More on the Infamous DHS Report

Federal Lawsuit Filed Against Janet Napolitano Over Homeland Security's Rightwing Extremism Policy
http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=19

----------
ANN ARBOR, MI - The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The lawsuit claims that her Department's "Rightwing Extremism Policy," as reflected in the recently publicized Intelligence Assessment, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," violates the civil liberties of combat veterans as well as American citizens by targeting them for disfavored treatment on account of the political beliefs. Click here to read the Law Center's complaint.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, Gregg Cunningham (President of the pro-life organization Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, Inc (CBR)), and Iraqi War Marine veteran Kevin Murray. The Law Center claims that Napolitano's Department (DHS) has violated the First and Fifth Amendment Constitutional rights of these three plaintiffs by attempting to chill their free speech, expressive association, and equal protection rights. The lawsuit further claims that the Department of Homeland Security encourages law enforcement officers throughout the nation to target and report citizens to federal officials as suspicious rightwing extremists and potential terrorists because of their political beliefs.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center stated, "The Obama Administration has declared war on American patriots and our Constitution. The Report even admits that the Department has no specific information on any plans of violence by so-called 'rightwing extremists.' Rather, what they do have is the expression of political opinions by certain individuals and organizations that oppose the Obama administration's policies, and this expression is protected speech under the First Amendment."

Thompson added, "Janet Napolitano is lying to the American people when she says the Report is not based on ideology or political beliefs. In fact, her report would have the admiration of any current or past dictator in the way it targets political opponents."

The Report specifically mentions the following political beliefs that law enforcement should use to determine whether someone is a "rightwing extremist":

Opposes restrictions on firearms
Opposes lax immigration
Opposes the policies of President Obama regarding immigration, citizenship and the expansion of social programs
Opposes continuation of free trade agreements
Opposes same-sex marriage
Has paranoia of foreign regimes
Fear of Communist regimes
Opposes one world government
Bemoans the decline of U.S. stature in the world.
Upset with loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India
. . . and the list goes on
The Law Center is asking the court to declare that the DHS policy violates the First and Fifth Amendments, to permanently enjoin the Policy and its application to the plaintiffs' speech and other activities, and to award the plaintiffs their reasonable attorney's fees and costs for having to bring the lawsuit.

The Law Center is asking the court to declare that the DHS policy violates the First and Fifth Amendments, to permanently enjoin the Policy and its application to the plaintiffs? speech and other activities, and to award the plaintiffs their reasonable attorney?s fees and costs for having to bring the lawsuit.

Click here to read the Department of Homeland Security?s Report.

The Thomas More Law Center defends and promotes America?s Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. It supports a strong national defense and an independent and sovereign United States of America. The Law Center accomplishes its mission through litigation, education, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. You may reach the Thomas More Law Center at (734) 827-2001 or visit our website at www.thomasmore.org.

-------------------

Here is the actual report.......
http://wnd.com/images/dhs-rightwing-extremism.pdf

INS-Gadget of the DMZ, of the United States Navy, a man very knowledgeable about the law had the following to add:

Just in case any of you missed it, the public was never meant to know this was written. This was a directive on who to place on watch lists, not a guide for the general public:

(U) LAW ENFORCEMENT INFORMATION NOTICE: This product contains Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES) information. No portion of the LES information should be released to the media, the general public, or over non-secure Internet servers. Release of this information could adversely affect or jeopardize investigative activities.

(U) Warning: This document is UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (U//FOUO). It contains information that may be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552). It is to be controlled, stored, handled, transmitted, distributed, and disposed of in accordance with DHS policy relating to FOUO information and is not to be released to the public, the media, or other personnel who do not have a valid need-to-know without prior approval of an authorized DHS official. State and local homeland security officials may share this document with authorized security personnel without further approval from DHS.

(U) All U.S. person information has been minimized. Should you require the minimized U.S. person information, please contact the DHS/I&A Production Branch at IA.PM@hq.dhs.gov, IA.PM@dhs.sgov.gov, or IA.PM@dhs.ic.gov.

Daily Gut: Rightwing Cranks

by Greg Gutfeld

So just as the other networks predicted, the April 15th tea parties were nothing but cauldrons brimming with rage. Rage against Obama, rage against the government, rage against these troubled times. Take a look for yourself.

(Roll footage of recent New York City anti-Israel protests, with their hate filled signs and chants)
Oh, sorry. Wrong tape. (We must have a new guy in the control room, probably from MSNBC). Anyway, while I was watching the protests, I couldn’t help but feel the anger building among these folks – and I knew it wouldn’t be long before their fury would turn frightening. Like here:

(Roll footage of G20 protesters rioting and smashing bank windows in London)

Whoops. My apologies – we can`t seem to get this right. Anyway, can we actually show some real footage of what went on yesterday?

(roll footage of actual tea parties)

Yep - those look like real extremists.

Actually, they look like people who own riding mowers. Fact is, I couldn’t find one violent incident among hundreds of demonstrations that took place during this synchronized event. Granted, I didn’t look too hard – but seriously: why is that not the story of the day?

I mean, not one person threw a chair through a store window. But that’s probably because that person owns the store. Or at least knows someone who owns the store.

Also, I noticed that most people at the parties were kinda like me – over 40 and overweight – and it’s hard to throw chairs when you get winded throwing a Frisbee.

But no matter – whether or not you care – the MSM would rather have you look at these people not just as jokes – but as cranks. Which is why someone needs to buy Susan Roesgen a mirror.
--------------------------------------
Let's add a few more examples of "moderate" left-wingers.

The following is footage of student "moderates" at UNC-Chapel Hill protesting the existence of immigration laws and the "hateful" idea that the U.S. should actually enforce them.









And plain insipid pseudo-revolutionaries:

Latest ZoNation

CNN "Reporter" Defends Dear Leader, Slams Right-Wing Extremists, FOX

New Assault Weapons Ban for "Latin American Security"?

I found a disturbing news item on Yahoo! as I was checking my email, hoping my next shipment of ammo would make it here before I turn old and gray.

Yep, good 'ol Barry is mulling over reinstating the Clinton-era Assault Weapons Ban. Why? So we can stop the drug wars in Mexico. According to the article, "the United States is the primary source of guns used in Mexico's drug-related killings." Seriously? There are about a dozen banana republics just south of Mexico, which are teeming with communist guerillas who have stockpiles of Russian military hardware from the 1980s--but they'd rather pay retail at Sportsman's Warehouse? If you'll buy that, I've got some wonderful oceanfront property in southern Iowa and a lightly used bridge I'd like to get rid of on the cheap.

The announcement is meant to be a surprise (Surprise, I'm here for your guns!), so few details are available. But Erich Holder (U.S. AG) is begging for a new AWB, and supposedly, Mexican officials swear the last ban "saved lives".

Let me walk you through an American "assault rifle". It is usually black, has a pistol grip, and a 20 or 30 round magazine. It fires an "intermediate" cartridge (more powerful than a handgun, less powerful than a typical hunting rifle), and is lightweight and handy. They are semi-automatic--that is, you pull the trigger and one round is fired. You release the trigger, and pull it again for another shot. They do not "spray lead" as so many leftards claim. Oh, and current MSRP on your average AR-15 in the U.S. is about $1500. Oh, and you'll need a valid photo I.D., a clean criminal record, and a background check before you walk out the door with yours.

Now lets look at some Russky surplus. The AK-47 (*in its pure, military form) is fully automatic, carried 30 rounds, is light and handy. Oh, and when I was in Afghanistan they went for about $80. I bet the prices in Paraguay, Columbia, or Brazil are comparable. You can buy them next to the stand where you buy chickens and unleavened bread. You pay cash, you get a rifle.

Now, you're a Mexican drug lord. Which rifle will you choose to arm your men with?

Obviously, I'd spend the cash to get to Arizona, find a straw purchaser (the ATF term for someone who buys arms for someone else), spend ten times as much money as I need to, then smuggle it back across the border. Not super hard to do, but a lot harder and more expensive than the alternative.

But that doesn't matter. Criminals like the Mexican drug lords will surely obey the law if Dear Leader signs it. Right? I mean it's already illegal for felons to own or purchase firearms, and they never end up in posession of one. Right? I mean, it's not like the government is just trying to disarm the people. They'd never do something like that. You'd be crazy to think so.

Unheeded Warnings in Obama's Presidential Speech

Revisiting Obama's presidential acceptance speech, long after the echoes of the reverb have passed into thin air like so much of the wealth of this and following generations, one finds several epiphanies. We were forewarned.

I recommend parsing the exact transcript of the speech and discovering your own "aha moments." I will try to excise a few of the most concerning.

First the bedrock principle of collectivism, and its blatant disregard and instrumental viewpoint of the individual:

Americans...sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

As Governor Rick Perry of Texas so rudely informed you, there are the Ninth Amendment and Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Ninth states:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Tenth:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Obama poses here that the United States of America is more akin to simply "United America" - that State's Rights and Individual Rights are a figment of his "Imagine-Nation."

Obama's point of view that "l'etat c'est moi" is a blast from the past that explains much of the Louis XIV-style tax-farming and the creature comforts of his Versailles palace; like flying in the greatest pizza chef from hundreds of miles away to cater to his cravings for a snack. Yes, we are to take global warming very seriously with such an attitude about carbon emissions.

Furthermore is his language that erodes the quaint notion that the United States is a sovereign entity.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

This is a twisted solipsistic view of the world that does much to explain Obama's disastrous foreign policy.

The warnings were clear that Obama was mentally unbalanced, but like so much of our culture, the great bulk of Americans were more focused on style than substance.

The Messiah Doesn't Like Competition from Jesus

Barack Obama gave a speech at Georgetown University, a private Catholic university (because this is definitely more urgent than managing the mess of a budget he concocted), and could not bear the burden of him and Jesus being seen in the same picture. Perhaps this was a campaign being run against Jesus for the title of "Messiah of mankind"?

This event is possibly one of the most telling about our Dear Leader. He combined a Stalinist erasure of "undesirables" from the record with a narcissistic tendency to demand the center of attention.

Recall his presidential acceptance speech at Grant Park when his family members and everyone else were ushered off of the stage so Obama could bloviate from his telemprompter as a single unifying figure?

What of his Alinskyite tactics of attempting to silence individuals like Joe the Plumber and Rush Limbaugh?

Additionally, the excuse from the Obama handlers that this was a "communications strategy" and not "theological" is just so much more sophistic pablum out of the left, like Napolitano saying the recent DHS report is an "assessment" and not an "accusation." Whatever the hell it is, it is a shoddy piece of agit-prop directed at people with weapons, both law enforcement and law-abiding citizens.

Obama's little "reveal" at Georgetown will do nothing but feed the anti-Christ conspiracy theories, and who knows, perhaps this is intended. Rather than being a uniter, he is adding fuel to the fire and is possibly even inciting Christians so that he can be justified with a backlash.

It is the defining nature of the left to provoke, and one reason they are a perpetual thorn in the side of peace-loving, hard-working Americans. Regardless of what you think about Christianity, it is not Obama's prerogative to appear at Catholic universities and then to whitewash out religious symbols, without even notifying the university that he would do so.

Let this be a lesson to Christian churches across the U.S. - you have been served notice. Obama considers your God an unsavory competitor.

Compare the "Moderate" Left's Protests to the "Extremist" Right Tea Parties

UNC Chapel Hill students devolved into rabid, foaming, babbling idiots when former Congressman Tom Tancredo gave a speech he was invited to give at the college campus. The police had to use pepper spray and almost turned to tasers as a recourse when the angry, hostile mob - (oops! I forgot about the DHS report), I mean, open-minded, civil, and moderate young students, protested the grave academic offense of assaulting them with reason.

These jello-brained fools have been molded into little quivering blobs of activism surreally protesting hatred by being hateful.

The banner they unfurled in front of former Congressman Tancredo during his speech stated "No One is Illegal." Profound stuff from people who do not understand what it means to have a nation of laws.

The idea of something being illegal is a foreign concept to the hard left. It is really not all that surprising that students might confuse forbidding something with being "cruel," since I had a prof debate with me the premise that a nation should necessarily enforce "the rule of law."

This video shows that the left's pablum is just toxic. Professors nowadays often remind me more of carnival barkers than respected men and women of Academe:

Lunacy for sale! Lunacy for sale! Hey students, want to buy some useless, moronic ideas? Step right up. Can't afford it? We'll set you up with a loan. Are you: Black, hispanic, American Indian, Innuit, lesbian, transgender, bi-sexual or even just sexually confused? What, you are here illegally? We can get you a special scholarship! Que? No hable ingles? No problemo, senor...

Flesh in Stone

Art represents man's view of reality and his place in it. It is a laconic and graphic way to state the basic metaphysical laws and aesthetic values. There are many art styles but all of them add up to a spectrum between two extremes.
One of them is the view of man as an impotent pawn in the hands of some supernatural force (God, society etc) and reflects the fear, ugliness, anxiety and despair that this view entails. Since man is seen as unworthy and depraved, human proportions are distorted. This approach is represented by medieval, (at least partially) modern, postmodern and most of non-Western art. To sum up, this view is a panegyric to death.
The other view is that of man as the creator, the hero, the maker of his own destiny in a rational universe. This approach demonstrates the beauty of the human body and soul. Greco-Roman and Renaissance art fit this definition the most. This view is an ode to life.
Below is a brilliant description of an encounter between these two extremes in Terry Goodkind's Faith of the Fallen - the art of the tyrannical Imperial Order and Richard's art:

As Victor and Ishaq reached the top of the plaza, Nicci untied the line, grabbed the linen in her fists, and ripped the shroud off the statue.

Both men stopped in their tracks.

In a half circle around the plaza, the walls were covered with the story of man's inadequacy. All around them, man was shown small, depraved, deformed, impotent, terrified, cruel, mindless, wicked, greedy, corrupt, and sinful. He was depicted forever torn between otherworldly forces controlling every aspect of his miserable existence, an existence incomprehensible in its caldron of churning evil, with death his only escape into salvation.

Those who had found virtue in this world, under the protection of the Creator's Light, looked lifeless, their faces without emotion, without awareness, their bodies as unbending as cadavers. They stared out at the world through a vacant, mindless stupor, while all around them danced rats, through their legs wriggled snakes, and over their heads flew vultures.

In the vortex of this torrent of tortured life, this cataclysm of corruption, this depravity and debauchery, rose up Richard's statue in bold, glowing opposition.

It was a devastating indictment of all around it.

The mass and weight of the ugliness surrounding Richard's statue seemed to shrink back into insignificance. The evil of the wall carvings seemed now to be crying out at their own dishonesty in the face of incorruptible beauty and truth.

The two figures in the center posed in a state of harmonious balance. The man's body displayed a proud masculinity. Though the woman was clothed, there was no doubt as to her femininity. They both reflected a love of the human form as sensuous, noble, and pure. The evil all around seemed as if it was recoiling in terror of that noble purity.

More than that, though, Richard's statue existed without conflict; the figures showed awareness, rationality, and purpose. This was a manifestation of human power, ability, intent. This was life lived for its own sake. This was mankind standing proudly of his own free will.

This was exactly what the single word at the bottom named it:

LIFE

That it existed was proof of the validity of the concept.

This was life as it should be lived - proud, reasoned, and a slave to no other man. This was the rightful exaltation of the individual, the nobility of the human spirit.

Everything on the walls all around offered death as its answer.

This offered life.

Victor and Ishaq were on their knees, weeping.

The blacksmith lifted his arms up toward the statue before him, laughing as tears ran down his face.

"He did it. He has done as he said he would. Flesh in stone. Nobility. Beauty."

People who had come to see the other carvings, now began gathering to see what stood in the center of the plaza. They stared with wide eyes, many seeing for the first time the concept of man as virtuous in his own right. The statement was so powerful that it alone invalidated everything up on the walls. That it had been carved by man underscored its veracity.

Many of them saw it with the same understanding Nicci had.

The carvers wandered away from their work to come see what stood in the plaza. The masons came down from the scaffolding. The tenders set down their mortar buckets. The carpenters climbed down from their work at setting beams. The tilers laid aside their chisels. The drivers picketed their horses. Men digging and planting the surrounding grounds set down their shovels. They came from all directions toward the statue in the plaza.

People flowed up the steps in ever expanding ranks. They flooded around the statue, gazing in awe. Many fell to their knees weeping, not in misery as they had before, but with joy. Many, like the blacksmith, laughed, as tears of delight ran down their happy faces. A few covered their eyes in fear.

As people took it in, they began to run off to get others. Soon, men were coming down from the shops on the hill to see what stood in the plaza. Men and women who had come to watch the construction now ran off home to get loved ones, to bring them to see what stood at the emperor's palace.

It was something the like of which most of these people had never in their lives seen.

It was vision to the blind.

It was water to the thirsty.

It was life to the dying.

P.S. I strongly recommend this book. It is definitely the best in the Sword of Truth series both in terms of plot and in terms of ideas. It is entitled "a novel of the nobility of the human spirit" and "a novel of ideas." In this book, Goodkind takes a strongly Objectivist approach and focuses on the most fundamental conflict in human existence - that between life and death, between reason and irrationality.
If one doesn't have the time to read the whole series, it's better to read this book to get the gist of Goodkind's style.

Budget with Butterfly Wings

To the tune of The Smashing Pumpkins' Bullet with Butterfly Wings.

Obama's a vampire
Sent to drain
A wealth destroyer
Fiddles while we're in flames
And what do we get
For our gain?
Betrayed desires
And a piece of change

Even though I know - I suppose he'll show
All the cool while we lose our jobs
Despite all the change I'm still just a rat in a cage
Then someone will say what it costs will make us all slaves
Despite all the change I'm still just a rat in a cage

The emperor's naked, now we're divided and alone
But can he fake it, for just one more show?
And what do you want? I want change.
And what have you got? Bet you feel the same.

Tell me I'm the only one
Tell me there's no other one
Obama was an only son
Tell me he's the chosen one
Obama was an only son - for you

Despite all the change I'm still just a rat in a cage
Then someone will say what it costs will make us all slaves
Despite all the change I'm still just a rat in a cage
And I still believe that we can be saved

Does Obama Talk to Sampson?

Life with monkeys has unearthed Obama in a 60 minutes interview allegedly high on Cheeba. This makes me wonder what Obama is like back at the crib...

Secession in the Air?

Texas Governor Rick Perry is not mixing words with the Obama administration. The word 'secession' was bandied about at an April 15th Tea Party and Governor Perry did nothing to dispel it. The blog Texas Politics has audio of Perry saying, and I quote, "Texas can leave the union if it wants to."

The blog also points out that Texas did secede in 1861, but this secession ended with the close of the Civil War.

Whatever his motivations, whether they be authentic, or opportunistically presidential, Perry's words have given many Americans a shot in the arm of hope in light of Obama's anti-American "change."

"There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

Tea Bag Accomplished

Looks like left-wingers are in denial about the tens of thousands of Americans who came out to the tea parties, as opposed to the average left-wing demonstration where more journalists show up than actual demonstrators. News companies are pissy that they can't control the narrative, and that their agit-prop is falling more and more on deaf ears.

As much as I despise Michael Savage for his ridiculous brand of populist agitation, he did make a good point today. If Obama tries to ramrod a blanket amnesty bill, the protesters will not be in the tens of thousands, but likely in the millions. There is already talk of a repeat Tea Party performance on the Fourth of July, you know, just to keep fit and limber.

I myself went to a tea party and it was amazing to listen to the middle-class, well-educated folks talk quite calmly, pleasantly and rationally about how we should return to Constitutional government. A few hundred showed up in the small town I went to, but I kid you not, there were hundreds of sympathetic honks - probably more than ten a minute from 5:00 to 6:00. This suggests that the tea parties are but a small reflection of the tens of millions who voted against Obama, and the millions more who could not bring themselves to vote for McCain or the "moderate" Obama.

I hope Obama has come out from his bunker after the "horrifying" attack of the tea bags launched over the White House fence.

And this is who we appointed to negotiate with Iran and North Korea about nuclear weapons? What kind of hallucinogens do you need to be on to think acting like a wuss and being nice to despots will convince them to change their despotty ways?

Yo Yo Yo

Homeland Security on guard for 'right-wing extremists'
Returning U.S. military veterans singled out as particular threats

Here is the story with a link to the doc (if it won't open on the webpage, feel free to look around after googling "DHS right wing extremism" and keep trying until you get it to load). It is about 10 pages. Will comment on this later. Have to run....Feel free to add comments.

All I've got to say for now is I CALLED IT! My "conspiracy" theory was that Obama was keeping troops overseas on purpose as he makes his big power grab. Hence the reshuffle of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Ciao.

Towards Non-Parental Government

The origins of authority are entrenched in mystery. The perquisites of power are, however, well understood and therefore the call to authority has lent itself to diverse justifications throughout history. There is the ultimate authority of death, whose manifestation all "great" religions seek to hijack for their own purposes. There is the wonderment of life and its creation by man in the role of the father; as well as the "religious" legitimation of women's oppressed positions by relinquishing to her the role of a filthy, intrinsically sinful carrier. The man who could transcend the sinful process of a sexually-created birth, and the painful reality of death could appropriate unto himself the authority over men's triumph in life creation and the power over their very deaths.

Historically, we have in most religions the erection of mystical patriarchal authority over the pater familias of a territory intended to be ruled by an unholy alliance of the king, his warriors and the priests. The fear of an omniscient ruler, in the personhood of the king or emperor, or, preferably (for men eventually learn the difficult-to-conceal secret that rulers are mortals like themselves), the king who possesses the divine right to rule, replaces the fear of the natural order and reifies it in a man that can be appeased by their slavish obeisance. If the subjects then carry out their slavishness with enough fidelity, they too can be admitted to the ultimate heaven, where they get the privilege of worshiping at the fountainhead of supreme authority for all eternity.

~~~

The Enlightenment was the harbinger of the destruction of divine right and the return to rule by nature, that is, reality itself. The great iconoclasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could not openly abolish religion, for it was the securitor of authority in the minds of the unenlightened. Instead, tributary appeals to "Nature's God" and a "Creator" could draw on the power of the "most rational" Christian Thomas Aquinas, leading to Baruch de Spinoza through Locke leading to the great idol-smashers of Paine and Jefferson, without instantly vanquishing faith.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were to be the rules for man; not the arbitrary rule of men, and certainly not the mystical and often brutally violent Bible. The new authority would derive from reason and the contemplation of elected educated men; not from the amalgamous mobs, and not from the worship of omnipotent, and all-too-absent gods. Christopher Hitchens, when discussing H.L. Mencken's observation that "every man is an atheist as far as gods like Amon Ra, Juno and Pluto are concerned," was certainly astute when he pointed out that "Americans need to go just one more god further to get at the truth..."

The reflections of a Nietzsche in his Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, combined with the implications of the deist Charles Darwin's theories, did not have the idolatry and superstition dispelling effect one would have surmised from the content at the time. Instead, Americans who were confronted with rising secularism rushed to revise the "religious significance" of the founding, and indeed shunned the Founding Fathers' mission of a rational basis for government. They reacted with revivalism, populism, and progressivism. These movements were anti-rationale in content, exuberant and emotional in form, and over the course of more than a century appear to have all-but-destroyed the bases for limited and divided American government.

~~~

Liberty is a tumultuous but vigorous value to adopt in society, but one conducive of providing great men, or men who seek to be great, the freedom to grapple with truth. Thus America's existential crisis is not merely a symptom of a diseased moral state; it is a direct result of the inevitable decay of the ancient traditions of superstition and religion in their war with reason, reality and truth.

Thus it is a call for great men, the John Galts of the world if you would indulge the author, to come forward and reveal the truth of the matter to the easily deceived. Great men, the few who have survived the state's war of attrition, must be moved to act before the state accrues enough power to permanently enslave the nation, even if this 'permanence' is as the words of Ozymandias:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~~~

An atheistic perspective deconstructing most men's psychological or "spiritual" affinity with God, as hypothesized as an abstraction of a parental authority schema carried over from childhood, is the most conducive to setting government into a place where it is an aegis of adults learning to rule over themselves. [Until such time as men are ready to abandon the shibboleths of faith, the protestant religion is the second best because it persuades men to recognize that we have individual relationships with "God(s)" that cannot be violated by other men or the state. This is a controversial statement, but I provide it to hold out some possible philosophical "solution" for reconciling those of monotheistic faith with the idea of the non-parental state (as the morally just order of men ruling over themselves).]

Thus in the clear-eyed rational interpretation (and derived from reading the writings of Jefferson and Paine), the American government was not intended to be a body to rule over men, but an aegis for men to rule over themselves. This is the realization of the Enlightenment - not that men need to be ruled over by philosopher kings, pace Plato, but that men can become philosophers themselves and rule themselves. Of course, not all men will choose the hard road that philosophy demands, perhaps only a small proportion at first.

~~~

The destruction of paternal authority as embodied in the coercive power of the state must not be replaced by maternal authority, which is akin to the program of the left. The proper place for authority in society is in the family, and this must be the authority of reason, not of violence. The child must be raised to seek to understand the world, his abilities, and his opportunities to achieve in it. Those who fail to achieve must rightfully take their place in the market with the common, unskilled jobs; those who strive to excel should and will most often be rewarded.

As far as how government is to enact punishments and rewards in such a state of liberty these are trifold.

First in men's interactions with reality, we must recognize the formulation of the Russian behavioralist Pavlov whose theory of conditioning posits the key feedback mechanism for biological organisms, including men, and is necessary for us to understand our relationship with physical, material reality.

Second, the rule of law centered on individual rights is indispensable. If there is any civic education needed to uphold this system it is that liberty, human dignity, and individuality are inviolate if one wishes to remain an equal member of society.

Third, in men's productive and economic lives, the market as the determinant of value, rooted in exchange and driven as an engine by need and by the potentiality of want in the event of prosperity, the allure of profit as well as the deterrent of failure and ruin, these must be upheld as most consistent with man's nature.

Government cannot and must not interfere with these necessary and natural mechanisms - indeed it must recognize that there is an objective reality and allow men to interact with it and learn from it if there is to be maintained healthy material conditions able to support life in the long-run. This is no small achievement, as the socialist in his folly assumes away and demonstrates his ignorance of, time and time again.

~~~

Thus comes the predictable reaction, and what of charity? Reason indeed cannot destroy man's natural emotions, it can only order them, and assuredly undirected emotions can destroy reason. Thus we need to posit a value that can animate the civic virtues of men.

The requirements of a civil society, as opposed to simply any spontaneous order, must hold out something to animate a vigorous attachment to freedom. This must comes from an appreciation of the beauty of men being allowed to live in freedom; respect for one another's dignity, and the esteem engendered and garnered from providing and attending to mutual respect at a basic level.

This mutual respect is signaled in society through the currently alien concept of manners. Manners may not maketh the man, but they are a display of a society's vitality and a confirmation that mutual respect for one another's rights is actively being preserved. In other words they are a signal to others that we are safe to be ourselves and to interact spontaneously and respectfully. The decline of manners and mutual respect is thus a barometer of the decline of a nation, the sign of what Adam Ferguson might call the impending barbarism of reversion to a "rude nation."

Yet judgment of good and evil, justice and injustice, noble and ignoble must not be subverted by this fundamental civil respect. This requires an education that is attenuated to seeking truth and "the good." Our educational system, to contrast, is centered on its role as an activist arm of a political party, is nihilistic, relativistic, and teaches unreason and "fiction" as philosophy. It is the core of our nation's moral and intellectual rot, and one that must be retaken for all that is good and reasonable in men to be preserved in this nation.