The Power of Reason and the Rule of Law

     The principle reason for the moral confusion which seems to pervade the twenty-first century, in America and elsewhere, is the almost dogged determination of so many people to avoid the use of a power given to them by God; the power of reason.   To illustrate, here is a true story.  Fortunately it came to a good conclusion, but it might have had a disastrous ending.  Late at night a car was being driven in a tough and nearly deserted neighborhood in St. Louis.  It came to a red light and stopped.  A lady driving alone came up behind it.  Three young and menacing-looking men approached the lady's car using vile language, with one of them carrying what appeared to be a baseball bat.  They were rather obviously durnk.  The lady honked at the car in front of her to move on.  There was no other traffic in the area.  Streets in all directions were deserted.  But the car in front refused to budge.  Why? As the driver later explained, the light was red.  The apparent hoodlums came on and on.  As they reached the lady's car the light turned green and everyone in both cars, which then moved on, was safe.  The nearly-victimized lady was furious, chased the car down through deserted streets until it pulled into a well-lit gas station where, in the presence of a police officer the story was told.
     This is a perfect example of slavish dependence on a rule which had no logical application under the circumstances.  Every day or so you can hear about some small child in the first or second grade being reprimanded or even suspended because he is found to be carrying a few cough drops or something like that against a rule prohibiting "drug possession".  This is called "zero tolerance".  Or someone compliments another person, usually female, on an attractive dress and is accused of sexual harrassment.  Now and then a judge will hand down an absurdly harsh sentence because of a hard-and-fast rule in a case where common sense cries out against it, as in a case a few years ago wherein a judge sentenced a boy to five years in prison because of some minimum-sentence rule when all the boy was charged with was the possession of a single marijuana cigarette.  (If you think the judge had no choice, he did.  He could have ruled that the statute, or at least its application in the case at hand, amounted to a violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  If appellate courts want to reverse something like that, let them do so).  And then there are horrific cases in which a judge or prosecutor demands the death penalty for someone when there is actual proof that he was innocent of the crime charged.  "He had a fair trial", it will be said.  The insanity of this escapes the judge or prosecutor, or he doesn't care about human life, or perhaps he is just incredibly stupid.
     But don't we need rules?  Yes, but we do not need to reach absurb results in the application of rules when they were obviously intended to apply to something else.  When Abraham Lincoln was criticized for by-passing certain constitutional rights during the Civil War he explained that he had to violate some Constitutional provision here or there to save the entire Constitution, which was being torn apart.  A prominent 20th Century jurist would say "The Constitution is not a suicide pact".  Would the Founders favor a rigid adherence to the letter of the Constitution if that would probably result in the destruction of the whole Constitution?  Does it not sometimes make sense to follow the spirit and intent of the law with constructions and applications which common sense dictates that the drafters and ratifiers of the law would have approved?  There should of course be a presumption in favor of rules and a very good and compelling reason  when their application is modified or even ignored.  Obviously, any society needs rules, the fewer the better in my opinion, but some rules are necessary.  Reason itself so demands.

Freedom and its Limits

     In defending the new government-mandated light bulbs a local columnist recently wrote, after reciting the putative benefits of the new bulbs,  "I am unable to understand the principles that govern today's Republican Party, but it is wrong to pander to people's ignorance or to cater to what people want to believe rather than the truth".  So shocking is the arrogance of such a statement that it is hard to know where to begin comment on it, albeit that similar assertions are so common that perhaps it shouldn't be so shocking after all.  To be fair, the column in question is a cut above the usual hysterical name-calling  tirades with which the print and broadcast media daily confront us because at least the writer does offer some tenable arguments in favor of the usefulness and economy of the new bulbs and he does recite facts or claims in support thereof.  That, at least, is to his credit.
     Aside from any other objection to the columnist's words, there remains a practical one.  How many people are there who consider themselves ignorant or mindless of the truth?  I have never encountered such a person.  So it is fair to conclude that if the purpose of the column is to persuade people to the writer's point of view and away from some incompatible alternative, he failed.  Up to that point he might have been getting somewhere.  Then he ended his chance of that.  So what did he expect to accomplish?  And this is typical of the torrents of name-calling abusive political commentary to which the American public is routinely subjected.
     Beyond that, there is a simple response to the writer's conundrum.  It is easy to understand Republican principles.  They are found in the words 'freedom' and the 'Bill of Rights'.  Even if I am one hundred percent convinced that the new bulbs are better than the old ones in economy, performance or whatnot, I refuse to cede to the writer or to the government the privilege of deciding the matter for me.  The old bulbs work.  If I like things the way they are, the writer can buy the new ones and leave me alone.  It's a nice arrangement.  On a plainer level; who the hell does he think he is anyway?
     But  shouldn't the government deny to a would-be consumer something which is plainly lethal, such as potassium cyanide?  Should I be allowed to go into any pharmacy and buy some of that?  No, and for three reasons.  First, I may not know it is poisonous, second I might be buying it to murder someone and third, something like potassium cyanide is so dangerous, its lethal effects so instantaneous, that the danger of its being imbibed --- for a child, for example --- is simply too great to allow it in free circulation.  The first objection can be answered with adequate informative labelling, and I submit that no reasonable person can object to the disclosure of dangers.  The second applies also to hammers, cars and a lot of other items which can be used properly with reasonable precautions whereas potassium cyanide is useful only in homocide.  Suffice it to say that there are items which are so dangerous that their sale or use should be restricted or prohibited altogether.  One should not be allowed to sell atom bombs indiscriminately.  I tend to oppose the prohibition by the government of cigarette selling but favor information dissemination.  Tell the public how bad they are but don't tell me that I can't smoke if I choose to in my own home (I don't).  Freedom is an ideal.  One can champion the principle without having to decide every particular case in advance of the necessity for doing so.  What is required after the principle is accepted is the application of human reason.  Not everyone will reach the same conclusions in every case.  Hence democratic government.  Unfortunately all too few people evince a willingness to use the capacity to reason with which they have been endowed by their Creator.

Abraham Lincoln --- The Great Emancipator

Robert Louis Stevenson --- Epitaph

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die,
   And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
   And the hunter home from the hill.

The Establishment Clause and Religious Freedom

      "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ".  Thus begins the  first amendment to the United States Constitution, which we call the Bill of Rights, consisting of ten articles, eight of which spell out the rights to be protected from encroachment by  Congress.  The ninth amendment reminds us that the list is not necessarily complete because rights are endowed by God and constitutions do not create rights, they protect them.  And the tenth amendment reserves to the states or to individuals the burden of protecting rights which are not specifically listed in the first eight amendments. 
     That is the Bill of Rights, ten articles which are perfectly understandable in principle, though the details in some cases must be filled in by the courts as they consider individual cases.  To illustrate, what precisely is Due Process?  For example, granted that a defendant has a right to counsel if accused of a crime, does that include the right to free appointed counsel for those who cannot afford to pay a lawyer from their own pocket?  In Gideon vs. Wainright the Supreme Court ruled that it does because otherwise, in many cases, the right to counsel would lack content and be meaningless for some people.  However, merely because judges are called on to exercise judgment does not mean, and never did or was intended to mean, that they can read into the law their own personal ideas on the way society should be structured.  Judges were not intended to be tyrants or dictators.
     Yet radical organizations like the ACLU, aided and abetted by liberal judges, have turned the first sentence of the Bill of Rights, with its simplicity and obvious meaning and intent, from a protection of the indivdual from the tyranny of forced religion into a war on religion, primarily Christianity.  Every president from George Washington to George Bush has asked for the recognition by the American people and their government of the dependence of America on Divine Providence for its freedom and prosperity.  As President John Kennedy stated in his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961 "The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God". There have been hundreds of such statements by presidents, congressmen, governors and, yes, even judges throughout American history.  In 1789 President George Washington complied with the request of both Houses of Congress, made by joint resolution, "to recomment to the People of the United states a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be obersved by acknowledging with grateful heart the many signal favors of Almight God, . . .".  President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that there be inscribed on the mantlepiece in the State Dining Room in the White House a prayer composed by John Adams and contained in a letter to his wife Abigail;  "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it.  May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof".  The Declaration of Independence, authored principally by Thomas Jefferson, declares that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Harry Truman said to a conference of attorneys general; "The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount.  The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.  I don't think we emphasize that enough these days", and in quoting Psalm 127 John Quincy Adams reminded Americans that "Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain".  That passsage was to be read by John Kennedy in the address he would have delivered in Dallas had he not been murdered by a madman.  Similar sentiments are to be found inscribed in state capitals, courthouses, public libraries and monuments throughout the United States.  Yet this is the nation which liberal judges tell us cannot tolerate a simple, wholly voluntary prayer by a small child in a public school class room, or a cross over a soldier's grave in the desert. 
     There can be close questions in the application of the first amendment but whether or not the recognition of the Soverignty of God in public places and at public events is constitutional is not a close question.  This is a Christian nation, though its people are free to follow the promptings of conscience as they see fit without invading the rights of those who disagree with them.  By "Christian Nation" we do not mean that Christianity is established by any law as the official state-supported religion of the United States or that anyone is required to take part in Christian observances but, rather, that Christian principles motivated and animated the nation's founders and subsequent leaders with the full consent  and encouragement of the American people.  Our people and our government have a right to acknowledge that, and they should, gladly and with gratitute to the Great God who gave them life.

A Religion of Peace

      Terry Jones, a small town Florida pastor, threatened to burn copies of the Koran on the September anniversary of the World Trade Center attack.  Although Jones was well advised to refrain from carrying out that threat, all things considered, you would have thought he had threatened mass murder, given the avalanche of self-righteous indignation directed at him.  Some folks breathed a sigh of relief that those big bad conservatives hadn't taken over just yet.

      It was jihadist terrorists, promoting the "religion of peace", not Terry Jones, who decided to fly jets into buildings, blow a hole  in a ship, torch a night club full of people in Bali, bomb trains in Madrid and London, hotels in India and Pakistan and embassies in Africa, a passenger jet full of innocent people in Scotland, attempted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, attempted to set off a bomb at the Los Angeles airport, and on a jet flying the Atlantic, and a jet landing in Detroit, and a bomb in Times Square, decapitate  innocent people who displease them,  murder disagreeable authors, establish Shariah Law by force where it isn't wanted, stone women to death, require women to  have a male escort when leaving home and to forget about driving a car or having a career,  erect a triumphant in-your-face mosque at ground zero while denying Christians, Jews and Hindus the right to worship in Saudi Arabia and wherever else they can do so, and to run 'wahabi' schools to teach murder and mayhem against 'infidels'. 
     Goody-goodies and can't-we-all-get-along types sometimes assert that "you just don't understand the Moslem religion".  My response is "I don't have to, nor do I care to.  What they believe is their business.  What they do is everyone's business".  I don't even care whether Islam is really a religion at all, or a political movement dressed up as a religion to take advantage of a lot of misguided notions about religious freedom.  Nor should we be interested in the ridiculous argument that they are mad at the United States because we're such mean old imperialists and racists and all that crap.  If they were really motivated by anger at Americans why do they commit their atrocities all over the world?  If these guys aren't stopped at some point they will take over the world, largely by default flowing from the lethargy and indifference of the West.

     How wonderful that we have so far been protected from this monster Terry Jones and his fifty parishioners in rural Florida

Compromise

    
     Compromise is not a policy.  It's what you do if you must do it in order to get something you need or want very much.  You would rather get the whole loaf and you may hold out for it.  If you stand firm there may be no deal.  That happens.  But you don't say, before there are any negotiations underway or before anyone has said anything, "I'm here to compromise".
      Conservatives are accused of  taking a "hard line" on the deficit, taxes and other matters.  But how else can you take a position about anything if not at least in the beginning taking what the liberals and their media friends call a "hard line"?  Do you say "I'll pay you $10,000 for that painting but I don't really mean it and I'm willing to compromise"?  That's not compromise.  That is setting a floor on what you will be willing to pay.  In effect you are saying that you will pay at least $10,000 and you may go up from there.  Another way of looking at it is to say that you have made the prospective seller's first offer for him and you have thereby started  negotiations by negotiating with yourself.  The Tea Party people were elected to Congress in November of 2011 on their promise to the voters to reduce spending and the deficit if at all possible.  They believe that it cannot happen if the debt ceiling is continually raised.  So they promised the voters that they would take a position on those matters and in so doing they were doing what the voters wanted .  That's democracy.  The left, as expected, charged them with being unreasonable and, also as expected, the "moderates" in the GOP were ready to agree with the left as  they almost always are.  But what were conservatives supposed to do?  Should they  have said "we won't agree to raise the debt ceiling --- but we might"?  That is almost like saying nothing at all.  If you offer to buy someone's painting for $10,000 there is nothing to prevent him from making a counter-offer.  You may accept it, or you may not accept it.  Nothing prevents a prospective buyer from taking his own position and seeing where he can get with it.
     Frequently negotiations take an if-then form.  For example, the Democrats might say "if you will agree to raise the debt ceiling we will do such-and-such".  If that is to have any reasonable meaning the such-and-such part has to be specific and firm.  What the Democrats do in reality, to the applause of their media and moderate friends, is to say "if you will agree to  raise  the debt ceiling by X amount we will agree to talk about such-and-such.  No sale, or it should be no sale.

What Now in Afghanistan?

     The question 'why are we in Afghanistan' should really be 'why should we still be there with ground forces'?  Is there  even a good argument for continuing  that presence?  If not, we should get out in an orderly way which minimizes harm to the Afghans and ourselves.  If so, the question is 'to what extent' and with what force', a question with which I am not concerned here because I do not have the military expertise to discuss it and, anyway, it would require a detailed and extensive consideration of goals, timetables, etc. and this is an essay, not a five hundred page book. The practical question is how are our own national interests advanced by being there at all, if indeed they are?
    It was by any measure necessary to send the military to Afghanistan in the first instance.  The United States had been the victim of a murderous attack on September 11, 2001.  Two New York skyscrapers were bombed and destroyed, the Pentagon was damaged, a passenger jet full of people crashed in Pennsylvania and the White House and Capitol in Washington were threatened.  If there ever was an act of war this was it.  It eclipsed Pearl Harbor.  But with Pearl Harbor we knew what nation had attacked us, the Empire of Japan.  Here the enemy was an insidious extremist organization named al Quaeda, not a nation state.  However, as President Bush said, and almost everyone agreed at the time, if any nation was aiding, abetting and sheltering the guilty parties and refusing to turn them over to us that country would be held responsible for the attack and would be at war with the United States.  There was such a nation, Afghanistan, ruled by another terrorist group called the Taliban, which was closely allied with al Quaeda and was acting as its protector.  We had to react with decisive military force and we did.  Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives all agreed on that.
     The Taliban was deposed, thrown out, and our forces occupied Kabul, the capital.  Immediately women were liberated after having been reduced by the Taliban to the status of slaves.  Other benign and civilized reforms were instituted.  There was one major problem, however.  The Talliban remained alive and well in the mountains of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, simply waiting to come back in after we had left and, for that matter, while we were still there.  Most of Afghanistan was still either a target for the Taliban or was ruled by a confusing conglomeration of warring tribes.  We set about trying to create a nation where there never had been one, a nation strong enough to fend off the Taliban and control warring tribes.  Were we successful in doing that?  Well, we're still trying, and it apprears that we have made some progress.  Should we stay until the process has been completed or until we conclude that it never will be?  Our original goal having been to bust up al Quaeda and kick it and the Taliban out, which was accomplished in large part, what is left which requires our continued presence at great cost and at a time of serious domestic economic difficulties in the United States?  We should face two salient facts:    (1)  The  fighting in Afghanistan cannot end with a peace treaty or a national surrender as did Word War ll.and (2)  It could therefore go on indefinitely, though possibly at a reduced level of combat, unless the enemy is crushed completely.
     So it comes to this.  Is there now a compelling reason to remain in Afghanistan?  It isn't nation-building.  The Afghans themselves must do that if that's what they want.  When we invaded Afhanistan we did assume some responsibility for its people, just as we once did for Germany and Japan.  We have helped the Afghans and we can perhaps continue to help them up to a point but we cannot stay there forever waiting for them to resolve their internal and external squabbles and difficulties.  Indefinite nation-building is not, I submit, a good reason for remaining in Afghanistan.  However, there is a good reason to remain there at some level of force.  It is that by remaining in a strategic location in the Middle East with air and ground fighting forces we are in a position to check, and go on checking, the progress of jihadist extremism.  If you want a WW ll analogy, the fact that we stayed in Europte gave us a barrier to Soviet expansion, just as our armed opposition to Hitler prevented him or his friends from bringing his insanity eventually to the United States.  Afghanistan is strategically located.  If it ever becomes necessary to defend Israel, which is hardly a remote possibility, we have a distinct advantage by having a presence there, and in Iraq.  Once we leave altogether, we're gone.  And remaining doesn't have to mean maintaining a presence at the current level.  It can be  reduced to suit the circumstances.
     I submit that it would be less than responsible for the United States to withdraw all military forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, including naval and air forces in that region of the world.  It would simply be an abdication of our position in the Middle East and we cannot afford that in a region of such conspicuous importance to the world and such great danger of drawing the world into ever greater dangers and complications.  I agree with Leon Panetta who recently said;  ". . . the mission [in Afghanistan] is to safeguard our country by insuring that the Taliban and al-Qaida never again find a safe haven in Afghanistan".  We need not confine this principle strictly to Afghanistan.  Any region as dangerous and sensitive as the Middle East requires constant attention for our own security.  If and when we become energy independant, which we are perfectly capable of doing if politics can be swept aside, the need for vigilance in the Middle East may be reduced.  But we are now faced with the world as it is.  The whole region --- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia --- is simply far too dangerous not to have a strong military presence there.
    

Thought for the Day

When a tong banging on the wrong gong goes bong I sing a song along with Tommy Chong and Long Dong Fong from Hong Kong, who plays ping pong with King Kong.
                                                                                                                      Anonymous Poet

The ACLU and the First Amendment

     The ACLU is on perpetual paroxysms of rage against Christianity.  Everything 'religious' is ripe for attack, from a cross in the middle of the Arizona desert to the Ten Commandments in a courthouse in Alabama or a voluntary prayer in a school room.  The ACLU's atheist-motivated hatred of Christianity and Judeo-Christian tradition knows no limit.

     So we should be reminded what the First Amendment really provides regarding the "establishment of religion".  If there is a law 'made' by Congress, which purports to establish a religion, that law is unconstitutional, though even that conclusion was not actually the main purpose of the drafters the First Amendment, which was to prohibit the Federal Government from interfering with religion in the states, some states having had, and having continued to have, an established religion.  Nothing in the Constitution establishes atheism as the official religion of the United States or requires Americans to cease recognition of their reliance on Divine Providence for their liberty. Those are the purposes of the ACLU and others who wish to banish God from society

Boredom and Wars

     I wrote in a previous essay that fanaticism has been the chief source of wars, riots and other violent disturbances throughout history.  Parenthetically, I said that boredom was probably next in line.  Here's why.
     Shakespeare enthusiasts are familiar with the opening soliloquay in Richard the Third.  The play opens with Richard telling us that he is bored.  There is peace in the land, everyone is enjoying life by pursuing a variety of worthwhile interests like drunken parties and jolly bedroom romps with castle babes --- everyone except Richard.  Richard has nothing to do all day.  He could of course wander the castle grounds observing nature, or he could take up knitting sweaters, but that's not enough.  So he started a civil war.  It didn't turn out well for him, he lost, but at least he wasn't bored any more.
     Think about this.  In Shakespeare's time and throughout the centuries before and thereafter there really wasn't much in the form of canned entertainment for anyone to enjoy.  There was work, of course, but the leisure class had no real work which had to be done in most cases.  There was no radio or TV, no computers, no cell phones or movies.  And you couldn't go to Paris or London if you lived somewhere else, at least at any reasonable speed.  In fact up until the twentieth century there really weren't all that many ways to fill up leisure time.  There were  parties and athletic events, and romantic assignations in the castle, but that wasn't enough for the restless spirit of man.  Anyway, Richard wasn't cool enough to have even that.  He was bored.  What better to do with time on one's hands than start a war?  War can be a real hoot if you win and you don't need to think about losing.
     But we still have wars, oodles of them; two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the middle east, war here, war there, war everywhere.  Why?  Because there is no end to the human desire for stimulation and excitement.  And a lot of world leaders aren't ready for a rocking chair and a pension. They still need stimulation and excitement and are ready to satisfy the need with their expertise at starting wars. 
     Anyway, our old companion fanaticism is and always will also be around.  This tribe doesn't like that one.  That means that that one is evil.  And of course this religion doesn't like that one; nations, ethnic goupings and races don't like each other.  So you still have plenty of reasons to start wars even with TV and movies to fight your boredom.  To help us resolve any boredom still remaining, and supply plenty of fanaticism, along come charismatic leaders --- Hitler, Tojo, Castro, Mao, Ahmadinijad and Khadaffi (or however they spell their names this week) to start our riots and wars for us.  Bin Laden is gone but there are plenty of other psychos, sociopaths and crackpots to take his place.  Who really needs nutty dictators anyway?  We've got plenty of politicians in both parties to take up any slack.  And it's actually easier to start a war in some ways now, possibly with the hope of winning, than it used to be because if you can buy a few atom bombs from Pakistan, Iran or China, which shouldn't be too hard if you look funny and wear a turbin, you don't have to be a dictator of some important country.  Any old sink hole or banana republic will do and there's only so much TV.  So we can always count on fanaticism and boredom.
    

Fanaticism and its Consequences

     No human  condition is more threatening to civilization than  fanaticism.  It reflects a  terrible flaw in the human makeup and most of the mass oppressions, civil disturbances and collectivist ideologies which plague mankind can be traced to it.  (Curiously, as to the causes of war and riots, the second most threatening condition is probably boredom, which in a way is almost the opposite of fanaticism).
     Fanaticism should not be confused with principled advocacy.  You can champion any cause  with  intensity without without becoming a fanatic.  Fanaticism is extreme intolerance of  dissenting views, an intention to supress them if possible, and the refusal to engage in rational debate.  Reason never matters. The fanatic demands that everyone he controls or seeks to control --- frequently the entire human race --- adhere strictly and without question to a party line.  Absolute conformity to ideological orthodoxy, which is the hallmark of fanaticism, is endemic to all collectivism, be it Naziism, Communism, Islamic extremism or radical-left American liberalism.  Some socially conservative positions which are meritorious in and of themselves have been embraced by dangerous fanatics on the right.  The fanatic of left or right insists that devient individualists be converted or actually destroyed with avalanches of propoganda or violence if nothing else works, and in many cases even when the  cause or movement which the fanatic seeks to protect and advance is not seriously threatened.   A despicable example of attempts at personal destruction is the left's campaign to destroy Sarah Palin. Though she has at present not announced her candidacy for President or any other office, the Left is engaged in a massive effort, costing their high priests millions of dollars, to find something, anything, suggestive of some wrongdoing even though there is no reason to suspect that there has been any.  Also, if one believes in a benign existence in the after-life he will tolerate political ideologies and religions he does not like or share because he believes that the imbalances of life will be rectified in the end.  But if this life is all their is, or if some putative god of the fanatic's invention or imagination so directs, two consequences follow:  First, all departure from the fanatic's idea of perfection must be supressed now.  We cannot wait, because the poor, the downtrodden or the spiritually deprived will die without hope except in compliance with the fanatic's self-made 'religion'.  In other words unless the fanatic comes to the rescue with his coercion, rioting mobs and violence their lives will have been wasted.  Second, we are told that we must live under some Command --- the inflexible directions of some book, some ayatolla, some dictator or code of conduct to which absolute obedience will be due.  The fanatic always looks for a source of authority which cannot be questioned but can only be "interpreted" --- interpreted by him of course --- and that results in his refusal to entertain thoughts of alternatives.  "So it is written, so it shall be done", said an Attila-like character in a movie.  Once anyone begins to question the orthodoxy of the fanatic's movement or his heroes, and is allowed to continue doing so, the fabric of lock-step orthodoxy and obedience starts to unravel and the manifest nonsense and immorality of the movement begins to be apparent. 
     Thus some book, god or charismatic leader is substituted for universal principles of honor, decency, kindness, fairness and justice, except as defined and decreed by Command.  The key is innerancy, the denial of any possible or permissable questioning of a Supreme Authority. 
     Corruptions, not real understanding, of the central messages of Christianity and Judaeism lead fanatics into the command-and-obey mentality.  Judeao-Christianity properly understood and practiced requires the faithful to use their God-given intelligence.  General principles are affirmed, of course, those which have always been recognized by decent people at all times --- rejection of theft, murder and adultery for example, or honoring ones parents, but the application of those principles in particular circumstances requires the application of reason and logic, and that is incompatible with fanaticism on any level.  The New Testament does not record a single word spoken by Jesus which applies more than incidentally to the masses or to any collective, governmental or otherwise.  All of His admonitions relate to actions and attitudes of  individuals --- and ultimately to their salvation one by one.  No group, race, tribe, nation or movement is "saved".  Only individuals.
     A church in Kansas produced a bunch of fanatics who went about obstructing the funerals of our men and women in uniform.  Let us pray that this is not a forerunner of things to come.  This is not the Christianity which any understanding Christian will recognize as the Gospel preached by Christ.

An In-depth Analysis of Congress --- the Problem and the Solution

     Five hundred forty-five (545) individuals in Washington have all the political power in the United States to overrule all the politicians and judges in all fifty states.  There are 435 members of the House of Representatives, 100 in the Senate, 9 Supreme Court Justices and 1 president.  They can do anything they want to do.  Yet these 545 individuals and their predecessors have bankrupted the country, created a debt  of over 14 Trillion Dollars which can never be paid, allowed hoards of drug-dealing illegal aliens across the boarder, made this great and resource-rich country energy dependent on a miserable bunch of mad dicatators in the Middle East --- a flock of crackpots and psychos such as the world has never  seen before in one place at one time --- and destroyed the credibility and respect which the United States once enjoyed throughout the world.  If that's not enough they have gotten into three wars in ten years, which is an average of about thirty in a century.
     Why not select 545 people at random from any urban telephone directory and set up a better government than the flop that we have now?  With any luck this new government would consist of men and women with more brains, character, human decency and honor than the miserable collection of clowns, buffoons and bumble-brained morons who are there now (no, not all, but all too many.  I still go for the telephone book method).  Or we can try to persuade Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth to take us back.  Unfortunately she's probably too smart to do that.
     That's my analysis of Congress.  God Save the Queen

Relativism and Objectivity

     The essence of Relativism is that one person's opinion is just as good as another's even though the two are mutually exclusive.  Lately, some Liberal clergymen, joining other liberals in their bonding with Islam, have been opining that 'all religions are basically the same and they all have the same purpose'.  This remarkable idea is symptomatic of a dreadful moral and intellectual poison --- that of Relativism, which denies all objective truth on the claim of "tolerance", perhaps the most misunderstood word in the English language.  It is easily provable that the various religions of the world are incompatible with one another, though they may coincide at certain points.   If Judaism is true then Christianity is not true, or not entirely true, and if Islam emobodies the ultimate truth then  Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Budhism does not.  Any two or more of these may contain similar concepts on certain points but they are inconsistent in their final conclusions.  In other words, any one of them could theoretically be true but no two of them could.  If you seek the truth you must pick one to exclusion of the others or opt for some other choice, such as agnosticism or atheism.  Furthermore,  to deny objective truth, to claim that any viewpoint is as good as another --- in religion, baseball or anything else --- requires the conclusion that that claim itself is not objectively true.  If any opinion is as good as any other, why should we be influenced by anyone else's opinion on anything?  And if the response is "well of course I wouldn't go that far" the respondent in all honesty should be able to explain when he would and when he would not "go that far".  In the end he will be backed into a corner because he will either affirm the existence of objective truth, including the "truth" which tells him that everything is relative, of which he should now start to see the absurdity, or he will admit that even that claim is relative and his argument has defeated itself.  In other words, a relativist destroys the basis on which his relativism rests.  At that point anyone should logically lose the slightest interest in anything he says unless it is a mere personal preference, such as a preference for one flavor of ice cream over another.  The only way out of this conundrum for the relativist is the assertion that his truth is entitled to a privileged position in the hiercarchy of opinion.  Someone else may wish to continue the discussion after that but I opt out.

    

Jesus and the Woman at Jacob's Well

      Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman, recorded at John 4, is interesting for a number of reasons and is one among several instances in which He shows His disapproval of racial, religious and gender discrimination. The Samaritan woman is the first person to whom Jesus expressly reveals who He is. He comes close to revealing his status as the Son of God to Nicodemus in John 3, but he refers to Himself in the third person.  He does not expressly say to Nicodemus, as He does to the Samaritan woman, "I am he, the one who is speaking with you."  This is also the longest conversation that Jesus is recorded to have had with any individual in the New Testament. Jesus and his disciples did not have to go through Samaria, Jews normally bypassed that region because the Samaritans had their own religious outlook and did not practice Judeaeism.  In other words He intended to go there. He was not just passing through.  And we encounter Him talking to a woman, for one thing, and a Samaritan, for another. A Jewish man would never drink water proffered to him by a Samaritan because they were considered by the Jews of that time to be unclean. The woman was at the well at noon time. Most people gathered water in the morning or evening, when it is not as hot. This woman went at noon in order to avoid people, perhaps from shame. The fact that she had had five husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband, indicates a shameful personal history.  So Jesus is revealing His divine sonship to a woman, a foreigner, a half-Jew, a sinner, and to her people who are outside the pale of Judaism. It shows the breadth and scope of His kindness and tolerance as distinguished from the narrowness and intolerance of the times.
     There are a number of instances in which the same principle is shown --- the story of the Good Samaritan, His willingness to go to the home of a Roman Centurion to heal the man's servant, His encounter with the gentile woman, a Scyrophonecian gentile, whose daughter was desperately ill and whom Jesus healed --- these among others.  And all of this when tolerance was not generally the order of the day.

What About Hell?

     When someone expresses doubt about the existence of Hell as a real place where 'non-believers' reside in eternal torment, he may be referred to one or more of many places in the Bible which seem to apply to such a place.  See, for example, Rev. 14:11, Mark 9:43, Luke 3:17, ll Pet. 2:1, Matt. 5:27-30 or Mark 9:48-49.  And there are others.  Christians are urged to take all these references literally. 
      Nothwithstanding insistance otherwise, however, Hell may be a metaphor for the source of the evil which is sweeping the world. Is it only that which matters?  Are bread and wine literally body and blood?  Even those who answer yes --- Roman Catholics, for example --- will admit that these elements are wine and bread to a chemist but they contend that they are converted to something else in some mystical or metaphorical sense which no one but Catholics, and perhaps a few others, even claim to understand.  The Catholic doctrine is called 'Transubstantiation'.  The Lutherans have a variation called 'Consubstantiation'.  Does it really matter?  Jesus asked for an act, not understanding (this do, not this understand).  He did not care about actual physical facts but only their meaning.  Or is that entirely true?  Without going too far into that, there is a good deal of support for those who believe that the physical facts and the literal reality of events reported in the Bible does matter a great deal.  Was there a real Abraham, a real Moses?  I go from one side to the other on such questions.  I tend to believe along with C. S. Lewis that the earlier events may have a mythical aspect to them but that there is no doubt about the reality of Jesus, the Virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion and Ressurection.  Where the mythical blends into the literal, while even then retaining something of the character and flavor of myth, I don't know.  But the Christian story is true.  Everything depends on its being true and there is sufficient support for it to state categorically that it is true.
      Is Hell real?  Yes, you can see it in the eyes of lunatics, of those who are slaves to alcohol, of sociopaths, of people so burdened with guilt that they cannot get through the day without breaking down.  Are there demons, those denizens of Hell who are said to torment the damned eternally?  There are certainly human demons --- Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and conspicuously those lovely Jihadists of the Middle East who think they are vindicating God's will by torturing and decapitating people, blowing up buildings, passenger jets, trains, night clubs and theatres, and oppressing women.  Yet I have to admit that there is more to it than that, joining to a degree those who advocate belief in Hell as an actual place.  There is an evil force making its way across the world with frightening effect.  We see it in "spontaneous" protests and riots, in crazed Jihadism, roaring and seeping into societies everywhere and threatening civilization.  We see it in the horrific crimes which are committed with the insistence that they are  in compliance with God's will.  Though I am not convinced that Hell is literally a place, it is very likely something more than just a state of mind, though it is certainly at least that, and that is bad enough.  Beyond that the notion of a literal Hell in a specific place seems far-fetched.  The Earth itself is constantly changing locales within the Solar system, and the Solar system within the Galaxy, and no doubt the Galaxy with reference to the Universe itself.  The similarity to a physical Hell, however, lies in the fact that it would be impossible for all of the hellish events going on around the world to be the result of some master plan, coordinated efforts,, a grand conspiracy promoted by people gathered in a room somewhere plotting.  There are plots going on here and there; in Washington, Tehran, Wall Street, union meetings, Moscow, Caracas and elsewhere;  no doubt about that, but not one grand plot.  At least not one grand human plot. There is simply too much hell in the world for that.  Hitler did not sit around hatching wicked schemes with George Soros.  They didn't even know each other.  Yet we see it as if everything had in fact been orchestrated at some central venue much like, if not actually, a real hell by a real devil.  Which makes me tend to believe that such a grand ongoing conspiracy exists in reality but not in some human board room or meeting hall.  What's the point of these evasive and presumably immaterial conspirators?  Whay bother with plots and conspiracies designed to injure humanity without any apparent benefit to themselves? Do they never quit?  Why don't they get bored?  I find street riots, wherein teenage boys throw rocks at tanks, and that sort of thing, just plain boring.  It's all the same.  It may take place in Paris, or Seoul or Cairo but if you've seen one you've seen them all.  And evil dictators who all seem to wear some sort of bizarre or garish costume with a strange hat, or a hat that's too big.  They want power.  But what will they do when they get it?  Do they even know?  Yet it never stops and this to me suggests something very evil going on the origin of which is not apparent.  Where does it originate?  Who originiates it?  And why?
      

 

The Danger of Fundamentalism in a Nut Shell

     The shocking excesses of the fundamentalist church in Kansas which has been sending people out to disrupt funerals, etc. points out the danger of fundamentalism if it turns in the wrong direction and then goes unchecked.  The fundamentalist represents every opinion he has as an "interpretation" of scripture, allowing him to excuse any number of reckless or violent acts with his all-purpose excuse, "so it is written, so it shall be done, thus sayeth the Lord" meaning that some Holy Writ has shut off all further revelation, inspiration or use of the mind and intelligence which are themselves gifts of God and intended by Him for use.  All further discussion and the thought process itself is shut off.  While many or even most fundamentalists may not go that far I submit that this explains jihadism and Islamist extremism to a large extent because it indicates the dangerous direction in which fundamentalism can go.  

What Can Man Know About God?

      Even as a committed Christian I have problems with organized religion and church services, not Christian theology.  So much of what so many ministers or priests say about God, His mind and purposes, presented as absolute truth, must be specualation or interpretation.  I am convinced that they claim to know, and doubtless believe that they know, much more than they do and that God is considerably more mysterious and inexplicable than they think He is.  Given the difficulty of understanding how television works, let alone Einstein's theory of relativity, it seems very unlikely that any human being, smart as the species is, can really know very much about God  on his own initiative.

     When a sailor in the mid-Pacific or the wayfarer in the Sahara or a tenement-dweller in New York, looks up at the sky and exclaims 'how great is God' he probably has come close to stating about all he can really know on his own, except for a few ideas originated by philosophers, about God being omnipotent, omnipresent, and all  that.  "Oh God, How great is thy sea and how small is my boat", the sailor's prayer, just about does it though we can embellish it a bit with the child's prayer;  "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so", which is a simple affirmation of all that may really matter in the end.  How He reacts with someone else is something I probably can never know, or know completely, and may be something I couldn't understand anyway. 

      We can know some things about Jesus because He was here and was written about by persons in a position to know.  But I submit that God the Father, the Great Spirit, the Emperor over the Sea, the ineffable Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, is beyond our intellectual capacity to know or ferret out.  Didn't Jesus Himself suggest as much to Nicodemas?  Speculation is all right I suppose (anyway, we will continue to do it) but it is very adviseable to recognize its limited value.  Yet we can know a fair amout about Jesus Christ, His life and work, His promises and expectations.  And the belief that God chose to limit Himself temporarily in order to take the form of  that same Jesus, in part so that He could cause mankind to understand some things he needs to know is both reasonable and supportable by a very high level of evidence.  Added to the 'leap  of Faith, we begin to see the way to Salvation. 
        

    

The Danger of Love

     This is about being 'in love' and is addressed specifically to heterosexual males, of which I am one, though the principles apply to females as well.  The subject is important and practical, because most people have had or will have the experience, or think they have.  All but an infinitesimal fraction of the population can do anything to settle matters between Israel and the jihadists but a great many people will experience the circumstances discussed here.  So the Middle East is important but this subject is important and practical as well and one fraught with deadly consequences literally and figuratively.

     When a man falls in love with a girl (and all women are 'girls' when you're in love with them) what is it like and how is it distinguished from lust?  It is like this; a consuming obsession with the object.  You think about her all the time.  You can't think very long about anything else.  You want her so much you can hardly stand it and you think "I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her".  And you really mean it.  It is an experience which I believe some men never have, though they may think they have.  It is not lust.  In fact, it excludes lust, and that is one very odd thing about it.  At your peak powers of male performance you lust after every attractive girl who walks by, particularly in a bikini.  If you are wise you control the emotion but the emotion pressures you at every turn.  For that matter, you can lust at any age, though your ability to do anything about it may abate.  Your motto is something like this:  "If I'm not near the girl I love I love the girl I'm near". 

     The test is this; ironically, if you are 'in love' you think very little if at all about sex.  That's not what you want.  You want the girl, not something she can give you or withhold from you.  You want her on any terms you can get her. 

     And here's the danger.  If the object of your affection is married to someone else, or if you are, you are likely to think that there's something almost spiritual about falling in love with her.  That's when you hear such nonsense as "We didn't want it to happen.  We didn't plan it.  We were just 'good friends' and just wanted to have lunch together and reminisce about old times" --- and all that garbage, for that's what it is.  'It' is not something that happens to someone.  You cannot separate 'it' from 'you' and thus absolve yourself from  blame.  Even if the situation never evolves into a physical affair --- thought the danger that it will is ever-present --- a mental affair is likely to be just as bad and almost as damaging. 
     There is only one possible answer, or solution, to this if the temptation arrives, an eventuality which is hardly unlikely, as it probably besets more people at one time or another than it leaves alone.  Only one course is decent and civilized, rational and moral.  Drop the matter.  Leave it alone. Do not fall for any of that just-good-friends nonsense.  Don't make the date for lunch, for it would in fact be a "date" whatever you think it is and whatever you call it.  If you have already made the date, cancel it.  Extra-marital affairs ruin lives, families, careers and friendships.  They corrupt character and cause a wide swathe of misery and despair which probably can never be repaired.  Don't think it's innocent because it seems so civilised when it starts.  It is not innocent and you are to blame if you encourage it or do not stop it --- at once and completely.  And if you see the girl in the supermarket, go the other way.
     Of course, if you are both single and unattached pursue your dreams.  If you encounter problems write to Dear Abby.

Fire in a Crowded Theatre

     The left does not have much imagination.  Once they latch on to some belabored phrase or slogan they won't let go of it until they realize that no one is impressed by it anymore or they find a new toy.  A current liberal mantra is 'fire in a crowded theatre'.  Whenever a lefty wants to squelch free speech he reminds us that a Supreme Court justice once opined that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech does not protect a man who falsely yells 'fire' in a crowded theatre.  He will seek to squelch free speech through the 'fairness doctrine' or its equivalent by another name, and through campus speech codes which ban all expressions of politically incorrect views as racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on, whether or not such expressions have anything at all to do with those subjects.  If you argue the First Amendment to them they will remind you that it does not protect the yelling of 'fire' in a crowded theatre when there is no fire. They keep going until everything becomes the equivalent of fire in a crowded theatre.  If they could have their way even the Declaration of Independence would approximate 'fire' in a crowded theatre.  (After all, they might remind us, wasn't it a rather alarmist document)?
     One of their goals currently is to use the Fairness Doctrine to silence conservative talk show hosts.  This would occur, or so the left hopes, by causing local stations and advertisers  eventually to cancel current-events daytime talk shows by claiming that they aren't being "fair" with their conservative  broadcasting.  The idea is that stations and advertisers would decide that the game is not worth the candle and go exclusively to sports, music and local issues. It hardly matters to the left that the reason that conservatism predominates on daytime radio and Fox News is that conservatism gets the ratings and the ratings and public preferences are what they are in a free market.  The liberals retain massive quantities of liberal media outlets, but they want it all.  If you tell them that they ought to respect freedom of speech across the board and be consistent they may respond that the First Amendment is all well and good but it doesn't protect someone yelling 'fire' in a crowded theatre and, of course, anyone who goes around saying things they do not like is equivalent to a man who yells 'fire' in a crowded theatre.
   

Conservative Women and the Gender Gap

          Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Christine O'Donnell, and Michelle Bachmann, among  other conservative women, are savaged in a daily barage of phony ethics charges (Palin) and trumped up campaign finance investigations (O'Donnell) for the express and sole purpose of silencing all conservative women.  Sarah Palin alone frightens the left out of its wits.  The goal of the left is exactly the same as that of the Bolsheviks  in Russia, the emasculation of conservatism and freedom in the United States, their inability to articulate rational argument being rather obvious.  Radical leftists know that the survival of their party, the Democrat Party, depends on the gender gap and gaining and keeping the Latino vote in a solid block, like the always dependable African American vote.

     Make no mistake about it; the Democraticic Party has fundamentally changed since the days of Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and other good Americans who simply went too far with spending and high taxes.  And make no mistake about this either; the radical leftist could not care less about the "oppressed masses".  He cares about power --- his own.  His strategy is simply to cobble together a collection of minorities, women and the disaffected at election time, largely conceding the majority of white males to the Republicans.  Without the gender gap in their favor the left is toast and they know it, so they must try to destroy conservative women who dare to callenge them.  It takes courage for conservative women to stand up to the radical left and they deserve the support and encouragement of all conservatives. 

                                                                                                

Death Panels and Tom Daschle

     The claim that there was never a provision for "death panels" in the original version of the 2009 health reform act is hogwash.  There was, and now the Administration, having failed to insert it into legislation which Congress would not enact, is attempting to ram it down the unwilling throats of the people by executive fiat by claiming that it isn't there.  The Nazis and Soviet Communists both had the idea that those who could not work were expendible but in recent American history it was discovered and advanced by Tom Daschle, former Democratic senator from South Dakota.  Daschle was intrigued by the notion that Government could usefully decide when senior citizens had become too infirm to warrant expensive measures to keep them alive.  (And, after all, seniors tend to vote Republican).  Of course they wouldn't be called 'death panels'.  Daschle wasn't that stupid.  When you want something which no one else wants you invent some euphemism  for it.  As his reward for coming up with such a brilliant idea, Obama tried to give him a cabinet post.  Fortunately that failed.

     But that's exactly how the idea was, and is, intended to function because it is perfectly obvious that health care will have to be rationed under Obamacare and what better way is there to do it than to get a foot in the door and keep pushing the Saul Alinsky way?  First you create some law or executive order which appears innocuous enough.  Call the program end-of-life-counseling or some such nonsense.  That's the 'foot in the door'.  Then you "interpret" what you now have, and then go from there.  Voila, you have a death panel.

What is Socialism and What Isn't?

     A recent letter to the editor of a large urban newspaper expressed reservations about conservatives who inveigh against socialism.  The writer opined that we already have socialism in the form of public libraries, fire departments, schools and bridges, among other similar things, and nearly everyone approves of that.  Aren't those things socialistic and aren't conservatives hypocrites when they support them and then denounce proposals for such things as universal health insurance as socialistic?  No, that kind of question reflects a misunderstanding of what socialism is.  It is not taxation of the general public for purposes which serve the undifferentiated mass of people on a non-discriminatory basis.  Libraries serve all the people, rich, poor, both genders and all races.  One may choose not to use a library, but it's there for anyone who does.  Schools serve a general public purpose even for those who have no school-age children.  Even if such purposes are served by excessive taxation or bureaucratic excess they are not socialistic.  They are objectionable, if at all, on other grounds. 

     Socialism is the taking from one group of people, usually the "rich", to benefit another, generally for political purposes.  It's chief tools are income-leveling devices such as the graduated income tax, welfare and the like.  The purpose and result are different from public-purpose spending of which almost everyone approves when it is proportinate to a valid public purpose.

The Job of a Corporate CEO

     The job of a corporate CEO is to earn a profit for his stockholders through the cost-efficient production, allocation and distribution of goods and services.  This serves the interests of the stockholders, the labor deployed for these purposes, the consumer and the country as a whole.  A CEO who builds a factory at home in order to employ more American workers when he could build it in Europe more cost-efficiently can fairly be questioned by the stockholders.  He has no right to play Mr. Bountiful with their money any more than he has a moral right to loot the corporation for his own benefit. 

     For  over thirty years I worked with and around CEOs and other executives of corporations, mostly large ones.  From the standpoint of intelligence, character, personality and generosity top executives are, on average, a cut or two above the general population.  A few are crooks.  Some are skinflints.  Unfortunately there is a problem here with greed when it comes to outlandish compensation packages in too many cases.  On the whole, however, I would sight unseen bet  on the CEOs and other top executives of large corporations against those who never stop complaining about them but are typically tight-fisted with their own money, frequently with Scrooge-like tenacity.  Their generosity applies to your money, not theirs, in all too many cases.

Wilful ignorance

     I have often wondered how anyone can really be an atheist, as the idea of an accidental Universe seems completely implausible to me.  The great British physicist Fred Hoyle, who originated the term 'Big Bang' wrote in his book 'The Elegant Universe' that the likelyhood of an accidental Universe was equivalent to the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard would leave behind it a Boeing 747.  That does not mean that all non-Christian religions are absurb or even that virtual agnosticism is.  One does not have to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Jesus, to realize the extraordianry implausibility of a Universe which simply exnihilates itself --- comes into existence out of non-existence.  To go from there to Christianity is a long road, which is not travelled without effort.
     But the stakes are enormous.  On one side we find a putative Saviour, Jesus Christ, who promises salvation, eternal life, achieved via His own death and sacrifice, offered freely, as a gift to all who will accept it, and on other side, what?  Who knows, but there is no other religion in the world which even makes the same claims as Christianity.  Some are too strange for any reasonable person to accept, while others have at least some superficial plausibility, particulary some Eastern religions, as the great Christian writer C. S. Lewis acknowledged.
     Without now attempting to decide what is true and what isn't, how can any sensible person ignore the questions; who was Jesus?  Was He a real person?  Can He be believed?  Yet we have to recognize the reality of Wilful Ignorance.  In other words, some people do not care enough to ask questions about their eternal existence or absence thereof.  Why? Is it because Christians are unintelligent and lack the sophistication of wiser and more practical skeptics, atheists and agnostics?  No, that idea is demonstrably false.  Even in the previous century alone we had such great intellectual lights as C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers and J. R. R. Tolkien, and many, many others whose intellectual bona fides cannot be seriously questioned.  Maybe they were mistaken, but any idea that they were unsophisticated, unintelligent provincials is simply out of the question.  They were the opposite.  They were intellectual heavy weights.
     A few years ago on a social occassion a woman who knew I was a Christian asked me to explain what Christianity is.  I told her that the circumstances did not permit me to offer an adequate explanation but that I would give her a book which I believed would satisfy her curiosity and I added that I would be glad to talk to her another time.  Shortly thereafter I gave her C. S. Lewis' "Mere Christiantity", the best product on the market for the purpose at hand.  A month or so later I saw the woman, who told me that it was too technical and frankly "boring" so she stopped reading it after an hour or so.  Here was a person whose eternal destiny was at stake, or so I believe, who would not exert even minimal effort to understand and deal with the matter.  That isn't innocent ignorance which I believe God forgives and remedies either here or in the hereafter.  That is wilful ignorance, and I just don't understand it.

The Establishment Clause of the Constitution

     More misunderstanding exists about the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment than anything else in the Constitution, usually in support of the claims that the Founders of the nation were atheists, which not one of them was, and that they prescribed a "wall of separation" between church and state in order to protect the state from religious encroachments.  Many were  Deists which, in the fashion of the time, embraced the notion that God started the Universe off and then more or less left it alone.  In other words He did not interact with man or interfere with the natural course of events.   But He was quite real and, consistent with that, Thomas Jefferson, who was frequently slandered as an atheist, wrote to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush, in a letter dated April 21, 1803, that his views were ". . . the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions".  Jefferson then wrote "I am a Christian . . ." though he questioned whether God accomplished His purposes through miracles.  He was not an atheist nor were the others.  No atheist drafted the Declaration of Independence.  He described Jesus as "meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, and of the sublimest eloquence".

     The Establishment Clause was put in the Constitution to prevent Congress from interfering with established churches in the states, of which there were many at the time.  By his "wall of separation" Jefferson meant a wall which protected churches from interference by governments, not the reverse.  The ridiculous idea of an establishment of a federally-chartered church was not in the minds of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution

Liberalism and Islam --- Allies?

     The alliance of Liberalism and Islamic extremsim  illustrates the maxim 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'.  As both strains of thought are for the most part negative, it is only necessary to understand what they jointly despise to see why they are friends.  They both reject individualism.  Islam is one hundred percent collectivist and Liberalism is about eighty-five percent so.  There are no individuals in the world of Islam, only tribes, sects and families.  Similarly, the Liberal looks out at the world and sees humanity divided into classes, races and ethnic groupings, but not individuals.  Then, too, they both compete with Christianity because it addresses the human condition on an individual basis, not that of a class, race  or other group.  Finally, they both hate capitalism, as it fosters individual enterprise.

     But doesn't Islamofascism, with its propensity for torture, the persecution of women, murder and mayhem fly in the face of all that the gentle, tolerant Liberal espouses?  No, because Liberals use that line only when it serves their purpose.  Recently, as one example, Islamic  'religion police' forced some girls back into a burning building because they had run from it without scarves on their heads.  The reason you don't recall hysterical outcries from feminists and other Liberals is that there weren't any such outcries, because they don't care.  They were too busy excoriating a rural Florida preacher because he threatened to burn one inanimate book, not a number of live human beings.  (That may be an unsubstantiated allegation but it's the reaction which matters here).  With the Communists no longer front and center on the world stage, the Libs have new friends.  They wear turbans.   

Why Can't Liberals be Liberal?

     What is to become of Liberals who in some ways no longer want to be liberal enough?  It appears that we Conservatives must now take on tasks the Liberals have abandoned.

     (1) When I was in law school fifty years ago it was the Liberals who carried the torch most prominently for freedom of speech.  Now some of them want to eliminate Fox News, as that great civil libertarian Jay Rockefeller has proposed.

     (2) It was the Liberals who most conspicuously and rightly demanded that women be treated on merit and with respect.  Now they refer to Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell and other conservative women by unprintable gender-related epithets.  So it was never about respect for women and their rights at all, was it?

     (3) Liberals invented and fought for Social Security, one of the few large government programs which has worked well.  Now they see dollar signs thinking about having a government default on its bonded debt to the seniors who paid into the system year after year in reliance on it.

     I would almost rather deal with fascists or Communists, who can usually be honest about what they believe.  Not quite, but almost. 

                

Global Shmobal --- A Big Fat Fraud

When the weather is too warm that's "Global Warming".  When it's too cold it's also "Global Warming", and when there's too much rain or too little, same thing.  Except that the left now permits us to call it "Climate Change" if "Global Warming" starts to wear a little thin because the Earth has actually been cooling slightly for the past fifteen years.  When the high priests of the left opine, their bald unsupported assertions are always "beyond argument".  If you don't agree you're against science. 

Man-made  "Global Warming" is the greatest fraud and power grab we have had to endure in the long lamentable history of power-mongering human arrogance.  There is no --- NO --- evidence for it at all.  There are computer models, but computer models can prove anything.  Is Chicken Little about to be conked in the head by a purple pumpkin?  Consult a computer model.  When Global Warming is combined with socialized health care they represent the ultimate weapon of the one-world left for the evolutionary accumulation of absolute power and the destruction of human freedom.  Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln must be wondering how all this could be happening to their country, the bastion of freedom they fought so hard to create and preserve.