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(Satire)
Just what is it with Op-Ed editor David Shipley at the New York Times?
How can an objective editor at a major metropolitan newspaper reject an Op-Ed submitted by the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party? Especially since the NYT recently published a piece by McCain’s Democrat opponent?
Sphere: Related Content
I reject as absolutely false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt.
Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am).
– René Descartes
Today’s column continues my review of Dr. Benjamin Wiker’s admirable and timely opus, “10 Books that Screwed up the World and 5 Others That Didn’t Help.” Here, I will do a critique on the very influential French philosopher, René Descartes (1596-1650) and his famous treatise, “Discourse on Method” (1637).
One of my earliest memories of Descartes was more than 20 years ago when I first read that lion of positivism, progressivism and liberal jurisprudence, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who in his famous 1897 essay, “The Path of Law,” wrote:
To an imagination of any scope the most far-reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas … [A] hundred years after his death the abstract speculations of Descartes had become a practical force controlling the conduct of men. … [T]he world is governed to-day by Kant [more] than by Bonaparte
Ten years ago, I used Holmes’ prescient quote in my apologetic against Judge Richard A. Posner, a comprehensive law review article I wrote on the history of law titled, “The Inseparability of Law and Morality.” In that opus I lamented just how prevalent and entrenched the ideas of Descartes (and other philosophers) have become in American culture and on Western civilization in modern times.
In his chapter on Descartes, “Discourse on Method,” which is subtitled, “… of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Searching for Truth in the Sciences,” Wiker wrote:
Descartes attacked skepticism, but only by denying reality. He confirmed the idea of the immaterial soul against the pronouncements of the crass materialists of the day, but only by recreating us as insubstantial ghosts trapped in clattering machines. He proved God’s existence, but only by making it depend on our thinking Him into existence. By his good intentions – if indeed they really were good –he fathered
Prior to Descartes’ criticism of skepticism, philosophers going back far as Socrates had in one form or another been ultimately concerned with God and/or truth. Descartes attack on skepticism feigned as an apologetic for God, ended up denigrating God; reducing God as an egotistical product of our own imagination, thus shattering the God-paradigm in classical philosophy that existed for millennia.
Descartes’ refutation of skepticism was a treatment worse than the illness because he was able to craftily hide his huge ego and present his sophistic arguments as merely a series of suggestions. However, Descartes, like most philosophers and intellectuals, wasn’t the least interested in philosophizing in a vacuum or in vain. Philosophers and intellectuals, like modern day demigods, want their ideas to be applied and celebrated throughout the world. Descartes, as the father of modern philosophy, was no different than the ancients or from contemporary philosophers and intellectuals.
In brief, Descartes’ method was to doubt everything. Below is a summary of Dr. Wiker’s ideas on the philosophy of Descartes and how his ideas have been disseminated in modern society and culture throughout Western civilization:
What is the apotheosis of Descartes’ ideas particularly upon Western civilization? Wiker remarks: “Even if such a method doesn’t lead to insanity it certainly leads to narcissism, the morbid condition of believing that I sit in god-like judgment of everything else but nothing stands in judgment of me.”
As Descartes said in Part I one of his “Method” that even among “the most excellent minds who have ever lived … there is nothing about which there is not some dispute” in philosophy, “and thus nothing that is not doubtful.” On this point, Wiker says of Descartes, “Where there is disagreement, there is doubt, and where is doubt, throw it out.”
If philosophers from Socrates to Einstein viewed the accumulation of knowledge as a precious reservoir to be preserved for posterity, Descartes ridiculed knowledge (and tradition) as garbage to be discarded upon the ash heap of history. In America during the turbulent 1960s the Hippies’ philosophies, “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” “Go with the flow,” “Don’t be judgmental,” “Create your own reality,” were all an obeisance to the nihilistic skepticism of Descartes 250 years before Nietzsche.
Wiker attacks Descartes’ singular statement of faith, cogito ergo sum and turns it on its head: “So we should say, ‘I am, therefore I can think,’ rather than, ‘I think, therefore I am.” The common sense point is this: reality exists before our thinking, so that our thinking depends on reality … First, our thinking depends on the reality of our own existence. If we don’t exist, we cannot think. Second, our thinking correctly depends on our properly conforming our minds to what really exists.”
In the end, Descartes, like many narcissists, so-called “intellectuals,” academics and scholars, doubted everything but his own method. Descartes deified subjectivism (perception is reality) and made it alone the standard of truth. Therefore, I think Descartes stole our humanity and reduced all civilization to an accidental conglomeration of cogs, springs, pistons, nuts, bolts, wheels – nothing more than machinery. Man was merely a ghost trapped inside this dreadful machine we call a human body. This was a precursor to Darwin’s evolution theory that would come to us more than 200 years later.
In Part V of his “Discourse,” Descartes, as the father of modern dualism, contradicted the Judeo-Christian understanding of man – body, soul, spirit contained in a body and viewed man “[as] two entirely different and independent entities, a ghostly soul banging around in a ghastly machine. The result of Descartes’ dualism according to Wiker is that humans have become “a walking philosophical bipolar disorder.”
What are the consequences of Descartes ideas upon society, culture and civilization in modern times? Wiker cites some grim policies that are directly related to the subjectivist philosophy of Descartes:
Harvest fetal embryos
This is the legacy of that Italian philosopher Machiavelli who separated morality from politics (I’ll speak on him next week). This is also the legacy of French philosopher Descartes who devolved human life to a mere mechanism and who taught us that God is not real and we can do whatever we want without fear of Judgment Day.
It was inevitable that the skepticism of Descartes would betray itself when skepticism questioned whether skepticism was a valid perspective at all. I’m convinced it was the diabolical and illogical ideas like those propagated by Descartes (skepticism, metaphysical subjectivism, dualism) that caused that great Roman orator and statesman Cicero to lament: “There is nothing so absurd that it can’t be said by a philosopher.” 
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There are two states on opposite sides of the nation where, if something really stupid can be proposed, they represent the most fertile ground. I speak, of course, of New Jersey and California.
I happen to know a lot more about New Jersey since I am born, raised, and still residing here in my old age despite all the hype about retiring in Florida. I hold a degree from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, so I have fulfilled my Florida quota, but if you want a front row seat to idiocy, there is no better place than my home state or California.
In early July some of the Democrat heavy hitters who run New Jersey joined U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. in an event to lambaste the notion of actually permitting the exploration and extraction of oil way, way off the coast of New Jersey. On the podium was Governor Jon Corzine and both of New Jersey’s Senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez. If mendacity has a particular odor to it, the stench of this event is probably still lingering over Belmar.
“We are really talking about something that is irrelevant to the overall dependency on oil,” said Pallone. “What we need to do is (to) be moving to alternative energies and most importantly (to) conservation.” Referring to the effort in Congress to permit the use of our own national oil and natural gas resources from the continental shelf and elsewhere, Pallone said, “I can’t think of an idea whose time is less appropriate than this one.”
Meanwhile, anyone filling up their automobile gas tank that day was paying out $4.00 per gallon for the privilege. In fact, there was a rumor going around that quite a few Americans were upset over the failure of Congress to permit some—any—degree of energy independence.
That might account for the historic single-digit disapproval rating for Congress that was announced shortly after Pallone and his pals got through bloviating about the evils of oil.
How does one go about achieving “conservation” of oil if, at the same time, the entire nation depends on it to get anywhere?
By conservation, one must assume that Pallone and the rest of the Democrats mean leaving it untapped and thus requiring Americans to import it from other countries.
Pallone raised the tired bogyman of an offshore oil mishap that would harm the pristine beaches of New Jersey, but failed to mention the many offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico that withstood Hurricane Katrina without a single mishap. Indeed, they fared much better than the city of New Orleans. Meanwhile, Sen. Menendez raised the specter of California beaches—he’s from Jersey City—allegedly destroyed by a spill long ago. I personally have been to the beach in Santa Monica and all I saw was a lot of people enjoying it.
Sen. Lautenberg, a man who, if reelected, will be 548 years old by the end of his next term complained that, “A plan to drill here is no plan at all. It’s a handout, simply a handout to the oil companies. It’s a terrible idea. And drilling will do nothing to cut today’s gas prices.” Apparently, like the entire Democrat Party, the Senator has never heard of the immutable law of supply and demand.
He’s also wrong about cutting today’s prices. If these morons had gathered to announce that leases had been granted to explore and extract oil from offshore New Jersey, the price of oil in the world’s mercantile exchanges would definitely respond. Every time a new reserve of oil is found, the price of this global commodity reflects the potential of a new supply. The price per barrel drops.
The newspaper report of the event did not quote Gov. Corzine, but he is so in the tank for “alternative” energy that the prospect of offshore oil must keep the man up at night. Let’s assume he thinks the idea of oil rigs offshore (most would be completely out of sight of land) is a very bad idea.
So why is Gov. Corzine a vocal proponent of vast fields of wind turbines whirling their blades around (but only when the wind is blowing) in full sight of beachgoers? Corzine is positively crazed for wind farms, particularly if they are located offshore.
One proposal in March of this year envisioned the construction of up to 118 wind turbines “rising hundreds of feet above the water.” The project costs are estimated at more than $1 billion and, for the record, there are no offshore wind farms operating in the United States. One such proposal that would have spoiled the view from the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts was opposed by that famous family and a coalition of local residents.
So the Democrat political equation is oil rigs, bad. Wind turbines, good. Only you can’t run your car on wind power. In fact, wind and solar power combined provide less than 5% of all the electricity generated in America.
The issue facing Americans these days is oil, oil, oil. We have lots of it if Congress will just let the oil companies explore and drill for it in desolate places like ANWR or difficult places like the ocean deeps.
“Every time we try something to create energy independence,” said Pallone, “We are fought tooth and nail by these oil guys.”
If you combined all the oil resources owned by the investor-owned oil companies, it would constitute about 4% of the world’s known oil reserves. These are the same companies that pay billions in taxes to the federal and state governments every year and, so far as the Democrats are concerned, they are the problem.
The citizens of New Jersey actually have it in their power to replace Sen. Lautenberg in the upcoming national elections. Do you think they will do it? Do you think they are going to vote for Sen. Obama? At least the Governor of Florida, like John McCain, has decided offshore oil rigs are not such a bad thing after all. Oh, wait, I forgot. Those guys are Republicans.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He blogs at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
© Alan Caruba, July 2008
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Those who oppose homosexuality for religious reasons are participating in “hate,” according to an official for McDonald’s,
the worldwide purveyor of Big Macs and Happy Meals.
“Hatred has no place in our culture,” corporate spokesman Bill Whitman told the Washington Post in response to a campaign by the American Family Association for a boycott of the burger-and-fries outlets because of the corporation’s advocacy for the homosexual lifestyle.
“That includes McDonald’s, and we stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment,” Whitman said.
“Throwing out any pretense of being neutral in the culture war, McDonald’s has taken up the rhetoric of gay activists, suggesting those who oppose same-sex marriage (SSM) are motivated by hate,” the AFA said in a new alert about its campaign today.
“AFA has asked for a boycott of McDonald’s restaurants because of the company’s promotion of the gay agenda. AFA asked McDonald’s to remain neutral in the culture war. McDonald’s refused,” the group said.
“McDonald’s has decided to adopt the ‘hate’ theme used by gay activist groups for years,” said the AFA alert.
“Mr. Whitman has intentionally avoided addressing the reason for the boycott. This boycott is not about hiring gays or how gay employees are treated. It is about McDonald’s choosing to put the full weight of their corporation behind promoting their agenda,” the AFA alert said.
McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner said the company will promote issues they approve, the AFA said.
“Being a socially responsible organization is a fundamental part of who we are. We have an obligation to use our size and resources to make a difference in the world … and we do,” Skinner was quoted as saying.
The American Family Association’s earlier boycott of Ford Motor Co. over its promotion of homosexuality was dropped after company sales fell 8 percent per month for two years.
AFA said McDonald’s donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in exchange for membership in the NGLCC and a seat on the group’s board of directors. The NGLCC lobbies Congress on a wide range of issues, including the promotion of same-sex marriage.
AFA had asked the corporation to remove its name and logo from the NGLCC website, where it is listed as a “corporate partner and organization ally.” AFA also requested that McDonald’s remove the endorsement of NGLCC by Richard Ellis, vice president of communications for McDonald’s USA, from the website.
“Ellis, who is openly homosexual, was given a seat on the NGLCC board of directors. … He was quoted as saying, ‘I’m thrilled to join the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and ready to go to work. I share the NGLCC’s passion for business growth and development within the LGBT community, and I look forward to playing a role I moving these important initiatives forward,’” AFA said.
McDonald’s officials declined to return a WND call seeking comment on the placement of its executive on the “gay” advocacy organization. But the corporation sent a subsequent e-mail confirming its support for the agenda of the homosexual business lobby.
“McDonald’s is indeed a Corporate Partner and Organizational Ally of NGLCC. Our vice president of U.S. communications, Richard Ellis, was recently elected to its board of directors,” said the brief statement to WND from Heidi M. Barker, senior director of media relations.
A spokeswoman for NGLCC refused to speak with WND except on “background” when asked about McDonald’s financial contribution to the group. But she did confirm the organization would not release information on its sponsors.
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(Satire)
No one can deny that Reverend Jesse Jackson is many things to many people. However, no one has ever accused the Reverend of being overly sophisticated or temperate in his language and or behavior.
That is unlikely to change as Reverend Jackson seeks to contain the firestorm resulting from his crude, intemperate remarks about Barack Obama on national television.
Specifically, in a video aired on FOX network, Jackson leans over and whispers, “See, Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith based … I want cut his n**s off … Barack … he’s talking down to black people.”
For emphasis, Jackson appeared to make a stabbing or cutting motion with his hand.
While Jackson was unveiling his scheme to neuter Barack Obama on national television, the would- be target of the “unkindest cut” was actually helping make Jackson’s case by admonishing American parents to “make sure your children can speak Spanish.”
For that bit of idiotic and unseemly vote trolling, Obama should be gelded on national television (FOX), as soon as it can be verified that Obama has “n***” to begin with, or that he has flip-flopped on the issue, whichever comes first.
Some unsolicited advise for Reverend Jackson seems appropriate: Reverend, in order to prevent this sort of mix-up again, perhaps you should speak Spanish when plotting to undo a brother’s masculinity and reproductive rights on right-wing television?
Brother Obama would appreciate it!
There are no such things as sexual deviations. If something happens sexually, it must be part of the natural spectrum; if it is part of the natural spectrum, it cannot be considered either abnormal or unnatural, even if it is relatively uncommon; but as it turns out to be so much more common hence quite natural.
~ Dr. Benjamin Wiker, on Kinsey’s “Human Sexuality in the Human Male” (1948)
Prologue
Today’s essay continues my review series of Dr. Wiker’s book, “10 Books that Screwed up the World and 5 Others that didn’t Help” (Regnery, 2008). Here I will combine my critique of Kinsey’s work in light of a recent Supreme Court case, “Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana” (June 25, 2008) that outrageously overruled a Louisiana state statute giving the death penalty to men who rape children under age 12 as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” provision of the Constitution.
Coincidentally, Dr. Michael Savage, my favorite radio talk show host and a bona fide conservative intellectual, Monday on his radio program said that “Kinsey was a sexual pervert who made up his own data.” Dr. Savage, as usual, is right on point.
Kinsey’s one-man sexual revolution of the late 1940s lobbied and received academic legitimacy to render normal and to promote the vilest sexual ideas imaginable including, pedophilia, child rape, sadomasochism and bestiality.
With such pernicious ideas having the stamp of scientific authority, Kinsey’s perversities traversed through American society like strains of a deadly virus. Despite promising vaccines, Kinsey’s evil ideas on human sexuality mutated and transformed to influence and vex each subsequent generation until this day.
SCOTUS majority rapes children again?
You may query, dear reader: How does a book that Kinsey wrote in 1948, 60 years ago, on human sexuality affect the judicial philosophy of the highest court in America in 2008? I’m glad you asked.
Last week, SCOTUS.org (Supreme Court of the United States) cited in the case Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana that it is unconstitutional to require the death penalty for the crime of raping a child, despite an existing Louisiana state statute that protects child rape victims.
In a majority opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court applied the tortured reasoning that since the rape victim lived, nor was death intended, therefore capital punishment for that crime violates the Eighth Amendment. (Talk about blaming the victim!)
Another of Justice Kennedy’s justifications for such draconian measures as overruling the Constitution is that the child victim will be required, possibly on more than one occasion, to retell the crime, forcing on the child “a moral choice” that the youngster is not mature enough to make. “The way the death penalty here involves the child victim in its enforcement can compromise a decent legal system,” Justice Kennedy wrote.
Justice Samuel Alito, rejecting the Kennedy majority opinion proclaiming a “national consensus” against the death penalty for one who rapes a child, argued that the emphasis is misplaced by pointing out that only six states now have such laws. Alito reasoned that additional states might have had laws on the books giving the death penalty to child rapists long ago if the Supreme Court in 1977 case Coker v. Georgia hadn’t overruled the execution for raping an adult.
Alito rightly theorized that in the pro-defendant climate of the 1970s many state legislators had “good reason to fear” that they never could pass such a law. The expansive dicta in that case, Alito also pointed out, were not even upheld by all the justices that voted with the majority in Coker v. Georgia. Thirty-one years since that case, Alito added, state courts have read the Coker opinion in its broadest interpretation, “stunting legislative consideration” of capital murder in cases where there is a child victim.
Kinsey’s kinder [children] and SCOTUS
Dr. Wiker, particularly in his thoughtful critique of Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s work, “Human Sexuality in the Human Male,” said that we find “the belief that our natural state is one of amoral sexual extravaganza; the evolutionary reduction of human beings to the level of animals; the adept use of science to mask propaganda; the attack on the Judeo-Christian understanding of male, female, marriage and family.”
Wiker further commented that “even more than Rousseau or Mead, Kinsey’s revolution was intensely personal, a revolution rooted in his own epic sexual perversity. He represents, in sterling coin, the evil that results from attempting to change the world to match one’s character, rather than changing oneself to match the deep moral order written into human nature.”
Here is where the recent child rape case embraces the sexual perversity and nihilism of a Dr. Kinsey. Wiker writes:
One can barely stand to read the sections of Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” on the repeated raping of babies and small children. What makes it so thoroughly nauseating is the high-sounding pretence to scientific objectivity. It all appears hauntingly like the Nazi researchers’ detached, objective accounts of their experiments on living victims. Both, no doubt, yielded real data, and in both we are faced with a science twisted to purposes that destroy the humanity of victim and perpetrator, all in the name of human progress.
How is it, therefore, that Kinsey’s “kinder” (German for “children”) are coming home to roost in the august and sacred halls of SCOTUS? (Please excuse the mixed metaphor.) Wiker answers that question in the concluding chapter on Kinsey:
Kinsey’s pseudo-science became foundational for the sexual revolution, used both in courts and classrooms to push a limitless sexual revolution that began in the 1960s and through which we are still living. … It will not be complete until it extinguishes all opposition, the greatest of which is Christianity. Once again, we see atheism at the root of rebellion.
Instead of Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose sophistic opinion was merely channeling Dr. Kinsey, enter defendant Patrick Kennedy, who ironically (and fittingly) shares a surname with Justice Kennedy. Could this despicable child rapist just have easily written this infamous opinion exonerating himself and giving fellow child molesters and rapists across America the green light to destroy the lives of as many children as they can get away with?
However, there is one more man I will include in this triumvirate of infamy who could have written the majority decision removing the death penalty for child rapists. You guessed it, dear reader, that villain Dr. Alfred Kinsey.
Epilogue
In June 1939, on the eve of World War II, France ended its practice of public capital punishment by the guillotine not because it was unusual, because beheadings in one form or another had existed in France and in other countries throughout the world for hundreds and thousands of years.
Admittedly, it is arguable that the guillotine was “cruel,” and there is the rub with liberal activist judges. They ignore the contraction “and” in the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” It is a two-part test founded in morality, not positive law, whereby many judges use their own personal policy preferences and prejudices to ignore the “unusual” clause and make the Eighth Amendment a one-part test.
The result: the judge arrogantly queries himself – is this punishment cruel? If “yes,” case closed, child rapist gets freed from the ultimate punishment.
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Comments received have been predictably partisan: Conservatives generally agree with the points made, while liberals almost universally reject the notion that George W. Bush acted in good faith and to the benefit of humanity by choosing to invade Iraq.
Additional information and clarifications are presented herewith:
1. I did not claim that the yellow cake was discovered in 2003.
2. The basis for the facts in my article was an AP report, the link to which is provided below.
There was no other source.
3. Yellow cake is a very dangerous substance, which can be converted to WMD with the right equipment and technology.
To believe that Saddam Hussein lacked the ability or motivation to acquire and perfect the equipment for production of nuclear WMD is, in my opinion, foolhardy and naive.
4. Those who believe that presence of IAEA inspectors assured that the yellow cake was controlled and adequately protected from diversion overlook two vital facts:
A. Saddam Hussein kicked the IAEA out of Iraq in 1998. Given that fact, just how effective was the IAEA?
B. The IAEA was not, and is not, held in high esteem by some professionals and experts.
Those who wish to explore the facts further should Goggle “IAEA effectiveness in Iraq” to glean more information, which includes, in part, the following report from the Nuclear Control Institute (http://www.nci.org/new/iraq-ib.htm):
“The IAEA performance in Iraq has not been reassuring. Iraq learned early on that it could conceal a nuclear weapons program by cooperating with the IAEA. Khidhir Hamza, a senior Iraqi scientist who defected to the United States in 1994, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Saddam Hussein approved a deception-by-cooperation scheme in 1974. “Iraq was careful to avoid raising IAEA suspicions; an elaborate strategy was gradually developed to deceive and manipulate the agency,” Hamza said.[6] The strategy worked. Iraq, as a signer of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was subject to IAEA inspections on all nuclear facilities. But IAEA’s inspectors had failed to detect the Iraqi “Manhattan Project,” which was discovered after the Gulf War by IAEA teams at sites identified by the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM)”
There are undoubtedly those who would be able to sleep comfortably in the knowledge that IAEA was protecting one’s loved ones from Saddam. That would not be true in my case.
5. Had the United States not invaded Iraq in 2003, that 550 metric tons of yellow cake would have remained physically within Saddam’s sphere of influence. Again, perhaps that would not bother some, but in light of 9/11, it bothered many Americans, including President Bush.
6. My column includes scores of references to Democrat politicians and officials who repeatedly declared that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that he posed a severe threat to the world, including the United States.
Regrettably, all of those public words by Democrats get lost in the rush to give credence to the left wing mantra “Bush Lied! People died!”
In truth, the high emotions surrounding WMD and the war on terror itself appear to be rooted in unmitigated hatred for George Bush and Dick Cheney, rather than objective consideration of facts.
7. Lest we forget, there is also the matter of UN Resolution 1441 which, although it did not authorize the use of force, did in fact document Saddam’s legacy of possessing and using WMD.
Refer to the link below for the official document titled, “Security Council Holds Iraq In ‘Material Breach of Disarmament Obligations’ ” which was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council on August 11, 2002. 1441
8. In October 2002, the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was passed by the U.S. Congress.
In the US House, 296 representatives (215 Republicans and 81 Democrats) approved the Resolution.
In the US Senate, 77 senators (48 Republicans and 29 Democrats) approved the Resolution.
In total, then, 110 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution.
President Bush signed the resolution into law on October 16, 2002.
The actual document itself can be viewed at the following link: Joint Resolution
9. It has become fashionable “blood sport” in the media, and among liberals, to ridicule President Bush by calling him stupid, either directly or by inference.
The delicious irony in that is that those who denigrate Bush’s intelligence the loudest are often the same folks who will swear that Bush sonehow tricked those 110 Democrats into voting for the war resolution in 2002!
For a man with the alleged IQ of radioactive dust, George W. Bush seems to be an overachiever when it comes to bamboozling, and defeating, Democrats!
10. In my judgment, America (and the entire world actually) is fortunate that President Bush decided to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. The president’s action allowed the Iraqi system of justice to punish Saddam Hussein for his brutal dictatorship, including the use of WMD on his own citizens.
In summary, I continue to believe that President Bush acted wisely, and that his actions have made the world a safer place.
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<script type=”text/javascript”
Red, white, and blue were the only colors that mattered back then.
As a result, I never imagined that our national anthem could be manipulated, willy-nilly, as a bully pulpit to promote the personal views of the singer.
However, that is exactly what happened in Denver recently when jazz singer Rene Marie decided, unilaterally, not to perform the Star Spangled Banner, as scheduled.
Rather, Marie treated her unsuspecting audience to a surprise rendition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” commonly known as the Black National Anthem.
She defended her decision with these words:
“I want to express how I feel about living in the United States as a black woman, as a black person.” *
Hmmmm. Perhaps Marie should write a book, or pen a letter to the editor of her hometown newspaper? Or why not spend an afternoon on the Oprah Show to swap racism horror stories with America’s most abused and oppressed billionaire?
Alternatively, perhaps Marie should volunteer for the Barack Obama presidential campaign?
She would be perfect to make sure that Obama never wears his Old Glory lapel pin and always keeps his right hand at his side, rather than over his heart, at ceremonies where the Star Spangled Banner and Pledge of Allegiance are featured.
One thing is very clear: Marie needs to understand that sabotaging the Star Spangled Banner is exceptionally rude and unpatriotic!
Still, Marie may have inadvertently provided a glimpse into a frightening future:
Namely, should America’s unhealthy obsession with multiculturalism and diversity prevail over common sense, the day may come when separate anthems are recited for Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and blacks,
Time permitting, there could even be a rendering of the traditional Star Spangled Banner.
For “old school” white folk, of course.
Liberal obstructionists anxious to kill the oil and automobile industries in order to save endangered insects have been boxed into a corner in the Congress.
Specifically, a majority of Americans wants Congress to lift the ban on offshore and ANWR drilling escalation, a position untenable to the loony left lead by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Most Americans believe that the energy crisis can be solved by increasing supply, rather by imposing higher taxes or other draconian measures designed by the far left to get people out of their automobiles.
In other words, the American people are saying: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader Harry Reid, get the hell out of the way and let business people with common sense solve the problem!
As to being boxed in, Democrat leaders in the US House had vowed to take up important energy legislation right after the Independence Day recess. *
However, leadership is now fearful that any energy-related measure would give the GOP an opportunity to force a vote on domestic drilling, a vote that most surely would cause the drilling ban to be repealed.
Consequently, the House of Pelosi has called off any immediate plans to bring energy legislation to the floor of the House.
So, my fellow Americans, while the price you pay at the pump marches relentlessly toward $5.00 a gallon, the Democrat Party refuses to permit a vote on drilling, a solution favored by 75 percent of the electorate!
Thanks to Democrats, the festivities just concluded from coast to coast, all across our grand land, to celebrate American independence, freedom, and democracy seem naively cynical.
A Democratic aide summed up that cynicism perfectly by saying, “Right now, our strategy on gas prices is Drive small cars and wait for the wind.”
Surely, We the people deserve more, and better, from our elected representatives? Hill:
johnlillpop@yahoo.com
Savages are not evil precisely because they do not know what it is to be good.~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Prologue
Today’s column continues my review of Dr. Benjamin Wiker’s excellent and timely opus, “10 Books that Screwed up the World and 5 Others that didn’t Help” (Regnery, 2008). Here, I will do a critique on the great French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and his famous treatise, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men” (1755).
Interestingly, many of the worlds’ great philosophers and intellectuals were atheists and crafted a quasi-autobiographical philosophy based on their own horrific childhood, life experiences and personal policy prejudices. Some of the commonalities among the leading philosophers are these: an absent, cruel or weak father, a predilection toward atheism, materialism, humanism, naturalism, but most notably, an irrational and visceral hatred of the Judeo-Christian traditions of intellectual thought.
Rousseau’s early life
Take Rousseau, for example. Below is a summary of his early years that are inextricably linked to his own philosophy rooted in naturalism, humanism and sexual egalitarianism:
Rousseau the philosopher
In 1750, Rousseau entered a writing competition sponsored by the Academy of Dijon. His essay, which won him the first prize, was titled, “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts.” The question was proposed: Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals? Rousseau answered “No.”
Savages are not evil precisely because they do not know what it is to be good.~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Prologue
Today’s column continues my review of Dr. Benjamin Wiker’s excellent and timely opus, “10 Books that Screwed up the World and 5 Others that didn’t Help” (Regnery, 2008). Here, I will do a critique on the great French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and his famous treatise, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men” (1755).
Interestingly, many of the worlds’ great philosophers and intellectuals were atheists and crafted a quasi-autobiographical philosophy based on their own horrific childhood, life experiences and personal policy prejudices. Some of the commonalities among the leading philosophers are these: an absent, cruel or weak father, a predilection toward atheism, materialism, humanism, naturalism, but most notably, an irrational and visceral hatred of the Judeo-Christian traditions of intellectual thought.
Rousseau’s early life
Take Rousseau, for example. Below is a summary of his early years that are inextricably linked to his own philosophy rooted in naturalism, humanism and sexual egalitarianism:
