Obaspite



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Keep Jesus Out of Your Socialism

Michael Youssef

The headline of the full-page ad asks, "What Would Jesus Cut?—A budget is a moral document." The text continues, "Our faith tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats the poor."

The ad was produced by Sojourners, a self-described "evangelical" organization whose slogan is "Faith in Action for Social Justice." The ad was signed by Sojourners president Jim Wallis and more than two dozen Religious Left pastors, theologians, and activists. They urge our legislators to ask themselves, "What would Jesus cut?" from the federal budget.

How would you answer that question? My answer would be, "It's a nonsense question. Your premise is faulty. Your priorities are not His priorities."

Jesus had many opportunities to confront the Roman government about its spending priorities. It was, after all, one of the most brutal regimes in history. If the question "What would Jesus cut?" has any biblical relevance, we should be able to cite instances where Jesus lectured the Roman oppressors the same way the Religious Left lectures America.

Just compare ancient Rome with America today. Rome sent its armies out to conquer; America sends its soldiers out to liberate. Rome demanded tribute from other nations; America sends aid and emergency relief around the world. Rome enslaved nations; America rebuilds nations.

If the federal budget is a "moral document," what does it say about America? It suggests to me that America may be the most moral nation on earth! Name one other country that has spent $15 billion fighting AIDS in Africa. Name one other country that has provided more disaster relief, that has built more schools and water treatment plants, that has supplied more food aid around the world, that has sent more doctors, teachers, and technical advisers to developing nations.

Even America's military budget—much of which is being spent to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan—reflects the basic compassion and unselfishness of the American people. Clearly, America hardly deserves any scolding from the Sojourners soapbox.

Did Jesus ever lecture the Roman Empire about its budget priorities? In Matthew 8, when the Roman centurion approached Jesus in Capernaum, our Lord could have said, "How dare you, a Roman warmonger, come to Me asking favors? Change your priorities! Tell your bosses in Rome to stop buying chariots and start funding welfare programs!" But Jesus didn't lecture the centurion. He said, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith!"

In Matthew 22, when the Pharisees asked if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar, the Lord could have thundered against Caesar's misplaced budget priorities. Instead, He said, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

In John 18, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, a friend of Caesar. Why didn't He give Pilate an earful about the injustice of Roman rule? If ever there was a time for Jesus to "speak truth to power" and become the "social justice Messiah," that was it!

But Jesus didn't preach the social gospel to Pontius Pilate. Oh, he spoke truth to power, all right. He delivered a profound message to Pontius Pilate—and to you and me: "My kingdom is not of this world."

Now, I'm not saying that Christians are never called to confront their government. God bless Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church for standing against Nazi genocide. But that's not the situation here.

And I'm not saying there isn't a social and compassionate dimension to the Christian gospel. There certainly is! Jesus had great compassion for the poor.

He preached in Nazareth, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." He sent word to John the Baptist, "The deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." Jesus presented the obligation to help the poor as an individual responsibility, a Kingdom responsibility—not the duty of the secular government.

Both the religious and secular Left in America seem to want government to replace the church in ministering to the poor and needy. One of Barack Obama's first proposals as president was a plan to slash tax deductions for charitable donations by high-income taxpayers. President Obama reasoned that a tax deduction "shouldn't be a determining factor as to whether you're giving that hundred dollars to the homeless shelter." Maybe so—but since private charities do so much good for the poor, why eliminate incentives for charitable giving? Could it be that liberals see private charities as competing with the big government welfare state?

In Romans 13, Paul tells us that we pay our taxes and support the government so that we will have a just, orderly society in which law-abiding citizens are protected from wrongdoers. But the responsibility for mercy and compassion belongs to the church—not the government.

What would Jesus cut? When He stood before the Roman Empire, He didn't suggest cuts. He received cuts. His flesh was cut by Roman nails and a Roman spear. He was bruised for our transgressions, and with His cuts we are healed. That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

SOURCE

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Honesty and Trust

By Walter E. Williams

Dishonesty, lying and cheating are not treated with the right amount of opprobrium in today's society. To gain an appreciation for the significance of honesty and trust, consider what our day-to-day lives would be like if we couldn't trust anyone.

When we purchase a bottle of 100 pills from our pharmacist, how many of us bother to count the pills? We pull in to a gasoline station and pay $35 for 10 gallons of gasoline. How do we know for sure whether we in fact received 10 gallons instead of 9 3/4? You pay $7 for a 1-pound package of filet mignon. Do you ever independently verify that you in fact received 1 pound? In each of those cases, and thousands more, we simply trust the seller.

There are thousands of cases in which the seller trusts the buyer. Having worked 40 hours, I trust that George Mason University, my employer, will pay me. People place an order with their stockbroker to purchase 100 shares of AT&T stock, and the stockbroker trusts that he'll be paid. Companies purchase 5 tons of aluminum with payment due 30 days later.

Examples of honesty and trust abound, but imagine the cost and inconvenience if we couldn't trust anyone. We would have to lug around measuring instruments to make sure that it was in fact 10 gallons of gas and 1 pound of steak that we purchased. Imagine the hassle of having to count out the number of pills in a bottle. If we couldn't trust, we'd have to bear the costly burden of writing contracts instead of relying on a buyer's or a seller's word. We'd have to bear the monitoring costs to ensure compliance in the simplest of transactions. It's safe to say that whatever undermines honesty and trust raises the costs of transactions, reduces the value of exchange and makes us poorer.

Honesty and trust come into play in ways that few of us even contemplate. In my neighborhood, workers for FedEx, UPS and other delivery companies routinely leave packages that contain valuable merchandise on the doorstep if no one answers the door.
The local supermarket leaves plants, fertilizer and other home and garden items outdoors overnight unattended. What's more, the supermarket displays loads of merchandise at entryways and exits. In neighborhoods where there's less honesty, deliverymen leaving merchandise on doorsteps and stores leaving merchandise outdoors unattended or at entryways and exits would be equivalent to economic suicide.

Dishonesty is costly. Delivery companies cannot leave packages when the customer is not home. The company must bear the costs of making return trips, or the customer has to bear the costs of going to pick up the package. If a supermarket places merchandise outside, it must bear the costs of hiring an attendant - plus retrieve the merchandise at the close of business; that's if it can risk having merchandise outdoors in the first place.

Honesty affects stores such as supermarkets in another way. A supermarket manager's goal is to maximize the rate of merchandise turnover per square foot of leased space. When theft is relatively low, the manager can use all of the space he leases, including outdoor and entryway space, thereby raising his profit potential. That opportunity is denied to supermarkets in localities where there's less honesty. That in turn means a higher cost of doing business, which translates into higher prices, less profit and fewer customer amenities.

Crime, distrust and dishonesty impose huge losses that go beyond those suffered directly. Much of the cost of crime and dishonesty is borne by people who can least afford it - poor people. It's poor people who have fewer choices and pay higher prices or must bear the transportation costs of going to suburban malls to shop. It's poor people in high-crime neighborhoods who are refused pizza delivery and taxi pickups.

The fact that honesty and trust are so vital should make us rethink just how much tolerance we should have for criminals and dishonest people.

SOURCE

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The Nobel peace prize  -- discredited again

Comment by Larry Pickering, an Australian conservative cartoonist

No person has ever been more deserving of a peace prize than little Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai. The world shed a tear as she bravely recovered from the Taliban’s cowardly attempts to kill her and her dream that little Pakistani girls might be educated.

She also gave the Norwegian Nobel Committee of academics one last chance at legitimacy, but again they blew it.

Oh well, we can't expect too much, after all, the Nobel Committee did see fit to award a Nobel Peace Prize to one of the world’s most notorious terrorists, Yasser Arafat. Arafat pioneered the art of suicide bombings and murdered thousands

Amid charges of bribery and corruption the Nobel Committee has awarded many prizes of dubious merit. A laureate among them was Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai, who famously claimed HIV/AIDS was developed by Western scientists specifically to depopulate Africa.

Another recipient, Linus Pauling, won multiple Nobels. He blazed a trail as one of the world’s leading chemists working on chemical weapons projects for the U.S. military.

The list is long... but one is my favourite: Failed rock star and three-time Nobel nominated, Bob Geldof. He was awarded the Nobel Man of Peace for his “feed the world” campaign.   But Geldof caused many hundreds of thousands to starve to death. Please explain, you demand?

Okay you have heard it before, it goes like this: “Please don’t give me a fish, teach me how to fish.” But teaching starving people how to catch or grow food wasn’t in Geldof’s self-promotion manual.

All creatures, including indigenous humans, breed in marginal areas when conditions allow. Some animals can even prolong gestation until conditions improve.

Australia’s kangaroos have learnt to survive the most severe of droughts and are masters of this technique.

They have figured out how to lactate an embryo at the same time as carry a joey in the pouch and another in the uterus. The whole regenerating process can be slowed to a stop during droughts and booted back up when food is plentiful.

Bob Geldoff, in pursuit of propping up his failed rock star career, and armed with $150 million in donations, fed the world. But only once! Yes… just once!

It gave him notoriety and a lucrative job as a presenter on cable television, but it killed a million innocent children. How did this happen?

Simply because when artificial conditions are imposed on a people who have adapted to extreme drought conditions over millennia, they breed according to what is available to eat. A starving mother will have no milk.

An inevitable higher birth rate will occur when food is freely available. And in this case, it was Geldof’s artificial food. And what about the next cyclical drought? Of course it arrives, but where is Bob Geldoff now?

Well, Bob is swanning around the world describing his wondrous philanthropic nature to paying audiences while starving parents describe the great meal they once had to their starving children.A starving nation cannot be fed just once!

“Get rich, get famous, and get laid,” was Bob’s stated ambition. It was a costly one, but not to him.

The Poms gave him a knighthood so now we need to call him Sir Robert Geldof.

I wonder what the starving children would call him, if they understood what he had done to them. I would just like 15 minutes in a locked room with him.

Never mind little Malala darling, if you were my daughter I would cry with pride... you will be rewarded in far better ways than with a discredited Nobel Prize.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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David Horowitz analyses the Left:

There are four defining features of the left, which distinguish it as a movement of individuals who approach politics quite differently from pragmatically-minded conservatives.

The first of these features is their alienation from country: If you ask progressives about their patriotic feeling, they will tell you that they don’t think of themselves first as Americans but as “citizens of the world.” That even has a Harvard imprimatur. They are, in fact, so profoundly alienated from their country as to be in some sense foreigners to it. They are hostile to its history and to its core values, which they see as reflections of a society that has been guilty of racism and oppression on an epic scale. And they are fundamentally opposed to its constitutional arrangements which the framers specifically designed to thwart what they deemed “wicked projects” to redistribute income and share individual wealth.

This is perhaps the hardest feature of their progressive adversaries for conservatives to comprehend. It is difficult to imagine that people as privileged by America’s generosity as Barack Obama and his entourage of despoilers should be so alienated from their country as to feel themselves in it but not of it. And there is no more shocking example of this than Benghazi. No matter what your politics, or what solutions you propose to the problems that confront this nation, ask yourself this: Could you have done what Barack Obama did that night? Could you as commander-in-chief abandon three Americans fighting for their lives under your command? These men had served their country for more than a decade. For seven hours they cried out for help from their government, but you refused to give it.

How, as a fellow American, could Obama have just left these men to die? No one with an ounce of patriotic feeling could. But he did. Even Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet premier of a Communist dictatorship, maintained contact with his astronaut as he burned up in space. But not our president. When the attack on our embassy in Benghazi began, he hung up the phone and went to bed, and then on to a fundraiser with Beyonce and Jay-Z in Las Vegas in the morning. This, with four Americans including our ambassador dead.

As a nation we are now confronted by mortal enemies in Iran and Syria, in Hizbollah and Hamas – enemies who have openly declared that we are the devil’s party and should be erased from the face of the earth. How could an American president deliberately set out to appease such enemies? How in the face of such threats could he reduce our country to an international laughing stock, no longer respected by our friends, no longer feared by our foes? How could he be so cavalier about having failed so miserably to have defended his country’s security and uphold its honor? How could an American commander-in-chief then put himself in a position to be snubbed by the Iranian Hitlerites, which is what they are, and which is what Obama did? How could he snub our Israeli allies and at the same time grovel before our Islamic enemies? But he did. How could he create a vacuum in the Middle East allowing Russia to become the new regional power? How could he make himself an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, which slaughters Christians, and promises the extermination of the Jews and spawns terrorist armies like al-Qaeda and Hamas?

The answer to all these questions is that Obama doesn’t identify with our country. He sees himself as a “citizen of the world,” and a redresser of grievances for the suffering he imagines America has inflicted on our adversaries, including Hitlerite Iran.

The second feature of the progressive left that is key to understanding it is its instinctive, practiced, and indispensable dishonesty. As I previously noted, the Communists in the circles I frequented in my youth never identified themselves as Communists but always as “progressives” and “Jeffersonian democrats” (which is the last thing they were). When I was a young man and Stalin was alive, the goal of the Communist Party U.S.A. was a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and a “Soviet America.” But under Stalin’s inspiration the official slogan of the Communist Party was “Peace, Jobs, and Democracy.”

The lesson? People on the left may be delusional but they are not stupid. They know what they can say and get away with, and what they can’t. Barack Obama is a born and bred member of the left and not coincidentally is the most brazen and compulsive liar ever to occupy the American White House. What other politician could have successfully explained away the fact that two of his closest political confidantes over a twenty-year period were an anti-American racist, Jeremiah Wright and an anti-American terrorist William Ayers?

There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it now. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn’t get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power.

An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America — which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election.

The chosen legislative instrument to begin this transformation was Obamacare. It was presented as an act of charity, a plan to cover the uninsured. That was the “issue” as they presented it. But the actual goal of Obamacare’s socialist sponsors was a “single payer system” – government healthcare — which would put the state in control of the lives of every American, man, woman and child. That is the reason that none of the promises made about Obamacare was true, beginning with his campaign lie that Obamacare government health care was not a program he would support. Obamacare will not cover 30 million uninsured Americans, as Obama and the Democrats said it would; Obamacare will not lower costs, as they promised it would; Obamacare will deprive many Americans of their doctors and healthcare plans, as they assured everyone it would not; Obamacare is a new tax, as they swore it wouldn’t be. All these promises Obama and the Democrats made were false because they were only a camouflage for their real goal actual goal, which was universal control.

A third feature of progressives that defines their politics is that they regard the past, which is real, with contempt, and are focused exclusively on a future, which is imaginary.

To understand why this is important, think of progressives as a species of religious fundamentalists planning a redemption. Like fundamentalists they look at the world as fallen – a place corrupted by racism, sexism and class division. But the truly religious understand that we are the source of corruption and that redemption is only possible through the work of a Divinity. In contrast, progressives see themselves as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous. Because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course.

The fact that they see themselves as saving the world – or “saving the planet” as they would prefer — results in a fourth key characteristic of their politics, which is that they regard politics as a religious war. This explains why they are so rude and nasty when you disagree with them or resist their panaceas (and of course if they had the power, the punishments would be more severe); that is why the politics of personal destruction is their favorite variety, why they are verbal assassins and go directly for the jugular, and why they think nothing of destroying the reputations of their opponents and burying them permanently. And that is why they can perform their character assassinations without regrets – or did I miss Obama’s  apology to Romney for accusing him of killing a woman with cancer during the campaign? Why apologize when you did it for the good of a world transforming cause?

To sum this up: Progressives see themselves as an army of the saints, and their opponents as the party of Satan; and that will justify almost anything you can get away with.

If you want to fight the left you have to fight fire with fire. That means first and foremost you have to hold them to account for hurting the people they are pretending to help. Whose opportunities are going to be wrecked by Obamacare? Health care taxes will go up for those who pay taxes – the middle class — while their incomes will go down. Already Obamacare is cutting the workweek to 30 hours. Whose pocket books do you think that is hitting?

They claim conservatives are conducting a war against minorities; we need to throw the truth back in their faces. We need to tell the people that progressives are the principal oppressors and exploiters of minorities and the poor in this country. Progressives control the inner cities, which are teeming with the nation’s minorities and poor; and they run the broken public school systems that have become dumping grounds for those who cannot afford a private education.

The city of Milwaukee has been run by liberals and progressives without interruption for more than 100 years. What is the consequence of this progressive rule? Milwaukee’s median household income is forty percent below the rest of the country. The black unemployment rate is 27%, three times the national average for everyone. Milwaukee’s population is majority black and Hispanic, and 30% of it lives below the poverty line. A third of Milwaukee’s public school children drop out before they graduate; those who do are barely literate. That’s what progressive policies achieve. Don’t let them forget it.

Conservatives need to put the human disasters of progressive policies in front of people every chance they get. We need to confront progressives with the misery they have created in America’s bankrupt cities, Detroit and Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the nation’s capital, and every city they have controlled for 25, 50 and 100 years, without interruption.

Conservatives need to talk less to the voters’ heads and more to their hearts. Government debt is not just an accountant’s nightmare. Debt is a form of economic slavery. If you add up all the taxes Americans pay — federal, state, local, income, sales — Americans already work half the year for government rather than for themselves. Like Obamacare and the political use of the I.R.S., debt is a threat to individual freedom.

Freedom is what our cause is about not just fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility has no emotional appeal except to people who already understand what it means. Fiscal responsibility is a means to an end. The end is freedom, and that is what inspires commitment and sacrifice and the passion necessary to win. Because it speaks to the heart.

Conservatives need to speak up as champions of the little guys, the underdogs, whose lives are being steadily constricted – made less free — by the ongoing destruction of a system that once afforded more opportunity for more people than any other in the history of the world. Conservatives need to speak up for the young whose future horizons are being rapidly diminished as the trillion dollar Obama deficits pile higher and higher. Conservatives need to speak for all Americans whose security under Obama has been degraded to the most dangerous levels since the end of the Cold War.

This is the threat we face, and the sooner we grapple with it the greater our chances to survive it. The most important battle in the world today is not being waged in the Middle East but here at home in the United States. If we lose this battle, everything is lost. But if we will take the measure of the enemies of freedom and prepare ourselves to fight them, we have a better than even chance to win.

More HERE

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Breaking the censorship

For the past six months, there has been a steady drip of bad news for Obamacare, but you wouldn't know it if you watched only the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks. Here are just a few of the Obamacare stories they've downplayed or completely censored:

A study released by the Society of Actuaries predicts that costs will shoot up an average of 32 percent by 2017 for insurers serving the individual health care market.

Economists, business owners, and employees all report that Obamacare is shrinking the number of full-time jobs as they are being replaced by less stable, lower-paying part-time jobs.

A Quinnipiac University poll shows two-thirds of self-identified Democrats expect the law will either hurt them or have no benefit.
Aside from one random report by NBC, not one of these trouble spots for Obamacare has been mentioned on ABC, CBS, or NBC's evening news or their morning show broadcasts.

Earlier this summer, when Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat and chief architect of the law, opined that Obamacare will be a "train wreck," it took nearly two weeks before any major network acknowledged the senator's dire prediction.

And even when PBS's News Hour featured a story about President Obama's efforts to defend his health care law amid increasing public skepticism, those on the show conveniently failed to mention the harsh criticism of the law from three prominent labor union leaders and an increasing number of Democrat congressmen. This censorship has to stop.

The fact is, the liberal media helped usher Obamacare into law, which makes them very reluctant to report any story that might undermine its success and ultimately damage their credibility. But the Media Research Center won't let them get away with it.

SOURCE (Email)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Park Service removes handles from water fountains

Pure Obama hate and vindictiveness.  This is nothing to do with money.  There is an alien mind behind this  -- certainly not the mind of a President who loves his people

driking-fountain-recyclingIn what can only be described as an act of spite, National Park Service rangers removed the handles from all sources of drinking water along several popular scenic bicycle and jogging paths.

The paths, running from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. on the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal will be closed at Cumberland, Maryland, and in an apparent effort to make it more difficult for the athletes, handles have been removed from all the well pumps along the way, according to the Cumberland Times-News.

This is just the latest example of outrageous conduct committed by the National Park Service since the government shutdown, all apparently in an effort to make Americans feel the pain.

SOURCE

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The real voting fraud



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Is our system broken?

By Rick Manning

Many Americans look at what is happening in Washington, D.C. and ask two simple questions, “Is our system broken, and why can’t these politicians just get along?”

In fact, these are two of the most frequent questions I get when doing radio interviews across the nation, particularly during the call-in portion.

As tough as it is to believe, the system is not actually broken when the Congress is fighting with itself and with the President, in fact, that is exactly the outcome our founding fathers intended when they built it.

There is supposed to be tension between the House and the Senate, and there is definitely supposed to be fighting between Congress and the Executive Branch.

The House of Representatives was given the constitutional responsibility of being where all spending bills must originate.  The Founders wanted the body closest to the people, who faced election every two years, to hold the purse strings of government.   The same House was proportionally elected whereby each Member represented approximately the same number of people, with every state guaranteed at least one House Member.

Until 1913, Senators were appointed by their respective state legislatures, two to a state in staggered six-year terms.  This insulation from the voters was designed to create the ultimate insiders club, to serve as an offset to the constant political demands in the House.

The Senate was also set up to defend parochial state interests as individual senators’ power was directly tied to the desires of the politicians in their home states.  Additionally, one of the great constitutional compromises was to protect the small states’ interests from being overrun by the large ones by offsetting the proportional representation in the House by giving each state equal representation in the Senate.

Just as the House has primary responsibility on money and tax issues, the Senate has sole responsibility in serving as a check on the Executive Branch through the ratification of treaties and the confirmation of political appointments among other powers.

American history is replete with examples of massive, almost heroic long-time congressional battles that somehow lose their passion in the stale retelling in school books.

Tensions leading up to the American Civil War were so high, that in 1856, a member of the South Carolina delegation to the House of Representatives physically beat a Massachusetts senator rendering him unconscious in the wake of a particularly blistering speech attacking aspects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

A few years earlier, House Speaker Henry Clay gained the moniker, the Great Compromiser, due to his fashioning of a congressional deal between diametrically opposed members of Congress that brought America back from the brink of the inevitable war that was fought out a decade later in places like Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Vicksburg.

Over the course of time, Congress has been divided over issues like whether the paper currency created to fund the Civil War should be maintained or if the country should return to strictly using gold and silver for its money, how to reintegrate the southern states into the union after the war, whether to enter what is now known as World War I, and many others.

Since the 1970s, there have been seventeen other government shutdowns due to disputes that caused parts of the government to not be funded on time.  And some of these were over what, looking back, were petty issues.

There are those who speak about the good ole days when President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil had such a good relationship back in the 1980s.  They forget that Tip O’Neil shut down the government on twelve different occasions using the power of the purse.  O’Neil even went so far as to shut it down because he did not like that the Fairness Doctrine had been allowed to expire.

In fact, the abnormality of the past forty years is that the government has not faced a shutdown since 1995.

Our nation’s history is shaped by the great battles that have taken place not just by soldiers on foreign and domestic fields, but in the halls of Congress.  The very soul of our nation’s future is determined through these arguments, which oftentimes get ugly.  They are not for the faint of heart, but they are worth fighting.

Finding a solution when both sides know that the decision creates a tipping point from which there is no return is not possible until one side determines that the battle is no longer worth waging — telling itself that they will return to it again one day, a day that never comes.

Democrats view Obamacare as the culmination of a fifty year fight to have government take over the nation’s health care system.  A fight that has incrementally changed the way Americans receive health care with a quantum shift — pushed over the edge without the aid of a single Republican vote.

Republicans view Obamacare as the final destruction of the private health care system that will inevitably lead to socialized medicine.  A system that is intended to drive doctors out of private practice and into big corporate health entities, where government decides who gets what health care and at what cost, and ultimately the people suffer due to doctor shortages and substandard service.

But at its core, Republicans in Congress believe that government has no business being in the health care business and Democrats desperately want government to control and run it.

Those irreconcilable differences should lead to great debates, shutdowns and a real national discussion over the direction our nation is taking.

Is our national system of government broken?  No, it is working exactly as it should.

SOURCE

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Americans Don't Want A Shutdown and They Don't Want Obamacare

It was not a good week for progressives. Democrats thought they’d be sitting in the catbird seat during a government shutdown, but their own arrogance, World War II veterans, children with cancer and their own words have cost them what they were sure would be a easy victory.

Conceptually, progressives had hoped a government shutting down would send ripples of panic throughout the country, putting pressure on Republicans to give in to their demands. It didn’t. The vast majority of Americans who don’t work for the government, went about their lives as if nothing had happened.

Having learned from the sequestration battle, progressives knew the shutdown needed visible effects, not just theoretical ones. With the closing of public tours of the White House as their guide (and still in place, therefore unavailable to them now), Democrats closed open-air national monuments that are routinely open and unstaffed 24/7, 365 days per year.

The reason they did this is obvious – so media around the world would broadcast tourists upset their vacation plans were ruined by mean Republicans. What actually happened reinforced the old joke: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.

While tourists were upset, the real story happened at the World War II Memorial. Members of the Greatest Generation weren’t going to let some flimsy gates stand in the way of them paying tribute to their fallen brothers. Nearly 70 years after storming barricades erected by other governments, they again stormed ones erected by their own.

Progressives tried to reinforce the barricades, but the next day they were stormed again.

Attempting to deny veterans in their 80s and 90s their last chance to visit a memorial to themselves, coupled with the threat of arrest, was too much for progressives and they caved. Veterans flown to Washington on “Honor Flights” will be allowed to visit, marking yet another victory for the brave men and women who defeated the forces they battled long ago.

A Park Service ranger told the Washington Times what we’d all suspected: “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Speaking of disgusting, the second PR disaster for progressives this week was committed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and it’s even more telling of their nature.

During the gun control debate, progressives repeated the mantra “If it only saves one child’s life, we have an obligation to act.” This child was theoretical, and would be “saved” only in the abstract from some future potential event that could, might, maybe happen. It was a weak argument then, but the “logic” behind it was turned on them.

Dana Bash of CNN asked Reid, who personally had refused to allow a vote on a bill to fund the National Institutes of Health that includes clinical trials for cancer treatment for children, why not just allow a vote on that to help those children?

Reid’s answer was as heartless as it was unsurprising. He said, “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own.”

Reid tried to explain away this callous response as a gaffe; that of course he cares about children with cancer. But it was no gaffe. He didn’t just say, “Why would we want to do that?” he equated those children with people who to that point had had two days off of work, saying, “They have a few problems of their own.” Bed sores and “video game thumb” do not equal terminal cancer.

And remember, you don’t participate in clinical trials on a whim. You do so because it’s your last resort. These children are dying. Conventional treatment hasn’t worked, and this is their last hope. Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats are denying that last hope out of obstinacy.

The monument strategy didn’t work. Maybe a body count, especially one with children, will.

If that sounds harsh it’s only because it is. Individuals never have mattered to progressives; they are about the collective. Individuals are replaceable, interchangeable and expendable to progressives. Not those in power, naturally, but the faceless masses and “great unwashed.” History tells this tale clearly.

Under the “progressive” umbrella are fascism, socialism and communism, differing only by a few degrees. The early 20th century infighting between these groups was over which was the standard bearer and which would lead under the progressive banner – and not over ideological differences. And no political philosophy had a higher body count in the last 100 years than the progressive movement.

Hundreds of millions were slaughtered or sacrificed for “the greater good” of the progressive Utopia. What’s a few more kids?

Reid hasn’t backed down on this. He’s still denying those children their last hope, but he’s exposed now. If children die while he’s obstructing their care, he and his fellow progressives in politics and the media will try to spin their deaths as Republicans’ fault. The truth is different, but he’s fine with that. To put it more bluntly: Harry Reid doesn’t WANT children to die of cancer, but he can live with it if it advances the cause.

This was no “gaffe,” this was accidental truth-telling from an unprepared politician so comfortable in the knowledge that the media would have his back that he was thrown by a simple question he should have been prepared for.

On Friday, an Obama administration official was quoted by the Wall Street Journal saying, “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.”

This has been the progressive way since its inception – the agenda is what matters, not the individual.

Imagine this: If progressives are willing to obstruct World War II veterans visiting their memorial, if they’re willing to refuse funding for children with cancer to avoid something as simple as a one-year delay in Obamacare or having to live under it themselves, what won’t they do? Remember, they’re taking over all of health care, slowly but surely. If they get it, what’s to stop them from blocking funding for any health care for anyone to get their next dream program in place?

Once you cede power to the government, you aren’t likely to get it back. A political movement willing to sacrifice children to the cause, a political philosophy with hundreds of millions of bodies behind it, will think nothing about adding a few more to the pile.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Federal Thugs Use Force As Anti-Obama Civil Disobedience Spreading

Recently, we suggested that the civil disobedience of those World War II vets who stormed the shutdown-closed World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, might be catching, and it looks like we were right.

Of course some of what looks like civil disobedience doesn’t have any clear political content – people who planned a vacation or wish to drive through a scenic vista the government has fenced off as federal property simply want to follow through on their plans and don’t understand why armed federal law enforcement officers are being employed to keep them out.

However, such inadvertent civil disobedience isn’t without its risks – even if it has no obvious political content – and the reaction of the National Park Service in particular has been completely outrageous in both the use of force and the use of supposedly furloughed federal employees.

Among the most egregious examples of excessive use of force by the National Park Service we have discovered was the experience of Pat Vaillancourt of Salisbury, Massachusetts, as reported by John Macone of the Newburyport (Massachusetts) Daily News.

Macone reports that “Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

When their bus stopped along a road as a large herd of bison passed nearby, and seniors filed out to take photos. Almost immediately, an armed ranger came by and ordered them to get back in, saying they couldn’t “recreate.” The tour guide, who had paid a $300 fee the day before to bring the group into the park, argued that the seniors weren’t “recreating,” just taking photos.

“The armed ranger responded and said, ‘Sir, you are recreating,’ and her tone became very aggressive,” Vaillancourt said.

When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.

Macone quoted Ms. Vaillancourt as saying her experience with the National Park Service reminded her of her father, a World War II veteran who survived three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

“My father took a lot of crap from the Japanese,” she recalled, her eyes welling with tears. “Every day they made him bow to the Japanese flag. But he stood up to them.”

“He always said to stand up for what you believe in, and don’t let them push you around,” she said, adding she was sad to see “fear, guns and control” turned on citizens in her own country.

In the thuggery of the National Park Service the American people are finally getting a taste of what Obama and Obamacare are really all about – fear, feds with guns and most of all control.

SOURCE

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Obamacare Waivers Granted to Nevada and New Hampshire

President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), headed by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has now granted Obamacare waivers to the entire states of Nevada and New Hampshire. In its letter to Nevada, HHS admits that, without the waiver, “there is a reasonable likelihood” that Obamacare would result in “market destabilization, and thus harm to consumers.” Thus, to try to keep insurers from fleeing that state, HHS has exempted Nevada from a portion of Obamacare’s long list of mandates and requirements. HHS also admits to a “reasonable likelihood” that Obamacare would “destabilize the individual market” in New Hampshire, and has granted it a statewide waiver as well.

So, just to summarize: The federal government passes almost unbelievably complicated and intrusive legislation that even its own Department of Health and Human Services admits is reasonably likely to disrupt markets and harm people. States and other entities then make the case to HHS that this would in fact happen. Sebelius and her underlings then decide — or decide not — to bequeath exceptions to the law for given states, companies, unions, or collections of companies in a given representative’s district. This is not how things are supposed to work.

Nevada and New Hampshire will be two of the most closely contested states in the upcoming presidential election, which of course will determine whether Sebelius will get to keep her job. In the past eight presidential elections, the candidate who has won Nevada has also won the presidency. And in seven of the past eight presidential elections, the candidate who has won New Hampshire has also won the presidency (the only exception being when John Kerry, from neighboring Massachusetts, beat George W. Bush by just over 1 percentage point).

SOURCE

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Varieties of conservatism

In 2008, the writer George Packer argued in a New Yorker article titled “The Fall of Conservatism” that the disarray then engulfing the Republican Party was actually symptomatic of deeper problems characterizing American conservative thought. Conservatism’s apparent meltdown in the United States, Packer suggested, partly flowed from fierce internal disagreements over issues ranging from foreign policy to government-spending levels. Yet the challenge facing conservatives went far beyond, Packer claimed, these explicit tensions. Conservatism’s real crisis, he said, was one of ideas per se. To this end, Packer quoted one of contemporary conservatism’s most astute products, the political analyst Yuval Levin, who maintained that “The conservative idea factory is not producing as it did. You hear it from everybody, but nobody agrees what to do about it.”

For many conservatives, ideas have never been something that people should embrace too enthusiastically. Some ideas, they note, have helped facilitate some of history’s greatest barbarisms. There is a straight line, for example, between Karl Marx’s ruminations jotted down in the sedate settings of the British Library, and the Killing Fields of far-away Cambodia one hundred years later. In this light, we shouldn’t be surprised to find some conservative thinkers such as the Tory M.P. and later Lord Chancellor Quintin Hogg insisting in his 1959 book, The Conservative Case, that conservatism wasn’t “so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself.”

The truth, however, is that for every “attitude-conservative,” there has been just as many “idea-conservatives.” Indeed few things divide conservatives more today than ideas. Among the many groups that have appropriated the term “conservative,” we find self-described fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, southern agrarians, neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, conservative liberals, business conservatives, traditionalists, libertarian conservatives, national security conservatives, conservative Democrats, Reagan conservatives, limited government conservatives, Tories, isolationists, bioconservatives, Thatcherites, progressive conservatives, federalists, fusionists, religious conservatives, and so on and so forth.

The differences between these ever-shifting clusters are often profound. The deepest, usually unspoken philosophical division is perhaps between those conservatives who ground their thinking in natural law reasoning and those committed to its polar-opposite: skepticism. But even within particular conservative alignments, there are sometimes noteworthy splits regarding specific questions. Some social conservatives, for instance, are outspoken free traders. Other, however, verge on economic nationalism.

The imprecision associated with the word conservative becomes even more evident when we consider figures that claim the moniker. Britain’s David Cameron, for example, never ceases proclaiming his conservative credentials. Yet does anyone seriously doubt that David Cameron has more in common with President Barack Obama than with, say, Senator Rand Paul or Senator Ted Cruz? What, some might ask, does Britain’s present Conservative Prime Minister have to do with conservatism at all?

That said, it’s worth noting that the various forces associated with conservatism haven’t ever and aren’t likely to achieve complete unity. Conservatism’s political expressions have often consisted of alliances of constituencies united less by common commitment to deeply-held beliefs, than by agreement on particular points during certain time-periods and some degree of “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” logic. The imperative of defeating the diabolical evil of Communism, for example, produced a number of less-than-obvious bedfellows. Beyond these political conveniences, a considerable degree of internal debate on the right is highly desirable, not least because it forces people to defend and refine their positions.

The political importance of building and sustaining “broad-church” conservative coalitions shouldn’t be underestimated. After all, they help realize what has to be an important part of modern conservatism’s agenda: opposing and rolling-back a left that, however absurd its goals, is truly relentless in seeking to realize its dreams. But any revival of conservatism can’t just be about focusing upon what it is against. Nor can conservatism’s energy be completely consumed by policy-battles, as important as these are. For if conservatives lose the broader conflict about the type of civilization we aspire to live in, then all their policy-victories will ultimately count for naught.

Genius of the West

This brings me to what I think has to be conservatism’s long-term agenda as well as a central element in any lasting conservative resurgence: the defense and promotion of what we should unapologetically call Western civilization. By this, I mean that unique culture which emerged from the encounter of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, the brilliance of which—if I may be deeply politically-incorrect for a moment—is somewhat harder to discern in other societies. As anathema as this culture may be in the contemporary faculty lounge, this is the tradition that conservatives should be in the business of safeguarding and advocating: not just in opposition to those who deploy violence in the name of a divine un-reason, but also against the obsessive egalitarianism, rank sentimentalism and wild-eyed utopianism of those who live inside the West’s gates but who have long inhabited a different mental universe altogether.

The best minds from whom conservatives continue to draw inspiration, ranging from Edmund Burke and Wilhelm Röpke to Augustine and Alexis de Tocqueville, have always understood that civilizational questions are the ones which ultimately matter. The genius of the West can be expressed in a number of propositions, but among the most prominent are the following: that freedom is to be found in the self-mastery that results from freely choosing to live in the truth rather than lies; that reason includes but encompasses far more than just the empirical sciences; and that in awareness of our fallen nature and the lessons of history we find some of the best defenses against our restless impulse to attempt to construct heaven-on-earth.

Yet as the French theologian Jean Daniélou S.J. once observed, there is no true civilization that is not also religious. In the case of Western civilization, that means Judaism and Christianity. The question of religious truth is something with which we must allow every person to wrestle in the depths of their conscience. But if conservatism involves upholding the heritage of the West against those who would tear it down (whether from without and within), then conservatives should follow the lead of European intellectuals such as Rémi Brague and Joseph Ratzinger and invest far more energy in elucidating Christianity’s pivotal role in the West’s development—including the often complicated ways in which it responded to, and continues to interact, with the movements associated with the various Enlightenments.

Such an enterprise goes beyond demonstrating Christianity’s contribution to institutional frameworks such as constitutional government. Conservatives must be more attentive to how Judaism and Christianity—or at least their orthodox versions—helped foster key ideas that underlie the distinctiveness of Western culture. These include:

their liberation of man from the sense that the world was ultimately meaningless;

their underscoring of human fallibility and consequent anti-utopianism;

their affirmation that man is made to be creative rather than passive;

their insistence that there are moral absolutes that may never be violated,

their tremendous respect for human reason in all its fullness;

their crucial distinction between religious and civil authority; and

their conviction that human beings can make free choices.

This last point is especially important precisely because of the difficulty of finding strong affirmations of the reality of free choice outside orthodox Judaism, orthodox Christianity, and certain schools of natural law thought. Beyond these spheres, the world is basically made up of soft determinists (like John Stuart Mill) or hard determinists (like Marx).

There is, however, something more elemental of which modern conservatism stands in desperate need. In the first episode of his acclaimed 1969 BBC series Civilisation, the art historian, the late Kenneth Clark, sat in the foreground of an old viaduct and spoke about the Romans’ “confidence.” By that, he didn’t mean arrogance. What Clark had in mind was the Romans’ self-belief: their conviction that the ideas and institutions which they had inherited, developed, and extended throughout Europe and the Mediterranean amounted to a singular cultural accomplishment worthy of emulation.

Obviously the Roman world was far from perfect. As illustrated in the novel Satyricon, most likely written by the Roman courtier Gaius Petronius Arbiter during Nero’s disastrous reign, substantive decay had already set in among Rome’s elites by the first century A.D. What, however, seems difficult to dispute is the need for contemporary conservatives—however they prefix or suffix themselves—to develop and display a Roman-like confidence in the West’s achievements. For, absent such confidence, how will conservatives be able to re-infuse self-belief back into a West presently awash in soft despotism, nihilism, emotivism, and rampant self-loathing?

“Civilizations,” wrote the historian Arnold Toynbee, “die from suicide, not from murder.” Preventing the West from continuing to drift toward self-oblivion is surely a task—nay, a duty—of any principled conservative worthy of the name. In fact, as Margaret Thatcher was fond of saying, there is no alternative.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Are European Jews mostly of Italian ancestry?

Greg Cochran is one of the authorities on Jewish genetics so his conclusions below carry weight.  As usual, he even has some little jokes about it.  From my own observations, I must say that there does seem to be an unusual warmth towards Israel among modern-day Italians -- JR

For some time, we have known that many Jewish populations  had mostly-Near Eastern  paternal ancestry (looking at y-chromosomes) and mostly-local maternal ancestry  looking at mtDNA). Autosomal admixture studies generally agree. This is easiest to see when the host population is fairly distant from Europe or the Near East, and thus has significantly different mtDNA types: it’s obvious in the case of Indian Jews.  Roughly speaking,  Jewish men settled distant lands, as traders or sometimes refugees and POWs.  They married local girls, and later, mostly with the advent of Rabbinical Judaism, rules emerged that forbade further intermarriage – and  presto, Roberta’s your aunt.

It’s a bit more difficult when comparing Europe and the Near East, since there has been a lot of population movement between those regions, most of it from the Near East into Europe in the form of the first farmers.  So even though the mixed origin of Jewish populations (Near Eastern men and local women) was clear in a number of cases, it wasn’t so clear in the most important case, the Ashkenazi Jews, who make up most of the world’s Jews and and account for almost all Jewish intellectual accomplishment.

But even when the same mtDNA haplotypes are found in both Europe and the Near East, the sub-haplotypes are different – the fine details clarify the story.

Back in 2006, Doron Behar and company looked at Ashkenazi mtDNA.  Four mtDNA lineages accounted for almost half:  K1a1b1a, K1a9, K2a2a, and N1b.  About 20% of Ashkenazi Jews have K1a1b1a mtDNA.  Behar concluded that all of these lineages originated in the Near East.  This was plausible for N1b (about 9% of Ashkenazi mtDNA), which is common in the Near East and rare in Europe (although it was common back in the LBK culture).  He couldn’t find any closely related versions of the K1a9 and K2a2a lineages outside of the Ashkenazim – and went on to say that they probably originated in the Near East, based on nothing. He also concluded that K1a1b1a was probably Near Eastern, since the only close non-Jewish versions were found in Portugal, Italy, France,  Morocco, and Tunisia: a conclusion which flew in the face of what evidence he had.  It is if one knew that all the languages closely related to Russian (Polish, Ukrainian, Serbian, etc) were found in Eastern Europe, and then concluded that the Russian language must therefore have originated in South Africa.

In other words, Doron Behar is a liar.  I was going to include something about the probable origins of Ashkenazi mtDNA (mostly Italian) and Behar’s follies in the book. I wrote it up (in a little essay titled “Special K”), but space prohibited, and anyhow liars are boring.

A new paper by Maria Costa et al (with Martin Richards as senior author) settles the issue.  We have a lot more data now – more people, and more detail.  Turns out that all of those major Ashkenazi mtDNA lineages originated  in Western Europe – even N1b, fairly rare in Europe.  The majority of the less common Ashkenazi mtDNA  lineages also originated in Europe – probably mostly in Italy. Altogether, > 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is European – mostly Italian, but a bit from France and Germany as well.

You may have heard of Arthur Koestler’s Khazar hypothesis – the notion that Europeans Jews are largely descended from Khazar converts. It’s not true – these results show that it is impossible. Charles Murray suggested that selection leading to higher intelligence in Jews occurred a long time ago, as far back as  the Babylonian Captivity.  That’s not true either. It never made any sense, because there’s not a scintilla of evidence that Jews in Classical times were smarter than the average bear – but  the Ashkenazim being half Italian crushed it yet again. If ancestral Jews had the genetic IQ magic, the Ashkenazim should be watered-down, closer to the European norm: but they’re not.

Lots of European admixture does not contradict our model of the evolution of superior Ashkenazi intelligence, because we think that the relevant selection occurred well after that admixture, during a period in which inward gene flow among the Ashkenazim was very low – as evidence by the fact that this study found plenty of Italian mtDNA, but little from Eastern Europe.

As Michael Balter cheerfully points out in Science, this result may be a bit troublesome to those that believe that Jewish identity descends through the female line.  In that case, most Ashkenazi Jews – aren’t.

I haven’t heard anyone else mention this, but logically, someone who is Ashkenazi could now decide that he and his cousins are really the true heirs of the Roman Empire, rather than a member of the Chosen People.  I’m sure that wouldn’t cause any trouble.

Doe this mean that the Palestinians have a better genealogical claim to the land of Israel than the Ashkenazi Jews? Maybe – but over the years, they’ve mixed too. They have a lot of South Arabian and African ancestry that wasn’t there 2000 years ago. That’s true of much of the Middle East – but that’s another post…  I’m sure that modern DNA technology will answer this question anytime anyone cares to look, and obviously everyone will accept the verdict of Science, whatever it may be.

Anyhow, if Italy really is the Ashkenazi urheimat, that’s not so bad.  I’d trade the Judean Hills for Tuscany in a New York minute. And even if trading homelands would require some toe-to-toe combat with the Italians – how hard would that be, really?

SOURCE

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Why the Left Hates the Old

Dennis Prager

The latest left-wing tactic to discredit conservative views is to dismiss the age and race of conservatives. "Old white males" and "old white people" are the left's latest favored negative epithets for those holding conservative views.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman of the New York Times, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ("angry old white men") are among the many on the left who have used this epithet.

Last week, on her nightly MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow showed a picture of an ad for Washington, D.C. talk radio station WRC that featured the station's talk show hosts. You will notice, she said, that they are all "old white Republican males." It was brought to my attention because I am one of those talk show hosts (and, it should be noted, nearly all of my colleagues and I are younger than her colleague, Chris Matthews, an old white Democratic male.)

What is going on here?

The answer is: quite a bit. The left's dismissal of old people is much more than another left-wing ad hominem attack. Therefore, to understand it is to understand much of what animates leftism.

As a rule, the left rejects the old.

The left's attack on teaching the works of "Dead White European Males" was one such example. It infuriated the left that Shakespeare was studied so much more than, let us say, living Guatemalan playwrights. As a result, one can now obtain a college degree in English -- let alone every other liberal arts department -- without having taken a course in Shakespeare.

So, too, in art and music, the new is almost always favored over the old. New composers and artists -- no matter how untalented -- are studied as much as or more than the great masters of old. And the old standards of excellence are neglected in favor of the latest avant-garde experimentation.

Rejection of the old is a reason the left has contempt for the Bible. To progressives, the idea of having 2,000 and 3,000-year-old texts guide a person's behavior today is ludicrous.

Low regard for the old is also a major factor in the left's dismissal of the Founders and of the original intent of the Constitution. Talk about "old white males," the Founders are white males who are now over 200-years-old. What could they possibly have known or understood that a progressive living today does not know more about or understand better?

What, then, is at the core of the left's contempt for the old, and its celebration of the new and of change?

There are two primary answers.

One is the yearning for utopia. Since Marx, the left has sought utopia in this world. And that means constantly transforming every aspect of society. As then-Senator Barack Obama said prior to the 2008 election: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

By definition, those who seek to transform consider the old essentially worthless.

The other answer is self-esteem. The left began the self-esteem movement in large measure because of its own high self-esteem. Those on the left are certain that they are smarter, kinder, more moral and more compassionate than -- in every way superior to -- their opponents.

That is a major reason for the left's problem with the old: If the old is great, then they and their new ideas are probably not that great.

Just about everyone who is not on the cultural left knows that all the great masters were incomparably superior to Jackson Pollock and other 20th-centuries artists who produced meaningless and talentless art. And because there are so few artists at any time who measure up to the old standards (standards that are synonymous with standards of excellence), the old standards have simply been abandoned.

This applies equally to morality. The left doesn't want to be bound or answerable to a higher moral authority. Rather, one's heart and reason are the best moral guides. Here, too, the old codes, especially as embodied in traditional religion, must be overthrown.

Prior to the ascendance of the left, it was assumed that the old had more wisdom than the young. Indeed, even every leftist I have asked, "Are you wiser today than 20 years ago?" has answered in the affirmative.

Nevertheless the left has transformed "old" -- a title that commanded respect in every civilization prior to the pre-1960s West -- into a pejorative.

As a result we live in the age of new music, new art, new families, new morality, new education, and now new marriage. If you think all these are good, then "old white males," like almost everything else old, do indeed constitute a threat. If you think the left's belief in "new" and "change" hurts society, "old" sounds good.

SOURCE

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"Diversity" as Fascism

If any of the mainstream media outlets in the United States, with the obvious exception of Fox News, were to draw up a list of the least tolerant groups, associations and organizations in the nation, the result would be completely predictable. Not necessarily in this order, it would read: The TEA Party; the NRA; the Republican Party; Rush Limbaugh listeners; Fox News viewers and, no doubt, anyone who works for Fox News; Glenn Beck listeners; Christians; any other group that believes in patriotism, the Constitution and traditional values.

The pre-programmed refrain would be that these groups do not accept diversity. True diversity, however, occurs when people of different faiths, lifestyles, ethnic backgrounds and nationalities come together organically. When diversity is forced upon a people, it is nothing more than a political charade; it is, indeed, a type of fascism.

The above list is, of course, dictated by those who provide the thoughts that fill the heads of today’s American Liberals. Completely ignored is the fact that neither the TEA Party, the NRA nor the Republican Party have any more restrictions on who they accept than does the Democratic Party or any leftwing organization in the country. Demographically, the make-up of the TEA Party closely reflects the make-up of the nation in every way but age-group.

The Republican Party has put more blacks in Congress than the Democratic Party, whose members founded the Ku Klux Klan. In addition, the Republican Party has given the nation more female cabinet members and state governors than the Democratic Party. It has also given the nation more state Governors from ethnic minorities. As for Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck; these three undisputed media giants employ, collectively, more Liberals than all other media outlets, collectively, employ Conservatives. Their viewers and listeners, if intolerant at all, are no more so than those who watch MSNBC or CNN or those who listen to NPR.

The Progressive movement, in order to conceal its agenda of complete control and enslavement, has, years ago, taken up the banner of ‘diversity’. In truth, however, the Progressive movement is the least tolerant and least diverse entity in the US. Those who identify with it have routinely – and publicly – made sexist, racist and homophobic comments; they have issued death threats and incited violence against those with whom they do not agree. President Barack Obama himself – the Progressive movement’s most useful puppet – is notoriously thin-skinned and completely unwilling to even engage in a serious discussion with anyone who opposes him politically or ideologically.

The various special interest groups in the US which pretend to fight for nothing more than acceptance, equality and ‘social justice’, such as the LGBT community, the NAACP and amusingly titled Planned Parenthood are, in fact, pushing for far more than mere equality; they are campaigning forcefully to impose their views upon everyone. Whilst the American political Right is more and more influenced by the Libertarian philosophy of Don’t Tread on Me, the political Left has become an alarmingly authoritarian movement; a veritable SS panzer division, ready to crush all those who oppose it and round up the survivors for re-education – or extermination.

Case in point: A private citizen with their own business – a bakery – refuses to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Firstly, that should clearly be a matter of the individual in question making a decision based upon their personal values and principles. The same-sex couple in question could merely have taken their business elsewhere. However, they were so filled with hatred and intolerance for anyone who refuses to conform to their beliefs that they stimulated – no pun intended – a campaign that lead to the afore-mentioned small business owner shutting down the business. Which party was the least tolerant, here? Which, the greater believer in ‘diversity’? The baker did not start a campaign to prevent the couple getting married, they simply declined to be connected with that marriage. The same-sex couple, by contrast, was determined to ruin a business – and quite prepared to destroy a life – because they came across someone who did not share their values.

Are those same-sex partners believers in diversity? Clearly not, or they would have brushed off the baker’s refusal to co-operate with a shrug and gone elsewhere for their cake; they would have accepted the fact that ‘diversity’ extends also to opinion and to values. The couple in question have every right to marry, if they are living in a state that permits same-sex marriage. The federal government has no constitutional right to deny their wishes; other private citizens may disapprove, but have no right to prevent their marriage – other than through the state-level ballot-box. Members of the LGBT community – or, as Al Sharpton calls them, homos – have a right to expect tolerance and freedom from persecution; they have no right to force everyone else to accept their lifestyle as normal.

Aside from the fundamentalists of the so-called Christian Right – America’s very own version of the Muslim Brotherhood – nobody else on the political Right wishes to force gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals to give up whatever lifestyle they have chosen. One has the right, however, to disapprove of whatever one wishes. The moment any group forces its will upon others and hounds, threatens, ridicules, demonizes – and discriminates against – anyone who happens to hold a different set of values, then that group has, itself, become the standard for intolerance, hatred and bigotry.

Diversity is, by definition, a complete acceptance of – and, indeed, a complete disregard for – differences of faith, lifestyle, skin-color, principle and belief. One simply cannot claim to embrace diversity whilst, at the same time, declare that anyone who holds a different opinion should be silenced, excluded and even punished.

The LGBT community – so long as it remains complicit in the drive to eliminate all dissent – is nothing more than a willing tool – no pun intended, again – of a Progressive movement that promotes a grotesque parody of ‘diversity’ which is, in reality, a form of fascism.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Is Iran a Lunatic State or a Rational Actor? Neither: It is a Rational Aggressor

Barry Rubin is an astute and experienced observer of the Middle East so his unusual analysis below is thought provoking

So is Iran a lunatic state or a rational actor? A hell of a lot more rational than U.S. foreign policy is today

Iran is a rational actor in terms of its own objectives. The issue is to understand what Iran wants. Policy is always best served by truth, and the truth is best told whether or not people like it. Iran is an aggressive, rational actor.

Remember: The problem is not that Iran is eager to use nuclear weapons but that the Obama Administration is not going to apply containment properly and credibly.  And that encourages Iran’s non-nuclear aggression and terrorism.

The fact is that the history of the Iranian Islamic regime does not show suicidal recklessness. A key reason for this is that the leaders of Iran know they can be reckless without risking suicide. In other words, Iran did face threats from the West commensurate with what Tehran was doing. Therefore, the risks it took were not suicidal. If apparently suicidal rhetoric does not produce suicide but serves a very specific purpose, that rhetoric is not in fact suicidal.

What, then, did Iran want?  Its basic goal was to be as powerful a regional hegemon as possible–including control over Syria and Lebanon. It would like to take leadership of all Muslims in the area. Today, however, it is clear that the Sunni Arabs reject Tehran’s leadership and will fight against it.

In other words, the ultimate extent of Iran’s zone of influence could only include part of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, southwest Afghanistan, Bahrain, and the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. That is the maximum, and Iran is far from achieving that goal. And it will probably never achieve it.

Iran’s influence is limited by the location of Shia Muslims. Not all Shia Muslims favor Iran, and pretty much all Sunni Muslims oppose it. Therefore, whatever the outcome is in Syria–in other words if the regime wins–Iran will at most keep its current levels of influence. But if the regime wins, the Sunnis will hate Iran even more and will fight against it harder.

So Iran still wants to get the most power without fearing reprisal.  Nuclear weapons are a defensive shield to carry out conventional aggression.

As I’ve insisted for many years, it is increasingly clear that Iran will get nuclear weapons. We should start discussions in that framework. The recent brilliant decision of the Iranian elite–who is not only more ruthless but strategically smarter than Western leadership–to pick a national security insider, who is at best a slightly moderate extremist, as president guarantees it.

The question is only: when will Iran get nuclear weapons? The evidence seems to show that this is several years away. (It would be interesting if that development was too late to affect Syria’s civil war, and such will probably happen.)

Why will Iran certainly get nukes?

First, the West isn’t going to take strong enough action to stop it because the alternatives are deemed–perhaps accurately so–too risky. No surgical Israeli strike is going to stop it, and Obama will never support such a strike.

Of course, there is a great deal of indifference about the potential victims and lots of greed about the money to be made from Iran. The sanctions may seem tough, but there are more holes than cheese.  U.S. companies sensing profits as sanctions hopefully  fall are chomping at the bit.  After Ahmadinejad, though, there is perhaps a better money-making climate. His successor will further soothe Western willingness to battle on this nuclear issue.

And of course they just don’t care that much about potential genocide in Israel.

Second, with international support at a low point, the logistical difficulties, and a U.S. president who is incredibly reluctant, Israel is not going to attack Iran to stop it from getting nuclear weapons. What Israel should and will do is to make clear it will attack Iran if there is any reason to believe that Tehran might launch nuclear weapons. It will build up a multilayer defensive and offensive system.  This is not mere passive containment but would mean assured massive retaliation.

Note that there is more than one potential victim of Iran’s nuclear weapons. People, including the Israelis, talk a lot about Israel. Yet the Sunni Arab states are increasingly involved in shooting situations with Iranian proxies. Unlike Israel, they won’t do anything and perhaps can’t, except to beg the United States to take strong action. But the U.S. won’t do so.

And of course everyone can just hope everything will turn out all right.

A rare piece of good news, however, is that before the “Arab Spring,” it was conceivable that Iran might become leader or hegemon of the Arabic-speaking world. Israel-bashing was an important tool to do so. Now the Sunni Muslims have their own successful–even U.S.-backed!–Muslim Brotherhood movement. They not only don’t need Iran any more, they fight against Tehran.

Pushed on the defensive with more limited prospects–and knowing the Israel card won’t work–Tehran has lots less incentive to stake its survival on that issue. The nuclear weapons arsenal isn’t intended for a big bang to get revenge on Israel, it’s intended to keep the current regime in power against a growing number of enemies.

Put bluntly, Iran won’t waste its nuclear weapons on Israel or, as they might put it in Tehran, to give Israel an “excuse” to attack Iran. No pile of quotes from Iranian leaders to the contrary changes anything.

The key factor is not an appeal to the “international community” to protect Israel. Israel’s power rests precisely in old-fashioned credibility and deterrence:  Only Israel can credibly destroy the Islamic regime.  And the Islamic regime in Iran knows that.

Israel was so important in Iranian verbal declarations precisely because Israel could at one time be turned into a card that strengthened Iran’s appeal with the Arabs and the Sunni. Iran certainly had very few other cards. But the Sunni and Arabs don’t care about this, given the big change of the last two years. The Israel card–as shown by the Syrian regime’s failure with it–is worthless.

Note that while Iran has been the leading sponsor of international terrorism and poured invective out against Israel, Iran did not notably take any material action against Israel beyond terror attacks and its sponsorship of Hizballah, Hamas, and Syria–which were its allies at the time. Compared to Arab efforts in the second half of the twentieth century, this was not very much.
In other words, against Israel, the Tehran regime talked a big game but did relatively little.

On other issues, too, Iran did not act like a country bent on suicide. Against its Arab enemies, it did not take considerable risks. Iran could wage a proxy war against America in Iraq, because the United States didn’t do very much about it.

All of the above in no way discounts an Iranian threat. Yes, of course, Iran sponsored terrorism and sought to gain influence and to spread revolution. Yet it did not attack a single country in open terms of warfare. Remember, Iran was invaded by Iraq. And when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself was persuaded that the United States was entering the war against him, he quickly ended it, though he said that doing so was like eating snakes and scorpions; but that was necessary to preserve the regime.

Iran is the kind of aggressor who was once described by Winston Churchill as a thief who went down the street rattling doors to find one that was open.

Second, Iran sought to defend itself by threatening antagonists with total destruction and by obtaining the ultimate deterrence, nuclear weapons. This does not mean one should sympathize with Tehran since, after all, it sought nuclear weapons to ensure its defense while it continued aggressive policies.

Iran can also complain about American encirclement. Of course, if it did not follow the policies that were being practiced, there wouldn’t be a U.S. motive for any such efforts. The point, however, is that the claim that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons so it could destroy itself by attacking Israel is just not demonstrated.

Thus, Iran is not a demonic, crazed, kamikaze country. It is simply a typical aggressor who wants to have insurance against having to pay the price of such continued activity. North Korea and Pakistan sought nuclear weapons for the same reason, and it is working for them.

Let’s approach the issue in another way. Suppose Iran helped the Syrian regime win the civil war. Would the danger to Israel be increased? No, certainly it would not be from a nuclear standpoint. Assad would reestablish control over a wrecked and tottering country where the damage would take years to rebuild. But the problem is that Iran will be more secure in defending itself which means it will be more aggressive, but now with nuclear weapons.

The USE of nuclear weapons loses whatever the possession of nuclear weapons gains.

Iran would be relieved at the Syrian regime’s survival but would not be better able to carry on a (nuclear) war against Israel. The Sunnis would be prepared to cooperate with the United States against Iran and even, covertly, with Israel up to a point.

Indeed, the ability of Sunni Islamists to attack Israel would be reduced because of their obsession with the principal danger.

Again, I don’t want Assad to win in Syria. I believe that Iran is a threat. I think Iran will succeed in getting nuclear weapons. I don’t think the Tehran regime consists of lunatics who cannot wait to immolate themselves in a fiery funeral pyre. They want to stay in power for a long time. Israel has an alternative of preemption if necessary. But the United States will never help stop Iran’s getting of nukes.

This analysis should be conducted in a sober fashion. I believe, indeed I see clearly, that Israeli policymakers understand these issues. We should remember that Iran is not an insane state and that there are threats other than Iran in the Middle East.

The problem is not that Iran is eager to use nuclear weapons but that the Obama Administration is unlikely to apply containment properly and credibly. And then its version of containment might fail.

SOURCE

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Shutdown Preparations Prove Most Government Is Waste

Some prescient comments from before the shutdown

When the government shuts down, the president will do without three-fourths of his White House staff — 1,265 taxpayer-salaried federal workers. That's a fraction of the government's total waste.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who didn't show up to vote on the budget last week, recently claimed, "the cupboard is bare. There's no more cuts to make" in a government that spends almost $4 trillion each year.

But it's funny how when the massive state apparatus is starved of its cash flow, lots of things magically appear in that bare cupboard.

A Sept. 26 letter from the assistant to the president for management and administration to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (couldn't those jobs be merged?) comically outlines the shutdown plan.

"Approximately 436 employees will be designated as excepted or exempt to perform excepted functions," the manager of the White House budget tells the manager of the executive branch budget. "The remaining 1,265 will be placed in furlough status once they have concluded activities necessary to shut down their offices."

Activities like what? Turning off the lights?

The Executive Office of the President "has carefully reviewed its personnel needs ... to ensure that the mission ... is carried out without significant interruption."

But the letter says during the shutdown it'll take 12 taxpayer-paid employees "to support the vice president in the discharge of his constitutional duties." Call them the dirty dozen, since they take care of what Vice President John Nance Garner called "a bucket of warm spit."

What do these 12 absolutely essential non-Secret Service vice-presidential staff do, guarantee that Joe Biden doesn't make a gaffe during the shutdown?

He also gets one staffer for the vice president's residence. Can't "average Joe," who as a senator famously rode the commuter train with the riffraff from Delaware to Washington every day, make his own meals for a few days? Or put up with Dr. Jill's cooking?

Why are 61 U.S. Trade Representative employees required during the shutdown "for developing, coordinating, and advising the president on U.S. trade policy"?

And how many of the more than 20 members of the first lady's staff, at least four of whom are paid six figures by the taxpayers, will be deemed non-essential?

The White House is just a microcosm of the out-of-control growth in federal government personnel. Shameless federal worker unions already plan to sue to get paid for days they stay home during the shutdown.

One thing a government shutdown does is prove that millions of them can, and should, stay home every day.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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