The New York Times tries a new way to tackle the Bill of Rights

In response to another attempt by the depraved and subversive New York Times to usurp our Constitution:

The problems with (il)liberal efforts to curtail or eliminate the ability of American citizens to defend themselves are several:

First, the right to self-defense is a God-given and unalienable right, period. Only tyrants and criminals want the innocent defenseless.  If you're a criminal seeking to harm someone, and you have a choice between two homes -- one in which the residents are armed and one which is defenseless -- which would you choose?

Second, we already have multiple laws forbidding homicide; if mass murderers and other criminals refuse to follow a law as basic as that, what makes you think that they'll obey gun laws? They won't; only the naive and the nescient think otherwise.

Third, you'll never eliminate firearms; if you make them illegal, only the law-abiding will be weaponless; government and criminals will still be fully-armed.

Germany tried that. Communist and Islamic states, too. How does that work out?

Fourth, the president and other elected tyrants who want to take away our ability to defend ourselves would never, ever, under any circumstances give up their armed security (for which we pay). What makes their lives and the lives of their families more valuable than ours?

If Barack Obama wants the nation disarmed, then him first.

Finally, why would you voluntarily give up your right to defend yourself, those whom you love, and your neighbors? And even if you would, why would you use the coercive power of the state to steal away from the rest of us our ability to do so?

How perverse.

Not a Christian nation? America's government an embodiment of the Two Kingdoms: James Madison on Martin Luther

Atheists and other usurpers want to convince the public that the United States was never, in any sense, a Christian nation. Well, there's one problem: the facts don't bear this out.

If it wasn't enough that the Puritans were influenced by it, America's supreme law, the Constitution, is the incarnation of Martin Luther's doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, the idea that the religious and civil realms are, and should be, separate, which is, of course, an explication of Christ's command to "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's."

How do we know this? James Madison, the Father of the Constitution declares it in an 1821 letter to F. L. Schaeffer:

It illustrates the excellence of a system [American Constitutional government] which, by a due distinction, to which the genius and courage of Luther led the way, between what is due to Caesar and what is due to God, best promotes the discharge of both obligations. The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.

The balloon's on the other head now, Chris Matthews

If anyone knows balloon heads, it's Chris Matthews.

Ironically enough, the politician on Chris Matthews' show during his recent fit of name-calling attacking Michele Bachmann as a "balloon head" for rightly stressing the importance of the Founding Fathers' work toward the abolition of slavery was none other than Charles Schumer.

It turns out that the senator isn't smarter than a fifth-grader -- or even Chris Matthews -- as he misidentifies the United States' three branches of government with: "We have a House, we have a Senate, we have a president." [sic]

What are the chances of Chris Matthews calling him names?

Question everything, but don't use skepticism as an excuse for denying the answers when you find them (or they find you)

One of the great intellectual crimes of the last one and one-half centuries has been the brainwashing of the West into making a false dichotomy between Faith and Reason. At least with regard to Christianity, it is not true that the two are mutually-exclusive; that one is based on Fact and the other emotion; that one is a matter of the heart and the other a matter of the mind; that one is objectively true and the other merely personal whim.

In fact, the Apostle Paul makes this point powerfully in declaring the obvious: If Christ has not risen from the dead, then our faith is futile and we Christians are to be pitied more than all men:

if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ . . . if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins . . . If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15).

Some reflections the nature and proper use of Reason, especially with regard to Faith, in response to a friend:

Official Roman Catholic teaching is that when the Pope defines a matter of faith or morals, he is infallible. (This does not mean that he doesn't sin or err in other matters, such as discipline or personal opinion).

I reject that doctrine, since it conflicts with the teachings of Christ: He tells the truth; it is up to us to recognize and admit that.  No office makes a man infallible in any matter; it is only to the degree that the Pope -- or any man -- speaks accurately the words of Christ that he speaks Truth.

As for Luther, he was a miserable sinner, just like every pope, you, and me. His value was that at a time when the western church taught officially that Christians could literally pay (cash) to remove sins, when the Church of Rome preached that God was a terrible, malevolent judge waiting to torment us in hell forever unless we could in some way satisfy His justice on our own merit (an impossible task), when those entrusted with the responsibility to preach faithfully His Gospel instead preached doctrines of hell, Luther rediscovered the clear teachings of Scripture.

He found that God's justice was not in treating us as our sins deserve, but in declaring all of us just (justified, innocent, righteous) in Christ, through faith in Him.

Though all of us sin daily and much and deserve God's wrath, God has had mercy on all of us by sending His Son to become flesh, die for our sins, and rise from the dead. In Christ, God reconciled the whole world -- all of us -- to Himself. He forgives our sins, rescues us from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all people, as the words and promises of God declare.

Luther was completely fallible (just like us); his great contributions were restoring to preeminence in the Church the true Gospel and reviving the teaching that unless something can be shown to be true from Scripture, it has no place as doctrine in the Church.

As for Mr. Jefferson, he was partly correct: We should question everything, but we should not use our skepticism as an excuse for denying the answers when we find them.  Or when they find us.

It appears from the quotation provided that Mr. Jefferson misunderstood the nature and purpose of Reason, since by definition, reason is a tool each man possesses to determine objective truth; an "Oracle given by heaven" comes from heaven and not from the mind of a man.  (If Man could discover from within all that God intended to communicate to us, then why would He send his Son?)

Some misunderstand Luther's comments on Reason being "the devil's whore;" he did not mean that we should reject the use of reason or the objective truth we determine with it and live in ignorance and superstition, but that we should put Reason in its proper place, which is as a tool that we use to determine fact, especially with regard to understanding the Scriptures as God intended.

Many Christians err in subjugating Scripture to their contra- or extra-Biblical, man-made "traditions" (as in Roman Catholicism and American Evangelicalism) or to their own Reason (as in American Evangelicalism as derived from Calvin; you may recall what Jefferson said regarding Calvin's god).  All of us sin, all of us err, and all of us have a responsibility to speak faithfully what God has revealed.  So we are responsible not only for the uprightness of our decisions but also the rightness of our declarations.

As for the First Amendment?  It opens the door to, invites in to supper, and then locks the door behind to shield from the wolves the skeptic, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, animist, pagan, agnostic, atheist, and truly peaceful Muslim.

So, what specific objections are in the way, my friend?

If the foundation is solid, the structure will be sound

From here:

All law is the expression of someone's worldview; the American Constitution, which was set up to guarantee the protection of Individual Rights from all forms of tyranny -- was created by Christians (and a few others influenced heavily by Christianity).

Even Thomas Jefferson -- who apparently rejected the deity of Christ -- believed Christ's teachings to be the highest expression of morality and supreme to all others, used tax dollars to fund Indian education in Jesus' doctrines, and attended church services in Congress. He declared:

"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

Such a system of government depends on the moral goodness, knowledge, and vigilance of its citizens. The recently-accelerated usurpation of our Constitution by power-hungry and condescending elected and judicial tyrants -- who believe that We the People exist to provide them power and position, rather than understanding that their position exists to protect our liberties -- is due not to any fault in our Constitution, but to the American people's ignorance, negligence, and greed.

By contrast, shari'a (Islamic law) -- which sacralizes and institutionalizes the vilest of atrocities, including pedophilia, torture, mutilation, slavery, rape, murder, wife-beating, polygyny, and religious and gender apartheid -- is founded on the words and deeds of Muhammad, whose example is considered by Allah a "beautiful pattern of conduct" for those who want to please it. This is why no Islamic nation with any form of shari'a enjoys spiritual, cultural, philosophical, moral, technological, or material prosperity, and those non-Muslim nations with Muslim populations of any significance endure constant turmoil, depredations, and every form of insecurity.

Did Nancy Pelosi admit Obama's ineligibility to serve as president?

WND has more evidence of Obama's failing to satisfy the Constitution's citizenship requirements for the presidency.

Two documents with Pelosi's signature. The second "form obtained by Williams appears identical, although the signatures are different, including the same strategic typographical error. But in this one, the verification of eligibility under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution is gone."

 

 

Are there no depths to which Liberals will sink in order to achieve and maintain power?

A real American

A few million more like this one, and it's game over for the socialists.

And the jihadists.

Discovered at this excellent site.

Chains of Liberty

It's time for another American Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson warned:

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Break out those chains if you want to preserve the liberties you possess still.

Socialism is slavery.  It makes dependent those who receive the fruit of their fellow citizens' labor, whose time and talent -- in the form of their treasure -- are confiscated at the point of a gun.

Humanly-speaking -- for we can merit nothing before God, Christ is our Merit -- if the State takes your wealth and uses it even accidentally for an occasional benevolent purpose, then it is no longer to your credit.

And what of when politicians hundreds and thousands of mile away use your wealth for immoral purposes?  Regarding that, Jefferson observed:

"to compel a man to furnish ... money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical."

Politicians are not engaged in charity when they take your money and limit your freedom "for the public good."  They're thieves using your resources to maintain their position.  They think you exist to provide them power.

They work for you.

Government is Leviathan.  If it is not restrained, it will devour us all.

It's time to start over as our Founders intended.  Remove all the filth politicians have codified into law and begin again from just the United States Constitution.

Let's also add term limits for Congress, end their benefits, and certify place of birth for presidential candidates, while we're at it.

The great Larry Elder nails it:

Assisting the needy in health care is a "moral imperative" – not a constitutional right. The two are as different as a squirt gun and an Uzi.

If something is not permitted under our Constitution, the federal government simply cannot do it. Period. The Founding Fathers vigorously debated the role of the federal government and defined it in Article I, Section 8 – spelling out the specific duties and obligations of the federal government. Most notably, this included providing a military for national security, coining money, establishing rules for immigration and citizenship, establishing rules for bankruptcy, setting up a postal system, establishing trademark and copyright rules, and setting up a legal system to resolves disputes, in addition to a handful of other matters.

Charity is not there.

Congress began ignoring its lack of authority for charity before the ink dried on the Constitution. When Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist French refugees in 1792, James Madison – a Founding Father and principal author of the Constitution – wrote, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution, which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

But what about the Constitution's general welfare clause?

Madison said: "With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers (enumerated in the Constitution) connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

And consider government welfare's effect on people's willingness to give. During the Great Depression – before the social programs that today we accept as givens (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) – charitable giving increased dramatically. After FDR began signing social programs into law, charitable giving continued, but not at the same rate. People felt that they had given at the office and/or that government was "handling it."

Government "charity" is simply less efficient than private charity. Every dollar extracted from taxpayers, sent to Washington, and then routed to the beneficiary "loses" about 70 cents in transfer costs – salaries, rent and other expenses. The Salvation Army, by contrast, spends 2 cents in operating costs, with the remainder going to fundraising and the beneficiary. They achieve this, among other ways, by relying on volunteers to do much of the work.

Following Hurricane Katrina, private companies, including The Home Depot and Wal-Mart, provided basic needs, such as water and shelter, faster than did government. What were their motives? Generosity? Positive public relations – a form of "selfishness"? Does it matter?

What about the issue of "moral hazard"? Does government welfare distort behavior and cause people to act irresponsibly? In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson launched a "War on Poverty." "Anti-poverty" workers literally went door to door to inform women of their "right" to money and services – provided the recipients were unmarried and had no men living in their houses. Out-of-wedlock births skyrocketed. In 1960, before the "War on Poverty," out-of-wedlock births accounted for 2 percent of white births and 22 percent of black births. By 1994 – just three decades after Johnson began his "War" – the rates had soared to 25 and 70 percent, respectively.

Numerous studies conclude that children of "broken homes" with absentee or nonexistent fathers are more likely to commit crimes, drop out of school, do drugs and produce out-of-wedlock children. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times asked both the poor and non-poor the following question: Do you think those on welfare have children to get on welfare? More poor people (64 percent) said "yes" to that proposition than did non-poor (44 percent).

If not taxation, how then?

In 1871, the city of Chicago burned to the ground. Contributions, with virtually no money from government, rebuilt the city. After 9/11, so many Americans gave money that the Red Cross used some contributions for non-9/11 purposes. Christianity Today wrote in January 2002: "Suddenly awash in a sea of money, relief agencies such as the Salvation Army need help. So much money – $1.5 billion so far – has come in that charities are having a hard time spending it." And Americans donated an even greater sum to those affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Three in four families donate to charity, averaging more than 3 percent of their income, with two-thirds going to secular charities. In total, Americans give more than $300 billion a year – more than the gross domestic product of Finland or Ireland. More than half of families also donate their time.

Absent (unconstitutional) government programs, individuals and charitable organizations can, will and – in many cases – already do provide services to the needy. A limited government – one that taxes only to fulfill its permissible duties – would allow even more disposable time and money.

People-to-people charity is more efficient, less costly, more humane and compassionate, and more likely to inspire change and self-sufficiency in the beneficiary. People can and would readily satisfy society's "moral imperative."

The Illegal Immigrant-in-Chief is doing just what he promised

How has the President done his first few days in office?

Well, the least harmful thing he's done is try to enter the White House through a window.

B. Hussein has been running the White House thermostat at Torch, which is ironic considering his condescending sermonizing over American energy consumption during the campaign. Today he chastised Wall Street executives for their profligate spending -- right after spending more on his inauguration than any of his peers. On top of that, immediately after his Congress approved nearly a trillion dollars in spending (most of it not going to immediate job creation or keeping allegedly essential financial institutions afloat), he celebrated with steak that costs $100 per serving.

It's good to see that he's being frugal with the American Taxpayer's hard-earned dollars.

As for transparency, he still hasn't released his birth certificate. Since the President claims he was born here, there is no way he would have been naturalized. But his grandmother says she saw him born in Kenya. That means B. Hussein is a citizen of the world but not the United States of America.

Thank goodness for those patriots in the Media defending our Constitution!

[The oath of loyalty to the Office of the President story is false, so it is removed.]

As for improving America's standing in the world while defending us from our enemies, President Hussein is closing a terrorist prison, trying to bring its prisoners into the U.S., and groveling at the feet of the Islamic world in his first television interview as President, bad-mouthing America along the way. Iran's Terrorist-in-Chief demonstrated immediately the effectiveness of Obama's Tough Diplomacy by demanding that B. Hussein apologize to the Islamic world for America's defending itself and supporting Israel.

Not all Change is good.

Giving thanks for America

From the great Mark Steyn.

Speaking as a misfit unassimilated foreigner, I think of Thanksgiving as the most American of holidays.

Christmas is celebrated elsewhere, even if there are significant local variations: In Continental Europe, naughty children get left rods to be flayed with and lumps of coal; in Britain, Christmas lasts from Dec. 22 to mid-January and celebrates the ancient cultural traditions of massive alcohol intake and watching the telly till you pass out in a pool of your own vomit. All part of the rich diversity of our world.

But Thanksgiving (excepting the premature and somewhat undernourished Canadian version) is unique to America. "What's it about?" an Irish visitor asked me a couple of years back. "Everyone sits around giving thanks all day? Thanks for what? George bloody Bush?"

Well, Americans have a lot to be thankful for. Europeans think of this country as "the New World" in part because it has an eternal newness, which is noisy and distracting. Who would ever have thought you could have ready-to-eat pizza faxed directly to your iPod? And just when you think you're on top of the general trend of novelty, it veers off in an entirely different direction: Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress "Gimme a cuppa joe" and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato.

Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a Kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!

But Americans aren't novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany's constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy's only to the 1940s, and Belgium's goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it's not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative.

The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France's, Germany's, Italy's or Spain's constitution, it's older than all of them put together. Americans think of Europe as Goethe and Mozart and 12th century castles and 6th century churches, but the Continent's governing mechanisms are no more ancient than the Partridge Family. Aside from the Anglophone democracies, most of the nation-states in the West have been conspicuous failures at sustaining peaceful political evolution from one generation to the next, which is why they're so susceptible to the siren song of Big Ideas – communism, fascism, European Union. If you're going to be novelty-crazed, better the zebra-mussel cappuccino than the Third Reich.

Even in a supposedly 50/50 nation, you're struck by the assumed stability underpinning even fundamental disputes. If you go into a bookstore, the display shelves offer a smorgasbord of leftist anti-Bush tracts claiming that he and Cheney have trashed, mangled, gutted, raped and tortured, sliced 'n' diced the Constitution, put it in a cement overcoat and lowered it into the East River. Yet even this argument presupposes a shared veneration for tradition unknown to most Western political cultures: When Tony Blair wanted to abolish, in effect, the upper house of the national legislature, he just got on and did it.

I don't believe the U.S. Constitution includes a right to abortion or gay marriage or a zillion other things the Left claims to detect emanating from the penumbra, but I find it sweetly touching that in America even political radicalism has to be framed as an appeal to constitutional tradition from the powdered-wig era.

In Europe, by contrast, one reason why there's no politically significant pro-life movement is because, in a world where constitutions have the life expectancy of an Oldsmobile, great questions are just seen as part of the general tide, the way things are going, no sense trying to fight it. And, by the time you realize you have to, the tide's usually up to your neck.

So Americans should be thankful they have one of the last functioning nation-states. Europeans, because they've been so inept at exercising it, no longer believe in national sovereignty, whereas it would never occur to Americans not to. This profoundly different attitude to the nation-state underpins, in turn, Euro-American attitudes to transnational institutions such as the United Nations. But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too.

When something terrible and destructive happens – a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan – the United States can project itself anywhere on the planet within hours and start saving lives, setting up hospitals and restoring the water supply. Aside from Britain and France, the Europeans cannot project power in any meaningful way anywhere. When they sign on to an enterprise they claim to believe in – shoring up Afghanistan's fledgling post-Taliban democracy – most of them send token forces under constrained rules of engagement that prevent them doing anything more than manning the photocopier back at the base.

If America were to follow the Europeans and maintain only shriveled attenuated residual military capacity, the world would very quickly be nastier and bloodier, and far more unstable. It's not just Americans and Iraqis and Afghans who owe a debt of thanks to the U.S. soldier but all the Europeans grown plump and prosperous in a globalized economy guaranteed by the most benign hegemon in history.

That said, Thanksgiving isn't about the big geopolitical picture, but about the blessings closer to home. Last week, the state of Oklahoma celebrated its centennial, accompanied by rousing performances of Rodgers and Hammerstein's eponymous anthem:

"We know we belong to the land

And the land we belong to is grand!"

Which isn't a bad theme song for the first Thanksgiving, either. Three hundred and 14 years ago, the Pilgrims thanked God because there was a place for them in this land, and it was indeed grand.

The land is grander today, and that, too, is remarkable: France has lurched from Second Empires to Fifth Republics struggling to devise a lasting constitutional settlement for the same smallish chunk of real estate, but the principles that united a baker's dozen of East Coast colonies were resilient enough to expand across a continent and halfway around the globe to Hawaii.

Americans should, as always, be thankful this Thanksgiving, but they should also understand just how rare in human history their blessings are.