Judas in a habit

Well what a surprise! It appears the Catholic Health Association - which we and others have identified previously as a complete and utter fraud - is, in fact, a complete and utter fraud.

Perhaps we ought be more specific. They are a DNC front group masquerading as a representative organization of the Catholic Church. Sister Carol Keehan, President of the Catholic Health Association, has come out in full endorsement of the Senate health care travesty. To hell with vexations over federally funded abortion. Progressivism must march on!

"Catholic" Democrats both pro-choice and pro-life can play this anyway they like and win. In fact they already are. One can almost hear the collective sigh of relief. Nearly had to take a moral stand there for a moment, eh Congressman? Not now. Thank you Sister Keehan!

How's that investigation of women religious in America coming Cardinal Levada?

Cheers,

Charlie

The Rationale of Madness

There exists an absolute truth – God – toward which every sacred and individual human soul is created to aspire, eternally. This notion of the transcendent nature of man is the marrow of Judeo-Christian consciousness and the fountainhead of Western Civilization.

Unlike any other, this notion – dare we say “revelation” - has fueled man’s quests for knowledge in the sciences and beauty in the arts. It has tempered his savage lusts so that he might live more harmoniously with his fellow man. It is the principle that provides the Declaration of Independence its irrefutable and universal authority.

History is replete with examples demonstrating that the extent to which societies have abided this notion they have thrived. The extent to which they have not, they have failed, often brutally.

Collectivist thinking is the antithesis of this notion, and its legacy is one of mass poverty, destruction, and death. Consider its most effective advocates and practitioners - Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot. Under their rule there exists no God, society alone is sacred. The individual human beings comprising it are no more than cattle to be herded and disposed of as convenient to the objectives of the State.

When discussing the leaders of such regimes, the conclusion is often simply that they were madmen. True enough. But if we genuinely wish to prevent future such madmen from gaining power, we must make ourselves thoroughly aware of the means by which they did so in the past. The process often reveals hair-raising similarities to much of what today is politically fashionable.

Author Mark Musser has done invaluable work in re-constructing the rationale that drove the Nazi death campaign and enabled it to sell its message of murder to so many. In his latest essay, Hitler’s Green Killing Machine, Musser further explores what he calls the “eco-imperialism” that, in the minds of many, justified German expansionism and the attempted extermination of the Jews.

Musser points out that in Mein Kampf, Hitler contends, “the Jews try to pacify or tame Nature through international commerce and capitalism on the one hand, or by stressing universal political values like communistic equality on the other hand, both of which rebel against the stern rigid laws of Nature which cannot be overcome. German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, the racist Darwinist who coined the term 'ecology' in 1866, posited that the Jewish transcendent view of man over nature made them resistant to evolutionary biological change, and hence the Jews had become a lesser race. While Hitler eschewed some of Haeckel's political views, he heartily agreed with this particular belief.”

What made the “Jewish transcendent view of man over nature” so offensive to the Nazis was that it was in complete contradiction to their own.

“Many Nazis, including the Fuhrer himself, believed that the industrial age along with its emphasis upon commercialism, city life, international trade and finance were corrupting the biological substance of the German people. The Nazis thus had an extreme literal reading of Nature which would spell absolute disaster for the Jews in particular precisely because they allegedly lived by a false, ‘eternal,’ or transcendent ethos, far above the natural world and her ‘scientific’ evolutionary natural laws of racism.”

Musser notes that, once in power, Hitler quickly codified his green ideology into law.

“By the summer of 1935, right before the Nuremberg laws were set up, Nazi Germany was by far the greenest regime on the planet. The Animal Protection laws were followed up by a strong hunting law for Hermann Goering in 1934. In 1935, Hitler also signed the Reich Nature Protection Act, the high water mark for Nazi environmentalism. Here is seen the birth of environmental permits, environmental impact statements and environmental totalitarianism. The Reich Nature Protection Act even allowed the expropriation of private property without compensation for the sake of the environment. Sustainable forestry practices called Dauerwald, which ironically means ‘eternal’ forest, were also introduced at the federal level.”

These laws, and the thinking behind them, logically concluded in the attempt to rid the world of the Jews who, to the Nazis, “had become a wandering and threatening invasive species because of their steadfastness to universal transcendent values in opposition to the Social Darwinian evolutionary laws of Nature…The revenge of Nature against the Jews was to be carried out by the Nazis, who thought themselves to be the Master Race precisely because they deemed themselves the most 'natural' or 'authentic,' i.e., the most in tune with Nature's pantheistic ways.”

No one advocates totalitarianism, the abolishment of human rights, and genocide openly. They do so - innocently or deliberately – through the promotion of some interpretation of justice and the common good. Through the modern environmentalist movement and its claims to seek the salvation of the planet, the free world has come perilously close to abdicating what liberties it still enjoys, opening the door to whatever monster wishes to take the reins of government and economy and do as he pleases.

As neo-pantheism and agnostic materialism increasingly replace the Judeo-Christian understanding of the transcendent nature of man in the minds of Western man, so this risk will increase. For if each individual human being is not held to be created in the image and likeness of God, endowed with certain unalienable rights, he has no natural rights at all. As such he is wholly at the whim of circumstances, ambitious do-gooders, and madmen.

Cheers,

Charlie

The British Guide to National Ruin

Many are the instances where adult children pointedly eschew the profligate ways of their of their drunken and wayward parents. In his fascinating analysis, “The Decline of Britain: A Cautionary Tale for America,” Dr. Robin Harris, former policy advisor to Prime Minister to Margaret Thatcher and Director of the Conservative Party Research Department, urges America to do just that: observe and reject the socialism which has rendered old Mother England an economic, political, and social basket case.

“Consanguinity,” (common ancestry for those who are NOT George Will) “works both ways,” advises Dr. Harris. “What works in one of our countries has been shown to work in the other. But what fails in one country also fails in the other, and in crucial respects Britain is now failing. The country’s palpable decline from its prosperity and security of just two decades ago constitutes an awful but, if intelligently observed, timely and useful warning to America.”

Harris traces the “remarkable, but also indisputable” parallels of American and British economic and political cycles over the past forty years: regulation and taxation under Nixon and Heath; near bankruptcy under Carter and Callaghan; rebirth and prosperity with Reagan and Thatcher; the watered-down Conservatism of Bush and Major; the triangulation of Clinton and Blair, the War on Terror vigor of Bush and Blair; and now the lunge toward Marxism under Obama and Brown.

What has catapulted Britain into the lead in terms of economic disaster is her legacy of socialism, the roots of which Dr. Harris traces to World War Two.

“The Second World War was arguably the decisive event in the history of British collectivism. It increased public expenditure, taxation, and controls to previously unimaginable levels. The Left argued that total planning, which allegedly had won the war, could also secure universal prosperity. Churchill’s coalition wartime government, bowing to the prevailing ethos, laid foundations for the massive economic and social interventions that were later implemented by the postwar Labour government.”

Presaging Mr. Rahm Emanuel, Clement Attlee and crew let not the very good crisis of the war go to waste. They promised their shell-shocked and war-weary nation heaven on Earth and, having won a landslide victory as a result, implemented a welfare state agenda that nationalized the majority of the economy and made the citizenry dependent on government forever more. Bemused, alienated, and himself more than exhausted, Sir Winston could only watch from the back benches as his beloved Britain succumbed to the siren song of socialism. Later he, and even Lady Thatcher, could steer Britain toward free-market prosperity and credible self-defense, only within the confines of a thoroughly entrenched welfare state.

“Even the Thatcher years—again, despite Mrs. Thatcher’s own objections to the consensus—hardly shook the assumptions established at this time (1945) about what government was about.”

And herein lies the core of Harris’s warning to America: DO NOT let socialism into your home. It is a guest that will never leave!

“Britain’s experience offers a serious long-term warning because it shows how difficult it is for another Anglo–Saxon country to escape the legacy of socialism once that ideology becomes entrenched in attitudes and institutions.”

Harris observes that the Tea party movement is a distinctly and delightfully American phenomenon, which indicates the unlikelihood of socialism becoming entrenched in American attitudes. This is happy reaffirmation for those of us who nearly despaired one year ago that the Americans too had become inextricably infatuated by the wiles of the Nanny State. Where America is most vulnerable, however, is in her lack of focus and vigilance in ensuring that collectivist policies do not overwhelm her institutions.

“For the British, the danger is that they revert to collectivism by historically conditioned reflex,” writes Harris. “For Americans, the risk is different but real: It is, as Tocqueville warned, that they may gently and unwittingly slip into it.”

Alas, many of the Americans now crying out against the direction their nation is heading were the very same who voted-in the current occupants of the Executive and Legislative branches of their government. What were they thinking? They were not thinking. This is a dangerous game, for socialism has, in fact, made significant inroads into American institutions. Colleges and Universities, churches and synagogues, the news media, the entertainment industry, philanthropic foundations, even corporations are infested with collectivist thought, expressed through sham programs and initiatives bearing the banners of “diversity”, “sustainability”, and “social justice.”

Only now is the average American awakening to the malevolence these seemingly innocuous niceties possess. We must hasten this awakening. As more and more institutions surrender to collectivist pressure, the nearer to impossible it becomes to effectively oppose the trend, socially as well as politically.

“Conservative timidity is also understandable in straightforward electoral terms because of the sheer size of the public sector and the number of individual voters who are dependent in one way or another on public spending,” explains Harris. In other words, eventually the national motto becomes, if you can’t beat them, join them. Witness Britain’s “Conservative” Party.

The excesses of British government ignited the American Revolution, galvanizing the principles of limited government, no taxation without representation, and the rule of law in the hearts and minds of the American people. We join Dr. Harris and many others who continue to see the United States as the last best hope of mankind in hopes that, by her tragic example, Britain may do so once again.

Cheers,

Charlie

Divine Intervention?

On his radio program, Mr. Michael Medved recently set about cataloguing instances in American history where the hand of God seemed particularly at work. There was the unassailable George Washington, unscathed through innumerable battles, whose preternatural invulnerability to harm was legendary even to Indian chief’s who fought him in the French and Indian War. There was the near simultaneous demise of Messrs Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, authors of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1836, the 50^th anniversary of the signing of that glorious testament. There were the failed firearms of Andrew Jackson’s would be assassin, later found to be in perfect working order. Many such examples exist, suggesting, as Mr. Medved (and others) so convincingly argue, that Providence has played a significant role in guiding the United States of America to her destiny as the champion of human liberty in the world.

We wonder if Mr. Scott Brown’s impossible ascent to the Senate is not another such instance? Skeptics, naysayers, and devout Liberals will scoff, but consider the circumstances leading up to this. This was the seat of Senator Ted Kennedy; Senator Ted Kennedy whose most ardent aspiration throughout his career was the establishment of socialized medicine in America. His sudden and tragic death last year was seen by most as a boost, not a bane to that cause. Yet instead, the vacancy Mr. Kennedy left became the vacuum which sucked in and galvanized the wrath of the American people toward that very policy and the runaway-train government seeking to ram it through. Remarkable!

Does the Almighty make a habit of inserting Himself into petty partisan politics? We’re guessing, no. But to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there is nothing petty about this particular policy. The very essence of the American experiment – politically, economically, spiritually – is at stake. So-called “health care reform” is but the football with which this colossal battle between collectivism and classical liberalism is being waged. The outcome will have profound consequences to both American and human history.

Enter Mr. Brown, stage right, an unknown moderate-Republican Senator in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, assuming the throne of the Liberal Left itself. As a result, their crowning agenda item, Mr. Kennedy’s dying wish, may be thwarted once and for all.

Believe as you wish, but this Liberty-loving bird is bowing his head and uttering repeatedly, “Thank you Lord!”

Cheers,

Charlie

High Marx for Mr. Obama

“We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming America!”
- President Barack Obama, October 31, 2008

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In his recent tête-à-tête with Oprah Winfrey (the original BIG O), President Barack Obama awarded himself the grade of B+ for his performance after nearly a year in office. Naturally, those on the Right disagree and award Barry an F. Somewhat surprisingly, those to the Left are not much more generous in their assessment.

We submit, however, that would-be graders, both right and left, are applying the wrong standard in grading Mr. Obama. This is understandable. For 220 years, presidents of The United States have performed, more or less, according to a common motivation: to win re-election and their place in history by leaving the nation more prosperous, powerful, and peaceful than it was when they assumed office. Many have failed in this regard, of course, but this was due to incompetence. Certainly were Barack Obama performing according to this same motivation he should be given a grade of F. The country is far less prosperous, increasingly less powerful, and in danger of becoming much less peaceful at this point in his tenure.

But Barack Obama does not share the same motivations as his predecessors and he is not incompetent. He is a radical Marxist who understands well that in order to successfully transform a free market republic he must first facilitate the collapse of its existing socio-economic order. And by this standard, it is our contention, Barry is doing an outstanding job.

He has accelerated the debauchment of American currency; he has committed Her to irrecoverable debt; he has impaired Her free markets with myriad regulation; he has handicapped Her military with impossible rules of engagement; he has befuddled and demoralized Her intelligence gathering operations; he has made Her economy vastly more dependent upon federal whim; and he has signaled to the world that he will not defend Her interest so much as negotiate them away.

Why? Does Barack Obama hate America? No. He possesses, however, a radically different idea of what America is supposed to be. His is the Jeremiah Wright-Bill Ayers-Howard Zinn-Saul Alinsky-Richard Cloward-Frances Fox Piven vision of America: a nation that has grown too rich and too powerful and done so primarily through the exploitation of the disadvantaged and the extortion of the powerless. In the name of justice, therefore, such a polity must be made to pay restitution, to make amends, to be humbled by any means necessary, so that it cannot and will not abuse its fellow nations and citizens of the world ever again.

It is descriptive, not pejorative, to identify this mindset and worldview as Marxist, for indeed Marx’s fundamental assertion was that the so-called free market thrives only through the exploitation of the worker and is thus, at its core, evil. In his mind, therefore, Mr. Obama is doing what is right, just, and necessary in making a shambles of the American socio-economic order. And in this he is doing a right bang-up job! We refer you to the chart illustrated above from a liberal professor of economics at a major Midwestern University.

Americans must understand that this is not incompetence, it is a promise kept: the fundamental transformation of America, Phase One. The sooner the majority realizes this, the more vehemently they will – we continue to hope – actively reject it.

Cheers,

Charlie

So we have won after all

On 7, December 1941, upon learning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Sir Winston Churchill declared, “So we have won after all.” Lacking his prescience and deep respect for the character of the American people, many around him were perplexed by the statement. To Sir Winston, however, it was immediately obvious that the Japanese had over-played their hand and awakened their worst nightmare. He was well aware that years of intense struggle and pain lay ahead. But in his lion heart he knew that, in the end, the American will, sufficiently motivated, would prevail over the enemies of freedom.

On 7, December 2009, upon learning of the Leftist attack on their economy, character, intelligence, and future, the American people are similarly awakened. Fraudulent stimulus, socialist health care proposals, and the climate change scam utterly exposed as such have shaken the electorate to its core and stirred a reverence for first principles as has not been seen in many a decade. Even prominent Democrats are warning the administration to change direction. Indeed the most potent antidote for Leftism is its being put into practice.

And yet, there remains intense struggle and pain ahead. Those leading the attack are not motivated by traditional political impetus. The mere threat of losing office deters them not.

As Mr. Obama jets off to Copenhagen to socialize with socialists, communists, anarchists, and shysters from every corner of the globe, seeking to further obligate the United States in a trillion dollar extortion racket while she is already imperiled by 10.2% unemployment and unbearable debt, it is becoming apparent that this is no mere liberal democrat in the presidency. This is a leader who seeks to break the United States as she is, force her to her knees, and then reclaim her on entirely new terms.

The failing policies of the Obama administration destroying the United States economy and the Democratic party are not the product of political incompetence. They are the deliberate application of a strategy; less Jimmy Carter and more Vladimir Lenin. Of course we are referring to the Cloward and Priven Strategy. To Conservatives, this in no news at all. To others (“Independents”) this is the bitter realization of what Captain Hope n’ Change meant when he said he intends to “fundamentally change America.” Had they been paying attention, they would not have voted for this. Had they been paying attention, they would not have voted for Obama! Bit late for all that now. What’s done is done and, in truth, the worst is yet to come.

Nonetheless we have more hope than at any point in the last 12 months. The Left has overplayed its hand and awakened their worst nightmare: a genuine appreciation in the hearts and minds of the American people for the principles upon which their nation was founded.

America will suffer for her dalliance with Marxism. She may even sustain some irreparable damage. But we know that, in the end, she will prevail, yet again, against the enemies of freedom.

And so, Liberty Lovers, we have won after all!

Cheers,

Charlie

The Cancer of Progressivism in America

Congressional Gang Rape

Thus spake Czar Hope and Change to his minions in Congress to rally their votes for health care reform,

“Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down

health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”

Henry the 5th this is not. "Teabag, anti-government people?" "Extremists?" A little more contempt please, Mr. President, for you are addressing more than half of the nation here. And pray tell, how exactly does this rhetoric fit into the "Post-Partisan" lexicon?

As obnoxious and shrill as the Iraq war protesters became, we do not recall President George W. Bush ever deriding them in this fashion. What does that say about the man? And what does the above say about our current Commander in Chief as well as those soulless ghouls who carry out his bidding?

The Heritage Foundation explains that November 7's gang rape wrought a $2.6 trillion bill which raises taxes by $700 billion on a nation which already faces record deficits and 10.2% unemployment, and massively expands a Medicaid program that currently provides substandard reimbursement rates, is bankrupting states, and is bankrupt itself. Now that's something to celebrate, presuming the destruction of the Great Republic is your aim.

Throughout all this one is forced to ask continually, "why?" The 47 million uninsured? Please even The Obama Himself dared not employ that fiction in his last address to the nation regarding health care. Because major organizations such as the American Medical Association, AARP, and major pharmaceutical companies endorse it? As Mr. Dick Morris and friends point out, this support was bought and paid for (extorted?) with tax-payer money long ago, and each of these players are beginning to realize they have been had; (witness The Health Insurance Industry) a realization the Bishops and the Catholic Health Association will soon come to when the Stupak amendment is exposed as pure vapor.

It is little wonder that the chorus declaring the American Democratic Party an organized crime syndicate disguised as a political party is growing. The only question now is how much looting of American treasure - fiscal and moral, present and future - will they accomplish in the meantime?

Cheers,

Charlie

Trick or Treat – A Nightmare for Westerners

Dressed as Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost, the wee ones sheepishly approach the awesome house. Everyone in the neighborhood had told them what incredible treats were provided there. They ring the bell. The door opens slowly.

“Trick or treat,” plead the little beggars.

A silent and powerful hand reaches forth and drops curiosities into open sacks: Stimulus, reduced carbon emissions, free health care, and a fair media.

Trick or treat, wonder the wanders. Are these gifts what they seem? Or are they something else, something that exacts a price their little minds cannot quite recall?

“Trick!” cry Ghost and Patriot. “Treat!” counter Hobo and Witch. They quarrel, shattering the camaraderie that helped make this night so magic.

A sound interrupts them. They stop and listen. Laughter. A single laugh, high, mocking, and impossibly loud, coming from inside the awesome house.

Cold. Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost shiver violently and suddenly realize they are no longer in costume. In fact they are completely naked. The wintry wind nearly steals their treat sacks, and they find that they are now empty: bereft not only of the offerings of the awesome house, but of all gains they had made thus far.

The laugh grows louder.

They run, each to their homes, but their homes are empty, as if no one had ever lived there at all. Neighbors, friends, strangers, all houses are now dark and empty but one – the awesome house.

Cold, hungry, and tired the little ones approach the awesome house again – without mirth, without mischief, without choice. They ring the bell. The door opens slowly. They stand shivering without speaking. The silent and powerful hand reaches forth and presents each of them a massive candied apple, then ushers them inside.

The house is warm and spacious. Everyone from the neighborhood is there but no one speaks. All are naked and cowering, gnawing voraciously on massive candied apples. Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost do likewise, the intense sweetness making their empty stomachs sick. But there is nothing else to eat. There is nothing else to do. There is no where else to go.

Another door opens. The silent and powerful hand beckons. The naked mass obeys and passes through the door and down a massive stairway. Down, down, down, the darkness grows thicker as a stench begins to rise. They are down now, at last, on solid ground. Their eyes adjust to the living darkness and they begin to see – more. More naked people, hundreds of them, thousands, millions, not dead but hardly living, stretching back to the beginning of history, an ocean of humanity standing silently, miserably, resignedly.

Terror rises in the minds and throats of Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost. They turn to run and scream, but they cannot, there are too many bodies in their way and their voices too are gone. They struggle futilely against the herd.

The high, mocking laugh returns from atop the massive stairway. Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost look up to see the silhouette of a man against the open basement door. He turns, climbs the last few steps back upstairs, and slams the door.

The darkness takes over now and obliterates all distinction between Witch, Patriot, Hobo, and Ghost; those they once called neighbors; and the ocean of silent humanity.

Patriot summons all his strength and utters one final word into the suffocating blackness: “Trick!”

Cheers,

Charlie

P.S. Our apologies to Mr. Bradbury.