Big Government allies.

Occupy Wall Street is getting a free ride from its allies. As you know by now, OWS has lots of demands, and nobody seems quite sure what they actually think they want, but one thing rings through loud and clear.

OWS does not want the America we know, the America that Conservatives and the Tea Party are working to keep, the America that our founding fathers bled and died for; they want to abolish the horrible captitalist system and replace it with socialism. They "know" socialism is better because the teachers and textbook authors have told them so, and have repeatedly told them throughout their public school and college education that America is sexist, racist, intolerant, non-diverse, and greedy. If you don't recognize that, it is classic Gramscian brainwashing and indoctrination.

Antonio Gramsci was a leading Italian Political Theorist, a Marxist, who argued that social revolution leading to a Marxist State had to be brought about by working through the schools to convert the masses.  He believed that the "ruling elite" controlled the masses by controlling what they learned, thus ensuring belief in and support for the status quo.  And where did all those Sixties Liberals go? Into the schools, the universities, the government, and the media, where the masses' opinions can be shaped.   So the college students of today "know" they want socialism.  Never mind the failures of Greece and Italy, the squalid conditions of the masses in Russia, or even the collapse of the Russian Socialist experiment.  Never mind the poverty of the Chinese workers, despite its massive economic growth, with its own class of uberrich.

In America, of course, there was no real "ruling" elite. Despite the influence wielded by the wealthy, we the people relied on accurate and factual education to "shape" our own opinions. Since the Sixties, however, liberals have worked to make sure more and more people were "educated" to understand the benefits of socialism. Patriotism, "melting-pot" and traditional American values have become targets of disdain, while America has moved steadily deeper into a morass of debt, social entitlements, and regulation.

Similarly, liberals, who believe in regulation and "social" justice, have moved into government positions where "real" power can be exercised. Obama himself exemplifies this attitude: a belief in small government is, he says, a belief in a "small America."

That brings us to OWS, working together with its Big Government allies.

The media gives OWS good coverage, portraying OWS activists as involved, and determined, out to make the world a better place.  One commentary even went so far as to call it the Tea Party with brains.  God help America if OWS is what passes for "brains" in America.

Remember ACORN? It doesn't exist anymore, you know.  However, the same organizations with the same people are operating under new names. Allegedly, they are posing as fundraisers for groups they don't represent to fraudulently raisefunds to actually pay workers to attend OWS activities.  If a rose by any other name smells like a rose, so a rotten acorn still smells like corruption.

Of course, the government itself would remain neutral in these protests. Or you might think so, but that isn't the case. In many places, Tea Party meetings had to obtain permits, buy millions of dollars of insurance, provide security and ensure that the grounds would be returned to pristine condition at the end of an event. Hoops had to be jumped through, barriers surmounted. If you assumed the OWS organizers had to do the same things, you'd be wrong. Across the nation, in city after city, OWS simply moved in and set up camp in public places. No permits, no arrangements for security or sanitation, no insurance. Not even a pretense of compliance with laws prohibiting overnight camping in public parks. Allegations of government favoritism toward the left-leaning OWS events, summarized in a Foxnews article, are surfacing everywhere. 

Big government employees are among big government's biggest boosters.   It shouldn't surprise anyone that liberals in government use their "real" power to favor their allies in the cause of Big Government.

Yet More Transparency!

The Obama Adminstration evidently thinks the meaning of "transparent" is "you can't see it."

Candidate, er, "President" Obama has been hard on the campaign trail. He has attended glitzy L.A. fundraisers and $35,000 per plate dinners. However, you can't see it - it's "transparent." Photographers were barred from the event, because that isn't the image the Obama campaign wants to project. 

What Mr. Obama wants you to see is a stop at the local diner for a fast-food chicken dinner special, so the media is invited in. (Where's "Let's Move" Michelle when all this high-calorie grease is going down the hatch?) Then it's on to collect the big bucks from the rich folks who bankroll his campaign, but you can't see it (it's transparent.)  And where is the media in all this? Gushing over Obama's link with the common man, how he is in touch with the little people at the diner, with hardly a word on the "transparent" fundraisers with the rich. The media could win more trust if they would do their job and stop campaigning for Obama.

It gets better, though. The "transparent" administration is proposing a new regulation which will allow Federal agencies to deny the existence of documents they don't want to release in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.  Under current law, if an agency refuses to release documents, a citizen may go to court to request an impartial review to determine whether documents should be released. With this new rule, the government can simply deny the existence of documents, removing any opportunity to seek a court review. After all, any court action would be dismissed on the grounds that the citizen could not even show that any documents existed to review, after all, it's transparent.
Is this an example of yet more transparency? This rule is simply another blatant attempt by the Obama Administration to ensure that government "of the people, by the people, for the people" shall perish from the face of the earth.

Whoa, let's not gallop right off the cliff!

 Senator McCain, once upon a time GOP candidate for President, is getting a little carried away with the cowboy diplomacy. While attending the World Economic Forum, which is being held right in the middle of the Middle East, the Senator said, "Now that military operations in Libya are ending, there will be renewed focus on what practical military operations might be considered to protect civilian lives in Syria.... Iran's rulers would be wise to heed similar counsel."  America just spent Three Quarters of a Trillion Dollars in military operations in the Middle East, and lost over 4,000 American lives, in the last nine years. And you want to gallop right off that cliff again? After nine years in Iraq, you want to engage Iran in a military conflict?

Have you forgotten that you folks in the Congress and the Administration are working to substantially cut the military budget? One-fourth of Obama's magical jobs act is money saved from not fighting wars. And aside from the Billion or so spent "not" fighting the "non-war" in Libya, our President and Fearless Leader has ordered "boots on the ground" in Uganda in a maneuver much like that which sucked America into Vietnam.

Of course, the good Senator is not alone. Ms. Clinton, our august Secretary of State, has been in Pakistan, delivering the message that if Pakistan is unwilling or unable to fight insurgents, the U.S. "would show" them how to fight the insurgents. She says the U.S. has no intention of deploying troops in Pakistan, that the favored method is reconciliation and peace - with the cooperation of the Pakistani government.  However, the "message" was sufficiently alarming that Afghanistan - yes, the place Americans have been fighting and dying to recover from the Taliban - said it would come to the aid of Pakistan, and stand with her against America, should America choose to invade Pakistan.

Afghanistan's response ought to serve as a dash of cold water in the face for Mr. McCain and Ms. Clinton. In other words, whoa up there, let's not gallop right off the cliff, okay? While you cowboys are out saber-rattling, you need to take a good hard look at what has been accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan up to this point.

What about Iraq? We won there, right? Sort of. We are leaving on such unfriendly terms that Obama failed to secure immunity from prosecution for American soldiers, let alone negotiate for U.S. bases in the country.  So the troops are coming home. It's a relief and blessing for the million men and women who served there, and their families. It's a campaign victory for Mr. Obama, who is bringing them home right on President Bush's timetable, but it is a military stalemate. Iraq is not stable, and many of the current leaders have strong ties with Iran, so it is likely to become an Iranian dependency. If that occurs, it means that all the American money and blood spent knocked out a dictator who was little more than an annoyance to us - but who stymied Iran's ambitions for power in the Middle East. Strategically, it could be a disaster for the U.S. While Ms. Clinton assures the world of U.S. commitment to Iraqi democracy, the past nine years have shown that it takes "boots on the ground" to keep it going - and the Iraqis are no longer keen on having our boots on their ground.

Then there's Egypt of the "Arab Spring." While that revolution was brought about as a popular rebellion, try finding the secularists and socialists now. They are quietly disappearing from the news, except for reports like the man sentenced to three years in prison for Facebook comments denigrating Islam. 

And our NATO "victory" in Libya? The National Transitional Council has just announced that Libya intends to adopt Shari'a Law as the basis for its legal system and repeal all non-Shari'a laws. Yes, the dictator is gone, but the radicals are moving in. And America, the country that can't stand even a whisper of the Bible or Judeo-Christian ethical system on which it was founded, is busy congratulating them even as they choose the Islamic religious system as the basis for their laws.

Strategically, that's 0 - 4, if you are keeping score.

For decades, America negotiated with and successfully made treaties with those who held common interests, while we tolerated, or perhaps ignored, those nations which did not harm us. Not all of the governments were necessarily "good" or "free," but then, we didn't deem it the job of the American Government to make everybody "good" or "free," either. It was not nations which have proved to be the most formidable threat to the U.S., but small groups committed to death-dealing ideology. If America would return to its founding ideology, instead of denying, distorting, and demonizing that ideology, it would survive, for ideology must be countered with ideology. However, "tolerating" and "accommodating" the ideology of those who would kill you is no protection. The worst thing America could do is send another million soldiers off the cliff of Syria, or Pakistan, or Iran; it merely gives the radicals every excuse they need to recruit new followers.

Out of Iraq

 Obama has announced that American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of the year! For all those who have courageously and ably fought for America during the last nine years, that is good news.

However, one has to ask - why now? Did the insurgents all come in and lay down their arms? Was there a successful treaty negotiation? Has peace finally come to Iraq? Have the issues surrounding the U.S. withdrawal been resolved with the government of Iraq?

And the answers to the last four questions, in order, are no, no, no, and no, the talks actually have broken down. President Obama, it seems, set a December 31st deadline for withdrawing the troops. He is, he says now, honoring his 2008 pledge to end the war. Strange how that didn't happen right after he was elected in, or at the end of 2009, or anytime in 2010.

So, why now? If it's time to get out of Iraq at the end of 2011, and not in those earlier years, there must be a strategic reason. Well, take comfort; there is a good strategic reason. You see, the re-election campaign season is underway, and bringing the troops home makes for good campaign press, so this is the best time from a strategic point of view for the campaign....

Oh. Did you think there was a good reason from a military point of view? What's that got to do with anything Obama does?

Lawless Liberals - the Better Way

Janet Napolitano has been testifying to the U.S. Senate about the question of removing illegal aliens from the country. As you may remember, the Obama Administration created a new policy which they disingenuously call "prosecutorial discretion." Of course, there has always been a policy of "prosecutorial discretion" in criminal cases, as a prosecutor has to have the ability to decide whether a case should be prosecuted based on the nature of the alleged crime and the availability of witnesses and evidence to support a prosecution in a case.

But, as always, the lawless liberals give a new twist to the meaning of an otherwise established term. Under the Administration policy, prosecutors will seek primarily to remove criminals, fugitives and repeat offenders In a removal case, the only evidence needed is whether the person is in the country illegally. That's the standard of law set by Congress, but according to Napolitano, "that's one way to do it. Or the other way and the better way … is to say we want to focus on" criminals and the like.

"The other way and the better way," Ms. Napolitano? That is the typical attitude of the lawless liberal. Congress makes a law, and the lawless liberals don't obey it, because they know "another way" and a "better way." The Executive Branch (that includes Ms. Napolitano, Mr. Obama, and all of their well-meaning elitist minions) does not make law. Congress already told DHS to send home those here illegally; it may be "one way to do it," but there is no other legal way.

But DHS doesn't care about obeying the law. In fact, they are still granting work permits to some who they elect not to deport. Under a procedure established in 1986, DHS can grant conditional work permits to some. The only requirements are that the illegal alien must be residing in the U.S., must apply within 18 months of November, 1986, and have arrived before January, 1982. It's not likely anyone still meets those requirements, but since there is a bureaucracy in place to grant permits, DHS isn't likely to worry about the legal niceties. After all, lawless liberals always have a better way.

A "New" Stimulus

 Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., Democrat, has proposed his own "new" stimulus bill.  It will only cost another $804 Billion, a little less than the nearly One Trillion Dollars spent by Obama, and not even twice the (purported) cost of Obama's latest $450 Billion Dollar stimulus proposal. Jackson, unlike Obama, does not even pretend that his plan is paid for.

Mr. Jackson promises that his plan will bail out all the unemployed, all the cities, and all the states. It's a fairly simple plan: create a civilian conservation corp, or a Works Progress Administration, and employ all unemployed people for $40,000 per year for five years at a cost of about $600 Billion, and bail out the cities and states with about $200 Billion. The cities and states, having been relieved of debt, can go back to spending and borrowing as usual, and presumably stop whining about unfunded mandates since they now owe the feds a big favor. And the people will pay taxes and buy products. Thus, he says, our economy will "work its way out of this protracted recession."

Sound familiar? It should. FDR proposed and implemented these plans following his election in 1933. These plans didn't help the people then, and they won't now. As Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury Secretary said, "I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started." After all, how much has Obama's vaunted stimulus reduced unemployment? Not at all; it has been a failure.

Jackson, though, says it's the "only way out of this crisis." He is wrong.  In American business, contractions and even collapses have occurred regularly. Downturns, and even market panics, occurred in 1873, 1893, and 1921. In a short while, they sort themselves out. For example, after the panic of 1893 it required about four years to recover and thrive again. 

In the 1930's, however, the government began intervening in the market. Hoover, who believed that the government could control market behavior, just as Bush (remember TARP?), began meddling with tax rates and massively increasing Federal spending.  None of this worked, and FDR took over in 1933, creating the very same programs Rep. Jackson proposes now.  All these programs did was to drag the people through prolonged poverty, and in the end, dragged the world into a prolonged depression. And in the 1930's, that prolonged depression created the conditions which gave rise to National Socialism, and world war.

Rep. Jackson is wrong. Obama is wrong. The Democrats and Liberals are wrong. Even the Establishment Republicans are wrong.  Government has proven itself totally incapable of preventing the ups and downs which must naturally occur in the business world.  Tying government to the markets does not prevent those natural cycles, but it may drag the government down.  The Russian government tried to control the price and demand cycle, and their economy and their government collapsed. No matter what the politicians or the socialists say, nothing is too big to fail.

It's a Braindead New World, or Buddy, can you spare a Soma?

You remember those Tea Party rallies? According to the media, hardly anyone showed up, and those that did were mostly racist kooks, "right wingnuts," Klan types prone to violence. So the media basically stayed away, and the op-ed pieces comments were full of what Tea Partiers "probably" said, "probably" wanted, "probably" intended. Conservatives were vilified, and although the public gave the Republicans victories in the midterm Congressional elections, they were vilified and marginalized.

That's not the case with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. Or not quite. Here, the media seems to be doing its best to present OWS as a well-organized movement with a rational, well-organized agenda to bring down corruption on Wall Street. It is not that.

In Atlanta, the OWS branch is called "Occupy Atlanta." They have adopted a logo: the raised clenched fist of solidarity on a background similar to the War Flagof the Japanese Imperial Army , surrounded by the olive branch. The fist has been a symbol of the SDS, the Black Panthers, the United States Communist Party, and the French and Soviet revolutions.  Occupy Atlanta's demands, which you may read here, are classical Marxist rhetoric.

The book, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, was published in 1932, and posited the world as it might be in 2540 A.D. The citizens, or perhaps inmates is a better term, are given "Soma" to keep their minds dull enough to stomach living in such a world, and rights are sternly delegated according to class status.  Brave New World, if you haven't read it lately, is a frightening commentary on what the future might be if we do not take care.

The "progressives," the liberals and the Democrats are bringing America perilously close to the Brave New World in a much shorter time. Sadly, America's socialist "progressives" don't seem to have a clue how a republic or a democracy works, or even socialism for that matter. At a recent "Occupy Atlanta" meeting, Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights hero, sought an opportunity to address the crowd. He never got the chance; you should watch the video, because you won't believe it. 

It's not a Brave New World looming before us, it's a Braindead New World.  Rational thought seems to have little place in the world of the "progressive." If we allow this nonsense to gain political momentum, we will all be saying, "Buddy, can you spare a Soma?"

Wait Just A Minute!

Change can be a wonderful thing. It can be a useful thing. It can be the right thing. It can even be a necessary thing. But it isn't always any of those things; sometimes it is absolutely unwise. Furthermore, if change is needed, you really need to determine what is supposed to be changed, and in what way.

Right now, Occupy Wall Street, with the approval of Obama and his Wall Street funded cronies are pushing for more socialism, more regulation, and higher taxes on earned income.

When Mr. Obama was elected in 2008, his signature sound bite was "Hope and Change." Everyone wants hope, and America wants change. Obama did not, however, specify what change he promised, and the change he has given America is a vast acceleration of the move towards socialism that became fashionable in the 1960's.

That was not the change America wanted, however. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 67 percent of America's political class thinks America's move toward socialism is the right direction, while 84 percent of America's citizens want to turn around and move the other direction. 

Wait just a minute, here. Sixteen percent of the country wants socialism. They want to throw away all that God and Country nonsense, all that capitalism and free-market nonsense. In their view, this is an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Europe, the Soviet Union and its satellites, China, and so on: an opportunity to break America free from the grip of backwards conservatives.

So why should America change that to socialism? America was founded as a Democratic Republic on Judeo-Christian principles. America has, as the pilgrims hoped, stood as a lighthouse to the world. It has been a unique place. People who have "enjoyed" socialism flee to America from all over the world; there really is no other country that people with conservative views can move to and live in.

On the other hand, there are many socialist countries in the world, many places a true socialist could choose to live.  You don't see the liberals packing up to move, however. They could go to a country that is already socialist and make it better there; show them how socialism is done. Down deep, they know that socialism makes exorbitant promises and does not deliver. America's "socialists" are, at heart, little more than spoiled children. Their slovenly behavior at their protests suggests that what they are most "green" with is envy of the success others have worked for and achieved in the America that Conservatives built.

Steve Jobs

The media and the internet are replete with articles, tributes, and pans of the life and career of a man named Steve Jobs, who passed away this week. Some people who worked with him call him a tyrannical micromanager, difficult to work with, and he may have been. I'm not one of those people; I never met him, and I can't say. It's certainly a characteristic of innovators. Edison, for example, liked to work long hours and expected much of his employees.

There are people who consider him little more than a successful pitchman, a person who shamelessly took other people's ideas and work and hawked them as his own; both might be true to some extent. On the other hand, his name is on some 300 United States Patents. Your name can't be there if you are just a manager or company owner; the law requires that only those who actually participated in the invention can be on a valid patent. With all the patent lawsuits Apple has been in, if Jobs was not legally on those patents, somebody would have been happy to point that out.

Then there's the "reality distortion field" that supposedly surrounded Jobs. According to his critics, this caused people by the millions to line up and buy products they neither liked nor wanted. Here is a partial list:

• Apple ll: first widely available consumer personal computer, not a kit-built
  hobby machine
  
• Macintosh: intuitive graphical user interface with mouse, menu bar with
  drop-down menus,built-in peer networking capability, with Microsoft
  Word and Excel, What You See Is What You Get document display,
  multiple fonts and typefaces(the interface was modeled after
  one demonstrated by Xerox PARC research labs,where management,
  in its best imitation of the Dilbert comic, had decided not to
  implement.)
  
• iPod: easy to use digital music player eliminates cassettes and CD's
  
• iTunes: easy and inexpensive access to music by track or album
  
• iPhone: creates market for smartphone with intuitive touchscreen OS and
  computer capabilites
  
• App Store: applications online and available anytime
  
• iPad: creates tablet PC market
  

Jobs vision and his goal, from the time the Macintosh was conceived, and which was achieved in the iPad, was to design an "appliance computer that would turn on and just work." Other computer makers of the day were determined to stay with the command line interface. That is, after all, how computers worked; the user was expected to learn a few hundred arcane commands to get the job done, and IT people would teach a user the ins and outs of the application they deemed best for any user. However, when Microsoft copied, or "innovated" the graphical user interface some years later, PC use took off, and there is virtually no computer system which does not use it today.

"Reality distortion field?" Hardly. Jobs had a "clarity field." Jobs saw that there are hobbyists and enthusiasts who want to build their own computer, get "under the hood" into the operating system; these folks generally tend to become the IT people. But he saw something they could not. 98 percent of the users do not want anything to do with the operating system or the hardware; we want that out of the way; it's just a tool. We don't buy a device to work on the device itself, but to use the device.

And Steve Jobs, more than anyone else, saw clearly and made that possible.

If you're interested in more about Steve Jobs, you might want to order his authorized biography coming out at the end of this month.

Occupy Wall Street wants what?

Just what is it that this Occupy Wall Street bunch wants? Some public protest, on some level, seems understandable enough.

Take a look at Obama's accomplishments; after all, since Obama took office, the rate of un- and under-employment just went right on up. Obama proposed a Trillion Dollar Stimulus that just had to be passed to generate shovel-ready jobs and keep unemployment under 8 percent. Obama passed a healthcare bill, his "signature legislation" that is setting America up for a healthcare disaster; premiums headed to record levels, Doctors and medical providers ready to bail out of the system, and, yes, a review panel with the power of life and death purportedly untouchable by legislation or any court. Obama regulators are driving coal power plants out of business with regulations coming into play which will cost millions or billions of dollars. After the Gulf oil rig fire and spill, Obama placed a unilateral and illegal moratorium on drilling; when the Court ordered the Administration to resume issuing drilling permits, the application process suddenly simply stalled out. Obama regulators at the FCC, possibly exceeding agency authority, have passed a rule to institute "net neutrality," which will place the government in control of internet access. The government's debt grave is dug to the tune of $14 Trillion, and the economy is stalled out as companies are sitting on their bank accounts, too scared to hire in the recessionary economy with thousands of pages of expensive, burdensome regulations rolling out to destroy America's ability to do business.

So the protesters are angry. You'd think the foregoing would upset anyone - but what does this bunch want? Some want socialism, some want more Obama, some are just flat-out clueless. It is an article of faith with these folks that socialism works; if it isn't, you're just not doing it hard enough. If a Trillion Dollar stimulus gets results opposite of those promised, spend another half Trillion. Should that fail, too, you just need to spend even more. If over-regulation is driving business out of the country, pass more regulations; somehow that will mitigate the regulatory impact. If people can't afford health insurance, require them to buy it and fine them if they don't have the money. And just on and on - there's no problem benevolent, all-knowing government can't solve with expanded power, right?

They don't really seem to understand what socialism entails, but they have lots of demands. Here is one example of Occupy Wall Street Demands. Please note the disclaimer in the Administrator's note, which correctly notes there is no "official" list of demands. The note goes on, with what passes for typical Liberal logic, to say although Occupy Wall Street posted these demands, it is irresponsible to say Occupy Wall Street posted these demands. At any rate, the demands posted seem to be typical of what the protesters seem to want, and just some of which are as follows:
no more free trade;
raise minimum wage to $20/hour and guarantee a living wage for everyone, working or not;
guaranteed healthcare;
free college education;
stop the use of nuclear plants and fossil fuels (that is, stop all planes, trains, ships and motor vehicles, and stop generating electricity, other than by solar or wind);
spend a Trillion Dollars on infrastructure (with no cars, will we need it?);
spend a Trillion Dollars on ecological restoration, removing all dams and allowing rivers to return to the natural state;
open the borders to anyone all the time with no limits;
all debt of every type whatsoever, between people, banks, nations, internationally, be forgiven.

The person posting these feels this "will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them...."

These demands contain many assumptions that seem to have little basis in rational thought. What legal authority does the United States government have to compel the forgiveness of all debts of all types worldwide? None. How many people will work when both working and not working pays the same? Probably not many. Are there enough Nissan Leaf and Toyota Prius electric cars to replace semi-trucks and freight trains? Where will the electricity come from? The wall socket, just like food comes from the grocer - it's just magically there. The United States can open its borders, but will that cause all other countries to do the same? No - we practically have during the last three Administrations, and that hasn't been good for Mexico, or us. Finally, who is going to pay for all this? The Federal Government borrows 40 cents of every dollar spent now, but the cost of meeting these demands would make the present Federal budget seem paltry. The answer is that no one can pay the price of meeting these irrational demands. One can hardly resist the feeling that these protesters are nothing more than big cry babies who want everything for free from Big Brother.

Free people can protest that freedom is not perfect. They can vote to put on the chains of socialism and become wards of the state. A ward is a person under the custody and guardianship of the state, and wards cannot "vote" to end that guardianship. Once the chains are on, only the benevolent state can decide to remove them, and they don't. Ask those who have enjoyed the benevolent leadership of Saddam Hussein, Assad, Mubarak- or Hitler, or Stalin. That is where the Liberal Left wants to blindly go. And it is what America's Conservatives have always stood, and must continue to stand, against.

What's a "Constitutional Right" to a true believer?

The Socialists are on the warpath, as they always seems to be, against the "free exercise of religion." Now, of course, they have the very best of intentions. One of the foundational statements of Socialism is the assertion that there is no God. As Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." If you take the time to read comments on internet news articles, you will regularly see comments referring to the imaginary nature of religion, or suggesting that religion is a human invention, a crutch, for the weak minded.

This is, of course, nonsense, as agnosticism and atheism are religious philosophies themselves, and recognized as such in various places, including the Humanist Manifesto and the United States Supreme Court. The agnostic or atheist who refuses to seriously acknowledge an obligation to open-mindedly investigate the various religions (including their own) to determine which is true, is more guilty of weak-minded credulity than those they sneer down at ever could be. Those who are sold out to Socialism, despite all the evidence which has accrued over the past century of the misery, the suffering and millions of deaths due to Socialism, are possibly among the most gullible of people.

Nonetheless, Socialists are true believers. Somebody, they ardently believe, will eventually do Socialism correctly, and in each generation, some group believes maybe they are the ones who will do it! In the meantime, there is all this culture of the past that has to be torn down and destroyed - so, since the 1960's, the true believers of Socialism, commonly called the "Progressive Left" have been hard at work to shear America from its foundations.

One of those foundations was the religious beliefs of its Founding Fathers. Even though the Socialists have made progress in neutering religion in America, the religion on which America was founded has proved to be remarkably durable against the onslaught of the Socialists. There are numerous examples of these attacks, some subtle, some not.

In a public school, a student is given a suspension for saying "God bless you" in response to a fellow student's sneeze. Perhaps that student is being deliberately loud and disruptive, but one suspects, given the reports of drug use and violence in today's public schools it hardly seems "Bless you" is the most pressing disciplinary problem.

Or the Fort Worth, Texas, public school that gave a one day in-school suspension, and two days full suspension, to a student who remarked to a friend that because he was a Christian, he believed homosexuality was wrong. This was not a comment made to a group, or in a disruptive manner, but was merely overheard by the teacher. Only after a public outcry did the school district relent and remove the punishment.

Then there's Vanderbilt University. About a year ago, a Christian fraternity refused membership to an openly gay individual, who then complained of discrimination. As a result, Vanderbilt has reviewed about 300 student groups, and placed about a dozen, including five Christian groups, on provisional status. The reason? The groups' charters require the leaders to profess or exemplify the beliefs of the group - the leaders of Christian groups have to lead Bible Studies and prayer, and Vanderbilt officials want to put a stop to that discriminatory practice. Political correctness is required.

Now the Department of Justice, under Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder, is pushing to apply Federal Anti-Discrimination laws to religious organizations. Traditionally, the government is not allowed to interfere with employment in religious institutions to prevent the government from trampling the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In this case, a former teacher at a parochial school sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the District Court refused to apply that law to the church operating the school. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that preventing discrimination outweighs the Constitution, so the case is going to the Supreme Court. The case does generate sympathy, so it's exactly the kind of case on which really bad court decisions are based. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will decide in favor of the Constitution, but with Judges, you never know. Once the Federal government gets the right to regulate who gets hired in church, political correctness rather than the Bible will be the highest commandment. Trampling the First Amendment is exactly what the Progressive Left wants to do. After all, what's a "Constitutional Right" to a true believer?

A Christian Pastor, Iran, and Taqiyya

A Christian Pastor in Iran, Yousef Nadarkhani, has been condemned to execution. Iran, more properly the Islamic Republic of Iran, operates in accord with Islamic law. In accord with Articles 168 and 170 of their Constitution, the Courts are bound to apply Islamic law in "political offenses" and "obliged to refrain from executing statutes and regulations... that are in conflict with the laws or norms of Islam...."

Pastor Nadarkhani, who says that he has never accepted Islam although he grew up in Iran, has been adjudged guilty of denying Islam and "convert[ing] to Christianity, that he "encouraged other Muslims to convert to Christianity," and that he advertised and pastored a church wherein he "repeatedly professed his Christian faith and denied the prophet Mohammad and the 12th Imam and denied the entire Koran and truth of the Koran." These quotations are drawn directly from the ruling of the Iranian Supreme Court decision of December 5, 2010.

The Court went on to remand, or return, the case to the state court for the reason that there had not been evidence given sufficient to prove that from puberty (15 years) to 19 years of age the Pastor had not professed Islam. The Court went on to say, "[Nadarkhani] must repent his Christian faith if this is the case. No research has been done to prove this, if it can be proven that he was a practicing Muslim as an adult and has not repented, the execution must be carried out."

Of course, human rights groups have been up in arms about oppression in Iran generally, and this case has drawn international attention.

So, as of October 1st, the Iranian State news agency has begun reporting that the entire case is actually really and truly about "rape" and "extortion" allegedly committed by Pastor Nadarkhani. Of course, there has not been a word, hint or whisper of these "crimes" in any prior proceedings.

It appears that the Iranian regime is adopting a principle employed by Hitler's Nazis: a simple lie told loudly and often will be in time accepted as true by the masses.

It also appears that an Islamic doctrine is being put into play: Taqiyya. Unless you are familiar with Islam, you probably have no idea what that word means. Simply put, it means that the Muslim is not bound to tell the truth to non-Muslims, nor can a Muslim be bound by an oath given to a non-Muslim.

The Islamic doctrine of Taqiyya is particularly relevant where the advancement of Islam is concerned. That is, if the aims of Islam are being advanced, the Muslim may be even obligated to lie. You won't hear the term Taqiyya in the media, because (1) they assume religious people of all stripes are bound by some code to be honest (since they feel all religions are the same,) and, (2) like the American government, they just don't want to know. But you need to know, because it may help you - for example, in discerning Iran's motives.

In the case of Pastor Nadarkhani, the Islamic Republic has adjudged him an unrepentant Christian who must be killed to satisfy Islamic law. However, to present a more palatable image of Islam to the unbelieving world, they have decided to loudly claim that the Pastor actually committed secular "crimes." So truth becomes irrelevant.

Taqiyya. You don't have to know how to pronounce it, but when it comes to interpreting and understanding what Muslims are telling you, you had better understand what it means.