A POINTED, PASSIONATE PLEA TO THE PRESIDENT
It is such a powerful, prophetic word.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
THAT SINKING FEELING
I don't always agree with everything Pat Buchanan says, but most of his views are on target. He tends to be too isolationist in foreign policy for example, and too anti-immigration (even of the legal aspect). But, here is something to consider:
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=104226
Friday, July 17, 2009
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Socialist America sinking
Pat Buchanan: Even the CFR is seeing seriousness of nation's decline
Posted: July 16, 20098:41 pm Eastern
By Patrick J. Buchanan
After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published "The People's Pottage." A year later, in 1954, he died. "The People's Pottage" opens thus:
"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."
Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.
Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When "Silent Cal" Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.
And today? Obama's first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.
The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.
Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes and "sin taxes" on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.
Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi's House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.
Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.
The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having "erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?
While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.
Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.
Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.
Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.
As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.
All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – "for ourselves and our posterity."
China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that's swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.
"The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event," writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR's Foreign Affairs magazine. "Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious."
Even the establishment is starting to get the message.
I don't always agree with everything Pat Buchanan says, but most of his views are on target. He tends to be too isolationist in foreign policy for example, and too anti-immigration (even of the legal aspect). But, here is something to consider:
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=104226
Friday, July 17, 2009
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Socialist America sinking
Pat Buchanan: Even the CFR is seeing seriousness of nation's decline
Posted: July 16, 20098:41 pm Eastern
By Patrick J. Buchanan
After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published "The People's Pottage." A year later, in 1954, he died. "The People's Pottage" opens thus:
"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."
Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.
Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When "Silent Cal" Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.
And today? Obama's first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.
The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.
Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes and "sin taxes" on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.
Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi's House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.
Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.
The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having "erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?
While the hardest-working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.
Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.
Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.
Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.
As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans.
All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America – as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution – "for ourselves and our posterity."
China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that's swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.
"The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event," writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR's Foreign Affairs magazine. "Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious."
Even the establishment is starting to get the message.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Let's Get Rid of Christianity!
Here is an article posted on Kairos Journal. In the times we live, with Christianity increasingly under assault, it is worthy of our consideration. Read on:
A Culture without Christianity? Imagine.
In 1971, John Lennon wrote a hymn for the secularist faith. The song, “Imagine,” fantasized about the state of world affairs if everyone were stripped of all beliefs and prejudices—with the notable exception, of course, of the former Beatle’s favorites. “Imagine there’s no heaven,” sang Lennon,
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today . . .
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace . . .
Now while there is certainly nothing wrong with peace, love, and understanding, the evidence suggests that Lennon’s dream world would in fact turn out to be a nightmare. That’s the conclusion of recent historical and sociological studies from two of America’s leading scholars: Rodney Stark from the University of Washington1 and Samuel P. Huntington from Harvard. Without any collusion, they have both found that the animating features that have made the West great—modern science, medicine, democracy and its attending freedoms—were the products of irreducibly Christian thinking derived from central biblical traditions.
In his 2004 book, Who Are We?, Huntington, arguably the most respected political scientist of our time, contends that the United States in particular faces a national identity crisis. What was the original identity? Beginning with G. K Chesterton’s analysis of America as “a nation with the soul of a church,” Huntington lists the following traits as explanatory of America’s success and global appeal:
the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law; the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a “city on a hill.” Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to America because of this culture and the economic opportunities it helped to make possible.2
In sum, the Harvard professor avers, it is the Anglo-Protestant culture that arose from scriptural foundations that made the United States great. Attempts to undermine this tradition, whether one ethnically arose from this context or not, he argues, are a misguided and dangerous social experiment which could unhinge the entire project.
In a similar manner, sociologist Rodney Stark tackles the secularist’s mantra that serious Christianity inhibits progress. This, Stark argues, is pure myth. To the contrary, for example, he demonstrates with lucid historical detail that “science could only arise in a culture dominated by belief in a conscious, rational, all-powerful Creator.”3 Further, against the charge that orthodox Christianity is inherently repressive, he makes the case that while believers have sometimes behaved horribly toward others (i.e., witch hunts and inquisitions), only people who believed “that slavery was an abomination in the eyes of God” were poised to defy the evil. “It was that conclusion,” writes Stark, “and only that conclusion, that enabled the West to abolish slavery.”4 The fear of God, in other words, means freedom for men.
Imagine a world without the Bible, without Christians, and without God? That is truly a frightening thought. It would mean more slavery, far fewer freedoms, and unchecked disease. Without the moral restraints inspired by God’s people, the world would no doubt be an unthinkably worse place in which to live. Even a self-professed relativist can appreciate that. All those who love liberty, or so it would seem, have a vested interest in the continued influence and vitality of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Footnotes:
1
Stark began teaching at Baylor University in 2004.
2
Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), xvi.
3
Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 197.
4
Ibid., 3.
Here is an article posted on Kairos Journal. In the times we live, with Christianity increasingly under assault, it is worthy of our consideration. Read on:
A Culture without Christianity? Imagine.
In 1971, John Lennon wrote a hymn for the secularist faith. The song, “Imagine,” fantasized about the state of world affairs if everyone were stripped of all beliefs and prejudices—with the notable exception, of course, of the former Beatle’s favorites. “Imagine there’s no heaven,” sang Lennon,
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today . . .
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace . . .
Now while there is certainly nothing wrong with peace, love, and understanding, the evidence suggests that Lennon’s dream world would in fact turn out to be a nightmare. That’s the conclusion of recent historical and sociological studies from two of America’s leading scholars: Rodney Stark from the University of Washington1 and Samuel P. Huntington from Harvard. Without any collusion, they have both found that the animating features that have made the West great—modern science, medicine, democracy and its attending freedoms—were the products of irreducibly Christian thinking derived from central biblical traditions.
In his 2004 book, Who Are We?, Huntington, arguably the most respected political scientist of our time, contends that the United States in particular faces a national identity crisis. What was the original identity? Beginning with G. K Chesterton’s analysis of America as “a nation with the soul of a church,” Huntington lists the following traits as explanatory of America’s success and global appeal:
the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law; the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a “city on a hill.” Historically, millions of immigrants were attracted to America because of this culture and the economic opportunities it helped to make possible.2
In sum, the Harvard professor avers, it is the Anglo-Protestant culture that arose from scriptural foundations that made the United States great. Attempts to undermine this tradition, whether one ethnically arose from this context or not, he argues, are a misguided and dangerous social experiment which could unhinge the entire project.
In a similar manner, sociologist Rodney Stark tackles the secularist’s mantra that serious Christianity inhibits progress. This, Stark argues, is pure myth. To the contrary, for example, he demonstrates with lucid historical detail that “science could only arise in a culture dominated by belief in a conscious, rational, all-powerful Creator.”3 Further, against the charge that orthodox Christianity is inherently repressive, he makes the case that while believers have sometimes behaved horribly toward others (i.e., witch hunts and inquisitions), only people who believed “that slavery was an abomination in the eyes of God” were poised to defy the evil. “It was that conclusion,” writes Stark, “and only that conclusion, that enabled the West to abolish slavery.”4 The fear of God, in other words, means freedom for men.
Imagine a world without the Bible, without Christians, and without God? That is truly a frightening thought. It would mean more slavery, far fewer freedoms, and unchecked disease. Without the moral restraints inspired by God’s people, the world would no doubt be an unthinkably worse place in which to live. Even a self-professed relativist can appreciate that. All those who love liberty, or so it would seem, have a vested interest in the continued influence and vitality of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Footnotes:
1
Stark began teaching at Baylor University in 2004.
2
Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), xvi.
3
Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 197.
4
Ibid., 3.
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