My favorite version of Auld Lang Syne from the O’Reilly Consort in my favorite Christmas album – The Only Celtic Holiday Album You Will Ever Need.
Happy New Year’s everyone – Geo, Carlos, MM and all you lurkers. Let’s hope and pray it’s a better one than the last two or three or seven.
Guest Post written by George Radanovich, Member of Congress 1995-2011:
In a recent column, opinion writer Eugene Robinson argued that a partisan “spirit of revenge” has created dysfunction and threatens the free nation of the United States. “Republicans have decided not to collaborate with President Obama in fulfilling the most basic obligations of government, preferring to let “disorders and miseries” fester rather than address them.” He goes on to state that, in American history, compromise and a spirit of shared enterprise has always been the norm, with the exception of slavery and the Civil War, and today we face no question of such magnitude.
Certainly we don’t face a bloody, internal conflagration ending in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, but we do face a question of a magnitude that threatens our happiness at home and our stature as the beacon to the freedom seeking world.
Our freedom to pursue happiness through the strong institutions of our culture is threatened by the faux happiness delivered by the hand of government through socialistic programs. These two avenues of pursuit are mutually exclusive.
There are surprisingly few ways to pursue happiness in this world; worshiping God, loving our neighbor as ourselves, building a family and working. Each pursuit must be supported by a strong institution. Allow the institution of one pursuit to falter and a nation’s pursuit of freedom is compromised.
One such faltering institution, a victim in our pursuit of socialism, is the American family. Today, 40% of American children will go to sleep tonight with only one parent in the home. Children from broken families are two to three times more likely to be victims of child and sexual abuses, do drugs, experience educational, health, emotional and behavior problems, become teen parents and engage in criminal behavior. The Fatherless Generation website (fatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com) provides information showing that the news just gets worse.
When these children grow up, the loss of economic potential and increased government social service costs associated with broken lives increases the tax burden to the point that 66% of the goodwill in this country is administered by government, degrading yet another institution vital to the pursuit of happiness, loving our neighbor as our self.
Parental neglect at crucial moments of a child’s life is what hinders the pursuit of happiness in the United States. Alarm at the explosive costs of government due to the disintegration of the family, particularly the costs associated with primary education, law enforcement and incarceration, produces the acrimony and dysfunction we see today in Washington DC. It is often talked about but never recognized as both the common denominator in explosive government costs and the starting point in the reform of our culture.
The West, or western civilization, is often referred to as the free world, a term coined during WWII to draw a line of distinction between fascism and Axis powers, and later in the Cold War to draw a line of distinction between capitalism and communism. The United States is considered to be the leader of nations in the free world and the president of the United States is often referred to as the leader of the Free World.
The Freedom in the World Report, produced by Freedom House, a non-governmental organization, rates the 195 countries of the world as free, partly free and not free. In 2014, the report finds that 88 countries are free, 48 countries are partly free and 59 countries are not free.
Exceptional nations install governments that guarantee the free pursuit of happiness and free cultures build strong institutions to support the very few and simple ways to pursue happiness.
In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explained how Martin Luther King cast the civil rights movement in a “new and different light…” King said the pursuit of civil rights was part of God’s plan; the same destiny that had ended British colonialism in India and slavery in the United States, and that had caused Christ to die on the cross so that he could take away our sins. It was the newest stage in a movement that had started centuries earlier. And as such, this new light required new responses, different strategies and behaviors.” King provided a new approach.
In the 1960’s, civil rights was the new stage of an age old movement and addressing the fatherless child is the newest stage in that movement today. Addressing it will require new, culture driven responses and different strategies and behaviors. This dysfunction in Washington DC continues because our leaders are blind to this reality.
Leaders of the free world, particularly in the United States, should pay attention to the simple truth that strong institutions must exist to support the worship of God, the love of our neighbor, the building of families and work. Knowing this, and responding by finding new responses, strategies and behaviors, is the first step to ending the nauseating partisanship in Washington DC and expanding freedom. This new light holds the key to building the Kingdom of God, a world of free nations.
Former California Congressman George Radanovich served 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives until his 2010 retirement. He recently established The Restore California Foundation He also published “The New World Order is the Old World Order.”
Kansas City based author and journalist Jack Cashill was on the same train of thought this week following a local news story that went nationwide due to the comic irony of the headline: “Nonviolence rally marred by multiple fights.”
But the story in reality is more tragic than comical, as Cashill points out in his latest piece, Barack Obama’s most tragic failure:
According to the Star, the “multiple fights” caused the suspension of an event, called “Your Life Counts,” that was staged “to celebrate survival in a city plagued by crime.”
As to the reasons for that plague, no one is publicly allowed to discuss them. New Jersey News 12 reporter Sean Bergin learned this the hard way two weeks ago.
After Lawrence Campbell executed rookie Jersey City cop Melvin Santiago, Campbell was killed in the ensuing shootout. This inspired Campbell’s friends to build a neighborhood shrine in his honor and inspired Bergin to speak out.
“The underlying cause of all of this, of course: young black men growing up without fathers,” said Bergin. “Unfortunately, no one in the news media has the courage to touch that subject.”
News 12 certainly did not. Its executives immediately suspended Bergin, slashed his pay to $300 a week and limited him to light features, forcing him to quit.
If there was any one person in America who had the potential to address this issue, it was Barack Obama. Many Americans voted for him for no other reason.
Linked by Maggie’s Farm, thanks!
Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) took to the House floor, Thursday for a one minute rapid-fire speech that gave the IRS the tongue-lashing of a lifetime.
He started out by saying that “there’s a hunger in this country for things that binds us together,” for instance; “Americans agree that the IRS should never target citizens. Americans agree that the government should tell us the truth.”
He continued, “the IRS has offered eight different explanations for targeting our fellow citizens.
If we, Madam Speaker, changed our story to the government eight different times, we would be called – inmates. We can’t lie to government, therefore the government shouldn’t lie to us.”
Obama didn’t escape his wrath, either: “No president should ever say there’s not a smidgen of corruption while an investigation is ongoing!” Gowdy exclaimed.
Hat tip: Brian B.
On 11/14/2001 – President Bush stood on the rubble at Ground Zero – bullhorn in hand – and ad-libbed a speech that has gone down in history as one of America’s greatest. It was great because it was sincere. It came from his heart, and the people around him – liberals, conservatives, libertarians, “lofos” – they weren’t thinking about politics at that moment – their emotions were raw and enormity of what had just happened obviously overrode petty politics. Political ideology for a few precious weeks was put on the backburner and the country was united. President Bush did not waste that moment. In fact, he would never throughout his entire presidency ever use political ideology to divide Americans. I don’t think the thought would even have occurred to him.
Contrast that with what we have now.
We have a president who can’t even get in front of the American people when he’s asking for our support without insulting a good half of us. He’s just congenitally unable to say one gracious thing about his political “enemies” ever, due to his Alinsky training to always “target”, “isolate”, ridicule” and “otherize” his opponents. Every speech he gives is an opportunity to community organize – every speech he gives – he must prop himself up while underscoring the inhumanity of “the other side.”
He did it again in the speech he gave last night to argue the case before the nation for a “limited” but “muscular” strike against Syria. I barely listened. The sound of his dumb, disingenuous voice sets my teeth on edge, and I knew he would have nothing groundbreaking to say.
But Ace picked up on something that would have made my blood boil had bothered to listen closely.
Come witness the Master Diplomat use his silvery tongue to insult the very people whose support he’s asking for.
In a speech that had been good, for an Obama speech, avoiding his usual gassy nothingness in favor of tangible nouns and clear verbs of the sort he apparently was taught were poor form in college, Obama chose to drop this little insult:
And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.
Note that Obama’s “friends on the left” believe in freedom and dignity in all people. People on the right don’t, apparently.
What do people on the right believe in? “Military might.” Pure force. Note that he decouples military might from any moral purpose — he doesn’t say “your commitment to keeping the nation safe” or “your commitment to a patriotic defense of America.” No, such moral approval is stripped away so that Obama can speak neutrally of the one thing Obama thinks conservatives care about, naked martial power.
We share this love of naked martial power, shorn of any moral or ethical purpose, with some of his other friends on the right, such as Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler.
His friends on the left, see, support the values which might be attained by exertion of raw military might, such as “freedom and dignity of all people,” but his friends on the right are just about having the biggest bombs and stuff.
Even when he’s supposedly “reaching out to us,” this Master Diplomat and Coolly Brilliant Poet-Warrior steadfastly refuses to pay the right the slightest degree of respect.
And this man represents us in our dealings with foreign actors. Imagine how his similar haughtiness plays overseas. Imagine how it’s already played for five years, and how it will play for another three.
Smart diplomacy, huh?
Hey wingers, get behind this war. It’s got the three things you Bitter Clingers can’t get enough of– Guns, Spooky Religious Nonsense, and Killing Foreign People.
Now, Friends on the Left, you can get behind it for the true moral purposes which flow from reason and higher functions of the brain.
Read the whole thing – Ace was just winding up, there. It gets better and he includes video aids featuring David Bowie and The Planet of the Apes to help illustrate his point.
You know what’s a scary thought? Imagining our current president standing in the rubble at Ground Zero with a bullhorn in hand, there ostensibly to soothe a nation united in its horror of what just happened, but unable to resist the temptation to tweak his political enemies and divide the nation one more time.
Ugh.
I miss W.
SEE ALSO
Andy at AoSHQ picks up on the hypocrisy of Barack “Stop the BAIPA” Obama feigning outrage and horror at the sight of children writhing in pain on a cold hospital floor : The Balls On This F’n Guy
Despite Democrats best efforts, the House passed the bill banning late term abortions after 20 weeks, today.
Life News reported:
The vote for the bill broke down on mostly partisan lines with Republicans supporting the ban on late-term abortions and Democrats opposing it. The House approved the bill on a 228-196 vote with 7 Democrats voting for the bill and 6 Republicans voting against it. (See end for how members voted).
The bill, if it receives a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate, is not expected to pass and pro-abortion President Barack Obama has issued a veto threat. But pro-life groups hope to use the measure as an election tool in 2014 in an attempt to wrest the Senate from abortion advocates.
Leading pro-life organizations issued statements praising the House for the vote.
“I would hope that stopping atrocities against little babies is something we can agree to put an end to,” Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota said during the debate. “We’re talking about babies who, if they were born and simply given a chance, they could survive outside the womb.”
Congresswoman Wagner of Missouri added: “As science and technology continue to advance, we are changing hearts and mind. It is not only the pain of the child we must consider, but also the pain of the mother. Everyone talks about the right to choose, but no one discusses the implications of that choice. I am for life at all stages. I am for the life of the baby, and I am also for the life of the mother. I will continue to work for a day when abortion is not only illegal, but absolutely unthinkable.”
Rep. Chris Smith, the head of the pro-life caucus in the House, spoke eloquently from the House floor.
“The brutality of severing the spines of defenseless babies—euphemistically called “snipping” by Gosnell—has finally peeled away the benign façade of the billion dollar abortion industry” he said.
“Like Gosnell, abortionists all over America decapitate, dismember and chemically poison babies to death each and every day. That’s what they do. Americans are connecting the dots and asking whether what Gosnell did is really any different than what other abortionists do. A D&E abortion—a common method after 14 weeks—is a gruesome, pain-filled act that literally rips and tears to pieces the body parts of a child,” he added. “The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is a modest but necessary attempt to at least protect babies who are 20 weeks old—and pain-capable—from having to suffer and die from abortion.”
On the other side, the increasingly demented Nancy Pelosi put forth the disturbing argument that late term abortions are somehow “sacred ground”, and Jerrold Nadler said it is morally outrageous to ban abortions after 20 weeks.
No, really – he said that:
“It is morally outrageous, frankly,” Nadler said about the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 1797), a bill that would ban abortions 20 weeks post-fertilization, or five months into pregnancy.
Meanwhile in NY, Governor Cuomo is striving to expand access to late term abortions.
After opponents had challenged the measure, an appeals court has ruled that a Texas abortion law passed last year that requires doctors to perform sonograms to pregnant patients, can be enforced.
Americans United For Life President & CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest appeared on Fox News Channel & debated the Texas sonogram law with Nancy Keenan of NARAL.
A key point that seems to be lost in media stories about the ruling is the fact that women can opt out of viewing the sonogram if they so choose.
Watch to the end to the mild mannered Yoest’ slam PP’s blood curdling hypocrisy…”I think it’s fascinating that you would bring up the relationship between the woman and her doctor, *cough*…”
Related:
In case you missed it…
Another huge story from last week with special appeal to religious conservatives: Maggie Gallagher, Townhall: Court Unanimously Slaps Down Obama’s Anti-Religion Doctrine:
Lost in the political shuffle in New Hampshire was an epic U.S. Supreme Court decision this week in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
By an astounding, unanimous 9-0 margin, the usually ideologically divided Supreme Court slapped down President Obama’s radical doctrine that the federal government can tell a church who it must employ as a minister if the church violates anti-discrimination employment provisions.
The Obama administration’s claim that there is no special protection for clergy in our Constitution, the majority ruled, “is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations. We cannot accept the remarkable view that the Religion Clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.”
This was an epic defeat for Obama’s ongoing war on religion as described by Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler:
Socialism needs to undermine the church, allowing the state’s deity (in whatever evil form it takes) exclusive control over the conscience of the people. The socialists know well that the morals and world view taught by the church are in direct conflict with establishing the state as the supreme influence for the populace. In modern times the socialists, keeping with their PC bullshit, wage war against any theology except Islam.
Nice Deb 