 |
"All truth goes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Then it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
— Schopenhauer
|
God, our Father, Walk through my house, and take away all my worries and illnesses, and please watch over and heal my family. In Jesus' name. Amen
|
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
— Ronald Reagan |
shoot fast.
shoot straight. shoot safe.
practice. carry.
glock rocks
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged |
The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.
— H.L. Mencken
|
 |
Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers so we can identify their corporate sponsors.
|
|
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
— Noah Webster, 1787. |
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent they conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
— Thomas Jefferson
|
Hope and Change
"He that lives upon Hope will die fasting."
— Benjamin Franklin
"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."
— John Adams
|
Socialist Republic
Barack Obama and George W. Bush seem to have come away from their study of the Great Depression with similar conclusions: To wit: After the Crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve did not move fast enough to save the banks and inject cash into the economy. Second, the New Deal, far from being wastrel deficit spending, was not bold enough. So it was that America wallowed in depression for a decade until the unbridled spending and mammoth deficits of World War II pulled us out. Bush and Obama seem determined not to make the same mistake. We are all Keynesians now. Thus, we have the $700 billion Bush bank bailout, the $700 billion "stimulus package" Obama wants by inauguration to "jolt this economy back into shape" and the $800 billion fund Hank Paulson created to get consumers borrowing and buying again. These come on top of Bush $455 billion deficit, the $29 billion bailout of Bear Stearns, the $105 billion in pork to grease the $700 billion bailout, the $100 billion to $200 billion to keep Fannie and Freddie afloat, the $140-billion-and-counting for AIG, the $25 billion for the greening of GM, Ford and Chrysler, the $25 billion more to save the Big Three and the $20 billion for CitiGroup. Now much of this overlaps, and some will be retrieved. But we are still staring at a deficit that could approach $2 trillion. How would this stack up historically? A deficit of $1.4 trillion would be 10 percent of gross domestic product, dwarfing the postwar record 6 percent run by Ronald Reagan in the Jimmy Carter recession. Bewailing the "Reagan deficits" has been a staple of Democratic oratory. This will stop. But the politics of this is not the point, the policy is. Consider what we are about to do. Bush in 2008 spent 21 percent of GDP. States, counties and cities spent another 12 percent. Thus, one third of GDP is spent by government at all levels. Obama and Co. propose to raise that by another 10 percent of GDP. We may soon be north of 40 percent of gross domestic product controlled and spent by government. That is Eurosocialism. And where, exactly, are we going to get the money? Americans save nothing. We spend more than we earn. Thus the levels of consumer debt, credit card debt, auto debt and mortgage debt. U.S. foreign-exchange reserves amount to a piddling $73 billion. The only nation with the kind of cash on hand we need now -- if we don't print the money and invite another gigantic bubble -- is China, with its $2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. Will Beijing lend back the dollars it has piled up by selling to us? China certainly has an incentive to keep Americans spending. For our purchases of Chinese-made goods have often been responsible for 100 percent of China's growth. China does not want to kill the American goose that lays those golden eggs -- until the goose can't lay any more eggs. Then they won't need the goose. But should China decide to lend us the money, what will Beijing demand in interest rates and assurances that we will not default. After all, the U.S. debt is 70 percent of GDP, our savings rate is near zero, and our merchandise trade deficit is still running at 5 percent to 6 percent of GDP. Unlike the 1950s, we are today dependent on foreigners for two-thirds of our oil and for much of our manufactured goods -- toys, TVs, radios, cameras, cars, shoes, clothes, bikes, motorcycles -- and for the $700 billion to $800 billion we borrow each year to pay for these imports. With U.S. homeowners, consumers, companies and banks now going bust, why must the nation borrow trillions more to bail them out? So we can maintain our status and standard of living as the last superpower. Bush and Obama are competing to shovel out trillions of dollars, so we can return to the good times of yesterday. But wasn't yesterday the root cause of today? Didn't saving nothing and spending more than we earn, purchasing what we cannot afford in cars, consumer goods and houses, buying far more from abroad than we sell abroad -- didn't that cause this crisis and crash? A family man in America's condition, awash in debt, spending more than he makes, would cut back consumption, find a second job and get out of debt. Or declare bankruptcy, accept the shame and humiliation, change his wastrel ways and start anew. Is it different for a nation? Yet we seem to believe we can borrow and spend our way out of a swamp of unpayable debt into which borrowing and spending have plunged us. We are headed either for default on our debts and bankruptcy as a nation, or something less honorable: a quiet cheapening of the debts we have incurred by inflating and destroying the dollar, robbing our creditors of what we owe them and robbing our own people of the value of what they have earned. And so it has come to this. What would the Founding Fathers think of us now?
— Patrick Buchanan, 11/27/2008 |
|
|
Top psychiatrist concludes liberals clinically nuts
Eminent psychiatrist makes case ideology is mental disorder
February 15, 2008
WASHINGTON Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed,veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.
Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded, says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.
While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to the vast right-wing conspiracy-
For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.
Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by the two major candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination can only be understood as a psychological disorder.
Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:
- creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
- satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
- augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
- rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
|
The liberal is continually angry, as only a self-important man can be, with his civilization, his culture, his country and his folks back home. His is an infantile world view. At the core of a liberal is the spoiled child -- miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.
— P. J. O'Rourke
|
The left hates heroes. A hero demonstrates the importance of a single person making big things happen. A hero is an individual -- as opposed to a group, or a tribe, or a "people." A hero defies victimhood, undermining the left's entire world view. There are big and great things that are publicly glorified as heroism. We can all be awed by mighty acts of courage and will that can move great forces in the world. Such people and such feats are important to history, and inspire us to live according to the best within us. But in everybody's life there are countless choices, conflicts, and opportunities that require courage, integrity, a willingness to face hard truths, make difficult decisions that might have big consequences, and take action that you would rather not have to take. Ronald Reagan saw the heroic in ordinary Americans. That is one of the things that I loved about him as a president, for everywhere he looked in America, he saw ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
— Dr. Joel Wade
|
If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under.
— Ronald Reagan
|
The problems facing America—unsustainable entitlements, broken borders, nuclearizing enemies—require tough solutions, not gaseous Sesame Street platitudes.
— Mark Steyn
|
“Years and years of history books have taught us that America was shaped by the great deeds of great men and women. It was not. America was shaped by the great deeds of ordinary men and women. America always has been better than its government, that its people have always been more decent than their presidents, and that the strength and greatness of this nation lies in them, the men and women who are not great and who never will be.”
— Roger Simon
|
It helps to remember that the Clinton-Bush coziness goes back to the days of Iran-Contra, when Papa Bush was supervising covert arms shipments to Latin America out of Arkansas (with drugs making the return trip) and Governor Clinton was busy looking the other way. Further, as was clear during abortive Republican investigations into various Clinton scandals, in the culture of impunity of Washington, politics stops at corruption's edge. Almost all major corruption is either bipartisan or common enough that one side can effectively blackmail the other.
|
REAL scientists will solve any pollution problems we have as well as our dependence on foreign oil. The global warming nazis are the laziest and least competent scientists one can find and they do nothing to promote science beyond obtaining government funding. If the scientists who waste their time writing apocalyptic papers about climate change knew anything about science, they would be inventing or improving something which would further their supposed goals instead of just whining and demanding more taxpayer funding.
7 posted on 12/05/2007 3:25:57 PM MST by bpjam
|
Raising taxes on capital formation reduces the rate of capital formation. Raising taxes on income reduces incentives to work. Unfortunately, because so many Americans buy into the politics of envy, politicians have a leg up in enacting measures that cripple economic growth.
— Walter Williams
|
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
— H.L. Mencken
|
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
— Groucho Marx
|
My feeling is we’ve bowed too far to the idiots. This is true in politics, journalism, and just about everything else.
— Peggy Noonan
|
Facts do not cease to exist because they're ignored.
— Aldous Huxley
Is it the nothing-can-be-done crowd’s assumption that the fellows who run armies of the ‘undocumented’ from Mexico into America are just kindhearted human smugglers who’d have nothing to do with jihad even if the price was right?
— Mark Steyn
|
Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed pharmacist'
Katrina Nation
When Woodrow Wilson went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war in 1917, the U.S. Army was ranked 17th in the world, behind Portugal. On Armistice Day, 19 months later, there were 2 million doughboys in France, where they had helped to break the back of Gen. Ludendorff's theretofore invincible army in its final offensive, and 2 million more in the United States ready to march on Berlin. No other nation could have done that. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR demanded that a disarmed America "build 50,000 planes" -- a seemingly impossible number, but one America met and exceeded. Starting from scratch in 1941, the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos designed, built, tested and detonated three atomic bombs by August 1945 to end the war. After Sputnik humiliated America, Wernher Von Braun and the boys at Redstone Arsenal had a satellite up in three months. In 1961, JFK declared we were going to the moon and would be there before the decade was out. Cynics scoffed. This writer was at Canaveral to watch Apollo 11 lift off in the summer of 1969. Whatever became of that can-do nation? In August 2005, Katrina swept through New Orleans and left 30,000 people stranded at the Superdome and Convention Center. Though the floodwater was shallow and stagnant and New Orleans is a port city with boats all over the place, it took six days and the 82nd Airborne to rescue the stranded. Compare our performance in Katrina with that of the Brits in 1941, who sent hundreds of boats across the Channel to pull 350,000 British and French troops off the continent in one week in the Miracle of Dunkirk. The Brits weren't going to let Goering's fighters deter them from going across and bringing their boys home. What occasions these reflections is this morning's lead story in The Washington Post: "'Virtual Fence' Along Border to Be Delayed: U.S. Retooling High-Tech Barrier After 28-Mile Project Fails." The opening paragraphs: "The Bush administration has scaled back plans to quickly build a 'virtual fence' along the U.S.-Mexico border, delaying completion of the first phase of the project by at least three years and shifting away from a network of tower-mounted sensors and surveillance gear. ... "Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans. ..." Thus, building the first 100 miles of "virtual fence" will take Bush longer than it took FDR to win World War II. The admission of failure comes two years after Bush announced plans for "the most technologically advanced border initiative in American history." "The virtual fence," writes the Post, "was to complement a physical fence that the administration now says will include 370 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers to be completed by the end of this year. The GAO says this portion of the project may also be delayed and that its total cost cannot be determined. The president's 2009 budget does not propose funds to add fencing beyond the 700 or so miles meant to be completed by this year." In short, these characters cannot build a virtual fence and won't complete a physical fence. If the nation is fed up with Republicans, who can blame them? Securing a border is not that difficult. In 1954, President Eisenhower sent an Army general to Texas to do it. He began repatriating thousands of Mexicans and had the situation in hand within a year. Along the San Diego corridor, a crude fence of corrugated steel matting from U.S. airfields in Vietnam has stopped illegal trucks from crossing, cut back 90 percent on the illegal alien traffic, and virtually eliminated murders and assaults in the border area. Measures taken lately at the state and federal level, though grudgingly by the administration, have begun to bear fruit. After Arizonans voted to cut off all social benefits to residents who could not prove they were in the country legally came reports of people pulling their kids out of public schools and leaving the state. From the border come reports that added Border Patrol agents have reduced the number of illegal aliens apprehended, suggesting word has gone out south of the border that it is no longer so easy to walk in. And deportations of criminal aliens, long demanded, is actually going up. Let it be said: Our border can be secured; the illegal aliens can be sent home; the magnets that draw them here can be turned off. This crisis can be resolved if the courage and will are there. Unfortunately, we have a government that does not seem to care and probable nominees neither of whom is committed in his heart to doing it. Given the manifest will of the people that this invasion from the south be halted and rolled back, the 2008 election is shaping up as yet further confirmation that American democracy is a fraud.
— Patrick Buchanan
|
We should rebuild the grassroots conservative movement. From the Reagan Revolution of 1980 through the Contract with America in 1994, it was this movement from outside Washington that carried us to the first center-right majority governing coalition in more than 60 years. The problem has not been with conservatism or with our voters. The problem has been with Republican leaders who forgot who elected them and what values their supporters expected to see implemented in Washington.
— Newt Gingrich, 11-13-2006
|
"Our enemies may be irrational, even outright insane, driven by nationalism, religion, ethnicity or ideology. They do not fear the United States for its diplomatic skills or the number of automobiles and software programs it produces. They respect only the firepower of our tanks, planes and helicopter gunships."
— Ronald Reagan
|
The opposition in Congress to making English the official language of the United States is a near perfect example of the failure of the current leadership in Washington to adopt a deeply held value of the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans want the federal government to join with 30 states in making English the official language of the United States, and yet our elites consider the adoption of this value as a distraction or worse. Consider last night's Democratic presidential debate. When asked for a show of hands, former Alaskan Sen. Mike Gravel was the only candidate to express support for English. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said that the question "is designed precisely to divide us" and that "when we get distracted by those kinds of questions, I think we do a disservice to the American people." If 85% of Americans support English as the official language of government, the only division is between Sen. Obama and the American people. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton responded that she supported English as the "national" language but not the "official" language of the United States, since making English the official language would prevent the printing of foreign language ballots for U.S. elections. It seems that only liberals can possibly see 85% support for a deeply held American value as divisive and only liberals think it is acceptable to express support for English as long as it does not actually have any meaning, such as ending the printing of foreign language ballots for U.S. elections
— Newt Gingrich, 6-4-07
|
"It is truly fitting that America observe April 9 in recognition of our former prisoners of war; that date is the 46th anniversary of the day in 1942 when U.S. forces holding out on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines were captured. Later, as prisoners of war, these gallant Americans were subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March and to other inhumane treatment that killed thousands of them before they could be liberated. In every conflict, brutality has invariably been meted out to American prisoners of war; on April 9 and every day, we must remember with solemn pride and gratitude that valor and tenacity have ever been our prisoners' response... To our former prisoners of war who endured so much, we say that with your example and with God's help we will seek to meet the standards of devotion you have set; we will never forget your service or your sacrifice." — Ronald Reagan |
Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families—especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who have died in defense of American liberty.
The Patriot Post - It's right, and it's free.
|
Radical Islam does not have its Sartre and its Pound. It is the conceit of intellectuals to think that this counts for more than a Richard Reid, armed this time not with a shoe-bomb but a nuclear suitcase or a consignment of anthrax. Disdaining the appeal of radical Islam is the conceit also of secularists. Radical Islam is not just as fanatical and unappeasable in its anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism and anti-modernism as anything we have ever known. It has the distinct advantage of being grounded in a venerable religion of over one billion adherents that not only provides a ready supply of recruits-trained and readied in mosques and madrassas far more effective, autonomous and ubiquitous than any Hitler Youth or Konsomol camp-but is able to draw on a long and deep tradition of zeal, messianic expectation and a cult of martyrdom. Hitler and Stalin had to invent these out of whole cloth. Mussolini's version was a parody. Islamic radicalism flies under a flag with far more historical depth and enduring appeal than the ersatz religions of the swastika and hammer-and-sickle that proved so historically thin and unsubstantial... Radical Islam's obvious intent is to decapitate the American polity, cripple its economy and create general devastation. We have seen what a mere 19 Islamists can do in the absence of WMD. We have seen what but two envelopes of mail-delivered anthrax can do to the world's most powerful capital. Imagine what a dozen innocuous vans in a dozen American cities dispersing aerosolized anthrax could do. Imagine what just a handful of the world's loose nukes, detonated simultaneously in New York, Washington, Chicago and just a few other cities, could do to the United States. America would still exist on the map, but what kind of country -- and what kind of polity -- would be left? If that is not an existential threat, nothing is.
— Charles Krauthammer
|
Cynthia McKinney is one of the most intelligent democrats in the country.
— Ann Coulter
|
"Christ's followers have continued to outrage people through two millennia; they are still outraging people today -- and paying the same terrible price. In China, authorities have tortured Christians to death by pouring molten metal over their heads. In North Korea, Christians are sent to re-education camps, tortured, and killed. In Saudi Arabia, the death penalty threatens anyone converting from Islam to Christianity. Tyrants subject Christians to this ferocious treatment out of fear: The Christian's obedience to a higher authority threatens their own power. China's leaders, for example, are acutely aware of the role Christianity played in the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe -- and are determined not to let the same thing happen to them. Since the first century, the story of the carpenter and the Cross has been attacked, ridiculed, driven underground. In the former Soviet Union, Communist leaders spent 70 years trying to wipe out belief. In the West, the story earned the contempt of Enlightenment thinkers and the followers of Darwin and Freud. Theologians have tried to de-mythologize the Bible, academics have torn it to shreds, and teachers have told generations of children that it's just a collection of myths. The result? Two billion people worldwide put their faith in Him. The reason is simple: The story is true. God acted in time and space, providing hope for every human being."
— Chuck Colson |
For all that we ought to have thought
and have not thought,
All we ought to have said
and not said,
All we ought to have done
and not done,
I pray thee God for forgiveness.
|
Ave María grátia pléna Dóminustécum, benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Jésus. Sáncta María, Máter Déi, óra pro nóbis peccatóribus, nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae. Amen
|
And my God shall meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever.
Phil 4:19,20
|
 |
I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food. But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue. Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table...everywhere. Then some of the birds turned mean: They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket. And others birds were boisterous and loud: They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food. After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore. I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio. Soon, the back yard was like it used to be...quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal.
Now lets see...our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to be a automatic citizen. Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands. Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families: you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor: your child's 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English: Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to press "one" to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than "Old Glory" are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.
Maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder?
|
Word of the Day: Quisling (Noun)
Pronunciation: ['kwiz-ling]
Definition: A traitor who turns against his or her own country to serve an invader.
Usage: This is a relatively new word so far without lexical offspring. The adjective would be "quislingly" which sounds odd. Better use the compound "quisling-like." It sounds queer as a verb, too, though its meaning lends itself readily to verbalization in the sense of "betray to an invader."
Suggested Usage: For those of us who remember World War II, today's word is a powerful condemnation in its literal sense, "The French partisans were always at risk of betrayal by quislings in their area."
Etymology: A commonization of the last name of Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), head of Norway's government during the Nazi occupation of World War II. Of all the heads of European states who chose to subserve the Nazi regime in World War II, Quisling was the misfortunate one commemorated for his weakness throughout the European languages.
—Dr. Language, yourDictionary.com
|
"Some neoconservatives these days argue big government is OK so long as it is conservative big government representing values in which they believe. Big government is not OK. Every inch the government grows, the same inch is taken from the liberties of the people, starting with the basic liberty of spending your own money the way you choose rather than the way the government chooses to spend it for you. Massive programs inevitably have unintended consequences; government, though necessary for many purposes, is no more a precision instrument for constructive social change than a sledgehammer is for brain surgery."
— Jay Ambrose
|
"Do not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it."
— Edward R. Murrow
"Already the hour is late. Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an ever-increasing degree interferes with the people's right to know. ... We approach the point of no return when government becomes so huge and entrenched that we fear the consequences of upheaval and just go along with it."
— Ronald Reagan
|
"All truth goes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Then it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
— Schopenhauer
"Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."
— Tench Coxe, 1788 |
An Armed Citizen, Is A Safe Citizen! The Second Amendment...
America's Only Homeland Security! Be Ever Vigilant!
71 posted on 10/03/2006 4:23:27 PM MDT by blackie (Be Well~Be Armed~Be Safe~Molon Labe!)
|
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. When you give up that force, you are ruined."
— Patrick Henry
|
"If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have weapons at all."
— Rep. Henry Waxman
|
Bang List Articles
Gun Control isn't about GUNS
It's about CONTROL
For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column for the eonline website called "Monday Night At Morton's". Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column to our military is worth a few minutes of your time because it praises the most unselfish among us; our military personnel. By Ben Stein: How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World? As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end. It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again . Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to. How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world. A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad. The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists. We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die. I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject. There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery. The teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children. The kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards. Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero. We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin--or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them. But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms. This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.
— Ben Stein
|
I actually feel very hopeful, even in the midst of this incredible onslaught of homosexual radicalism, actually hedonistic-secular humanist-atheist terrorism.
Why? Because it is said, with good reason, that it is darkest before the dawn.
God exists, this is truth. His nature is all-perfect, all-merciful, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Nothing is out of His grasp, nothing is beyond His knowledge or His control. Those who rebel against Him suffer the results, and we can see that not only today in Massachusetts and elsewhere, but even within the confines of our own hearts.
In His perfect wisdom and mercy He gives us free will - because without the choice of rejecting Him, there can be no loving surrender. The more we choose Him, and pray for His mercy in helplessness, the more we will see His hand in our lives daily. The more we will experience His direction, guidance, and presence. One sincere soul praying incessantly - which can be done within, no matter what we are doing - can change the world.
More and more people are waking up, I am convinced. The evil that is being perpetrated in the name of "Gay Rights", "reproductive rights", "right to die", as well as jihadi terrorists, is so terrible, that many people who have up until now remained more or less asleep, can sleep no longer.
I think there is great hope in the midst of these sorrowful and dangerous times. Each one of us has a great opportunity to turn to God and by doing so become secure and happy ourselves, and do great good for others.
With sincere regards,
little jeremiah
92 posted on 05/18/2004 7:19:05 PM MDT by little jeremiah (Moral decay leads to anarchy which leads to totalitarianism.) |
“I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.”
— Maxine Waters
"Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain."
- Leo Buscaglia
284 posted on 09/28/2003 8:00:24 AM MDT by carlo3b (http://www.CookingWithCarlo.com)
|
Support Free Republic - Become a Monthly Donor
Remember... only you can prevent fundraisers.
|
Thanks to Jim Robinson for creating Free Republic and to his sons John and Chris for their efforts to improve it keep it running smoothly and support their father
Thank you for coming to Free Republic May your life and our nation be richly blessed for your having done so
--DoughtyOne
|
create your own visited states map blue: #CCFFFF
green: #CCFFCC
red: #FFCCFF
orange: #FFCCCC
purple: #CCCCFF
Free Hit Counter
|
|
|
