Posted on 07/18/2004 10:03:00 AM PDT by saquin
Bump.
excellent stuff here.
God Bless the Aussies.
"It seems not too bold a prediction to say that no sovereign state will ever again choose socialism for its forward pathway."
Has the author talked to the Democrat party about this?
Could Rob Foot be Dr. Robert Foot, the physicist from the University of Melbourne?
What with Bolt yesterday and Foot today it would seem that the strongest support for America is coming from down under; now if we could only convince freeze dried/blow dried to put a little old fashioned Texas Whoop-ass on the Whoopi-Cushion the world would take notice...but Dan Rather wouldn't.
This essay should be mandatory reading in every highschool class in America.
My first encounter, too.
Excellent article, the type of post that just sets this site apart from all others in terms of good quality.
My only one. I think we have a closet philosopher in the physics department. Just like in Atlas Shrugged.
I don't believe any of us could in any way add to what he has written. But I'd like to focus on just one of his small comments and take off on a tangent of my own (it won't be nearly as beautiful or well-researched as his, but allow me some room anyway. I'm a layman … :)
I know you agree with me that 'socialists' have been around since time immemorial, having existed under countless labels as the history of humankind has unfolded. They will never cease to exist, no matter the defeats they suffer. Each defeat is seen only as a setback which occurred as the result of the ignorance and stupidity of mankind. They will always return, after licking their wounds, because they represent a segment of mankind that believes that a superior ruling elite (which appears to genetically pass its arrogance down through the generations) knows best how the world should be run. They do not recognize God. They despise Him. His eternal words stand in their way. They value human life only as a means to an end. They harbor no allegiance to anything except their timeless ideological agenda. And they see truth as nothing more than an obstacle toward the realization of that agenda.
In America 2004, socialism (as evidenced by, and embodied in, its loathing of everything genuinely American, and its revulsion when confronted with truth) is alive and well in leadership at the highest levels -- especially on Capitol Hill and in the Supreme Court.
The attack on America that is occurring today is unprecedented. Under attack are the God whose hand played the most intimate role in her founding and her rise to greatness, the Founders who risked their lives fortunes and sacred honor to leave us an inheritance worthy of all three, and the values that laid the groundwork for a republic that rose out of the ashes of what this author rightly calls the only genuinely successful revolution in the history of mankind.
And the most venomous and hate-filled of these attacks are being orchestrated by people within our own borders – people who sit in seats of national leadership. One of them is seeking the Presidency. One of them is seeking the Vice Presidency. (One of them is seeking re-election to a fifth-term senate seat in my own state of Pennsylvania). And perhaps two hundred or more of them sit in Congress, and on the highest court in the land.
The rabid socialists within our borders, and the terrorists without, share two very deadly traits: (1) they place little or no value on human life, and (2) they define reverence for truth as an obstacle, rather than a virtue.
All one needs to do is take a good hard look at the agenda of the anti-American forces at work in the world today. Where in the focus of that agenda do human life, and human dignity, lie?
We are forever confronted with the human atrocities these critics of America commit. But we choose not to look at them … at least not for very long. They are too offensive. Yet, because the words of the perpetrators so often belie their deeds, it is only in examining, and remembering, their deeds that we can comprehend the truth about who they are. You can't put 2 and 2 together and visualize a 4, if, because it was too hard to look at, you've discarded one of the 2's along the way.
We look away from the videos of innocent American office-workers leaping to their deaths from the fiery inferno that was the World Trade Center. We choose not to witness the charred pieces of American bodies hung from a bridge above the Euphrates. We would rather not see the slow, torturous decapitation, or hear the agonized cries, of Nick Berg, or those unfortunates who followed in his footsteps.
Closer to home, we (apparently 50% of us) applaud the Vietnam vet who seeks to be president. We ignore the fact that he sees nothing wrong with the murderous torture known as partial birth abortion.
The video, 'Silent Scream' which has been on the internet for many years, depicts an early-term (eleven week) abortion via real-time ultrasound. An abortion from the victim's vantage point. If we were willing to witness it, we would see a child (fully formed, absolutely identifiable, who has had brain waves for six weeks, and a functioning heart for eight weeks) screaming as it is torn apart, dismembered, crushed and destroyed by the cold steel instruments of the abortionist.
In partial birth abortions, children six months closer to being naturally born, are tortured in no less brutal a manner. And I would imagine their screams are even more audible.
One of our Presidential candidates, and many of the hundreds of other socialists in our government, see nothing wrong with such human torture. Because, after all, it furthers an all-important political ideological agenda.
And their reasons offered for condoning the murder of the innocent unborn (almost always 'the concern for the health of the mother' … ) are untrue. As usual, life and truth take a back seat to agenda realization. Life and truth are simply roadblocks on the road to something far more inglorious.
How many Americans who will pull the lever next to the Kerry/Edwards ticket in November comprehend their stance on PBA? How many of these voters have seen ‘Silent Scream’? How many of them would see no connection between a stance on partial birth abortion and a cavalier view of the value of human life (and human liberty, and human dignity) in general? Do these same people believe that a John Kerry, or a John Edwards, or any of their socialist clones in Washington, value the life of the average American any more than they do the tiny victims of PBA?
Human life (whether in-utero, or walking down Main Street) … and truth … are of little value to a socialist.
And yet most Americans, who find all of the atrocities mentioned above repulsive, choose to not recognize that they exist, or to exile them from our consciousness as soon as conveniently possible, or to declare them somehow irrelevant to 'the big picture'.
They are 'the big picture'.
Neil Cavuto, who generally has the courage to attempt to force us to see (either literally or figuratively) the ugliness which threatens us all, recently wrote a wonderful piece on just this subject. Here is an excerpt:
Show me the senselessness of their killings. Show me the evil behind their killings.... Show me all of it. And don't sanitize it. Don't blur it, mask it, color it or frame it. Don't gloss over it and try to make us not see it or be appalled by it. You see, I want us appalled. I want us angry. I want us outraged. I want us sickened.... I want all of us who survived hell to see hell, to see the tears and know the loss. I want us to relive those days, every day, and not forget for a moment the evil that perpetuated it, condoned it and sanctioned it. For some, it's heady stuff. But I say, these are heady, sickening days. The war on terror is that kind of war. It is ugly. It is gory. It is stomach-churning. We do ourselves a disservice as victims when we don't show our victims. We do ourselves an injustice when we don't look at the injustice of terrorists. That's why I say, with some caution, to relax our caution. Nothing rouses a nation's anger in a war more than when we see the victims of a war -- our victims, our friends and our countrymen. They did not have to die. But they did. Why should we gloss over the fact that they did? I think it cheapens their sacrifice when we try to sanitize their loss. There's no nice way to say someone was beheaded and butchered. There's only one way to talk about it, and that's to show it. I want us to get angry, outraged, furious and incensed because this is evil in its purest and simplest form. We must see it for what it is, not cover it up for what it is not." … Neil Cavuto
The terrorists in Iraq are surely more ‘bloodthirsty’ than the socialists in the halls of Congress. But those who demean, or refuse to acknowledge the sanctity of, human life and dignity share a 'connection' that makes them allies on at least some level. (Have we given much thought lately to Mary Jo Kopechne? Or Vince Foster? Or Ron Brown? Or the tens of millions of innocent pre-born children who, because of the inconvenience they posed to a living, breathing woman, were not allowed to continue living? … just a handful of 'lives deemed worthless' from an unending list … )
The one area in which their (the socialists' and the terrorists') alliance is always visible is in their need to bring America to her knees. America is what stands in the way of ultimate success to those who view both life and truth as dispensable. Men cannot be allowed to extinguish the lives or liberties of other men when the country in which they live acknowledges a God who granted those gifts, and forbids their destruction. Such a nation’s past, present, and future must be defiled (by lies) and destroyed (by removing her underpinnings).
The defiling continues. And the underpinnings are weakening. And we whose charge it is to prevent both had better develop a stomach for looking into the ugly faces of those who are causing the destruction. There is no courage in turning away.
~ joanie
Beautifully said joanie.
This is the font and source of the Left's rage and hate. The wrong side, the wrong ideas, the wrong attitudes and the wrong people had somehow contrived to win.
Absolutely right. To a very great degree my doctrinaire leftist acquaintances feel a sense of profound betrayal at the failure of what they took to be the morally superior Soviet Union - that must seem almost a quaint usage by now, but I assure younger readers that it was so. To be a leftist was to believe in something greater than oneself, which is the very definition of a religion. Socialism was, truly, "The God That Failed."
I note, as an aside, that the structure of Why Do People Hate America?, the volume by Sardar and Davies cited by the author, mirrors closely the classic arguments for the existence of God - cosmological, ontological, and teleological - this may be a clever summation by Professor Foot, but if it is actually in that book it is extremely revealing.
What we had in the waning days of the Cold War was a belief system that had systematically failed to produce the Promised Land, and all it left to its adherents was a sense of desperate denial - the Soviet Union was a Workers' Paradise because it must be. But the evidence was at last undeniable - throngs leaving that "paradise" could not be ignored - and it resulted in a case of mass cognitive dissonance, whose reverberations echo in the unreasoning, passionate level of hatred directed at the victor. It is literally the stuff of insanity.
Saquin, many thanks for posting this wonderful and thought-provoking article. I have it bookmarked, because it's going to take quite a bit more consideration than the half-hour I've given it.
And pray tell who might that be? :-)
The only change I would make to your excellent post is to substitute "elitists" for "socialists", but that's a technicality.
Human life (whether in-utero, or walking down Main Street) … and truth … are of little value to a socialist.
It's time we understood that.
Bump for later. Thanks for the ping.
China has ditched the socialist model for its economy, and political reform will doubtless follow, in time.
I believe Red China is the evil empire of our time and that they are in fact behind the scenes in much of the external and internal confrontations we face. Not that they are necessarily the puppet master by any means...we have plenty of foreign and home grown enemies who are still bent on socialsim/marxism/totalitarianism and tyranny on their own...but they are certainly trying to use those others to their advantage. Where possible, they are also trying, IMHO, to orchestrate them for their own purposes.
They have adopted a fascist economic model, but at their root they are still the communist masters. I believe a failurte to recognize this will lead to a much, much worse conflict and confrontation than what we faced with the Soviets. And precisely because the Chinese have been intelligent enough to abandon the failed marxist and maoist economic failures. They are showing us and the world a psuedo-market economy that is still rooted in totalitarianism and they are soaking up our own capitol, monies and manufacturing to fuel it. If it ever reaches its own critical mass...we are going to be in very deep trouble...I believe we already are.
I believe we must find a way to confont them as Reagan did the Soviets and bankrupt them before that time...to the point that they fail and the people within China either fall into civil dissarray or create their own republican institutions (they have done so before). The vast majority of the people in China are still significantly repressed, problem is, 8-10% if 1.4 billion is a BIG number and can easily be used to make it appear as though reform is in the wind when it is not for the other 1.25 billion.
Anyhow, as you well know, for this reason, along with the continued outsourcing of most of our manufacturing, the continued rampant illegal immigration on our southern borders, the continued push for more and more "command economy and control" modules in our own government and because of the continued external threats from other sources is why I have written the:
Dragon's Fury Series of Novels.
Hopefully it is a warning note that can be heard by more and more people...one that causes them to reflect and think about current circumstances in a light that fosters more vigilance regarding the foundational principles which have made this nation what it is...and to which you spoke so well.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for drawing my attention to this.
Should be required reading for every American.
You're right about China, my friend.
What was once a communist state is in reality now a fascist super-state.
Communists lay claim to all the means of production.
Fascists let you believe that the means of production belong to you.
Socialism and its proponents on the American Left are EVIL and must be confronted and defeated.
Good stuff, joanie...thanks fer the ping to the article and your comments...MUD
Thanks for the ping to his "masterpiece" (and it is).
Yours is one, too.
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