"If U.S. consumers are in the midst of a green revolution," writes Peter Whoriskey at the Washington Post, "the news hasn't reached car buyers."
Hat tip: FoxNation
Consider the following quote from thinker Francis Schaeffer as Obama rejects the Founding vision rooted in unalienable rights, from a real and verifiable Creator, for an alien vision (alien to the U.S. and to human nature) rooted in private values (such as diversity, class warfare, homosexuality, mere economics, etc.) imposed by Washington:
When the Christian consensus died, it left a vacuum, and this will tend to be filled by an elite to form an authoritarian state. When we speak of an authoritarian state, we must not think of the model of Hitler or Stalin, but rather a manipulative authoritarian state. The governments of the world have at their disposal forms of manipulation beyond anything the world has every known before.
-- Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? DVD, Episode 6, "The Scientific Age"
Memo to Tea Party: Any political party or cultural movement that would help turn America away from tyranny and back to freedom must address current challenges at foundational levels.
The economic breakdown we are witnessing in America today is a symptom of a more fundamental breakdown -- a breakdown caused in no small measure by a breakaway by liberals and RINOs from the founding genius of the Declaration worldview and then away from the U.S. Constitution, which was created to protect the Founding vision.
The Constitution is not -- is not -- a stand alone document. It stands in continuity with the Declaration of Independence. And it either stands within the context of the liberating norms of the Declaration, or it falls to the ground as a dead letter. And the freedoms it is supposed to protect fall with it.
The Founders addressed at foundational levels the great challenge of freedom vs. tyranny in their moment in history, and if we are to refound a free American people upon Declaration norms and content, we must do so as well, equally foundationally, in our own moment in history. Once again, it's either liberty or death.
This tribute to knightly mouse Reepicheep of the Dawn Treader, by Quin Hillyer at American Spectator, may have you thanking (again) C.S. Lewis for Reepicheep, and the Creator for C.S. Lewis.
Michael Filosof writes at American Thinker:
The lame-duck session of the 111th Congress proved one thing beyond a doubt: The Republican Party does not represent the interests of conservatives. Despite the midterm election tidal wave, in which the Republican Party gained 63 House seats (eclipsing its historic 1994 success against Clinton), congressional Republicans failed to leverage their victory into politcial clout and collapsed like a house of cards in the lame-duck session.
"Chris Matthews, the anchor of MSNBC's 'Hardball' program, is now calling for Barack Obama to release his original, long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate to put to rest any doubts about the president's eligibility to hold office," reports WorldNetDaily.
CNSNews.com reports:
Planned Parenthood received $363.2 million in government grants and contracts during its 2008-2009 fiscal year, according to the organization's annual report. That was up from $349.6 million in FY2007-08.
According to a fact sheet on Planned Parenthood's Web site, the organization performed 324,008 abortion in calender year 2008. That was up from 305,310 in 2007 and 289,750 in 2006.
In a photo accompanying the CNSNews report, PP president Cecile Richards is decked out in a red outfit as she speaks against a green background.
How appropriate. Not for Christmas, but for the red of innocent blood shed and the green of ungodly greed.
In an article titled "Hitler's Christmas Party: Rare Photographs Capture Leading Nazis Celebrating in 1941," Allan Hall reports at the UK Daily Mail:
The pictures from December 18, which have only just come to light, show Hitler and his generals at a party for SS officer cadets in Munich.
But the Nazi Christmas was far from traditional.
Hitler believed religion had no place in his 1,000-year Reich, so he replaced the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas with the Norse god Odin and urged Germans to celebrate the season as a holiday of the ‘winter solstice’, rather than Christmas.
Out of sight at the top of the tree behind Hitler was a swastika instead of an angel, and many of the baubles carried runic symbols and iron cross motifs. The remarkable pictures were captured by Hugo Jaeger, one of the Fuhrer’s personal photographers.
And so this is diversity, John Lennon might sing. In all its pagan glory and anti-Judeo-Christian passion.
But note, according to this report, many Germans still called the December celebration "Christmas," indicating perhaps they employed a "living," evolving definition of that term, just as today we have Obama, the ACLU, and other secularists glorying in a "Constitution" that is also a "living," evolving document.
You almost begin to wonder who won that war.
Fred Lucas reports at CNSNews.com:
The board of the American Conservative Union [ACU] -- an organization known for monitoring the votes of members of Congress and then scoring those votes according to how they accord with the organization’s views of conservatism -- held two votes of its own, via email, on whether to give GOProud, a homosexual Republican group, a planning role in the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference.
Members of the board were told that the first email vote was a 14-14 tie, according to board member Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute. This week, ACU Chairman David Keene informed board members by e-mail that in the second vote the board had approved making GOProud a “participating organization” in CPAC, a role that will allow the homosexual activist group to take part in planning meetings and recommending speakers for the event.
You may be witnessing the spiritual death of the American Conservative Union. The homosexual agenda is a discriminatory affront to the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."
It is pure blinding core hatred against the Creator, against the Creator's liberating norms for family life, and against the wonder of the diversity of humanity created in the image of God as male and female. Thus, for example, the war on the military ("Don't Ask") and the battle against the family.
Instead of unalienable rights, the homosexual worldview would impose the private values of an Obama, alien Washington elites, and a federal government so immersed in self-worship that it thinks it is the fount and source of human rights. Thus the rise of tyranny camouflaged as "diversity,""basic equality," and other verbiage with origins in marketing and PR manipulation instead of the enduring and defining American mainstream.
As the Founders understood, and as the Declaration of Independence makes clear, these rights come from the Creator, not from the state, "diversity," or any other politically correct idol of the moment. There simply is no adequate basis for "unalienable rights" and the "blessings of liberty" in human passions, 51% of vote, victim status, the patronage of the state, or the barrel of a gun.
The ACU would be wise to reconsider its approach to GOProud and to any other extremist group that stands in antithesis to the enduring, defining, and mainstream core principles of American freedom under God.
Meanwhile, no doubt millions of Americans across the country would like to know who at the ACU stands with the Founders and the Creator and who stands in discrimination against them -- along with with GOProud, racists, and other extremists.
Which way, David Keene and the ACU -- freedom or tyranny?
Eugene J. Koprowski reports at WorldNetDaily:
Veterans and active duty personnel alike are reacting harshly to the news that Barack Obama has signed the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, and one much-needed leader already could be lost to the military.
A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army has confirmed to WND that he is asking to be relieved of the command of his squadron because of the new policy. And former combat personnel are telling WND that they are continuing to keep the pressure on Congress to reverse itself.
"I have already requested through my chain of command that I be relieved of command of my squadron prior to new policy implementation on grounds that my personal beliefs don't permit me to force the coming 'behavior modifications' training and other inevitable policies on my soldiers," the officer, whose name has been withheld, wrote to WND.
The repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is not about "civil rights." It is about a president and the homosexualist lobby imposing their private "values" upon the military and upon American society.
Part of the code language Obama and Co. employ is "equal rights" and "basic equality." What this language signals is a repudiation of Creator-based unalienable rights, which are consonant with creation-embedded norms for family life, the wonder of male-female diversity, and the liberating social structure known as the family.
All of these basics of human freedom Obama and his elitist extremists reject. Clearly, for the sake of freedom and the continuation of a people who respect the "Blessings of liberty" and as good stewards who want to pass this legacy onto the next generation, this latest lameduck expression of oppression is to be resisted.
Bravo to the vets and active duty military personnel who resist this Christmas-season attack on the very freedoms they pledged to uphold upon agreeing to serve in the U.S. military.
Bravo to those who would resist secularist and liberal discrimination against the Creator and against the wonder of the American experiment in human liberty.
And Bravo to all who understand that the message of Christmas includes resistance to "every form of tyranny upon the mind of man." For truth sets people free.
Embracing Sodom: "Fulfilling a campaign pledge and striking a blow for what he sees as basic human rights, President Barack Obama is signing a landmark law Wednesday that allows homosexuals to serve openly for the first time in America's armed forces," reports AP.
This action is a further indicator of the moral and philosophic bankruptcy of Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and not a few Republicans.
The United States is rooted in unalienable rights from the Creator, not in the private values of pressure groups advocating destructive lifestyles that break ethical community with God and man.
With the rise of the New Resistance, America will throw off these shackles of discrimination against the Creator and against human beings created equal, male and female, in His image, not in the image of secularist interest groups.
This is not about "civil rights," but about right and wrong -- affirming the moral right of Declaration freedoms, but resisting the moral wrong of unending homosexist hysteria against the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."
"The GOP establishment -- and some conservative pundits -- ridiculed Sarah Palin for backing rough-edged Tea Party challengers over establishment figures," note Investor's Business Daily. "But "recent congressional votes prove her right."
Seth McLaughlin reports at the Washington Times:
Responding to the federal repeal of the military policy banning open gays from serving in the armed forces, a state lawmaker in Virginia plans to fight back with legislation that bars "active homosexuals" from serving in the Virginia National Guard.
Delegate Robert G. Marshall said the Constitution reserves states with the authority to do so and that he'll introduce a bill in the state General Assembly next year that ensures the "the effect of the 1994 federal law banning active homosexuals from America's military forces will apply to the Virginia National Guard."
Bravo for Mr. Marshall. The ruling elites in Washington are utterly out of touch with the enduring and defining mainstream of American liberty, which is rooted in the Creator who is the source of unalienable rights and whose liberating norms for family life and sexual relations cannot be spat upon with impunity.
Shame on Obama, the Democrats, and those Republican senators who are Americans in name only. We look forward to the rise of the States to throw off the yoke of elitist oppression emanating from extremist Washington and her radical cadres at odds with the foundations of human freedom and dignity. Rise up and live free.
"Today is a tragic day for our armed forces," says Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in a press statement released today.
Perkins is responding to the "vote by the U.S. Senate to pass cloture for a bill that sets in motion a repeal of the 1993 law on homosexuality in the military, commonly referred to as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' which codified the prohibition on homosexual conduct in the armed forces that has existed since the nation began," says the statement from FRC.
"The American military exists for only one purpose -- to fight and win wars," says Perkins. "Yet it has now been hijacked and turned into a tool for imposing on the country a radical social agenda. This may advance the cause of reshaping social attitudes regarding human sexuality, but it will only do harm to the military's ability to fulfill its mission."
But far more is at stake than even the U.S. military. This is why any American who cares for the survival of our nation as a people of freedom and dignity in a dangerous world must take up all legal, moral, educational, and ecclesiastical means necessary to repel this ongoing assault upon the foundations of human liberty.
These foundations rest politically exactly at that point where the American Founders placed it in the Declaration of Independence -- upon the Creator, in whose image we are created male and female, and by virture of which we possess "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The homosexualist agenda rejects this Creator, this Declaration, these foundations, and therefore, this nation. This alien and alienating agenda would replace the "Blessings of liberty" and "unalienable rights" with pseudo-"rights" created by Washington and blessed by San Francisco. In this struggle, therefore, we are witnessing the curse of a nation in decline not the blessings of liberty among a people on the rise.
Anything else is wishful thinking on a grand scale. For the attempt to build a society apart from the Creator has been tried before, and failed before, as the Founders well understood.
We've seen this failure in the fragmentation of ancient Greece, the totalitarianism of classical Rome, the blood of revolutionary France, the socialism of Nazi Germany, and the Marxism of the Soviet Union. And now out-of-the-mainstream extremists would introduce that cancer into the U.S. military because well-funded radicals have the tin-ear of Washington elites who care not for the Constitution or Declaration.
But there is hope in this December hour. For as was announced some 2,000 years ago, a King has been born to show forth the resistance of God against all inhumanity, all indignity, all enslavement, all death, and all decay. Even when paraded as "rights." It is a message of hope grounded in reality and directed to all of us noble-but-all-too-broken beings who sometimes think we ourselves are the One we've been waiting for.
They killed this King once. But he rose again in space and time. He irreligiously took questions from those unafraid to think and live free and follow the evidence where the politically correct dare not tread. Today the liquidators of liberty are targeting an exceptional American experiment in freedom that respects that King, an America the Founding Fathers knew so well.
And so we fight. For if freedom is to live, despisers of liberty must fail. And face resistance forevermore. Not because America is over. But because with these extremists in power, it would never have begun.
Beware a King who lives and dies and yet lives again, for then evil is ever in question. His warriors tire but never give up. Some fly as eagles. All renew their strength. Freedom could break out at any moment.
"A mother has been arrested after a four-year-old girl was found stabbed to death with her heart and other organs cut out and strewn around her flat," reports the UK Daily Mail.
"The 35-year-old woman was allegedly sitting in her kitchen chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter's disembowelled corpse lay next to her. The little girl's heart and other organs were found in different rooms around the flat in Clapton, east London."
Founder of Judicial Watch Larry Klayman says the mind of Americans is "on rebellion against the government, at all costs."
In "The Courage of Marine Corps Leadership on DADT," Ken Ireland at American Thinker says, "'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' keeps our combat forces effective at visiting violence upon those who would harm our nation and our way of life."
One of the surest signs that elite opinion has lost its way in America today is the ongoing effort to impose support for sodomy upon the Band of Brothers.
Saluting sodomy is submission to slavery. Islamist terrorists surely laugh at this self-imposed weakness roiling our ranks.
Meanwhile, the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" are not mocked. A nation that disrespects the source of human liberties is poised to lose them.
But America the free need not follow extremists into an empire that fails, even if fools today give in on Capitol Hill.
Millions of Americans remember who we are and why we resist. And through the woods and thorns we yet see that shining city set upon a hill.
"An astronomer argues that his Christian faith and his peers' belief that he is an evolution skeptic kept him from getting a prestigious job as the director of a new student observatory at the University of Kentucky," AP reports.
"Martin Gaskell quickly rose to the top of a list of applicants being considered by the university's search committee," says the news service.
"One member said he was 'breathtakingly above the other applicants.' Others openly worried his Christian faith could conflict with his duties as a scientist, calling him 'something close to a creationist' and 'potentially evangelical'."
Related
Christianity Is a Science-Starter, Not a Science-Stopper
Bob Unruh reports at WorldNetDaily:
There simply is no authority in the U.S. Constitution that allows bureaucrats in Washington to regulate "decisions," according to arguments that challenge the legality of Obamacare and have been handed in to a federal appeals court.
They also warn affirmation of the law would give the federal government what amounts to "state police power."
"Contrary to the district court's decision, there is no enumerated power in the Constitution that permits the federal government to mandate that plaintiffs and other American 'residents' purchase health-care coverage or face a penalty," said the brief submitted by the Thomas More Law Center to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeal is from a decision by Judge George Steeh to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the law center and several individuals challenging Obamacare as going far beyond what authority the government actually has.
Julia Duin in The Economist:
Not long ago I was covering the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a wildly popular event hosted by Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert that drew well over 200,000 people to the Washington Mall. The gathering was decidedly odd -- two faux newscasters had organised a semi-faux rally. . . .
In an effort to make intellectual sense of this, I turned to a new book by Nancy Pearcey, America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.Her new book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, presents a case for Christianity as the best counterweight to the secular, anti-God views of Western culture. . . .
Always an independent thinker, Nancy is a former agnostic who grew to appreciate the intellectual honesty and personal integrity of another former agnostic, the great thinker Francis Schaeffer, who with his wife, Edith, founded L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland in 1955.
"Reviewers in evangelical magazines who lionise Schaeffer," Duin concludes with a note of wonderment, "have ignored or downplayed Ms Pearcey's book. That's a shame."
"Word TV, a Christian TV show run by prominent evangelical pastor Charles McVety, has been shut down temporarily after an industry watchdog ruled that it had discriminated against homosexuals," reports LifeSiteNews. "Outraged conservatives have called the ruling an act of censorship, while McVety himself has condemned the ruling, calling it 'a gross breach of democracy' and 'reminiscent of totalitarian regimes of the past'."
Robert Stacy McCain writes at American Spectator:
A gunman who opened fire during a Florida school board meeting before apparently committing suicide left a "testament" on his Facebook page that blamed the "wealthy" for his crime.
Clay Duke, 56, pulled a pistol during a Tuesday school board meeting in Panama City, Fla., and fired several shots, according to press accounts. A security officer for the school system shot and wounded Duke, who then fatally shot himself, police told reporters.
Before pulling the gun, Duke used a can of red spray-paint to make the letter "V" inside a circle on a wall of the meeting room. This was evidently a reference to the 2006 movie V for Vendetta, in which a character uses terrorist tactics to fight an oppressive government.
Nancy will appear on the Janet Mefferd radio show today at 2:00 p.m. eastern time.
To call the show, dial 1-800-343-9282. To listen live online, click here.
Adam Shaw writes at American Thinker:
London's descent into anarchy over a rise in university tuition fees shows just how deeply the entire leftist enterprise relies on their takeover of the university system. . . . The passion behind the riots (which included not just students, but whole squads of angry leftists) is explained not only by the usual left-wing angst, but also by the fact that the rise in tuition strikes will radically reform the main left-wing recruitment center and training ground -- the university. (emphasis added)
Philip Klein writes at American Spectator:
Nationwide protests were "Astroturf." Polling was to get better once Congress passed a bill. And the new law was supposed to boost Democrats' electoral chances in November. Throughout their campaign for national health care, liberals tried to convince us that opposition was a joke, only to be proven dramatically wrong each and every time.
This Monday, a federal judge punctured another liberal fantasy -- that constitutional challenges to ObamaCare were frivolous exercises that would be laughed out of courtrooms.
In a 42-page decision, U.S District Court Judge Henry Hudson ruled that the health care law's requirement that individuals purchase insurance "exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power," rejecting the Obama administration's argument that the Commerce Clause gave it the authority to compel the purchase of coverage as part of a larger health care regulatory scheme.
The Founders envisioned a federal government limited by the Constitution and a host of other checks and balances. In contrast, Obamacare's deep offense against all things Declarational and Constitutional -- that is, against human freedom and dignity with God at the center and not the state -- envisions a federal power unlimited in principle by nothing by what the imaginations and machinations of elites in power at a particular moment are able to impose upon a purposefully weakened people.
The Founders divided government so that "We the People" could conquer tyranny. Obamaism divides the people (class warfare) so that government can collect power and conquer freedom.
Obamacare enslaves. A people of dignity created for freedom revolt.
"Casting an unmistakable and perhaps permanent pockmark on the face of the Obama administration, a federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a major component of the new health care reform law is unconstitutional," reports FoxNew.com.
"Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled Monday for the state's claim that the requirement for people to purchase health care exceeds the power of Congress under the Constitution's Commerce Clause or under the General Welfare Clause."
Not only is Obamacare unconstitutional but it is also Shovel Ready -- for permanent burial, along with all things governmental that violate the Founding and defining vision of the United States, set forth in the Declaration of Independence and safeguarded in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
You can hear Nancy today at 4:00 p.m. eastern time on "Wretched Radio with Todd Friel."
David Wheaton of The Christian Worldview Radio Show will be guest hosting.
Emily Miller at Human Events interviews Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.
"As a recovering liberal," writes Robin of Berkeley at American Thinker, "it has . . . been the shock of a lifetime to learn that many of the threats to our country come from within. I never had a clue that the progressive movement that I had supported, 'the good guys,' was a danger to us all."
"When asked if Jesus Christ had to the right to life from the moment of conception, at least three Republican lawmakers have answered in the affirmative," reports CNSNews.com.
Those lawmakers would be Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.).
"Members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus have written to President Obama asking him to correct a speech he gave in Indonesia incorrectly replacing the nation's motto of 'In God We Trust' with 'E pluribus unum'," reports WorldNetDaily.
Good for them. Because with each passing day, it becomes more apparent that the current occupant of the White House has next to nothing in common with founding genius of the American experiment in human liberty.
For freedom is founded upon the Creator, not upon the state nor upon "diversity," even when proponents of "diversity" try to co-opt phrases such as "E pluribus unum" ("Out of many, one") for their own extremist agendas.
Yes, as a statement of governmental unity and diversity, it is true: Out of the many individual States, we Americans affirm the framework of national unity. But again, under God the Creator, not under Washington and not under the "diversity" of a language-manipulating president seeking to impose an alien philosophy upon a free people.
The stakes could hardly be higher. For without the Creator of the Declaration to provide a unity around the diversity, the result in law, government, and society is not "One," but chaos.
The real-world result is not "diversity is our strength," but "diversity is our downfall" -- into unfreedom, weakness, and inhumanity. And then the need for national authoritarianism to keep a society divided by political hatreds from devouring itself.
This is the trajectory of Obamaism. This is the direction of Obama's attempt to impose his private values upon the rest of us, exchanging a society based upon the Creator for submission to an increasingly inhumane national state.
Obama's philosophy is an extremist departure from the defining and enduring mainstream of American liberty. America will not begin to be restored until politicians like him and philosophies like his are nowhere near the levers of power.
If the stakes are high, the choice is clear: Obamaism is slavery. The Creator is freedom.
From Ted Nugent at Human Events:
The world has changed much in the last 69 years, but what will never change in the hearts and minds of Americans who care is that December 7th is a day that will forever live in infamy.
God bless all the warriors of Pearl Harbor. They will matter forever.
"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he's more inclined to run for president in 2012 than not to make a bid," reports AP. "Gingrich says he probably won't make a decision until late February or early March. But he says that talking to friends and thinking about such an undertaking have made him more inclined to believe that 'it's doable'."
"Rep. Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.), founder and chairman of the House Tea Party Caucus, told CNSNews.com that there will need to be an insurrection' against the House Republican leadership if it does not hold an independent, straight up-or-down vote on repealing the entire Obamacare law that does not tie this repeal to other policy initiatives including any effort to 'replace' elements of Obamacare with new federal health-care reforms," reports Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com. (emphasis added)
"A day after discussions of religious diversity led officials to remove the word 'Christmas' from signs at the Christmas Village merchant fair outside City Hall, the event's organizers decided Tuesday to take down the signs -- only to have the mayor reverse that decision," AP reports.
"Mayor Michael Nutter jumped into the fray by announcing yesterday that the 'Christmas Village' signs would be back up today," states AP.
The mayor reportedly "told the Philadelphia Daily News, 'The Christmas Village is not a religious service. It's an outdoor fair. It's a very commercial enterprise.'"
Someone should inform the mayor that the Christmas signs would be fine, would pass Constitutional muster, and be entirely consistent with the Declaration of Independence even if the "Christmas Village" was a religious service with Santa and the elves rolling in the aisles.
The nation is founded upon a verifiable Creator, not upon that secularist nothingness currently termed "diversity" -- which all too often is code language for getting rid of the enduring and defining mainstream of the American experiment under the Creator and replacing that mainstream with the state, group, skin color, gender, nature, or some other inadequate extremist passion that lacks a sufficient basis for unalienable rights, human dignity, and individual liberty.
Mayor Nutter made the right move but for the wrong reason, for there is more at stake here than mere commerce. "Man shall not live by bread alone," as Someone once famously said.
It is good that the Christmas signs have been restored. Far better, however, to restore respect for the Founding worldview that makes freedom possible in the first place -- not just freedom of speech or even political freedom, but also the right and responsiblity to live in liberating community with God and man across the whole of life.
"Diversity," religious or otherwise, is no match for the emancipatory power and glory and humanity of the historic Christmas. This is true not just for a "Christmas Village" in Philadelphia today but also for a Christmas birth in Bethlehem yesterday, a mere 2,000 years or so ago. Some events are like that. They never quit.
"The National Portrait Gallery, part of the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, is presenting an exhibition that does exactly the opposite of what true art does," writes Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com.
