Paul Greenberg
Monday, November 30, 2009

"Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan."

--Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451"

"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books."

--James Tracy, headmaster, Cushing Academy

Without a Gibbon to record the decline and fall of a civilization in proper detail and literary fashion, a few scattered notes on the continuing collapse may have to do. Perhaps these will be of use to some future archaeologist digging through the electronic junkyard that will prove our civilization's equivalent of Roman ruins. Buried somewhere in the vast pile of old Fax machines, laptops and iPhones, this little news item may help explain how we came a-cropper:

In Ashburnham, Mass., in once proud New England, land of the Pilgrims and Puritans, of iron-hard Adamses and dreamy Emersons, a prep school has just given up on books. The headmaster of Cushing Academy, one James Tracy, doesn't see any need for them. Not any more. Anybody who's anybody or wants to be now has an iPhone with apps, a Kindle or whatever the Next Big Thing turns out to transiently be. Who needs books?

To quote this very model of the modern headmaster: "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books."

There you have another sign of the shiny, color-coded cultural Apocalypse, one of the many such signs all around if we weren't too busy googling to notice them. The barbarians are not just at the gates but deep within the citadel -- at the head of the very schools entrusted with passing on the heritage of the past. How the mighty have fallen.

There are still those of us who see something other than an outdated technology when we look at books -- like a great store of value, the very currency of knowledge, of wisdom and of whatever of virtue may be taught by the written word.

"There are only a few of us left," as an old lawyer out of Mississippi named Billy Moore Clark, pronounced Billy Mo' Cla'k in these latitudes, used to confide when in his cups and sighing for the days of a lost grace.

We happy few can only respond to Headmaster Tracy's view with a slow, sad shake of the head. For what other response would be more fitting when confronted by someone so blind to the use and beauty of books, so immune to their charm, so impervious to the spell they cast, so cut off from the delight of not just reading but experiencing a great book?

The headmaster would prefer to be stared down by some electronic simulacrum that wearies the eyes, mind and patience. Sad doesn't begin to describe his handicap. Which he seems determined to pass on to his poor students.

The headmaster's low opinion of books may be only the first wave of a bleak future. How long before booklovers will have to gather secretly in whatever passes for catacombs nowadays to pore over their favorite volumes, savor the scent of printer's ink on freshly printed pages, know the assurance of sturdy bindings and sense the promise a real book holds for each successive reader?

How long before the world is divided between book people and those who, like the contemptuous headmaster, dismiss books as holdovers from an earlier, primitive time? Now we have a new god: Deus ex Machina. How long before, as in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," those who still treasure books will be treated as suspect, outcasts, rejects?

The headmaster is nothing if not sincere, more's the pity. For his comments are matched by actions that would credit a vandal: He's getting rid of his academy's library of some 20,000 volumes, which are to be replaced by a $500,000 "learning center" full of flat-screen telemonitors, laptop-friendly carrels, and various other electronic gotta-haves that will soon enough be outdated in technology's rush to obsolescence.

It was not enough for Headmaster Tracy to dismiss the book with a heedless comment; he had to insult the scroll, too: "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books." Hard as it is to believe in this oh-so-advanced age, there is still an obscure religious sect that gathers on each of its sabbaths to read from such a scroll. The prophet of another faith even referred to its adherents as the People of the Book.

The scroll they read is handwritten with fear and reverence, blessings and recitations, each word recorded on parchment by a learned scribe who has spent years in preparation for his task. Written in an ancient tongue called Hebrew, the scroll is said to open a whole universe of thought and revelation. To those who hold fast to it, they say, it is a tree of life. Its teachings, they claim, are inexhaustible. But the headmaster would seem to have even less use for scrolls than he does books. Man's ignorance, and his pride in it, appears to be inexhaustible, too.

I learned of this latest attack in the ongoing war on books via my favorite little magazine, The New Criterion, whose department of Notes and Comments regularly reports on these brittle post-cultural times. It watches for such inauspicious signs with the sharp eye of a lookout on the bridge of the Titanic. I tend to save my copies, lest I miss a single report on the continuing collapse of Western civilization. So I can remember what it was.

John Stossel
Wednesday, November 25, 2009

When you knowingly pay someone to lie to you, we call the deceiver an illusionist or a magician. When you unwittingly pay someone to do the same thing, I call him a politician.

President Obama insists that health care "reform" not "add a dime" to the budget deficit, which daily grows to ever more frightening levels. So the House-passed bill and the one the Senate now deliberates both claim to cost less than $900 billion. Somehow "$900 billion over 10 years" has been decreed to be a magical figure that will not increase the deficit.

It's amazing how precise government gets when estimating the cost of 10 years of subsidized medical care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bill was scored not at $850 billion, but $849 billion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her bill would cost $871 billion.

How do they do that?

The key to magic is misdirection, fooling the audience into looking in the wrong direction.

I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible.

The politicians have a hat full of tricks to make their schemes look cheaper than they are. The new revenues will pour in during Year One, but health care spending won't begin until Year Three or Four. To this the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner asks, "Wouldn't it be great if you could count a whole month's income, but only two weeks' expenditures in your household budget?"

To be deficit-reducers, the health care bills depend on a $200 billion cut in Medicare. Current law requires cuts in payments to doctors, but let's get real: Those cuts will never happen. The idea that Congress will "save $200 billion" by reducing payments for groups as influential as doctors and retirees is laughable. Since 2003, Congress has suspended those "required" cuts each year.

Our pandering congressmen rarely cut. They just spend. Even as the deficit grows, they vomit up our money onto new pet "green" projects, bailouts for irresponsible industries, gifts for special interests and guarantees to everyone.

Originally, this year's suspension, "the doc fix," was included in the health care bills, but when it clearly pushed the cost of "reform" over Obama's limit and threatened to hike the deficit, the politicians moved the "doc fix" to a separate bill and pretended it was unrelated to their health care work.

Megan McArdle of The Atlantic reports that Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin asked the Congressional Budget Office what the total price would be if the "doc fix" and House health care overhaul were passed together. "The answer, according to the CBO, is that together they'd increase the deficit by $89 billion over 10 years." McArdle explains why the "doc fix" should be included: "They're passing a bill that increases the deficit by $200 billion in order to pass another bill that hopefully reduces it, but by substantially less than $200 billion. That means that passage of this bill is going to increase the deficit."

From the start, Obama has promised to pay for half the "reform" cost by cutting Medicare by half a trillion over 10 years. But, Tanner asks, "how likely is it that those cuts will take place? After all, this is an administration that will pay seniors $250 to make up for the fact that they didn't get a Social Security cost-of-living increase this year (because the cost of living didn't increase). And Congress is in the process of repealing a scheduled increase in Medicare premiums."

Older people vote in great numbers. AARP is the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. Like the cut in doctor's pay, the other cuts will never happen.

I will chew on razor blades when Congress cuts Medicare to keep the deficit from growing.

Medicare is already $37 trillion in the hole. Yet the Democrats proudly cite Medicare when they demand support for the health care overhaul. If a business pulled the accounting tricks the politicians get away with, the owners would be in prison.

Austin Hill
Sunday, November 29, 2009

I’m not an attorney.

For better or worse I didn’t go to law school, but rather, I instead went to graduate school to study philosophy.

But you don’t need to be an attorney – or a philosopher – or the Attorney General or the President of the United States or a Representative or a Senator you don’t even need to be a community organizer to understand what I understand.

In fact, if you are one of “those” that I just listed, there’s a good chance that your station in life will blind you from seeing and understanding the reality that is intuitively obvious to “the rest of us.” And the reality is that as President Obama and Attorney General Holder seek to award five Sept. 11 conspirators, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with the full rights of American citizens in a civilian trial, the United States is being undermined.

Not being an attorney makes me a mere “layperson” for many in the legal profession, and therefore, unqualified to comment on the matter. But this “layperson” thinks that the legal profession should be embarrassed, and ashamed, of the lack of reasoning underlying Mr.Holder’s decisions.

In the interest of “fairness”- and hopefully as a means of bringing clarity to the situation - let’s get some things straight from the get-go. The five 9-11 conspirators in question have been held all these years in a facility known officially as the “Guantanamo Bay camp.” And the use of the word “camp” matters profoundly.

If the Guantanamo Bay facility were, for example, a “prison,” then it follows that those being held there would be “criminals.” If, on the other hand, the Guantanamo Bay facility were defined as a “POW camp,” then those being detained there would be “enemy soldiers,” and would be subject to “rules of war” set forth in international law.

Yet, in fact, the thugs at Guantanamo Bay are neither “criminals,” as we have historically defined them in the West, nor are they “enemy soldiers” or “prisoners of war.” They are something the likes of which we have never dealt with before, and as it appears to this mere layperson, neither U.S. law nor international law adequately contemplate how they should be addressed.

Some of this legal ambiguity was evident in the public rhetoric of our previous President. George W. Bush frequently stated during his eight years in office that the U.S. was engaged in a “war on terror,” while at the same time claiming that our nation’s mission was to “hunt down the terrorists and bring them to justice.” To us laypeople, that seemed like a U.S. President assuring the world that America would be the “good guys” even while under duress, yet at the same time we would not allow ourselves to be undercut.

But in legal-speak, it would seem that Bush’s remarks could be construed as contradictory. By legal definition, a war is not a legal proceeding, and what happens on the battle field is not the same thing as what happens in a criminal investigation.

So now we’re in the era of Obama. And while in the face of a Muslim Army Major murdering 13 of his fellow soldiers President Obama insists that we must not “rush to judgment,” Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has nonetheless “judged” after ten months that these five 9-11 conspirators need a civilian trial.

And Mr. Holder’s vacuous responses to even the simplest of questions should be deemed “unacceptable” by all Americans – even attorneys.

What happens to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, if he is acquitted? “Failure is not an option” Mr. Holder explained in a Senate inquiry. Oh yeah? What about that thing called “due process?” Has the outcome of this trial been pre-determined? Are we to understand that “the fix is in?”Even a lay person like me can see that the outcomes of court trials are often highly unpredictable.

Has an enemy combatant ever been granted a civilian trial before? Holder assured the inquiring Senators that he would “have to look at that” – which meant that either he hasn’t “looked at that,” or that the honest answer would not support his decision. And how could Holder be so certain of a conviction in a civilian trial, when Mohammed had already plead guilty in a military tribunal? Holder couldn’t answer that either.

And then there was our President, Barack Obama, who also stated that KSM will be convicted and executed. But what did that mean? Was this the President merely expressing confidence that his vision would become reality, as politicians so often do? Or was this the Executive Branch of our government pr-determining what the judicial branch will and will not do?

To those in the legal profession – where are you at with all of this? Are we talking here about a mere “show trial?” Is the American Bar Association okay with the Executive Branch running over the top of the judiciary?

For us mere “laypeople,” the thought of President Obama and Eric Holder pre-determining the outcomes of civilian trials is a very chilling proposition.

LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR - AT HOME!

According to a former congressman who served under the Bush administration, there were about 35 terror threats prevented by Homeland Security and regional police enforcement. Personally I know of ten different terror plots, some that would have impacted public schools, cruise ships and U.S. military bases. With the exception of three plots that made national news, the others were dealt with and not made public. This is partially due to preventing a panic among the general population and partially due to keeping methods of collecting information from liberal media journalists that would focus on the "rights" of terrorists on our own soil.



In 2009, after taking office, President Obama made it known that the words "Islamic terrorists," would no longer be used while he was president. During his campaign, he never used his middle name "Hussein," and he seldom emphasized the fact that members of his family, including his father and stepfather, were Muslims. However, after becoming president he made speeches in the Islamic countries of Egypt and Turkey in which he not only bragged on Islam's influence and prestige in history but also on how Muslims were involved in the formation of America and how that America was "enriched by Islam." While in Turkey, Obama stated how that "the Islamic faith has done so much to shape the world... including my own country." Huh? Did I miss that history class in school? My history book revealed how America had to form a national document that today is housed in Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. that gave America power to form a Navy to fight against the Barbary pirates that were seizing out ships. Muslims were not a part of the 12 million black slaves that came to America from Africa, but were the slave traders selling their own brothers as slaves. There is no record of any Muslim in the Revolution, or any listed on record during World War I. Only after World War II did many Muslims begin to come to America, partially because of political and spiritual strife in their nations. A large percentage of the Muslims in America are black Muslims, especially those linked with the Nation of Islam, whose headquarters in Chicago is located in the same district where Obama was a Community Organizer, and near the very church where Obama attended.



Since his swearing in as the 44th President, America has witnessed the rise of homegrown terrorists. With the assistance of the FBI and Homeland Security, these "sleepers" have been exposed prior to their attacks or while in the process of acting out their plans, not realizing their explosives and devices were fake because they had been obtained by under cover agents. However, the recent and terrible assault on the United States troops at Foot Hood in Texas that left 12 dead and 31 wounded has caused my blood to boil. The shooter, Major Maliq Nadal Hassan, was a practicing Muslim whose recent history, now being exposed, reveals he was a fanatical Muslim with a Jihadist mindset. Maliq had posted on web sites his admiration for suicide bombers. Warning signs were seen by doctors and those who knew this man but because the nation has become "politically correct," individuals chose to remain silent as not to offend his Islamic religion. I just wonder if this fellow was a Baptist or a Pentecostal, would be have been treated with such kid gloves?



This is NOT the first time an "American" soldier has turned on American troops. During the early stages of the war in Iraq, a Muslim soldier in the U.S. Army went on a rampage and shot several troops in their tents. Another American soldier was shot by a Muslim in Arkansas. Here is where my blood boils. With the exception of Fox News, the major media outlets and the Administration ignored the fact that this man was a fanatical Muslim and refused to call the assault at the Base a "terror attack!" The Obama administration said we should not "Jump to conclusions," and that we must not "Judge others by this man's beliefs." Really? It was this type of radical thinking that blew up two embassies in Africa, blasted a hole in the U.S.S. Cole, brought down the Twin Towers and left a black hole in the side of the Pentagon. Further, it resulted in sending America into two Islamic nations to fight a war against a segment of the Islamic world that desires the death and destruction of Americans.



Now, the generals on the ground are saying we need more troops in Afghanistan to win the resurgence that is occurring. Each day it seems more troops are dying and the president waits, and waits, and refuses to act. The reason is that his liberal base wants us out of Afghanistan and Iraq and this may upset his voting block. Another reason, Obama announced in Turkey that America is "Not at war with Islam and never will be!" Certainly we are neither at war with Muslims at large nor any religion, but to say that we will never be at war implies that Obama will be passive and submit to whatever comes his way in the name of Islam. While Iran builds a nuclear bomb, the administration sits back and says, "Let's give them time to see what plays out."



The whole episode reminds me of Former President Jimmy Carter, who sat by for 444 days while hostages were held in Iran, and allowed the interest rates to rise at 19%, and sent the economy in a tail spin that took years to recover. I personally know of and have Muslims friends in the Middle East and they are very friendly towards me and we often talk about the Bible and Spiritual truths. Certainly, most Muslims are not fanatical and jihadists. However, the passivity of our president is read by the fanatics as weakness. I predict if he continues along this path, of refusing to speak of Islamic terrorists, he will experience in his administration difficulties with these radical groups. Remember that he may brag on his Muslim names (Barak was the name of Mohammad's white stallion, and Hussein was one of the early leaders in the Shiite branch of Islam), his Islamic background, and say he will do everything to defend the Muslim faith, but the jihadists are not impressed. They will continue their plots and weakness of the enemy is their motivation.



Let's call the shooting in Fort Hood what it is - the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9-11. IT is time to quit being politically correct!

 Written by: David Guard

John Hawkins
Tuesday, November 17, 2009

"You will find that I am kind. Unlike the cruel Leonidas, who demanded that you stand...I require only that you kneel." -- King Xerxes, 300

Liberalism is an extraordinarily deceptive, ruinous and cruel ideology. That's because liberalism comes, arms wide open, whispering sweet words of compassion and pity, even as it forcefully slams down a boot upon the neck of people it's "helping." It's bad enough to see people's lives ruined by those who make no pretense about their intentions, but to see human beings destroyed by those who claim to have only their best interests at heart...well, let's just say it's a hell of a thing.

What liberalism does to minorities: Liberalism falsely convinces minorities in America that they are widely hated and despised for their skin color. How terrible it must be to spend your days seeing racial slights that don't exist, feeling despised by people who don't give you a second thought, and expecting that you will be treated unfairly by people, most of whom think no more of your skin color than they do the color of the carpet they're standing on.

Believing these lies leads to a sense of victimhood that liberalism offers to "fix" with more destructive solutions like Affirmative Action. How many white Americans have doubted the achievement of a black American because of Affirmative Action? How many black Americans have doubted their own worthiness because they thought they may have been given a helping hand because of their race? How many black college students who would have graduated with honors at UNC-Chapel Hill flunked out of Harvard because Affirmative Action got them into a college that was over their head? In the wildest dreams of the Ku Klux Klan, they could have never come up with an ideology as deviously destructive to minorities in America as liberalism.

What liberalism does to children: One of the great ironies of modern life is the constant liberal refrain of "do it for the children." That's true, not only because liberalism is directly responsible for the death of more than 40 million children via abortion, but because liberal policies have descended like a plague of locusts upon the inheritance that America's sons and daughters would have otherwise received. Generations after everyone who went to Woodstock is in the ground, Americans will still be paying off their spending. What better thing could we do for the children than to safeguard the country we grew up in so that they'll have an opportunity to live the American dream, too?

What liberalism does to Africa: Liberalism's smothering paternalism has arguably done considerably more damage to Africa than European colonialism. "The Western world has given Africa 'about a trillion dollars in aid in the past 50 years' and yet as a whole, the continent could be fairly said to have gone backwards over the last 10-15 years." Obviously our aid is doing little for Africa, but we can't stop, even if it would be better for them to learn to stand on their own two feet, because liberalism says it’s better to ruin millions of lives than to risk making liberals feel bad.

If only liberalism similarly prioritized the lives of African children over those of song birds. In another great irony, it's conservatives who argue that DDT should be used in Africa to kill mosquitoes and wipe out malaria, while liberals are willing to watch millions die because they're afraid that to do otherwise -- might put a few birds at risk.

What liberalism has done to the American family: Oh, the intentions are always good...so liberalism says. They just don't want anyone to feel bad or be judged negatively. They want everyone to have a good time and they believe the government should be there to pick up the pieces if things don't go well. So, we get...

Welfare checks. Gay marriage. No fault divorce. The sexual revolution. Attacks on Christianity. Lauding hedonism and single mothers in Hollywood. "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

But, when inevitably divorce rates skyrocket, our prisons fill up with children who never had fathers living in the home, and our society starts to fray around the edges, no one wants to admit that liberalism is at the heart of the entire problem.

What liberalism does to the poor: What mother dreams that her child will grow up to be on food stamps? What decent father wants to see his son eating free breakfast at school? How can you care about a person and want to see him living in a government housing project, collecting welfare, and nursing a grudge against the people in our society who have succeeded in life, instead of trying to become a success himself?

Liberalism says its adherents should pat themselves on the back for their compassion because they're making it possible for people to live that way. How many men's pride have they stolen with that "compassion?" How many lives has that "compassion" helped mire in misery? How many people, who could have made good lives for themselves, in the end, became dependent on the government and chose lives of mediocrity? If someone views that as "compassion," then his moral compass is shattered.

Phyllis Schlafly
Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Another kooky Barack Obama appointee became publicly known this month and quickly was thrown or voluntarily threw herself under the bus. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director (who led Obama's war on Fox News), said that Mao Zedong was one of her two favorite "political philosophers" whom "I turn to most" for answers to important questions.

History identifies Mao as a ruthless savage, not as a philosopher. He probably holds the record for ordering the mass murder of more people (50 million to 100 million) than anyone else in history.

Dunn tried to claim that her statement was a joke, but anyone can look at her actual statement on Youtube and see that she spoke in deadly earnest. Dunn was part of Obama's inner circle and a senior media adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Dunn's husband, Bob Bauer, an expert on campaign financing, fundraising and voter mobilization, is Obama's personal lawyer. He has just been appointed White House counsel, where he will be in charge of vetting Obama's appointees.

Obama's green jobs czar, Van Jones, had to exit in disgrace after he admitted that "I was a Communist." We can thank Glenn Beck for exposing him.

Obama's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book in 2008 in which he declared that the government "owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission." So, after the death consultants authorized in Nancy Pelosi's health care bill convince you to reject life-saving procedures, the organ-transplant team can remove your body's organs immediately.

Czar Sunstein also argues that animals are entitled to have lawyers to sue humans in court. Bow, wow -- more business for trial lawyers. His wife, Samantha Power, is now on Obama's National Security Council. She is famous for writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about genocide, which she defined so narrowly that it excluded Joseph Stalin and Mao.

Obama's nominee for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Chai R. Feldblum, signed a 2006 manifesto endorsing polygamous households. This lengthy document, called "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," argues that traditional marriage should not be "privileged above all others."

Obama's education appointments, who came out of the Chicago political machine right along with Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, will have nearly $100 billion in new money to indoctrinate America's youth. Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is notorious for trying to start a gay high school in Chicago.

Obama's safe schools czar, Kevin Jennings, founded the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist group that now has thousands of chapters at high schools across the nation.

GLSEN chapters and materials have promoted sex between young teens and adults and sponsored "field trips" to gay pride parades. Jennings was the keynote speaker at a notorious GLSEN conference at Tufts University in 2000 at which HIV-AIDS coordinators discussed in detail, before an audience including area high school students, how to perform various homosexual acts.

Obama's science czar wrote in a college textbook that compulsory "green abortions" are an acceptable way to control population growth. We assume that what makes an abortion green is when the motive for the killing is population control to serve environmentalist dogma.

Affirmative action is in vogue in Obama's administration: His diversity czar has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities. Obama's first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is a woman who said repeatedly that a "Latina woman" would make better judicial decisions than "a white male."

Obama's top lawyer at the State Department, Harold Hongju Koh, calls himself a transnationalist. That means wanting U.S. courts to "domesticate" foreign and international law -- i.e., integrate it into U.S. domestic law binding on U.S. citizens.

Koh is eager to put us under a global legal system that would diminish our "distinctive rights culture" such as due process, trial by jury and our First Amendment "protections for speech and religion" that give "far greater emphasis and judicial protection in America than in Europe or Asia." Under global governance, the United States will be forbidden to allow more freedom and constitutional rights than other countries.

When Obama's appointee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, David Hamilton, was a district court judge, he prohibited the Indiana State Legislature from giving an invocation that mentioned Jesus, while mention of Allah was allowed. Hamilton worked for ACORN and the ACLU, and even the liberal American Bar Association rated him "not qualified."

And we thought the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an embarrassment to Barack Obama when he was running for president! We never dreamed Obama would actually appoint such a collection of weirdos.