Democrat Dick Durbin Gives His ‘Legitimacy’ To Terrorists

We are at a point where Democrats ought to have zero credibility, and the worst thing that should ever happen to someone’s reputation would be getting caught with your face in the same picture as a known or suspected Democrat.

But while we OUGHT to be there, we’re certainly not there yet.  There are fools and communities of fools who actually respect Democrats, and stupidly and naively believe they’re decent people.

So, as asinine and in fact as outrageous as it might seem, Democrats can add their “credibility” to others.

But being truly despicable people, Democrats have a tendency to lend said “credibility” to the very worst sorts of people.  Like terrorists.

For the record, I added the labeling to make it easier to identify both the terrorists and the dumbass in the photo.

Here’s a quick description of these guys Dick Durbin says are A-OK in his book:

Pictured with Senator Durbin [that’s the dumbass in the middle] is Jamal Said [the terrorist on the left], an unindicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case that led to criminal conviction. Said also reportedly raised money 11 years ago at an Islamic conference by asking for donations in name of a suicide bomber. More recently, he told a gathering of Muslim leaders in 2009, “We need to raise our children to know the martyrs of Gaza.”

Also in the photo [the terrorist on the right] is another unindicted terror trial coconspirator named Kifah Mustapha. According to the IPT, Mustapha serves as an imam for the Illinois Mosque Foundation. Last year days after becoming Illinois first state police chaplain, his appointment was revoked after ties to terror groups became public.

According to IPT, the Mosque Foundation has a long history of ties to terror organizations, even sponsoring a rally for a Hamas operative arrested in Israel. 

So we’ve got the cheerleader for suicide bombers and a guy who wants to radicalize our rapidly growing Muslim inmate population.

The guy who wants to raise money for suicide bombers’ families so terrorists can murder away knowing their families will be taken care of, the guy who wants the children to know these “martyrs” as heroes so the hate can continue to the next generation, is part of a murder plot against Israel’s innocent children going back decades.

And the guy who sought to be a “chaplain” so he could radicalize our prison population is part of a long effort to get the hate of Allah into our prison systems.  From an article in the Oxford Journal titled “Prison Islam in the Age of Sacred Terror“:

Research indicates that Islam is the fastest growing religion among prisoners in Western nations. In the United States, roughly 240,000 inmates have converted to the faith since the 9/11 attacks. According to federal law enforcement, Saudi-backed Wahhabi clerics have targeted these prisoners for terrorist recruitment.

An article on how state prisons are a breeding ground for radical Islam begins:

The four men accused of plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down a plane all did stretches in state prisons – a major breeding ground for Islamic radicalization.

At least two of the suspects, James Cromitie and Onta Williams, entered the system as Baptists and were paroled as Muslims.

The concern about prisons incubating jihadists has been heightened in the debate over releasing Guantanamo terror suspects to facilities across the U.S.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has called America’s prisons “fertile ground for extremists.”

A 2006 study called “Out of the Shadows” found “tight-knit communities of Muslims in prison are ripe for radicalization, and could easily become terrorist cells.”

And the entire organization for which Durbin is lending his “credibility” is waaaaayyy beyond merely dubious.

Confronted with this, Durbin was unapologetic.  These people are perfectly fine.  What they’re doing is great.  And if you don’t want to be murdered in a giant explosion by a suicide bomber, you’re just a racist anti-Muslim bigot.

So just why do Democrats want to legitimize terrorists who want nothing more than your hot sticky jugular-vein blood all over their filfthy hands?  I now say “dumbass Democrats” rather than just “dumbass Dick Durbin” because this is just so par for the Democrat course.

Here’s Durbin’s rationale, complete with it’s own refutation:

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in an attempt to address what he claims is an increase in anti-Muslim bigotry, is relying on questionable statistics and a witness with a record of opposing virtually all law enforcement attempts to deal with Islamist-inspired terrorism.

In a statement, Durbin said his hearing Tuesday on the state of Muslim civil rights in America comes “in response to a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year including Quran burnings, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes, hate speech, and other forms of discrimination.”

While hate crime data for 2010 has not yet been released, FBI reports in recent years show no spike in anti-Muslim attacks. Those statistics show 107 anti-Islamic incidents reported in 2009, compared to 156 anti-Muslim crimes in 2006. In both reports, race related crimes dominated, and religiously-targeted attacks involved Jews as victims about nine times more often than Muslims in 2009 and more than five times more in 2006.

Durbin is literally championing the violent Muslims who are victimizing Jews at nine times the rate in America and calling the victimizers the “victims.”

Which is to say, Democrats are consistent, in that they are always fools all the time.

And what is the Fool-in-Chief up to?  He’s joining Osama bin Laden in siding with the Libyan rebels which include al Qaeda fighters, and who are led by Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi – a man who fought Americans troops in Afghanistan. 

No one knows a whole lot about these Libyan rebels, and everything we do know is bad.  Jonah Goldberg quipped yesterdat that this Libyan rebellion is kind of like Pelosi’s approach: “We have to pass this rebellion so you can find out what is in it.”

A Politico story covering Durbin’s hearing said:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said it wasn’t a response to Republican Rep. Peter King’s hearings this month on post-9/11 Islamic radicalization and terrorism — but it sure felt like it.

And that’s exactly what it was, of course.  And all King’s hearings tried to do was ask a question about the domestic radicalization of American Muslims.  And even the left-leaning Washington Post acknowledged that Democrats embarrased themselves in their coming unglued over simply asking a question and seeking information.

This is not just an unfortunate moment immortalized in a picture.  This is a demonstration of the morally bankrupt philosophy of not only Dick Durbin, but the entire Democrat Party.

And as usual, the mainstream media propaganda does not want you to know which side is right and which side is wrong.

Terrorism: Stop Calling Timothy McVeigh A ‘Christian’

I’ve heard it pop up a number of times that Timothy McVeigh is an example of a ‘Christian terrorist.’  As the charge surfaces again in light of the hearings that Rep. Pete King has called regarding terrorism and the militarization of American Muslims, let’s consider the “evidence” that Timothy McVeigh is a “Christian.”

From my looking for evidence that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian who executed his Oklahoma City bombing as a Christian, it mostly boils down to this quote from Time Magazine:

Time: Are you religious?

McVeigh: I was raised Catholic. I was confirmed Catholic (received the sacrament of confirmation). Through my military years, I sort of lost touch with the religion. I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs.

Time: Do you believe in God?

McVeigh: I do believe in a God, yes. But that’s as far as I want to discuss. If I get too detailed on some things that are personal like that, it gives people an easier way [to] alienate themselves from me and that’s all they are looking for now.

This quote from the Time Magazine article is so prevalent that I can’t find the actual article.  And, of course, I wonder what else he said that someone like myself would find useful.  Those who want to maintain that Timothy McVeigh was a ‘Christian’ explain that McVeigh distanced himself from Catholicism, not Christianity.  And that since he still believed in “a God,” he wasn’t an atheist or a secular humanist, and hence he was a Christian.

But what you see is a man who had some contact with Catholicism, and then basically turned away from it.

For the record, Christians don’t believe in “a God”; we believe in the one and only true God, the Creator of the Universe and of man.  McVeigh actually corrected the interviewer: “Do you believe in God?” (i.e., the monotheistic deity of Judeo-Christianity).  “I do believe in a god, yes.”  That usage of an indefinite article “a god” actually screams volumes about whatever Timothy McVeigh’s religion is.  But let’s examine the question whether religious affiliation as a child means that one is an adherent of that religion:

Obama’s mother, divorced from Obama’s father, married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the family relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first, Obama attended the Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his stepfather. The document required that each student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when registering – Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant.

And:

His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama’s grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended. That registration meant that during the third and fourth grades, Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in religion class.

Well, congratulations, liberals.  We now have the smoking gun proof that Barack Hussein Obama is in fact a Muslim.  Because we’re going to use the same childhood standard of religious affiliation on Obama that you want to use on Timothy McVeigh.  And by that standard, Obama is Muslim.

The fact of the matter is that Timothy McVeigh walked away from his Catholic faith (for the record, I myself am a Baptist), and never came back to it.  And rather than having anything whatsoever to do with Orthodox or organized Christianity, he had come to have his own subjective views about something he described as  “a god.”

He definitely did not bomb the Oklahoma City Alfred P. Murrah federal building in the name of Jesus, or do it as an act of his “Christian faith.”  There is absolutely no reason whatsoever save anti-Christian bigotry and profound religious intolerance to suggest that he did.

That is very unlike the hundreds of videos recorded by terrorist suicide bombers who expressed their intent being directly connected to Islam.

Let’s go on.  Was Timothy McVeigh a Christian?  Not according to his own words:

In his letter, McVeigh said he was an agnostic but that he would “improvise, adapt and overcome”, if it turned out there was an afterlife. “If I’m going to hell,” he wrote, “I’m gonna have a lot of company.”

And:

McVeigh once said that he believed the universe was guided by natural law, energized by some universal higher power that showed each person right from wrong if they paid attention to what was going on inside them. He had also said, “Science is my religion.” [Michel, Lou and Herbeck, Dan. American Terrorist. pp. 142–143]

I – as one example among millions of true Christians – am a Christian.  I am not an agnostic.  And science is very definitely NOT my religion.

I came across a quote – “Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian. he refused to have a clergyman while awaiting execution but changed his mind at the last moment “to cover my bases” – that is directly supported by firsthand sources who had direct access to McVeigh.  McVeigh was an agnostic who in the very end doubted his agnosticism.  He was most certainly no Christian.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: maybe the mainstream media can start saying that McVeigh was a scientific terrorist.  Or at least an agnostic terrorist.  Because either of those statements would be far closer to reality than that he was a “Christian terrorist.”

There’s a little more to say.

I am going to reproduce here the entire article that, if true, proves that Timothy McVeigh merely participated in yet another of the hundreds of thousands of Islamic terror attacks across the world:

“Homeless” Man Hussain Hashem al-Hussaini is “John Doe #2 in Oklahoma bombing
 Doug Hagmann  Friday, March 11, 2011

On Wednesday, a “homeless man” was arrested in the Boston suburb of Quincy, Massachusetts, on a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after allegedly striking another man with a beer bottle. His name is Hussain Hashem al-HUSSAINI, although has several other aliases and a previous arrest record.

His arrest would have likely gone unnoticed except for the tenacious investigative journalism conducted in the months and years following the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by author and investigative journalist Jayna Davis. Ms. Davis, a former reporter for KFOR-TV at the time of the bombing, identified al HUSSAINI as the “John Doe #2” in the April 19, 1995 bombing that claimed the lives of 168 people, including 22 children, three who were unborn. Her investigation is chronicled in her book, The Third Terrorist, and is an important investigative report into the actual events that took place in the months, days and weeks leading to the bombing, and perhaps even more importantly, in the years afterward.

// //

The disheveled homeless man arrested this week is at the epicenter of a plot that involves not only domestic terrorism, but the inexcusable failures and activities of the FBI that led directly to the events of September 2001. Ms. Davis documented the direct involvement of a Muslim terrorist operation involved in the 1995 bombing, and attempted to warn the FBI of additional attacks being planned. Despite impeccable documentation compiled by Ms. Davis that I personally reviewed in my capacity as an investigator, her warnings went unheeded. Six years later, the worst attack on American soil killed another 3,000 people. It is my belief that the attacks of 9/11 could have been stopped had the FBI acted upon the evidence she submitted to the FBI.

Instead, twenty-two witness affidavits she compiled and submitted to the FBI in January 1999 that, in part, connect al HUSSAINI to the events of the bombing “disappeared.” Those affidavits contain sworn statements of multiple witnesses who placed al HUSSAINI in the company of Timothy McVeigh prior to the bombing, exiting the Ryder truck that was used for the bombing, and speeding away from the area just prior to the blast. Despite solid witness statements, the FBI reportedly failed to interview al HUSSAINI.

In addition to the “hands-off” approach with al HUSSAINI, the FBI continues to refuse the release of closed circuit camera footage that exists of McVeigh and “John Doe #2” as they exited the Ryder truck in front of the Murrah Building. Why?

Leading up to, and at the time of, the Oklahoma City bombing, Hussain al HUSSAINI worked for a property management company owned by a Middle Eastern businessman who was suspected of having ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organization(PLO). Six months prior to the bombing, this man hired several former Iraqi soldiers. Four years earlier, he had been convicted of federal insurance fraud.

Investigation in Boston

In mid-May 2005, I personally conducted an on-site investigation of “John Doe #2” in Boston. My confidential 30-page investigative report was submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice on 1 June 2005. The information contained in that report verified all of the relevant aspects of Ms. Davis’ claims as they pertained to Hashem al-Hussaini. The following is a redacted version of my partial investigative findings from 2005.

Hussain Hashem al-Hussaini

The primary subject of this investigation is Hussain al HUSSAINI, an Iraqi national who has been identified in sworn witness statements obtained by Ms. Davis as, in part:

1. Accompanying Timothy McVeigh in the Ryder truck used to deliver the bomb to the Murrah Federal Building on 19 April 1995;
2. Stepping out of the Ryder truck at ground zero minutes before the blast;
3. Speeding away from downtown Oklahoma City immediately after the detonation of the truck bomb;
4. Being seen in the company of Timothy McVeigh a various times and locations prior to 19 April 1995.

Hussain al HUSSAINI, a former member of the Iraqi military and Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, currently resides in Braintree, (Norfolk County) Massachusetts, a southern suburb of Boston. As well documented in The Third Terrorist by Jayna Davis, al HUSSAINI came to the U.S. following the Persian Gulf War in 1991 under the guise of escaping persecution from the Iraqi dictator. Because of the significant number of refugees admitted into the U.S. and other factors, the checks-and-balances that were (or should have been) in place to verify the authenticity of those seeking entry into this county were admittedly strained or not properly implemented. Regardless of the reason, al HUSSAINI remains living in the U.S. as of the date of this report.

Subsequent to the Oklahoma City bombing, al HUSSAINI moved to Dallas, Texas, and then to Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked at Boston Logan International Airport.  At that time, he resided with two Iraqi men (brothers) who provided food catering services for the commercial airlines at Boston Logan during the time leading up to and including September 11, 2001.

The two Iraqi brothers referenced above have been identified as Khalid [REDACTED] and Majed [REDACTED]. They both continue to reside in Braintree, Massachusetts. Due to their close proximity to the primary subject and their activities in Oklahoma City near the time of the 1995 bombing, this investigator has also conducted comprehensive database research and an on-site investigation and covert surveillance to update their activities as well.

Both men were observed at their residence. The activities of both men were documented, and their activities undocumented by law enforcement, according to a source contacted within the FBI. According to this source, they have “no interest” in either subject.

Left: Surveillance photograph taken by Douglas Hagmann 16 May 2005

Multiple Identities

Investigation determined that Hussain al HUSSAINI possesses a social security number issued in 1994 in the state of Massachusetts. For reasons unclear, it was reissued in Texas in 1995. Several dates of birth are associated with al HUSSAINI, all listing his month and year of birth as September 1965. He also has a lengthy list of aliases, including but not limited to Hussain Hashem Jassem Al-Hussaini, Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini, Hanan Hashim Jassem Al-Hussaini, Adnan Hashim Jassem Al-Hussaini, Salem Hashim Al-Hussaini and eleven others.

Neighbors as well as fellow employees knew him simply as “Sammy.”

At the time of this investigation, al HUSSAINI was working as a landscaper while living with his 30-year-old American girlfriend, her father, and a two-and-a-half year old daughter. He has resided at this location since 1997. Distinctive in his appearance, he has tattoo reflective of his association with the Iraqi National Guard.

Also at the time of this investigation, the two Iraqi brothers who provided food catering services at Boston Logan on 9/11 were investigated. The reports of their activities, although redacted here, were detailed in my 2005 report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. Yet, much like the warnings of Ms. Davis, nothing has taken place.

Left: The former residence of Hussain al Hussaini in a suburb of Boston

Foreboding prediction?

Confidential psychiatric records confirm that in 1997, Hussain al-Hussaini made a foreboding prediction about a future event to take place at Boston Logan International Airport, the point of origin for two of the four hijacked flights that slammed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

According to those records and prior to 9/11, al-Hussaini suffered anxiety so acute regarding his airport job at Boston Logan International that he checked into a psychiatric hospital to seek treatment for recurring panic attacks. When asked about the source of his trepidation, he told his therapist “if something happens there, I will be a suspect.”

Interestingly, only days after my investigation into the activities of Hussain al HUSSAINI, he “disappeared.” He left his residence of eight years and slipped quietly into the shadows of Boston, only to be found homeless and facing criminal charges this week.

Something is terribly wrong with the FBI’s handling of the 1995 bombing and the events leading up to and including the attacks of September 11, 2001. Something at the highest levels of government that continue through the present.

---

I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusion regarding how accurate that article is.  But suffice it to say that there is far, far more evidence that Timothy McVeigh took part in a Muslim terrorist attack than there is that Timothy McVeigh was a “Christian.”

I close stating this: 126 individuals have been indicted on terror charges in the U.S. the last two years.  Every single one of them without a single exception is a Muslim.  Fifty of these terrorists were Americans.  And all fifty of these Americans were Muslims.  Conclusion?  There is clearly no connection between Islam and terrorism, says the left.

The same left that says that Timothy McVeigh is a “Christian” based on the flimsiest evidence proceed to refuse ironclad evidence about the terrorist threat of Islam.

And every single person who falsely claims that Timothy McVeigh was a “Christian” is merely an intolerant anti-Christian bigot.

Obama’s Government As God Believes It Owns Everything The People Earn

“The Universal is to be found in the State…The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth…We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend Nature, it is harder to grasp the Essence of the State…the State is the march of God through the world…” — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, as quoted in Popper, Karl R., The Open Society and its Enemies, 4th ed., 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, vol. 2, p. 31.

“…the State ‘has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.'” Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Georg Hegel in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959, page 144).

Hegel, it probably doesn’t surprise you, was an important precursor to Marxism, in that he held that the State owned everything, and had all the prerogatives of God Almighty.

But that was also the view of the founder of the Progressive movement, Woodrow Wilson.  As Wilson put it, the essence of Progressivism was that the individual “marry his interests to the state.”  Jonah Goldberg noted that:

Wilson’s fascination with power is the leitmotif of his whole career.  It informed his understanding of theology and politics, and their intersection.  Power was God’s instrument on earth and therefore was always to be revered.  In Congressional Government he admitted, “I cannot imagine power as a thing negative and not positive” (Liberal Fascism, p. 84).

We also learn of the founder of the Progressive movement that:

“Wilson would later argue when he was president that he was the right hand of God and that to stand against him was to thwart divine will.” [And that] “He always took the side of power, believing that power accrued to whoever was truly on God’s side” [Liberal Fascism, p. 85]

“‘Government,’ Wilson wrote approvingly in The State, ‘does now whatever experience permits or the times demand'” (found in Liberal Fascism, p. 86, with footnote].

Jonah Golderg cites Woodrow Wilson from his unintentionally chilling essay, Leaders of Men:

“Only a very gross substance of concrete conception can make any impression on the minds of the masses.  They must get their ideas very absolutely put, and are much readier to receive a half truth whcih they can promptly understand than a whole truth which has too many sides to be seen all at once.  The competent leader of men cares little for the internal niceties of other people’s characters: he cares much – everything – for the external uses to which they may be put … He supplies the power; others supply only the materials upon which that power operates … It is the power which dictates, dominates; the materials yield.  Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader” (Liberal Fascism, p. 89; from Woodrow Wilson, Leaders of Men, 1952, pp. 20, 25-26].

And Wilson argued, “we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be intent to realize his activity only in connection to the activity of the many.”

“God” was useful to Wilson and his fellow progressives in order to seize dictatorial powers and advance the cause of a Government as God.  But the atheist communists founded a system in which God was overthrown, and the State could assume His prerogatives unto itself.  Modern progressives have likewise banished God out of government, but they still fiercely stand for “Government as God.”  “God” may largely be gone from their arguments, but, like Woodrow Wilson and like the communists, their worship of power remains.

Right now, today, we are facing an incredibly important issue in this country which boils down to the following question: Do we own the state, or does the State own us?

Now, someone might argue, “No one’s debating that.  Liberals aren’t arguing that ‘the State owns citizens.'”

And I would argue, “Really?”  And then I’d hand off the ball to Brit Hume.

From Fox News Special Report, Tuesday, September 13, 2010:

BAIER: Senior political analyst Brit Hume is here with some thoughts about what the debate over the soon to expire tax cuts really means.

Good evening, Brit.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Bret.

The running argument over extending the Bush tax cuts may come to nothing if Congress decides to go home in just three weeks, but it has been a revealing exchange nonetheless. The president’s call for extending the cuts for middle class taxpayers is an acknowledgment that President Bush did not just cut taxes for the rich as Democrats are fond of claiming. He cut them for all taxpayers.

Administration officials keep saying it’s a bad idea to keep the cuts in place for wealthier taxpayers because it would cost $700 billion in lost revenue over 10 years. What they don’t say is that keeping them for the middle class which they now support would cost about three times that much.

Still, the president’s position means he agrees with Republicans that raising people’s taxes in the midst of a flagging economy is a bad idea. But the very language used in discussing these issues tells you something as well. In Washington, letting people keep more of their own money is considered a cost. As if all the money really belongs to the government in the first place in which what you get to keep is an expenditure.

This sense of the primacy of government is reflected in the high percentage of stimulus funds used to bail out broke localities and protect the jobs of government workers. Democrats are proving once again that they are indeed the party of government. Americans think government is important, too. They just don’t think financing it takes priority over all else — Bret.

BAIER: Brit, “The Washington Post” is reporting that top Democratic leaders want to rebrand the extension of the Bush tax cuts to call them the Obama tax cuts for the middle class. What about that?

HUME: Well, if we had sat here a year and a half ago and one of us had said to the other that Democrats at this stage would be wanting to rebrand the Bush tax cuts and continue them and call them the Obama tax cuts, we’d have both fallen out of our chairs laughing. These are people who opposed these tax cuts when they were passed. They now not only want to extend them or at least the largest piece of them, but they want to put Barack Obama’s name on it. Bret, it doesn’t get any better than this.

BAIER: All right. Brit, thank you.

I recently wrote an article that refutes the Democrat contention that tax cuts have to be “paid for” or “cost” the government.  And Brit Hume points out – as I do – that the Democrats screaming about the $700 billion that the rich’s tax cut would cost the Treasury, while simultaneously calling for a tax cut for the middle class (which they vigorously opposed during George W. Bush’s presidency) that would cost the Treasury $3 TRILLION according to the same report.  But in the above special commentary, Brit Hume destroys the very premise by which the Democrats argue that the tax cuts should be treated as a “cost” to the government at all.  On what ethical basis should allowing people to keep more of the money that they earned be deemed a “cost” to the government?

Think of it this way.  Suppose I believe that my next door neighbor’s property belongs to me, and allowing my neighbor to keep what I think is really mine is a cost to me.  Our prison system is filled with people who think precisely that way.  But is it true?  Well, only if the entitlement mindset of coveting what others have accumulated is the way the world should work.  In that case, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, too.  Otherwise, if my neighbor’s property actually belongs to my neighbor, then no matter how much he works or how much he profits, it doesn’t cost me anything.  And it would frankly be immoral of me to think otherwise.

Here’s another way to think of it, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts:

“I had someone ask me in this process — I don’t remember who it was, but somebody asked me, you know, ‘Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?’ And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then, the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.  That’s the oath.”

But while it IS the oath, it is no longer the system.  Rather, we have a system that has been perverted by judicial activism and by the politics of class envy and class warfare.

Then there’s the fact that even the wealthiest billionaire becomes “the little guy” when confronted by the power of government.

Watching the September 16th Larry Kudlow program on CNBC, I learned that China has ten times the growth of the United States, and that China has lower taxes than we have.  Meanwhile, Democrats are using Marxist class warfare and redistributionist arguments to try to raise American taxes even higher.  With all due respect, what should you call a party that is even more communist now than communist China?

So let me ask again: Does the government own all of my wealth, and allow me to keep some of it?  Do I belong to my government, or does my government belong to me?

In Washington under the Democrats’ philosophy, letting people keep more of their own money is considered a “cost.” It’s “lost revenue” for the government.  As if all the money we earn really belongs to the government in the first place and that what government allows us to keep amounts to a government expenditure.  In this mindset, we are wading neck deep into the waters of Marxist collectivism, and the view of Government (big ‘G’) as being our God and as Savior.

The story of abusive big government is not a recent one.  The prophet Samuel describes it in the Old Testament:

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles. — 1 Samuel 8:19-20

Who are we really rejecting? God said to Samuel:
“…it is not you they have rejected, Samuel, but they have rejected me as their king.”  — 1 Samuel 8:7

Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.  Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.” — 1 Samuel 8:10-18

The tenth of everything that God warned the people the king would take was on top of the tenth that belonged to God.   Which is to say that the king would double their taxes in addition to treating the people like they belonged to him.  Of course, that tyrant king was only seizing an additional tenth of his people’s wealth; imagine today, where in the highest-taxed states (which are all Democrat states, fwiw), some Americans are forced to pay more than half of their income in taxes.  A mere extra tenth would be like a blessing to them.

From doubling our taxes to quintupling them; a good definition of “progressivism” is a political movement that is devoted to making things ever worse than they were before.

Our founding fathers went to war in their reaction against tyrannies which are nothing as compared to the tyrannies modern Americans now face every day.

Tyranny is the kind of thing that creeps up on a people.  It’s not like we have a “Tyrant Party” that promises more tyranny, and then we vote for them.  Rather, tyranny is “progressive.”  The wrong people, or people with the wrong worldview, gain power, and then they just seize more and more and more of our freedoms.  Until we wake up and wonder what happened.

47% of Americans pay no federal income taxes at all today, while demanding that a smaller and smaller group of people pay an increasing share of taxes.

But mark my words: the same government that believes that it owns the wealth of the wealthiest will all too-soon understand that it owns your wealth, too.  And that it has the right to take from you whatever it demands.

Update, September 27, 2010: here we go again…

Obama Grovels Before Yet Another Foreign Leader

There’s a scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee that reminds me of the current Obama fiasco (there’s ALWAYS an Obama fiasco, but this is the fiasco of the hour).  Mick “Crocodile” Dundee visits New York and is confronted by a mugger with a switchblade.  His gal-pal, Sue, says, “Mick, give him your wallet!”  And Dundee says, “What for?”  Sue, looking at the switchblade, says, “He’s got a knife.”  An amused Crocodile Dundee says, “That’s not a knife,” as he draws this gigantic Bowie knife that dwarfs the trivial-by-comparison switchblade.  “This is a knife.”  The mugger runs away.

ABC reporter Jake Tapper tries to put Obama’s bow into “perspective” by pointing out that Richard Nixon had at least sort of bowed in 1971.

But let’s apply what we just learned from Crocodile Dundee.

That’s not a bow.

Apparently, Bill Clinton did something that wasn’t quite a bow, either.

But about what Obama just did on his Asia tour (while he runs away from his decision to send the troops his general requested for Afghanistan, while he runs away from the latest unemployment report of 10.2%, runs away from his inability to label the Fort Hood massacre as a terrorist attack)?  Well….

THIS is a bow.

And it’s not just a bow.  It is a grovel.  It’s the profoundly disturbing and disgusting genuflection of a man who clearly has no business representing a people who drove away kings by force of arms bowing down low before his betters.

It’s an insult to everything America stands for.

ABC’s Jake Tapper put it this way:

“The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.”

Just like this prior contemptible event, in which Obama groveled before the Saudi king:

Mind you, Obama did not merely cravenly grovel before King Abdullah (making America grovel before Saudi Arabia by proxy), he cravenly lied to the American people about cravenly bowing down before the king of Saudi Arabia.

You’d think he would have learned his lesson, but grovelling just seems too deeply ingrained into his psyche.  He just can’t help himself.  It’d part of his unfortunate condition of statolatry.

Obama’s “Disgrace America Tour” is kind of like the Rolling Stones — it just keeps going on and on and on and on.

Obama doesn’t have to grovel before Nancy Pelosi — as long as he lets her have complete control over “his” healthcare agenda.

Here’s a picture of Vice President Cheney offering his respects to the Japanese emperor.

Ah, thank God for an actual grown-up who actually understands that American leaders do not grovel before foreign ones.

I’m betting that “inexperienced” Sarah Palin wouldn’t have groveled before the emperor, either.  Apparently, bowing and groveling is something that they teach at Harvard.

You know what I wonder?  I wonder if FDR or Harry Truman, who defeated Imperial Japan at the great cost of 100,000 American lives following their vicious attack against Pearl Harbor, would have bowed down before the Japanese emperor?

Just wondering.

‘Celebrating’ DEPENDENCE Day Under Barack Obama

As we survey the despotism of the world around us, we can admire our founding fathers – and celebrate their achievement – all the more.

Think of Iraq under Saddam Hussein; or think of Iran under the Ayatollah and the mullahs.  And then look around and see all the millions, even billions of peoples, under some form of tyranny and totalitarian rule.  It was not the Iraqi people, but the people of the United States of America, who threw down Saddam Hussein and instituted a democracy in place of tyranny.  And the Iranian people may have rioted in their streets, but they failed to throw off the shackles of their tyrannous and repressive regime.  And it is very unlikely that they ever will lest some free people liberate them from their own government.

Think of the history of human civilization, and realize just how few times peoples under such rule have thrown off the shackles of bondage for themselves.

We were one of that tiny number.  And our forefathers instituted in place of tyranny the greatest example of democratic and republican government that the world has ever known.

The rarity of America’s achievement, and the resulting greatness that has since resulted, should be celebrated with more than fireworks.  It should inspire Americans – and the world – to pursue freedom and liberty over any obstacle which gets in the way.

Many historians have argued that the British government, and the king who embodied that government, really did not seek to impose anything that tyrannous.  The king didn’t seek to impose an Orwellian-style regime; he merely wanted to modestly increase taxes to help pay for a war that had been fought for the Colonies’ behalf.

The British Empire had spent some 60 million pounds fighting the French and Indian War less than a decade previously.  And the British justifiably believed that the Colonies should share some of the burden for that massive cost.  They weren’t consciously attempting to impose tyranny; all they wanted to do was raise money.

But the patriots didn’t view it that way.  What they saw was taxation without representation.  What they saw was an imposition on their property without their consent.  They looked at taxes (such as the Stamp tax and the Tea tax), and asked themselves, “If they can impose this upon us, what else can they impose?”

And when their protests were met with thousands of British troops, the patriots believed they had their answer: the king believed he could impose power upon them at his whim.

Unlike most other peoples in human history, our founding fathers did not wait for the yoke of oppression to become so heavy that it could not be thrown off.  Rather, they were willing to fight at the very first signs of tyranny.  And in so doing, they not only won their freedom, and the freedom of their descendants; they won the freedom of millions and millions of peoples whom their descendants would subsequently fight to liberate.

Part of the problem with tyranny and totalitarian rule is that there will always be people who say, “It really isn’t that bad.  Why are you making such a nuisance of yourself by protesting?”  The analogy of the frog in water comes to mind: if a government takes away our freedoms little by little, it is very likely that won’t comprehend the deprivation until it is too late to do anything about it.

Alexis de Tocqueville – one of the great political thinkers who recognized the import and result of American freedom – also wrote about one of the most pernicious forms of tyranny in the second quarter of the 19th century:

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

C.S. Lewis wrote about a century later:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The tyranny described by Alexis de Tocqueville and C.S. Lewis is the tyranny we face in America today: the tyranny of the nanny state; the tyranny of big government; the tyranny of the welfare state.  Naysayers can always continue to say, “It’s not that big of a deal,” or “It’s not that much worse than it used to be,” or “This is what we need right now.”  And they always will be able to say such things.  And that is precisely why most peoples find themselves in forms of tyranny that they have neither the power nor the will to free themselves from.

There is no question that the massive anvil of fiscal insanity will ultimately fall on the US economy due to the near doubling of the national debt as Barack Obama adds a projected $9.3 trillion to the $11.7 trillion hole we’re already in.  Obama is borrowing 50 cents on the dollar as he explodes the federal deficit by spending four times more than Bush spent in 2008 and in the process “adding more to the debt than all presidents — from George Washington to George Bush — combined.”  And what is most terrifying of all, Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very long from now? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:

By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.

I look at the recent past, and see debts that our children’s children’s children will never be able to hope to repay; debts that will soon shackle us, and most certainly shackle our future generations.  And I realize that these debts have been accumulated in order to forge the very sort of society that de Tocqueville and Lewis warned us about.

The nanny state doesn’t celebrate the peoples’ independence; it celebrates their dependence.  As big government assumes more and more control of the economy, it creates more poverty and therefore more need for the government to come to the increasingly dependent peoples’ rescue.  It systematically and progressively creates a vicious cycle of dependency that becomes increasingly difficult for a once-free people to sever themselves from.

I think of two attempts by the Obama administration to seize government power that are most pernicious of all: health care and cap-and-trade.  Consider for a moment that if the government assumes control over our health care, it will have the potential to control everything that goes into our bodies, and even the activities of our bodies in the name of our “health.”  And as for cap-and-trade, what doesn’t require energy to produce or transport?  Under these two programs alone, nearly total control can be exercised.

What would our founding fathers – who were willing to fight over taxes on stamps or tea – have to say about these massive government power grabs?

Obama’s Disgrace America Tour Off To Great Start

Let’s reflect on the past few weeks.

First Obama treats the Prime Minister of Britain – America’s closest historic ally – like dirt and then has his State Department announce that “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”

But that’s okay; he’s balancing that despicable treatment by doling out more of the same shoddy treatment to the 2nd greatest ally of the United States, Israel.

Apparently, Obama seeks to appease the countries who despise us by turning his back on the countries who have loved us.

Then he goes on his “Apologize for being an American” tour during the G-20 summit. He didn’t get any meaningful commitments from anybody to give us any kind of meaningful help in our “good war” in Afghanistan, and he got absolutely nobody to follow his “let’s all keep on recklessly spending” stimulus plan. But he gave up American economic sovereignty by ceding control over to an international body anyway. At least Judas got 20 pieces of silver for his betrayal; Obama got nothing for his.

During that tour, Obama had the gall to apologize to France – to FRANCE! – for American arrogance. That pretty much proves that Obama believes America is the most arrogant country in the history of the world.

And he bowed down before the king of Saudi Arabia before lying about the fact that he had bowed. The first American president to break with the tradition that American presidents do not bow down to kings. The tradition of “sic semper tyrannis” is officially over.

Then – after bowing down before a Muslim king – Obama went to Turkey to renounce American Christianity, and all the founding history that went with it.

With his genuflection to serve as a capstone foreign policy moment for American submission, Obama then journeyed to Mexico to tell them to blame America for all their problems, and repeats the already utterly disproven demagoguery that “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States” to support his thesis. Pretty smart, this: he gets to demonize America for selling guns to Mexican drug cartels and at the same time he gets to undermine the 2nd Amendment.

And then we went to the Americas Conference to appear as the “poor ignoramus” that Hugo Chavez said he was a few weeks earlier:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an “ignoramus” for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.

“He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality,” said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.

Geez. I never would have believed Hugo Chavez would ever be right about anything. Hugo Chavez should look in a mirror, of course, but he’s absolutely spot-on in his assessment of Obama.

The governments of the United States and Venezuela finally agree upon something; and Obama and Chavez subsequently shook on it to confirm the fact: Barack Obama IS a poor ignoramus.

Well, at least he didn’t bow down before him, although some have suggested that perhaps if Obama bows down before the Ayatollah of Iran and Kim Jong Il of North Korea perhaps they’d abandon their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Why nuke us if we’re already subservient?

And then Chavez took another photo op moment to present Obama with a book that presents the Marxist-socialist thesis that America is the source of evil that is responsible for all of Latin America’s problems. Chavez DID say the poor ignoramus needed to read up on his Marxist fabrication of history, after all.

Sad thing is I bet Obama reads every page of the book Chavez gave him. And believes it.

After listening to a deranged speech in which Daniel Ortega demonized and blamed the United States for every problem in Latin America (having clearly read Obama’s new book), Obama’s response was as telling as it was depressing:

“I’m grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old.”

It’s NOT about YOU, dammit! This guy just pissed all over your country – the country that you took an oath to DEFEND, by the way – and all you care about is whether he blamed YOU the way you’ve blamed George Bush 5,000 times?  STAND UP FOR AMERICA! Tell the world we’re NOT the hateful country that sleazeballs such as Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and Ortega claim.  But, no; you’ve done even more blaming of America than Ortega during the last several weeks.

Very recently, Obama continued the disgrace America tour by releasing CIA memos so he could refer to “the dark and painful chapter in our history.” Yet another attempt to rub our nose in our morbid and completely illegitimate desire to protect ourselves from the lethal hatred of terrorists. CIA officials are supposed to be thankful that Obama did not reward them for their efforts to protect the country by having them criminally prosecuted. It was apparently vitally important that our terrorist enemies be made to realize that they no longer have absolutely anything whatsoever to fear from being captured by American forces. All they have to do is lawyer up while enjoying three hots and a cot while they destroy our country just like the ACLU does – from within – by using our own institutions against us.

The disgrace America tour goes on and on under Barrack Hussein. Let’s not forget the sermons from Obama’s spiritual leader for 23 years: this IS “God damn America,” after all.

I end by reflecting on the words of Mark Levin from Liberty And Tyranny, page 18:

For the Statist, the international community and international organizations serve as useful sources for importing disaffection with the civil society. The Statist urges Americans to view themselves with through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, to doubt their institutions, and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders – as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. They need to listen to the voices of condemnation from world capitals and self-appointed global watchdogs hostile to America’s superior standard of living. America is said to be out of step and regressive, justifying the surrendering of its sovereignty through treaties and other arrangements that benefit the greater “humanity.” And it would not hurt if America admitted its past transgressions, made reparations, and accepted its fate as just another aging nation – one among many.