Posts Tagged → america
Garden as metaphor, Part 3…or 4
Can anyone think of a better metaphor for life as a human than a garden?
All the planning, selecting, planting, nurturing, stoking, prodding, coaxing, frustration, re-planting, and finally, after all the work and with some luck, the harvesting of fresh food…this is all just like the bigger things in our lives.
Lately it has been difficult to ignore some generational changes afoot that simply cannot bode well for our nation, now or in the future.
Where debate historically involved logic, facts, and reasoning, a great deal of what is represented as debate is simple ridicule, mockery, dismissiveness.
Few things demonstrate the weakness of an argument more than the use of ridicule and mockery, or name-calling. Yet the Internet is full of this waste of time. Because of my own passion for and involvement in tough policy issues, I am really interested to hear separate points of view from people, and spirited debate, give-and-take, is part of that process. This process is what makes Western Civilization so unique and so precious.
Dismissiveness assumes all will be well, no matter what, irrespective of actions or behaviors across the landscape.
In my observation, the younger generations are much more inclined to forgo logic and facts, and are more inclined to leap into name calling and ridicule in their online debates. This just cannot bode well for American democracy, which is based on the use of logic, reason, and facts. How our citizens expect to hold on to their Constitutional rights and liberties, and yet allow debate to be dominated by juvenile behavior is not wild speculation. Already we have witnessed the erosion of individual liberties at the hands of judges who don’t care what the US Constitution says, or what their particular state constitution says; their basis for decisions making is purely personal, or political.
So go grow a garden, fellow citizens. Tending even a small garden helps us work physical and mental muscles that atrophy easily. It builds small but important personal traits that are needed on a much bigger scale. Tending, cultivating, and nurturing all build basic skills necessary for us to function well as individuals and for our civilization to succeed on the whole.
The alternative – relying on everyone else for everything else we need, and ridiculing the rest – is a recipe for disaster.
Israel’s Independence Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, So Where are We Today?
Israel Independence Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day are here.
Obviously these two milestones are related in the sense that out of the ashes of the European genocide against Europe’s Jewish minority (not to be confused with the similar and nearly simultaneous Muslim Arab ethnic cleansing of the Jewish minority once living in the Middle East, now presently applied to Christians there) arose the modern state of Israel on the soil of the ancient state of Israel.
Here in America most Jewish communities spend a full 24-hour period on Holocaust Remembrance Day reading the names of Nazi victims. By reading their names, they are in some small but meaningful way not forgotten. And by remembering them as people, larger society is supposed to remember what happened so that people, and government, do the necessary things so genocide does not happen again.
This is all sound logic to me, although it is questionable whether it works, or not.
Why am I sounding a bit skeptical here? Because the evidence isn’t supportive that this approach works, in the sense that it does not inspire humans around the globe to treat one another better, much less treat Jews any better. The evidence in front of us demonstrates that Holocaust Remembrance Day, with all its universalist activities, primarily appeals to Jews, their friends, and liberal-minded news reporters. Meanwhile, plenty of genocide is going on ever since, namely in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kurdistan, and now once again in the Middle East, where Muslim Arabs are sadistically rampaging among the religious and ethnic minorities among them.
And Israel has been under sustained and increasing attempted genocide from the day it was founded in 1948. Every libel, slander, lie and contrivance has been drummed up to delegitimize Israel and to justify the ceaseless murders of unarmed Jews within and outside Israel. Boycotts, divestment from Israeli companies, and sanctions against Israeli academic institutions and the government of Israel are proof that Israel, and Jews, receive an incredibly harsh and unjustified treatment from a world that really ought to know better.
Making things even worse, and totally odd to me and to most people I know, is the overwhelmingly liberal mindset American Jews maintain. Their liberal political views, on a policy-by-policy basis, are completely contrary to the Torah (the Bible) to which their ancestors swore loyalty and which created Western Civilization.
Abortion-on-demand and as a form of birth control, faith in big government, rejection of religion’s role in good government, gun control, you name it, every single one of the politically correct issues that liberal Jews believe in are at odds with their own founding document, the Bible.
One would logically conclude that a group of people who had recently undergone such incredibly painful and devastating attacks, round-ups, shot on sight, murder in the street, painful medical experiments, gassing, bodies burnt to hide the atrocity, and so on, you would think that the survivors and heirs would adopt a more self-preserving view. That is the conclusion that their friends have arrived at and said is needed many times, and asked why Jews don’t, for many years.
You know, why do most Jews vote for people and policies that are against their own interests? Like for Obama, or against gun rights?
That American Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of intense gun regulation is without question. Public surveys show it. Even more to the point are the lists of leaders on gun regulation; nearly all of them are Jews – Past and present US Senators Feinstein, Schumer, Metzenbaum, Lautenberg, Boxer – joined by an endless list of Jewish members of Congress, and not to mention the actual leaders of gun regulation, Josh Sugarmann, Shira Goodman, to name but a few, and not to mention the Jewish donors to anti-gun rights groups, like Bloomberg and Hechinger, to name but a few.
More locally, two years ago I sat in on a meeting between my then-newly elected state senator Democrat Rob Teplitz and a group of citizens gathered at a local Harrisburg synagogue. As the morning Boy Scout function there was the drawing attraction, and not everyone there was Jewish, there was one group of men who had just completed their prayers and who had then gathered to join in the following meeting with Senator Teplitz. Either the first or second question of the event came from a man in that group, who asked Senator Teplitz when he was going to become an ardent and active advocate for serious gun regulation. Heads nodded in agreement around the table, and Teplitz responded that he would be neither “too pro gun nor too anti gun.”
Further confusing many Americans is how vociferously anti-Israel so many American Jews have become. Whether by strongly supporting an obviously anti-Israel Obama or by actively participating in anti-Israel actions and activities, lots of American Jews clearly are at war with the one nation designed to protect them should the very things they are remembering now begin to happen once again.
Why would a tiny group of people, who have experienced such awful tragedies and injustices over and over again, seek to both disarm themselves and their fellow citizens in favor of big government, which has never anywhere been a friend to Jews or liberty, and also disarm and undermine the one country capable of protecting Jews should the you-know-what hit the fan?
Folks, I know you are moved by recalling victims and inured to maintaining victimhood. It is practically the Jewish identity to the point where “Holocaust worship” has been decried by the more religiously observant Jews; you know, the Bible believers.
If you really want to remember the European Holocaust and say “Never Again!” in a way that means something, then be able to defend yourself. Get a 12-gauge pump shotgun, learn to use it with buckshot and store it safely, and support a strong Israel capable of easily defending itself against all attackers. That’s it.
Otherwise, you just make people ask “Do Jews today really remember what happened, and do they really understand how important Israel is to them?”
In other words, people just must ask “are Jews really so smart?”
Today’s talk with Dickinson College students
Thank you to Professor Andrea Leiber, among others, at Dickinson College, just about every year I am invited to come speak to a class about environmental issues.
Usually it is more enjoyable to go right into the Question & Answer period, because it’s there that we get the most essential points. Usually stuff like “Statistically, most of you will get married and about half of you will become divorced. Many of you will get fired from a job. Don’t fight with your boss. Pursue things that make you happy,” and so on.
These are college students who may not have ever heard facts and ideas like this before.
Today I brought a hand-out, below, that we went over before getting into the Q&A. The students, naturally, found these items tremendously provocative, which is good. That is the point. The goal is to challenge them and get them to think hard, outside their comfort zones. Kids, thank you for being so interested in our topics. I appreciate at least not being ignored.
Here is what was handed out:
Dickinson Five points:
1) your generation is becoming infantile. Don’t be offended. That’s a cop-out. Engage the world. Debate people on substantive issues. “You offend me” is bullsh*t. Don’t deal in bullsh*t. Be real.
2) listen to Rush Limbaugh. Or Hannity. Or Glen Beck. Add diverse thinking to your daily dose of diversity. Or, stop deceiving yourself that you truly embrace diversity. Listening to ideas you’re new to or unhappy about gets you outside the box. Think outside the box. Political correctness is a box.
3) climate change is not a religion, or a cult, or a science, so stop treating it that way. For 35 years we’ve been told a brand new, unproven, nascent science was already settled. Really? On what basis? By whom? Anthropogenic climate change is a corrupted political movement based on Marxism. It’s not science, yet.
4) Learn the American Constitution. It’s the basis of your life whether or not you presently understand it. It’s under assault. Eg 2nd amendment is fundamental to a free people and gun control has zero to do with crime control, FEC FCC regulation of internet, NSA spying, IRS political assault on political speech, Hillary’s private emails to conduct national security, loss of religious conscience.
5) Islam is at war with western civilization. America’s next big war will probably be with orthodox Muslims over individual liberty and freedom. Do not allow political correctness to stop you from asking questions and from saying what you believe.
Are you against Christianity but ok with Islam? Why?
Are you upset about the Israeli “occupation” but are ok with the Arab occupation of Jewish and Christian homes, farms and businesses? Why?
Be brave or kiss America and your iPhone goodbye.
Get off Facebook, have a beer [or soda] and grilled hotdogs with your real friends, instead.
Grow a small garden.
Camp out often.
Be self reliant.
Don’t let others’ expectations shape your future.
Get a gun and learn how to shoot it and store it.
Don’t smoke pot. Facebook is pot. It’s already killing your brain. Don’t add more.
Don’t be a hypocrite or have double standards. Be real.
Going where no Western man has gone before
Each day this past week I have waited for the other-other shoe to drop. And sure enough, each day some new incomprehensible surprise greeted us.
Obama’s most endearing trait is his public persona. His smoothness. His likeability. But what has come out more in the past week than in the past six years is how treacherous Obama is, how deliberately two-faced he is, how big of a blatant liar he is, how evil he is and how intent he is upon tearing down America and replacing it with…God knows what.
In his rapprochement with genocidal Iran and his war on Western Civilization Israel, Obama is dragging the United States into a place no Western human has ever gone before: Down.
Obama is dragging all of us into an abyss from which our nation will not climb out, if Iran gets to own nuclear bombs. And it is clear that Obama wants Iran to have them, just as it is clear that he resents Israel having them (note the release of Israel’s deepest nuclear secrets by Obama’s Pentagon this week).
Odd as it is, Obama’s supporters still include most American Jews, whose recent brushes with genocide would under normal circumstances remind them to place their sympathies elsewhere. However, political correctness is the new religion of the people formerly known as American Jews, and political correctness demands utter fealty to The Human One, whomever that may be at any given time, not The One who created Heaven and Earth. This is a sad development because so much of America’s intelligentsia is represented by the people formerly known as American Jews, such as academia and the media.
In going Down, instead of on the Upward trajectory Western Civilization has carried all of us over the past thousand years, minorities are most likely to suffer badly, one way or the other. One of the largest minorities in America today are Caucasians. How will they fare under the new America? Will there be a place for them? Will faux “White Guilt” force them to become willing slaves? Are they becoming that already, working as they do to support a tax-heavy government intent on wiping away their free speech and self-defense rights?
So many have placed their trust in a Muslim Marxist, whose mask is beginning to fall away, and yet they hope, in vain, that the dirty deeds he does now will not really exist later on. That’s the hope they voted for.
Just as surely as you can keep your doctor and your health plan, you can bet on everything working out just fine, folks. That’s the change we got.
Everybody is Irish today
Americans celebrate a multitude of holidays. Some are religiously based, some are ethnic, some are historic, and some are just fun.
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day, a holiday we borrowed from Ireland and made even better. In Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day has a load of religious meaning, which is fine, and yes, they have some festive public drinking to lend a celebratory air to it.
But here in America, we celebrate St. Patty’s Day as if every American is a little Irish, as indeed many, even most, are.
And that is important, because the Irish were among the very first slaves brought to America, and even as freed men they helped build this incredible nation, knowing that they had as much a share in it as anyone else. Coming from a place – Ireland – where Catholic Irish had their lands stolen on a whim, and where Catholics could be shot on sight just for the fun of it, any place was better.
Irish pluck, Irish luck, Irish humor, Irish fierceness…all are key ingredients in America’s success today. So here’s to the Irish today, and of yesterday, and to all of us Americans. We owe ye much, lads! Today we are all a little bit o’ Irish, just by being Americans.
A man who loves his nation
How refreshing to witness a leader who loves his country speak passionately about protecting his people.
Netanyahu was speaking for Israel, and also for America, which is leaderless.
One just hopes that enough elected officials can get up enough steam to stop America’s current administration from facilitating Iran getting the nuclear bomb.
Otherwise, the next 9-11 attack won’t be about planes into buildings; it’ll be about entire American cities being vaporized.
What if concerned citizens blocked the FCC vote tomorrow?
What if concerned citizens went to the FCC headquarters and blocked the five members from meeting there and holding a quorum?
What if the American citizenry decided that they had had enough of Obama’s lawlessness, and they determined the only way to keep the FCC from taking over the Internet was to #OccupyFCC?
What happens when the FCC takes over the Internet, the FEC begins regulating what is posted on the Internet, and the government continues to dispense “waivers” to its regulations like it has with ObamaCare, except that in the case of the Internet the establishment legacy media are allowed to continue on in their partisan way, and everyone else must obey or be severely punished?
Will armed citizens storm the FCC building and take it over, or destroy the hard drives controlling the Internet, to get their freedom back?
These are dangerous times indeed. A lawless takeover of America is rapidly occurring on many fronts, with government coercion and control behind all of it. Americans in the past have not responded well to this sort of power grab. And by bringing in a tidal wave of illegal aliens to vote themselves more of our hard-earned tax money, well, that is the recipe for war. In fact, there are historic precedents for this throughout human history, where alien nations used surreptitious control from behind the throne to take over a competing nation they could not vanquish through warfare.
Obama did not love the America he became president of in 2008, there is no question about that. He is seeking to fundamentally transform America into something else, completely deviating from its founding principles, the principles that made our nation great and a beacon of freedom and hope.
To be fair, Obama is being aided by the weakest group of elected officials in our nation’s history. The Republicans in Congress are obsessed with their own personal power and prestige, their long careers, not with staying true to our Constitution, or to good government, or freedom of speech.
To quote many of my good friends, this situation is “unsustainable.”
Risk & Sacrifice separate grass roots activists from insulated party professionals
In 2009, like many other citizens shocked at the sudden, dramatic changes and corruption re-shaping America, I greatly increased my political activity.
Part of a grass-roots wave of citizen activists that year, I ran in a four-way US Congressional primary. It’s a long story, and in short I ended up liking one of my opponents so much I hoped he would win. Along the way, several people closely affiliated with the Republican Party tried to dissuade me from running, assuring me that a certain sitting state senator would beat the incumbent Democrat, congressman Tim Holden.
Our campaign still netted about 25% of the vote in a four-way race, which is solid performance, especially considering that one of the candidates had run before, one was a sitting state senator, one was a well-known political activist, and we had gotten a late start and spent little money.
In the general election, Holden crushed the Republican state senator who won that primary race by 400 votes.
Fast forward to January 2012, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects a new, heavily gerrymandered Republican redistricting plan. At the heart of the court’s decision was the “egregious” and grossly unnatural shape of the 15th state senate district, where I happened to then reside, and still do now, too.
The PA Supreme Court called the new district “the iron cross,” and indeed it looked like a cross shape and was iron clad against upstart citizens asserting themselves in political races reserved for establishment members only.
(My current congressional district is the same, with only about ten blocks of Harrisburg City included in what is otherwise a large, rural district reaching the Maryland state line. Guess who lives in that ten-block area. Yes. Me. )
Given my previous public interest in running for the 15th senate seat, it was obvious that excluding our family’s home from that district was purposeful: It was an attempt by political bosses to artificially silence and thwart an otherwise good candidate who does not see his job as serving political bosses.
The court’s ruling allowed a handful of us to wage a tremendous grass roots 11th hour campaign for that senate seat, getting our start two days into the three-week ballot petition process.
Although we did not win, we did give the political bosses a hell of a challenge by winning a huge number of votes with only pennies spent.
A year later, York businessman Scott Wagner beat those same political bosses for his state senate seat, in a historic write-in campaign against a million dollars of party money. The race, and its remarkable result, drew national attention. Clearly the voters responded to Wagner’s grass roots campaign in the face of a party juggernaut.
This evening I spent some time speaking with an NRA staffer. We met at the Great American Outdoor Show, which is the former Eastern Outdoors Show and now NRA-run at the PA Farm Show complex, and he gave me an opportunity to vent a bit and explain my frustration with the NRA.
To wit: An increasing number of grass roots activists now perceive the NRA as merely an arm of the Republican Party establishment political bosses. The same bosses who oppose conservative/ independent candidates like me and Wagner.
See, back in 2012, I was the only NRA member in that three-way primary race (to be fair, one candidate had been an NRA member for several months, which could never, ever be construed as a political move, even though he was the candidate selected by the same political bosses who created a safe district for him to run in), but the NRA refused to get involved.
If there was any endorsement that was deserved in that race, it would have been the NRA endorsing their one and only member, and a decades-long member at that – Me. (Firearm Owners Against Crime did endorse the one pro-Second Amendment candidate, thank you very much, Kim Stolfer)
And then tonight it dawned on me on the way home from the Farm Show complex…two basic but defining experiences separate grass roots activists and candidates from the party establishment: Risk taking and making sacrifices.
By definition, grass roots candidates take many risks and make many sacrifices, both of which are seen as signs of weakness by the establishment.
Self-starters motivated by principle and passion for good government, the grass roots candidates and activists have to reach into their own pockets to get any traction, and they often risk their jobs and businesses in challenging the establishment power structure. To get invitations to events, they have to reach out and ask, knock on doors, make phone calls. They have to cobble together campaigns made of volunteers and pennies, and they usually are grossly under-funded now matter how successful they are.
On the other hand, party establishment candidates have the ready-made party machine in their sails from the get-go. Money, experienced volunteers, paid staffers, refined walking lists, the establishment can muster a tremendous force in a relatively short time. Establishment candidates also enjoy artificial party endorsements (formal or informal) that give them access to huge pots of party campaign funds or a leg-up in other ways.
Establishment groups like NRA view grass roots candidates the same way as the party establishment views them- trouble makers.
In short, few if any establishment candidates put in their own money to drive their campaigns, take risks, or make sacrifices in their pursuit of elected office. Everything is done for them by other people.
So long as party establishment staff and officials and groups like NRA maintain this artificial lifestyle and view, this alternate reality, this disconnect between the grass roots voters and the party that needs their votes will continue and deepen.
So long as the voters see grass roots activists and candidates struggling against an unfair arrangement that is created solely for the preservation of political power and profit, they will continue to migrate away from the party and support people they can relate to the most.
An elder in my family once told me that taking risks and making sacrifices build character and lead to success, and although a 26-year career full of both risks and sacrifices has often left me wondering at the truth of that claim, I increasingly see it bearing out in electoral politics.
The voters are not dumb; they can see the pure American earnestness in their fellow citizen fighting City Hall. They respect risk-taking and sacrifices made in the pursuit of saving America. That is a strong character which no establishment candidate can or ever will have.
Those political parties and groups that ignore that strong American character do so at their own risk, because they will lose the supporters they need to be successful.
Obama: We are all ISIS, so give Iran the bomb
Nearly every time some more interesting subject begs to be written about, say, Pennsylvania’s farmland preservation program, Mr Obama inserts himself and requires an essay.
So last week, Obama had two known African murderers at his national prayer breakfast, but because they are Muslim leaders they are exonerated.
Then Obama gave a speech equating Christianity and people of all faiths today with the sadistic cruelties of ISIS, the muslim terror group of Syria and Iraq. Plenty of moral equivalence, no leadership. No criticism of Islam is allowed by Obama.
Then it turned out that the Obama administration is doing everything possible to appease Iran and enable it to manufacture its own nuclear bomb. Secret meetings with Iranian leaders, including some who are known to rape, torture, and then murder female political prisoners.
Then it turned out the Obama administration is spending American taxpayer money to fund V15, an electioneering effort to get Israel’s Netanyahu voted out of power.
Netanyahu is one of the few leaders strong enough to stand up to Obama’s appeasement policies, because he knows that Iran is not just a threat to America, it is a threat to Israel.
Now, for many years people claimed that Obama was and is a Christian. Why is that important? Because we don’t like being lied to, and we deserve to know who our leaders are. And it was important that Obama at least appear to be a Christian, to get the votes necessary to become president.
Six years later, we see a man determined to criticize Christianity, criticize Western Civilization, block all fair criticism of Islam, install the Muslim Brotherhood in powerful positions throughout American government, dramatically weaken Israel, dramatically weaken America, and facilitate Iran getting nuclear bombs which without question will be used against America and Israel.
And people wondered why so many not only didn’t trust Obama in 2008, but utterly hate him today…My God, our government has been taken over by a determined destroyer.