The Breastplate of Sanity

You may get a million people to march in the streets and chant that 2+2=5.

You may get the highest court to rule that 2+2=5 is now the law of the land.

You may even require everyone who wants to keep their job, any job, to publicly affirm that 2+2=5.

But there are two things you may never, because you can never, do.

No matter how hard you try,

You can never actually make two plus two equal five.

And no matter how much coercion you bring to bear,

You cannot make me deny that 2+2=4.

 

[written with a grateful nod to George Orwell]

The Frankfurt School: Social Collapse By Design

The following essay I regard as one of the four or five key articles every one of us should have under our belt as we go forward. Despite that it was written in Britain, it reveals more about our American situation than most things published in America. Every conservative, every Christian — indeed, everyone who feels that our society is collapsing — needs to know this truth: The current social insanity was planned. It is deliberate.

Today, in light of the Supreme Court decision that attempts to redefine marriage (and it’s only an attempt, remember, since marriage can’t be redefined, any more than 1 + 1 can be made to equal 3), this article is more important than ever.

I reprint it here in its entirety, with a few minor punctuation and spelling changes to harmonize the original British text with American usage.

 

The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to corrupt

By Timothy Matthews

“Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has been previously experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced the prospect of a fundamental alteration of the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social life rests … Civilization is being uprooted from its foundations in nature and tradition and is being reconstituted in a new organization which is as artificial and mechanical as a modern factory.”

~ Christopher Dawson,  Enquiries into Religion and Culture, p. 259.

Most of Satan’s work in the world he takes care to keep hidden. But two small shafts of light have been thrown onto his work for me just recently. The first, a short article in the Association of Catholic Women’s ACW Review; the second, a remark (which at first surprised me) from a priest in Russia who claimed that we now, in the West, live in a Communist society. These shafts of light help, especially, to explain the onslaught of officialdom which in many countries worldwide has so successfully been removing the rights of parents to be the primary educators and protectors of their children.

The ACW Review examined the corrosive work of the “Frankfurt School” – a group of German-American scholars who developed highly provocative and original perspectives on contemporary society and culture, drawing on Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber. Not that their idea of a “cultural revolution” was particularly new. “Until now,” wrote Joseph, Comte de Maistre (1753-1821) who for fifteen years was a Freemason, “nations were killed by conquest, that is by invasion. But here an important question arises: Can a nation not die on its own soil, without resettlement or invasion, by allowing the flies of decomposition to corrupt to the very core those original and constituent principles which make it what it is?”

What was the Frankfurt School? Well, in the days following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, it was believed that workers’ revolution would sweep into Europe and, eventually, into the United States. But it did not do so. Towards the end of 1922 the Communist International (Comintern) began to consider what were the reasons. On Lenin’s initiative a meeting was organized at the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.

The aim of the meeting was to clarify the concept of, and give concrete effect to, a Marxist cultural revolution. Amongst those present were Georg Lukacs (a Hungarian aristocrat, son of a banker, who had become a Communist during World War I ; a good Marxist theoretician, he developed the idea of “Revolution and Eros” — sexual instinct used as an instrument of destruction); and Willi Münzenberg (whose proposed solution was to “organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat”). “It was,”said Ralph de Toledano (1916-2007), the conservative author and co-founder of the National Review, a meeting “perhaps more harmful to Western civilization than the Bolshevik Revolution itself.”

Lenin died in 1924. By this time, however, Stalin was beginning to look on Münzenberg, Lukacs and like-thinkers as “revisionists.” In June 1940, Münzenberg fled to the south of France where, on Stalin’s orders, a NKVD assassination squad caught up with him and hanged him from a tree.

In the summer of 1924, after being attacked for his writings by the 5th Comintern Congress, Lukacs moved to Germany, where he chaired the first meeting of a group of Communist-oriented sociologists, a gathering that was to lead to the foundation of the Frankfurt School.

This “School” (designed to put flesh on their revolutionary program) was started at the University of Frankfurt in the Institut für Sozialforschung [Institute for Social Research]. To begin with, school and institute were indistinguishable. In 1923 the Institute was officially established, and funded by Felix Weil (1898-1975). Weil was born in Argentina and at the age of nine was sent to attend school in Germany. He attended the universities in Tübingen and Frankfurt, where he graduated with a doctoral degree in political science. While at these universities he became increasingly interested in socialism and Marxism. According to the intellectual historian Martin Jay, the topic of his dissertation was “the practical problems of implementing socialism.”

Carl Grünberg, the Institute’s director from 1923-1929, was an avowed Marxist, although the Institute did not have any official party affiliations. But in 1930 Max Horkheimer assumed control and he believed that Marx’s theory should be the basis of the Institute’s research. When Hitler came to power, the Institute was closed and its members, by various routes, fled to the United States and migrated to major US universities—Columbia, Princeton, Brandeis, and California at Berkeley.

The School included among its members the 1960s guru of the New Left Herbert Marcuse (denounced by Pope Paul VI for his theory of liberation which “opens the way for license cloaked as liberty”), Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, the popular writer Erich Fromm, Leo Löwenthal, and Jürgen Habermas — possibly the School’s most influential representative.

Basically, the Frankfurt School believed that as long as an individual had the belief — or even the hope of belief — that his divine gift of reason could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation that they considered necessary to provoke socialist revolution. Their task, therefore, was as swiftly as possible to undermine the Judaeo-Christian legacy. To do this they called for the most negative destructive criticism possible of every sphere of life which would be designed to de-stabilize society and bring down what they saw as the “oppressive” order. Their policies, they hoped, would spread like a virus—”continuing the work of the Western Marxists by other means” as one of their members noted.

To further the advance of their “quiet” cultural revolution — but giving us no ideas about their plans for the future — the School recommended (among other things):

1. The creation of racism offences.
2. Continual change to create confusion.
3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children.
4. The undermining of schools’ and teachers’ authority.
5. Huge immigration to destroy identity.
6. The promotion of excessive drinking.
7. Emptying of churches.
8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime.
9. Dependency on the state or state benefits.
10. Control and dumbing down of media.
11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family.

One of the main ideas of the Frankfurt School was to exploit Freud’s idea of “pansexualism”– the search for pleasure, the exploitation of the differences between the sexes, the overthrowing of traditional relationships between men and women. To further their aims they would:

• attack the authority of the father, deny the specific roles of father and mother, and wrest away from families their rights as primary educators of their children.
• abolish differences in the education of boys and girls.
• abolish all forms of male dominance – hence the presence of women in the armed forces.
• declare women to be an “oppressed class” and men as “oppressors.”

Münzenberg summed up the Frankfurt School’s long-term operation thus: “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.”

The School believed there were two types of revolution: (a) political and (b) cultural. Cultural revolution demolishes from within. “Modern forms of subjection are marked by mildness.” They saw it as a long-term project and kept their sights clearly focused on the family, education, media, sex and popular culture.

The Family

The School’s “Critical Theory” preached that the “authoritarian personality” is a product of the patriarchal family — an idea directly linked to Engels’ Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which promoted matriarchy. Already Karl Marx had written, in the Communist Manifesto, about the radical notion of a “community of women” and in The German Ideology of 1845, had written disparagingly about the idea of the family as the basic unit of society. This was one of the basic tenets of the “Critical Theory”: the necessity of breaking down the contemporary family. The Institute scholars preached that “Even a partial breakdown of parental authority in the family might tend to increase the readiness of a coming generation to accept social change.”

Following Karl Marx, the School stressed how the “authoritarian personality” is a product of the patriarchal family—it was Marx who wrote so disparagingly about the idea of the family being the basic unit of society. All this prepared the way for the warfare against the masculine gender promoted by Marcuse under the guise of “women’s liberation” and by the New Left movement in the 1960s.

They proposed transforming our culture into a female-dominated one. In 1933, Wilhelm Reich, one of their members, wrote in The Mass Psychology of Fascism that matriarchy was the only genuine family type of “natural society.” Eric Fromm was also an active advocate of matriarchal theory. Masculinity and femininity, he claimed, were not reflections of “essential” sexual differences, as the Romantics had thought, but were derived instead from differences in life functions, which were in part socially determined. His dogma was the precedent for the radical feminist pronouncements that, today, appear in nearly every major newspaper and television program.

The revolutionaries knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. They have succeeded.

Education

Lord Bertrand Russell joined with the Frankfurt School in their effort at mass social engineering and spilled the beans in his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society. He wrote: “Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development.” The importance of mass psychology “has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called education. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray . When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Writing in 1992 in Fidelio Magazine, (“The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness”), Michael Minnicino observed how the heirs of Marcuse and Adorno now completely dominate the universities, “teaching their own students to replace reason with ‘Politically Correct’ ritual exercises. There are very few theoretical books on arts, letters, or language published today in the United States or Europe which do not openly acknowledge their debt to the Frankfurt School. The witchhunt on today’s campuses is merely the implementation of Marcuse’s concept of ‘repressive toleration’ — tolerance for movements from the left, but intolerance for movements from the right — enforced by the students of the Frankfurt School.”

Drugs

Dr. Timothy Leary gave us another glimpse into the mind of the Frankfurt School in his account of the work of the Harvard University Psychedelic Drug Project, Flashbacks. He quoted a conversation that he had with Aldous Huxley: “‘These brain drugs, mass produced in the laboratories, will bring about vast changes in society. This will happen with or without you or me. All we can do is spread the word. The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible.'” Leary then went on: “We had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism had arrived.”

One of the directors of the Authoritarian Personality project, R. Nevitt Sanford, played a pivotal role in the usage of psychedelic drugs. In 1965, he wrote in a book issued by the publishing arm of the UK’s Tavistock Institute: “The nation seems to be fascinated by our 40,000 or so drug addicts who are seen as alarmingly wayward people who must be curbed at all costs by expensive police activity. Only an uneasy Puritanism could support the practice of focusing on the drug addicts (rather than our 5 million alcoholics) and treating them as a police problem instead of a medical one, while suppressing harmless drugs such as marijuana and peyote along with the dangerous ones.” The leading propagandists of today’s drug lobby base their argument for legalization on the same scientific quackery spelled out all those years ago by Dr. Sanford.

Such propagandists include the multi-billionaire atheist George Soros who chose, as one of his first domestic programs, to fund efforts to challenge the efficacy of America’s $37-billion-a-year war on drugs. The Soros-backed Lindesmith Center serves as a leading voice for Americans who want to decriminalize drug use. “Soros is the ‘Daddy Warbucks’ of drug legalization,” claimed Joseph Califano, Jr., of Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (The Nation, Sept. 2, 1999).

Music, Television and Popular Culture

Adorno was to become head of a “music studies”unit, where in his “Theory of New Music” [what is meant here is probably Adorno’s book Philosophy of Modern Music — ed.] he promoted the prospect of unleashing atonal and other popular music as a weapon to destroy society, degenerate forms of music to promote mental illness. He said the U.S. could be brought to its knees by the use of radio and television to promote a culture of pessimism and despair — by the late 1930s he (together with Horkheimer) had migrated to Hollywood. The expansion of violent video-games also well supported the School’s aims.

Sex

In his book The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom observed how Marcuse appealed to university students in the sixties with a combination of Marx and Freud. “In Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse promised that the overcoming of capitalism and its false consciousness will result in a society where the greatest satisfactions are sexual. Rock music touches the same chord in the young. Free sexual expression, anarchism, mining of the irrational unconscious and giving it free rein are what they have in common.”

The Media

The modern media — not least, Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger, Jr., who took charge of the New York Times in 1992 — drew greatly on the Frankfurt School’s study The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950). In his book Arrogance (Warner Books, 1993), former CBS News reporter Bernard Goldberg noted of Sulzberger that he “still believes in all those old sixties notions about ‘liberation’ and ‘changing the world man’ . . . In fact, the Punch years have been a steady march down PC Boulevard, with a newsroom fiercely dedicated to every brand of diversity except the intellectual kind.”

In 1953 the Institute moved back to the University of Frankfurt. Adorno died in 1955 and Horkheimer in 1973. The Institute for Social Research continued, but what was known as the Frankfurt School did not. The “cultural Marxism” that has since taken hold of our schools and universities — that “political correctness” which has been destroying our family bonds, our religious tradition and our entire culture — sprang from the Frankfurt School.

It was these intellectual Marxists who, later, during the anti-Vietnam demonstrations, coined the phrase “make love, not war”; it was these intellectuals who promoted the dialectic of “negative” criticism; it was these theoreticians who dreamed of a utopia where their rules governed. It was their concept that led to the current fad for the rewriting of history, and to the vogue for “deconstruction.” Their mantras: “sexual differences are a contract; if it feels good, do it; do your own thing.”

In an address at the U.S. Naval Academy in August 1999, Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR USN (Ret), gave a background briefing on the Frankfurt School, reminding his audience that it was the “foot soldiers” of the Frankfurt School who introduced the “sensitivity training” techniques used in public schools over the past 30 years (and now employed by the U.S. military to educate the troops about “sexual harassment”). During “sensitivity” training, teachers were told not to teach but to “facilitate.” Classrooms became centers of self-examination where children talked about their own subjective feelings. This technique was designed to convince children they were the sole authority in their own lives.

Atkinson continued: “The ‘authoritarian personality,’ studied by the Frankfurt School in the 1940s and 1950s in America, prepared the way for the subsequent warfare against the masculine gender promoted by Herbert Marcuse and his band of social revolutionaries under the guise of “women’s liberation” and the New Left movement in the 1960s. The evidence that psychological techniques for changing personality is intended to mean emasculation of the American male is provided by Abraham Maslow, founder of Third Force Humanist Psychology and a promoter of the psychotherapeutic classroom, who wrote that, “… the next step in personal evolution is a transcendence of both masculinity and femininity to general humanness.”

On April 17th, 1962, Maslow gave a lecture to a group of nuns at Sacred Heart, a Catholic women’s college in Massachusetts. He noted in a diary entry how the talk had been very “successful,” but he found that very fact troubling. “They shouldn’t applaud me,” he wrote, “they should attack. If they were fully aware of what I was doing, they would [attack]” (Journals, p. 157).

The Network

In her booklet Sex & Social Engineering (Family Education Trust 1994) Valerie Riches observed how in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were intensive parliamentary campaigns taking place emanating from a number of organizations in the field of birth control (i.e., contraception, abortion, sterilization). “From an analysis of their annual reports, it became apparent that a comparatively small number of people were involved to a surprising degree in an array of pressure groups. This network was not only linked by personnel, but by funds, ideology and sometimes addresses; it was also backed by vested interests and supported by grants in some cases by government departments. At the heart of the network was the Family Planning Association (FPA) with its own collection of offshoots. What we unearthed was a power structure with enormous influence.

“Deeper investigation revealed that the network, in fact, extended further afield, into eugenics, population control, birth control, sexual and family law reforms, and sex and health education. Its tentacles reached out to publishing houses, medical, educational and research establishments, women’s organizations and marriage guidance—anywhere where influence could be exerted. It appeared to have great influence over the media, and over permanent officials in relevant government departments, out of all proportion to the numbers involved.

“During our investigations, a speaker at a Sex Education Symposium in Liverpool outlined tactics of sex education saying: ‘if we do not get into sex education, children will simply follow the mores of their parents.’ The fact that sex education was to be the vehicle for peddlers of secular humanism soon became apparent.

“However, at that time the power of the network and the full implications of its activities were not fully understood. It was thought that the situation was confined to Britain. The international implications had not been grasped.

“Soon after, a little book was published with the intriguing title The Men Behind Hitler—A German Warning to the World. Its thesis was that the eugenics movement, which had gained popularity early in the twentieth century, had gone underground following the holocaust in Nazi Germany, but was still active and functioning through organizations promoting abortion, euthanasia, sterilization, mental health, etc. The author urged the reader to look at his home country and neighboring countries, for he would surely find that members and committees of these organizations would cross-check to a remarkable extent.

“Other books and papers from independent sources later confirmed this situation. . . . A remarkable book was also published in America which documented the activities of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). It was entitled The SIECUS Circle: A Humanist Revolution. SIECUS was set up in 1964 and lost no time in engaging in a program of social engineering by means of sex education in the schools. Its first executive director was Mary Calderone, who was also closely linked to Planned Parenthood, the American equivalent of the British FPA. According to The SIECUS Circle, Calderone supported sentiments and theories put forward by Rudolph Dreikus, a humanist, such as:

· merging or reversing the sexes or sex roles;
· liberating children from their families;
· abolishing the family as we know it.”

In their book Mind Siege (Thomas Nelson, 2000), Tim LaHaye and David A. Noebel confirmed Riches’s findings of an international network. “The leading authorities of Secular Humanism may be pictured as the starting lineup of a baseball team: pitching is John Dewey; catching is Isaac Asimov; first base is Paul Kurtz; second base is Corliss Lamont; third base is Bertrand Russell; shortstop is Julian Huxley; left fielder is Richard Dawkins; center fielder is Margaret Sanger; right fielder is Carl Rogers; manager is ‘Christianity is for losers’ Ted Turner; designated hitter is Mary Calderone; utility players include the hundreds listed in the back of Humanist Manifesto I and II, including Eugenia C. Scott, Alfred Kinsey, Abraham Maslow, Erich Fromm, Rollo May and Betty Friedan.

“In the grandstands sit the sponsoring or sustaining organizations, such as . . . the Frankfurt School; the left wing of the Democratic Party; the Democratic Socialists of America; Harvard University; Yale University; University of Minnesota; University of California (Berkeley); and two thousand other colleges and universities.”

A practical example

A practical example of how the tidal wave of Maslow-think is engulfing English schools was revealed in an article in the British National Association of Catholic Families’ (NACF) Catholic Family newspaper (August 2000), where James Caffrey warned about the Citizenship (PSHE) program which was shortly to be drafted into the National Curriculum. [This would be the British equivalent of Common Core here in the U.S. – ed.] “We need to look carefully at the vocabulary used in this new subject,” he wrote, “and, more importantly, discover the philosophical basis on which it is founded. The clues to this can be found in the word ‘choice’ which occurs frequently in the Citizenship documentation and the great emphasis placed on pupils’ discussing and ‘clarifying’ their own views, values and choices about any given issue. This is nothing other than the concept known as ‘Values Clarification’–a concept anathema to Catholicism, or indeed, to Judaism and Islam.

“This concept was pioneered in California in the 1960’s by psychologists William Coulson, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. It was based on ‘humanistic’ psychology, in which patients were regarded as the sole judge of their actions and moral behavior. Having pioneered the technique of Values Clarification the psychologists introduced it into schools and other institutions such as convents and seminaries–with disastrous results. Convents emptied, religious lost their vocations and there was wholesale loss of belief in God. Why? Because Catholic institutions are founded on absolute beliefs in, for example, the Creed and the Ten Commandments. Values Clarification supposes a moral relativism in which there is no absolute right or wrong and no dependence on God.

“This same system is to be introduced to the vulnerable minds of infants, juniors and adolescents in the years 2000+. The underlying philosophy of Values Clarification holds that for teachers to promote virtues such as honesty, justice or chastity constitutes indoctrination of children and ‘violates’ their moral freedom. It is urged that children should be free to choose their own values; the teacher must merely ‘facilitate’ and must avoid all moralizing or criticizing. As a barrister commented recently on worrying trends in Australian education, ‘The core theme of values clarification is that there are no right or wrong values. Values education does not seek to identify and transmit ‘right’ values, teaching of the Church, especially the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

“In the absence of clear moral guidance, children naturally make choices based on feelings. Powerful peer pressure, freed from the values which stem from a divine source, ensure that ‘shared values’ sink to the lowest common denominator. References to environmental sustainability lead to a mindset where anti-life arguments for population control are presented as being both responsible and desirable. Similarly, ‘informed choices’ about health and lifestyles are euphemisms for attitudes antithetical to Christian views on motherhood, fatherhood, the sacrament of marriage and family life. Values Clarification is covert and dangerous. It underpins the entire rationale of Citizenship (PSHE) and is to be introduced by statute into the U.K. soon. It will give young people secular values and imbue them with the attitude that they alone hold ultimate authority and judgement about their lives. No Catholic school can include this new subject as formulated in the Curriculum 2000 document within its current curriculum provision. Dr. William Coulson recognized the psychological damage Rogers’ technique inflicted on youngsters and rejected it, devoting his life to exposing its dangers. Should those in authority in Catholic education not do likewise, as ‘Citizenship’ makes its deadly approach?”

If we allow their subversion of values and interests to continue, we will, in future generations, lose all that our ancestors suffered and died for. We are forewarned, says Atkinson. A reading of history (it is all in mainstream historical accounts) tells us that we are about to lose the most precious thing we have—our individual freedoms.

Big Society

And now in Britain we see the influence of the Frankfurt School edging even further forwards in the form of the Alinsky-inspired “Big Society.”

Yet another “transformational Marxist,” Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) was a radical Chicago activist–idolized by Barack Obama–who had made a study of Antonio Gramsci’s blueprint for social transformation and avidly promoted the Frankfurt School’s strategy of the “long march through the institutions.”

[Alinsky] was convinced that the overthrow of western society should be carried out, not noisily, but with stealth and deception. It was necessary, he believed, to cultivate a down-to-earth image of pragmatism and centrism; he cultivated the rich and influential; politicians fell under his spell. He won the hearts of globalist-leaders around the world. “True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism,” Alinsky taught, “they cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.” The trick, as he saw it, was to penetrate existing institutions: churches, unions, political parties. He even spent time in Milan with Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul VI) at the instigation of Jacques Maritain (cf. Faithful Citizens, Austen Ivereigh, Longman & Todd)

“Change” became [Alinsky’s] battle-cry. In the opening paragraph of his book Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (published a year before his death and dedicated to Lucifer, “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom”), he wrote, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

“Change” meant turning society inside out, and this would be accomplished by duping the idealistic middle classes, by winning their trust with fine-sounding phrases about morality. And all this, he declared, would come about through the work of “People’s Organizations.”

“These People’s Organizations,” wrote John Perazzo in FrontPageMagazine.com, “were to be composed largely of discontented individuals who believed that society was replete with injustices that prevented them from being able to live satisfying lives. Such organizations, Alinsky advised, should not be imported from the outside into a community, but rather should be staffed by locals who, with some guidance from trained radical organisers, could set their own agendas.”

And so it was that in the U.K. in 2009, David Cameron, apparently mesmerized by his friend Barack Obama, announced that he would help push forward the decades-long march by endorsing the Alinsky program by creating a “neighborhood army” of 5,000 full-time professional “community organizers.” Could he possibly have realized what he was doing?

In a February 2009 Investors Business Daily article entitled “Alinsky’s Rules: Must Reading In Obama Era,” Phyllis Schlafly wrote that Alinsky’s “tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends” is: “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.” He doesn’t ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He is much more devious; he teaches his followers that “Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means. . . .

“The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems,” and “organizations must be based on many issues.” The organizer “must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.”

As his fervent acolyte Hillary Clinton enthusiastically pointed out, in a 1969 Wellesley College thesis, “if the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution.”

Conclusion

“What we are at present experiencing,” writes Philip Trower in a letter to the author, “is a blend of two schools of thought; the Frankfurt School and the liberal tradition going back to the 18th century Enlightenment. The Frankfurt School has of course its remote origins in the 18th century Enlightenment. But like Lenin’s Marxism it is a breakaway movement. The immediate aims of both classical liberalism and the Frankfurt School have been in the main the same (vide your eleven points above) but the final end is different. For liberals they lead to ‘improving’ and ‘perfecting’ western culture, for the Frankfurt School they bring about its destruction.

“Unlike hard-line Marxists, the Frankfurt School do not make any plans for the future. (But) the Frankfurt School seems to be more far-sighted than our classical liberals and secularists. At least they see the moral deviations they promote will in the end make social life impossible or intolerable. But this leaves a big question mark over what a future conducted by them would be like.”

Meanwhile, the Quiet Revolution rolls forward.

Timothy Matthews is the editor of the British edition of Catholic Family News, a news service of the National Association of Catholic Families, in the United Kingdom. The original U.S. appearance of the article was in the Catholic weekly The Wanderer, December 11, 2008, was reprinted by CatholicInsight.com on March 17, 2009, and is still available at FreeRepublic.com. The author has since updated it, adding the “Big Society” section, which is included here.

 

Before You Vote…

An appeal to my reasonable conservative friends:

Important: if you are not reasonable and open-minded, don’t read any further. I’m not looking for “zots.” I’m looking for reasonable people who are serious about making the right choice. When I know I’ve chosen wisely, I feel at peace, without doubt in my mind, and start to get excited – like Chrissy Mathews, I get “that tingle.” How do you feel when you know you’ve made the right choice?

At this point, you’ve been following the primary race for months, and that means you are looking to make the right choice. Are you aware of how important making the right choice is in this primary process? I agree, and that’s why it is important to keep an open mind. That’s why you’ve read this far, so you might as well hear me out.

Obama has made it clear that he is pinning his reelection efforts on class warfare. So, think about whom you would want the GOP nominee to be if you were Obama, and you needed a target for class warfare? I agree – Mitt Romney. Understand that Obama uses Alinsky tactics, and Alinsky tactic 13 is “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Simply put, it is much easier to attack an organization or an idea if you can ‘put a face on it’. If you can find a single individual who both represents your opponent, and who, given the right spin, can be portrayed as the face of evil, you can use this person as a proxy for your attacks on your adversary. What face would you put on the 1%? Mitt Romney.

You may think that Mitt Romney is a great guy, and a great example of success, and I agree with some of that (and certainly applaud his success), and I would add that you should have no doubt in your mind that this is exactly what Obama will do (stick a big, fat 1% on him), and you can imagine that he is licking his chops in anticipation of doing it. If Mitt Romney is the nominee, this is what the general election will look like. Click Here. No matter what he says or how well he says it, he will not be able to shake that label. How does that make you feel about Mitt? And it doesn’t help that he has a habit of making mistakes and saying the wrong thing. Click here. Even Romney booster John McCain no longer believes Romney can win. Click Here. Moving on.

Obama’s second trick is throwing “red meat” distractions to keep us from discussing the areas where he is most vulnerable, such as economic and foreign policy. The biggest distraction so far has been the contraception controversy. And Rick Santorum took the bait- big time. Rick Santorum is a great father with great moral values, but he is also a one trick pony. Social issues are important, but he just can’t stop talking about them, and that has gotten him in a ton of trouble. The issue isn’t that he talks a lot about social policy, the issue is that he just can’t change gears quickly enough to avoid the damage caused by Obama’s intentional deceptions and sleights-of-hand. Consider how many distractions Obama will throw out there if Rick is the nominee. We’ll be talking about birth control all the way through November. By the time Rick manages to shift the debate back to Obama’s weak points, it may be too late.

Rick also tends to make serious, and very public, mistakes. For example, he loses his cool very quickly. Click Here. Cringing? He also gets confused regularly – in this instance, he gives Obama credit for CREATING jobs, publicly, on CNN! Click here. Just imagine if he makes even ONE mistake like this in the months between the nomination and the general election. Understand the very real risk with Rick. How do you feel about that, given the stakes?

Please understand that all of this is just fact, and I understand that some of you will now feel a bit disturbed and unsure at this point. But, I digress.

Newt is a flawed man, but recognize that his flaws are less subject to substantive attack. For example, Freddie and Fannie? It may be a big deal in the Republican primary, but Democrats do NOT want to go there! Yes, he’s had multiple marriages, but how many times has Rush been married? Do you still listen to Rush, at least here and there? And, of course, Democrats cannot launch credible attacks on the subject of adultery – we can go there. Before I close, I urge you to do one thing, and one thing only… please watch this video – click here. You’ve read this far, so another minute or two won’t kill you. Click here. Now, how do you feel about this man going up against Barack Obama?

The above letter from J.M. Stein at Red Side of Life is so good, as is, that I chose not to break up his text with my comments.

Indeed, Stein makes a very compelling case. But if there is still any doubt in your mind, please consider a few additional facts:

• Besides the “1%er” card that Stein says will be played against Romney, the Democrats also have their old favorite: the race card. Mitt is a very committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, aka the Mormons, and until 1978, Mormon theology relegated blacks to a kind of second-class membership in the church. After considerable social and political pressure, the church’s “living prophet” declared a new “revelation” changing the previous position which had been held since the church’s inception. Already, many on the Left are raising a stink about this. We can be sure that if Mitt were the nominee, this ugly issue would only get uglier — much uglier. The Democrat-Media Complex will make sure of that.

• The issue of contraception is problematic for Santorum not only for the reason Stein explains — namely, that the Left is skillfully and shamelessly using it to sidetrack discussion away from Obama’s staggering malfeasances in both foreign and domestic policy — but also because the driving force behind Obama is the “Shadow Party” funded by George Soros, who has an obsession with population control. Soros and other Agenda 21 promoters believe that world population must be reduced by literally billions of people. Santorum, the father of seven children — one of whom has Trisomy-18, a genetic disorder for which many Leftists believe abortion to be the only appropriate response — has the Left’s bull’s-eye on his back.

• The Left surely will demonize Newt just as viciously as they would Romney or Santorum. That’s what the Left does — to anyone who opposes them. A key difference, however, is that Newt fights back. Like the late, great Andrew Breitbart, Newt is a “happy warrior” who both understands the Left, and loves taking them on. Plus, like Breitbart, Newt understands that Big Media is every bit as much our opponent as is the Democratic Party. He is smart, articulate and confident enough to be able to answer their attacks on the spot, without hemming or hawing. People in media continually try to nail Newt with their “gotcha” questions — but they never succeed.

• America’s survival is threatened not only by terrorism and rogue states outside our borders, but by two major enemies within: communism and radical Islam. Yet, no other candidate besides Newt even mentions Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers and George Soros. Newt is the only one who seems to recognize — or at least, will publicly say — that Obama is not a misguided incompetent with well-meaning intentions, but rather a Marxist radical who believes America is more evil than good, and who is committed to destroying the freedoms that have made America great. As for radical Islam, while Rick Santorum recognizes the threat from Iran, and is very knowledgeable on national security matters, only Newt recognizes — and openly talks about — the giant strides that sharia (Islamic law) has already made right here in the U.S., thanks to CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA and the whole alphabet soup of Muslim Brotherhood-spawned groups that, despite proven connections to Hamas and other terror groups, are presented as legitimate “moderates” in our media and have infiltrated our government at high levels, including within the Department of Homeland Security.

• We can look around and see the perfect storm of economic collapse, national-security threats and inflamed social passions that is converging on us. America is — whether or not we yet realize it — in as much danger now as Britain was in the spring of 1940. Almost too late, the British people finally recognized that Winston Churchill — whom they’d previously despised as “impulsive” and “arrogant,” whom they’d castigated for his “poor judgment” and “grandiose ideas” — was actually the best man, perhaps the only man, who could lead them through the crisis. I’m not saying Newt is Churchill — but having studied Churchill, I am struck by the remarkable parallels between the two. Just as Churchill saw who Hitler really was long before most of his countrymen woke up, Newt understands the dangers to America that many people have so far been unable or unwilling to see. Newt will help open their eyes — because, like Churchill, Newt has a gift for explaining things in ways people can understand. Just as importantly, Newt has the bulldog tenacity and unabashed can-do attitude that the nation needs in its leader if we are to make it through the tough times ahead. As we saw so clearly during the South Carolina debate — when standing ovations kept erupting as Newt spoke — Newt has, as Churchill did, the power to inspire.

Sebelius on the attack! Against the good guys, of course.

Shocking things have become such a daily occurrence under the Obama regime that I gave up blogging a few months ago.  There was no way to cover all the outrages — or even to pick what to cover from the overwhelming barrage.

This morning, however, something came along that hits so close to home, I am inspired to write.  The horror of ObamaCare has now gotten all too personal.  Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services, has chosen, as her first victim in the coming war on insurance companies, my own insurer, the company that has covered — and graciously served — my family for the past 19 years.

The Washington Times, via WeaselZippers, has the story:

The Obama administration on Monday called on a Mennonite-owned health insurance company to cancel its proposed 11.6 percent rate hike, marking the first time the government has tried to pressure a private company under the new health care law.

For those of you who may not know, Mennonites are a Christian denomination that emphasizes non-violence, much as the Quakers do, and mutual assistance, much as Jewish groups have historically been known for.  Mennonites originated in Switzerland in the 16th century, were persecuted by both Catholics and Lutherans, and now include members in many countries all over the world.  Mennonite congregations and lifestyles range over a broad spectrum, with the Amish being the most traditional.

While Pennsylvania-based Everence Insurance said it needs to raise rates on about 5,000 customers to cover costs, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius called the increase “unreasonable,” holding it up as evidence that the government has an important role to play in reining in the cost of coverage.

I won’t go into private family stories here, but suffice it to say that during some very difficult times, Everence (formerly Mennonite Mutual Aid) was there for us in a way I simply cannot imagine any other insurance company doing.  Not only have Everence employees been like angels to my family, they get high marks from all our healthcare providers, too.  I can’t tell you how often I’ve received spontaneous, out-of-the-blue remarks from healthcare professionals about how extraordinarily nice our insurer is to deal with.

In part, this is because Everence/MMA is a very small company, i.e., no huge, intimidating, cumbersome bureaucracy.  But perhaps more importantly, it’s because they are Christians, who take their mission seriously.  As an Everence case manager once told me, “We don’t see ourselves as an insurance company.  Look at our name: Mennonite Mutual Aid.  Christians helping Christians.  That’s what we try to be. We are a Christian mutual aid society, not an insurance company.”

Although I am a Catholic now, the rest of my family still attends a Mennonite church, and we have stayed with our Mennonite insurer.  You could look all over America, and I am convinced you would not find a more ethical and caring insurer than this small Mennonite association, which raises rates only with reluctance, and by no more than what’s needed for financial survival.  There is thus a particularly galling irony in the fact that of all the insurers in America, Kathleen Sebelius and her minions would pick this one to attack first.

But then again, perhaps it makes perfect sense in a perverse way.  We know that bullies are cowards at heart, so they usually go after the little guys.  And they often target Christians, whom they know hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior than that of the bullies.  Some readers might find additional irony in the fact that this leftist Administration is targeting a denomination whose most famous trademark is its strict pacifism.  You’d think the anti-war liberals would give them a break, wouldn’t you?  But some of us have been saying for a long time that, contrary to popular stereotypes, the Left is not and never has been nonviolent.

I am happy to note that the Mennonites, pacifists though they be, are resisting Sebelius’ efforts to intimidate them.

With the first plan to be ruled unreasonable by the administration, Everence indicated it would not back away from the rate hike, although the Mennonite-affiliated company will be required to publicly justify it on the website healthcare.gov.

The fact that Obama, Sebelius & Co. are going on big-time offense against such a small fish — and a virtuous, Christian one, at that — is just one more bit of evidence that these people really are doing the devil’s work.  But it may be taking them by surprise to come up against something of which they seem to have no concept: the unearthly strength and courage that Christ the King gives His humble followers, who bow to no one but Him.

Lights-out time for incandescents

Better keep stockpiling those incandescent light bulbs, folks, because yesterday Congress voted not to overturn the phase-out of conventional incandescent light bulbs that begins less than six months from now.

Libertarian types have long opposed the virtual ban for lofty-sounding (although perfectly correct) reasons — government overreach, violation of free-market principles, blatant flouting of the Constitution — but I confess that my own visceral revulsion at the light-bulb mandate comes from more practical, down-to-earth considerations.

First, fluorescent light gives some people migraine headaches, it torments those of us with visual and/or auditory hypersensitivity, and it aggravates ADHD, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. (Could that be one reason ADHD rates have gone through the roof the last few decades, as schools have phased out incandescent lights as well as good old-fashioned windows?)

Secondly, compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) contain mercury. Have you read the EPA’s official guide on handling CFLs? Heaven help you if you ever break one of the darn things. The first thing you have to do is turn off the air-conditioner or heater (any forced-air system) and open all the windows, so that the mercury vapor released when the bulb broke can be aired out of the house. The guide hasn’t yet been updated to reflect the latest findings that some of the mercury may remain in your house for up to 128 days.

All the materials you use to do the cleanup have to be put into a sealed glass or plastic container and taken to the nearest Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Disposal Center. If you live in a rural area, as I do, and that center is a long way away, you’ll just have to set aside the container of hazardous stuff in a safe place until your next trip to the big city. But you’d better call ahead; some HHW centers are only open one day a week, or month. (How many whipped American citizens does it take to change a broken light bulb? Three. One to open all the windows, one to keep the children out of the room, and one to call the HazMat team.)

Even bulbs that don’t get broken require special disposal procedures. Ideally, they should be recycled — either at a HHW disposal center, or at certain commercial establishments such as Ace, Lowe’s, Home Depot and IKEA. The EPA has a handy-dandy guide for that, too.  Unfortunately, according to the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers, only about 2% of CFLs are being disposed of properly. The other 98% end up in landfills. Is anyone surprised?

And what is all of this folderol and rigmarole for, anyway — to save energy? When you factor in all the costs — manufacture and disposal — of these confounded bulbs, I’m not so sure that they save energy at all. But assuming they do save a little, why have they become such a sacred cow for the Left? Because of “global warming” (AGW)? Are you kidding me? It’s as if ClimateGate never happened. The veil has been lifted on what is probably the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated — but our government leaders continue to walk around with a blanket over their heads.

Unfortunately, they have little incentive to come out from under it. Al Gore with his billions he’s made in the global warming con game is only the tip of the iceberg. Vast multitudes of EPA and DOE bureaucrats, along with the scientists to whom they dole out grants (i.e., our tax dollars), make their living off of the “climate change” scam.

Molly Ivins was a diehard leftist, but I’ve always thought she got one thing right. She said that no matter how solid your facts and how logical your argument, you will never get someone to see the plain truth if they have a vested interest in not seeing it.

I think of that bit of wisdom when I consider GE, the largest manufacturer of CFLs as well as the largest manufacturer of the turbines used for wind power. Given that its CEO, Jeff Immelt, is one of Obama’s closest advisors, don’t expect any light bulbs to go on over the heads of either Immelt or Obama — or their legions of lackeys.

Thad McCotter shakes up the presidential race

If you don’t know who Thad McCotter is, don’t worry; you will soon. The next GOP candidate debate is scheduled for August 11, and it’s safe to say that McCotter’s presence in the lineup will get a lot of folks’ attention. Let’s put it this way: he’s not only the tallest guy in the room, but the brainiest. Also, the wittiest — as anyone who’s seen any of his frequent appearances on FOX’s “RedEye” knows.

When I first heard the name Thaddeus McCotter several years ago, I pictured an older Southern gentleman, white-haired, with spectacles and an old-fashioned pocketwatch in his vest, complete with a fob… Colonel Sanders without the bowtie.  Whoa.  I was way off base. Turns out the five-term Michigan Congressman is lean and tall, relatively young, athletic (football and baseball), and the lead guitarist in a Congressional rock-n-roll band, the “Second Amendments.“

Formerly the head of the Republican Policy Committee — the #4 GOP leadership position in the House — McCotter represents Michigan’s 11th district, which includes western and northwestern suburbs of Detroit. A Detroit native, McCotter is highly sensitive to the automotive industry which employs (or has employed) many of his constituents. This may explain several pro-union votes cast by McCotter that many GOP primary voters, myself included, may find troubling.

However, since there is no perfect candidate (“perfect” being defined as: “agrees with me 100% on every issue”), I have a one-free-pass policy: I give each candidate a “Get Out of Jail Free” card on one issue. I figure that’s as close to perfect as you’re ever going to get in an imperfect world — and in the particularly imperfect world of politics. And that’s just on the issues. The perfect candidate also needs to be someone who can win.

Let me tell you how close to perfect McCotter is. He has the sheer intellectual firepower of Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann’s passion for the Constitution, the even temperament of Tim Pawlenty, the moral compass of Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain’s can-do American spirit. All that, plus a great sense of humor.

On the issues, McCotter is pro-life, pro-Israel, anti-Obamacare; he advocates lower taxes, reduced spending, small government, a strong defense, energy independence and Paul Ryan’s budget plan. He believes in responsible stewardship of natural resources but doesn’t buy the global warming hoax. The most recent piece of legislation he’s introduced is H.R. 2261, a bill to cut off United States contributions to the United Nations if if the U.N. goes through with recognizing an independent Palestinian “state” as planned this fall.

Actually, most of the GOP candidates share those views. I don’t understand conservative pundits who complain about the lineup of Republican candidates. I happen to think we suffer from “an embarrassment of riches.” Our candidates — those who have announced and the potential ones waiting in the wings — are fabulous, in my opinion, both in their stands on the issues and in their personal skills and experience. If anything, the problem is one of choosing between many excellent and virtuous people.

So what makes McCotter stand out? At least two very major things. First, he has a profound vision of the Big Picture — and, crucially, the ability to articulate it — that is reminiscent of G.K. Chesterton. Second, he has thought through, and deeply cares about, some hugely important issues that I don’t see anyone else in the GOP addressing:

1.  the very real challenges posed by globalization (jobs go to where labor is cheapest, even if that means prison and slave labor);

2.  the fact that Communist China is really and truly Communist, can not be trusted, and indeed is taking hostile action against us politically, economically, technologically and militarily;

3.  the fact that both for economic and for military security, we need a manufacturing base in this country;

4.  the crucial importance of “intermediating institutions” to the social fabric — churches, parent-teacher organizations, Kiwanis clubs, softball leagues, Boy Scouts, small-town chambers of commerce, etc. — without which society is hollowed out, reduced to isolated and vulnerable individuals on one end and an intrusive, overreaching government on the other. It is these intermediating institutions that help keep families and communities strong, strong enough to neither desire nor create an opening for the “nanny state.”

This last point is what Catholic social teaching calls “subsidiarity” — the principle that “human affairs are best handled at the lowest possible level, closest to the affected persons.” In other words, if a need can be met by one’s family, then the school or community should not interfere. If the local community can meet the need, then the state or its agencies should stay the heck out of the picture.

Thad McCotter “gets” all this on a deep, instinctual level — and that’s another reason his thinking reminds me of G.K. Chesterton, who was probably the most able exponent in the English language of the concept of subsidiarity. Many of our conservative candidates are “pro-family” — but precious few (Santorum is the only other one I can think of) explicitly recognize the crucial principle of subsidiarity, without which the bones of a pro-family stance have no flesh.

McCotter asserts that too many of us on the right, losing sight of subsidiarity, have become almost as ideological as our enemies on the left. We have gotten suckered into the ideology of “creative destruction,” which is not true conservatism at all. Here’s how McCotter explains it in his book, Seize Freedom!: “Creative destruction” is

the ideology that led “conservatives” to falsely think materialist panaceas — notably the chimera of “free trade” — would solve all problems between peoples.  Enrapt by this deceit, the heralds of “creative destruction” (for everyone but themselves) placed a greater value on saving five dollars on an imported shirt from a sweatshop than on defending the inherent dignity of individuals; than on ensuring fair competition and jobs for American manufacturers and workers; than on securing the national security of the United States from predatory nations like Communist China; and, yes, than on preserving the moral foundations of American culture, which secures and sustains our free-market prosperity.

I like and trust Thad McCotter because he espouses the basic, common-sense truth that I first heard articulated by Mike Huckabee back in 2008: To be secure and to remain free, our country absolutely must be self-sufficient in three things — food, energy and defense. Did you know that we have been outsourcing various defense-systems components? Not to mention that we import many of the machine tools that we need for manufacturing the components that we do still make here. Unlike any of the other candidates, Thad McCotter prioritizes not just “jobs” in the abstract, but specifically the necessity for America to restore its manufacturing base, which he calls our “Arsenal of Democracy.”

As for the “food” leg of the three-legged food-energy-defense stool, you will notice that McCotter is the only Republican candidate who mentions farmers. (He even put that electric guitar of his to use playing at a Farm Aid concert.) McCotter believes that the information-and-services economy so beloved by the liberal elites is no stable economy at all. A healthy, secure America, he says, is a nation of factories, and (significantly to this heartlander) “a nation of farms.”

As an admirer of E.F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry, and G.K. Chesterton, I love it that McCotter believes these things to his marrow. But the scheming political activist in me that wants to win elections rejoices that McCotter’s combination of conservative social values, strong-national-defense advocacy, and blue-collar (both factory and farm) sympathies will appeal to precisely those same working-class voters who enabled Ronald Reagan to win the White House, introducing the term “Reagan Democrats” to the American political lexicon.

McCotter can win those people in the middle who voted for Obama in 2008 because they’d bought the lie that Obama was a “moderate” and a “uniter.” Those people, now disillusioned, are more than ready to vote for a Republican, provided that they feel that he or she understands their concerns. Most importantly, Thad McCotter will win them not by watering down conservatism, but by explaining it so well that he will persuade people of the logic and rightness of conservatism. Just as Reagan did.

Congressman Pat Tiberi of Ohio says that McCotter represents an important part of the Reagan coalition that the GOP is going to have to win again to be a successful national party. “When my dad voted for Ronald Reagan, it was the first Republican he ever voted for,” Tiberi says. “He was a Catholic, a union worker, an immigrant. We need to reach voters like that who share our values but identify with the Democrats for demographic reasons.” McCotter, he says, “clearly and confidently communicates what he believes” in a way that “speaks to them.”

All right, enough about Thad McCotter. Check him out for yourself. Here he is in Whitmore Lake, MI, announcing his candidacy at a July 4th weekend “Freedom Fest”:

As you can see,  Joshua Sharf got it right when he said, “McCotter takes his politics seriously, but not himself, a rare characteristic in a politician.”

McCotter has a solid worldview, not just a set of talking points; a philosophy, not just a personal promotion strategy.

His book, Seize Freedom!, is available from Amazon; many of his speeches and interviews are online at YouTube (I’ve added one of my favorite McCotter speeches to the “Great Speeches” page here at this blog); and the best profiles I’ve seen of the man are at American Spectator and the New York Daily News.

Check out his campaign website, McCotter 2012.

As for me, I’m counting down the days until the Iowa Straw Poll. McCotter’s going to rock it — in more ways than one.

Allen West warns against “a Neville Chamberlain moment”

Rep. Allen West recently gave an awesome speech to the Center for Security Policy.

While it seems that our media can only focus on one “crisis” at a time, Allen West never takes his eye off of all the threats to U.S. national security.

No teleprompter, you’ll notice. The man is a walking encyclopedia, and he can communicate.

What Paul Ryan does for budget issues, Allen West does for national security.

Hat Tip: Big Peace

The deliberate flooding of the American heartland

Yet one more reason in the ever-growing list of reasons why I’m not an “environmentalist” anymore…. Check out this eye-opening piece at the American Thinker:

Some sixty years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began the process of taming the Missouri by constructing a series of six dams.  The idea was simple: massive dams at the top moderating flow to the smaller dams below, generating electricity while providing desperately needed control of the river’s devastating floods.

The stable flow of water allowed for the construction of the concrete and earthen levees that protect more than 10 million people who reside and work within the river’s reach.  It allowed millions of acres of floodplain to become useful for farming and development.  In fact, these uses were encouraged by our government, which took credit for the resulting economic boom.  By nearly all measures, the project was a great success.

But after about thirty years of operation, as the environmentalist movement gained strength throughout the seventies and eighties, the Corps received a great deal of pressure to include some specific environmental concerns into their MWCM (Master Water Control Manual, the “bible” for the operation of the dam system).  Preservation of habitat for at-risk bird and fish populations soon became a hot issue among the burgeoning environmental lobby.  The pressure to satisfy the demands of these groups grew exponentially as politicians eagerly traded their common sense for “green” political support.

Things turned absurd from there….

The Corps began to utilize the dam system to mimic the previous flow cycles of the original river, holding back large amounts of water upstream during the winter and early spring in order to release them rapidly as a “spring pulse.”  The water flows would then be restricted to facilitate a summer drawdown of stream levels.  This new policy was highly disruptive to barge traffic and caused frequent localized flooding, but a multi-year drought masked the full impact of the dangerous risks the Corps was taking.

This year, despite more than double the usual amount of mountain and high plains snowpack (and the ever-present risk of strong spring storms), the true believers in the Corps have persisted in following the revised MWCM, recklessly endangering millions of residents downstream….

Perhaps the environmentalists of the Corps grew tired of waiting decades to realize their dream of a “restored Missouri River.”  Perhaps these elements heard the warnings and saw in them an opportunity to force an immediate re-naturalization of the river via epic flood.  At present, that is impossible to know, but to needlessly imperil the property, businesses, and lives of millions of people constitutes criminal negligence.  Given the statements of Corps personnel, and the clear evidence of their mismanagement, the possibility that there is specific intent behind their failure to act must be investigated without delay.

In recent decades, many universities have steeped their Natural Sciences curriculum in the green tea of earth-activism, producing radically eco-centric graduates who naturally seek positions with the government agencies where they can best implement their theories.  Today, many of these men and women have risen high in their fields, hiring fellow travelers to fill subordinate positions and creating a powerful echo chamber of radical environmentalist theory.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a victim/tool of the above-described process.  The horrifying consequence is water rushing from the dams on the Missouri twice as fast as the highest previous releases on record.  Floodgates that have not been opened in more than fifty years are in full operation, discharging water at a rate of 150,000 cubic feet per second toward millions of Americans downstream.

This is a mind-boggling rate of release.  Consider that 150,000 cubic feet of water would fill a football field instantly to a depth of four feet.  This amount of water, being released every second, will continue unabated for the next several months.  The levees that protect the cities and towns downstream were constructed to handle the flow rates promised at the time of the dam’s construction.  None of these levees have ever been tested at these levels, yet they must hold back millions of acre-feet of floodwater for the entire summer without failing.  In the flooding of 1993, more than a thousand levees failed.  This year’s event will be many orders of magnitude greater.There are many well-publicized examples of absurd obeisance to the demands of radical environmentalists resulting in great economic harm.  The Great Missouri River Flood of 2011 is shaping up to be another — only this time, the price will likely be paid in lives lost as well as treasure.  Ayn Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

We need to begin the investigations immediately.  It seems that it is sanity, and not the river, that needs to be restored.

U.S. troop withdrawal will hurt Afghan women the most

Afghan women are living in fear that they are about to be returned, once again, to the Dark Ages of misogynistic terror. The Asia Sentinel reports:

The report Wednesday from Washington, DC   that US President Barack Obama has set in motion a substantial withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is hardly good news for Afghanistan’s women.  Withdrawal of 10,000 NATO troops is expected by the end of the year. Women in the country are hearing rumors that talks with the Taliban are already taking place in secret…. Women risk losing liberty, education and employment if the fundamentalist Taliban were to win a significant place in the Afghan government.

The presence of foreign troops has caused significant issues, too. For example, a recent errant NATO strike killed at least nine women and children. But women say this tragedy should not be used as a reason for a troop withdrawal. The Taliban are responsible for the majority of civilian deaths during the war and intolerable abuse of women.

In May, Safia Siddiqi, a women’s activist and former member of the Afghan National Economy Committee, said on a national radio broadcast that nothing had improved for women in rural areas and that women need each other and the international forces to attain peace and security.

READ MORE –>

The REAL problem for us with Anthony Weiner should be his WIFE — and her family’s ties to militant Islam

While the nation was busy obsessing over Anthony Weiner’s private parts, we missed what should have been by far the more important story: his wife, Huma Abedin. As deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — and by many accounts, her closest aide — Huma Abedin is privy to many state secrets. This is disturbing because Abedin’s immediate family members are more than tangentially involved in the Islamist cause. Not just Muslim. Islamist. As in: militant Islam. The enemy. In plain English: Someone with close ties to our enemies has an extremely high-level position in our State Department. Hello? Anyone awake?

According to Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack writing at Pajamas Media, Huma Abedin’s mother, Saleha Abedin, who lives in Saudi Arabia, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood (also known as the International Women’s Organization), the women’s arm of the radical, terrorist-spawning Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, Huma’s brother, Hassan Abedin, has worked to promote the Islamic agenda from his base at Oxford University.

Oxford, which has long been infiltrated by Islamists who founded the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), has Huma’s brother listed as a fellow and partner with a number of Muslim Brotherhood members on the Board — including al-Qaeda associate Omar Naseef and the notorious Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. Both have been listed as OCIS trustees. Naseef continues to serve as Board chairman.

A report from 2007 identifies Naseef as the likely force behind the Abedin family’s abrupt departure from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, circa 1977 – the same year that the Muslim Sisterhood was established.

In 2009, Qaradawi’s role within Oxford and the Muslim Brotherhood was championed by the notorious Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi of Al-Nahda – a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate now active in Tunisia. OCIS has even presented an award for great scholarly achievement to Brotherhood member Shaykh Abd Al-Fattah Abu Gudda, whose personal history goes back to the Brotherhood’s founder, Hasan al-Banna.

Even the Sunday Times acknowledges that the cradle of Islamic jihad — Al-Azhar University — actively attempts to establish links with OCIS, where Huma’s brother serves.

Huma’s brother, Hassan, has also worked on projects with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose goal is “spreading Islam to the west.” Alwaleed bin Talal  is one of those Saudi princes who has credibility with many in America because of his personal connections, philanthropic donations, and investments (notably, he owns seven percent of NewsCorp, the parent of FOX News, making him the second-largest individual shareholder). But meanwhile, the prince gives huge financial support to radical Islamist groups masquerading as “moderate” — including the Cordoba Initiative (Ground Zero mosque), CAIR, and the Islamic Development Bank (promoting shariah-compliant finance, which inherently and by design promotes the spread of shariah).

Was Huma unaware of all this as she accompanied Hillary Clinton to the Dar El-Hekma women’s college in Saudi Arabia? Huma’s mother is co-founder and vice dean at the college and an active missionary on issues regarding Muslim women.

I got so confused while trying to make my way through the tangled web of connections that I had to make a diagram — somewhat simplified — to keep it all straight. (In case you’re wondering, the dotted line from Weiner to Hillary is there because of Hillary’s support — at least, until recently! — of Weiner’s political ambitions. Bill Clinton was even the officiator at Weiner’s and Abedin’s wedding.)

 

 

In 2008, Dr. Mumen Muhammad wrote about why Huma vowed to stay with Hillary even if the latter were to lose the presidential nomination to Obama:

Abedin assures in press releases of her continuance on the path with Hillary Clinton, even if Clinton failed as a candidate. The candidate’s aides and other influential figures in the Democratic Party assure that they do not disregard Abedin running for election or taking her position in the political arena with the help in successive political administrations of the Clinton family itself [emphasis added].

Hillary Clinton signed a document less than one month prior to her trip to Saudi Arabia with Huma that lifted the ban on Tariq Ramadan, allowing him entry into the United States. (Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, and has ties to Islamic terrorist groups.) The Clinton family played a key role in promoting Fethullah Gülen, the extremely powerful Turkish imam and notorious Islamist conspirator, as he fled Turkey for the United States after attempting to overthrow Turkey’s secular government. (He was indicted on this charge in 2000.) In 2008, the former president heaped praise on Gülen, giving him a clean slate. Gülen has been given refuge and has even had sermons aired on Turkish television during which he explained to his followers how to best seize power from the Turkish government:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe….Until that time, any step taken would be too early — like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. [emphasis added].

Gülen expressed this sentiment in another sermon as well:

The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do [emphasis added].

 Serving with Huma’s brother as an Oxford Centre trustee is Abdullah Gül, Turkey’s [current] president himself. [Gül, who poses as a moderate but has strong Islamist roots] considers himself a follower of Fethullah Gülen, according to Wikileaks.

Besides the Abedin family’s numerous Islamist connections, another thing that raises red flags is the lack of Muslim outrage over Huma’s marriage to a Jewish man. Given how well-known the Abedins are in the Islamic world (and in the Islamist world), how is it that Huma was able to marry a non-Muslim, which is absolutely prohibited in Muslim law? Even in the West, there have been “honor killings” of girls from Muslim families for dating a non-Muslim, much less marrying one. (Note: A non-Muslim woman is allowed to marry a Muslim man — because the man is dominant in Islam. However, the reverse — a Muslim woman, such as Huma Abedin, marrying a non-Muslim man, such as Anthony Weiner, is absolutely forbidden by shariah because such an arrangement puts a non-Muslim in a position of dominance over a Muslim — which, in Islam, is intolerable.)

Since the penalty for such apostasy is death, why has Huma not been the victim of an “honor killing”? Ex-Muslim Walid Shoebat offers two possible explanations. One is that Huma and her family are using taqiyya — the obligation of a devout Muslim to lie and dissemble when dealing with non-Muslims in order to advance the greater cause of Islam. That would mean that Huma has been given a “pass”  in service of the greater Islamist/Muslim Brotherhood goal:  to infiltrate the highest levels of our government.

A second possible explanation is that Anthony Weiner might have converted to Islam. This is not as unlikely as it sounds at first blush, especially given that Weiner was raised as a secular Jew. New York imam Omar Abu-Namous, a close associate of Ground Zero mosque imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, encouraged Huma, in the wake of the recent scandals, to stand by her husband — but such advice would not be expected from an imam if Huma were in fact married to a non-Muslim.

As corruptive of our culture — and fraught with the potential for political blackmail — as Anthony Weiner’s peccadilloes have been, they pale in comparison to the potential dangers created by his wife, Huma Abedin, being a top, trusted aide to the Secretary of State of the United States.  Can you say “Alger Hiss“?

Cross-posted at Unified Patriots and RedState