What Would Digital Publius Do?

I have the occasion to engage in apologetical discussions pertaining to the Christian faith with a wide variety of anti-Christian antagonists — Muslims, witches, atheists. As a Christian apologist, one argument you are sure to come up against, no matter the persuasion of the person you are dealing with, is the reliability of the Holy Bible.

They all claim one or all of the following, without fail, the Holy Bible:

1) is not divine in origin, but rather the work of men;

2) is open to a wide range of interpretations with no Biblical view able to claim preeminence above the next;

3) despite an individual’s belief in the Holy Bible’s divine or mundane source or sources, it has been tampered with by unscrupulous men bent on using the text to further their own ambitions; for this reason, the Bible matters little today.

For the purposes of this article, I will focus on claim number three. This particular claim has always been the most amusing to me, as it is by far the silliest and easiest to overturn. Which brings us to the title of this article – “What Would Digital Publius Do?”

In keeping with the idea of man placing his own wisdom and morality above God's I am forced to ask the question, What would I do if I were an unscrupulous man bent on using the Biblical text to further my own ambitions? What would I change in the Holy Bible to help me meet that end? Well I sure as heck would do a better job than those who came before me!

If I were a powerful person capable of effecting changes to the Bible, given my natural predilection for attractive women, I’m fairly certain I would do away with the whole one man one woman thing and all those pesky rules eschewing adultery and fornication. Just being honest here!

I  would certainly make it possible for powerful men like myself to be exempt from such restrictions, if not the hoi poloi. There would have to be some revelation given so at least I could do my thing!

This is the sort of thing we do find in extra-Biblical cults and false religions. Generally when someone wants to use “religion” to grasp power, they have their own revelation or “thus sayeth the Lord” moment. They don’t change the Bible, they change the brand. That's how the world got the Book of Mormon, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and the Qur'an to name a few!

The problem in changing the Holy Bible is people would notice, even way back in the 4th century, the time most Bible critics point to when they make these assertions. But if you start your own brand, you’re good. You just claim that God is still in the revelation business and you are the new relay!

Liberalism, by it’s very nature, abhors rules against the causes they want to champion. The leftists don’t like phrases like “Congress shall make no law...” any more than they like “Thou shalt not...” No man does really.

The difference is in an individuals heart and discipline to overcome our baser instincts and accept what God wants to teach man about how we should live and treat others. Let me give you an example of liberal thinking. Aldous Huxley, the Author of “Brave New World”, makes a rather revelatory statement when rationalizing his acceptance of the idea of Darwinian evolution and the meaninglessness of life as had his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (who was known as Darwin’s bulldog):

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption... The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do…. For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom..” Aldous Huxley, “Confession of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, vol. 3 (June 1966), p. 19. From an article by Helming, “An Interview with God.”

It’s simple really; rebellion against God can always be summed up as man’s intrinsic selfish pursuit of self-gratification and expedience.

The Holy Bible contemporaneously still looks down on the sort of behavior that would aid in oppressing others for selfish reasons. It has still got a bunch of those troublesome “Thou shalt not's” giving fits to Huxley and his like-minded latter day liberals and that humanists of every kind find so distasteful. In fact, the Bible has a distressing habit of teaching service to others as the only true path to greatness.

“And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.”  Luke 22:24-27

Yep, that’s the kind of passage from Jesus Christ that would have to go! Not good if you are all about selfish power grabs and controlling masses with liturgical opiates. Yet it is still there! How do you, as a king, put this teaching to work placing yourself above other men, even above God when Christ, Himself says, “I am here among you serving you”?

No, my friends, when man seeks to abrogate the Living Word of God, he does it from the outside, by casting aspersions on the Holy Bible and placing human wisdom above what was revealed to man in Scripture. You don’t change God’s Word, you reject it!

You conform God to your idea of what He should be outside of the framework of who God says He is in His written Word. People reject not just the Bible, but also the Holy God of the Holy Bible. There are scads of people, like President Obama who say they believe in God—yet you find precious few who actually believe God!

This is why President Obama can claim to be a Christian, yet the White House says the President is “grappling” with his personal views on gay marriage as Obama orders the United States Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the very law of the land defining marriage as a legal state consisting of one man and one woman in holy matrimony.

Is President Obama less powerful than the kings and leaders of old? Can’t the President do something about this outdated Bible our laws are based on? Well, the Democrats and the rest of the liberal left have been doing just that for decades now. The leftists have eliminated the Bible's influence in American society as much as they possibly can.

You don’t have to change the Holy Bible - just undermine it! God says He knew you in the womb, my President says that’s “above my pay grade”! God says marriage is defined as one man, one woman, my President says lets ‘grapple” with that idea!

Change the Bible? Why bother? Every time a King or President casts doubt on God’s wisdom by overturning the clear teachings of Scripture on matters of marriage and the like, does he have to literally take out a Sharpie and start redacting the Holy Bible? Of course not, especially when President Obama's own Democrat Party has put in the time and legislation to make sure that many don’t know what the Bible says to begin with — let alone feeling any accountability to the One who wrote it!

Digital Publius

Weird Politics!

 

Irish comedian Dylan Moran does a bit about Americans where he says something to the effect of “American imperialism is insidious!” He says that America targets some war-torn poverty stricken corner of the globe that has oil or chocolate or whatever it is we want, and all the natives get mad and begin to meet.

So they gather together in some bombed-out cafe or something to foment, “What are we going to do about the Yankee, American imperialist pig dogs? They come in here, they take our stuff...” Meanwhile — while these people are talking— America very, very gradually builds a Starbucks around them! They get addicted to lattes, lose the will to fight, and then they turn into Americans.

Apart from Moran’s bit being absolutely hilarious, the one thing he has manifestly right, is that once people get a taste of what a free nation has to offer, they generally want more. That is, with the possible exception of the American extreme left. Many liberals, who have the ability to have it all by virtue of being born in the freest nation on earth, would rather deconstruct the Starbucks and see America become a giant bombed-out cafe.

With the Middle Eastern nations tumbling like so many dominoes in an exhibition of alleged democratic fervor are squaring off against oppressive oligarchies and dictators, the American left seeks to hitch a ride on the bandwagon of civil unrest — not with an eye towards preserving or defending the democratic process responsible for making our republic the envy of the world, but in decidedly un-democratic displays of sore-headed defiance.

You have leftists calling for a renewal of hard left rhetoric, even resuscitating the Weather Underground’s halcyon call for “Days of Rage!”, calling for “an end to American capitalism and imperialism.”

All this while the truly oppressed Middle Easterners — who serve as the titular inspiration for the homegrown anti-American, capitalism eschewing extreme liberals — are unable to get their stories out via the state controlled media. So, they turned to Twitter, Facebook and other web-based communication media.

Web entities like Facebook and Twitter, even foreign grown applications like Skype, indeed the very internet itself, would not exist apart from the Yankee capitalism the liberals hate. Not to mention the devices they use to access them. This fact seems to elude their mushy brains as the left uses the web with cheerful abandon to spread the word about their planned hissy fits.

It’s because they don’t think; the liberals are like toddlers who have no idea that mommy and daddy have to work to buy the juicy boxes they only take one sip out of before using the rest to make the sand red in their sandboxes. Unfortunately, these toddlers are trying to make the country red.

As the people in the Middle East rise up to have the right to put this issue or that to the vote, the Democrat Party obversely does all it can to ensure democracy doesn’t happen if it involves an issue they don’t like. Whether it’s states like California working to overturn or block passage of Defense of Marriage acts or school vouchers, state by state, they will work feverishly either not to vote or block anyone else from voting at all.

The 60’s radicals were born of a time of rebellion with heroes like James Dean and Marlon Brando representing a counter culture fueled by some of the most powerful voices in rock and roll history — causes born in the crucible of the civil rights movement and the conflicts in South East Asia. They rebelled against a society whose politicians may have danced the Lindy Hop, and most certainly danced to Boogie Woogie.

Today's politicians are often my age, as are those who foment unrest. We were born in the latter days of the Baby Boom, and the early days of Generation X. The MTV generation! So, it’s no wonder that many of my generation who enter politics are modern day rebels, viewing the world like a John Hughes film.

Case in point: The legislature in the state of Wisconsin was slated to vote on an anti-union bill Thursday, the 17th of February, aimed at ending unions' collective bargaining rights. This is a Republican sponsored bill! The Wisconsin Republicans enjoy a 19 seat majority in the 33 seat Senate, so the bill would pass with flying colors.

In Wisconsin, there can be no vote in the Senate unless there is at least one member present from the two parties. So what do the Democrats do? They pull a Ferris Bueller and take the day off!

Rather than take their medicine, the Democrats (tucked snuggly in the hip pocket of the unions) act like taciturn teenagers and disappear. In Wisconsin, they can compel a vote so the Democrat Senators not only didn’t show up, they literally left town — all 14 of them! In an effort to emulate their hero, they ended up at some resort in Illinois, Ferris’ home state.

There is not a lot of faith in democracy in the Democrat party! Real mature dude!

When things don’t go their way the Democrats would rather job the system like Ferris, which is in stark contrast to the conduct of the U.S. Congressional Republicans who defiantly stood for their principles and showed up to vote as the liberals gleefully slammed through Obamacare on a totally partisan vote.

In Hawaii, state Senator Sam Slom is the sole Republican in the 25 seat Hawaiian Senate. Every vote pretty much ends in a 24 to 1 decision, but Senator Slom shows up to cast that one vote. That is faith in the system!

The problem is, too many Democrats see Republicans as “Chet Donnelly”, Wyatt’s bully of a big brother in “Weird Science”, while seeing themselves as Breakfast Club member “John Bender” types, raging against everything and everyone, content to explain away immature, bad behavior because they had it tough. Ever on the prowl to subvert the good kids to bring them down to their level rather than rising to the level of the high acheivers.

The latter John Bender trait was indicative of the behavior displayed by some 1000 Madison Wisconsin School teachers who called in sick so they could join the protestors surrounding the state capitol to prevent the union vote. It’s all about the kids right? Well...except when they are trying to mess with my union.

Turns out that even though the students had no idea what they were protesting some of those teachers actually took students out of class to help in the protest. It seems some of these students were away from schools with teachers sans obligatory permission slips from parents. Your tax dollars at work?

Rest assured, if my kids were in that mob absent from school without my say so--it would not be pretty!

A message to the Democrat Party: in order to have democracy, you have to mix in some democracy, even when it doesn’t go your way. Otherwise, you may just want to go join the crowd the people are protesting against in Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt — they don’t want the people voting either!

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. I Corinthians 13:11

Digital Publius

Lib Reactionaries on Parade!

                              (Sung to the tune of "Pink Elephants on Parade")

Look out! Look out!
Lib Reactionaries on parade

Here they come!

Hippety hoppety

They're here and there
Lib Reactionaries ev'rywhere

Look out! Look out!

They're walking around the bed

On their head

Clippety cloppety

Arrayed in braid
Lib Reactionaries on parade
What'll I do? What'll I do?
What an unusual view!

I could stand the sight of worms

And look at microscopic germs

But technicolor Liberals
Is really much for me


I am not the type to faint

When things are odd or things are quaint

But seeing things you know that ain't
Can certainly give you an awful fright
What a sight!

Chase 'em away!

Chase 'em away!
I'm afraid need your aid
Lib Reactionaries on parade!

Lib Reactionaries!
Lib Reactionaries!

Digital Publius

Bondage of Corruption Pt. 1: Culture

“Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Romans 8:21

The Holy Bible declares that corruption leads to bondage, while true liberty is only available to those who are freed from corruption by being counted amongst the children of God. In America, many today confuse liberty with license–that is, license in a sense of the freedom to behave as one wishes, especially in a way that results in excessive or unacceptable behavior. This behavior views corruption as freedom rather than bondage.

Nowhere is this spirit more easily observable than in our entertainment and entertainers–our storytellers, our musicians, our artists. This is made possible by a diversion away from the essence of things–the essence of what is good and what is intrinsically bad–and a preference for promoting the concept of the subjective over the reality of the objective.

It is manifestly unpleasant to hear fingernails dragged across a chalkboard. It becomes no less hideous when you make a video of this activity and play it on an endless loop, emblazoned on a hundred connected TV monitors in a museum, calling it an art installation. No matter how artfully done, it remains unpleasant.

It has been construed that pushing the boundaries of propriety–indeed, challenging the very notions of propriety, good taste, manners and common decency–somehow leads to better more legitimate art.
In spite of the general populous finding much of this sort of “art” repugnant, it is still somehow important to keep it in the public eye. Indeed, it is so important that some of the most repugnant art needs to be subsidized with public funding, as precious few in the private sector seem willing to patronize or own a portrait of the Virgin Mary smeared with fecal matter.

In essence, fecal matter is still fecal matter. It stinks. Objectively, that is. Subjectively, it is art, regardless of it being unpleasant in essence, poor in taste and potentially a health hazard if you were inclined to hang it in your home or place of business.

I used to own, with a couple of partners, a chain of three comic book stores in the 80’s and 90’s. Comic books have always been a big part of my life since I was seven years old, when my dad bought me my first comic, Captain America #117.

Recently, Spiderman, in an effort to keep his incredibly old Aunt May from dying, sold his soul to the Marvel Comics’ version of the devil. A provision in this deal, beyond the sacrifice of Peter Parker’s soul was that his marriage to Mary Jane would be wiped out of reality. So to save his aunt, he bargained his immortal soul and his marriage to the devil.

This is Spiderman, a character who in essence was one of the most incorruptible. What message does this send to the kids reading this story? It certainly devalues the idea of the immortal human soul. Does this sort of Faustian story make Spiderman better than when he was stopping Mysterio or the Green Goblin from robbing banks?

The comics I loved while growing up featured heroes who had a letter on their chest, a cape, and a magic word, who fought bad guys because they were bad and they needed their butts kicked. Now, you are hard pressed to tell the heroes from the villains–the morality is so subjective and ambivalent.
Some of the superhero movies so popular today I have enjoyed, but none of them have gotten the characters right. None of them! Hollywood is about to release a film based on the Thor comic book character. It looks like a fun film, but it is not The Mighty Thor of the comic. He may superficially look a bit like Thor but he is not Thor.

In the comics, Thor was banished from Asgard, the home of the Norse gods, because he was arrogant, selfish and without a speck of humility. To teach him the humility necessary to make Thor the hero he would become, his father, Odin, placed him in the body of a scrawny, physically lame medical doctor named Donald Blake.

As a crippled doctor, he learned the value of serving others and gained an appreciation for his prowess and the responsibilities that prowess granted him when acting as Thor. The Don Blake persona humbled him and made Thor a hero. In the film, he is just sent to earth and he is still a big strapping good looking blond guy capable of beating up a bunch of highly trained operatives. He just doesn’t have the super powers. A guy like that would still have a pretty good time here on earth. And a pretty hard time learning true humility.

Humility is no longer a virtue worth translating in a comic’s storyline today, or in film. At least, not through serving others as Don Blake did.

I watched a sci-fi film, “Splice” this week that depicts a creature made by a scientist couple, culled from the DNA of several different creatures. Upon reaching maturity, the creature has graphic sexual relations with the male scientist, and then transforms into a male creature and graphically rapes the female scientist leaving her pregnant. Thats a long way from “This Island Earth” which I loved growing up. I wouldn’t even let my son see “Splice”.

I stayed home with a cold yesterday and watched daytime TV. I saw classic episodes of “Emergency”, “I Spy”, “Kojak”, and “Quincy”–all great, all compelling episodic TV. In prime time, I watched Law and Order SVU, not a show I normally watch but it is rerun time.

They ran two episodes back to back. Both dealt with rape, and both found it necessary to have the rape victims relate their stories in uncomfortably graphic detail–detail that would not have been allowed at the time the shows I watched earlier in the day were produced.

The graphic detail didn’t make the shows more compelling than the earlier shows. It just made them more...disquieting, gratuitously so. Disturbing to a point where I decided to scratch “Law and Order SVU”  off my list of shows to watch. Rape is never a pleasant subject, but the graphic nature of the testimony stuck with me far longer than the satisfaction derived from seeing the perpetrators face their just desserts.

The graphic testimony didn’t make the show better, just more salacious–especially in the first show, where they kept showing the rapist’s face as the victim told her story and he was obviously deriving pleasure from the telling.

The governor is deactivated in music, film, Television. A culture gets the art it deserves by virtue of what it allows. I don’t mean in the sense of governmental regulation, but by what the citizenry itself will accept, promote and support.

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

Bread and circuses! As corruption rises in our culture our liberty erodes, spiritually and physically. We are being plied with more and more debauchery as is our nature to desire. Culturally, God and objective morality based on the adherence to the dictates of God are being supplanted by subjective, let-it-all-hang-out licentiousness.

At some point we need to grab a hold of the moral reins and give a collective “Whoa there!” As we become looser in our morality, more and more distracted by the bread and circuses, more and more restraints on our liberty are being hammered into place by those forwarding agendas like Cap and Trade. Most Americans didn’t even notice the FCC takeover of the internet on a three Democrats to two Republicans vote a few days ago.

Who are these people and who put them in the position to make such a decision?
At some point, we have to stop patronizing this crap, Stop going to the movies, turn the TVs off, stop downloading the music. All of it. If these industries see that we mean business by not buying anything until they eliminate the crap, the crap will continue to eat away at us and our children. It starts with me and you!

Digital Publius

The Fink Who Sat By The Door

A bit past a year ago, the sycophantic/leftist media celebrated the ill-conceived bestowing of the hitherto prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. The fledgling statesman winning the award seemed odd to everyone, save the most obsequious lickspittles chanting, “Yes we can” and “Hope” and “Change”!

It was plain to the sober minded, that the Nobel body acted with a bona fide stupidity, born of fanciful notions of a transformative new diplomatic era springing forth from Barack Obama’s bellybutton fully mature! All the naughty people and all our enemies awestruck by his native mightiness seeing the error of their ways stumbling over each other to join hands and summit, quaffing the wares of the trendiest micro brewery.

It was repeated ad nauseam by leftist punditry that Barack Obama  would recover the good will America enjoyed internationally that they felt the Bush administration squandered. How the left could possibly divine the Junior Senator from Illinois possessed such power, without the evidence of past diplomatic experience, is beyond my comprehension.

It certainly seems that to this point, the only people susceptible to Obama’s siren powers are left wing ideologues! The rest of the world seems indifferent. It appears that all of those outside of the U.S. who were besotted with the idea of a less “cowboy” like approach to diplomacy don’t have the influence in their respective nations to get their own leaders to play ball.

Well, the left is right! This is a new era of American diplomacy, one where for the first time, America operates from a position of weakness. We read in Der Spiegel:

"Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information -- data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which US foreign policy is built. Never before has the trust America's partners have in the country been as badly shaken. Now, their own personal views and policy recommendations have been made public -- as have America's true views of them."

I could never have fathomed something like this year’s WikiLeaks disclosures.  You would think the U.S. State department could have put the kibosh on this sort of thing back in March when the first group of truly damaging leaks was released. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s greatest rival for the Democratic nomination in 2008, is now running the State Department. Beginning with the Russian reset button debacle Mrs. Clinton has proven to be incompetent far beyond my expectations. If you remember - diplomacy was supposed to be Hillary’s strong suit, at least that was what she said.

Der Spiegel, the Guardian UK, and our home grown fifth column rag, The New York Times are all indicative of leftist ideology run amuck. The WikiLeaks disclosures would never have seen the light of day in a more patriotic era - at least not without someone swinging in the aftermath! By my reckoning, The Times actions constitute nothing less than treason.

As a nation America has had nationalism driven out of us--there are too many people now raised  with no sense of pride in what America has been to the world and what it means to be an American. The left now controls our children’s education and the modern media have reduced America’s role in world history to that of a recalcitrant bully.

There are more people now calling themselves Americans that have utter disdain for their own nation, than at any point in our history, this did not happen by accident. We have placed more emphasis on feelings than reason and reality. You have people teaching their children it is more important to follow their hearts than their brains, when the Creator of those children says:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the above mentioned news entities are thinking with their hearts without regard for the very real people who will be effected by their wrongheaded actions. They follow a misguided dictum to an extreme like children incapable of seeing beyond the most basic ideas.

This is the same sort of heart-based decision-making that leads to nude scanning and the groping of airline travelers in our airports. Instead of using common sense to determine which people it would be wise to scrutinize more vigorously the TSA would rather subject my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill (if you could get them on a plane) to a series of indignities in the name of not offending Syrian nationals.

The TSA spends time looking for bombs so they check everyone, even 10-year-old Timmy from Goose Lake, Iowa. Israel, surrounded by enemy states and the constant threat of terrorism, utilize their brains and are more interested in finding terrorists. Whether flying in or out of Israel, it will be an Israeli checking you out and they are looking at race, ethnicity, religion, dress and behavior. The Israeli’s have zero incidents and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill do not have to worry about having their bits and pieces handled.

Do you feel the love in this new era yet? Are we safer? Cowboy diplomacy is bad, yet, in less than two years of the dawning of the new diplomatic epoch, to appease Moscow, the Obama administration gave Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe the high hat by reneging on the missile defense shield treaty promised by the previous administration.

China is regulating our actions in the Yellow Sea as the Calender gets rolled back to 1950 in Korea. Israel, initially overwhelmingly supportive of the Obama Presidency now looks at the U.S. like something less than an honest broker as the administration pushes for more and more one sided compromises with the Palestinian Authority.

With the advent of the WikiLeaks disclosures the administration proved powerless to prevent despite hollow threats from our State Department, Pakistan is now more reticent. Germany, Kenya, Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia all offended. Hillary Clinton is revealed to have ordered all manner of spying on even some of our staunchest allies, not a bad thing in and of itself, but the world is now reading our diplomatic memos so now they know that we know that they know.

All this as violence is escalating in Afghanistan, Cindy Sheehan and her Code Pink cohorts nowhere in sight. Is Cindy camping outside Obama’s Illinois residence as she used to do at Bush’s Crawford ranch? If she is, the cameras aren’t there to record it like they were on a regular basis during W’s time in office. I guess covering Cindy's Code Pink shenanigans was just politics.

We are creating our own insurgency right in our schools and on our television sets and movie screens. Our children are being fed a steady diet of misinformation and revisionism and taught to value feelings over thinking.  Those are not the attitudes that made America the strongest most giving and compassionate nation in the history of the world.

The left, so anti the things that make us great, faith in God, family, industry,  can’t fathom that it is the old ways that keep drawing people, filled with real “hope,” to our shores not idealistic views of an America that never existed and hopefully never will. Meanwhile, the progressives squat in the shadows at the gate, opening our doors a little wider to our enemies everyday.

Digital Publius

Branded (Election Afterthoughts)

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” ~ Albert Einstein

Few adages are as readily available to the American consciousness as the one quoted above. Yet, there are even fewer more frequently forgotten. Nowhere is the tacit rejection of Einstein’s truism more painfully apparent than in America’s urban areas.

Urban areas mired in corruption and collapsing school systems, decaying infrastructures providing fewer and fewer services to a citizenry still expected to pay taxes, inner city denizens clinging maniacally to those failed policies and the leaders who implement them — this particular election cycle provided a rather unique glimpse at the near total perfection of liberal Democrats’ hold on Black voters’ thinking and political actions in the inner cities across the nation. 

What the 2010 midterm elections showed is the “D” in front of a candidate’s name is even more powerful in urban Black consciousness than common sense, reason and even skin color. Despite the fact many of these areas have not elected a conservative official in decades, they seem incapable of surmising it may be a good idea to try something different.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein

The American independent voters (that block of people often responsible for a swing one way or another politically) decided this time the “Change” they voted for in 2008 was far beyond what they expected. So, they swung back the other way this election in even greater numbers than 2008.

Independents are by nature reactionary, a characteristic I find difficult to regard highly myself, yet one I find is at least, to a degree, understandable. This makes the slavish devotion to the Democrat party exhibited by my people more troubling. Why do we continue to hold to a party whose precepts have decimated our communities?

In the races where you had a Black Republican as an alternative to a Black Democrat, or even a Black Republican against a White Democrat, the urban areas still opted for the Democrat. This was the case in Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s race against Republican Isaac Hayes in Illinois as well as the race of California Democrat Laura Richardson, who faced Popular Republican pundit Star Parker. Ms. Parker’s story is truly an inspiration for those seeking to better their situation in life and exactly the image most needed in Compton.

Corruption charges against incumbent politicians seem not to matter, either. Eternal Congressman Charlie Rangel had no trouble brushing aside Michael Faulkner.

Tennessee’s 9th Congressional district Black Republican candidate, successful business woman Charlotte Bergmann, received an anemic 25% of the vote in her race against incumbent White Democrat opponent Steve Cohen, despite a 60% Black population in the district. In fact, it is the states only predominately Black district. It’s not a black thing, it’s a “D” thing.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” ~ Albert Einstein

To counter Einstein’s faithful adage defining insanity, we find this bromide:

“It doesn’t matter what party is in power, nothing ever changes, all politicians are alike.”

To all those Black Democrats languishing in cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Memphis who employ this banal and wholly unoriginal bit of fluff, I ask; how would you know?

During the slave trade, it was not uncommon for a master to brand his slaves with a hot iron. This served as a constant reminder to the slave he was not his own. This brand ran far deeper than the raised scar it produced. It meant you knew to whom you belonged and you mustn’t entertain any ideas of your station changing.

The modern slave master’s brand is unseen but no less effective. The Democrats say you’ll be free, but not yet. You’ll get your freedom, but it will be a freedom defined by “us”. This is why the Democrats are always reminding you everyone else is racist. They reinforce daily you cannot succeed without them being there to pave the way for you.

In the past, the slave masters employed overseers to make sure the slaves stayed in their places and performed as they were expected. These overseers were charged with disciplining the slaves as well. Frequently, the most zealous of these overseers were themselves slaves — all too willing to keep the order in the slave quarters if it ensured a few extra creature comforts for themselves.

In many cases, these Black overseers reacted more vehemently to Black rebellion than any White overseer. We see this played out today as Black folks become unhinged when someone has the temerity to stray from the Democratic plantation, spewing the very invective they accuse the right of espousing. This is trained behavior; some of the most effective training takes place when the subject is unaware they are being trained.

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”  ~ Albert Einstein

Of course, as the left explains, their crushing defeat at the polls is due to the “inability” of the hoi poloi to “grasp” the beneficence they have bestowed upon us. The President just “failed to communicate” how successful he and his sycophants have been. It is indeed difficult to explain why ideas that have never worked are still completely ineffectual. “Hope” indeed springs eternal!

At some point, the Black community has to realize it has been flimflammed, or at the very least come to a point were they are willing to consider an alternative to failure. This is what wise, thinking people do in order to extricate themselves from circumstances they are dissatisfied with — unless of course they fail to recognize they are dissatisfied. Then they are simply fools!

Chicago serves as a fairly good example of what I am talking about. President Obama’s former senate seat was lost to a Republican as the President’s former constituents opted for a change of guard. Interestingly, Roland Burris, the only serving Black senator, appointed to replace President Obama, was strongly advised not to seek re-election.

Burris is just one of a string of Black elected officials encouraged to step aside by the President and the Democrat machine — a list that included most notably New York Governor David Paterson and Kendrick Meek of Florida. Meek won the Democratic nomination for the senate fair and square, but was asked to step aside for the White Charlie Crist.

Crist, a former Republican running as an independent, pledged to caucus with the Democrats, which made for a more acceptable choice for the Democrat party than the Black Democrat the people of Florida chose. Meek earned 20% of the votes Tuesday While the usurper Crist garnered 30%. This opened the Door for Republican Marco Rubio to win the election with 49% of the vote.

How well would Meek have done if the Democrat party-backed Crist had not taken 30% of the vote away from him? It seems painfully apparent, at least in the cases of Burris and Meek, the left has an aversion to black senators. You are fine with the Democrat party as long as you are the kind they want — the kind that won’t try to escape the plantation and start believing in their ability to overcome by their own means.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction." ~ Albert Einstein

The entire constitution of the United States, complete with amendments, fits on a couple of pages in the back of my Webster’s dictionary. The healthcare bill, threatening to burden the nation for generations to come, is thousands of pages long. Does this make sense to you? How long will my people continue to put their faith in government and the Democrat party instead of hard work and God, who was the Founders’ strength?

“For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD; They would none of my counsel, they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.” Proverbs 1:29-31

Digital Publius

Groomed To Fail

For all of you who voted for Barack Obama, you are to blame for the President’s failure. Someone should have risen up and been the adult. Someone should have said “Barack, we appreciate your enthusiasm, but it is not yet your time.”

Alas, this is not what happened and, as is often the case when someone takes on a responsibility they are not yet equipped to handle, others more properly equipped are burdened with sorting out the aftermath.

It is obvious from the President’s campaign rhetoric that the man lacks the wisdom to understand why the majority of the American people, the same people who elected him, are not receptive to his message. He seems genuinely bemused by the backlash he and his party are now facing. Obama doesn’t get that “We the People” understand what he is trying to get across.  However, it’s just not what we want to hear.

Mr. President, we get it! Americans can see that you and your Democratic Congressional cohorts have accomplished a great deal in the first half of your presidency. Congratulations!  However, the nation is saying, “Mr. President, you just haven’t accomplished what you were elected to do.”

On more than one occasion, I’ve stated that the Democrats won the majorities in the upper and lower chambers because of anti-war fatigue. During the political discourse leading up to the 2006 elections there was no talk of an ailing economy. At that time, the nation was enjoying six straight years of uninterrupted economic growth with average unemployment, over those years, at a nostalgic 5.2%.

President Bush spent money like a drunken sailor; it seems Bush approved every debt expanding Ponzi scheme Congress set before him. Yet even President Bush could see the writing on the wall when it came to the Dems favorites Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. So despite constant warnings that Fannie and Freddie needed reigning in from Bush and the Republicans, the Dems maintained all was well.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi surge worked and suddenly there was nothing but good news on the war front. Positive war news resulted in no war news being reported, as the leftist media could not bring itself to report anything positive. A successful war effort presented a very dismal outlook for the liberals for the 2008 elections with the economy humming and positive war news. What to do, what to do?

Well the answer came with the collapse of Freddie and Fannie and through the magic of special effects. The resulting financial collapse became the Republicans fault and the result of failed economic policies of the president whose policies, up to that point, were stellar.

Bush forwarded a hideous bailout and the perfect storm needed to take the White House left tropical storm status and culminated into a full blown hurricane. Democrats take over everything with the promise of righting the countries financial ship of state.

The people have no jobs, “Rent is too damn high” and businesses are afraid to invest! Hey, remember how Bill and Hillary never could get that health reform thing done? Let’s do it. Hear us world. Nothing can stop us now! What about jobs? Health care man, our wind farms and green economy will put a soy chicken substitute in every pot.

The President was groomed for failure. Obama is a man who admittedly has a natural predilection for the type of economics that have never worked anywhere they have been tried. Obama himself said he is drawn to a Marxist perspective. Barack did not change stripes once elected, oh no, he appointed others who share a socialist worldview into the Cabinet and a cadre of czars.

The people ignored the fact that Obama had zero experience running anything. A two-year senator barely heard of save a lovely speech two years earlier, America ignored Obama’s questionable associations, which surely would have derailed the campaign of a less media besotted candidate. A rag tag list of Pinkos, domestic terrorists, cuckoo clerics and political strongmen all indicating that Barack Obama does indeed represent “change”.

Sociologically speaking, President Obama is the quintessential example of nurture over nature. All of the president’s associations, including his family, were wrong headed. Everything Obama learned was wrong, the poor guy never had a chance! The President and his associates claim to love America, but it is a version of America that exists only in the minds of America’s enemies.

This morning my friend and I were driving through the city of Detroit. Everywhere you looked was decay, lack and hopelessness. He and another friend were involved in buying and rehabilitating homes for rental in Detroit. With the recent housing collapse, they got out of the business. At one point a few years ago, my friend and his associate had some fifty homes and apartment buildings.

My friend told me that most of those homes they reconditioned, homes that had been reclaimed and believe me when I say it these dwellings were beautiful and back on the rolls producing not just a home for a family, but taxes. Almost all of the homes are either destroyed or worse than when first acquired.

Wondering aloud, my friend asked, “Where are these people going? You would think that with the loss of jobs the poorer neighborhoods would be growing, with more folks having to leave more affluent areas for less expensive housing, but that’s not happening.”

And then it hit me! Detroit is Cuba! Right here in the middle of the U.S. of A., Detroit is Cuba! Detroit may be the first city to experience not only white flight, but black flight as well. Detroit has been run under the auspices of socialist ideology by liberals since the election of Mayor Coleman Young.

What happens to socialist nations? People escape them! Most of the people I know, my contemporaries, have left the city for the suburbs. It used to be that Black folks moved to the closer Detroit subs, like Oak Park and Southfield/Lathrup Village. More and more are moving to the suburban hinterlands into places far, far, far from the city.

As we have found in the past, when socialism takes root, those with the means leave first. The poor, trapped without jobs immigrate to where the jobs are. The poorer areas are not growing as more people join the ranks of the poor because even the poor are leaving and going to cities and states where there are jobs that are not run like socialist enclaves.

The poverty-stricken may not understand the socio-political ideology responsible for their circumstances, but they are reacting nonetheless just as we find in the countries that are avowed socialist nations. Tragically, because most of the poor are taught politics and economics from people who think that their socialist ideas are correct; the needy have also been groomed to failure.  When they move to areas that are freer, the poor likely elect officials that have also embraced the ideologies that have ruined the urban areas as they move to the suburbs, eventually bringing them down as well.
This is what happens when you vote for a man because he makes you feel good.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Things seldom go well when you act from feelings, God warns us about this and gives us a model to follow as Jeremiah 17 continues:

“I the LORD search the heart, [I] try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, [and] according to the fruit of his doings.” v10

God says not only does He search the heart, He tries the reigns, He looks at your mind and examines the fruit you bear.

Should we not do the same, especially when it comes to choosing our leaders? Obama told us all what he was going to do before he took office. What Obama was planning to do is in his books; it’s in his voting record. Barack even made known how he would lead spiritually. This is a man of enormous hubris and he has governed as such. Barack Obama hoping to forward the ideological fantasy of what he believes America should be in his pride has disregarded the will of the people and the spirit of this nation.

Let this be a lesson to us all.

Digital Publius