Ironically, those opposing the current hegemonic ideas and political forces in the United States and Europe must develop a Marxist-style analysis of what has happened. To call the current dominant ideas and political currents socialist, Marxist, Communist, leftist, progressive, or liberal is not meaningful and conceals more than it reveals. The movement must be understood on its own terms in order to understand it and see how it differs from its predecessors.

The Marxist Analysis of the Social Battle

Marx and his followers identified the industrial working class as that revolutionary force. Here’s how the idea appears in the 1848 Communist Manifesto:

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

Marxists posited that the workers’ condition would worsen and that no reform could improve their situation, forcing them to become revolutionaries. Their main ally would be the lower middle class, wiped out by big business and new technology:

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat …

In contrast, who are the revolution’s enemies? Capitalists, clergy, and those elements that benefit from capitalism. And along with them:

The “dangerous class,” [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

Note that in many ways the post-Marxist left reverses this analysis. The lumpenproletariat becomes its ally along with those — many of them prosperous — who benefit from the government’s management of capitalism. In contrast, Marx’s description of the revolutionary forces sounds more like a description of Tea Party members.

Why Marxism Failed

This is a complex subject, but given limited time here are some key points:

– Capitalism didn’t decline but advanced, raising living standards across the board. So Marx was wrong about capitalism. Rather than a generalized misery (think of London during the second half of the nineteenth century), the “victims” today are a small minority, 10 to 20 percent, who have been left behind. And even these people receive welfare and other benefits beyond the wildest dreams of the poor in every other country and every historical era in the world.

– The working class prospered, preferring material betterment rather than a transformation of society. So Marx was wrong about the proletariat, especially in the United States. What’s important to remember is not that this group struggled to improve its life and working conditions but that it succeeded.

– This adjustment of society to solve these problems was due to many forces. One was improved technology and methods of organization, created by the capitalist system. Another was reforms, usually brought by liberal and social democratic parties and the institution of trade unions.

– The workers were responsive — at the time more than the elites — to the appeals of religion, patriotism, and traditional culture.

– Communist regimes failed miserably.

– Minority groups and women improved their status often — in contrast to Marx’s conception — with massive support from the society as a whole. Dramatic changes took place in relatively short periods. When Michelle Obama said she was ashamed of her country, she blotted out everything from the Civil War to federal support for the civil rights movement to huge changes of attitudes on the part of Americans. Note that an aim of the post-Marxist left is to erase all of this good will and progress in order to stir up grievances and hatred.

The Post-Marxist Left’s New Analysis

Gradually, Communists understood that things weren’t developing as predicted. There were many attempts to adjust to this unpredicted reality, ranging from Vladimir Lenin’s theory of imperialism through such thinkers as Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukacs, the Frankfurt School; Third World-oriented interpretations like that of Andre Gunder Frank (whose book Hugo Chavez gave to Obama); Saul Alinsky; and the 1960s New Left. One of the most important New Left strategists from the 1960s, Carl Davidson, headed the Progressives for Obama group in the 2008 election. Bill Ayers pioneered using education for indoctrination.

The new approach argued that the proletariat and lower middle class had largely “sold out” and was now the enemy, clinging to guns, religion, and hatred of those different from themselves. This treason was related to racist and imperialist privilege. Swollen with imperialist and “white-skin” privilege, the United States was the cancer of the world. America was evil and Americans were the enemy, a stance quite different from that of earlier left movements.

So what was the revolutionary strategy to be? The most important basic principle is that the left must, in effect, wear a burqa, concealing its true nature and goals, pretending to be liberal or — stealing an old liberal reformist term also used by the Communists — progressive. This is purely opportunistic, a descendant of the 1940s Communist Party slogan claiming that “Communism is twentieth-century Americanism.” In the current incarnation, left-wing radicalism is said to be twenty-first century liberalism. Millions of Americans accept these ideas with no idea of their origin or goals.

Second, rather than struggling to weaken the capitalist state to overthrow it, the strategy was to work “within the system” to seize control of the state apparatus in order to transform the society. Thus, the state is to be strengthened as a tool for transforming society rather than defeated.
Such a tactic, called “entryism,” is by no means new. Historically, however, Communist forces ruined the effect by turning captured organizations into “front” organizations that too obviously followed the party line. They also lacked sufficient cadre to take over major institutions, and faced strong, conscious opposition. Now, however, the New New Left had lots of cadre, money, and flexibility while the opposition was disorganized and unaware of what was happening. Victory was astonishingly easy.

Third, structural changes in capitalism also indicated the best strategy. These included a “new working class” of experts and technicians along with the tilt toward managerial power over ownership best foreseen by James Burnham. These people, along with the children of the wealthy and capitalist, could be recruited to support the movement through educational indoctrination and perceived self-interest. Believing in efficient, “intelligent” management they would be inclined to think that the government would be the best agency to run things rather than the market.

Ironically, as a result, the radical left was better financed than its conservative opponents for the first time in Western history. The well intentioned could be manipulated by appealing to their concern for the environment and the poor. Whole sectors of society could be won over by appeals to self-interest through government payments.

Fourth, the cultural-intellectual battle was even more important than economic appeals. A high priority was put on seizing control of universities, schools, the news media, publishing, and the entertainment industry. They would be used to indoctrinate people with the movement’s ideas. As Marx wrote:

The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated.

In other words, the new ideology argued for the abandonment of the Enlightenment and the principles of the American Founders: open debate, fairness, and professional ethics. It argued that these notions were phony means of maintaining capitalist hegemony. Since there was no such thing as objective truth and everyone was biased, there’s nothing wrong with lying and silencing dissent to serve the revolution. A journalist can be proud to slant his article; a professor pursues the greater good by twisting reality. The educator should be indoctrinated and become, in turn, the indoctrinator of others.
These efforts were not a coordinated conspiracy. Indeed, one of the advantages of the “post-Communist” or “New New Left” is precisely this lack of centralization. The Leninist model — a single disciplined party, an idealized Communist motherland — proved to be major handicaps. Having a party or party line would raise suspicions and opposition. Having an idealized society — as the USSR had been — was counterproductive for the left when that society was shown to be horrible and their loyalties shown to be against America. The battle was thus carried out by like-minded cadre and loose networks. Even to argue that such a movement and ideology existed — as this article does — is portrayed as a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

At the same time, though, don’t doubt that these ideas, tactics, and strategies were explicitly discussed within the movement. There is massive literature on this rarely used by critics. When someone does exploit the evidence to show what has been going on — as with Stanley Kurtz’s book on Obama, Radical in Chief — the result is remarkably persuasive. And that is precisely why the camouflaged revolutionaries who control the means of idea and information production, who pretend they are just plain liberals, must ignore or ridicule such explanations.

The strategy was greatly assisted by another factor — a new definition of the revolutionary forces. The proletariat was replaced by elements of the new technological-intellectual-managerial elites. Since these people had high levels of education, power, and money, they were far more empowered than the proletariat had been.

Much of this sector was linked to the state. Increasing government spending could be portrayed as something that would benefit “everyone” with “free stuff.” In fact, such a policy was in the class interests of those advocating it, including the recipients of government grants, for welfare or other purposes, and employees of the state. Crony capitalism benefited those big companies that went along with the program (General Motors, General Electric, “green energy” scams). See cartoon, above.

Much of the alliance would be built on cultural-intellectual lines. As Bill Ayers and his colleagues posited in the early 1970s, the key was to use race and gender; Third World peoples (including illegal immigrants and Muslims); gay movements, and other “out-groups,” including a lumpenproletariat dependent on government payments. Even the planet Earth itself was co-opted into this coalition through global warming.
This provided the movement with the cultural-intellectual equivalent of nuclear weapons: any critic could be accused of racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. Those in the intelligentsia and professional classes who would laugh at being called “enemies of the working class” cringe and surrender at the hint of being called one of these new “-isms.”

Despite the fact that capitalism has met past “group” grievances, new complaints are continually manufactured to ensure that opportunity, past reforms, and capitalist productivity will never get credit for solving problems. Just as the Stalinist USSR had to create counterrevolutionary agents, the New New Left must create accusations of racism, etc. to argue that American or Western or capitalist society can never offer justice.

Equally important, the left could not compete on complaining about low living standards since Western — and especially American — capitalism had achieved tremendous gains that enriched the average working people. It therefore switched to the argument of inequality: the injustice was not poverty as such but difference. Marx argued that the workers would never be able to purchase goods, say — in today’s context — automobiles, television sets, or homes.

Obama complains that not everyone has the same quality goods. The tactic, then, is not nationalization of the means of production — which remain in private hands — but redistribution of wealth. This may be more economically damaging than a socialist economy, since successful capitalism is simultaneously left in place and sabotaged.

Historically, radical Marxists defined the capitalist state as bad. Since it could never be used to do what they wanted, it must be subverted. In contrast, the New New Left views the capitalist state, if they control it, as the best base for furthering their agenda. That is why the former were revolutionaries while the latter practice what Obama called “fundamental transformation.” A “revolution” so subtle they can persuade millions of people that it isn’t even happening.

An icing of populism was thrown over the whole movement; the attempt to sell the slogan of the “99 percent versus the one percent” is a prime example of that tactic. One could easily argue that the self-conscious revolutionary cadre are the “one percent.” That “one percent” took over leadership of the approximately 25 percent of the population that is non-radical liberal, adding on various constituencies through material benefit or misdirection (those who want to help the poor, fight racism, etc.) until a majority is achieved in elections.

Thus, “false consciousness,” traditionally a tool that revolutionaries thought benefited their enemies, is now turned into an asset by those who have mastered the art of public relations and all of the modern methods of manipulation. One might call this system the mass production of false consciousness. That is why the New New Left seized control of these instruments, leveraging them into political control. Historic Marxism was the exact opposite, getting into control of the means of material production to seize state power.

All that was needed is a leader who embodies those characteristics. In that sense, Obama is not so much of a Manchurian candidate but a Manichean candidate, that is someone who seems to embody all that is “good” (young, black, hip, handsome, intellectual, compassionate, modern, urban and urbane, etc.) and able to conceal the true import of the movement and its goals. What’s important is not where Obama was born but where the ideas he espouses were born.

Finally, since the existing society is evil and rotten, those warring against Western democratic states were external allies. And in the early twenty-first century that means predominantly revolutionary Islamists, along with some radical nationalists (notably, for example, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez).

Any attempt to counter this movement, its ideology, and its control of key institutions must begin with a proper understanding of the enemy. Moreover, it should be emphasized that those people who know most precisely that the above analysis is true are those who are quickest to ridicule it.

Yet to portray what is happening now as merely a typical example of past liberalism misses the point and plays completely into the radical forces’ hands. And real liberals face precisely the same task as their ancestors, particularly in the 1930s-1960s era: how to oppose the far left that seeks to corrupt their ideas, and to throw these radicals out of controlling their institutions. This task has not even begun.

One weakness of the radical movement, however, is clear. The old revolutionaries created a new regime that ensured their hold on power. Failures, such as economic decline, need not worry them because they could repress any dissent and did not need to win fair elections. The New New Left, however, is trying to run an existing capitalist society in which its misfit policies inevitably produce failure and even disaster. What they are doing is somewhat akin to trying to get your computer to boot up by hitting it with a club. There are also big holes in its control over information, allowing reality to shine through.

Thus, the failure of their program will be increasingly obvious and sooner or later they will be voted out of power. There is a big difference, however, between “sooner,” when the damage might be reversed, and “later,” when things have gone too far, too many people bought off or indoctrinated, and too much debt accumulated.

Retrieved from:  http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/04/10/needed-a-marxist-style-analysis-to-understand-and-combat-the-extreme-lefts-hegemony/?singlepage=true

Pray for abortions? Six Rivers Planned Parenthood of Eureka, Calif., has launched a campaign called the 40 Days of Prayer: Supporting Women Everywhere.

The campaign lists 40 different prayers for those committing abortions: the mothers, the escorts, the abortionists, and everyone involved except the unborn children.

The prayer event is supported by the Clergy for Choice, who characterize themselves as “religious leaders who value all human life.” In truth, the purported “clergy” only value life once it reaches a certain age and actively seek to destroy the lives of defenseless preborn children, according to Liberty Counsel.

As Liberty Counsel sees it, this is a concerted effort to dehumanize children based on their age and is similar to a tactic once used in Nazi Germany toward the Jews and other non-Arians: first ostracize them from the rest of society, and then annihilate them.

Planned Parenthood’s attempts to develop a “spiritual” aspect to the pro-abortion argument can seem comparable to the religious leaders in Germany who supported Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. It was wrong then and it is wrong now, Liberty says.

“Planned Parenthood’s ‘prayer’ campaign is offensive,” says Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. “As much as they might not like the comparison, Planned Parenthood today is no different than the eugenics promoted by its founder Margaret Sanger who advocated the elimination of ‘undesirables,’ just like the most famous eugenicist, Adolf Hitler.”

Day 35 of the prayer campaign says, “Today we pray for girls everywhere, that they may have every opportunity for education, sport, health, art and vocation.” This prayer excludes girls who are in utero, Liberty asserts, and offensively insinuates that mothers are incapable of becoming educated, enjoying art, being healthy or holding a job.

Liberty concludes that Planned Parenthood’s prayer crusade is an attempt to mock and marginalize the highly effective “40 Days for Life,” which has unified half a million voices for the cause and saved at least 5,838 lives.

As a direct result of this prayer event, 22 abortion clinics have closed and 69 doctors have stopped performing abortion. Vision America has another positive prayer and fasting event called “40 Days to Save America,” which encourages pastors, priests, and rabbis to pray for God to intervene and save our nation.

Retrieved from: http://charismanews.com/us/33185-planned-parenthood-launches-pro-abortion-prayer-campaign

WASHINGTON — If you thought your tax bill was big this year, just wait till you see what’s coming next year.

A huge slew of tax cuts, breaks, and benefits are set to expire on New Year’s Day. The result could be so devastating, it could send the recovering economy right back into recession.

‘Taxmageddon’

A tax increase so massive is headed America’s way Jan. 1, some congressional aides are calling it “Taxmageddon.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warns these tax hikes, along with simultaneous spending cuts, could lead to major problems for the weak economy.

“There’s going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases,” the Fed chief recently told a congressional panel.

“It’s $500 billion of higher taxes just in 2013 alone,” Curtis Dubay, a senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, told CBN News.

“A tax hike of that size for just one year is simply unprecedented,” he said. “It’s going to take an enormous chunk of the economy out of the hands of the businesses and people and families that earned the income and give it to Congress to spend.”

Not only will the Bush-era tax cuts end, but much more:

• The Social Security payroll tax, which currently stands at 4.2 percent, will be restored to 6.2 percent.
• Parents who’ve been writing off $1,000 in taxes for each of their children, will now only be allowed to write off $500.
• The fix of the marriage penalty will disappear, meaning many married couples will suddenly have to pay more taxes.
• The patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax will get unpatched, which means many more middle-income Americans will get treated like the wealthy in the eyes of the IRS and taxed much more.

“Seventy percent falls directly on middle- and low-income taxpayers,” Dubay said.

But not everyone sees hiking taxes next year as a bad thing, especially if it hits the nation’s wealthy.

“Raising taxes in the short term and spending it, particularly taxes on the top end, will produce more jobs,” Robert Borosage, with the left-leaning Campaign for America’s Future, told CBN News.

“We have a lot of corporations and a lot of very wealthy people sitting on their money,” he said.

Borosage predicts the government will use all the new tax revenue to rebuild America’s infrastructure.

“Because our infrastructure is so decrepit, you’d put people to work, create the demand that then would get those wealthier people and the so-called jobs-creators to create some jobs,” he said.

But Dubay said it’s the threat of such tax hikes that keeps businesses from investing.

“There’s so much uncertainty, they don’t know if they can add new workers. They don’t know if they should make a new investment, so they’re holding back and waiting,” Dubay said.

“So ‘Taxmageddon’ is really hurting the economy today,” he concluded.

But Borosage is worried that without new tax revenues, massive spending cuts will devastate public schools, public works, Pell Grants for college students, and so much more.

“Food stamps and Medicare and aid for the most vulnerable seniors, people at the end of their life — we’re too rich a society to make those kinds of cuts,” he said.

Dubay insisted the best way to help everyone in America is get business thriving and get everyone back to work. He said “Taxmageddon” will only retard all that.

“It will slow job creation, it will slow wage growth, and it will really hamper the still staggering economy from recovering fully,” he told CBN News.

The White House and Congress could stop Taxmageddon, but currently there’s no political will to tackle it until after the presidential election in November.

Retrieved from: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/finance/2012/April/Economic-Observers-Beware-the-Coming-Taxmageddon/?cpid=EU_DD_2012_102

We all became witnesses to the unfolding travesty after the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.  The usual suspects led the way as the media circus ensued.   Division and racial hatred were preached by Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the New Black Panther Party.  What had started as a plea for justice from a grieving family, became a scream for vengeance under the direction of those who seek to divide us- those who want us to fight among ourselves so we don’t notice what they’re really doing.  Even the President failed to call for cooler heads to prevail, and added fuel to the fire.

News reports have been flooded with examples of hatred being put into action.  In Illinois, a 78 year old white man was beaten and robbed by a group of black youths while they stated “this is for Trayvon.”  A white visitor to Baltimore was beaten, robbed and stripped of everything (including clothes) by several blacks while groups of black witnesses looked on and laughed.  In Phoenix, a Hispanic man was shot dead during a minor altercation at a fast food drive through with a black man.

So my question remains;  Al, Jesse, are you happy now?  Martin Luther King Jr. would be ashamed of what you have made of his wonderful civil rights movement.  Remember ~ “I have a dream that one day a man will be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.”  Instead of love and support for the grieving family, you have provided a new movement where people are judged by the color of their skin.  The content of your character has been revealed, and it is not good.

Note: This tally excludes nine delegates each for American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas and the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, with 23.

Source: Associated Press

1144 delegates needed to win nomination

       Mitt Romney ~ 661

       Rick Santorum ~ 285

       Newt Gingrich ~ 136

       Ron Paul ~ 51

Information in this post obtained from:  http://projects.wsj.com/campaign2012/delegates

Born in a slave hut April 5, 1856, was Booker T. Washington. In dire poverty after the Civil War, he moved to West Virginia to work in a salt furnace and coal mine. At age 16 he walked 500 miles to attend Hampton Institute in Virginia and later Wayland Baptist Seminary in Washington, DC. In his book, Up From Slavery (1901), Washington wrote:

“Perhaps the most valuable thing that I got out of my second year at the Hampton Institute was an understanding of the use and value of the Bible. Miss Nathalie Lord, one of the teachers, from Portland, Maine, taught me how to use and love the Bible…”

“I learned to love to read the Bible, not only for the spiritual help which it gives, but on account of it as literature. The lessons taught me in this respect took such a hold upon me that at the present time, when I am at home, no matter how busy I am, I always make it a rule to read a chapter or a portion of a chapter in the morning, before beginning the work of the day. Whatever ability I may have as a public speaker I owe in a measure to Miss Lord.”

In 1895, Washington gave an historic speech at the Atlanta Exposition, of which he wrote:

“The afternoon papers had forecasts of the next days’ proceedings in flaring headlines… I did not sleep much that night…The next morning… I also kneeled down and asked God’s blessing… I make it a rule never to go before an audience … without asking the blessing of God upon what I want to say.”

Washington taught in West Virginia until he founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In the spring of 1896, Washington wrote to George W. Carver, who had just received his Masters Degree from Iowa State Agricultural Institute:

“Tuskegee Institute seeks to provide education — a means for survival to those who attend. Our students are poor, often starving. They travel miles of torn roads, across years of poverty. We teach them to read and write, but words cannot fill stomachs. They need to learn how to plant and harvest crops… I cannot offer you money, position or fame. The first two you have. The last, from the place you now occupy, you will no doubt achieve. These things I now ask you to give up. I offer you in their place-work-hard, hard work-the challenge of bringing people from degradation, poverty and waste to full manhood.”

Washington wrote:

“While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the work at Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the religious and spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational, but it is thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the students is not neglected. Our preaching service, prayer-meetings, Sunday-school, Christian Endeavour Society, Young Men’s Christian Association, and various missionary organizations, testify to this.”

Starting with 33 students, by the time Washington died, Tuskegee Institute had grown to 1,500 students and a faculty of 200 teaching 38 trades.

“If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian. . . . As a rule a person should get into the habit of reading his Bible. You never read in history of any great man whose influence has been lasting, who has not been a reader of the Bible.”

On May 24, 1900, Washington delivered “The Place of the Bible in the Uplifting of the Negro Race,” at Memorial Hall in Columbus, Ohio:

“The men doing the vital things of life are those who read the Bible and are Christians and not ashamed to let the world know it… No man can read the Bible and be lazy.”

Washington became friends with the leading men of his day, including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Presidents William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge, and was received by the Queen of England in Windsor Castle.

He was the first African American to have his image on a U.S. postage stamp, 1940, a U.S. Coin, 1946, and was the first African American elected to the Hall of Fame, 1945. Washington declared:

“In the sight of God there is no color line, and we want to cultivate a spirit that will make us forget that there is such a line anyway. I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”

Retrieved from: http://godfatherpolitics.com/4559/what-young-blacks-and-whites-can-learn-from-booker-t-washington-who-was-born-on-this-day-156-years-ago/

In a move that could foreshadow decisions from larger agencies, Egan-Jones downgraded the US to AA from AA+.

The company on Thursday cited “the lack of any tangible progress on addressing the problems and the continued rise in debt to GDP.”

“For the first time since WWII, US debt exceeds 100 percent,” analysts said, predicting that would rise to 106 percent by the end of the year, calling that an “inflection point.”

Egan-Jones — which is much smaller than its rivals — scrapped the United States’ top-level AAA rating in July, one month before Standard & Poor’s.

Part of the reason cited then and now was the continued political gridlock in Washington.

“We’d like to see some progress towards reducing the fiscal deficit in the next six to twelve months,” said managing director Sean Egan.

Retrieved from: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/05/US-credit-rating-downgraded–again

I’ve been involved with creation ministry for a number of years and know firsthand how difficult it is to speak in science classes in a public school.  If they do allow you to speak, they generally place strict guidelines on you.  You’re not allowed to say anything about the Bible, Jesus, God, creation, or intelligent design.  I’ve seen schools go so far as tell you that you aren’t even allowed to question evolution for fear that someone will take it as a creation talk and the school will get sued.

Likewise, history classes are the same way.  I once was invited to speak about America’s early history, but was told that I couldn’t mention anything about religion whatsoever.  I informed the teacher that you cannot truthfully teach American history without religion as it played a huge role in shaping the nation and helping us gain our independence from Great Britain.  Consequently my invitation to speak was withdrawn.

Public schools throughout our country are so afraid of lawsuits that they’ve turned to teaching history that has been sanitized against all religious references.  They’ll teach that most all of our Founding Father were deists, which by the way is not correct, but that’s as close to religion as they’ll get.

So tell me why a public school in the Tampa, Florida area would invited guest speakers from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)?

According to a report from One News Now, Steinbrenner High School had invited members of CAIR to come in and educate their students on Islamic relations.  When word got out to the surrounding community, the school board was overwhelmed with complaints from concerned parents and citizens.  Parents asked the school board to adopt a policy to prevent things like this from happening, but the school board refused to do so and even endorsed the high school’s policy to invite CAIR speakers in the future.

I wonder if the same high school would invite someone from an organization like American Vision to come in and teach on America’s Christian foundations and how the Bible helped shape our nation and our nation’s governing documents.  I highly doubt that they would because that would be teaching a religious view and would be a violation of the supposed separation of church and state.

But they evidently have no problem inviting in Muslims to teach about their history, which is also religious in nature.  How do they expect the CAIR representatives to teach anything about themselves without the mention of religion?  It’s like asking someone to teach about electricity without mentioning direct or alternating currents or teaching woodworking without teaching anything about the different types of wood.  It just can’t be done.

Fortunately, David Caton, president of the Florida Family Association has become involved with the Steinbrenner High School situation.  He believes that the school and school board received so much negativity from the community and parents that they will probably not invite any CAIR members in the future.  To help insure that it doesn’t happen again, the Florida Family Association has offered a cash reward for verifiable information for any future speaking event involving members of CAIR or any other Muslim organization.

retrieved from: http://godfatherpolitics.com/4584/why-is-it-okay-for-muslims-to-teach-their-heritage-in-public-schools-but-not-okay-for-christians/

The Rules of Outrage — Or Why the Trayvon Martin Tragedy Divides the Country

Every year hundreds of Americans are shot and killed under controversial circumstances, where the evidence is incomplete and subject to dispute, often making impossible an immediate charge of murder or manslaughter, at least until further witnesses or information come forth.

We, the public, rarely, if ever, hear of such tragedies. These certainly are not national news items. What, then, made the Trayvon Martin shooting so different?

A few unpleasant facts were assumed that explain the subsequent protests—and the growing backlash against the protests. I think they run something like this, presented here without much editorial commentary.

1. If Trayvon Martin had been white, or George Zimmerman had been black, or had both been black or both white, there would have been no outrage: 94% of murdered blacks are killed by other blacks, to almost no national outcry. Just this past Friday in Florida, fourteen were gunned down (two killed) to silence (at a funeral parlor, no less), as the protestors of the single Martin fatality went ahead with further demonstrations.

Whites are far more likely to be murdered by blacks than vice versa, despite the latter comprising only 11-12% of the population — again to no national outcry. The distinction in this case was that Martin was black. Zimmerman was not. The rule in America is apparently that only rare white on black crime — not far more common black on black, or black on white, or white on white — is symbolic of larger pathologies, both past and present. In earlier decades of American history, the reverse was more likely true: black on white crime aroused public furor in a way white on white or black on black or white on black crime did not. That fact in time was accepted as clearly symptomatic of racial bias, but the inverse of that today is said not to be.

2. If George Zimmerman had been black and not charged with a felony, there would have been no outcry — given that black assailants of other blacks often are not charged because of the occasional difficulty of obtaining eyewitnesses’ affidavits and the unwillingness of many to testify in court (especially in gang-related violence), as well as the use of the self-defense plea. If no one comes forward with enough information to arrest all those who shot up a Florida funeral parlor last Friday, wounding fourteen and killing two, no one I fear will care all that much. Again, the apparent problem in the Martin case was that the one who was not immediately charged was white — and that again made it symbolic of supposedly larger pathologies.

3. George Zimmerman allegedly used a racial slur caught on tape. I say allegedly since the recording is scratchy and unclear. Yet we know the deceased self-identified himself on his twitter account with the N-word. One problem in this case is that everyone did not realize that someone not black who may have or have not invoked a racial slur is thereby rightly suspect — whereas one who is black may use racial slurs aplenty with impunity, understood as they are as terms of intimacy or endearment. When whites, remember, use racial epithets, it is symptomatic of larger pathologies; when blacks do, it enters the realm of sociological exegesis. It does not matter that there are social implications to young black males referring to each other with the infamous N-word — from matters of proverbial self-esteem to lowering the bar for the usage of such a slur by others. It matters only that non-blacks accept that they will hear the N-word frequently in rap lyrics, in movies, on some radio, and in colloquial speech and that they nevertheless realize that the omnipresent smear has not in fact now transmogrified into mere slang.

4. George Zimmerman, we are told, had credit problems. He had brushes with the law. He apparently displayed in the past a bad temper. All that was considered to be necessary background information to understand his motives on the night of the shooting. Trayvon Martin was suspended from school three times, for allegedly possessing drug paraphernalia, defacing school property with obscene graffiti, and possessing items not his own, as well as posting on the internet some disturbing references to apparent criminal activity. All such information was announced to be irrelevant to the issue of whether Martin may have provoked a fight, broken Mr. Zimmerman’s nose, or pounded the latter’s head into the pavement. Such background information about Martin was considered character assassination — that about Zimmerman a key to his criminal psyche. Whether such distinctions were predicated on the fact that Mr. Martin was black and Zimmerman white, or, conversely, that Mr. Martin was shot in the altercation and Mr. Zimmerman shot him, is not entirely clear.

5. Trayvon Martin’s mother, understandably, is upset that unflattering information about her deceased son is publicly aired, contrary to her own portrait (as is true of all mothers in extremis) of him as a model student. She is going to court to trademark the use of his name — not, it is promised, for commercial purposes, but to ensure that others do not. All publicity about the deceased that is positive is now rightly in the public domain and soon to be merchandised; all that is not is scurrilous and blame-the-victim defamation.

6. George Zimmerman is now referred to as “a white Hispanic” on the basis of his Hispanic mother and white father, although he would be classified as “Hispanic” should he have applied for a civil service job. The president of the United States, to my knowledge, is not supposed to be referred to as a “white African-American” due to the fact of one of his parents being white. Apparently the insertion of “white” into racial identification is to lessen the claim of the referent on victimhood. Or is the race industry worried that skin color or nomenclature can fool us into to thinking race is incidental to our personas?

Note that had Zimmerman preferred, as do many of mixed heritage, to Hispanicize his first name (e.g. Jorge) or use his mother’s Peruvian maiden name, he would be de facto “Latino,” and the case would have lost its white/black resonance. It surely would not have made the national news. Latino/black and black/Latino crime either offers no teachable moment in our ill society or provokes a counter-response from the Latino activist community.

7. One can be conscious of the fact that 2-3% of the population (young black males) commits over 30% of the nation’s crime; but if one were to use that information to guide one’s behavior then it is deplorable and degenerates into racial profiling.

The national emphasis is not on ensuring that 2-3% of the population does not commit 30% of the nation’s crime, but that the population not be aware of that fact for any particular use — or that it realize in the collective sense that society is responsible for such inordinate rates of crime. All media pundits and elites who live in New York and Washington (including the president of the United States) deplore racial profiling, but — in the selection of their children’s schools, in their preferred neighborhoods, in the decision where to shop or buy gas after hours, in the advice they give their teenagers who go out on Saturday nights — employ such general profiling and stereotypes hourly. Stranger still, so do young African-American males: black males who might wear cardigan sweaters and ties on the Saturday night street would be safer than those with hoodies and tattoos.

8. When the narrative of the case was first aired in the media — a white vigilante murderer with a Germanic sounding name had gunned down a preteen African-American child with skittles — the nation was outraged. The furor intensified especially when photos aired of the mug shot of Zimmerman, juxtaposed to that of the smiling preteen Martin, even as demonstrators preferred the photos of a hooded 17-teen-year-old, 6’2” Martin. I gather that for purposes of ethnic solidarity, Trayvon was to be portrayed as a defiant hooded 17-year-old; while for purposes of public empathy, he was also to be frozen in amber as a slight preteen in his football uniform. Were we the public not to be aware of that?

9. The New Black Panther Party quite quickly put a bounty out for the arrest of George Zimmerman. The director Spike Lee tweeted his supposed address in apparent hopes that a mob might assemble at his front door. These acts were cries of the heart, not potential felonies to be investigated by state or federal authorities — although should other organizations have emulated their actions in anger over a black suspect in a shooting of a non-black victim, warrants probably would have ensued.

10. In commentary on the case, pleas for patience and caution to ensure a full airing of the facts of the case were said to be symptomatic of callousness, if not racism; demands that immediate arrests and indictments follow from popular agitation were deemed liberal and ethical.

11. There was no expectation that either the president or attorney general would issue advisories, calling for a reduction in tensions while the criminal justice system investigated the shooting. Mr. Holder had little credibility as a disinterested adjudicator (cf. “cowards,” “my people,” charges of racism against congressional inquirers over Fast and Furious), and President Obama had lost his opportunity by bizarrely reminding the nation that the deceased would have resembled the son he never had. There is no credible administration voice calling for calm; nor can there now be. Did President Obama infer that had Mr. Martin been white, he would have been silent, or expressed no particular solidarity with the deceased — and thereby those of us who are not African-American should feel no special connection with the deceased because Mr. Martin did not look like our sons, but we should have, if he had? If so, then the president of the United States sees American society largely in tribal terms, where our own interests and empathy are predicated largely on kindred race.

Where do these realities of the case leave us?

Much of black America, and many liberals in general, believe that the Martin shooting is a classic reminder of both contemporary racial prejudice, and the wages of decades of discrimination and oppression in the United States. In such a climate and in a country with such a history, there is not necessarily logic to be found, or some sort of constructed equivalence. Instead, they accept that America is a racist society, and then all of the above assumptions take on a certain logic.

The problem?

There are millions of Americans who do not buy into the above paradigm. Millions of whites were born decades after the civil rights movement, and do not believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are privileged on the basis of their race. They came of age in the era of affirmative action, do not discriminate or tolerate discrimination, do not wish to utter the repulsive N-word, and, to be candid, often have experienced first-hand inordinately high black crime percentages. (My first two experiences with violent crime were as a graduate student in East Palo Alto in 1975, when an African-American male tried to break into my apartment with a bat, and when two African-American males tried to knock me off a bike and steal it.) For millions, then, the notion of collective guilt is less palatable. Millions of others are Latino, Asian, or of mixed heritage. In their view, fairly or not, they too do not accept many of the above premises: they do not see their apostasy as racism, and charges of racism cause them little worry. Nor do a growing number of blacks see their fates as predicated on the degree present of white racism.

In other words, we are left with the following paradoxes: the traditional civil rights industry will see the Martin case as an indictment against America, one deserving of compensatory and reparatory action from the majority, which they are prepared to oversee and adjudicate. The majority, of citizens, however, sees the current civil rights hierarchy as much of the problem with, not the solution to, the Martin tragedy. No, it is worse than that still: the Martin case has evoked renewed interest not in disproportionate rates of black crime alone, but in the civil rights leadership’s apparent lack of concern about it.

And Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman?

At this writing no one yet knows whether an edgy neighborhood watch bully gratuitously provoked an incident and shot an unarmed victim, or whether he was himself pounded to the pavement, when in self-defense reaching for a weapon to ward off his assailant — or neither of the above scenarios or something else still.

And increasingly few sadly seem to care to find out.

Retrieved from: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/from-the-trayvon-martin-tragedy-to-a-national-travesty/?singlepage=true

When a 1942 Supreme Court decision that most people never heard of makes the front page of the New York Times in 2012, you know that something unusual is going on.

What makes that 1942 case — Wickard v. Filburn — important today is that it stretched the federal government’s power so far that the Obama administration is using it as an argument to claim before today’s Supreme Court that it has the legal authority to impose ObamaCare mandates on individuals.

Roscoe Filburn was an Ohio farmer who grew some wheat to feed his family and some farm animals. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined him for growing more wheat than he was allowed to grow under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which was passed under Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.

Filburn pointed out that his wheat wasn’t sold, so that it didn’t enter any commerce, interstate or otherwise. Therefore the federal government had no right to tell him how much wheat he grew on his own farm, and which never left his farm.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says that all powers not explicitly given to the federal government belong to the states or to the people. So you might think that Filburn was right.

But the Supreme Court said otherwise. Even though the wheat on Filburn’s farm never entered the market, just the fact that “it supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market” meant that it affected interstate commerce. So did the fact that the home-grown wheat could potentially enter the market.

The implications of this kind of reasoning reached far beyond farmers and wheat. Once it was established that the federal government could regulate not only interstate commerce itself, but anything with any potential effect on interstate commerce, the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on the powers of the federal government virtually disappeared.

Over the years, “interstate commerce” became magic words to justify almost any expansion of the federal government’s power, in defiance of the Tenth Amendment. That is what the Obama administration is depending on to get today’s Supreme Court to uphold its power to tell people that they have to buy the particular health insurance specified by the federal government.

There was consternation in 1995 when the Supreme Court ruled that carrying a gun near a school was not interstate commerce. That conclusion might seem like only common sense to most people, but it was a close 5 to 4 decision, and it sparked outrage when the phrase “interstate commerce” failed to work its magic in justifying an expansion of the federal government’s power.

The 1995 case involved a federal law forbidding anyone from carrying a gun near a school. The states all had the right to pass such laws, and most did, but the issue was whether the federal government could pass such a law under its power to regulate interstate commerce.

The underlying argument was similar to that in the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn: School violence can affect education, which can affect productivity, which can affect interstate commerce.

Since virtually everything affects virtually everything else, however remotely, “interstate commerce” can justify virtually any expansion of government power, by this kind of sophistry.

The principle that the legal authority to regulate X implies the authority to regulate anything that can affect X is a huge and dangerous leap of logic, in a world where all sorts of things have some effect on all sorts of other things.

As an example, take a law that liberals, conservatives and everybody else would agree is valid — namely, that cars have to stop at red lights. Local governments certainly have the right to pass such laws and to punish those who disobey them.

No doubt people who are tired or drowsy are more likely to run through a red light than people who are rested and alert. But does that mean that local governments should have the power to order people when to go to bed and when to get up, because their tiredness can have an effect on the likelihood of their driving through a red light?

The power to regulate indirect effects is not a slippery slope. It is the disastrous loss of freedom that lies at the bottom of a slippery slope.

Retrieved from: http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/03/28/back_to_the_future/page/full/

“Thoughtcrimes” — opinions and ideas that oppose the status quo — were pursued and punished by the Thought Police in the future world described by George Orwell in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Could politically incorrect thought be declared illegal — a type of “hate” crime against individuals or the State — someday in America? Since much of Christian thought seems to be considered politically incorrect these days, might it also be declared hate speech?

Although such notions may seem the stuff of futuristic science fiction, just last week, Big Journalism ran a column with the subtitle “Shorter Ann Curry: Your religious beliefs represent hate speech!” The column by John Nolte described Curry’s recent NBC Today interview with Christian actor Kirk Cameron.

What did Cameron say to deserve Curry’s “attack”? When, a couple of weeks earlier, the actor was asked his views on gay marriage by CNN’s Piers Morgan, Cameron, within a much longer answer, made these particular statements: “I think that it’s unnatural. I think that it’s detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of our civilization.”

The U.S. military hosted an event over the weekend for soldiers and others who don’t believe in God. It was called “Rock Beyond Belief.” A so-called ‘gay’ flag flew over a U.S. military base in Afghanistan last week. Last year, the Obama Administration banned the Christian cross from a worship tent in Afghanistan. The cross was considered to be offensive.

“The U.S. Army has removed a cross that was prominently placed on the front of a chapel located at the remote base of Camp Marmal in Northern Afghanistan. . . . [O]fficials said that having a permanent sectarian image on the chapel violated army regulations. . . . One soldier referred to the decision and the regulation behind it as ‘a direct attack against Christianity and Judaism.’”

This isn’t the first time Christianity has been an issue in Afghanistan. Bibles translated into Afghan languages were sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan. They were deemed to be offensive to the Muslim population. And a ‘gay’ flag isn’t? Here’s how CNN reported the story in 2009:

Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.

So it’s OK to blow up stuff and shoot and kill Afghans, but it’s illegal to share the gospel with them. We have traded bullets for the “gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15).

America has been compromising its Christian heritage with Islamic nations for more than two centuries. It didn’t work then, and it’s not going to work now. Europe abandoned its Christian heritage long ago in the name of religious pluralism, adopted secularism as a state religion, and if demographic reports are accurate will be Islamic in less than 50 years. Playing the neutrality game is having an impact, and it’s not a good one. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7).

Retrieved from: http://godfatherpolitics.com/4498/gay-flag-flies-over-afghan-base-while-cross-removed-from-army-chapel-and-atheist-rally-sponsored-on-military-base/

DELEGATE COUNT AS REPORTED BY STATE PARTIES ~ Retrieved 4/1/12 @ 8:47 PM MST

1144 delegates needed to win nomination

       Mitt Romney ~ 478

       Rick Santorum ~ 182

       Newt Gingrich ~ 133

       Ron Paul ~ 26

Unbound ~ 322

Information in this post obtained from: http://www.gop.com/index.php/comms/comments/rnc_primary_update