RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last week, everywhere I went in Washington it seemed as if the country’s cultural and ideological divisions came down to a debate over the state of Texas and whether or not it was “a crazy state” or the “place that is still most like America.”

Congressman Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, started the rumble during a House committee meeting by saying that Texas’s refusal to join Obamacare’s exchanges made it “a crazy state.” He then refused to apologize to Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican who challenged him.

Those became fighting words. Former governor Rick Perry, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, responded during a speech at the American Principles Project: “He is right! We are crazy!” he enthused. “We’re crazy about jobs, we’re crazy about opportunity, we’re crazy about liberty, we’re crazy about the Constitution!” Charles Murray, the libertarian American Enterprise Institute scholar who hails from Iowa, weighed in by saying, “I’ve always thought of Texas as the place that is still most like America,” pointing to the self-reliant, can-do spirit the state still represents. Florida governor Rick Scott also joined in, noting that he has often cited Texas as a tax-cutting role model; then he joked about out-dueling Perry as a jobs generator.

When Obama burst upon the scene, prescient souls saw through the mask and asserted that, like all alleged utopian dreams, his would only result in inequalities and injustices. As world-renowned Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth, writes in his 2013 Haggada: Collected Essays on Pesach:

In the history of the human mind there have been many utopias, imagined paradises. None has been realized. Indeed the word ‘utopia’ itself means ‘no place.’ Utopias never happen because they come without a realistic map of how to get from here to there. They are discontinuous with the present. They can be brought about only by revolution, and almost without exception, [these utopian] revolutions replace iniquities and inequities with injustices of their own (33).

Consequently Americans have been and continue to be deluded by a man who feels he is entitled to a divine right to rule over his subjects, the very subjects whom he reviles and despises, especially those who still value freedom.

In all of Obama’s executive orders and unconstitutional actions, one characteristic is abundantly clear and that is the “negation of liberty.” Instead he creates an “ongoing despair” as people work harder and earn less, as people strive for success, but are shackled by ObamaCare lies, excessive regulations, and increasing taxes.

In the previous article in this series I noted some differences between Hebrew and English—differences that are not surprising since the two are from different language families. And yet, at the same time, in large part via the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew has considerably influenced English.

As this informative article notes:

Both because of a desire to read the Bible in its original tongue and a belief in Hebrew as “The Mother of Languages,” it figured prominently in the Puritan movement in England…. English Puritan emigrants were also instrumental in promoting Hebrew as part of the curriculum in such prominent American universities as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Pennsylvania (Yale, Columbia and Dartmouth still bear Hebrew inscriptions on their seals). In Harvard’s early years, more time was devoted to the study of Hebrew than Latin or Greek.

It makes sense, then, that not a few common English words originate in Hebrew—and the following, of course, are just examples.

Unlike Nixon and Clinton, who lied in self-defense, Obama lies proactively, which is decidedly more dangerous. He will say practically anything to achieve his goals without regard to the truth. The repeated assertion about keeping your doctor and your health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is just one famous example. But only a few days ago on Fareed Zakaria’s show [1] the president made a statement that dwarfed his claims about Obamacare. When asked if we were in a war with radical Islam, the president replied:

….I reject a notion that somehow that creates a religious war because the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject that interpretation of Islam. They don’t even recognize it as being Islam, and I think that for us to be successful in fighting this scourge, it’s very important for us to align ourselves with the 99.9 percent of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we’re looking for — order, peace, prosperity.

99.9 percent?! I will bypass for the moment Obama’s rather self-serving definition of Islam and focus on that outrageous number, which is absurd on the face of it and not remotely supported by any of the numerous polls [2] on the subject

In her December 28 CNN article, “How Germany Banishes Climate Myths [1],” German environment minister Barbara Hendricks argues that the climate policies enabled by her country and the EU as a whole have been an economic success.

This is nothing more than East German-style disinformation.

The reality is that Germany’s so-called “Solar Valley” has become a mothballed industrial rust belt. Nearly all solar energy manufacturers have closed their doors.

In support of her argument, Hendricks claims that while greenhouse gas emissions in the EU fell by 18% between 1990 and 2012, there was cumulative growth of 45% in the EU’s economy during this period. However, this represents a growth rate of only 2% annually, while typical investment portfolios grew by between 100% (4.5% annually) and 300% (13.6% annually) during this time.

Hendricks asserts:

Scientists have long agreed that climate action strengthens economic development and creates an opportunity for comprehensive modernization of our economies.

This makes no sense. Scientists aren’t experts on economics, and unbiased scientists never agree on such contentious matters. Hendricks continues:

The age of fossil fuel is coming to an end, just as the age of the horse and cart, the steam locomotive and the oil lamp eventually came to an end.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/frontpagemag-com/to-undermine-sharia-on-the-glazov-gang/

How and why the West needs to spearhead the effort to undercut the Sharia narrative.

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Moorthy Muthuswamy, the author of Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War.

Dr. Muthuswamy came on the show to discuss To Undermine Sharia, analyzing how and why the West needs to spearhead the effort to undercut the Sharia narrative.

Founded in 1948, The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of 345 Protestant and Orthodox Christian churches in 110 countries. Their aim is “to support the member churches and ecumenical partners to journey together, promoting justice and peace in our world as an expression of faith in the Triune God.”

To advance their “justice and peace” initiatives, they collude with Islamic and Palestinian friends in a covert scheme to sabotage Israel. Their web of anti-Zionism extends throughout Europe, the Americas and Africa. While this may seem a bold assertion, it is nonetheless worth examining some undeniable evidence.

WCC is among the many coalitions of Christians that embrace the extreme left and the jihad agenda as appeasers and collaborators. According to Melanie Phillips, a British journalist and commentator, Islamic tactics are emboldened largely due to the support of Christian leaders. These strong alliances help to propel the Islamic agenda. Respectable Christian institutions like the WCC have partnered and even befriended this dreadful Islamist fraternity under the guise of ecumenism.

BRIAN WILLIAMS FOR PRESIDENTTwo years ago NBC and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell tried to invent a Romney gaffe by playing an edited tape of Romney. Mitchell wasn’t just another angry MSNBCite, but NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent and a colleague of Brian Williams who often appeared on his newscast.

NBC was criticized, but Mitchell wasn’t fired. Neither was anyone else. She didn’t even apologize.

The network had even more outrageously edited George Zimmerman’s tape to make him sound racist. A local producer and correspondent were fired. The correspondent, Lilia Luciano, had reported for, among other NBC outlets, The Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Brian Williams is in trouble for lying, but he was part of a media culture of deceit where lies were acceptable for a good progressive cause. Williams isn’t really in trouble because he lied, but because he got caught. Worse still, the lies were self-serving. They served Brian Williams; they didn’t serve the left.

Williams had failed to draw the line between the “good lie” (ObamaCare is making life better) and the “bad lie” (I swam the flooded French Quarter with puppies on my back during Katrina while Al Qaeda shot RPGs at me). But the borders between the “good lie” and the “bad lie” have been vague when it comes to the titans of the left.

This past month the Center for Immigration Studies released a report authored by Jessica Vaughan, that organization’s director of policy studies.

The title of the report was, “Government Data Reveal 5.5 Million New Work Permits Issued Since 2009.”

Jessie is an old friend and colleague. I contacted her to discuss her astonishing report. I was more than a bit curious as to how she had come to focus on how millions of aliens were granted employment authorization when, under existing immigration laws, they would not qualify to be granted this important immigration benefit. I was especially interested to know if any official reports issued by the GAO, at the behest of an appropriate congressional oversight committee, had been behind the initial findings. She was crystal clear in her response: There were no such reports, she came to do the study on her own.

Here is how her report begins:

Government data reveal that about 5.5 million new work permits were issued to aliens from 2009 to 2014, above and beyond the number of new green card and temporary worker admissions in those years. This is a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the limits set by Congress that inevitably impacts opportunities for U.S. workers, damages the integrity of the immigration system, and encourages illegal immigration.

Originally published by Defining Ideas.

In December, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, had to explain to Congress several remarks he had made about the “stupidity of the American voter,” as he put it in one speech. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh frequently uses the more diplomatic phrase “low-information voter” to explain why bad policies or incompetent politicians succeed. And numerous polls of respondents’ knowledge of history and current events repeatedly imply the same conclusion––that the American people are not informed or smart enough for democracy.

This bipartisan disdain for the masses has been a constant theme of political philosophy for over 2,500 years. From the beginnings of popular rule in ancient Athens, the competence of the average person to manage the state has been called into question by critics of democracy. Lacking the innate intelligence or the acquired learning necessary for dispassionately judging policy, the masses instead are driven by their passions or private short-term interests.

The earliest critic of democracy, an Athenian known as the Old Oligarch, wrote that “among the common people are the greatest ignorance, ill-discipline, and depravity.” Aristotle argued that the need to make a living prevents most people from acquiring the education and developing the virtues necessary for running the state. He said the “best form of state will not admit them to citizenship.” And Socrates famously sneered at the notion that any “tinker, cobbler, sailor, passenger; rich and poor, high and low” could be consulted on “an affair of state.”

By the time of the Constitutional convention in 1787, this distrust of the masses had long been a staple of political philosophy. Roger Sherman, a lawyer and future Senator from Massachusetts, who opposed letting the people directly elect members of the House of Representatives, typified the antidemocratic sentiment of many delegates. He argued that the people “should have as little to do as may be about the government,” for “they want information and are constantly liable to be misled.”