It's "Joseph, husband of Mary," not "Mary, wife of Joseph," or What's in a surname? Nothing we'd recognize, at least until the Middle Ages

A pastor asked recently how Luke, the author of his eponymous Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, could have come up with such personal details of the events surrounding Christ's birth in his Christmas account, since he wasn't there. The answer, of course, is that he most likely interviewed Jesus' mother Mary. The pastor then asked for Mary's last name.

Knowing that people in those days didn't have last names, one participant answered "Theotokos" ("Mother of God"), because that title identifies Jesus' mother uniquely among every Mary, Miriam, Maryam, or Maria in human history.

The pastor's response? "That's a title, not a last name." His answer was that Mary's last name is "wife of Joseph."

Well, "wife of Joseph" is a title, too. And it doesn't appear in the New Testament. (Last names didn't exist until the Middle Ages.)

People did have appellations that indicated familial, occupational, or locational associations. John the Baptizer, Jesus of Nazareth, Leonardo da Vinci. In Matthew 1:16, Joseph -- Jesus' stepfather -- is referred to "Joseph the husband of Mary."

So, according to the pastor's logic, that would make Joseph's last name "the husband of Mary."

How do the Biblical texts actually refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus? The name "Mary" turns up fifty-four times in the ESV New Testament; only nineteen times does it refer to Jesus' mother. Here are a few examples:

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:18).

"And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh" (Matthew 2:11).

"to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child" (Luke 2:5).

"And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, 'Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed [...]'" (Luke 2:34).

And just "Mary" in a number of verses (e.g., Matthew 1:16, Mark 6:3, Luke 1:27, Acts 1:14). Interestingly, the Apostle John never refers to his adopted mom Mary by name (he uses "His mother" in John 19:25).

Adding context to Scripture can help us relate personally to the people, places, and events from so long ago, but it needs to be done truthfully. And a pastor should be the last one to err or worse, fabricate.

Loreena McKennitt's buying what they're selling in Marrakesh Night Market

A foreign culture, moonlight, exotic foods, mystery, a general excitement in a crowded market ... what's not to like?

How about genocidal anti-Semitism? Universal commands to enslave or slaughter all who refuse the "invitation" to convert? Sacralized gender oppression, including rape, wife-beating, polygyny, and worse-than-second-class-status?

I'm sure Ms. McKennitt is unaware of what she's been sold. (Imagine the buyer's remorse when she finally unwraps that package!)

A response to the artist's musings here:

"women are veiled to a great degree ... I am stuck by the sense of intrigue the environment creates; as much is concealed as is revealed ... "

I love Loreena McKennitt, but she is totally out of her element here. These musings indicate a Westerner on vacation romanticizing the "other," a naive stranger delighted in her "tolerance" and "openness" but substituting her imagination for the reality of where she is.

A love of exploration, other cultures, and human creativity is wonderful, but all of those -- love, exploration, culture, creativity -- are diametric to Islam.

In other words, there may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. And that's why a veil -- which might be mysterious on Ingrid Bergman or Audrey Hepburn -- is, on the devout, merely a symbol of Muhammad's violent misogyny and genocidal intolerance.

A culture's being infected with "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5) -- and assorted other crimes against humanity -- disqualifies it from being exotically-romantic, doesn't it?

"Jihad will continue until America is no more"

Who would make such a racist, bigoted, and hateful comment? Who's the colossal Islamophobe? Rush? Hannity? Pamela Geller or Robert Spencer? Nope.

Rush and Sean are still afraid of the "j" word (although Sean will use the word with an "-ist" at the end). And Geller and Spencer will one day be hailed as guardians of Western Civilization (if it survives).

No, that's the head of Islam in Iran. Perhaps our (allegedly) former-Muslim-in-Chief can explain to Khamenei how he misunderstands The-Religion-of-Peace-Say-Otherwise-and-I'll-Cut-Your-Head-Off and how he's "hijacking a great world religion." (If only Bush 43 had been making a veiled admission of Islam's guilt with that now-clearly unintentional pun!)

Whether it's Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, or Iran, Sunni or Shia, USC or UCLA's MSA, the goals are the same.

Anyway, here's more evidence that the "smartest president ever" who grew up Muslim and his lapdogs in the media are really only facilitating the end of civilization, a process they accelerate by allowing a nuclear Iran

In response to a question by a parliamentarian on how long this battle will continue, Khamenei said,“Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.”

The only things "transparent" about liberals are their utter, craven dishonesty and homicidal malfeasance

So, Democrats are calling Obama "detached," "flat-footed," and "incompetent."

That makes them racist, right?

And now that the government's utter, fatal failures in caring for our national heroes are being exposed, the VA is going to "allow" more veterans to go to private medical facilities for help.

How magnanimous! How wise!

These are the people to whom the greedy, closet racists, and the apathetic have entrusted our medical care?

Way to go, America. You elected a "detached and flat-footed incompetent" to take away our health care -- not to mention our right to determine how best to spend our own resources -- from private industry only to return to it when they start killing us.

Well done!

Obvious truths?

Yes, if you're willing to read honestly.

Two replies, one offered to a Roman Catholic who is afraid to deal with the Word of God as the Word of God, and the other to an atheist who is either so uninformed or so perverse as to try to undermine the faith of the weak.

From here (pending moderation):

To Rose:

Facts are facts.

If the history -- even in the Old Testament -- isn't true, then you can't trust Christ, Who said that it is.

You're not only "not Sola Scriptura" -- by the way, neither are Southern Baptists, even though they [might] think they are -- you're not any Scriptura.

You need to rethink that.

To Hiker:

With regard to your so-called "contradictions":

1) The Creation accounts (not "stories") do not conflict; they focus on the event from two different perspectives.

Both accounts were written by the same author, Moses, who was educated in all the wisdom of the ancient world. Don't you think that he would have noticed that he was "contradicting" himself? And the people of ancient Israel, to whom this subject matter was Life-and-Death and who preserved Moses' writings as the very words of God -- don't you think someone (everyone!) would have noticed? "Hey, wait a minute, Moses ...."

2) "Two different flood stories"? Genesis is still written by Moses.

3) The fact that you have to ask where was Jesus born and where His parents lived indicates that you're either intellectually-lazy or cravenly-dishonest, since the answer is available to anyone who can read. [The tone of this line bothers me, but taken in context, it seems necessary, since Hiker is not asking honestly; he's trying to destroy Rose's faith.]

Christ was born in Bethlehem, in a manger. When the Magi (number unstated) find Him, it's close to two years later, which we know from the historical record: Herod ordered the slaughter of all male babies two-years-old and younger based on the time of Christ's birth he learned from the wise men:

"Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men" (Matthew 2:16).)

4) As for Bethlehem or Nazareth? No one's ever moved from one city to another, have they?

"And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David [...]" (Luke 2:4). 

"And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth [...]" (Luke 2:39). 

5) Archaeology has uncovered another reign as governor/proconsul for someone named Quirinius, because, you know, no one's ever been named the same as someone else or served in an office twice.

[Luke calls Pontius Pilate "governor of Judea" in Luke 3, even though Pilate was "procurator"; Luke used the word to mean "one who governs" and not necessarily as a title. Luke also notes that the Luke 2 census was the "first" while Quirinius was governor; he notes a later census under Quirinius in Acts 5. Finally, Vardaman notes microletters on the Lapis Venetus also placing Quirinius as proconsul of Syria and Cilicia c. 12/11 B.C.]

Your objections are simplistic, dishonest, and stale. You're neither reading nor thinking for yourself, or you're hoping only to undermine the faith of others.

Perhaps, Hiker, it's time for you to reexamine your religion. And your motives.

Palin nails Domestic and Foreign Policy in one paragraph

Of course, this is an improper use of "baptism."

But her pointing out the utter hypocrisy of the murderous and craven Left and a proper response to those who would enslave or slaughter innocents merely for rejecting their "invitation" to convert to their genocidal ideology is moral and brilliant.

From here:

I do have to apologize for that. I am sorry. Not all intolerant, anti-freedom, leftist liberals are hypocrites. I'm kidding, yes they are. And they are not right. The policies that poke our allies in the eye and coddle adversaries instead of putting the fear of God in our enemies. Come on! Enemies who would utterly annihilate America. They obviously have information on plots to carry out jihad. Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.

If you want to justify evil, just call someone a name, demonize them, and destroy their career

It's simple, really. Even if you treat others decently in your place of employment, for more than a decade, in an organization you helped found, don't express an opinion that the tyrannous Left doesn't like. Or else.

I guess "tolerance" extends only to your own peculiar predilections. Forget God. Forget Nature. Forget millennia of moral absolutes.

Well, time to find a new browser (until the next witch hunt).

Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO:

"Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomfortable."

Sin is not "love." And lust does not create a Constitutional right.

Refusing to legitimize an unnatural and perverse act by calling it "marriage" is not bigotry; refusing to redefine one of society's fundamental institutions is not "hateful" (but demonizing those who defend it is).

No one I know wants to deny anyone their license to play house with the consenting adult(s) of their choosing.

Not all adults have the right to marry. Would you abolish all barriers to it? Would you redefine the word into absurdity?

What about sodomy makes it sacrosanct to you? It's a behavior; as such, it is subject to moral judgment. Where do you draw the line? Incest? Polygyny? Zoophilia? Pedophilia? A young adult male and his browser? Why can't they all get "married"? What gives you the right to deny them their equality? Who are you to forbid their happiness? Why are you so hateful?

You don't have any problem making moral judgments against those whose morality you despise. That makes you a bigot, doesn't it?

This isn't about equal rights. This isn't about "letting people live like others."

This is about using the force of government -- and now, the marketplace -- to coerce the endorsement of that which is immoral and unnatural. This is about demonizing those whose positions you dislike.

And that doesn't even depend on religious doctrine -- though Christ's endorsement of one man, one woman, for life with the glorious possibility of children should be enough.

Nowhere in Nature does any species engage in exclusively-homosexual relationships. Even the Darwinist knows that exclusively-homosexual relationships mean the end of the species. And it's a violation of design; even a simple man knows that the relevant organs are made for ... other purposes.

And you won't let Eich "live his life like others."

Fascist. Hypocrite.

Why can't all deranged fatwas be limited to space travel?

If only Islam's perverse rulings were confined to other planets. This world would be a much better place.

But people like green_planet and Okay_a_Username won't allow it. Whether because of actual devotion to the genocidal pedophile Muhammad or just plain hatred of Christianity (everyone knows that Islam is its mortal enemy), the effect is the same: jihad advances and the only real defense against it is undermined.

As for the ruling itself? "religious leaders argue that making the trip would be tantamount to committing suicide, which all religions tend to frown upon."

Religions, yes. But Islam? It forbids suicide unless you're able to murder or maim non-Muslims in the process. Then you get paradise (Qur'an 9:111). (What a deal!)

Below are replies to the propaganda so popular with devout Muslims and their suicidally-nescient Useful Idiots, this time at Crave:

@green_planet

You're quite a liar, aren't you?

Yours is the standard Islamic apologist/Useful Idiot tu quoque: "Okay, Islam is bad, but Christianity is too."

First, thanks for admitting that Islam kills.

Second, yes, it is true that Christians commit evil often, but it is not true that the religions "teach the same crap." Neither is it true that Islam is only "accused" of the same teachings.

Christ committed no sin, spoke only the truth, healed the sick, raised the dead, died for the sins of the whole world, and resurrected, commanding His people to love even their enemies.

On the other hand, Muhammad preached and practiced genocide, anti-Semitism, pedophilia, rape, slavery, torture, mutilation, polygyny, wife-beating, theft, arson, deceit, sedition, treason, and blasphemy, warning his followers, "Allah made me do it, and you will too, or else!"

No, there is no comparison.

"Allah’s Apostle said, '[...] I have been made victorious with terror [...]'" (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220).

@Okay_a_Username
That is not only historically-illiterate, it is perverse.

Islam has been raping, enslaving, and slaughtering non-Muslims (and those they consider not-Muslim-enough) for nearly one and one-half millennia as knowledge, zeal, and resources allow, including 9/11 and twenty-two thousand jihad attacks since.

They do so because Muhammad preached and practiced it.

Hitler hated Christianity but admired Islam. He allied with Muslims to slaughter Jews, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who exhorted Nazis in the concentration camps to do their "work" diligently.

As for Yugoslavia, even if atrocities were committed against Muslims, it was in defense against jihad and because of similar atrocities committed against them, a fact of which you are conveniently ignorant (or worse, you choose to omit).

There's only one group of people on Earth detonating their shoes, underwear, intestines, and breasts in efforts to murder and maim "unbelievers."

"Allah's Apostle said: 'I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle [...] if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me [...]'" (Bukhari Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24).

You have to "blame the religion."

And here are a few more comments on that article from other misunderstanderers of Islam and ... some pithy replies:

ascpgh Feb 22, 2014
How about strapping a belt bomb on and going to a local market to set it off? How about taking control of an airliner and deliberately crashing it into buildings?

Going to Mars is suicide and they are "against" that? If so centrally powerful and unified voice of Islam, why have they waited this long to address suicide as being on the bad list of weekend activities for Muslims?

dixiedog1944 Feb 22, 2014
@ascpgh Hey, you gotta' blow some people up to make suicide worth it. They would probably starve to death before a U.S. mission arrived and they could attack. Simple economics.

SantiagoMatamoros Feb 22, 2014
@dixiedog1944 @ascpgh

"Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur'an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah?" (Qur'an 9:111).

Ed9065 Feb 22, 2014
@SantiagoMatamoros @dixiedog1944 @ascpgh Yeah, extremists tend to like twisting the Qur'an/bible/Torah/whatever to what they want you to do.

SantiagoMatamoros Mar 5, 2014
@Ed9065

How much does "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5) have to be twisted in order to get the faithful to ... you know ... kill pagans wherever they find them?

keizer790 Feb 23, 2014
Extremist groups are not the normal, average folks of them! Generalizing is never a good idea

SantiagoMatamoros Mar 5, 2014
@keizer790

Who's "generalizing"?

Muhammad is the one who commanded his followers to "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5).

Blame him.

Ninaj1990 Feb 23, 2014
@ascpgh An ingnorant comment.... the terrorists don't know a thing about the religion they claim to follow.... and before making comments like this educate yourself a little.

SantiagoMatamoros Mar 5, 2014
@Ninaj1990

The genocidal pedophile Muhammad boasted, "I have been made victorious with terror ..." (Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220).

It sounds like the "terrorists" know a whole lot more about your religion than you do.

Or, perhaps, they're just more honest.

An alternative to the anti-American in the White House

He talks a good game.

Just when you thought "man-to-man" was a basketball reference

Speaking of March Madness, I went to a basketball game -- actually, it was a fan-site post on UCLA's recent victory in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament -- and a kerfuffle over orientation broke out.

I offered a sympathetic (and gentle) affirmation of Truth and for my efforts received the obligatory, unthinking, and knee-jerk accusation of bigotry.

What, exactly, puts a literally-deviant (and immoral) act beyond reproach? How does a lust constitute a moral good?

Here's my reply to someone who prefers demonizing over debate:

How is recognizing that I'm no better than anyone else a "mask"? And how does argumentum ad hominem prove the rectitude of your position?

As for "prejudice"? That's not only absurd, it's intellectual suicide:

-Every act is subject to moral judgment; in fact, you just made one. Doesn't that make you "prejudiced"?

-Why is it that you can make moral judgments and I can't? Doesn't that make you a hypocrite?

-Is there any act or "relationship" of which you would not approve? If so, then why would you deny anyone their happiness? Doesn't that make you a bigot?

-What makes your "truth" more valid than mine? If there exists no absolute, objective standard of right and wrong, then you are completely unable to condemn anyone else's perspective, because what's true for them is just as "true" as what's true for you.

But an absolute, objective morality exists. Christ endorsed one man and one woman for life.

Our sinfulness does not negate that.

Update: samollie followed up with:

I never judged you. I stated a fact, not anyone's version of truth. I respect the fact that you believe nobody believes to be mistreated, yet you are still judging another because of your faith. That is prejudice, automatically handing down judgment no matter what. We'll leave it at that and agree to disagree.

To which I replied:

You did judge me; "prejudice" is a moral evaluation.

(And since you don't know me, that would make you ... prejudiced.)

The word means "judging before knowing"; since I'm judging no one but merely affirming an objective moral truth regarding a behavior, your use of "prejudice" is inapt (at best; at worst it's a craven attempt to demonize me and quash criticism of something you consider sacrosanct).

Rather than engage in ad hominem attacks, why don't you prove the rectitude of your position?

A fictional president introducing a fictional explanation of origins

From here:

A fictional president introducing a fictional explanation of origins?

Brilliant.

The foundation of Science is observation and experimentation. No one has ever observed Life arise apart from Life and Life's programs. No one has ever witnessed program arise by accident from nothing. No one has ever shown that cells form magically from the muck by only random, natural processes. And no one can answer the question: When the first human being arose, with whom did he or she reproduce?

Darwinists take one fact -- that random, minor genetic mutations occur -- and from it leap nonsensically to the conclusion that from a first accidental cell all Life -- including us -- arose.

Besides the fact that genetic mutations are typically either neutral, harmful, or deadly to an organism, no one's ever seen a mutation result in newer, more complex program, structure, or function.

Neither do living things evolve into significantly-different forms; Life is stable, even over the Darwinists' "millions" of years. After almost 400 million years, the coelacanth is a coelacanth. After several million years, the ancient camel's DNA matches the modern camel's. Geckos and frogs on a hidden plateau in Australia undisturbed for millions of years are still only geckos and frogs. Darwin's finches were still ... finches. And after tens of thousands of generations, Lenski's E. coli evolved into ... E. coli with an eating disorder. (They're still bacteria.)

To believe Darwin's creation myth, not only must you believe that for which no evidence exists, but you have to deny what you know is empirically-true. You have to violate Science's fundamental tenets.

Darwin's creation myth is atheistic naturalism conducting its own Inquisition. It's Gaia in a lab coat.

It isn't Science; it's science fiction.

Calling Conservative Republican a "conservative Republican" is like calling the genocidal pedophile Muhammad a "prophet"

One of the more rabid examples of the psychosis necessary to defend the murderous child-rapist Muhammad.

From here:

More absurd ad hominem?

For the benefit of anyone else who might come across this, I use translations by Muslims, for Muslims, and I provide specific citations so that everyone can determine for themselves who is telling the truth and who is defending the genocidal pedophile Muhammad.

Speaking of the inaptly-named "conservative republican," we're waiting still for him to explain why he defends "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5) and "The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) married me when I was seven years old. The narrator Sulaiman said: or Six years. He had intercourse with me when I was nine years old" (Abu Dawud Book 11, Hadith 2116).

Don't hold your breath, folks, Con has demonstrated a pathological aversion to facts.

Degenerate Leftists make Republican promoting bad theology look like Philipp Melanchthon

The theology of the candidate mentioned in the article is abysmal -- homosexuality, along with every other sin, comes from the heart -- but those opposing her in defense of perversion and tyranny are even worse.

Offered in response to one of the deranged Left's foot-soldiers, here:

How absurd.

It is the Democratic Party which is the major political bastion of racism (and sexism) in the United States. That's why any "minorities" -- but especially Blacks, because of their near total compliance with your party's electoral dictates -- are eviscerated if they think for themselves and do anything but what their masters on the Left demand of them.

The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act (a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported it), and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

But the Democrat Party is the party of slavery, Segregation, the KKK (its terrorist wing), and institutionalized racial division, demagoguery, and exploitation.

Here's a blunt obliteration of the absurd manipulation by which so many of your elected representatives have risen to and maintained power:

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs - partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

--Booker T. Washington.

An argument for the PC as the ultimate gaming system

The first time your favorite console manufacturer comes out with a newer and more powerful system and all the games you already own don't run on it, you realize the value of the PC.

Besides the flexibility to upgrade hardware for better performance and more features, older -- and just plain old -- games still run just as well as (or better than) when they were new.

And the experience isn't limited to the office/study; connect the PC to a 65" plasma and an AV receiver with 5.1 surround sound, put the hardware into an HTPC-format case, and add a wireless mouse and keyboard, a couple of Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2s, and a 22" touchscreen monitor on the side, and you've got an unrivaled gaming experience.

Besides everything else the PC can do. Which is everything.

And here's one last argument for the PC:

Can your console do this?

It really just does everything.

World hijab day?

Wonderful.

So, when's World Swastika Day?

Islamic barbarism isn't an aberration, it's devotion

Bomb threats around the world over a movie? Must be Islam.

I wouldn't use "wacky" to describe jihadists. "Obedient" is more accurate.

From here:

I remember being in the theater with my brother to see THE SENTINEL when we first saw the trailer for what is now call, THE MESSAGE. Originally it was entitled, MUHAMMAD: MESSENGER OF GOD. We were excited only because it looked so grand and epic - also because my brother was history major. (He was offered to teach and Hunter University and later offered a position with the Federal Government to work in foreign American embassies) We never did get to see since it was taken out of the theaters due to bomb threats in other parts of the world and especially when a NY theater was taken hostage by savage Muslims (big surprise!) because the film contained "the prophet's" name and were against his story being told in the film - yet the producer/director was Muslim. Anyway. That was 1977 and not much has changed - and I bet most thought the attack on the Twin Towers was the first terrorist attack on America, let alone NY. NOT. These people have always been wacky my brother always stated.

Ironically, the story of Muhammad is exponentially more frightening than any fictional mass-murdering psychopath's: according to Islam's own "sacred" texts, Muhammad preached and practiced genocide, anti-Semitism, pedophilia, rape, slavery, torture, mutilation, religious and gender apartheid, wife-beating, polygyny, theft, vandalism, sedition, treason, and blasphemy and warned his followers, "Allah made me do it, and you will, too, or else!"

And Islam's "influence" on America goes back long before the 1970s. The only reason 9/11 (or even the '93 WTC attack) was a surprise to most of us is because we'd been shielded by two oceans from what the rest of the world has endured for the last one and one-half millennia.

In fact, Muhammad's doctrines have been harming Americans since the Republic's founding: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson met with an ambassador of the Barbary States (the Marines' Hymn, "to the shores of Tripoli ...") to find out why they were capturing our ships and murdering and enslaving our sailors. The reason, they were told, was that they were unbelievers and so all they had belonged to Islam.

And John Smith of Pocahontas fame? Before he came to the New World, he made a name for himself defending the West against jihad.

And if you want to go back to before America was a gleam in England's eye, Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to pay for Columbus' "shortcut" to Asia -- a detour around Islamic lands and all that that entailed -- after she defeated the last of Andalusia's (Al-Andalus') Muslim overlords, completing Spain's eight-hundred-year War of Liberation from Islam, the Reconquista.

The West's leaders arrogant, deluded, compromised

How can you win a war you refuse to wage? Against an enemy you refuse to name?

Insight on our political, media, and academic insanity, from here:

In today's conflict with Islamic jihad, the jihadis likewise do not respect their non-Muslim foes. The Infidels are "the most vile of created beings" (Qur'an 98:6) while the Muslims are "the best of peoples" (Qur'an 3:110). There is no sense of shared values. Yet the leaders and opinion makers among the non-Muslims do not understand or accept this. They continue to believe that gestures of good will will be appreciated and reciprocated. They continue to think that their own careful displays of respect for the values and principles of the jihadis will be received with something other than amused contempt. They continue to send their young soldiers into the Afghanistan meat grinder, imagining that they're winning hearts and minds by forcing our soldiers to train their "allies" who, in appallingly increasing numbers, turn on them and murder them as soon as they have the opportunity.

The persecuted Church in Syria

The president cares more about helping jihadists nation-build -- and himself to the luxuries that American taxes and debt can buy -- than helping his (allegedly-) fellow Christians.

As for "Why?" Islam, of course.

From here:

Mourning Christians in Syria were still awaiting answers Monday, July 8, as to why Islamic militants with links to opposition rebels entered Christian villages more than a month ago killing several people, including children, in what locals called a "massacre".

Vatican-backed news agency Fides said the gunmen raided the village of al-Duwayr/Douar, outside the city of Homs near Lebanon, where they immediately executed a man and his daughter in their home and burned their bodies. The fighters reportedly also occupied the village church from where snipers began firing at terrified civilians, killing an- 11-year-old boy and a girl of 18, and injuring some 10 people, two seriously.

Militants remained in the church where they were holding village Mayor Joseph Jamil Adra, a Christian, and another Christian man, Fides said. Their situation was not immediately clear Monday, July 8.

Christian refugees were quoted as saying that the fighters of opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra, which has pledged its allegiance to terror group al-Qaida, also "destroyed and burned all the houses" in the village, prompting the roughly 100 Greek-Orthodox families living in the area to flee.

The time for (what's left of) the Christian West to aid its brothers and sisters in the east is long past-due.

And no, this Crusade doesn't involve President Bush's well-intentioned-but-suicidal nation-building, but it does begin with telling the truth about the enemy.

If Kennedy were running today, the Democrats would burn him

This is an interesting article on the power of narrative in shaping people's opinions. (I disagree that we don't need someone like Reagan and that America's enemies from the last half-century are no longer threats. If anything, they're in power now.)

A few thoughts awaiting moderation there:

A good story is a wonderful thing; the key to its effectiveness in changing perception is the manipulation of emotion. That's what liberals and other charlatans are good at.

Reagan excelled at exposing the nonsense of the Left and reminding people of what made this nation great: Individual Liberty and moral goodness. We don't have anyone today who both really believes in those ideals and can communicate them plainly.

(And when we get close, the media assassins go for the jugular.)

It wasn't that long ago that I could have voted for a Democrat; John F. Kennedy understood that lower taxes -- which is really just increased freedom -- makes people more prosperous, and he believed in and defended America against its enemies.

If Kennedy were running today, the Democrats would burn him at the stake.

A Christian cannot vote Democrat. (If they do, it's because they've accepted uncritically the nescient propaganda of the left. It's like serving on a jury, where a defense lawyer throws out any lie they can think of to create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of at least one juror.)

That party has made the Founding Fathers into potential terrorists and embraces pretty much whatever is perverse, cruel, or tyrannical. It is faithless.

It's too bad that today's Republicans are, by and large, devoid of the passion for freedom and moral rectitude that our Founders and Framers possessed. After all, why vote for a fake liberal when you can get the real thing?

The National Park System doing Darwin's dirty work

If you haven't been to Zion National Park in Utah, you're missing out. It's a cathedral.

Which is ironic, since your tax dollars go to forcing Darwin's creation myth on visitors through the park's tram narration (the only way to ride through Zion's scenic route) and educational displays and programs.

Disturbingly, I observed a park ranger repeatedly telling kids that even though the local Indians drew dinosaurs centuries ago, they didn't actually see any, since the "terrible lizards" lived millions of years before we did.

For a group of people who boast so loudly of their reason and intellect, Darwinists are remarkably superstitious (and ill-informed, intellectually-dishonest, and hypocritical). The only reason that evolutionists claim that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago -- and long before humans -- is because God can't be true. They have to believe -- and force everyone else to believe -- that Life arose by accident from preexisting muck. Millions of years give a tinge of possibility to their fable.

The only problem is, no one has observed the truth of any its core elements. (For example, we do know that random genetic mutations occur in the cells of living things, but these end usually in sickness or death.)

That's why that ranger proselytizes for her irrational religion. That's why she has to convince others -- and herself -- that even though Indians depicted their experience of dinosaurs so many years ago, their art can not mean what it obviously means. She has to have others reject obvious fact in service to her anti-intellectual and anti-empirical religious philosophy, evidence of which no one has observed, ever.

Our public employees should refrain from forcing their religious beliefs on others (especially children) and instead to just stick to the facts as we find them.

Not a Christian nation? America's government an embodiment of the Two Kingdoms: James Madison on Martin Luther

Atheists and other usurpers want to convince the public that the United States was never, in any sense, a Christian nation. Well, there's one problem: the facts don't bear this out.

If it wasn't enough that the Puritans were influenced by it, America's supreme law, the Constitution, is the incarnation of Martin Luther's doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, the idea that the religious and civil realms are, and should be, separate, which is, of course, an explication of Christ's command to "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's."

How do we know this? James Madison, the Father of the Constitution declares it in an 1821 letter to F. L. Schaeffer:

It illustrates the excellence of a system [American Constitutional government] which, by a due distinction, to which the genius and courage of Luther led the way, between what is due to Caesar and what is due to God, best promotes the discharge of both obligations. The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.

ESPN deceives the public in defense of sodomy-as-"marriage"

In this article about several NFL players possibly declaring their preference for men, ESPN has banned from posting and deleted the comments of (among others) those who support the traditional description of marriage.

(You'll notice that the first few comments visible give the impression that NFL fans/ESPN readers all support homosexuality.)

So, at ESPN, you can name-call, lie, and denigrate religion -- as the militant homosexuals and their Useful Idiots do -- but never, ever refer to sodomy as "sodomy."

(Is this also Disney's official position?)

No one's advocating harming homosexuals. But to use the force of law and the persuasive power of the media to force the acceptance and silence criticism of what is perverse and immoral is a crime against the People.

Who's next for "marriage"? Zoophiles? Pedophiles? Necrophiliacs? Siblings? Farmers? When's Adulterer Pride Month?

Shame on ESPN.

Forget titanoceratops. What about Darwin's titanic fraud?

Linked tangentially to this:

Darwinists are some of the most illogical -- and unintentionally ironic -- of all people, committing the very same thought-"crime" of which they accuse others: Making up stories not only devoid of empirical fact, but opposed by it. (Not to mention, their fairy tales are impossible to verify.)

Who has observed Life arise apart from Life or Life's programs? Who has observed a fish evolve into a reptile, or an ape-like creature into a man?

And when the first modern human arose, with what (not "whom") did he/she/it reproduce? Of course, there was no one else, but Darwinists don't want you to notice that little detail. They make the first man a zoophile who can somehow reproduce with non-humans.

But it must be true! And if you disagree, you're an idiot. 

Obama's changing position on sodomy-as-"marriage" not an evolution, but a confession

You don't wake up one day in mid-life and decide that sodomy is a good thing.

Neither does an "expert" on the Constitution decide all-of-a-sudden that what was a "state matter" when unpopular is -- now that's it's picked up some steam -- a matter to be mandated nationally by the Court.

The pseudo-president's misuse of public resources in perverting the Law and subverting our Republic proves his malice. Obama Lawyers Said to Back Gay Marriage at U.S. High Court:

The Obama administration will urge the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate same-sex marriage in California, taking a stand in a historic case that could lead to gay nuptials across the country, an administration official said.

(Allegedly) former Nazi Franklin Delano Roosevelt nominates covert Nazi convert to head CIA

You just can't make this stuff up.

First, Obama's obliterating the Constitution and bankrupting and disarming the Republic. Then, he nominates a flaming anti-Semite for Secretary of Defense.

Now, he wants a compromised and closeted convert to command our covert collection of critical combatant contemplation and communication:

former Marine platoon commander, FBI swat team leader, and counterterrorism & Muslim Brotherhood expert John Guandolo broke last week [...] that John Brennan, President Obama's nominee to head the CIA, converted to Islam while CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia.

In John's analysis, Brennan's conversion represents the culmination of a campaign against Brennan by a foreign intelligence service. Giving Brennan the most charitable benefit of the doubt, this reveals Brennan's susceptibility to manipulation. By itself, the secret circumstances of this conversion to the religion that is also the basis for jihad war to entrench the totalitarian legal-political system of sharia should be troubling. But coupled with Brennan's activities as the president's top counterterrorism adviser -- frequent, close work with Islamic organizations (e.g., ISNA) that operate on behalf of terrorists groups (Hamas, a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood) -- Brennan should certainly and without question not be confirmed.

Will our lawmakers, our representatives, our last, best and only hope, act on this information, or even seek an account of his activities from Brennan himself? Last week, no senator put a single question to Brennan regarding his associations with MB groups, his (at best) lame public statements regarding Al Qaeda's ideology (nothing to do with Islam, in Brennan's view), or his touting of Hezbollah's "moderate elements" and "legitimate" mechanisms.

Great job, America. You elected Hitler to end the Holocaust.

Ironic Gore

From here:

the fact that we have 24/7 propaganda masquerading as news, it does have an impact.

That's a certain text.

(He's got to be joking, right?)

Liberals can't be honest without revealing their hatred of Liberty

Capitalism is nothing more than economic Liberty. A fact the utterance of which causes Liberals' heads to explode.

Here's a reply to someone so dishonest, it makes one wonder whether he's able to tell the truth:

"stretch"? [...] Aren't you embarrassed?

[...]

Your idea of "argument" is so [...]incoherent that it makes one wonder whether a response is beneficial at all.

It's not "sophistry"; it's called "reading."

Essentially, if I were to say, "The sky is blue," you'd respond with something along the lines of, "No it's not. It's a collection of gases held against the Earth by gravity. It's got nothing to do with color."

For illiterate tyrants like you, the following terms are all indicative of Liberty, since all involve individual choices made free from the control of government:

"private or corporate ownership of capital goods"

"investments that are determined by private decision"

"prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined [...] by competition in a free market."

Please, offer something honest [...] in reply.

Buying Al Gore: A good investment for jihad

Have you ever noticed how liberals oppose Capitalism for others but not for themselves? Free men can do whatever they want with their property, even Al Gore. If only his rank hypocrisy were the sole story here!

The father of Anthropogenic Global Warming -- someone who's made a fortune foaming-at-the-mouth about our use of fossil fuels destroying the planet and who helped create an industry used by governments to further enslave their citizens -- just sold his mostly-unused television network to the emir of Qatar.

I guess Big Oil isn't evil if the check is big enough.

And there's something much more menacing about Al Gore's new owners and what this arrangement means for the United States: Al-Jazeera is a propaganda arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is to destroy Western Civilization from within. They own now not only a lobbyist who was only a few hundred votes from the presidency, but in taking over Current TV, it won't be just PBS airing their jihadist nonsense -- they've gained access into homes across the nation.

Here's another nail in the coffin:

“Of course Al didn’t show up [to a meeting with his new masters],” said one high placed Current staffer. “He has no credibility.

"He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising—and Al Gore, that bulls***ter sells to the emir?”

The meeting, while not contentious, was, according to staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, miserable. The mostly left-leaning group—some still in denial —weren’t buying what Al Jazeera was selling.

Oil? The Left's not buying that, since they hate whatever makes us prosperous. But jihad and shari'a -- the antithesis of Christianity, Liberty, and our modern notions of human rights -- they buy that in bulk.

A glimpse into what makes Nick Saban a champion (and why the rest of us aren't)

Without a playoff between conference winners, college football will never have an actual champion, but there's no doubt that Alabama's Nick Saban is one of the sport's best coaches. His teams have won three of the last four BCS national titles.

Here's a glimpse into what makes him -- and his teams -- so good:

The other day, the coach told a story about his father that drove him to something resembling actual emotion. When he was 11, he said, he started working at his father's service station in West Virginia, a full-service joint with a Dairy Queen attached to it; he cleaned windows, he checked oil, he gauged the tires, and he washed cars. He especially hated the blue and the black ones, because if his dad found a single streak, he'd make him start over again.

"That sort of perfectionist type of attitude that my parents instilled in me," he said, "that's probably still the foundation of the program we have right now."

[. . .]

This morning, in the conference room of the hotel where I'm staying, I went to a press conference where Saban, summoning a photograph smile, posed with four separate national championship trophies — and if ever there is proof of the laggardness of college football's present system, it's that we still need four separate trophies — and in the midst of it, someone asked Saban a simple question: Why? In other words, why keep doing this, and why keep striving, and why not pull a Spurrier and slip off to the golf course on some August afternoon during a two-a-days and delegate to one's coaching staff? Like, why so uptight, man? And Saban sort of stared down the questioner for a second, and then he said this: "Why do you do what you do? Are you driven to be the best at what you do?"

And as Saban's eyes bored into the deepest recesses of the reporter's conscience, he replied, "Yes, sir."

What else could he say?

And here's a bit that illustrates the difference between those who achieve greatness and the rest of us:

From there, Saban wound into a story that centered on an old Martin Luther King sermon about a shoeshine man who took pride in his work, and he said something about being the best street sweeper you could be, and I think we got a little glimpse of why Saban is one of the best living-room recruiters who ever blew through the South. I hurried back toward my hotel room, all fired up to be the best damned street sweeper I could be, just as soon as I stopped at Starbucks and checked Twitter and Facebook and watched a few minutes of CNN and ESPN and stared out at the pool seven stories below my window and let another hour of my life pass me by without accomplishing much of anything except the completion of this sentence.

So, at what are you driven to be the best?

Planned Parenthood murders record number of babies

Slaughtering the innocent is their business, and business is good:

According to annual reports, the organization performed 332,278 abortions in 2009, 329,445 in 2010, making the total number of abortions in three years to 995,687.

One million innocent children butchered by Planned Parenthood alone.

How can a free and decent people allow such depravity? This is America's modern holocaust.

Science vs. Darwin's creation myth in the Left's propaganda war against America

God vs. evolution. Science vs. Darwin. Faith founded on fact vs. neopaganism disguised as "science." Liberalism vs. the Republic.

America's God-hating Left is attacking another Conservative-politician-with-a-clue, hoping to make implications of ignorance and superstition stick.

We have the facts on our side. Just articulate them. Not only that, but it's the accidentalists making the truth claim: Make them prove it. What can they point to that actually demonstrates the truth of their fairy tale?

A brief comment on Darwin's pseudoscientific, anti-intellectual, and irrational creation myth:

The foundation of Science is observable fact.

Who's ever observed abiogenesis? Who's ever witnessed random genetic mutations result in newer and more complex program, structure, and function?

We've only ever seen Life arise from Life and Life's programs. We've only ever seen organisms reproduce the same kinds of organisms.

Darwin's creation myth is absurd on its face, even to an atheist.

Support Israel in its defense against jihad

A celebrity who urges her tweeps to pray for Israel in its war of self-defense against Allah gets ridiculed, demonized, and threatened with death.

The savages murdering innocent Israelis? Not so much.

A brief response in defense of Israel to someone making the same, tired Islamo-leftist propaganda points:

That moral equivalence is completely false. Both sides are not equally responsible for the violence.

Israel is acting only in self-defense and only because its Muslim neighbors are required by their religion to hate and murder Jews.

If the jihadists were to stop fighting, what would be the result? Peace.
If Israel were to stop fighting, what would be the result? No more Israel.

In the war between the Civilized Man and the savage, support the Civilized Man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.

Bold colors

It's easy to see from the comments below why -- while the rest of the Pyrite State was voting for a muscular fraud -- I voted for McClintock.

He's one of the few people who understand what makes America great and can articulate it.

Don't abandon what is true. Fight for it. From here:

Common Sense After a Close Election
Northern Division Republican Women
Rancho Cordova, California
November 17, 2012

"Now let's pull up our socks, wipe our noses and get back in this fight."

After listening to ten days of hand wringing and doom saying from the usual suspects that Republicans must abandon our principles if we are to survive, we need a little of Mark Twain's common sense. I suggest we all take it to heart.

He said, "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

So it is in that spirit that I will begin with three incontrovertible truths about this election.

First, the same election that returned Barack Obama to the White House also returned the second largest House Republican majority since World War II - bigger than anything Newt Gingrich ever had.

Second, according to polls before, during and after this election, the American people agree with us fundamentally on issues involving the economy, Obamacare, government spending, bailouts - you name it.

Third, the American people are about to get a graduate level course in Obamanomics, and at the end of that course, they are going to be a lot sadder and a lot wiser.

That is not to say that there aren't many lessons that we need to learn and to learn well from this election, particularly here in California. But capitulation is not one of them.

Have we forgotten that just two years ago, Republicans campaigned on clear principles of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government? We took strong and united stands to oppose Obamacare, rein in out-of-control spending, roll back the regulatory burdens that are crushing our economy and yes - dare I say it - secure our borders? Have we forgotten that the result was one of the most stunning mid-term elections in American history: a net gain of 63 U.S. House seats, six U.S. Senate seats, 19 state legislatures, six governors and nearly 700 state legislative seats?

Now we're told, just two years later, after a net loss of just eight House seats, two Senate seats and a 2 1/2-percentage point loss of the White House, that we must abandon these principles or consign ourselves to the dustbin of history.

If you want to see a catastrophic election, look at 1976.

We not only lost the Presidency, but as a result of that election the Democrats held 61 U.S. Senate seats (today they have 55); and 292 House seats (today they have just 201).

Then, we heard the same chorus of impending doom that we hear today. We had to moderate our image. We had to broaden our base. In short, that we had to become more like the Democrats.

Here is what Ronald Reagan said to the naysayers of 1976:

Americans are hungry to feel once again a sense of mission and greatness.

I don 't know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, "We must broaden the base of our party"-when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents...

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.

Fortunately, we had the good sense to take that advice, and four years later Ronald Reagan became President, and shortly after that it was morning again in America. That would never have happened if we had listened to the usual suspects of their day and become a pathetic reflection of the Democrats. As Phil Gramm said, "why would anyone want to vote for a fake Democrat when they can have the real thing?"

The first of the cold stove lids we are told not to sit on is illegal immigration. Republicans, they say, must accept the notion that our nation can no longer control its borders and we should declare amnesty for the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens now in this country. We should do so, we are told, because our position on border security has hopelessly alienated Latino voters who would otherwise share our values.

It is true that Latino voters are a growing part of the American electorate - making up ten percent of the vote in 2012, of which 71 percent voted for Barack Obama, according to the CBS exit poll.

Sean Trende is the senior political analyst for Real Clear Politics. Last May, he published an article addressing this argument directly. He made three points.

First, Latino voters are not a monolithic group on this issue. Citing 2008 exit polling, he noted that a majority of Latino voters "either thought that illegal immigration was fairly unimportant or thought that it was important and voted Republican."

So why are Latinos voting for Democrats? Very simply, he said, once you adjust for socio-economic status, Latinos vote pretty much the same as the general voting population. But because they are disproportionately poor, they tend to vote disproportionately Democratic. However, as they begin to work their way up the socio-economic ladder and assimilate into American society, they become more and more Republican.

Second, citing research from the Pew Institute, he pointed out that the wave of illegal immigration has now crested, and may actually be reversing. He noted that every immigration wave has followed this pattern. Those who stay become more and more assimilated and more and more Republican as the years go by.

As recently as 20 years ago, we used to hear a lot about the Italian vote or the Irish vote. We don't hear about that anymore because they have melted into the general population. The demographic tide, he said, is not running against the Republicans, but running with them.

Third, he points out that a very sizeable part of the Republican base is firmly opposed to illegal immigration, and that abandoning that position could be politically catastrophic. He reminded us, "In a large, diverse country, every move to gain one member of a political coalition usually alienates another member."

Heather MacDonald makes the same point in the aftermath of the election. She notes that 62 percent of Latino voters support Obamacare. They overwhelmingly support higher taxes to pay for a larger government and more public services. These are not voters who will suddenly flock to the Republican banner because we have reversed our position on border security.

That's not to say Republicans should ignore the Latino vote - far from it - and I will get to that in a few minutes. But to suggest that Republicans need to reverse themselves on a fundamental issue of national sovereignty and the rule of law is unprincipled, counterproductive, self-destructive and wrong.

Ironically, the issues where most Latino and African-American voters do agree with us are the social issues, like abortion and marriage -- but of course, we're told by the same naysayers that we should repudiate our position on these messy social issues.

Let's look closer at the polling on the social issues. According to exit polling by Public Opinion Strategies, it is true that five percent of voters last week said that the most important issue in their vote for President was their pro-choice/pro-abortion position. Five percent of the entire electorate is nothing to sneeze at.

But four percent of voters said that the most important issue in casting their vote for President was their pro-life/anti-abortion position. That's a statistical tie.

I have a question for you. How many of those hard-core, single-issue abortion-on-demand Obama voters will suddenly switch their votes to Republicans once we've renounced our position on this issue?

Now, here's a bonus question: how many of that four percent of the electorate who support us solely because of our pro-life position are going to stay with us once we have repudiated them?

It is important in politics to know the difference between addition and subtraction. Addition is what creates majorities and subtraction is what destroys them. In this single exercise, we have just subtracted four percent of the entire American electorate from our vote and added little or nothing.

Now, repeat this process on every other so-called social issue, and tell me if we will be better off or worse off for taking this advice.

With all this said, there is no blinking at the fact that we just lost an election that we should have won, and to pretend there's nothing wrong meets Einstein's definition of insanity. There's a great deal wrong and a great deal that we need to address.

The voters who appeared at the polls agree with us on Obamacare. According to the CBS exit poll, by a plurality of 49 to 44 percent, they want to repeal some or all of Obamacare.

They agree with us on the size of government. By a margin of 51 to 43 percent, they believe that government is "doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."

They agree with us on taxes. By a resounding margin of 63 to 33 percent, they disagreed with the statement that "taxes should be raised to help cut the deficit."

Perhaps most telling of all, 52 percent of voters agreed "things in this country today are seriously off on the wrong track," and yet then voted to continue down that wrong track for another four years.

As Lincoln said, "The voters are everything. If the voters get their backsides too close to the fire, they'll just have to sit on the blisters a while." It is a painful experience; but it is a learning experience. And at the end of that experience, they emerge sadder but wiser and in time for the next election.

We are winning the issues. And that means over time we will be winning the votes -- but only if we stay true to our principles and true to the millions of Americans who are already with us and many more who may not consider themselves Republicans today - but who believe as we believe.

What was the single biggest political movement in 2009 and 2010? It was the much-maligned, politically incorrect Tea Party, which energized fully one third of the American electorate across party lines. Although 60 percent were Republicans, 20 percent were Independents and 20 percent were Democrats. Long before the Tea Party, we had another name for that phenomenon. We used to call it the "Reagan Coalition." But this year, those who tell us we need a bigger tent told the Tea Party to get out. And many did.

Who brought a tidal wave of young people into the party? It was the much maligned and politically incorrect Ron Paul, whose simple message of unadulterated freedom resonated deeply on college campuses. Eight thousand UC Berkeley students turned out last year to hear that message. But this year, those who tell us we need a bigger tent told Ron Paul and his supporters to get out. And they did. In fact, many of their votes went to Obama.

A well-intentioned supporter e-mailed me last week and said, "we've got to kick the religious right out of the party." I reminded him that we did that in 1976, when the religious right voted for Jimmy Carter.

My point is, you cannot build a majority by systematically ejecting the constituent parts of that coalition. You build a majority by adding to that coalition by taking your principles to new constituencies.

Working Americans of every race know instinctively that you cannot borrow and spend your way rich. We need to appeal to them.

Immigrants came to this country to escape the stultifying central planning and corrupt bureaucracies that ravaged their economies. We need to appeal to them.

For the first time in our history, young people face a bleaker future than their parents enjoyed. We need to appeal to them.

The very groups of voters most damaged by Obama's policies are those who voted for Obama - we need to appeal to them.

Not in the closing days of a campaign poisoned with partisanship - but right now.

We need to recognize that a large portion of our population is not familiar with the self-evident truths of the American Founding and has no compass with which to follow back to the prosperity, happiness and fulfillment that is the hallmark of free societies.

Without that clarion call - without a party of freedom willing to paint our positions in bold colors - I am afraid that as the economy suffocates under the avalanche of government burdens, intrusions, restrictions, regulations and edicts, people in their growing despair, will increasingly turn to the false hope that paternalistic government offers.

The only antidote to that is the self-evident truth of the American founding: that freedom works and we need to put it back to work.

Like it or not, we are at this moment the only party equipped to revive and restore those truths and take them to the millions of Americans who are desperately searching for them.

Great parties are built upon great principles, and they are judged by their devotion to those principles. Since its inception, the central principle of the Republican Party can be summarized in a word: freedom. The closer we have hewn to this principle, the better we have done; the farther we have drifted from it, the worse that we - and the country - have done.

Dick Armey put it more simply: "When we act like us, we win, and when we act like them, we lose."

The Republican Women formed originally as the educational arm of the Republican Party. Never has that role been more important than it is today. We will not win the political battle until we win the battle over principles. We need to begin that campaign today. We can be confident that these principles resonate, but only when we are true to them with our existing constituencies while we reach out with them to new constituencies.

That is our challenge. That is our destiny. That is the salvation of our country. Now, fellow Republicans, let's pull up our socks, wipe our noses, and get back in this fight.

Man without God makes men into gods

"Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid." -Ronald Reagan

Recently I was speaking with a coworker about the proper role of government in relation to the Individual. I made what I thought was an unanswerable argument: Who knows better how to spend your money, you or a politician living thousands of miles away? Liberalism is merely Parasites and Tyrants Robbing Free Men.

This coworker seems like a genuinely nice man and of above-average intelligence, so -- despite past experience -- I was caught off-guard by his reply. His answer was: "I'm a humanist. I believe in the goodness of people."

I prefer that tyrants and those who serve them be honest about their lust for power and their contempt for others, but he seems sincere. He might want to believe that he's come to a well-founded position, but I know he hasn't, and here's how:

Nevermind that Thomas Jefferson warned, "Let no more be heard of confidence in Man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution" (apparently, power corrupts only Conservatives). If this man really believes that innate human goodness permits sacrificing essential Liberty for a little temporary safety, then why doesn't he give his whole paycheck to the government and trust that they'll take care of him? Or, if he really believes that politicians can be trusted because of their basic decency -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- then why doesn't he believe that every Individual is capable of making equally rational, moral, and wise decisions? Or does he think that politicians are born just a little bit better than you and me?

(Liberal elitism might be a little closer to the truth.)

Reagan understood this, noting that those who reject God worship the state. (Which applies even to Islam, since it is impossible to reject the living God any more fully than does Muhammad's hellish "religion," which fuses mosque and state.)

Man without God makes men into gods:

We've heard in our century far too much of the sounds of anguish from those who live under totalitarian rule. We've seen too many monuments made not out of marble or stone but out of barbed wire and terror. But from these terrible places have come survivors, witnesses to the triumph of the human spirit over the mystique of state power, prisoners whose spiritual values made them the rulers of their guards. With their survival, they brought us "the secret of the camps," a lesson for our time and for any age: Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.

That's why the Marxist vision of man without God must eventually be seen as an empty and a false faith -- the second oldest in the world -- first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with whispered words of temptation: "Ye shall be as gods." The crisis of the Western world, Whittaker Chambers reminded us, exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God. "The Western world does not know it," he said about our struggle, "but it already possesses the answer to this problem -- but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism's faith in man."

"Bigotry" workshops for public school teachers promoting ... Islam?

It's not hard to read between the lines. "Bigotry" and "tone of recent debates" are references to the growing fact-based discussion of Islam.

How ironic that these propagandists would use George Washington's Letter to the Hebrew Congregations of Newport to whitewash their mendacity:

-First, it was Washington's Christian faith that informed his affection for his fellow (Jewish) citizens and moved the heirs of Western Civilization from "tolerance" to "Liberty."

-Second, these liars pretend to defend religious freedom by discussing its "limits." They want to move us from "Liberty" back to "tolerance" and eventually to "persecution" and "murder." You know, "Islam."

-Third, there's only one major "religion" on Earth that wants to rape, enslave, and slaughter those who refuse its "invitation" to convert -- Islam -- and that's the one "faith" they're trying to protect from honest examination.

-Fourth, it's not Christians who need an education on tolerance; it's Muslims who need re-education to stop killing Jews (and the rest of us).

Because America "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance," Islam must be exposed, resisted, repelled, and eventually, defeated.

California just keeps on giving:

Facing History and Ourselves, One Nation: Many Faiths TAH Project, San Joaquin COE, CSU San Bernardino-ELC and the California 3Rs Project invite you to participate in Give Bigotry No Sanction – The Meaning of Religious Liberty in America George Washington’s 1790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, RI

Join Facing History and Ourselves and the One Nation: Many Faiths TAH project for a look at the letter of George Washington in 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation at the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. This letter is a landmark in the history of religious freedom in America and part of a founding moment in U.S. history when the country was negotiating how a democracy accommodates the “deepest differences” among its people.

Today this letter can serve as a guide in today’s changing global landscape, where Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, as well as people who belong to no religion, find themselves living alongside neighbors whose beliefs and practices are often quite different than their own. With this new diversity, there is a growing need worldwide to discuss religious freedom—and its limits—in secular, democratic societies.

These are not easy conversations, and the tone of recent debates about religious difference suggests that we need to get better at talking about these issues, or else risk further polarization. Lesson materials and resources are provided for teachers to use Washington’s letters in their classrooms or other discussion forums.

Join us for one of the following 3 programs. There is no fee but registration is required
Select one of the following events and contact people. Email that contact person the date of your workshop, your name, school name, school street address, city, zip code, and phone number.
__________________
November 3, 2012
8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
San Joaquin COE – Nelson Education Center
2901 Arch Airport Rd, Stockton CA 95206
To register, contact Veray Wickham vwickham@sjcoe.net 209-468-9021
DEADLINE: October 26, 2012
__________________
December 1, 2012
8:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Best Western Heritage Inn
8179 Spruce Avenue Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730
To register, contact Margaret Hill mhill@csusb.edu 909-946-9035
DEADLINE: November 26, 2012
_____________________
January 12, 2013
9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles
To register: http://www2.facinghistory.org/workshops
DEADLINE: January 7, 2013

Here's a link to the source.

Obama bin Lyin': President kept out of decision to eliminate bin Laden because he vetoed three earlier opportunities to do so

President Obama continually hypes UBL's demise, but really, what choice did he have? Who wouldn't have authorized the elimination of the single person most symbolic of 9/11?

It turns out, Obama himself, three times according to this article:

Obama “did not know of the raid in Abbottabad to kill Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, until after the helicopters with SEAL Team 6 had crossed into Pakistani airspace.”

The source said Obama was notified “at the golf course … which is why he was sitting in the strange sitting position in the picture that documented the White House operations room event.”

The source told Stand Up America that Panetta “was the key player who organized and supported this daring raid.”

“He signed the ‘execute orders’ with only a few people aware: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Adm. Bill Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus.”

The source explained the White House “was closed out of the decision because the president, through Valerie Jarrett, had turned down two or three other earlier proposals.”

Panetta, Vallely’s source reported, “and his covert planning team were extremely frustrated at all the denials, so saw the opportunity slipping away, as implausible as it seems.”

The report said Panetta convinced his other principals to make the decision and received their full-fledged support but the president, according to the official, “remained clueless on the mission.”

“This tremendously serious and sensitive information was relayed by a source who has been very frustrated with the continued dishonesty within the White House,” Vallely reported.

Vallely, who served in Vietnam and retired in 1991 from the U.S. Army as deputy commanding general for the Pacific, previously has called for “We the People” to stop the nation’s “progressive socialist, treasonous death march.”

He graduated from West Point and was commissioned in the Army in 1961. He served in theaters in Europe and the Pacific Rim and saw two tours of combat duty in Vietnam.

CBS has reported that “Obama’s decision to send operatives after Osama bin Laden” was described by White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan as “one of the most gutsiest calls of any president.”

However, the Mail Online in London reported a book by Richared Miniter documented that three “kill” missions were canceled by Obama in January, February and March of 2011.

The SEAL mission was in May 2011.

Miniter reported it was Jarrett who kept urging Obama to cancel plans to get bin Laden.

Timothy Marr and Joseph M. Hennessey believe that your "misunderstanding" of Islam is the reason (at least in part) for 9/11 and other Muslim atrocities

But what can you expect from someone who regurgitates Edward Said?

At least we have this to show for it. (Who knew that Captayne John Smith -- yes, Pocahontas' John Smith -- fought against jihad?)

Captayne John Smith, defender of the West against Muhammad's hordes.
Because, unlike Disney's fictionalized American Indians,
Muslims don't paint with all the colors of the wind.

Offered in defense of my comments on The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism:

Joseph,

According to the BOOK DESCRIPTION, Marr argues that "Historical, literary, and imagined encounters with Muslim history and practices provided a backdrop where different Americans oriented the direction of their national project, the morality of the social institutions, and the contours of their romantic imaginations. This history sits as an important background to help understand present conflicts between the Muslim world and the United States," as if we are somehow to blame.

Among the EDITORIAL REVIEWS, we find:

-Melani McAlister saying that our "global cultural imaginings" help explain the conflict between Islam and America.

-Iftikhar Malik claiming that "American mis-images of Islam" and their "reverberations even today" help explain the conflict between Islam and America.

-Anouar Majid asserting that "America's conflicted view of Islam" helps explain the conflict between Islam and America.

And MARR HIMSELF acknowledges that teaching for three years in Pakistan "opened my eyes to Islamic cultures and to the kindness of Muslims . . . That extended time . . . helped me begin to understand cultural distortions in the ways that Islam is represented and interpreted in American situations . . . It is my hope that this book will contribute to a fuller analysis of the impasses between Americans and global Muslims . . . I have been sustained . . . by the vision of Bahá'u'lláh [apparently Marr doesn't realize that the Bahá'í are persecuted by devout Muslims] that the earth is one common homeland consisting of a single human family sharing a diverse world culture."

The fundamental impasse between America and Islam is the difference between Heaven and hell. It's the difference between God-given, inalienable rights on the one hand and "kill the pagans wherever you find them" on the other.

Do you understand now that our present conflict with Islam has nothing to do with OUR perception of the "Muslim world"? That's like claiming that OUR "misunderstanding" of Imperial Japan helps explain the "conflict" in the Pacific. Or that the Holocaust was due to the Jews of Europe "misunderstanding" Hitler.

Stop blaming the victim, Joseph.

Islam is, and has always been, a totalitarian, brutal, genocidal "faith" because that is what Muhammad preached and practiced. Neither our perception nor the perceptions of the other non-Muslim civilizations attacked by Islam over the last one and one-half millennia have ANYTHING to do with why they hate us. Rather, it is Muslims' perception of the genocidal pedophile Muhammad as the apostle of a god that is the root cause of the global jihad.

To demonstrate that I offered John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Ibn Kathir, and Muhammad in their own words. But you call that "ignorant."

So, if you like books that get fundamental historical fact completely upside-down, blame victims for the atrocities committed against them, and aid our enemies during a time of war, then please, buy this book.

Unless rioting Muslims are cinephiles enraged at really poor production values, they have no right to be distressed at a video pointing out what their own texts claim regarding Muhammad

Would the distress Nazis might feel at Hitler's being mocked be "entirely understandable"?

In the same way, the discomfort Muslims (claim to) feel over an internet video is neither acceptable nor excusable. By saying that it is, you're not only legitimizing Islam's prohibitions against any criticism of Muhammad, Islam, and Qur'an (even when truthful), but you're betraying those millions of innocent non-Muslims living under the constant threat of Islamic violence and discrimination.

(And that's not far-removed from the Obama administration and its propagandists' absurd claim that the video "ignited" Muslim rage, which is as nonsensical as claiming that reporting about the Holocaust caused the Holocaust.)

Have you seen the video/trailer? Though it is poorly made, its claims regarding the genocidal pedophile Muhammad's atrocities are accurate, as they come straight from Islam's own "sacred" texts.

So, unless rioting Muslims are cinephiles enraged at really poor production values, they have no right to be upset at a video pointing out the words and deeds of Muhammad, whom they otherwise exalt as Allah's "beautiful pattern of conduct" and the "Ideal Man."

Democrats rip away the mask; finally admit their contempt for God, Jews, the unborn, your children, and you

Which makes them a natural fit for Islam (and unfit for citizenship, let alone public office). If you are a decent person and a Democrat, you can no longer be both.

One of the great things about the Drudge Report is that often even a quick glance will provide revealing snapshots of national and global trends. The screen capture below shows all that needs to be said about the malice, greed, mendacity, and perverseness of today's Democratic Party.

This is not the party of even Jimmy Carter, who recently expressed his concern at the Democratic Party's becoming the party of abortion. (Speaking of Mr. Carter, he must delight at the Obama presidency in one respect: He's no longer America's Worst President Ever.)

This is the Democrats' creed, their vision for America:

Hostility toward God (but not Allah, I'll bet).

Typical Liberal Jew-hatred (a perfect fit for Islam).

Using your tax dollars to fund the slaughter of our children (an American holocaust).

Sixteen trillion dollars in debt (but give Obama four more years, and this time, he'll do something about. Honestly, he will. For real. What are you, racist?)

Record food stamp usage (because it's hard to vote on an empty stomach. Just remember where that came from).

There was a time when such positions would incur public wrath. Now it's a national political party. Is that what you want America to be?

As if there was any doubt. At least now there's no more pretending.

When decent Americans are classified as potential terrorists and treated like criminals by their own government, but Muslims are shielded from any real scrutiny (even just basic fact-telling) whatsoever -- despite claiming fealty to a god demanding the enslavement or slaughter of all who refuse the "invitation" to convert -- then you know that the enemy is not only within the gates, they're in control.

As destructive as Franklin Roosevelt was to the Constitution and American Liberty, even he would be demonized by today's Democrats as a right-wing, religious extremist. And JFK? Clearly, a Nazi. And don't even think about giving any sort of credence to Colonial proto-terrorists like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, or Madison. As for Lincoln? Reagan? Republicans.

This is what happens when citizens allows the ignorant, perverse, and craven to gain control over government, media, and education. You end up with malignant narcissists on parade and in power, on your dime.

Congrats, tyrants, there's a political party just for you, and now, it's official.

Update 2:03 AM, 9/5/12: According to Drudge, a DNC video declares: "The government is the only thing we all belong to."

Of course. Now we're just one or two steps away from Democrats informing us that we exist at their discretion and for their benefit.

Cake, anyone?

Same-gender "marriage" not about human rights, but about using the coercive power of the state to endorse perversion

In response to this:

If all sin were illegal, we'd all be serving life sentences.

Having said that, this manufactured controversy is not about "human rights," but about forcing society to endorse a perverse abuse of the human body. What society in the history of Man has promoted same-gender depravity as legitimate family structure?

The definition of "marriage" is not determined by majority-vote; if it is, what's to keep "We the People" from mis-defining marriage as "one man, three women," "one mother, one son," "one man, one iPod," or "one man, one [insert farm animal here] (pun definitely not intended)? How will anyone be able to stop NAMBLA or Islam from defiling our children (Allah-sanctioned pedophilia, for the uninformed)?

We are not defining marriage, we are merely describing what already exists -- what God created -- and that is a permanent union of one man and one woman (with the glorious possibility of children).

Even the person of no particular religious or moral conviction has to see that homosexuality taken to its ultimate conclusion leads only to the end of civilization and the extinction of the human race.

And it is obvious that the human body was designed with the systems for a man and a woman to reproduce.

Tolerance is not approval. Endorsing sin is not love.