I used the example of the dictators merely to explain how an absolute monopoly in education, where parents do not have a right or ability to choose the education that best suits their children due to economic circumstances or otherwise, runs counter to a free and open society. Our support of a school voucher program has the goal of giving parents something that dictators never would, a choice in which school their children attend by being able to control the portion of the tax dollars that is designated for the education of each child.”

As it turns out, Bishop McFadden is more correct than he may know, as our current system of education came from the very totalitarian regimes he speaks of. In fact the word totalitarianism refers to a system of government where the state dictates every aspect of human behavior and achieves this largely through the education system, which becomes a political apparatus of the state.

“Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc. are only particular modes, of production and come under its general law. The positive suppression (Aufhebung) of private property as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive suppression (Aufhebung) of all alienation, and therefore the return of people out of religion, family, state, etc. into his human, i.e. social existence.”

– Karl Marx

In the 1950s, Obama’s mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski (b. 1928) said that the totalitarian socialist dictatorship is greatly concerned with the transmission of its power and ideology to the younger generation. In fact, it is with the young that socialism hangs its hope, constantly asserting that the future belongs to the youth. Because the youth have no personal knowledge of or commitment to the past, the state is unrestrained in identifying and characterizing failures and successes of yesterday, or of the utopian superiority of tomorrow. Stalin agreed with Hitler and Mussolini when he said:

“The youth is our future, our hope, comrades. The youth must take our place, the place of the old people. It must carry our banner to final victory. Among the peasants there are not a few old people, borne down by the burden of the past, burdened with the habits and the recollections of the old life. Naturally, they are not always able to keep pace with the party, to keep pace with the Soviet government. But that cannot be said of our youth. They are free from the burden of the past, and it is easiest for them to assimilate Lenin's behests.”

Fascist Italy’s national hymn was called Giovinezza and is Italian for, “The Youth.” The hymn calls on the young to swear personal loyalty to Mussolini, the father of the people. In April of 1926, the youth group called the Italian Balillawas formed as an adjunct to the Fascist Party (Italian Socialism) for the indoctrination of the young. The law that established it declared that Fascism considers the education of youth to be one of the fundamental tasks of the revolution, in an “atmosphere of discipline and service to the nation.” In 1936, Hitler would use the same arguments when he enacted the “National Youth Law” creating the Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth, stating that, “the totality of German youth must be prepared for its future duties.” Both organizations aspired to achieve total control of the youth, and by 1939 both Germany and Italy had made membership mandatory.

In Soviet Russia the Komsomol, the “Communist Union of Youth,” placed emphasis on indoctrinating the young so as to be liberated by making them conscious of their role and position in the state. What all three youth organizations had in common was party indoctrination, while serving as a proving ground where the next generation of the party elite could be identified, selected, and groomed.

These are very different organizations from the ones found in free countries such as the boy scouts and other religious or artistic youth organizations. While traditional Western organizations use many of the same slogans, they are, in fact, very different as they stress the development of personal character, individual improvement, and an allegiance to the family and Church.

The Komsomol, Hitlerjugend, and Balliia all worked to organize and indoctrinate the child at the earliest possible age. To better facilitate this, the state needs to transform the educational process itself into a school for socialist ideology. The entire educational system becomes an adjunct to the propaganda efforts of the regime, and is perverted to this purpose in ever-larger measure as the totalitarian nature of the dictatorship unfolds.

Socialist Education and Political Indoctrination

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937) said that no political regime can last without a certain degree of effective cooperation from most of its members; in fact, the development of this loyalty has traditionally been the concern of all governments.  Aristotle emphasized this when he addressed the “making of citizens” in his book, Politics. To this end there is a vital difference between employing the educational system to teach the youth how “to think for themselves,” and using education for the purpose of forcing all those who come within its grip to think alike, as Aristotle proposed.

A study of Soviet Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mussolini’s Italy shows that totalitarian governments begin indoctrination at an early age, stripping away individual thought and family influence, replacing it with political indoctrination delivered by party loyalists. Criticism is not permitted and teachers and pupils alike are continually exposed to pressures originating from the state.  Eventually, more and more teachers become absorbed into the movement, often by formal recruitment into the party itself. Over time the distinction between education and propaganda becomes increasingly blurred, so that education, like ideology, becomes an instrument in the hands of the regime that takes upon itself the definition of truth.

The Soviet Education System

There is a story told of a teacher who had not yet adapted himself to Communist ideology, who set the following problem in arithmetic to his students: “If a man bought a barrel of apples for 30 rubles and sold it for 70, what would he get?” Quick came the pat answer, “Three Years of Jail.”

An understanding of today’s education system in America first requires an understanding of the Soviet education system. In Russia, universal education began in 1631 when the Orthodox Catholic Church created a series of schools with its own funds, starting with the ecclesiastical academy that was founded in Kiev. In 1782, Catherine the Great expanded on this by introducing free universal education, paid for by the crown. She used as her inspiration the inclusive education system she saw growing in America.  Eventually, the elite saw these schools as a threat and looked to replace them with schools tailored for the elite. The last thing they wanted was an educated lower class.

In 1864, the Russian Emperor Alexander II (1818 – 1881) created a form of local commune called the Zemstva, which was administered by Nikolay Milyutin (1818 – 1872), also known as “The Red.”  As an “Orthodox Socialist,”  Milyutin began to replace the Christian based schools with “progressive” schools,  by confiscating Church property and killing off the clergy. His ultimate objective was the destruction of not only the Russian Orthodox Church; but also the Catholic Church in Poland, as part of a plan to destroy Poland herself.

Primary and secondary education came under the control of the central government and the minister of education, who appointed autocratic curators that arranged curricula, appointed inspectors, and dictated the methods of teaching.  Unlike the Catholic schools, which Milyutin failed to eradicate, attendance was restricted to the children of the elite.

After the Bolshevik revolution, Russia would import educational ideas from socialists in the West and modify them for use in the Soviet Union. The person who would do this was Anatoly Lunacharsky, who is discussed in chapter 7 of the book.

One of Lenin’s utopian platitudes stated, In order to bring education within reach of everybody it had to be free. He said that the working class suffered because education was restricted to the children of bourgeois parents who could pay for it.  Of course, this totally misrepresented the education provided by the Church and by Catherine the Great, which was available to everyone for free. It wasn’t the Church or the middle class that restricted education. It was the Zemstva and its socialist belief in the elite that caused the problem.

While the Church was based on a classless belief that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, Lenin represented that just the opposite was true. What the Bolsheviks did was to blame the failure of education on the Church, ignoring the role that had been played by socialism, calling on Marxism to provide the solution, just as Obama is doing today. The Bolsheviks went on to extend what Milyutin had started; creating a class-oriented society consisting of a ruling elite, an elitist bureaucracy, and a working class – collectively called a plutocracy. Lenin said it would take several generations of right education to eradicate the marks and signs of superstition and oppression, saying, “Culture and a high moral standards cannot be produced in a night, nor can children be given a complete Communist education except by Communist parents and teachers.”

In the Soviet system, the kind of education that each child received was the result of whom their parents were, assuming they received any education at all. The children of millions of disfranchised kulaks (middle class business owners), priests, engineers, and scientists, were not allowed to attend school at all.

The children of the working class received little to no education. Instead each industry provided training that was sufficient to work in a factory or in the field.  Each factory had an apprentice school to support the industrial centers, and each Soviet state or collective was required to provide a school for peasant youth.

Pre-School Education

In Soviet Russia, children were under the care of the Commissariat of Health from birth until four years of age. They were then entered into the nursery infant school, under the care of the Commissariat of Education. At this point,  the children of factory workers were placed into the care of a factory apprentice school, where the children were raised by a school staff consisting of: a director, teachers, a mistress of methods, a psychologist, a cultural supervisor, a doctor, and a nurse. There was also a technical staff consisting of cooks, maids, and cleaners. The purpose of the factory schools was to train youth for industry, and children were selected for various levels of training depending on the jobs they were to be assigned. While the factory apprentice schools trained elementary grade workers, there were technical schools that provided intermediate technical and professional training as well. About half of the training these children received was for industry and half for political propaganda, while time not spent in the classroom was spent under the direction of the Komsomol (Young Communist League).

In the Soviet system the working class was expected to work, and by the age of seven most children were at work, where they would labor until they died or were no longer needed, in which case they would be disposed of. Today this has become the centerpiece of China Inc. where young workers are taught enough to work in a factory where they are treated as slave labor. When these workers are no longer needed, they are simply turned loose to starve.

Like in China today, the children of the Soviet elite received a completely different education that prepared them to manage the country. After leaving the Commissariat of Health, children of the elite would enter a communist version of a preschool where they would spend nights with their parents. When these children entered what we would call grade school, it was with the understanding that they would receive a more substantial education. In addition to math and physics, these children would receive lectures in Marxism, and other aspects of the socialist faith, including sexuality.  They were also taught how to spy on each other, their teachers, and on their parents, while teachers would inspect and report on the condition of the parent’s home.

A form of discipline was a large sheet of paper that was mounted on the wall called the “Wall Newspaper,” which was edited by a committee of children chosen from the Young Pioneer (Junior Communist) organization.  The paper was used to openly ridicule fellow students who did not believe properly, or whose conduct didn’t comply with the Marxist religion – in and out of the classroom.

Education at all levels instilled politics into all subjects, often at the expense of teaching the subjects themselves. The walls of schools were decorated with political posters depicting slogans, while school songs were about completing the five-year plan in four. History was rewritten, providing information about foreign countries that was blatantly false, where pre revolutionary Russia was demeaned, and post-revolutionary Russia was glorified.  The young were required to recite hymns to further the socialist faith and the Stalin cult such as:

Today we see the same kind of hymns being sung to Barack Obama, while socialist propaganda adorns the walls of our schools – including environmental paganism.

In totalitarian states, admissions, grades, and advancements were determined by who the student’s parents were, or for other political considerations, while test scores were not given as a result of how well a student did, but by the political needs of the state, much like affirmative action in America.

Teachers were not allowed to teach Western economics or Christian religion; but were required to teach communist economics and religion, calling it atheism. This included the building god movement, where men shall be as gods,  socialist moral values, and other aspects of the Marxist / Leninist faith. In 1936, when a new Constitution was promulgated, Stalin announced that the "exploiting class" had ceased to exist, and that everyone was now equal; but it was a boldfaced lie, as he was the exploiting class.

Today America’s schools and teachers have become ardent believers in the socialist faith, preaching the social gospel of the state, while treating parents as the enemy. More and more school districts have given up on teaching students anything of value, so long as there is a poster of Obama on the wall, surrounded by propaganda and slogans regarding sexuality and environmentalism.  This isn’t a question of how our country is becoming a Socialist Totalitarian Dictatorship, but how we became one, and what needs to be done about it.

While I agree strongly with Bishop McFadden’s depiction of our education system, I don’t believe he should have apologized to anyone. As Christians we need to stop apologizing when the truth offends the purveyors of evil, such as the ACLU. We need to stand up for our faith, the greatest force for good in the history of the world. We need to speak out against socialism, the faith of destruction – responsible for more deaths than any other force in history.

Read the Book

If you would like to learn more, including how the totalitarian method of education came to America, read the book:Totalitarianism: How the Socialist Faith is Destroying America. This article is about 2,500 words, while volume 1 of the book is over 160,000 words – providing a lot more information.

Information contained in the book will challenge almost everything you believe to be true. It describes an ongoing war between Hebrew-Christianity and Socialism, between Good and Evil, and why America is currently losing that war. Central to this description is a documented assertion that Socialism is a faith, the only definition that explains its actions.

A product of 7 years of research, the book presents a view of our nation, world, and history that is unique because it provides something you have probably never heard before, the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is often hard to swallow; but if you want to accept the same old party line, or believe that things are just fine as they are, continue doing what you are doing. If not, this book will help you understand what is happening, and what to do about it. Remember, once the magician’s secret is revealed, the illusion no longer holds any sway.   Learn More

If you like Ray's article, read his book click here to read more

Copyright © Ray Peach All Rights Reserved

Mr. Peach (visit his website) ·is a retired engineer who spent a great deal of his life traveling the world to solve problems for fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Government.·After serving 8 years in U.S. Naval Air he went to work for Litton Guidance Systems as a field engineer, working in the Middle East and Asia. For the next 12 years he worked as a systems engineer for Hughes Aircraft where he was involved with the F-14D, F-15E, and the F/A-18 tactical aircraft...........read more

"If a soldier is wounded in battle--what we saw many times in Baghdad in 2003 or Fallujah in November 2004--a collocated support soldier may be the only person in a position to evacuate the wounded soldier on his own back.  In this environment, women do not have an equal opportunity to survive, or to help fellow soldiers survive.  Lives should not be put at needless risk just to satisfy 'diversity metrics' for the career ambitions of a few.

"It is not realistic to expect that women will be held to the same physical standards as men.  Attempts to establish such standards always are attacked by feminists as 'unfair' and 'barriers to women's careers.'  The result is lowered, gender-normed standards that mandate inequality in the name of ‘equality’.”

"By formally eliminating rules affecting units collocated with infantry battalions, the Defense Department is imposing needless complications and burdens on direct ground combat units.  The Pentagon also is inviting another ACLU lawsuit challenging young women's exemption from Selective Service registration, which the courts have upheld as constitutional because women are not assigned to direct ground combat.

"For this reason, the incremental policy changes announced today will have harmful consequences not only for our brave women and men in the military, but for unsuspecting civilian women as well."

Elaine Donnelly, President of the Center for Military Readiness, served as a member of the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces

Calling out energy providers and consumer watchdogs who have protested the high costs of EPA regulations, McCarthy defiantly challenged, “If you are worried about whether this will benefit the economy, read those figures.”

Federal Agencies Disagree

Much of EPA’s asserted benefits accrue through the agency’s calculation that each life it extends through regulations provides $9.1 million in societal value. EPA’s $9.1 million figure is higher than that asserted by any other federal agency.

For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asserts a life extended is worth $7.9 million, and the Department of Transportation (DOT) assumes a life extended is worth $6 million. EPA itself asserted as recently as three years ago a life extended is worth $6.8 million.

‘I Can’t Answer the Question’

During a press conference at the EUEC, this reporter asked McCarthy how EPA arrives at its $9.1 million figure and why it differs from the value assigned by other federal agencies.

McCarthy said she could not give a specific answer. Instead of providing a formula or specific considerations EPA took into account when arriving at its $9.1 million valuation, McCarthy said EPA “works in close consultation with the White House” to arrive at its figure.

“We work very hard to come up with the proper number,” said McCarthy.

Following up, this reporter asked McCarthy if her answer meant EPA does not have a specific formula it utilizes.

“I didn’t say that,” McCarthy responded. “I said I can’t answer the question.”

EPA ‘Misleading at Best’

Emergency medical physician John Dale Dunn, a policy advisor for the American Council on Science and Health, says regardless of whether EPA inflates the value it assigns a human life, it is misleading for the agency to claim its regulations are providing economic benefits.

“The costs that energy producers pay to comply with EPA regulations are certainly economic, and these economic costs certainly get passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices,” said Dunn. “EPA’s asserted benefits, however, are not economic. The asserted benefits are largely the subjective value that EPA places on a person allegedly living a little bit longer due to EPA regulations.

“When EPA bureaucrats say their regulations will ‘help the economy,’ they are being misleading at best,” Dunn explained. “Even if, for the sake of argument, EPA is not inflating the value it places on a life extended, its asserted benefits are noneconomic in nature. The economy pays dearly for EPA regulations, even if EPA says the noneconomic benefits are worth the price.

“You can say, ‘I think the subjective value people place on having their life extended is $9.1 million,’ but that certainly doesn’t mean the economy grows by $9.1 million each time a life is extended,” Dunn observed. “EPA is comparing economic apples to noneconomic oranges, and the agency is being misleading at best when it claims its regulation benefit the economy.”

Minimal Life Extension

This reporter also asked McCarthy how much time is added, on average, to each life allegedly extended by EPA regulations.

McCarthy said she could not answer that question, either.

“There is a good reason why Assistant Administrator McCarthy said she could not answer the question: the answer is embarrassing for EPA,” said Dunn. “EPA is not preventing an army of twentysomethings from dying grossly premature deaths. Instead, even if we accept EPA’s highly suspect data-mining, EPA regulations add mere hours or days per life extended.”

“To say that adding a few hours or days to an elderly person’s life is worth taxpayers spending $9.1 million is quite a bold statement,” said Dunn. “And to say that adding a few hours or days to an elderly person’s life provides $9.1 million in economic value is simply preposterous.”

“It is also curious that EPA claims a higher monetary value per life saved than the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Transportation,” observed Dunn. “DOT regulations are designed to prevent sudden tragedies that strike people of all ages. DOT is saving many more years of life per accident avoided than the few days of life extended by EPA regulations, yet EPA has the audacity to claim a higher benefit value than DOT.”

“EPA is cooking the books when it claims the benefits of its new and proposed regulation outweigh their extremely high costs,” Dunn summarized.

SOURCE: The Heartland Institute

James M. Taylor is managing editor of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism with a circulation of approximately 75,000 readers. He is also senior fellow for The Heartland Institute focusing on environmental issues. More bio here

In a similar fashion, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has waged a long war on the provision of energy; most recently with the imposition of its Utility MACT rule on plant carbon dioxide (CO2) and mercury emissions, neither of which pose any threat. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, decried the rule as one “intended to undermine the viability of coal, one of our country’s most abundant and reliable energy sources.”

Despite having spent billions to meet the demand for upgrades of the technology to trap such emissions, coal-fired plants all over the nation are in the process of being closed as a result of the MACT rule. These “greenhouse gas” rules are baseless insofar as CO2 is not a pollutant and is vital to the growth of all vegetation on the planet. There is no proof that minor mercury emissions represent any threat to public health.

The EPA use of bogus “computer models” to support wild health claims argues for an end to this agency and the return of its responsibilities to state environmental agencies.

In January, the American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the leading authority, warned that “environmental regulations are shown to be the number one risk to reliability over the next one to five years.”

The Institute for Energy Research has stated that “Beyond the 38 gigawatts of electricity capacity that has already been announced to retire, NERC estimates that another 36 to 59 gigawatts of capacity will come off-line by 2018, depending on the ‘scope and timing’ of EPA regulations. Together, nearly a quarter of our coal-fired capacity could be off-line by 2018, marking the first time in energy history that installed coal-fired capacity has declined.”

This is a threat to the viability and security of a nation that sits atop the largest deposits of coal in the world! It is a nation in which coal provides 50% of its electricity.

In a similar fashion, environmentalists, after a long propaganda war against coal, have launched an equally massive campaign against natural gas, attacking the use of “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for the last fifty years or more to access equally vast reserves of natural gas.

Likewise the cost of automobiles has been systematically driven up by the wholly false EPA assertion that their CO2 emissions represent a threat to clean air. The imposition of a mandate to mix gasoline with ethanol has resulted in greater CO2 emissions while, at the same time, reducing the mileage of cars. In addition, the use of food crops like corn for the production of ethanol, have driven up food prices.

Anyone who has lost electricity due to a blizzard or a hurricane knows how totally dependent the nation is on reliable and affordable electricity, and knows how totally dependent they are on is provision.

The simple fact is that the present and prior administration’s EPA, the Department of Transportation, and others have been lying to Congress and the American public for years regarding their claims about air pollution and energy provision. The Interior Department just put uranium-rich acres of land off-limits to mining.

Environmental organizations and special interest groups like the American lung Association are a fifth column of enemies within the nation.

The global warming hoax—now called climate change—is on its last legs. Nations around the world that have wasted billions on the claims made for “renewable” energy, solar and wind, are pulling back from further support. The “science” behind these claims has been totally and utterly refuted.

Even the United Nations, the source of the global warming hoax, is now switching its debased claims to a new hoax based on so-called endangered species.

The loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the energy and transportation sectors, as well as energy-intensive industries, is incalculable. EPA demands and mandates are deliberately undermining the nation’s economy.

The lives and safety of Americans are under attack by environmental organizations and, if they are successful, the only outcome would be the deaths of millions here and around the world from hunger and the lack of power to turn on the lights, heat and cool homes, and power industries.

The planet is not running out of oil, coal, or natural gas. It can use more nuclear power, not less.

We are witnessing an environmental attack on American energy and, ultimately, on America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

If I were to update part of President Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech to fit our current situation, with my italic changes, it would sound this way:

“’A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this nation cannot endure, permanently, half socialist and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of socialism will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike mandatory in all the states,…”

Socialism is a major threat to America because, under the guise of caring for people, it interferes with every aspect of our lives and ultimately puts the state in the place of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that, after the Flood, God grouped people into separate families, nations and languages, “under the guardianship of angels,” in order to “limit the pride of fallen humanity, united only in its perverse desire to forge its own unity as at Babel.” We know from the horrors of the 20^th century that socialism is that very temptation to create an empire without God, under a ruling elite.

Our founding fathers, who were well-versed in history and the Bible, also knew that humans were prone to corruption, and so they created a government with written guarantees of liberty and one in which power was diffused by the separation of a national government into the executive, legislative and judicial branches and by the separation of national, state and local governments. They encouraged partisan politics to impede the centralization of power.

Even if Obama relents, the bishops hopefully are getting a rude awakening that the limited national government created by the founders has gradually morphed, by incremental subversion of the Constitution, into an institution with almost unlimited coercive power. The bishops would do well to heed the warning of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, that "the two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

It’s no accident that the size and intrusiveness of government--at all levels—has paralleled an increase of irreligion and immorality among the electorate, because sin has consequences. Many politicians are only too willing protect us from one another and mitigate the wreckage of our misdeeds. Only conversion and prayer will save this country. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” said John Adams, our second president. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Mr. Retzlaff is a free-lance writer living in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y.

In Biblical thought, the body is inert matter organized and vitalized by the soul.   A human life is a soul which informs inert matter, thus a body without a soul is no more than a disorganized mass of cells that would quickly deconstruct, said Pastor Louis Pernot in a sermon delivered at the Temple de l'Etoile in Paris.  (“Body, Mind, and Soul,” Nov. 28, 2010)

The noblest part of the soul is spirit (the heart). Spirit is immortal and self-aware. It can will and think and is freely responsible for what it thinks, wills, and does.

Spirit is the unique property that distinguishes soul from matter.    In Biblical thought, spirit allows man to spiritually transcend the natural dimension in order to access the supernatural dimension, thereby allowing him to enter into a personal relationship with the Spirit of God.   Through this relationship, man’s conscience is cleansed over time, thus enabling him to more perfectly orient the manner of his existence in this world in preparation for eternity.

In Christian thought, a person is a spirit and personality is the total individuality of the spirit. Without spirit there is no person.

 Pastor Pernot notes that the key to individual liberty in the temporal sphere is man’s spiritual liberty contrasted against a genetically programmed animal-like orientation.  Animals do not have spirits, which are linked to intelligence, imagination, sensitivity, self-consciousness, reflection and the capacity for truth and moral goodness.   

A person is uniquely free because he can spiritually transcend matter to access the supernatural dimension as Paul affirms:

 “Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17)

Man is God’s spiritual image-bearer, and, said the brilliant French economist, statesman, and author Frederic Bastiat, this is the gift from God which includes the physical, intellectual and moral life:

“He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties.   And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources.   By application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. Life, faculties, production---in other words, individuality, liberty, property---this is man (and) these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”   (How Evil Works, David Kupelian, p. 8)  

 Vishal Mangalwadi, India’s foremost Christian scholar observes that the unique concept of man as God’s spiritual image-bearer gave birth to the “belief in the unique dignity of human beings,” and this is,

 ”…the force that created Western civilization, where citizens do not exist for the state but the state exists for the individuals. Even kings, presidents, prime ministers, and army generals cannot be allowed to trample upon an individual and his or her rights.” (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, pp. 12-13) 

Death of the Western and American Soul

 Jesus to Buddha,   “….you took God away from them (and) your espousal of an absence of self is the most unique and fearsome claim you made…You turned from Hinduism because it said there was an essential self, which they called the atman.”   (The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha, Ravi Zacharias, pp.59, 67)

 Of all Christian doctrines the most difficult to understand is that of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). This doctrine is the complete opposite of ancient and modern evolutionary cosmogonies affirming that the universe and even the gods, emerged or evolved out of a pre-existing substance such as primordial matter or the watery chaos, which begs the question of where the substances came from.

 The Triune God’s miraculous creation has its’ foundation in the fact that He spoke all things into existence from nothing. Early Church Father Irenaeus comments,

 "God, in the exercise of his will and pleasure, formed all things...out of what did not previously exist."

 But if there is no Triune God, then it logically follows that there is no source for life, consciousness, soul, spirit and will, or for human dignity, worth, liberty, and property. Without God the Father unalienable (God-given) rights are meaningless.   If man is not God’s spiritual image-bearer, then he is less than nothing, a conclusion Buddha reached long before Jesus Christ walked this earth:
 
“Six centuries before Jesus Christ, the Buddha already knew that if God does not exist, then the human self cannot exist either……Therefore, he deconstructed the Hindu idea of the soul. When one starts peeling the onion skin of one’s psyche, he discovers that there is no solid core at the center of one’s being. Your sense of self is an illusion. Reality is nonself (anatman). You don’t exist. Liberation, the Buddha taught, is realizing the unreality of your existence.” (The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Vishal Mangalwadi, p. 6)

Teaching Monstrous Lies About God

 The great Oriental scholar Max Muller observed that monotheism preceded the polytheism and monism of the Veda. It was Buddha who took the God of monotheism away.   Buddha craved God-like power to reinterpret the order of being--- to deconstruct and reinterpret the soul. Taking power not only requires the murder of God but the teaching of lies.

Telling lies is wrong. But telling lies about God is a monstrous crime with eternal consequences.  

 Centuries later, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Nietzsche, among others, followed in Buddha’s footsteps.   God was taken away, man’s soul deconstructed and lies taught as truth.   Eric Voegelin comments:

 "….the order of being (was) obliterated (and reinterpreted) as essentially under man's control." Taking control "requires the decapitation of being — the murder of God." (Eric Voegelin, "Science, Politics and Gnosticism," p. xv)

 In place of man as God’s spiritual image-bearer, the New Man was beast-man, qualitatively no different from a rat, pig, or ape.

 Nihilism, or non-belief in one’s own soul, is the logical assumption if the transcendent God does not exist. Nihilism is spiritual, moral, and intellectual suicide, yet for the last two hundred years, Enlightenment atheist humanists----rationalists, materialists, positivists and their modern naturalist counterparts such as occult New Agers and Trans-humanists----have been moving the West and America closer and closer to Buddha’s denial of the soul.  

 Beginning with Kant, soul was separated from body.   Man was a machine.   Soul hovered somewhere in the vicinity.   This did not go far enough for Enlightenment nature philosophers however. Lester Crocker explains:

 “There existed in the eighteenth century a widespread desire to equate the moral with the physical world…”   What was desired above all was “total integration of man in nature, with refusal of any transcendence, even though it was admitted that (being God’s image-bearer) gave him certain special abilities and ways of thinking.   The important thing, as La Mettrie, d’Holbach and others made clear, is that he is submitted to the same laws; everything is response to need---mechanically… like a tree or a machine.   Man merely carries out natural forces---without any freedom whatsoever---in all he does, whether he loves or hates, helps or hurts, gives life or takes it.” (Monsters from the Id, E. Michael Jones, pp. 5, 7)  

 Nietzsche declared the death of the Triune God and reinterpreted soul as an aspect of body, but it was Marxist materialists who attempted to scientifically re-engineer human beings after the fashion of Buddha’s programmatic nihilism said Mangalwadi.  

 After seizing control of Russia, they utilized mind-conditioning techniques such as propaganda and re-education with emphasis on Darwinism as well as mind-altering drugs, electro-shock therapy, terror and other brutal measures to,

 “...liquidate all expressions of individual identity in favor of an impersonal collective, communal consciousness.”   (The Book that Made Your World, p. 74)

 With B.F. Skinners’ behaviorism there is neither God nor soul. Human beings are chemicals turned into psychochemical machines determined by environment, chemistry, chance, and cultural conditioning.

 With Richard Dawkins nihilism, metaphysical “thinking” memes plant thoughts in the grey matter of psychochemical organisms that are fatalistically determined by DNA.

 Cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism, claims there really is no you, that soul, spirit and will are illusions caused by chemical interactions in the brain while his partner in nihilism, naturalist Tom Wolfe proclaims,

 “Sorry, but your soul just died.”   (The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul, Beauregard and O'Leary, p. 4)

 After World War II reaction set in against the eclipse of the unseen dimension by materialist and positivist simplifiers.   Seeing the writing on the wall, Mortimer J. Adler, the guiding hand behind The Encyclopedia Britannica predicted that belief in the unseen dimension would soon be considered orthodox science. (The Seduction of Christianity, Hunt and McMahon, p. 107)

 Sure enough, scientism, evolution, theosophy, spiritism, Vedanta monism and shamanism mingled, giving rise to occult science.   Whereas the metaphysical program of materialist scientism outwardly denies anything nonphysical and supposedly confines itself to physical laws, occult scientism deals with spiritual laws and metaphysical forces believed to govern the physical.    Building off of Darwin's materialist theory of evolution, Teilhard's spiritual theory teaches that after millions of years of evolution an impersonal god has emerged from matter.  Whereas Christianity had de-divinized nature, Teilhard's theory trumpets its' re-divinization. The stage was set for the return of the gods and goddesses.

Buddha’s Nihilism Comes to America

In no Western thinker has Buddha’s nihilist doctrine been more clearly expressed than in Nietzsche’s ecstatic utterance, “God is dead.”   God is dead in the hearts of modern Westerners:

“…and it is as true of the atheists and Satanists who rejoice in the fact, as it is of the unsophisticated multitudes….Man has lost faith in God and in the Divine Truth that once sustained him; the apostasy to worldliness that has characterized the modern age since its beginning becomes, in Nietzsche, conscious of itself and finds words to express itself. God is dead…”   (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene Rose, p. 60)

Prior to the turn of the century, God was already dead in the hearts of America’s 'elite' progressives, and upon the arrival of Swami Vivekananda at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 the 'elites' eagerly embraced him:

 “He was immediately lionized by high society in Boston and New York. Philosophers at Harvard were mightily impressed.   Many wealthy high society types and intellectuals reverted to the Buddhist idea that self is an illusion.   They constituted a ‘… hard core of disciples who supported him and his grandiose dream: the evangelizing of the Western world by….Vedantic (monistic) Hinduism.” (Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 21)

 Vedanta Societies were established in America and Europe for the purpose of injecting Vedantic ideas into the bloodstream of the West and America. Among those who helped disseminate Vedanta monism were Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Somerset Maugham, and Teilhard de Chardin.

 The Sixties witnessed a whole series of Indian gurus make their mark on the student generation. Popular culture was introduced to any number of nature- beliefs, from Vedanta monism, Zen Buddhism, pantheism, panentheism, reincarnation and karma to belief in a vague immanent ‘force,’ World Soul, Gaia (Mother Earth) and Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point:  

 “…..de Chardin believed that humanity could achieve a form of Godhood or a high level of spirituality called the Omega Point. This was an evolutionary process that everyone could attain through discipline and dedication to the path of enlightenment.” (Reflections of the Omega Point, Frank Tipler, omegapoint.org)

 The exciting new spirituality discouraged belief in the Biblical God and promised followers that by dedication to the path of enlightenment they would attain godhood through the merging of their souls with the cosmic universe.  Through guided imagery, Tantric sex, kundalini yoga, hypnosis, possibility-thinking, dream-work, past-life regression, mind-altering drugs, rhythmic music, and spiritistic practices such as channeling, initiates could be raised to new levels of consciousness, develop psychic powers, release their souls from their bodies through astral projection and merge their consciousness with the void.

In his article, “Confronting Neo-Paganism in the Culture and the Church” Dr. Peter Jones reports that many of the architects of the new spirituality,

“…. such as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, and Huston Smith were converts of Vedanta ….. Contemporary architects… call themselves ‘Cultural Creative's,’ ‘Progressives,’ ‘Evolutionaries,’ ‘Integral Spiritualists,’  ‘Interspiritualists’ or ‘Transtraditional Spiritualists.’   It is doubtless true to say that the key New Age leaders and their present disciples all claim some form of Vedantic enlightenment.” (truthexchange, Apr. 12, 2011)  

It is already the case that for increasing numbers of contemporary believers the death of God has made it impossible for them to affirm the existence of the human self thus they actively seek the annihilation of their souls through drugs, Tantric sex, yoga, and meditation.  As with Buddha and contemporary Hindu gurus some initiates are trying to merge their individual consciousness with the void.

Perverted Christianity

 Jesus to Buddha:   “Wherever the worship of the living God has been perverted, it has always been the result of a departure from my Word….when my people cast aside the Word, the absolute is lost. Pollution in worship is the result.”   (The Lotus and the Cross, pp. 74, 77)

 Perpetuating the lies of his predecessors, spiritual evolutionist and Vedanta prophet Ken Wilber, a Mahayana Buddhist from a Christian background, teaches “integral spirituality.” A popular author whose teachings have been avidly studied by world leaders, politicians (i.e. Bill Clinton and Al Gore), scholars, writers, artists, musicians, spiritual teachers and pop culture icons, Wilber combines evolution with the world’s nature religions, morals, and Eastern and Western philosophy so as to establish a universal spirituality.  

 A panentheist, Wilber imagines that the entire universe is God evolving from matter through billions of years toward de Chardin’s ‘Omega Point.’   Having evolved from primordial soup beast-man now evolves toward total god-consciousness, and in this way, the imaginary god is in process of becoming while evolution becomes conscious of itself.

A form of Christianized-Vedanta monism is already here, said Dr. Peter Jones:

“Evolutionary Christianity” is producing the longed-for and much-prophesied synthesis, namely, the union of science and spirituality…. Evolutionary Christianity is a variant of Wilber’s ‘Theory of Everything’, a worldview of (Vedanta monism) that claims to explain everything through the notion of human evolution into a non-dual divine. Michael Dowd, the ex-Evangelical now evangelist for evolution (agrees) with Bishop’s Spong’s post-theistic Christianity (and) declares supernatural other-worldly religion will die out for a post-metaphysical natural religion.”

Jones adds that Evolutionary Christianity is an online gathering place for:

“….evangelical theistic evolutionists, ‘progressive’ Emergent Christian leaders, radical post-theistic Christian liberals, Christian non-dual mystics, pro-homosexual ministers, radical religious feminists, and recognized evolutionary scientists. Some are deeply influenced by Pierre Teillard de Chardin, and pagan “geologians” such as Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme.”    

Emergent Church Pastor Rob Bell for example, enthusiastically endorses Ken Wilber and claims to be reinventing Christianity as an Eastern religion while evangelical leader Leonard Sweet uses quantum physics to ‘scientifically’ prove that God is ‘in’ everything.   Not surprisingly, Sweet cites Teilhard de Chardin as “20^th century Christianity’s major voice.”   (Normalizing Necromancy: Tempting the Church to Talk with the Dead, Worldview Weekend, 1/23/12)

Nihilism underlies all permutations of the ‘new’ spirituality, whether Evolutionary Christianity, Hinduism, Gnosticism, Mythology, Jungian Depth Psychology, the Perennial Philosophy, Interfaith, Trans-humanism, Wicca, Scientology, Goddess worship, or the spiritual 'gay' agenda, for there is no form of the new spirituality that is not naturalistic.   All are equally God-less; none have a source for life, consciousness, and soul, hence all are merely different expressions of nihilism.  

Welcome to the Theater of the Absurd

 For over two hundred years, nihilist philosophies have been working their way through our culture, embedding themselves, often unconsciously, within our psyches.   This means that not only is the way we see ourselves and America colored by nihilism, but to the degree that our minds have been polluted are we immobilized by apathy, the spiritual emptiness that says in reaction to our peculiarly twisted, degraded culture, "Why bother?'  

 The strangely twisted atmosphere of our age is the “death of God” made tangible and it is Nietzsche who describes our meaningless, disordered, ugly, atonal, brutal, upside-down climate of nothingness:

 “We have killed him (God), you and I! …But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move?   …Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray…through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? …Does not night come on continually, darker and darker?” (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene Rose, p. 108)

 Such is the theater of the absurd in which there is neither up nor down, male nor female, right nor wrong, true nor false, normal nor abnormal because the living God is dead, and while America and the West drift aimlessly in “infinite nothingness” nihilism progressively dissolves the foundation of soul, mind, worth, morality, family, and individual liberty.  

 America and the West are swirling ever downward in a spiraling vortex issuing into a void of outer darkness…..hell.   

Choose Life that You May Live

 As the new spirituality forcefully sweeps over and across America it effects a counter-conversion of souls.   This means that in turning away from the Triune God comes the reversal of conversion in which the soul ceases to live from the spirit and begins to live with the life of the body. The disordered passions thereby revived absorb the life of the person who spiritually dies resulting in the natural man of 2 Tim. 3:3. (St. Tikhon, Works II, as quoted in Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Ellis Sandoz, p. 120)

 “….. I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life…”   Deuteronomy 30:19-20

 The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word become Flesh, Jesus Christ the Physician came to heal the spiritually sick.   But whoever rejects the Physician and his own soul, whether through indifference or outright denial, rejects His prescription, hence destroys him or herself.  

 Destruction however, does not mean annihilation of the soul.   The soul though immortal, said St. Augustine, nevertheless suffers a kind of death when the living God forsakes it:

 “…in that penal and everlasting punishment….the soul is…said to die because it does not live in connection with God (meaning that) though man does not cease to feel, yet because this feeling is neither sweet… nor wholesome (but) painfully penal, it is (called) death rather than life.” (St. Augustine’s City of God, Chapter 2, Of that Death Which Can Affect an Immortal Soul, and of that to Which the Body is Subject)

 copyright 2012 Linda Kimball

 Linda writes on worldview and similar issues.

What tactics? According to the source, who requested anonymity, protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel. The source also identified members of the New Black Panther Party, who “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count,’” and another protester who warned that “Mitt [Romney] has Secret Service now, but [Newt] Gingrich and [Andrew] Breitbart don’t,” implying that the group might go after people they consider easier to confront–or perhaps assault.

Reportedly, most of their antics will take place on Saturday, the last day of the conference — because they don’t want to get in the way of unions who plan to protest on Thursday and Friday. “What do Wisconsin Governor SCOTT WALKER, presidential candidates MITT ROMNEY, NEWT GINGRICH, RICK SANTORUM and House Budget Committee Chair PAUL RYAN have in common?” asks the Washington, DC Metro Council of the AFL-CIO on its website. “They all represent the greed of the wealthy 1% and they’ll all be at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference. WE’VE HEARD ENOUGH FROM THE 1%! Join the rally featuring tents, an inflatable fat cat, puppets, ‘candidate Walmart,’  and more to LET THE VOICES OF THE 99% BE HEARD!”

The unions have scheduled two official protests at noon and 5 p.m. Friday. The 5 p.m. demonstration will coincide with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s speech. “It’s all in good fun, but with a very serious message in terms of representing the 99 percent,” said AFL-CIO organizer Chris Garlock. He also said he expects the protest to be “non-confrontational.”

Garlock has a short memory. In November, the very same Occupy D.C. protesters stormed a dinner held by Americans for Prosperity at Washington Convention Center. During that “non-confrontational” episode, Dolores Broderson, age 78, who had ridden 11 hours on a bus from Detroit to attend, was pushed down the stairs. She ended up in a hospital emergency room with a bloody nose and bruises on her hand and leg. There was also a “pre-planned assault on the Convention Center” as described by an eyewitness who claimed the mob was “hell-bent on shoving their way through the front doors.”

Joining the AFL-CIO will be a group called Change to Win (CTW), an SEIU-led federation that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005. CTW staffer Trina Tocca has posted a notice of the protest on her Facebook page. Thus, two union groups will be joining Occupy D.C. in their efforts to disrupt the conference.

That the unions would align themselves with Occupy D.C. is disturbing. According to the Occupy D.C. website, the CPAC event is characterized as “another gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters.” Its purpose is to “parade and attempt to perpetuate the radical right wing’s imperialist ideologies with keynote speakers, movies and banquets dedicated to pursuing its racist, sexist, patriarchal and exploitative agenda.” 

Furthermore, the Occupy D.C.-ers are particularly bothered by scheduled discussions titled “From Fidel to Chavez: How Do We Stop the Resurgence of Socialism in Latin America?” “Is the ‘Arab Spring’ Good or Bad for America?” “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity is Weakening the American Identity” and “Islamic Law in America: How the Obama Justice Department Is Selling Us Out.” They are also upset by what they characterize as “frequent bloviation” regarding “American exceptionalism.” Their website claims their “mission” is to “Occupy CPAC. Create as much non-violent resistance as possible, and make this a conference the attendees will never forget.”

Unlike their assault on the Americans for Prosperity Washington Convention Center, the protesters are facing a different set of logistics here. The Marriott Wardman Park is on private property, and is set back from the street. Thus, any attempt to “occupy” CPAC meetings would likely result in a confrontation with DC police before the protesters could engineer any serious disruptions. Furthermore, the hotel itself, along with the American Conservative Union (ACU), which hosts the annual conference, claim they have their own security. Both groups say that security has been increased, and they are “confident” in their ability to deal with any threats.

However, the protesters and the unions have accounted for these obstacles. Although the union denies it, an attendee of the Thursday Occupy D.C. meeting, who claimed to handle relations with labor organizations, said the AFL-CIO had booked rooms for Occupiers at the Marriott Hotel, with the intention of allowing them to bypass security measures at the door. Occupy representatives from American University and George Washington University claim they will register their members for CPAC, which would allow full access to the conference. They also claim they’ll produce counterfeit credentials for non-students who want to join the protest. Still others intend to adorn themselves with “Ron Paul 2012″ gear because they believe Paul supporters “generally look like hippies,” and they won’t have to dress any differently in order to attend. That last bit may backfire: Paul will not be attending this year’s conference.

Barring outright violence, what will assuredly be on display at “Occupy CPAC” will be the Left’s fervent attempt to quash the free speech and assembly rights of their political enemies. This is a boilerplate leftist tactic that has been employed innumerable times, especially on college campuses. If one is a betting man, bet the farm that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s speech, already on the protesters’ “must attend” agenda, will be four-star opportunity for those who wish to suppress Mr. Walker’s right to speak.

He won’t be the only one. All three Republican presidential candidates appearing at CPAC have been shouted down at campaign stops this year. Occupy Tampa protesters attempted to disrupt a speech by Rick Santorum in Florida. The same thing happened to Mitt Romney in Iowa, and Newt Gingrich at Harvard University. Former Republican presidential candidates speaking at the event were also shouted down this year. Herman Cain was heckled in Tennessee, and Michele Bachmann was forced offstage by Occupy Charleston protesters in South Carolina. Numerous other CPAC speakers have been subjected to such tactics as well.

Ironically, the Occupy crowd invariably claims their rights have been suppressed whenever the numerous cities they’ve occupied grow tired of their long and often illegal encampments, and force them to disperse. Their intent to disrupt CPAC demonstrates how oblivious they are to their own hypocrisy. In the Occupier/Big Labor world view, they are entitled to endless free speech rights, to demand more and more from the public square, even as fiscal budgets have been busted protecting their rights, their monopolization of common spaces have deprived local residents of their rightful use, and much of their ill-advised, disgusting, anti-Semitic and criminal behavior has been largely “overlooked” by politicians fearful of being labeled unsympathetic and/or oppressive. Meanwhile, their political enemies are entitled to nothing. Conservative free speech and assembly rights are there to be suppressed, trampled on and terrorized at all costs. Tolerating the promulgation of ideas that are antithetical to leftist orthodoxy is simply a liability the mobocracy cannot afford.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

SOURCE: FrontPageMagazine

In its 17 years of operation, it has done little or no good for real victims of domestic violence, while its funds have been used to fill feminist coffers and to lobby for feminist objectives and laws. Although every spending bill should be subject to rigorous auditing procedures in order to curb waste and fraud, VAWA has somehow ducked accountability for the nearly a billion dollars a year it doles out to radical feminist organizations.

In other words, men are always guilty, and women must always be believed without fear of being punished for perjury. VAWA assumes there is no violence against men, and VAWA doesn't provide services for men who are victims of domestic violence.

The feminists have so broadened the definition of domestic violence that it doesn't have to be violent and can be whatever a woman alleges. Definitions of domestic violence include vague and overbroad concepts such as emotional distress, harassment, annoyance, or merely unpleasant speech.

Feminist recipients of VAWA's handouts use the money to train legislators, judges and prosecutors in feminist ideology and goals. This has resulted in dozens of state laws calling for mandatory arrest (i.e., the police must arrest someone, so guess who), and no-drop prosecution (i.e., the man must be prosecuted even in the large percentage of cases where the woman has withdrawn her accusation or refuses to testify).

Instead of promoting divorce, breakup of marriage, and hatred of men, VAWA should be revised to encourage counseling when appropriate and voluntary. Some VAWA money should be used for programs to help couples terminate use of illegal drugs and reduce the use of alcohol.

Any man who is accused of domestic violence effectively loses a long list of constitutional rights accorded to ordinary criminals. These include due process, presumption that he is innocent until proven guilty, equal treatment under the law, right to a fair trial, right to confront his accusers, freedom of speech, right to privacy in family matters, custody or visitation with his own children, and even the right to bear arms.

The woman is provided with legal representation even though she has not presented any evidence of injury or harm. The man gets no such help.

About a fourth of divorces involve an allegation of domestic violence, which in many cases is false or without any evidence. Those allegations usually result in the issuance of restraining orders which the Illinois Bar Association has referred to as "part of the gamesmanship of divorce."

It's no surprise that VAWA is often referred to as the hate-men law. The attitude of many judges and prosecutors who have been trained by the feminists with VAWA funds was expressed by one New Jersey judge whose extravagant statement was even reported in the New Jersey Law Journal: "Your job is not to become concerned about all the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order. Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back, and tell him, 'See ya' around.'"

Judges are required to consider allegations of domestic violence in awarding child custody, even though no evidence of abuse is presented. This usually results in the complete severing of child's relationship with his father.

VAWA should be completely revised to provide meaningful definitions of domestic violence that are specific enough to identify real victims, to stop the over-criminalization of minor partner discord, to emphasize counseling rather than incarceration, to assure that training programs for prosecutors and judges are objective, to assure accountability by tracking the large flow of taxpayers' money, to respect fathers' rights, to inspect shelters to evaluate success and fairness, and to develop programs to address the common problem of mutual partner abuse.

If VAWA is not reformed to respect constitutional rights, it will turn out to be a major embarrassment to all Members of Congress who vote for it.

Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo. She has been a leader of the pro-family movement since 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization now called Eagle Forum. In a ten-year battle, Mrs. Schlafly led the pro-family movement to victory over the principal legislative goal of the radical feminists, called the Equal Rights Amendment. An articulate and successful opponent of the radical feminist movement, she appears in debate on college campuses more frequently than any other conservative. She was named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies' Home Journal.

• Domestic Violence/VAWA

What makes this so amazing is that it is déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra might say. Do you remember the death knell for HillaryCare? I bet you can’t. Answer below the fold.

Mammograms and Pap smears. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

[Yes, I know. There were many things that helped derail HillaryCare. The biggest mistake was the White House's failure to throw everything aside and endorse the Senate Republican health plan, which was about as close to HillaryCare as RomneyCare is to ObamaCare. Hillary would have ended up with about 90% of everything she wanted. More about that, perhaps, in a future Alert.]

But what really killed the whole thing in the public’s mind were mammograms and Pap smears. Fifteen years ago the “experts” didn’t agree on how frequently women should have them any more than they agree today. I’m sure that when various women asked various doctors they got various answers. And, by the way, there is nothing wrong with that. Whenever there is risk and uncertainty, opinions will differ. That’s not the end of the world.

What was the end of HillaryCare, however, was the notion that the White House should decide these questions for every woman in America! When you stop to think about it, that takes a certain amount of chutzpah. It also reflects a degree of meddlesomeness that’s really hard for me to understand. But in both the Clinton White House and in the Obama White House there were folks who just could not abide the idea of your having a health plan different from the one they think you should have — down to the tiniest detail!

For Hillary and her advisers it came down to this: They decided that sexually active women should have a cervical cancer test every three years, instead of every two. For women in their fifties, they called for a mammogram every other year, instead of every year. And these decisions, unfortunately for Clinton, were different from what most doctors were recommending.

[The technical folks, by the way had fun with all of this. Cost-effectiveness numbers at the time suggested that Hillary’s cut-off number was about $100,000 for each year of life saved. If the projection comes in below that number, do the test. Above that number avoid it. Interested readers may consult my discussion of this issue here. I don’t think this facet of the problem ever got on anyone’s radar screen outside of the number crunching community; however, and I doubt that Hillary was even aware of it.]

Now the right way to think about all this is very simple. How much does a mammogram cost? $100? If you want one, take the money out of your Health Savings Account and go buy it. How often should you do that? Probably as often as it gives you peace of mind. Is not having the test keeping you awake at night? Then spend $100 and get the test. The same principle applies to contraceptives. You want them? Go buy them.

And what about the tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the population that really can’t afford these services? Go to a community health center or to Planned Parenthood and ask for them for free! This isn’t rocket science.

It is truly amazing how much consternation is caused for no other reason than the desire on the part of some people to tell everybody else how to live their live.

John C. Goodman is president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market think tank located in Dallas, Texas.  The Wall Street Journal and the National Journal, among other media, have called him the “Father of Health Savings Accounts.” Dr. Goodman’s health policy blog is the premier right-of-center health care blog on the Internet.  It is the only place where pro-free enterprise, private sector solutions to health care problems are routinely examined and debated by top health policy experts across the ideological spectrum.

Enter Brigham Oil & Gas and their co-defendants, 93 years later.  Brigham and the other companies use reserve pits to hold fluid and oil that accumulates from their drilling operations.  This practice is permitted by North Dakota law, which is where the relevant events occurred.  This storage practice is a basic and essential function of the business, and it is not intended to harm birds or any other wildlife.

But that did not matter to U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon or the United States Fish & Wildlife Service in North Dakota.  The U.S. Attorney filed a criminal information against seven oil and gas companies for violating the MBTA by “taking” (killing) 28 migratory birds.  The three companies that moved to dismiss the criminal charges were accused of being responsible for 7 dead birds.

The federal courts for North Dakota expressed their hostility to such far-reaching claims more than a decade ago.  In 1997, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that logging activity does not violate the MBTA.  As the federal appellate court explained, deeming “logging” a “taking” of migratory birds “would stretch this 1918 statute far beyond the bounds of reason” and would lead to construing the MBTA “as an absolute criminal prohibition on conduct, such as timber harvesting, that indirectly results in the death of migratory birds.”

In the Brigham Oil & Gas case, District Judge Daniel L. Hovland made it clear that the MBTA also did not apply to drilling fluid storage and dismissed the government’s charges.  The use of reserve pits was declared to be “legal, commercially-useful activity” that cannot be considered criminal under the MBTA.  Judge Hovland noted that if the government’s interpretation were correct, then “many everyday activities become unlawful – and subject to criminal sanctions.”  The court noted that, if the government’s reading of the statute were correct, anything from driving a car to owning a cat could result in criminal prosecution. 

Indeed, under the government’s position it could easily be argued that baseball star Randy Johnson should have been thrown in jail for beaning a dove (if it was, a covered migratory dove) with a fastball while pitching in a spring training game.  The Wall Street Journal has suggested  that this reflects the Obama Administration’s bias against oil and gas companies, because the government’s own statistics show that thousands of birds are killed in wind turbines each year, but there appear to be no active prosecutions against those corporations.

Although it’s still early in 2012, the WSJ has already dubbed U.S. Attorney Purdon “Dodo of the Year.”  But unlike the dodo, Purdon says he won’t go away just yet—he is considering an appeal of the case.  Purdon was appointed by President Obama in 2010, a move that was immediately questioned as favoring politics over experience.

And the problem isn’t limited to unsympathetic defendants like oil companies.  How can anyone forget the story of the 11-year-old-girl who tried to care for a woodpecker but had the misfortune of running into a Fish & Wildlife agent?  Her mother was issued a summons (which the agency later claimed was accidental) that put Mom at risk of jail time for her daughter’s illegal capture the bird under the MBTA.

Overcriminalization in environmental law continues to be a problem, as prosecutors and federal agents pursue more and more innocent acts as being worthy of criminal punishment.  Calling government action like this “bird-brained” would be to severely underestimate its danger.

SOURCE: The Heritage Foundation

More articles by Joe Luppino-Esposito

In reality, Douglas was a long time Communist Party USA member, from at least 1972 to 1991. He was a member at one point of the Party’s Religious Commission, the body charged with expanding communist influence in the churches. In 1991, Douglas left the Party to support the breakaway Committees of Correspondence.

Douglas, like many former CoC members, appears to have returned to the Communist Party orbit.

Fighting for Immigrant Rights in Alabama from Scott Marshall on Vimeo.

Scott Douglas on the Colbert Report.

Scott Douglas, executive director of [[Greater Birmingham Ministries]], appeared on the Colbert Report on Monday night to mark Martin Luther King’s birthday celebration.

Douglas has been with GBM since 1993, and has recently taken on the fight against Alabama’s tough immigration law, which is known as HB56. Before the interview, Colbert described Douglas as “a community organizer who believes anti-immigration is the civil rights issue of our time.”

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During the interview, Douglas described HB56 as a law that “burdens family, breaks up families, forces to split up our families, burdens taxpayers and makes law enforcement take on the extra job of checking out people at traffic stops.” Douglas argued against a patchwork state immigrant law system in which all 50 states have their own anti-immigrant laws, and in favor of a comprehensive federal immigration law “that’s just and fair for everyone.” Douglas also mentioned the argument that HB56 diverts scarce law enforcement resources to immigration enforcement, a view shared by Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale and other Alabama law enforcement officials.

At one point, Colbert told Douglas that he is unable to see color (a long running Colbert Report gag), and asked if Douglas is Hispanic.

“I am a proud African-American, a proud Alabamian and a proud United States citizen,” Douglas replied.

Trevor says, “I’m a libertarian activist and political researcher from Christchurch New Zealand. I believe in freedom with responsibility, not freedom from responsibility. My ideal society is one in which government is confined to protecting its citizens from criminals and external enemies. I believe in working with all those who are moving in broadly the same direction. The views expressed in this Blog are strictly my own.” Trevor is also the founder and editor of KeyWiki.org, a rapidly growing website with the goal of unlocking the covert side of U.S. and Global politics.

If the BLM decides to adopt the Preferred Alternative, 461,965 acres would be available for research and development of oil shale, a kerogen-rich rock (35,308 acres in Colorado; 252,181 acres in Utah; and 174,476 acres in Wyoming).  In addition, 91,045 acres in eastern Utah would be available for activities related to tar sands, a type of hydrocarbon-wet sedimentary deposit.

“The preferred alternative continues our commitment to encouraging research, development, and demonstration projects so that companies can develop technologies that can lead to economic and commercial viability,” said BLM Director Bob Abbey.  “Because there are still many unanswered questions about the technology, water use, and impacts of potential commercial-scale oil shale development, we are proposing a prudent and orderly approach that could facilitate significant improvements to technology needed for commercial-scale activity.  If oil shale is to be viable on a commercial scale, we must take a common-sense approach that encourages research and development first.”

To date, technological and economic conditions have not combined to support a sustained commercial oil shale industry in the United States, and there is currently no commercial development of oil shale in the areas under review in the draft PEIS. Lands that would be open to oil shale development under the Preferred Alternative would be available for Research, Development, and Demonstration (RD&D) leases.  The BLM could issue a commercial lease after a lessee satisfies the conditions of its RD&D lease and meets all federal regulations for conversion to a commercial lease.

Additionally, following the recommendations of the Government Accountability Office - which determined that several fundamental questions about oil shale technologies remain unanswered, including critical questions about water demands - the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is undertaking an analysis of baseline water resources conditions to improve the understanding of groundwater and surface water systems that could be affected by commercial-scale oil shale development.

Oil shale is a term used to describe a wide range of fine-grained, sedimentary rocks that contain solid bituminous materials called kerogen.  It should not be confused with “shale oil,” which is not addressed by the draft PEIS.  Kerogen, which is organic matter derived mainly from aquatic organisms, releases petroleum-like liquids when subjected to extremely high temperatures – more than 750 degrees.  Developers have been trying to produce oil from this rock in an economically-viable way for more than a century.  The majority of U.S. oil shale (and the world’s largest oil shale deposit) is found in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.

Tar sands are sedimentary rocks containing a heavy hydrocarbon compound called bitumen.  They can be mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil.  However, unlike the oil sands deposits in Canada, oil is not currently produced from tar sands on a significant commercial level in the United States.  Additionally, the U.S. tar sands are hydrocarbon wet, whereas the Canadian oil sands are water wet.  This difference means that U.S. tar sands will require different processing techniques.

Any new land allocation decisions made on the basis of the Final PEIS would replace the land allocation decisions made in 2008 that proposed making up to 2 million acres of public lands available for commercial oil shale leasing in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming and 431,000 acres available for tar sands leasing in Utah.  Some Western communities argued that the 2008 PEIS and Record of Decision would have prematurely allowed commercial leasing without technologies having been proven viable and without a clear understanding of impacts on scarce Western water supplies.  In response to those concerns and in settlement of litigation, the agency agreed to reconsider the 2008 land allocation decisions.

A 90-day public review and comment period began on February 3, 2012 and is scheduled to end on May 4, 2012.

• Website – Using the online comment form available on the project Website: http://ostseis.anl.gov. (This is the preferred method of commenting).
• Mail – Addressed to:

Oil Shale and Tar Sands Resources Draft Programmatic EIS
Argonne National Laboratory
9700 South Cass Avenue—EVS/240
Argonne, IL 60439.

Before including your address, telephone number, e-mail address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment–including your personal identifying information–may be made publicly available at any time.  While you can ask us in your comment to withhold your personal identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.

To read the BLM’s Federal Register Notice of Availability click here.

The BLM manages more land - over 245 million acres - than any other Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The Bureau, with a budget of about $1 billion, also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.

“The new rules appear to run counter to President Obama’s recent State of the Union address, in which he pledged to “take every possible action” to increase production on public lands. The damaging effects that these new rules will have on job creation and robust domestic energy development cannot be overstated.

On the one hand, the administration wants to take credit for increased production on state and private lands and for offshore lease sales that were scheduled five years ago. On the other hand, the administration continues an ideologically-driven quest to stifle job creation in the energy sector and to raise the cost of energy through more regulation, more mandates, and more restrictions on affordable sources. At best, this administration is suffering from acute energy schizophrenia. At worst, the administration is using brute administrative force to hurt the oil and gas industries and reward its green energy cronies.

“It is hard to believe the administration’s rhetoric about greater energy independence when its every action continues to lead America further away from that goal. And with record job creation now happening in the traditional energy sector, this latest tranche of regulations demonstrates just how willing the President is to kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg.”

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today's global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.

See Bureau of Land Managment Complete Draft, including Executive Summary

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4. IER President Tom Pyle’s Statement on New Keystone XL Route
5. IER President Releases Statement on New EPA Regs

(H/T EuropeNews.dk)

“Xenophobia,” an irrational fear of that which is strange or foreign, also doesn't work. Aversion to Islam doesn't come from unfamiliarity with the religion; in fact, it's quite the opposite. There’s no reason to fear being called a racist, either, since neither Islam nor Muslims are a race.

Our language needs a term that describes what many critically thinking people feel about Islam according to their own terms, not according to what Muslims wish us to feel or what the PC establishment diagnoses to scare us into allowing more voters for the Left into our countries. We need a term that simultaneously invites Muslims to realize what they need to change about their behavior and religion if they wish to advance from an embarrassing last place in the evolution of civilizations and to earn some real respect among the world community.

Natural reaction to Islamonausea

As in many other nauseating situations, Islamonausea is a normal and natural reaction to something abnormal, not vice versa.

The nausea reflex is innate, and it is biologically natural and healthy to experience emotional and bodily discomfort with anything that is unpleasant, unhealthy or harmful.

There is nothing phobic or racist in feeling nausea when hearing about the Islamic massacres performed by Muhammad and his many devout copycats through history and all over the world today. The same goes for Muhammad's sexual relationship with a nine-year old girl, and the cutting off of limbs and stonings in the name of Allah and his Sharia laws.

Thinking of Muslims’ epidemic practice of forced inbreeding (which damages intelligence and increases the risk of psychiatric diseases) -- often many generations in a row -- one may also experience unpleasant feelings in the abdomen. There is also no shame in feeling nausea when hearing about the extreme social control, violence and murderous examples made to keep and scare hundreds of millions of their women from enjoying their human rights to chose their own sexual partners, clothing and lifestyle.

The many calls for hatred, violence and killing of non-Muslims commanded by the faultless Koran are outright disgusting. Imagining the pinnacle of evolution being a planet-sized Islamic caliphate is not only a complete embarrassment to the human race; it may also make one lose one's appetite.

Islamonausea Examples

The word Islamonausea can be used to describe a feeling of nausea, disgust, displeasure, discomfort or aversion that arises by itself when encountering Islam or Islamic culture, or whatever or whoever represents it.

Examples of use of the word: "I'm not afraid of Islam, I have Islamonausea." "I do not want minarets in my town. They give me Islamonausea." "They got Islamonausea from all the Muslim immigrants and decided to move to another neighbourhood." "Reading the Koran gives me Islamonausea." "He got Islamonausea and decided to quit his job at the prison." "I get Islamonausea hearing about all those honor killings." "I get Islamonausea at the thought of eating Halal." "I get Islamonausea seeing all those Muslims hopping up and down and shooting in the air, trying to scare us into respecting their childish behaviour."

Prevalence

The first use of the word that I have been able to trace, is from 7 July 2005, in a comment on this website, Jihadwatch.org.

Here, a person calling himself Sheik Canuck, writes in a commentto an article on Muslims' positive reaction to the Islamic suicide bombings in London that same day:

"I don't have islamophobia, I have islamoNausea, I'm sick of them all."

The first time it occurred in a Danish newspaper was in a letter by this writer in Nordjyske Stiftstidende on December 30th 2011, entitled "We have nausea."

The term attracted some attention when the comedian, atheist and Islam critic Pat Condell used it in a video from 2009 called "Apologists for evil."

Islamonausea deserves its own article on Wikipedia.

Help get Islamonausea into our dictionaries by using the word on blogs, in articles and in Letters to the Editor, and in everyday speech.

SOURCE: Jihad Watch

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far, and our schools are preparing the next generation to either "do time" in the prison system or to live as good little slaves in the Big Brother prison grid that is being constructed all around us.  But what our schools are not doing is giving these children the critical thinking skills that they need to live as free citizens in a nation that used to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

Of course very few people would deny that the character of American schoolchildren has changed dramatically over the decades.  Back in the 1950s, some of the biggest school discipline problems were gum chewing and hair pulling.  Today, kids bring knives, guns and drugs with them to school.  Gang activity is rampant in many of our schools and in some schools kids are even having sex in the school bathrooms.

So there is definitely a discipline problem in our schools.

But what is going on in many areas of the country is absolutely ridiculous.  For example, in 2010 alone police down in Texas issued an astounding 300,000 tickets to school children.

Yes, if a kid pulls a knife on someone the police should get involved, but teachers and administrators should be able to use some common sense and handle the vast majority of discipline problems that happen themselves.

What you are about to read is absolutely going to amaze you.  The following are 19 really crazy things that school children are being arrested for in America....

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket.  The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor (video) after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up.  Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. "I love my friends Abby and Faith" was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanesin class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father's lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area (video) by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police.  The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back....

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom.  The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some "inappropriate touching" during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

Unfortunately, what is going on in our schools is a reflection of the broader society as a whole.  Our schools are being turned into prisons because our entire society is being turned into agiant prison.

Our nation is rapidly heading down the toilet, and the children of this nation do not have a bright future to look forward to.

If the police really want to find some criminals, they should start investigating some of thesickos that are in charge of some of these classrooms.

It seems like almost every day now there is a news story about some public school teacher that is involved in some kind of really perverted stuff.

For example, just check out what police down in Los Angeles recently found that one teacherwas hiding....

A former Los Angeles elementary school teacher has been arrested for felony molestation of nearly two dozen students, accused of gagging children and putting live cockroaches on some of their faces. Deputies say the crimes were committed on campus.

Sickos who do that kind of stuff to kids should be punished very severely.

America's schools are changing, and not for the better.

Personally, I went to public schools all my life, but I would not recommend that anyone send their kids to public schools today.  There is just way too much crazy stuff that goes on.

And our kids are learning less than ever in these public schools.  As I have written about previously, many of them are coming out of the system as dumb as a rock.  Instead of teaching our kids how to think critically and examine all sides of an issue, these schools are indoctrinating our kids and pushing particular social and political agendas on them.

There are a few public schools out there that are still good, but the vast majority of them are horrible.  They are not producing the leaders of tomorrow and they are not preparing the next generation with the tools that they need to survive in a complex world.

So is there much hope that our schools can be turned around?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

SOURCE: The American Dream