Archive for July, 2008
Veterans for Freedom is an independent group of over twenty thousand American veterans who are actively engaged in supporting the cause of freedom. These good men are continuing the work they did as members of the United States Armed Forces by spreading the message of freedom to Americans and people across the globe.
VFF is a non-partisan group. It supports candidates who support freedom — no matter what party they belong to. VFF is supporting Jim Marshall, a Democrat who is running for Congress from Georgia.
One of VFF’s current projects is Four Months, For Victory, a campaign to inform the American public and their representatives concerning the undeniable success that our troops have achieved in Iraq, and the importance of ensuring victory in Iraq, Afghanistan and the overall Global War on Terrorism.
The campaign is going well, but VFF needs more volunteers to accomplish their goal. The states in most need of additional volunteers are Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Mexico, Missouri, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia.
If you can make the time to become involved with your local community and meet some truly great people, this is an opportunity which you will not want to miss.
We Americans find it difficult to comprehend the levels to which our European brothers and sisters have degraded themselves and their once proud culture. When we hear that 100 cars are set afire in France every night, it sounds completely unacceptable to us. Yet the French have come to accept those burning cars as a necessary cost of their cultural acceptance of France’s new Islamic citizens.
We tend to set higher standards for the British, as we almost think of America as a direct descendant of the British Empire. And then newspaper articles like Schoolboys punished with detention for refusing to kneel in class and pray to Allah remind us just how European the Brits can sometimes behave.
It seems that some bubble headed British school teacher was attempting to indoctrinate a class of eleven and twelve year olds into the proper worship of Britain’s new god. A couple of the braver boys refused to kneel and pray to Allah. As a result, the school punished them with detention.
Many others have been beheaded, stoned, or otherwise brutally murdered for refusing to pray to Allah. In that context, the boys got off rather lightly with just detention. But what message does this send to British children? It teaches them that they will be forced to submit to Islamic domination. This is not a good lesson for the next generation of what was once the worlds greatest civilization.
There is absolutely no reason or justification for any British citizen to be coerced into worshiping a seventh century death cult. I can only hope that the British public reminds their overbearing government of this obvious fact.
The liberation of Iraq is now winding down to what is now mostly a security task of keeping Al Qaeda and the Iranian government from smuggling terrorists and weapons into the country.
None of that makes for major news, so the thoughts back here in America have turned to another topic — the economy.
Real estate prices are down. Stock prices are down. It’s a great time to invest — if you have the money and a strong stomach for market fluctuations.
John McCain recently published Jobs in America: The McCain Economic Plan.
As is usual with John McCain, this plan is incredibly middle-of-the-road. It borrows ideas from Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. It preaches fiscal conservatism and balanced budgets, while at the same time containing many provisions which reek of government intervention into the economy.
The plan is strong on improving America’s international competitiveness. The plan is also strong on energy independence, especially in it’s support for nuclear power.
The plan is weak in its concern for personal freedom by it’s support of CAFE, drug re-importation, and taxpayer funding for research.
The plan is far from perfect, but at the same time it is unimaginably better than Barack Obama’s Blueprint for Disaster.
Shortly before his death, the inestimable William F. Buckley penned one last note about the John Birch Society (JBS).
The article, Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me, recalls events in the early 1960’s which preceded Barry’s campaign for the Presidency.
Buckley had become concerned about the growing menace posed by Robert Welch and the John Birch Society.
The JBS was a powerful group of conspiracy theorists who believed, among other things, that President Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy” against the United States.
The JBS was slowly poising the growing conservative movement in the United States and threatening to turn it towards populism, racism, and ridiculous witch hunting in the search for imaginary conspirators.
Buckley finally denounced the society in the National Review:
How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own.
Goldwater risked his political career by responding supportively in the next issue of the same magazine:
I think you have clearly stated the problem which Mr. Welch’s continued leadership of the John Birch Society poses for sincere conservatives. . . . Mr. Welch is only one man, and I do not believe his views, far removed from reality and common sense as they are, represent the feelings of most members of the John Birch Society. . . . Because of this, I believe the best thing Mr. Welch could do to serve the cause of anti-Communism in the United States would be to resign. . . . We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.
This story is as important now as it was forty years ago. The wounds which Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater gave the John Birch Society turned out to be far from fatal. After decades in remission, the Bircher problem is once again growing in the conservative movement. Americans deeply in search of meaning and understanding in their political lives have become vulnerable to bizarre conspiracy theories which claim to provide answers to every possible political question.
The only real answer to this threat is education. Education is an effective immunization against the kind of bad thinking which leads people to believe in irrational conspiracy theories.