Parallels

http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000010608.cfm

"Democrats Purport to Seek 'Compromise' on Abortion"

That's not compromise; you can't comprimise your principles if you don't have any.

Just as in the distant past some called for the gradual abolition of the slave trade (other terms used were "regulation" or "moderation"), so today some are seeking "common ground" on the issue of abortion.

The following quote is from the (altogether amazing) book Amazing Grace by Eric Metaxas and is about William Wilberforce, the member of British parliament a couple of hundred years ago who was the key player in ending the British slave trade, slavery, and many more social ills, and who was also the man who basically (re)created the idea of a social conscience:

"Wilberforce saw much of what the rest of the world could not, including the grotesque injustice of one man treating another as property. He seems to rise up out of nowhere and with the voice of unborn millions--with your voice and mine--shriek to his contemporaries that they are sleepwalking through hell, that they must wake up and must see what he saw and know what he knew--and what you and I know today--that the widespread and institutionalized and unthinkably cruel mistreatment of millions of human beings is evil and must be stopped as soon as conceivably possible--no matter the cost."

Sound familiar? The only part I disagree with is what I put in italics because we actually don't all see what he saw. As has happened many times in history--and despite general agreement that all men are created equal--we keep redefining 'man' such that there are always those inferior beings who are property, and thus treating them as such is not evil and we are told to only think of the high cost to personal freedom if we do anything about it.

While I'm talking of abolition and slavery, do also note how the British abolition movement was an almost exclusively Christian movement at the time. Politically active, often rich, and (what we would now call) fundamentalist Methodists (and don't forget the Quakers) were at the center of the movement when no one else was. Good examples of those who were generally opposed to abolition were those with financial interests in the Trade (nowadays that would be single mothers who cannot afford a child as well as those who profit from leaving abortion as is), those who did not want to take unpopular actions that would curtail the freedoms of their constituents (i.e. your average American politician), those who take advantage of other people and often believe that certain people (usually of color) are inferior and should be exterminated (Planned Parenthood), and finally, the guiltiest party, the Church of England, which staunchly retained "the outward trappings and forms of religion--which were all well and good and would help keep the lower classes better behaved--but... [denied] religion any real power" (which would be your average mainline Protestant "church" today).

Now, I wonder if there is any movement in response to a social ill that is almost exclusively the cause of "fundamentalist" Christians....

The many adventures of the Czars

In case anyone is feeling particularly proud of the direction our current government is heading I'd like to rain on your parade by telling you of the many adventures of some of Obama's appointed and pending-appointment czars:

1) Obama's Science Czar, John Holdren, the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, "once floated the idea of forced abortions, 'compulsory sterilization,' and the creation of a 'Planetary Regime' that would oversee human population levels and control all natural resources as a means of protecting the planet...."

It gets better. He "won the unanimous approval of the Senate as the president's chief science adviser.

"He was confirmed with little fanfare on March 19 as director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, a 50-person directorate that advises the president on scientific affairs, focusing on energy independence and global warming.

"But many of Holdren's radical ideas on population control were not brought up at his confirmation hearings; it appears that the senators who scrutinized him had no knowledge of the contents of a textbook he co-authored in 1977, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," a copy of which was obtained by FOXNews.com.

"The 1,000-page course book, which was co-written with environmental activists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, discusses and in one passage seems to advocate totalitarian measures to curb population growth, which it says could cause an environmental catastrophe.

"The three authors summarize their guiding principle in a single sentence: "To provide a high quality of life for all, there must be fewer people. ['all' is apparently defined here as 'the ones we pick']

"Holdren and his co-authors spend a portion of the book discussing possible government programs that could be used to lower birth rates.

"Those plans include forcing single women to abort their babies or put them up for adoption; implanting sterilizing capsules in people when they reach puberty; and spiking water reserves and staple foods with a chemical that would make people sterile. [Has anyone read Francis Schaeffer?]

"To help achieve those goals, they formulate a 'world government scheme' they call the Planetary Regime, which would administer the world's resources and human growth, and they discuss the development of an 'armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force' to which nations would surrender part of their sovereignty."

Of course Holdren now denies that he actually believed this, especially since the book is very old and was written by three authors, but as Fox News points out:

"While Holdren and his co-authors don't openly endorse such measures on other topics, in [one] case they announce their disappointment -- "unfortunately" -- that women in the third world cannot [practically] be sterilized against their will, a procedure the International Criminal Court considers a crime against humanity."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/21/obamas-science-czar-considered-forced-abortions-sterilization-population-growth/

2) Obama's 'Green Jobs' czar, Van Jones, apparently has a long history with communism. A blog, the Dakota Voice, did the hard work [here] of shortening quotations from a 2005 news story for me. The following shows some of his many adventures:

But that wasn’t enough to assuage his anger. Convinced that American society needed a wake-up call on race, Jones abandoned his plan to become a journalist, concluding that he would rather make news than report it. “If I’d been in another country, I probably would have joined some underground guerrilla sect,” he said.

…while Jones was observing the first large rally since the lifting of the city’s state of emergency [during the Rodney King riots], he got swept up in mass arrests. It was a turning point in his life.

Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he said, “I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’” Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. “I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.” In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.“

In 1994, the young activists formed a socialist collective, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, which held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin and dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia. They protested police brutality and got arrested for crashing through police barricades.

“I realized that there are a lot of people who are capitalists — shudder, shudder — who are really committed to…”

His new philosophy emphasizes effectiveness, which he believes is inextricably tied to unity. He still considers himself a revolutionary, just a more effective one, who has realized that the progressive left’s insistence on remaining a counterculture destroys its potential as a political movement.

His plan now is to drop traditional communism and marxism and go for utopia via the "green jobs" approach.

3) Finally, we have Cass Sunstein, Obama's appointment for regulatory czar. His appointment "hit a new snag in his Senate confirmation process -- a 'hold' by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who's says he's not convinced that Harvard professor Cass Sunstein won't push a radical animal rights agenda, including new restrictions on agriculture and even hunting.

"'Sen. Cornyn finds numerous aspects of Mr. Sunstein's record troubling, specifically the fact that he wants to establish legal "rights" for livestock, wildlife and pets, which would enable animals to file lawsuits in American courts,' the Republican's spokesman, Kevin McLaughlin, said in a statement to FOXNews.com.

"Sunstein [has said that] he 'would not take any steps to promote litigation on behalf of animals,' and that he believes the "Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess guns for purposes of both hunting and self defense.'"

Note that Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga, has said (after hearing the above promise) that "Professor Sunstein comes highly recommended by a number of folks from the conservative side of the philosophical divide in this country."

How encouraging.

"One of Sunstein's top jobs would be to review and provide guidance for draft federal regulations at different federal agencies. It is a wide-ranging and largely unrestrained position in the executive branch.

"That's a large part of the reason Sunstein's positions on animal rights have become worrisome to his critics. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Sunstein has spoken stridently in favor of allowing people the right to bring suit on behalf of animals in animal cruelty cases and to restrict what he calls the more horrific practices associated with industrial breeding and processing of animals for food. [Is unprocessed meat somehow less painful for the animal??]

"In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein also advocated restricting animal testing for cosmetics, banning hunting and encouraging the general public to eat less meat."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/21/obama-regulatory-czars-confirmation-held-hunting-rights-proponent/

There are reasons some conservatives like him. For instance, he believes in using cost benefit analysis when analyzing regulations. For instance, if this were applied to Global Warming regulations like Cap & Trade (which will never actually happen), it means we'd never do anything about it because it would cost more to regulate than it would be worth. However...

"Though he is generally described as left of center, Sunstein's academic interests in regulation have led him to raise questions about the constitutionality of liberal favorites such as workplace safety laws and the Clean Air Act. He has embraced a controversial "senior death discount" that calculates the lives of younger people as having a greater value than those of the elderly."

Some liberals are upset that he would dare to put dollar signs next to government regulations (to see if they are actually worth spending money on), but he's willing to take the concept much farther and decide what people are worth, dead or alive.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/26/nation/na-sunstein26

More info on Sunstein:

Some conservatives bristle at what they see as Mr. Sunstein's paternalism: that most people don't know what's best for them and need nudges from on high. Rural Republicans are alarmed over his statements on the wisdom of a hunting ban and his suggestion that animals may deserve more rights in court.

It is liberals who appear the most uneasy about Mr. Sunstein's track record. He is a strong advocate for weighing the estimated costs against the benefits of regulation, a position that advocates fear could weaken efforts to strengthen federal rules on health and safety.

Mr. Sunstein has argued that the landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act, by giving too much discretion to federal agencies, could be unconstitutional. He has also been leery of the risks and rewards of strict measures to combat global warming.

"He thinks that people are irrational and overly phobic about risks," says Rena Steinzor, a legal scholar who directs the Center for Progressive Reform, a liberal group that focuses on regulatory issues.

"Mr. Sunstein, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, is also well connected. Mr. Sunstein's wife, Samantha Power, is an Obama foreign-policy adviser. Solicitor General Elena Kagan hired him at Harvard. And at some future point in the Obama administration, he is seen as a possible Supreme Court pick."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124683695891298003.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And the best part of all of this is that two out of these three people are in power right now.

"CONTRACT AWARDED FOR CONSTRUCTION OF NEW RECOVERY.GOV"

The federal website that supposedly is keeping track of the stimulus money, Recovery.gov, is getting a makeover. That is, up to $19 million dollars worth over the next 4 and a half years. Remember, this money is to revamp what is already there.

http://www.recovery.gov/?q=node/668

WASHINGTON—In a major step toward developing a state-of-the-art Recovery.gov website, a contract was awarded this week to Smartronix, Inc., a Maryland information technology firm. The company will build the new website for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, an independent agency that manages Recovery.gov and monitors spending under the $787 billion Recovery program.

The initial outlay, $9,516,324, covers many facets: redesign and construction of a new website; installation of hardware and software infrastructure; hosting and operations for the website; more robust data storage; an enhanced content-management system; and contract labor support and other features. If the Recovery Board exercises options under the contract, the cost could total $17,948,518 over a period ending in January 2014.

---

The only thing I like is this: "A mapping capacity that will allow users to search for spending all the way down to their own neighborhoods."

But I think an easier solution would be to outsource that money to individual spenders who will be responsible for the money and have to keep track of it themselves. That is, don't take the money from taxpayers in the first place!

Why scams don't go away (see why in 6 years and 10 months)

Global warming. We're all going to die from it (they say). We're all going to pay to stop it (for sure). We all know it doesn't exist--or rather, that we aren't causing it. Now I don't want to go into a discussion on why this is. But frankly, one of the best reasons for me to think this is because the same people who love everything God hates are telling me that the earth will blow up in 6 years, 10 months, 1 day, and 16 hours. Yes, Rush Limbaugh does have a counter on his website counting down to when Al Gore said the earth will scorch.

But I digress. The reason I bring this up is because it bugs me how we're going to get out of this. If I may borrow a word from the environmentalist book, this trajectory is unsustainable. The media, scientists, and politicians will have to reverse course somehow when there simply is no argument to make anymore. However, these people will not be able to come out and say they were wrong. No one will be able to say that there isn't actually man-made global warming. Why? Because that would show the people that they cannot trust scientists and politicians in the first place to govern their lives!

We can't trust some agent from some lab in a white coat who comes out with some study that overturns 15 other studies that we long forgot telling us that peanuts are in fact harmful if we eat too many of them! Remember those kings of Israel who trusted in armies and bad council rather than God? Those kings didn't end up so well. Why do we consult lawyers to solve legal issues in the church? Why do we talk to "experts" with PHDs in Child Playground Equipment before going for a walk in the park? Those are exaggerations. However, have you ever watched the national news lately? There's a few stories on politics (sometimes the word 'stories' is all too appropriate), a story on a medical study that we must heed in order to live happy and healthy lives, there's always one with some expert giving some kind of advice, and then a sappy story at then about the life of a panda to tide people over to the next day.

Jeremiah 17: 5-10:

Thus says the LORD,"Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
And makes flesh his strength,
And whose heart turns away from the LORD.
"For he will be like a bush in the desertAnd will not see when prosperity comes,
But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness,
A land of salt without inhabitant.
"Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD
And whose trust is the LORD.
"For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
That extends its roots by a stream
And will not fear when the heat comes;
But its leaves will be green,
And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
Nor cease to yield fruit.
"The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?
"I, the LORD, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give to each man according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds. "

I think the "heat" is coming and all of America will be found to be a bush in the desert.

All that to say.....government officials, politicians, etc. all need an emergency to get their agendas through and gain more power. In fact they admit as much. They ADMIT to want to take advantage of emergencies or "emergencies." Take that $600+ billion set aside for universal health care.....a program that doesn't even exist yet. It's all there "just in case." They need to always have emergencies so they will never be able to back down.

So the question is...what will happen when there's no logical argument? Not even an illogical one. I have no idea. Are there any politicians out there who can help answer this?

So yes, I've been reading about global warming in one of my radical "textbooks" and would rather write about it than read it.

Anti-Western Inconsistencies

If you are going to be anti-Western, please be consistent. Promises Not Kept by John Isbister is not. It is a required book for a class that I now regret signing up for. As the title suggests, the book is all about how evil the western world is for creating empires and bullying the poor third world countries. While there is much truth in this, Isbister is far from consistent and uses flawed arguments.

He says that the indigenous societies that existed before the imperial powers were doing just fine before we ruined them. In fact, it even seems that these countries weren't poor until the evil Europeans told them they were poor. He admits that the pre-imperialized societies were in fact poor by our standards. He also says that they were just fine that way. But apparently once they were occupied and oppressed they became poor. In other words, we could sum up his opinion like so: "Poverty is evil. Of course, in traditional standards these people are not poor---their culture was rich, even though they were starving. If we only didn't tell them that..."

The real big issue I have with this worldview is that liberals are quick to decry Western influence in the Third World (yes, I used a politically incorrect term) but are the first to push for running into these nations and teaching everyone birth control methods and how great abortions are. For example, our new President's third executive order was to allow for federal TAXPAYER money to fund international abortions.

As if that weren't bad enough, people like Isbister say that "The imperialists brought with them public health measures that lowered mortality and caused the unprecedented population explosion in the third world." He actually thinks that that is a BAD thing! Seriously, he does. If you read the whole context of the chapter he is saying that LESS death is another imported evil western action. I'm sorry, I didn't know that valuing life was bad. But wait! He says the evil imperial powers killed countless millions....and that's bad, but of course only in the context of people over and below a certain age. Because we all know that those are the real people. Who needs the old, the weak, the young anyway?

Isbister also has a tendency to say, in effect, "The following are some suspect statistics that could be wrong but I am going to use in my argument anyway...." Oh, and I also love it when he basically says, "There's no data on this, but if there was, it would say_____."

And one must not forget religion! We have a moral responsibility based on common humanity, he says, to deal with poverty. The disease of poverty must be cured! After all, most conflicting religions say so. That's his opinion. Essentially, and I'm exaggerating a bit for effect, he's saying: "Because all religions believe that we should be nice to the poor, including religions that believe in one god, two, three, none, 66, and 205.1, we can therefore surmise that the United States government should increase its foreign aid, especially for abortions."

He also blasts trickle down and then admits that it works on like the same page.

All of this to say that I'm upset that this is required reading. And, my response: If you are going to decry the injustice of the Western, "Imperial" nations...please don't turn around and tell the third world to kill their young.

Guess what my other book's worldview is? If we only had the right policies the world would be perfect. The great modernist, Jeffrey Sachs...