A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
- - - Dwight D. Eisenhower
All people are born alike - except Republicans and Democrats.
- - - Groucho Marx
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| You Are 83% American |
 You're as American as red meat and shooting ranges.
Tough and independent, you think big.
You love everything about the US, wrong or right.
And anyone who criticizes your home better not do it in front of you! |
FREEDOM ROCK - IOWA
Bubba Sorenson's Site
Learn about this art and the artist from the artist himself!
YET ANOTHER POLITICAL QUIZ?!
Click for FREE FILM while they last
29 April 2005
SHOPPING GUIDE - CHOOSE YOUR PURCHASE BY COLOR?!
24 April 2005
PERSONAL BELIEF SYSTEM?
18 April 2005
17 April 2005
MORE TAXES PLEASE
PRESIDENTIAL TAX RETURNS
10 April 2005
Check out my Morality! 45% liberal, 55% conservative
From E-Mail - 2 APRIL 2005
Sandy Berger, an advisor to the Kerry campaign as well Clinton's National Security Advisor, has ADMITTED that he stole and destroyed documents from the National Archives that were after-action reports critical of Clinton's handling of the planned attack by bin Laden and Al Queda in 1999. He stole and destroyed these government documents so that they would not be turned over to the September 11 Commission. These documents have shown that the Clinton Administration not only knew of proposed terrorists attacks on the U.S. but hid this information from the public and did nothing to go after the terrorists except leave a note to George Bush that there were terrorists planning to attack the U.S. Like everything else Bill Clinton has done in his life, with the help of a fawning media, he sweeps the real work of governing under the rug like a P.R. flack and leaves the heavy lifting to the next guy. Fortunately, this next guy disregards the media suck-ups and does the job with li! ttle appreciation from these same suck-ups.
Why does Berger only get probation for stealing and destroying sensitive government documents for purely political purposes? And why hasn't the media exposed this egregious disregard by the Clinton Administration for the public's safety and tell the story? Where is the media outrage such as undoubtedly would have been leveled against George Bush. Do they, the media, wonder why they have the credibility of used car salesmen - I apologize to used car salesman to put them in the same low-class. I respect factual criticism, especially constructive criticism, of all and, especially anyone who purposely and strenuously becomes a public figure. But I have no respect for journalists and their management who, through a plethora of devious means, censor the news for their own, profitable agenda. Ironically, it is these elitist journalist who scream the First Amendment who want to silence bloggers because they may have an agenda.
Please, somebody, give this story the unbiased, factual attention it deserves. I saw a small reference to this in our local (Palm Beach) press and no editorial comment. Yes, it will hurt Hillary's aspirations to the throne but that is her problem, one she deservedly should have.
David Barth, CFA
Jupiter, Florida
11 March 2005
25 February 2005
STORY OF TWO AMERICANS
WONDERFUL WRITTEN TRIBUTE TO A FALLEN SOLDIER. A "click photo"
Followed by an "America Nothing"
February 24, 2005
"Ward Churchill Admits He's not an American Indian". I may be wrong, but isn't this the way he established himself - became as important as he is - emphasized that he should be given more opportunities and be listened to because he's a "native" of the United States and has some special rights, etc.?!?
February 18, 2005:
What the "New Left" Did to Me
By Phillip Abbott Luce - Author of "The New Left"
An angry young man discloses the full cycle of his thinking - from rebellion against all authority, to communist "activism," to disillusionment with communist demands, to defection. And he sees a way to avoid such "wasted years"
A communist must be prepared to act upon command. Once he begins to develop scruples, he's on his way out. How and when the break comes depends on the man and the circumstances.
I began dabbling in "revolution" in 1958, when I was 20. I became a free-wheeling "activist" of the New Left in 1960 and a secret member of the Chinese-oriented Progressive Labor Party in 1963. By the winter of 1964 I was trusted enough to be selected to join a special group to go underground.
The plan was discussed for weeks in quiet restaurants and coffee-houses in New York City. We would be trained in the techniques of disguise, forgery, wiretapping, karate, evasion of surveillance. Later, this education would be rounded out abroad, in Cuba or China. Then we would change our names and trades, drop all open contacts with communists and blend into the submerged world of secret operatives.
As a start, I was instructed to give up my friends, my relatives, my girl, my job, my apartment. Since I was a the time awaiting trial under federal indictments for my connection with trips to Cuba. I would become a fugitive from justice. There would be no turning back.
I chose not to go underground. A few months later, I decided to break away. It was not a sudden thing. The underground project was only the climax. For months I had been worried by scruples, but I was kept too busy with meetings, picketings, sit-ins and editorial writing to think things through. Now I was forced to reappraise communism and my own relationship to it -- not the abstract ideas, but the grim facts.
I defected because, when the chips were down, I couldn't accept total obedience. Sucked into the movement by hunger for absolute freedom and rebellion against all authority, I finally recognized that there were no margins for personal freedom among hard-core communist revolutionary organizations.
I defected because I saw young people being deceived and possibly destroyed by lies which we, as leaders, were telling them; by actions in which they were just expendable pawns. Some were my friends, drawn into the movement in part by my example.
I defected not because I was reconciled to the injustices of American society as I saw them but because I realized that communism would bring more and infinitely worse injustice.
The Inner Frustrations. My story is not unique. Thousands of young people through nearly half a century have believed that revolutionary radicalism held the answers to their own grievances and the world's problems. Few joined the movement for bad reasons. Mostly we were naive, romantic, misinformed -- above all, angry and impatient.
I was born in Ohio of middle-class Republican parents. I graduated from Mississippi State University in 1958, then earned a master's degree in political science from Ohio State University in 1960. By the time I got to Ohio State, I had begun to flirt with communism. My inner frustrations led me to the illogical conclusion that only the overthrow of the whole political and economic structure of the country could cure its ills.
These inner frustrations are difficult to explain, being more emotional than reasoned. I was in rebellion against parents, school, society -- any authority. I wanted things changed and changed now. The normal democratic tempos seemed to me too slow, the "establishment" too entrenched to yield to anything but violent pressures.
My rebellion was fed by the reading of communist hate propaganda and sustained by the itch to "do something." The civil-rights struggle seemed made-to-order for my mood -- not only a thrilling cause in itself, but an outlet for protest generally. I was expelled from the staff of the Mississippi State newspaper for my attacks on the state legislature and the White Citizens Councils. I found the experience of "struggle" with "reaction" intensely intoxicating. As a graduate student, I joined picket groups, sit-ins, boycotts. I was becoming an "activist," quite sure what I was against, but pretty hazy about what I was for.
Upon finishing at Ohio State, I went to New York. I wrote for the communist Worker under several pseudonyms, and I fellow-traveled with a variety of communist organizations, coming to know the whole spectrum of ultra-left groupings, some of them communist creations, some infiltrated, some independently radical. I was searching for a "home" in the frenzied world of revolution. It was not until the summer of 1963, however, that I became fully involved.
Action, Color, Power. By then the so-called New Left was in loud and violent eruption, an outgrowth of the stage of romantic anarchy called the Beat Generation. The movement was "new" -- or so we told ourselves -- because it rejected the conventional Marxist jargon and working-class mystique. We had only contempt for the Old Left, with its patience and restraints. We relished stirring up trouble for trouble's sake. We were for police baiting, riots, undergrounds. Ours was an attitude rather than an ideology.
Ironically, today only a few New Left groups remain financially and ideologically out of communist clutches. Some of these, such as the Students for Democratic Society and Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), are being rapidly penetrated.
Considering the noise it makes, the New Left is surprisingly small -- perhaps 5000, with another 5000 at the fringes. Most are social anarchists, with no more than 2000 communists of all stripe in their midst. These self-willed utopians and most other Americans find it virtually impossible to believe that a tiny handful of communist professionals, using glittering slogans like "peace," "freedom now," "equal rights," or "academic freedom," can manipulate thousands of innocent young rebels into violent street demonstrations and explosive confrontations with police. On the surface, it is incredible. But having studied the arts of mass manipulation and hate propaganda, and having practiced them myself, I know the power of a few expert hidden persuaders.
In the late spring of 1963, I was approached by a leader of the Maoist Progressive Labor Party to join an expedition to Cuba. No one can overstate the influence of Red Cuba upon immature, alienated minds. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were to us what Lenin and Trotsky had been to others in their time. Here was action, color, our own kind in power -- and all of it only 90 miles from the mighty Yankees. Here was David defying Goliath. I jumped at the chance to go. The fact that it might be in violation of federal law added spice to the adventure.
When I returned, I plunged into Progressive Labor activities. I helped organize, in 1964, a second trip to Cuba. I was arrested while trying to kindle a riot in Times Square -- forcing a "confrontation with the cops," we called it grandly. I helped secrete guns in New York City for future "self-defense." I drafted the original declaration calling on young men to refuse to fight in Vietnam, took part in a violent fracas before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, marched and sat and shouted slogans as directed.
"True Truth." It was a frenetic life I led, as thoroughly "involved" as any of the communist string-pullers could wish. The change in me was evidenced in a new willingness to lie and deceive others in pursuit of our goals. Looking back, I recognize how utterly self-righteous and intolerant we were, not only of the "enemy" -- meaning everyone from conservatives to "bourgeois radicals" -- but of all other elements in the New Left. It was the totalitarian mentality in action. We were toddling totalitarians, and uncarded communists demanding instant idealism and "Millennium Now!" We alone had the "true truth" from which dissent was heresy.
By August 1964 I had begun editing the magazine Progressive Labor, but without being "identified." This deception was based on the hope that a secret party member would be more successful in recruiting. Not until December, only three months before I defected, was my name listed as editor.
Meanwhile, the riots broke out in New York's Harlem. We were not the immediate spark, but we did everything possible to provide them and to harvest the credit. For weeks we had been preparing the requisite explosive climate, calling for a "long, hot summer" in Harlem.
One hour before the rioting actually began, Bill Epton, a vice-chairman of Progressive Labor, told a street rally: "In the process of smashing this state, we're going to have to kill a lot of cops, a lot of these judges, and we'll have to go up against their army. We'll organize our own militia and our own army." (Epton was in due time arrested and convicted of criminal anarchy.)
The 25-year-old editor of our party's newspaper, Challenge, proclaimed: "I advocate precisely that the people disturb the peace. There is no lawful government in this country today. Only a revolution will establish one." We prepared the infamous posters, "Wanted for Murder -- Gilligan the Cop," which helped to spark the mobs.
By dint of sheer activity I was becoming more and more entrapped within the narrow communist world. If you are a good communist, your time -- including evenings and weekends -- is not your own. You sell party literature, do volunteer mailings and office work, paint signs, picket, demonstrate, attend endless meetings.
Yet some part of my mind was uneasy, questioning. The caches of arms left a bitter taste. It bothered me to see our individual members time and again become patsies in plans and plots outside their knowledge or consent, so that they often were jailed or injured for reasons beyond their control.
The Break. Finally, all my doubts. and grievances seemed to crystallize when the scheme for going underground was sprung on us. Making the conscious decision to join the communists had taken a certain kind of guts. Now, defection proved even more difficult. The temptation is to slink away in silence; if you decide to break away publicly and try to save others from the morass, you have to be prepared for slander, harassment, even physical attack.
I chose the latter alternative. Then I walked into the FBI office in New York to clinch it. At this, the wrath of my former "comrades" knew no bounds. They accused me of every crime in the book, contended that I was always a "police agent." I was in the outside world but no yet part of it. It took some time before I discovered not only that I was indeed free but that others had gone through the same ordeal of disenchantment and that, like them, I could ultimately readjust myself to a rational society.
The Wasted Years. I've thought a lot about my involvement, and its meaning. It is not enough to condemn impatient, rebellious youth as communists or dupes. The public must distinguish between young communists and young rebels. Youth has always been rebellious. The problem is to understand and channel their zeal for a more just world, and to keep the out of the clutches of communists and other messianic extremists.
I think often that I might have been spared the wasted years if my schooling had included the study of communism -- not as a beguiling doctrine through its sacred texts, but as living history on view in Soviet Russia and Red China and in the story of its many mass deceptions and manipulations in the Free World. It seems incredible that I could have acquired a graduate degree in political science without having been encouraged to read Witness by Whittaker Chambers, The God That Failed by Arthur Koestler and others, Child of the Revolution by Wolfgang Leonhard, The Red Decade by Eugene Lyons. There is a rich literature on communism. Surely our colleges have an obligation to use it effectively.
Most of the young rebels in an around the New Left are not, in their hearts, communists. In most cases, their actions are more dangerous to themselves than to the country. But we must win them over to the side of democracy before they get themselves and others into serous trouble.
Free Speech, Ltd.
Adlai Stevenson: "I yield to no man in my belief in the principle of free debate. The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords."
February 10, 2005:
The following story deals with another time and place. Actually in a 1950 book titled: "One Moment Please"
By: James Keller. The "short" from a "Thrift Store" 25 cent book - yet, makes you think about today and
Ward Churchill and helps you see the reason to react to "Free Speech."
As is said - it's a great freedom to be able to say whatever you may feel moved to enunciate and know that you will not be sent to prison as you may be in other countries.
Individuals and organizations are also permitted this same right to respond in their own "Free Speech" and react as they feel appropriate to what ever "Free Speech" may occur.
The penalty or responsibility of "Free Speech" is to also accept the reactions that follow what we say. "Free Speech" does not create "public opinion immunity" from judgments made by others for our free speech.
Any judgments - penalties, etc. (i.e., Marge Shott penalized when she actually owned a major league team. Dan Rather was demoted. Andy Rooney's racist remarks. John Rocker - we remember these seemingly non-intent statements - and we could go on and on.) must also be endured.
Your words - the words YOU choose - demonstrate to others, the person you most likely are - the "real" you. We are all free to develop our opinions and reactive desires accordingly.
Six Important Spheres
Those who hate God and who wish to enslave mankind make it their business to swarm in large numbers into the following
six vital fields:
- Education
- Government
- Communications
- Labor
- Social Service
- Libraries
Why these fields in particular? Because, through them, the majority of people of any nation can be quickly and effectively reached and eventually corrupted and enslaved. Through them, the influence of the home and religion can be neutralized and undermined.
God intends that these fields should be used for the peace and well-being of mankind, not for harm. Each of us, therefore, can see to it in one way or another that these important spheres will be staffed by the best type of citizen, not by the worst - by those who love God and country, not by those who hate Him and are bent on destruction.
Remember, it is more important to "chase in" workers of good than to become too preoccupied in "chasing out" workers of evil, necessary as the latter is.
WHILE SHOPPING (from an E-Mail)
One of my sons serves in the military. He is still stateside, here in California. He called me yesterday to let me know how warm and welcoming people were to him, and his troops, everywhere he goes, telling me how people shake their hands, and thank them for being willing to serve, and fight, for not only our own freedoms but so that others may have them also.
But he also told me about an incident in the grocery store he stopped at yesterday, on his way home from the base. He said that ahead of several people in front of him stood a woman dressed in a burkha. He said when she got to the cashier she loudly remarked about the US flag lapel pin the cashier wore on her smock.
The cashier reached up and touched the pin, and said proudly," yes, I always wear it and I probably always will."
The woman in the burkha then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing her countrymen, explaining that she was Iraqi.
A gentleman standing behind my son stepped forward, putting his arm around my son's shoulders, and nodding towards my son, said in a calm and gentle voice to the Iraqi woman: "Lady, hundreds of thousands of men and women like this young man have fought and died so that YOU could stand here, in MY country and accuse a check-out cashier of bombing YOUR countrymen. It is my belief that had you been this outspoken in YOUR own country, we wouldn't need to be there today. But, hey, if you have now learned how to speak out so loudly and clearly, I'll gladly buy you a ticket and pay your way back to Iraq so you can straighten out the mess in YOUR country that you are obviously here in MY country to avoid."
Everyone within hearing distance cheered.
