Articles: The Art of Subversion

Articles: The Art of Subversion
 

The Art of Subversion

By Glenn Fairman

September 28, 2013

Screwtape discourses on America -- with all apologies to C.S. Lewis.

To Those Brave Souls: The Progressive Vanguard!

Allow me to thank you for your recent request for my counsel. Even though I have long since retired from Subterranean Public Service, I still remain quite active in the Terrestrial Political Wing: dispensing tidbits of knowledge I have gleaned from a long career of fomenting revolutions, instigating Holy wars, and evangelizing towards our Dark Utopia. Without further ado, allow me to offer you a little guidance -- a bit of "devil's advocacy," if you will.

For the diligent and subversive mind, the act of destroying America must appear at once to be a daunting task. Indeed, the annals of men are bursting with tales of cities that fell in one day due to force or treachery. But if we looked much deeper we would find that, as with the case of many of those wretched and fallen peoples, their violent ends were merely the last link in a long chain of indignities. As Whittaker Chambers, one of America's most deluded but astute minds once wrote, "Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies." In order to bring down a super-state of America's magnitude, it will be necessary first to break that faith. And although ten million guns trained upon its shores could not begin to accomplish the task at hand, a slow suicidal sickness unto death can topple a tower that is thought too great to be throw down. To quote a vital truth from our enemy's noxious Bible: "Without a vision, a people perish."

But first, it is necessary to create in the collective American soul a wasteland: one where the government actively contributes to the moral and psychological decay of what were once a sovereign and free people. Through surreptitious and concerted efforts, men and women must be enticed to lay fallow their historical heritage -- as those in authority subtly weave into the populace foreign and indolent beliefs to do battle with those shared politico-cultural memories that were forged at the regime's founding.

Let us begin with the narrative that their patrimony was anchored upon false foundations of wicked privilege and unquenchable greed. Drum into their heads that the Founders of the American regime were self-interested brigands who were concerned solely with their purse strings. Through the Deconstructive Marxian lens (a true visionary, that man), reveal the Founding's sacred documents in their true form to be nothing but the thinly camouflaged window dressing of conquerors: glib words composed to render their oligarchy more palatable. At every opportunity, you must crucify the meme of American Exceptionalism: the political and moral treasure that flows from America's twin philosophical and ethical tributaries of Athens and Jerusalem. Additionally, never relent in your scathing historical indictment against the republic's maltreatment of its aboriginals and its complicit assent to racial slavery. And furthermore, never allow those festering wounds to heal. By stoking the seething rage of historical victimhood with the cultural paralysis of grievance, you can accomplish much in perpetuating the aggrieved group's "martyrdom by proxy." Now, you cannot know how much it pains me to quote Him here, but you must remember but what our great enemy has said: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand." Exploit these bottled-up hatreds to ignite a relentless cycle of injustice amongst your citizenry; and then stand back and watch how the fireworks play out.

Next, regurgitate the calumny, over and again, that the prevailing economic system is a rigged wheel that guarantees failure and yields only the ignoble distortions of inequality. Since the Art of Economics has been forever muddled with the introduction of pseudo-scientific Keynesian flim-flam, urge the population and the government to consume their own and their children's seed corn into perpetuity. With a bit of cleverness (you will be surprised how little it takes) it is possible to instill into the intellectually adroit and powerful the belief that such profligacy is in actuality a moral virtue. Remember, with the fanatical pursuit of social justice, you can eventually bring about a total institutional collapse. For your further enlightenment, I advise you to seek more technical advice in these matters from my trusted protégées: Cloward and Piven.

Make it a point whenever possible to steer the dull and credulous masses away from all traditional religious beliefs and their attending moral structures, even as you replace these institutions with the secular machinations of the ascendant Leviathan State. By all means, turn the hearts of the young away from the classical virtues of: hard work, thrift, the forswearing of illicit pleasure, vile chastity, and every species of maudlin piety. Instead, brew in them the pernicious venom of: entitlement, ingratitude, impatience, hedonism and self-worship. Reinforce progressively poisonous governmental dependence with the lethargic mental comfort of lowered aspirations.

Pepper the people's entertainments with twisted images that trumpet: illegitimacy and familial dissolution, all manner of lusts, and the celebration of mindless and unbridled violence. Through addicting the population to a host of pallid shadows designed to inculcate in them the shallow tastes of the barbarous soul, you may more easily control those who can no longer rein in their own inclinations. Moreover, you will find that such control will be infinitely more secure if you twist your educational institutions into Temples of Propaganda. The game is half won if you can suppress free human inquiry for those soothingly orthodox intellectual horizons. Never underestimate the value of what is ideologically banal and steeped in self-satisfied mediocrity. After all, what would you use for television programming?

Once you have wiped clean the moral and spiritual mindscapes of a few generations of brats and these domestic time bombs have breached the nation's psychological outer ramparts, declare that the ancient and timeworn assumptions that undergird the laws themselves can no longer be trusted to serve such a depraved people. And as men inexorably lose the capability to exert even the most cursory control over their squalid appetites and inflamed passions, you may -- under the aegis of the greater common good -- then begin the systematic "reinterpretation" of their hallowed natural and political rights of speech, assembly, and self-preservation. As the citizenry are slowly reduced to mere subjects and begin devouring themselves as pitiless beasts that are stained red in tooth and claw, decry America's constitutional covenant and its attending checks and balances as obsolete, ponderous, and even dangerous. By broadcasting at a fevered pitch the endless cavalcade of manmade atrocities that you have labored so deftly to bring about, you may utilize their degradation as political justification for a more "centralized" control and for the further eradication of their now arcane and useless liberties -- all in the service of public tranquility and Procrustean outcomes.

Finally, and you must trust me here: While some may yet howl for the freedoms that are snatched from them, the Great Unwashed Multitudes who are content with their meager materialist swill will fortunately pay no mind to the soothing embrace of the boiling cauldron. And remember the words of one of my finest students: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." If you continuously apply the noxious irons of fear to their shrinking hearts, you will not believe what a debased population will trade away for the sake of their miserable skins.

Do all of this, and eventually you will raze the ancient stronghold to the ground: allowing you to pave the foundations of "our" -- er, I mean "your," New World atop the bleached bones of America's once formidable political legacy. Then, and only then, can you begin to mold the cowed and pliant into the service of utopian abstraction. Only then can you set about bringing to fruition your glorious (and delicious) terrible and faceless City of Man.

Sincerely,

Comrade Screwtape

Glenn Fairman writes from Highland, Ca. He can be reached at arete5000@dslextreme.com.

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Yes, Chile's Private Pension Model Works, Big Time - Investors.com

Yes, Chile's Private Pension Model Works, Big Time - Investors.com

Yes, Chile's Private Pension Model Works, Big Time

Posted 09/26/2013 06:50 PM ET

 

 

Pensions: In Chile, a major study shows the nation's private retirement accounts provide workers pensions worth 87% of their salaries, 73% of that from profits on savings. So much for the canard about the perils of markets.
The story was front-page news in Chile's largest newspapers, El Mercurio and La Tercera, on Sept. 3, a powerful affirmation of what former Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain called "The Chilean Model" of private retirement accounts.
The study of 28,000 households by Dictuc, a consultancy affiliated with the Catholic University of Chile, showed that male workers who contributed just 10% of their salaries to their retirements for 10 years or more on average earned retirement checks worth about 87% of their top salaries. No 401(k) account needed.
That's because in 1981 Chile Labor Minister Jose Pinera replaced the country's bankrupt social security system with this famous system of private accounts.
It redirected workers' existing social security taxes to a new market-based system of investing choices that let workers make their own decisions in a program run by private companies.
The Dictuc study shows Chile's private pensions over three decades have yielded returns six times higher than what workers got under Chile's old social security system — which, by the way, was similar to ours.
The study shows that saving for retirement through the market is actually far less dangerous than relying on the government for pensions. Workers' returns on Social Security in the U.S. for those currently retiring is zero. For workers just starting their careers, the return is forecast to be negative as the trust fund goes bust.
More to the point, anyone who has to live on Social Security income alone is condemned to a life of poverty on those returns. The only alternative is for workers to double-down by opening 401(k) or IRA accounts.
Some 30 nations have adopted a version of Chile's private system. But in the U.S., the radical left, led by the same Big Labor unions that assured workers ObamaCare would improve their lives, have been warning that markets are far too dangerous to entrust workers' pensions to them.
The details of the Dictuc study shatter this pernicious myth: Data show workers earn an extraordinary 8.7% compound rate of return above inflation over a period of 32 years from the 10% of their salaries put away.
The compounding means that 73% of the pensions workers retire on comes from profit made on investments, with only 27% coming from their actual contributions. Profits accumulate even through market downturns, as was seen in 2008, because cost-averaging of investments cushions the impact.
Financial markets will never fall to zero, as scaremongers warn, except maybe if Armageddon hit. And if that's the case, Social Security would go bankrupt right along with it. There would be no economy to support it.
With Social Security's trust fund slated to go bust in 2035, maybe it's time to start thinking about how the lessons of Chile can benefit American workers, too.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/092613-672776-score-another-one-for-the-chilean-model-of-private-pensions.htm#ixzz2g7C3Crtx
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God, Rush, and Global Warming

 

God, Rush, and Global Warming

 

By E. Calvin Beisner, CP Op-Ed Contributor

September 18, 2013|8:29 am

Recently on his nationwide talk show, host Rush Limbaugh said, "If you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming."

Two evangelical climate scientists took him to task in The Christian Post. "Rush Limbaugh doesn't think we exist. In other words that evangelical scientists cannot subscribe to the evidence of global warming," they said. "… Rush's uninformed rhetoric is demeaning to Christians who care deeply about what humans are doing to God's Creation and ignorant of the consequences that future generations will face if we don't respond quickly to the challenge of climate change."

Ironically, these climate scientists-Katharine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman-acknowledged at the outset, "Talk radio personalities often make hyperbolic statements …." Why is that ironic? Because, having acknowledged that, they then took Limbaugh literally-precisely what one must not do with hyperbole-and castigated him for meaning something they acknowledge he didn't.

No sane person, for instance, takes Jesus literally when He says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches" (Matthew 13:31–32). By Hayhoe and Ackerman's reckoning, Jesus was wrong, because mustard is not the smallest of all seeds, and while it grows larger than many (not all) garden plants, it doesn't become a tree. But Jesus used hyperbole to get attention and drive home a point: the kingdom of heaven unexpectedly starts small but grows large to encompass multitudes.

So, what was Limbaugh's point when he said, "If you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade warming"? Not that no theist can believe that human emissions of greenhouse gases can contribute positively to earth's temperature. Rather, that it is difficult to reconcile belief in the infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, and infinitely faithful God of the Bible with belief that a minuscule change in atmospheric chemistry-raising CO2 from 27 thousandths of 1 percent to 54 thousandths of 1 percent of the atmosphere-is likely to cause catastrophic harm to human and other ecosystems. It's that latter belief that's encompassed by the shorthand "global warming."

Was Limbaugh right? Arguably, yes.

The Bible teaches that earth and all its subsystems-including the climate system-are the product of a God who is an infinitely wise Designer, an infinitely powerful Creator, and an infinitely faithful Sustainer. It teaches that when God finished creating the earth and everything in it, He declared it "very good" (Genesis 1:31); that He created it by His infinitely powerful word (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24; John 1:1–3); and that He sustains it "by the word of His power" (Hebrews 1:3).

Now I ask you, does an infinitely wise designer plan something to be so fragile that a proportionately tiny stress will cause it to collapse? Does a good architect, for instance, design a building so that if you lean against a wall, the rest of the building reacts by magnifying the stress of your weight until the building collapses?

But that's what's assumed in the theory of catastrophic, anthropogenic (manmade) global warming (CAGW): that a proportionately tiny stress can cause catastrophic consequences. The theory is that CO2's rising from 27 thousandths of 1 percent to 54 thousandths of 1 percent of the atmosphere-which itself is a relatively tiny part of the entire climate system, which includes the oceans, land masses, all living things, and even energy from the sun and cosmic rays from stars in distant galaxies-will raise earth's temperature so much as to threaten catastrophic harm to human and other life.

Such a result would come only from a design that made positive feedbacks vastly outweigh negative feedbacks. In other words, it would make the rest of the climate system magnify rather than offset the warming effect of CO2. Yet natural systems are dominated by negative rather than positive feedbacks-otherwise they'd all have collapsed long ago.

So God's wisdom in designing earth's climate system is hard to reconcile with belief in CAGW.

Likewise, belief in CAGW is difficult to reconcile with belief in God's power and faithfulness.

The Bible records God as making a promise to Himself after visiting the earth with catastrophic judgment in the flood of Noah's day: "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease" (Genesis 8:21–22).

The poetic structure of verse 22-"While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease"-called merism, involves naming opposites to encompass everything of the same category. The thrust of the verse is God's promise, having nearly destroyed them by the flood, to uphold henceforth all the cycles on which life on earth, especially human life depends.

A group of evangelical theologians used precisely this argument in their contribution to the major study, A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming. Perhaps Limbaugh's not in such bad company.

So, does belief in God make belief in CAGW utterly impossible? No. But it's very difficult to reconcile the two beliefs. Perhaps Hayhoe and Ackerman have done that to their satisfaction. But when other, equally qualified climate scientists offer scientific evidence against CAGW, or when someone like Limbaugh points out, even hyperbolically, the tension between belief in God and belief in CAGW, prudence suggests a different response from Hayhoe and Ackerman's.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a former professor of theology, ethics, and interdisciplinary studies at Covenant College and Knox Theological Seminary, is the author of Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate and Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future.

Blog: Those darn scientists who got global warming wrong

Blog: Those darn scientists who got global warming wrong

 September 16, 2013

Those darn scientists who got global warming wrong

Silvio Canto, Jr.

Calling Al Gore.  It may be time to go shopping for some sweaters and gloves because global warming has "a cooling problem":

"Earth Gains A Record Amount Of Sea Ice In 2013 -- 'Earth has gained 19,000 Manhattans of sea ice since this date last year, the largest increase on record'"

It also appears that there was "a virus" in the global warming computers, according to reports in the British press:  

"A leaked copy of the world's most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong. 

The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ultimate watchdog whose massive, six-yearly 'assessments' are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the gospel of climate science.  They are cited worldwide to justify swingeing fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for 'renewable' energy. 

Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that the world has been warming at only just over half the rate claimed by the IPCC in its last assessment,  published in 2007.  

Back then, it said that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade - a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models. 

But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade - a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction."  

In retrospect, the computer got it wrong!   Poor computer.   

To be honest, I'm not really very smart about computers but I do know one important concept:  Garbage in, garbage out! 

The computer did not decide to give us global warming predictions.  In fact, someone, probably a professor looking for some grants, programmed the computer to scare all of us. 

I guess that we won't see all of those polar bears floating from the North Pole to Miami Beach.  We may see Al Gore running away from the media instead.

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Blog: Peak Warmism

Blog: Peak Warmism

 September 16, 2013

Peak Warmism

Thomas Lifson

The Warmist scare -- the officially-backed theory that the earth's temperature was spiraling upward and would soon fry the planet -- is receding, if leaks from the forthcoming (September 27) "fifth assessment report" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) are accurate. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley explains that the computer modelers are retreating from some of the doom-mongering they have been responsible for:

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPPC thought in 2007.

Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet. (emphasis added)

The evidence is forcing the computer modelers to realize that the "sensitivity" to CO2 levels has been overestimated. So, even if CO2 does raise temperatures, the rise is likely to be less than the warmists hyped it to be.  And that could lead to beneficial warming:

Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places). Increased carbon dioxide levels also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth-because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher. (emphasis added)

Ridley notes that this retreat from doomsaying doesn't even incorporate the latest data, which raise even more questions:

Yet these latest IPCC estimates of climate sensitivity may still be too high. They don't adequately reflect the latest rash of published papers estimating "equilibrium climate sensitivity" and "transient climate response" on the basis of observations, most of which are pointing to an even milder warming.

The costs of hysterical warmism have been huge. Ask the people in developing countries where the price of corn and other grains has soared because Americans are being forced to buy ethanol-based fuels at the gasoline pump. People in Haiti and Africa are not getting enough to eat because grain prices have soared. The slow economic growth of our economy is aggravated by regulations that CO2  -- essential to life - as a pollutant.

Warmism is the biggest scientific scam in history. Even at the summit of warmism, the IPCC, the handwriting is on the wall. We have experienced peak Warmism, and now we can start junking the costly policies that were based on half-baked computer models.

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Articles: Why Millennials Won't Turn 'Conservative'

Articles: Why Millennials Won't Turn 'Conservative'

 

Why Millennials Won't Turn 'Conservative'

By Selwyn Duke

September 12, 2013

Every so often the wonks of wishful thinking give us an article about how blacks are becoming Republicans, how Hispanics are supposedly a natural GOP constituency, or, as is the subject here today, how the millennial generation is turning "conservative." Perhaps pundits asserting the last thing recall Winston Churchill's observation, "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain." And perhaps they overlook that it's possible to raise a brainless generation.

Don't think, as one might, that this will be a typical analysis sneering at the proverbial "next generation" using the perceived gold standard of one's own. After all, I realize that my generation is the tree the millennial nut fell from. Placing matters in further perspective, it's true that older and younger generations ever slam each other; it's also true that they both are always partially right. Lastly, I'll say that I don't at all consider the WWII FDR voters the "greatest generation," though it makes for a nice narrative. The greatest generation was the one that founded our nation and wondered if we could "keep" its republic, and there has been a consistent, but accelerating, degeneration ever since.

In discussing our latest movement toward idiocracy, my starting point will be a Sept. 4 American Thinker article written by one Chriss Street. In making his case for millennial hope, Mr. Street points out that while 61 percent of millennials voted for Barack Obama in 2012, his approval among them has now sunk to 46 percent. But this is a deceptive statistic. For an approval rating amounts to the judging of a candidate relative to people's ideal personal standard for the presidency, whereas in an election he is judged relative to another specific candidate for the presidency. And if Obama were again running against Mitt Romney -- with all the usual media propaganda -- does anyone really think he'd lose millennials to the governor? No doubt more would stay home, but I suspect the president would enjoy something close to his 2012 support among those who cast votes.

Moreover, millennials may have soured on Obama somewhat, but this reflects cynicism more than conservatism. Of course, that they'd be cynical is no surprise; they've been raised in an unraveling West in which feckless, morally-confused adults in their homes, schools, government, houses of worship and elsewhere have let them down. Nonetheless, cynicism is not traditionalism; in fact, it is a form of naiveté. Believing all people act out of selfish motives, the cynic instinctively paints everyone with the same brush. And such a person can hardly distinguish well among candidates.

Mr. Street also tells us that, "in 2008, 37.4% of incoming freshman women and 30.5% men identified themselves as liberals or leftists, the most in 35 years." The reality, though, is even worse than this indicates. First consider that self-reporting is more about perception than reality. For starters, it always underestimates leftist numbers, as likely a majority of "moderates" are liberals who -- usually because of self-delusion (a leftist bailiwick) and a desire to sound "reasonable" -- don't brand themselves what they really are; bear in mind when pondering this that liberals are generally solipsistic and fancy that they define the center, and also realize that the label "liberal" has been discredited enough so that many won't don it. Yet even more significant here is that it isn't just people's perceptions that shift -- the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" do, too.

Consider that while a conservative in 1952 America was staunchly anti-communist, a conservative in the Soviet Union at the time was a communist. And "conservatives" in Western Europe are often our liberals' ideological soulmates. This isn't for lack of truth in political advertising. Rather, it's because the only consistent definition of "conservative" is "a desire to maintain the status quo" while "liberal's" only consistent definition involves a desire to change it. This means "conservatism" is always changing: tomorrow's version will reflect today's liberalism's success in altering the status quo. Conservatism is the caboose to liberalism's locomotive (I treat this in-depth here).

This explains a few things. First, it's often pointed out that a healthy plurality in America describes itself as conservative. Is this surprising? All it really means is that many, many people align themselves with the status quo -- and if this weren't the case, the status quo wouldn't be the status quo. Second, some insist that millennials will move toward conservatism, and this is true in that most people become somewhat more traditional with age. Yet it's also true that conservatism will move toward them.

That is to say, as "conservatism" drifts "left," it follows that millennials will "become more conservative" even if they stay in the same place, in that they will be situated more on the post-shift political spectrum's right side; this is just as how a person can become poorer in a definitional sense if the poverty line standard is altered.

That so few recognize this reflects the relativism of our time, where we label ourselves with provisional terms and measure ourselves against other people (it's people who define the political spectrum). If we want to see matters clearly, however, we must define them differently: in absolute terms.

In other words, what do millennials actually believe? Well, never before has an American generation been so tolerant of intolerable sexual practices, so supportive of faux marriage and skeptical of actual marriage, so relativistic and disconnected from Christianity (church attendance is one of the best predictors of voting habits). Never before has an American generation been to their degree socially "liberal."

This brings us to the claim that millennials are, at least, fiscally conservative. Now, not only is convincing evidence of this elusive, but considering it a saving grace is essentially saying that it profits a man to gain the world but lose his soul. Regardless, however, while the social liberalism/fiscal conservatism marriage may exist in particular cases, I suspect that in principle it is an impossibility.

For instance, speaking of principle versus particular, if you ask people, "Do you believe government should balance its budget and be frugal," of course they'll say yes. But if you ask them if they're willing to relinquish their particular piece of the pie (government college aid?), their tune changes. Espousing fiscal responsibility requires only a voice; achieving it requires virtue.

Second, consider the side-effects of social liberalism in modern times. And this should be prefaced by saying that since this explanation warrants a book, my treatment here will necessarily be lacking. But just as an example, social liberalism means loose sexual mores. Loose sexual mores mean a high rate of single motherhood (today it's 42 percent... and rising). And what does this mean? Since the modern West won't let these women twist in the wind, the government will step into the breach and play daddy with handouts and/or mommy with tax-funded daycare. It is unavoidable.

And in point of fact, this cultural decay brings us to the real reason for political drift. It was something about which the Founding Fathers -- as well as great thinkers throughout Christendom's history -- spoke much. Ben Franklin warned, "As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." British philosopher Edmund Burke observed, "It is written in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters." And John Adams wrote in 1798, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Question: does "moral and religious" describe us today?

Of course, some will now say, "But why do you think millennials supported Ron Paul? They want liberty!" Sure they do.

So does a tiger in a zoo.

So does a toddler.

Neither, however, can be allowed to roam free in civilization without hurting himself or others. And the less people are civilized growing up, the closer they will be to that infantile or animalistic state -- and the more they have need of cages and masters.

The truth? Government can be no better than the public's virtue, though it can be worse. And this morality-government relationship is evident in voting patterns. Is it a coincidence that every group orthodox Christians label immoral -- those involved in "alternative" sexual deathstyles, criminally inclined inner-city dwellers, effete college professors, grunge-type youths scarred with multiple tattoos and body piercings -- vote left? "What fellowship hath light with darkness?" The darkness hates the light. When people have sins they yearn to rationalize away, the last thing they'll do is support leaders who would uphold, even just through word, a moral standard condemning their passions.

Providing specificity as to how this affects government is another book-worthy topic, so I'll offer just two examples. We've heard about those ruggedly individualistic Americans who'd rather live in poverty in Appalachia than accept government handouts and those spirit-of-entitlement types who protest violently when they don't receive them. And society will always contain both kinds, but the ratio can vary greatly. In a nation characterized by self-sufficiency, honor, and virtue, a redistributionist will find barren ground. But if a spirit of greed, covetousness, and thievery prevails, people will be susceptible to the demagogic appeal, "You've been cheated, but give me power and I'll get you your piece of the pie, comrade!" Or consider lust. If people resolved to be chaste outside of marriage, do you think the abortion movement or taxpayer funded contraception appeal could gain traction?

So how do you make a civilization susceptible to dark demagogues?

Make it love the darkness.

I wouldn't first and foremost spend time on intellectual appeals. As the Soviets once did (as explained by ex-KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov) I'd seek to undermine the morality of the target nation. I'd spread the idea that morality is really "values" and values are relative -- all just a matter of perspective, you see. Once this was accepted and people no longer believed in the rules of morality, it would be as if they ceased believing in the rules of human nutrition: not thinking any food could actually be "bad," they'd be governed only by taste and would try, and could develop an affinity for, anything -- even perhaps poison. Vice corresponds to this on the moral menu.

I'd then get them hooked on their bad moral diet through inundation. Stoke their lust's fires via highly sexualized entertainment, and portray violence as just as casual and cool, so lashing out at others seems the norm. I'd engorge their egos with media messages about how they could determine their own morality so that, as the serpent said, "you will be like God." I'd provide co-ed dorms and a general party atmosphere at universities, creating "occasions of sin" that will ensure the kids have as much as possible they need to justify. And after robbing them of moral judgment and creating a visceral craving for vice, I'd fill their heads full of anti-Western, anti-Christian -- in fact, anti-goodness -- ideas in college classrooms. When I was done with them, they'd not only possess the discernment of a man in the midst of a drug-fueled orgy, their egos would be so bloated they'd consider their ignorance wisdom.

Speaking of wisdom, when conservatives indulge wishful thinking and suppose that millennials will "wake up," they ignore that we actually need a shakeup, something that changes the cultural trajectory on which we've long been (so if an asteroid strikes the Earth, millennials may turn into conservatives -- of course, they instead may turn into cavemen, too). Until then, whatever the keepers of the flame plan had better require the participation of only a zealous minority. For the masses will not wake up when beset by a cultural narcolepsy in which nightmares are fancied nice dreams.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/why_millennials_wont_turn_conservative.html#ixzz2ekWsLOTg

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Rare golden treasure found in Jerusalem - Israel Travel, Ynetnews

Rare golden treasure found in Jerusalem - Israel Travel, Ynetnews

Rare golden treasure found in Jerusalem

 Two bundles containing 36 gold coins from Byzantine era, gold and silver jewelry, gold medallion with menorah uncovered during Hebrew University excavations at foot of Temple Mount
 Aryeh Savir, Tazpit

 During excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount, which were conducted this summer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar discovered two bundles of treasure containing 36 gold coins, gold and silver jewelry, and a gold medallion with the menorah (Temple candelabrum) symbol etched into it. 

 Also etched into the 10-centimeter (4-inch) medallion are a shofar (ram’s horn) and a Torah scroll.


Mazar, a third-generation archaeologist working at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, directs excavations on the City of David’s summit and at the Temple Mount’s southern wall, the Ophel area.

Calling the find "a breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime discovery," Dr. Mazar said: "We have been making significant finds from the First Temple Period in this area, a much earlier time in Jerusalem’s history, so discovering a golden seven-branched Menorah from the seventh century CE at the foot of the Temple Mount was a complete surprise."


Gold medallion with menorah symbol (Photo: Ouria Tadmor)

Coin collection (Photo: Ouria Tadmor)

The discovery was unearthed just five days into Mazar’s latest phase of the Ophel excavations, and can be dated to the late Byzantine period (early seventh century CE). The gold treasure was discovered in a ruined Byzantine public structure, a mere 50 meters (164 feet) from the Temple Mount’s southern wall.

The menorah, a candelabrum with seven branches that was used in the Temple, the national symbol of the State of Israel, reflects the historical presence of Jews in the area. The position of the items as they were discovered indicates that one bundle was carefully hidden underground while the second bundle was apparently abandoned in haste and scattered across the floor.

Given the date of the items and the manner in which they were found, Mazar estimates they were abandoned in the context of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614 CE.

Dr. Mazar holding medallion. 'Breathtaking discovery' (Photo: Ouria Tadmor)

After the Persians conquered Jerusalem, many Jews returned to the city and formed the majority of its population, hoping for political and religious freedom. But as Persian power waned, instead of forming an alliance with the Jews, the Persians sought the support of Christians and ultimately allowed them to expel the Jews from Jerusalem.

'Treasure was abandoned'

Hanging from a gold chain, the menorah medallion is most likely an ornament for a Torah scroll. If this is the case, it is the earliest Torah scroll ornament found in archaeological excavations to date. It was buried in a small depression in the floor, along with a smaller gold medallion, two pendants, a gold coil and a silver clasp, all of which are believed to be Torah scroll ornamentations.

"It would appear that the most likely explanation is that the Ophel cache was earmarked as a contribution toward the building of a new synagogue, at a location that is near the Temple Mount," said Dr. Mazar. "What is certain is that their mission, whatever it was, was unsuccessful. The treasure was abandoned, and its owners could never return to collect it."

Discovery site at the Temple Mount’s southern wall (Photo: Ouria Tadmor)

The Ophel cache is the third collection of gold coins to be found in archaeological excavations in Jerusalem, said Lior Sandberg, numismatics specialist at the Institute of Archaeology. "The 36 gold coins can be dated to the reigns of different Byzantine emperors, ranging from the middle of the fourth century CE to the early seventh century CE," said Sandberg.

Found with the coins were a pair of large gold earrings, a gold-plated silver hexagonal prism and a silver ingot. Remnants of fabric indicated that these items were once packaged in a cloth purse similar to the bundle that contained the menorah medallion.


Mazar’s Ophel excavation made headlines earlier this year when she announced the 2012 discovery of an ancient Canaanite inscription (recently identified as Hebrew), the earliest alphabetical written text ever uncovered in Jerusalem.

The 2013 excavation season at the Ophel ran from the middle of April to the end of July, on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University. The Israel Antiquities Authority is carrying out the preservation works, and is preparing the site for the public.

Articles: Socialist Science in the Climate Science Neighborhood

Articles: Socialist Science in the Climate Science Neighborhood

 September 7, 2013

Socialist Science in the Climate Science Neighborhood

By Anthony J. Sadar

Radical socialists (often disguised with the euphemism "progressives") have many potential avenues they can travel to arrive at their ends -- an end that justifies its means.  And, rather than a goal to save lives or help the poor, the nefarious ends of socialists unfortunately seems to be their own power and control over the rest of us great unwashed.
Typically, the socialist trail is carved out through the down-trodden by whipping up resentment and jealousy and a sense of entitlement that is to be fulfilled by the social activist/community organizer.  Furthermore, socialist socialites in high political and organizational authority are celebrated and idealized as saviors of the needy by the witting and unwitting media.

Thus, the assault on society comes from below and above facilitated by the media to ultimately enslave and impoverish all -- all except the ruling class of socialists, and the wealthy who carefully avoid excessive irritation of the rulers.

After decades of inroads into unions, education, politics, law, journalism, public relations, and many of the "soft" scientific disciplines, the latest avenue of attack has been via the "hard" sciences, in particular, atmospheric science. 

During my 35 years of practice in the atmospheric science profession, in government, consulting, and academia, the socialist techniques that have become apparent include blatant dishonesty stemming from arrogance -- a hallmark of socialism -- and its offshoot, a sense of supreme superiority.

Haughty socialism has no problem with twisting the truth or simply lying.  Although for most people, "honesty is the best policy," in socialist ideology the ends justifies the means and so, even though verity can be useful, it's not absolutely necessary.

There are many experienced real-world atmospheric-science practitioners who legitimately question the conclusions of the cadre of academic and government scientists who have declared "settled" the complex scientific endeavor of understanding climate change.  When experienced practitioners are labeled "climate change deniers" by some of these very same arrogant scientists, you know a symptom of socialism has reared its ugly head.  (Note that I am not claiming that those who use such derogatory terms are necessarily radical socialists, rather that they are displaying the characteristics germane to that radicalism.)

The denier moniker is obviously untrue, which makes it a bit problematic to trust a researcher or research director who relies on using this blatant ad hominem attack.  Professor Michael Mann used the phrase "climate change denier" or some variant of it seven times on one page alone, page 193 (if you count endnotes to the page), in his 2012 book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.  Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, impudently stated in August that she didn't want any "climate-change deniers in my department."

Likewise, another basic tactic of socialism is to "divide and conquer," that's why differing science views are framed as a "war." It's all or nothing when a personal philosophy/religion is at stake, whereas with authentic scientific practice a middle ground is quite acceptable and often is the path to discovering the truth about a matter under investigation.  Of course, with extremists on both sides, "you're either for us or against us," a view more typical of politics than science. So, socialists demand that you choose sides -- pick a conclusion and defend it at all costs.  With such socialist thinking in control of academia, politics, and much of the media, a scientist's conclusions must meet socialist approval or he/she is not "doing science."  Independent thinking is not acceptable.  And, if you have doubts that the socialist side is correct, then you must be a denier of the "truth." Yet, authentic science is liberating, whereas science in the grips of an ideology, like socialism, is bound not to progress.

The path to true progress for people and the planet should be traveled with gracious, empathetic, and humble responsibility by those who can make a difference with advanced science and technology.  In short, science should be in the service of humanity, rather than in the service of any ideology.  But, unfortunately, with radical socialism now taking up residence on Climate Science Street, well... there goes the neighborhood.

Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic's Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012).

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/socialist_science_in_the_climate_science_neighborhood.html#ixzz2eEOKGfIi
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