Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

One hundred forty-eight Signatories

November 11, 2009

Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes—from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the “need” for abortion—a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as “the culture of death.” We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo- research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called “therapeutic cloning.” This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-twentieth century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.

Marriage

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33 In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society—indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as “holy matrimony” to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.

Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits—the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling—and alarming—indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society—and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average—is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.

We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to “a more excellent way.” As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.

We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same- sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being—the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual—on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being “married.” It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality—a covenantal union of husband and wife—that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as “marriages” sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non- marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good(not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.

Religious Liberty

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. Matthew 22:21

The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: “Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God” (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God—a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason.

Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro- life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.

As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than serve it.

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

The insidious PC infection... and so many tears

Political correctness...

that nasty group think that has infected all sectors of society has now sadly infiltrated our armed services.

I am filled with so many emotions as I watch the memorial service at ft Hood. I am not a tough guy. I cry often. I sit writing this with tears streaming down my face and taps playing after a rifle volley in tribute to the men and women murdered by Nidal Hasan.

I am ashamed of my President and his cowardice to plainly call Major Hasan what he is – an Islamic terrorist.

Within hours of the massacre Mr Obama pleaded for us to wait for the facts and not jump to conclusions while simultaneously the FBI stated without equivocation that terror and any greater plot or links to terror groups would not be considered. I wonder if the FBI heard Mr Obama's words... “wait for the facts and not jump to conclusions.”

I'm not sure we needed much more in the way of facts though. Maj Hasan gave out copies of the Koran the morning of his murder plot. Told neighbors he was going away. And then out of his fanatical religious views proceeded to murder 13 innocent victims in the name of his god while while screaming Allah is great in Arabic and shooting over 100 rounds indiscriminately into a crowd gathered for a graduation ceremony and hitting over 40 people with the gun he bought slightly over one month ago.

The murderer got a free ride because he was Muslim. He had been investigated for his Anti American views. He as a psychiatrist trained in PTSD was to help our most vulnerable heroes coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan... those with shattered psyches who his job it was to communicate that he could be trusted and could help them. Instead he proselytized and argued with them. HE abused his power as a healer and flaunted to colleagues that he was a Muslim first and an American second. His colleagues reported these things and eventually became afraid to because they were accused of anti-muslim attitudes.

On ABC's “This Week” Gen Casey the Army Chief of Staff unbelievably spoke about worrying over the possible backlash against Muslim soldiers. I think I prefer Casey to think more about why Nidal Hasan remained in our armed forces and how he can prevent another massacre like Ft Hood and stopping the insidious spread of “politically correct” thought in the armed forces the very last place it should find a comfortable and welcoming home.

In telling emails from Army officials less than 24 hours after the tragedy they ask for reevaluation of terrorism plans at respective military installations. '

It turns out that Hasan had ongoing communications with a radical imam from that African bastian of respect for freedoms, Yemen. A man named Anwar al Awlaki who is a US citizen. Awlaki has heaped praise upon Hasan. These emails etc came to the attention of the FBI and intelligence community and were dismissed!

To paraphrase convicted 9-11 Islamic terrorist Mousawi's defense lawyer who has defended several terror suspects – “Exactly what communication between a Unites States Military Officer and the Imam that coached several of the 9-11 terrorists can be considered 'benign' – give me a break.”

Anwar al Awlaki has said the following on his web site:

“Nidal Hassan is a hero...”

“How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done?”

“The heroic act of brother Nidal...”

“...we ask Allah to accept from him his great heroic act.”

I have watched with alarm as some media outlets have tried to medicalize this mans act of terror or use it to further their own agenda in regards to Afghanistan or Iraq. The heretofore unknown diagnosis of “vicarious PTSD” which has beeen advanced is laughable and supposedly comes from Hasan hearing the horror stories of returning vets. Funny how the sordid misery of urban living with its depression, suicide, addiction and broken lives that EVERY psychiatrist hears as well as those of us in Family Practice hear daily have not caused an epidemic of “vicarious PTSD”.

You see the problem is one of perception. If Obama admits that this is indeed an act of terror – which it clearly was – then he faces the full assault of Dick Cheney's criticisms being true. Therefore we have witnessed the spin machine in full force to make this not a terrorist act but an ostensibly simple act of criminal justice with no greater implication or meaning than that of one more madman run amok with a gun.

It would clearly show the American public Mr. Obama's inherent distaste for all things military as he clings to his policy of accommodation and capitulation

The Critical Gaze...

It bothers me that so many cast an ultra-critical eye on America and are unwilling to cast that same eye upon other Nations and state actors or even administrations they do not like. Ten months into Mr. Obama's administration he is still making excuses and blaming Mr Bush. The Media is still engaged in its “slobbering love affair” replete with unceasing adulation from all but one news outlet. Apparently the ego-maniacal Marxist at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is not content with ONLY the constant praise of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, CBC, Unavision and MSNBC. But again I digress...

Where are the critics that just two short years ago were railing that it was the President's fault for not having enough flu vaccine? How is it that then it was so obviously the Oval Office at fault and yet today with what the media describes as the “smartest man in the white House in decades” and all his smart advisers and “czars” and the shortage of vaccine is worse than ever and yet now is only the manufacturers “outdated technology” with the White House being passed over as if it had nothing to do with it?

Then Sen Hillary Clinton blamed the shortage of flu vaccine on the Bush administration.

They're more interested in tax cuts for the rich than for flu shots for everyone who needs them. This administration has their priorities wrong," she added. "And we've really paid a big price for their negligence.

Never mind her own hand in changing laws regarding vaccine manufacture that likely have contributed to the shortage directly.



Where is the outraged citizenry that decried Dick Cheney and Haliburton making money off of Iraq as the revolving door between Goldman Sachs and the current adminstration spins ever more rapidly... (maybe it's a wind mill generating green power?)???

Where are they as Al Gore, chief figurehead of the climate change theory (so handily debunked by Lord Monkton) as he profits from the setting up of the carbon exchange to trade carbon credits which will do nothing for the environment except make our own far less habitable here in the US as jobs fly overseas at the speed of light and utility bills – and I quote Mr Obama - “”...necessarily skyrocket.” while China and India the worst offenders of all continue to refuse to adhere to any limitations of the pollution they spew which will only grow more voluminous as American manufacturing jobs and capacity – at least whats left – migrate with even greater rapidity to these “frenemies”.

More later... I have to say I'm still slack jawed at the media's attempt to rationalize Maj. Hasan's murder of a dozen people as he shouted in Arabic, “God is great” or Alla akbhar. The rallying cry of Muslim terrorists world wide. Yet we cant cross that PC border and call this guy what he was... why do we bend over backwards to placate the 1.6% of Americans who identify as Muslim? I wonder what would have happened if a white male committed mass murder at a military installation while screaming, "Jesus Saves!"

Can you imagine the field day they would have ???

 

Sometimes I am struck by the sheer beauty of God's creation. I took this photo on a walk near my home along Lake Washington early one morning several weeks ago. Its at those moments I smile and take some stock of my good fortune to live in the United States. Inevitably I am lead to thoughts of what has happened to this country and why has all common sense left us...

Today Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 11 people before he was shot by Americans far braver than he. They knew duty and honor. Officer Munley the 34 year old police veteran arrived within minutes and immediately engaged and stopped Hasan via a fierce gun battle receiving several gunshot wounds herself. She is in stable condition. Ms. Munley is a hero.

Much will come from today. Obvious questions arise when I hear the colleagues of this man tell of his repeated and sustained anti-American vitriol. Major Hasan apparently joined the armed services prior to 9/11 but always professed an aversion to war and armed conflict.

How ironic.


I'll tell you what I know: people like Hasan don't belong in the military.
Why did his superiors tolerate constant anti-American comments?
Why did Hasan continue to suck up my tax dollars in his salary if he hated the US so much?

I don't get it.

You know hypocrisy angers me more than anything.

Hasan should have had the integrity to quit.
No great qualification needed here.
No in depth discussion necessary.

It really is that simple.
It is an honor to serve this great Nation and Hasan did not deserve it.
He OWED the military for paying every cent of his medical education.
That he couldn't even honor that commitment makes me all the sicker.

A few more nonsensical things on my mind:

T'is the season and the nonsense has begun!

Kentucky's Governor has decided to call the State Christmas tree a "Holiday Tree"
My own state did the same last year and will again this year.

Home Dept fired a young man for wearing a button that proclaimed "One Nation Under God, Indivisible..."




And up North one business owner did teh right thing when his patrons COMPLAINED about the American Flag being "offensive" ! In the video a man about to become a US Citizen stands up for our Flag. How sad we have a generation of self hating Americans embarassed to be citizens of the world's last best hope. Sigh...

Just one more common man trying to make sense of how we got where we are. More importantly on these pages I hope to elucidate and articulate the foundational truths that will get us back to the America that has always rightfully been the hope of the world and humanity itself.

There have been many things that finally motivated me to this outlet... the least of which is a generation that seems to have a profound amnesia of even recent history. Trying to intelligently discuss politics with a group of people that placed this great Nation in the hands of someone not based on reason but on "feelings" as they chanted slogans more reminiscent of Mao's revolution than a free democratic republic.

They lack the context to evaluate much of the political wrangling in the news daily and suffer from the most egregious and obvious example of what happens when education is subject to "sensitivity and diversity review" which leads not to an education rooted in the classic subjects that have served as civilizations foundation for millennium but instead results in indoctrinating young minds in "proper" ways to feel and think but robs them of most if not all critical thinking skills. Not to mention a constant annoyance of mine which is that when i perhaps fish out the correct change after handing a cashier at (insert ANY store here but particularly Target, WalMart etc) results in a slack jawed look of bewilderment by the clerk who has not the skill to make change without the computer. But I digress.


Let me also say right now that I believe in civil and logical debate and discourse. I see a lack of it from far too many and on both sides of the political aisle. I must confess I am dismayed at the "Progressive's" use of personal attacks and playing the race card. Shame on the American public for accepting such a ludicrous assertion that anyone who departs from the lock step of a black President is therefore "racist"! I care not for the color of a persons skin... I care for the policies he or she purports to believe and will use to lead the great Nation.