Strange things happen in the English law, but I have seldom read a stranger opening to a judgment than the following, handed down this week by Lord Philips of Worth Matravers, the President of the Supreme Court.
“The seventh chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy records the following instructions given by Moses to the people of Israel, after delivering the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai,” Lord Philips began. Then he plunged into how God, having smitten the enemies of Israel – Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – in a manner highly satisfactory to the Jews, now demanded that His people observe proper marriage customs in return.
How did a question which involved only God and the Jews, and which was decided roughly 3,500 years ago, come before Lord Philips and his eight fellow jurists sitting in 21st-century London?
The answer is that sacred text of modern times, the Race Relations Act of 1976. The Jewish Free School (JFS), a very successful secondary school in Brent, is run along Orthodox Jewish lines. A dispute arose about the admission of a boy known as M. M’s mother became Jewish by conversion, but only after giving birth to M. According to Orthodox rules (see that chapter of Deuteronomy), Jewishness passes through the female line. M, therefore, was not Jewish, and so did not have the right of admission to the JFS.
The Supreme Court, however, decided by a majority of five to four that the decision to exclude M was in contravention of section one of the Race Relations Act. He was excluded on racial grounds, it held.
This is a rather big decision. Lord Rodger, one of the dissenting judges, said that it “leads to such extraordinary results, and produces such manifest discrimination against Jewish schools in comparison with other faith schools, that one cannot help feeling that something has gone wrong”.
Actually, it goes wider than that. The court is effectively saying that a religion’s way of defining its own membership, practised over 3,500 years, is illegal. This is an acute problem for Jews, who are at great pains to maintain their own rules while respecting the law of the land. It will also be used by anti-Jewish groups, which are growing in strength, to bolster their argument that Judaism is racist and that the state of Israel is the equivalent of apartheid South Africa. So the Race Relations Act, set up to help minorities, ends up punishing them.
I would argue that the judgment goes wider still. It is part of a current idea of equality and of human rights which, in the name of freedom, is beginning to look like tyranny.
When you set out general principles about equal treatment for all, regardless of race, religion, sex, age etc, people will tend to agree with them. It is a liberal principle that all are equal before the law, and a Christian principle that all are equal in the sight of God.
But when you frame endless laws according to these universal principles, you run into difficulties. It may be “discriminatory” for a Jewish/Catholic/Muslim school to prefer to employ Jewish/Catholic/Muslim teachers, but isn’t it also reasonable? Isn’t it fair and natural that a religious school should be free to prefer to admit children from the relevant faith, in order to maintain the ethos which is so important to its success as a school? By what morality are such things wrong?
The human rights culture which now dominates our law believes in its own morality. It sets itself above the varied experience of civilisation, and above the idea of independent nations. It decides that rights can be codified for everyone and can be applied everywhere. It is not a coincidence that our highest court has just changed its name from the House of Lords to the Supreme Court: it considers itself supreme indeed. This “human-rights” morality is much more coercive than it purports to be.
One controversial example is homosexuality. All the main faiths put heterosexual married love above homosexual acts, yet our human rights culture makes it illegal to do this. Catholic agencies are forbidden to handle children for adoption unless they will bestow them on gay couples as readily as married ones.
Another example relates to terrorism. Common sense would suggest that a nation which decides that a foreigner is trying to foment violence in this country should be free to expel him. But universal human rights, as now interpreted, forbid this if the suspect might be tortured in his home country.
A third relates to charity. Until 2006, it had been accepted from time immemorial that the advancement of religion or education was a charitable purpose. Under the Charities Act of 2006, however, this assumption was removed. All charities now have to prove that they serve a “public benefit”, and the Charity Commission decides what that benefit is, according to criteria which it calls “modern”. These are hard to understand, but they appear to involve social engineering. Woe betide the charity which provides fee-paying education.
Even a self-described “hairy Lefty” has noticed that something is amiss. In his interview with this paper a week ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said: “The trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem.” There is now a strong secularist agenda working its way through our public authorities. There is a even a group of militant secularists, preposterously called “Brights”, who want to drive religion out of the public sphere. Already you can see it in rows about a nurse who prays with a patient, or about sex education, or even about what to call Christmas. Government ministers flatter individual religious leaders – indeed, many Jews feel that the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who was given a peerage by Gordon Brown, has become too much of a No 10 favourite to defend his community properly. But it is this Government which has exalted secular human rights over all belief systems, and made laws to enforce them. And Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, has led a culture war against faith schools, especially Jewish ones, for their policy on admissions.
This article taken from Atlas Shrugs 12-20-09
News Flash-This Just in from England
Oral Roberts Basptized into Mormon Church
Oral Roberts Basptized into Mormon Church
A researcher has uncovered the LDS proxy baptism and other proxy records of televangelist Oral Roberts.
Old news, you might say. Mormons “dead dunk” famous deceased people all the time.
The problem? Oral Roberts passed away this week, December 15, 2009.
He was baptized by proxy and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints May 19-20, 2009, received his temple endowments on August 29, 2009, and was sealed to his (earthly) parents on October 13, 2009; all in the Mesa, Arizona LDS Temple, according to this researcher’s web site.
The problem? A church which insists on only its own ordinances for salvation AND which depends on direct revelation from God, should not have these kinds of problems……
Enough is Enough of Radical Islam
By Benjamin Shapiro
www.WorldNetDaily.com
Enough with the pseudonyms.Western civilization isn’t at war withterrorism any more than it is at war
with grenades. Western civilization is at war with militant Islam, which dominates Muslim communities all over the world. Militant Islam isn’t a tiny minority of otherwise goodhearted
Muslims. It’s a dominant strain of evil that runs rampant in a population of well over 1 billion.
Enough with the psychoanalysis.They don’t hate us because of Israel.They don’t hate us because we deposed Saddam Hussein. They don’t hate us because of Britney Spears. They hate us because we are infidels, and because we don’t plan on surrendering or providing them material aid in their war of aggressive expansion.
Enough with the niceties.We don’t lose our souls when we treat our enemies as enemies. We don’t
undermine our principles when we post more police officers in vulnerable areas, or when we send Marines to kill bad guys.
Enough with the words. Talking with Iran without wielding the threat of force, either economic
or military, won’t help. Appealing to the United Nations is an exercise in pathetic futility. Evil countries don’t suddenly decide to abandon their evil goals—they are forced to do so by pressure and circumstance.
Enough with the faux allies.We don’t gain anything by pretending that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are
true allies. They aren’t. We should be backing India to the hilt in its current conflict with Pakistan: Unless Pakistan can destroy its terrorist element, India should be given full leeway to do what
it needs to do. Russia and China, meanwhile, are facilitating anti-Western terrorism. Treating them as friends in this global war is simply begging for a backstabbing.
Enough with the myths.Not everyone on Earth is crying out for freedom. There are plenty of people
who are happy in their misery, believing that their suffering is part and parcel of a correct religious system. We cannot simply knock off dictators and expect indoctrinated populations to rise to
the liberal democratic challenge. Look at Gaza.
Enough with the lies.Stop telling us that Islam is a religion of peace. If it is, prove it through action.
Enough. After the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the plane downed in Pennsylvania, the endless suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks in Israel, [the list goes on ad nauseum]—
it’s about time that the West got the point: We’re in a war. Our enemies are determined. They will not quit just because we offer them Big Macs, Christina Aguilera CDs, or even the freedom to vote. They will not quit just because we ensure that they have Korans in their prison cells, or because we offer
to ban “The Satanic Verses” (as India did). They will only quit when they are dead. It is our job to make them so,and to eliminate every obstacle to their destruction.
Sometimes an Extremist Really Is an Extremist
by Jonah Goldberg
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan demonstrated many things when he allegedly committed treason in the war on terror. For starters, he showed — gratuitously, alas — that evil is still thriving.
He demonstrated that being a trained psychiatrist provides no immunity to ancient hatreds and religious fanaticism, nor does psychiatric training provide much acuity in spotting such things in others. For example, the London Telegraph reports that, in what was supposed to be a medical lecture, Hassan instead gave an hour-long briefing on the Koran, explaining to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that nonbelievers should be beheaded, have boiling oil poured down their throats and set on fire.
His fellow psychiatrists completely missed this “red flag” — a suddenly popular euphemism for incandescently obvious evidence this man had no place in the U.S. Army.
He proved how lacking our domestic security system is. According to ABC News, intelligence agencies were aware for months that Hasan had tried to contact al-Qaida. His colleagues reportedly knew he sympathized with suicide bombings and attacks on U.S. troops abroad, and one colleague said Hasan was pleased by an attack on an Army recruiting office and suggested more of the same might be desirable. That’s treason, even if you’re a Muslim.
Which raises the most troubling revelation: For many people, the idea that he is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics, was — at least initially — too terrible to contemplate. How else to explain the reflexive insistence after the attack that the real culprit was post-traumatic stress disorder? The fact that PTSD is usually diagnosed in people who’ve been through trauma (hence the “post”), and that Hasan had never seen combat, didn’t seem to matter much.
Apparently the “P” in PTSD can now stand for “pre.”
A few months ago, an anti-Semitic old nut named James von Brunn allegedly took a gun to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to get payback against “the Jews” and killed a black security guard in the process.
In response to this horrific crime, the leading lights of American liberalism knew who was to blame: Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the GOP. One writer for the Huffington Post put it succinctly: “Thank you very much Karl Rove and your minions.”
The fact that Von Brunn was a 9/11 “truther” who railed against capitalism, neocons and the Bush administration didn’t matter. Nor did the glaring lack of evidence that Rove et al. ever showed antipathy for the museum. It was simply obvious that Von Brunn was the offspring of the “right-wing extremism (that) is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment,” wrote columnist Paul Krugman.
If only Hasan were a fan of Glenn Beck!
President Obama was right when he said, in the hours after the shooting, that people shouldn’t “jump to conclusions” (a lesson he might have learned when he jumped to the wrong conclusion about a white cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates, a black Harvard professor). But just as we should not jump to conclusions, we shouldn’t jump away from them.
Despite reports that Hasan had shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews insisted that “we may never know if religion was a factor at Fort Hood.” Thursday night, NBC and CBS declined to mention that Hasan is a Muslim. Meanwhile, ABC’s Martha Raddatz’s reporting on the subject reflected a yearning for denial: “As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’”
We have a real problem when much of the political and journalistic establishment is eager to jump to the conclusion that peaceful political opponents are in league with violent extremists, but is terrified to consider the possibility that violent extremists really are violent extremists if doing so means calling attention to the fact that they are Muslims.
I am more sympathetic toward this reluctance to state the truth of the matter than are some of my colleagues on the right. There is a powerful case to be made that Islamic extremism is not some fringe phenomenon but part of the mainstream of Islamic life around the world. And yet, to work from that assumption might make the assumption all the more self-fulfilling. If we act as if “Islam is the problem,” as some say, we will guarantee that Islam will become the problem. But outright denial, like we are seeing today, is surely not the beginning of wisdom either.
I have no remedy for the challenge we face. But I do take some solace in George Orwell’s observation that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
Dismantling America
Thomas Sowell – Syndicated Columnist – 10/27/2009 10:50:00
Thomas SowellJust one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official — not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President — could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.
How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to “change the United States of America,” the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles, and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: “God d— America!” Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn’t know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America’s influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration’s enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.
THE GOLDSTONE REPORT: NO FACTS…NO ACCURACY
The Goldstone Report – Using Terminology in Service of Deception
October 26, 2009 | Eli E. Hertz
Justice Richard Goldstone and the United Nations Human Rights Council, sought to rewrite history by labeling Judea and Samaria (Known as the West Bank) “Occupied Palestinian Territories” [Paragraph 11], calling Israeli Arabs “Palestinian citizens of Israel” [Paragraph 111], referring to Israeli Arab villages as “Palestinian Israeli communities” [Paragraph 110] and calling Arab inhabitants of Gaza “Palestinian People in the Gaza strip” [Paragraph 1859]. Essentially Goldstone is endowing Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza with an aura of bogus peoplehood and statehood, as well as a false history as if title or ownership could be assigned out of thin air.
No legal binding authority has empowered Goldstone or any UN organ, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the Human Rights Council to decide that the territories of the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, and Gaza could be transformed into “Occupied Palestinian Territories” or “Palestine.” Goldstone’s use of these dishonest, loaded terms empowers terrorism and the Palestinians with the right to use all measures to expel Israel.
Palestine is a Geographical Area, Not a Nationality
Arabs, the UN and its organs, and lately the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as well, have repeatedly claimed that the Palestinians are a native people – so much so that almost everyone takes it for granted. The problem is that a stateless Palestinian People is a fabrication. The word Palestine is not even Arabic.
Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian People distinct from other Arabs appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule. During that rule, local Arabs were actually considered part of, and subject to, the authority of Greater Syria (Suriyya al-Kubra).
Historically, before the Arabs fabricated the concept of Palestinian peoplehood as an exclusively Arab phenomenon, no such group existed. This is substantiated in countless official British Mandate-vintage documents that speak of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine – not Jews and Palestinians.
In fact, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (when the name “Israel” was chosen for the newly-established Jewish State), the term “Palestine” applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before the state’s independence.
Some examples include:
• The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post until 1948.
• Bank Leumi L’Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the “Anglo-Palestine Company” until 1948.
• The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was initially called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
• Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was originally called the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra,” composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.
• The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
There Has Never Been a Sovereign Arab State in Palestine
The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs who never established a Palestinian state or advocated one prior to the Six-Day War in 1967.
Only twice in Jerusalem’s history has it served as a national capital. The first time was as the capital of the two Jewish Commonwealths during the First and Second Temple periods, as described in the Bible, reinforced by archaeological evidence and numerous ancient documents. The second time is in modern times as the capital of the State of Israel. It has never served as an Arab capital for the simple reason that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state.
The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow. Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN in 1947 recommended to partition Palestine, and to establish “an Arab and a Jewish state” (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinian Arabs clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.
So much for facts and accuracy.
Obama’s Energy Plan: Mandated Scarcity in the Richest Country in the World
Monday, August 17, 2009
Even Ayn Rand would not have gone this far in depicting the evil workings of the moochers, looters and destroyers. It would have been too unbelievable.
Obama is manufacturing crises from one day to the next. Hey, it’s how to ram his marxist agenda through a capitalistic state.
From my PAMELA blog:
To my friends, family, acquaintances, business contacts,
As most of you know, I work for ExxonMobil (29 yrs.) and just Wednesday 8/12/09 sat in what was the most disturbing presentation in my career. The meeting was called by the ExxonMobil Chalmette Refinery Manager with prior notice of the subject matter to be presented. I am well familiar with the subject and have had my speculation on the results were the event to occur, but this makes it official in my mind. The presenters were Richard Igercich (Refinery Manager) Dan Borne (President of the Gulf South Chemical Plants Association) and an ExxonMobil executive analyst on Political climate for the South Region. The subject matter was The Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill which is up for voting after August recess of the Legislature. The Bill is a very complex one and offers devastating results to you, me, our generations to come and every business in America. The urgent call to all of our employees is to contact all friends and family outside of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (all members of Congress and Senate here oppose the Bill), to urge you to contact your State and U.S. Senators and Congress to tell them to vote NO to the Waxman-Markey Bill.
Are you prepared to live without gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and heating oil? Can you afford electricity, coal, natural gas at a cost more than 100% increase per household, over what you are paying now? That is exactly what we will do if the Waxman-Markey Bill (Cap and Trade) if written in its present form is passed. This is not an exaggeration or a pessimistic opinion, but the honest truth. Obama admits it in his campaign to wean the U.S. off of Crude Oil Petroleum products. The intent is to go “Cold Turkey” by making Crude Oil Products beyond affordability by every American homeowner. The Tax Cost on the Oil Refineries and Chemical Plants ability to produce the products would be more than consumers to afford to purchase the product. Remember just last year when gasoline prices were $4.00 plus. That will be nothing compared to the effects of this bill.
The bill in its present form targets Oil Refineries and Chemical Plants as the most dangerous contributors to Global Warming, which has no scientific facts to support that accusation. It not only blames the Refineries and Plants individually but also associates the emissions of every car, truck, motorcycle, airplane, jet, train, farm equipment and boat in America to the Bill. Below is the briefest excerpt of the Bill I could find, but remember it is a short version of a very complex issue. So please e-mail, write a personal letter and/or phone your State and U.S. Senators, and members of Congress to vote NO to the Waxman-Markey Bill.
Sincerely, Bob
Testimony before The House and Senate Western Caucus July 30, 2009
My name is Ben Lieberman. I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. I would like to thank the House and Senate Western Caucus for the privilege of participating in today’s hearing. I’ll be discussing the costs of the cap-and-trade approach to addressing global warming and The Heritage Foundation’s economic analysis of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey). As you know, the House narrowly passed this bill, which is similar to, but has more stringent targets and timetables than, the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill that was rejected by the Senate last June.
It is clear that cap and trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates–and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted–the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to used less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.
The only entities directly regulated by Waxman-Markey would be the electric utilities, oil refiners, natural gas producers, and some manufacturers that produce energy on site. So the good news for the rest of us–homeowners, car owners, small business owners, farmers and ranchers–is that we won’t be directly regulated under this bill. The bad news is that nearly all the costs will get passed on to us anyway.
What are those costs? According to an analysis we conducted at The Heritage Foundation, an updated version of which will be out shortly, the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill’s provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.
But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.
Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035. And note that those are net job losses, after the much-hyped green jobs are taken into account. Some of the lost jobs will be destroyed entirely, while others will be outsourced to nations like China and India that have repeatedly stated that they’ll never hamper their own economic growth with energy-cost-boosting global-warming measures like Waxman-Markey. Since farming is energy-intensive, that sector will be particularly hard-hit. Higher gasoline and diesel fuel costs, higher electricity costs, and higher natural gas-derived fertilizer costs all erode farm profits, which are expected to drop by 28 percent in 2012 and average 57 percent lower through 2035. As with American manufacturers, Waxman-Markey also puts American farmers at a global disadvantage, as other food exporting nations would have no comparable energy price-raising measures in place.
Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it. It should also be noted that the costs are not distributed evenly. Low-income households spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy, and thus would be hit harder than average by Waxman-Markey. Of course, the bill has provisions to give back some revenues to low-income households, but it is likely that these rebates will amount only to some portion of each dollar that was taken away from them in the first place in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for other goods and services. Waxman-Markey also disproportionately burdens those states, especially in the Midwest and South, that still have a substantial number of manufacturing jobs to lose, as well as those that rely more heavily than others on coal for electric generation. In addition, because the bill raises energy costs, it hurts rural America much more than urban America. Rural Americans, farmers and non-farmers, spend an average of 58 percent more on energy as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts, and those costs would go up.
The disproportionate burdens affect the West. Coal mining will be very hard-hit, so Montana and Wyoming and other coal-producing states will see this important sector of their economies shrink significantly. Western oil and natural gas producers will face higher costs as well. The promise of oil shale in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming will never be realized under Waxman-Markey. As I mentioned, agriculture is hard-hit, and that particularly includes things common in parts of the West that are not well positioned to partially defray their costs by availing themselves of offsets, like ranching on federal lands, fruits and vegetables, and potatoes. And of course the long distances rural Westerners have to drive in the course of each day means that gasoline and diesel price increases hurt them more than other Americans.
In conclusion, it is not surprising that support for Waxman-Markey is heaviest in those parts of the country, the urban centers in the West Coast and Northeast, that are least harmed by it. Even there, the economic damage would be bad enough, but the citizens in the rest of the country and their representatives, and especially those who represent the rural West, should really be asking many tough questions about the economic impact of cap and trade.
The Real Reason Obama Hides His Birth Certificate
A Special Report By Gary DeMar, President of American Vision
Almost anyone can be president as long as they meet three, and only three, basic requirements. They must be a natural born citizen of the United States and at least 35 years old. They must also have been a resident of this country for at least the last fourteen years. Of all the things our Founders could have required, they picked only these three.
There are no requirements concerning political philosophy and knowledge of how our government works. You don’t even have to have any experience. Instead, they picked citizenship. Why? “The President of the United States was to be a citizen of this country, holding up this country’s values and ideals. He had to be loyal to this country alone.” Whether Barack Obama was born in the United States is important, but even more important is for him to demonstrate his constitutional loyalty to a nation built on Christian principles. Thomas Jefferson said it well enough:
No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.
President Obama has been apologizing for America in every foreign country he visits, and he does it publicly. But it’s in Muslim’s nations that he has denigrated and dismissed America’s Christian heritage most forcefully. For several years, first as a Senator and now as President, Mr. Obama has repeatedly claimed that America is not a Christian nation. On a recent presidential trip to the Muslim nation of Turkey he announced to the world that Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Did he ask American Christians? During a trip to the Muslim nation of Egypt, he declared that America is “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” The Muslim population in the United States is less than one percent while the Christian population is nearly 60 percent. What’s going on here?
Obama is a Muslim sympathizer. It’s possible that if his birth certificate is released, it might reveal a Muslim connection.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little put off by all of this and even a little frightened. The Muslim world, even if it’s only a minority of a billion radical Muslims, is terrifying. World domination is their goal, and there is no reason why we should be helping them to achieve it. So what do we do about it? While we put pressure on this administration any way we can to stop its tyrannical policies, we need to alert more Americans about President Obama’s Muslim sympathies and refute his rejection of America’s Christian history.
FEDERALIST No. 63
The Senate Continued
For the Independent Journal.
Alexander Hamilton or James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:
A FIFTH desideratum, illustrating the utility of a senate, is the want of a due sense of national character. Without a select and stable member of the government, the esteem of foreign powers will not only be forfeited by an unenlightened and variable policy, proceeding from the causes already mentioned, but the national councils will not possess that sensibility to the opinion of the world, which is perhaps not less necessary in order to merit, than it is to obtain, its respect and confidence.
An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government for two reasons: the one is, that, independently of the merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on various accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy; the second is, that in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed. What has not America lost by her want of character with foreign nations; and how many errors and follies would she not have avoided, if the justice and propriety of her measures had, in every instance, been previously tried by the light in which they would probably appear to the unbiased part of mankind?
Yet however requisite a sense of national character may be, it is evident that it can never be sufficiently possessed by a numerous and changeable body. It can only be found in a number so small that a sensible degree of the praise and blame of public measures may be the portion of each individual; or in an assembly so durably invested with public trust, that the pride and consequence of its members may be sensibly incorporated with the reputation and prosperity of the community. The half-yearly representatives of Rhode Island would probably have been little affected in their deliberations on the iniquitous measures of that State, by arguments drawn from the light in which such measures would be viewed by foreign nations, or even by the sister States; whilst it can scarcely be doubted that if the concurrence of a select and stable body had been necessary, a regard to national character alone would have prevented the calamities under which that misguided people is now laboring.
I add, as a SIXTH defect the want, in some important cases, of a due responsibility in the government to the people, arising from that frequency of elections which in other cases produces this responsibility. This remark will, perhaps, appear not only new, but paradoxical. It must nevertheless be acknowledged, when explained, to be as undeniable as it is important.
Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents. The objects of government may be divided into two general classes: the one depending on measures which have singly an immediate and sensible operation; the other depending on a succession of well-chosen and well-connected measures, which have a gradual and perhaps unobserved operation. The importance of the latter description to the collective and permanent welfare of every country, needs no explanation. And yet it is evident that an assembly elected for so short a term as to be unable to provide more than one or two links in a chain of measures, on which the general welfare may essentially depend, ought not to be answerable for the final result, any more than a steward or tenant, engaged for one year, could be justly made to answer for places or improvements which could not be accomplished in less than half a dozen years. Nor is it possible for the people to estimate the SHARE of influence which their annual assemblies may respectively have on events resulting from the mixed transactions of several years. It is sufficiently difficult to preserve a personal responsibility in the members of a NUMEROUS body, for such acts of the body as have an immediate, detached, and palpable operation on its constituents.
The proper remedy for this defect must be an additional body in the legislative department, which, having sufficient permanency to provide for such objects as require a continued attention, and a train of measures, may be justly and effectually answerable for the attainment of those objects.
Thus far I have considered the circumstances which point out the necessity of a well-constructed Senate only as they relate to the representatives of the people. To a people as little blinded by prejudice or corrupted by flattery as those whom I address, I shall not scruple to add, that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.
It may be suggested, that a people spread over an extensive region cannot, like the crowded inhabitants of a small district, be subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures. I am far from denying that this is a distinction of peculiar importance. I have, on the contrary, endeavored in a former paper to show, that it is one of the principal recommendations of a confederated republic. At the same time, this advantage ought not to be considered as superseding the use of auxiliary precautions. It may even be remarked, that the same extended situation, which will exempt the people of America from some of the dangers incident to lesser republics, will expose them to the inconveniency of remaining for a longer time under the influence of those misrepresentations which the combined industry of interested men may succeed in distributing among them.
It adds no small weight to all these considerations, to recollect that history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate. Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are, in fact, the only states to whom that character can be applied. In each of the two first there was a senate for life. The constitution of the senate in the last is less known. Circumstantial evidence makes it probable that it was not different in this particular from the two others. It is at least certain, that it had some quality or other which rendered it an anchor against popular fluctuations; and that a smaller council, drawn out of the senate, was appointed not only for life, but filled up vacancies itself. These examples, though as unfit for the imitation, as they are repugnant to the genius, of America, are, notwithstanding, when compared with the fugitive and turbulent existence of other ancient republics, very instructive proofs of the necessity of some institution that will blend stability with liberty. I am not unaware of the circumstances which distinguish the American from other popular governments, as well ancient as modern; and which render extreme circumspection necessary, in reasoning from the one case to the other. But after allowing due weight to this consideration, it may still be maintained, that there are many points of similitude which render these examples not unworthy of our attention. Many of the defects, as we have seen, which can only be supplied by a senatorial institution, are common to a numerous assembly frequently elected by the people, and to the people themselves. There are others peculiar to the former, which require the control of such an institution. The people can never wilfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.
The difference most relied on, between the American and other republics, consists in the principle of representation; which is the pivot on which the former move, and which is supposed to have been unknown to the latter, or at least to the ancient part of them. The use which has been made of this difference, in reasonings contained in former papers, will have shown that I am disposed neither to deny its existence nor to undervalue its importance. I feel the less restraint, therefore, in observing, that the position concerning the ignorance of the ancient governments on the subject of representation, is by no means precisely true in the latitude commonly given to it. Without entering into a disquisition which here would be misplaced, I will refer to a few known facts, in support of what I advance.
In the most pure democracies of Greece, many of the executive functions were performed, not by the people themselves, but by officers elected by the people, and REPRESENTING the people in their EXECUTIVE capacity.
Prior to the reform of Solon, Athens was governed by nine Archons, annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE AT LARGE. The degree of power delegated to them seems to be left in great obscurity. Subsequent to that period, we find an assembly, first of four, and afterwards of six hundred members, annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE; and PARTIALLY representing them in their LEGISLATIVE capacity, since they were not only associated with the people in the function of making laws, but had the exclusive right of originating legislative propositions to the people. The senate of Carthage, also, whatever might be its power, or the duration of its appointment, appears to have been ELECTIVE by the suffrages of the people. Similar instances might be traced in most, if not all the popular governments of antiquity.
Lastly, in Sparta we meet with the Ephori, and in Rome with the Tribunes; two bodies, small indeed in numbers, but annually ELECTED BY THE WHOLE BODY OF THE PEOPLE, and considered as the REPRESENTATIVES of the people, almost in their PLENIPOTENTIARY capacity. The Cosmi of Crete were also annually ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE, and have been considered by some authors as an institution analogous to those of Sparta and Rome, with this difference only, that in the election of that representative body the right of suffrage was communicated to a part only of the people.
From these facts, to which many others might be added, it is clear that the principle of representation was neither unknown to the ancients nor wholly overlooked in their political constitutions. The true distinction between these and the American governments, lies IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, from any share in the LATTER, and not in the TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE from the administration of the FORMER. The distinction, however, thus qualified, must be admitted to leave a most advantageous superiority in favor of the United States. But to insure to this advantage its full effect, we must be careful not to separate it from the other advantage, of an extensive territory. For it cannot be believed, that any form of representative government could have succeeded within the narrow limits occupied by the democracies of Greece.
In answer to all these arguments, suggested by reason, illustrated by examples, and enforced by our own experience, the jealous adversary of the Constitution will probably content himself with repeating, that a senate appointed not immediately by the people, and for the term of six years, must gradually acquire a dangerous pre-eminence in the government, and finally transform it into a tyrannical aristocracy.
To this general answer, the general reply ought to be sufficient, that liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power; that there are numerous instances of the former as well as of the latter; and that the former, rather than the latter, are apparently most to be apprehended by the United States. But a more particular reply may be given.
Before such a revolution can be effected, the Senate, it is to be observed, must in the first place corrupt itself; must next corrupt the State legislatures; must then corrupt the House of Representatives; and must finally corrupt the people at large. It is evident that the Senate must be first corrupted before it can attempt an establishment of tyranny. Without corrupting the State legislatures, it cannot prosecute the attempt, because the periodical change of members would otherwise regenerate the whole body. Without exerting the means of corruption with equal success on the House of Representatives, the opposition of that coequal branch of the government would inevitably defeat the attempt; and without corrupting the people themselves, a succession of new representatives would speedily restore all things to their pristine order. Is there any man who can seriously persuade himself that the proposed Senate can, by any possible means within the compass of human address, arrive at the object of a lawless ambition, through all these obstructions?
If reason condemns the suspicion, the same sentence is pronounced by experience. The constitution of Maryland furnishes the most apposite example. The Senate of that State is elected, as the federal Senate will be, indirectly by the people, and for a term less by one year only than the federal Senate. It is distinguished, also, by the remarkable prerogative of filling up its own vacancies within the term of its appointment, and, at the same time, is not under the control of any such rotation as is provided for the federal Senate. There are some other lesser distinctions, which would expose the former to colorable objections, that do not lie against the latter. If the federal Senate, therefore, really contained the danger which has been so loudly proclaimed, some symptoms at least of a like danger ought by this time to have been betrayed by the Senate of Maryland, but no such symptoms have appeared. On the contrary, the jealousies at first entertained by men of the same description with those who view with terror the correspondent part of the federal Constitution, have been gradually extinguished by the progress of the experiment; and the Maryland constitution is daily deriving, from the salutary operation of this part of it, a reputation in which it will probably not be rivalled by that of any State in the Union.
But if any thing could silence the jealousies on this subject, it ought to be the British example. The Senate there instead of being elected for a term of six years, and of being unconfined to particular families or fortunes, is an hereditary assembly of opulent nobles. The House of Representatives, instead of being elected for two years, and by the whole body of the people, is elected for seven years, and, in very great proportion, by a very small proportion of the people. Here, unquestionably, ought to be seen in full display the aristocratic usurpations and tyranny which are at some future period to be exemplified in the United States. Unfortunately, however, for the anti-federal argument, the British history informs us that this hereditary assembly has not been able to defend itself against the continual encroachments of the House of Representatives; and that it no sooner lost the support of the monarch, than it was actually crushed by the weight of the popular branch.
As far as antiquity can instruct us on this subject, its examples support the reasoning which we have employed. In Sparta, the Ephori, the annual representatives of the people, were found an overmatch for the senate for life, continually gained on its authority and finally drew all power into their own hands. The Tribunes of Rome, who were the representatives of the people, prevailed, it is well known, in almost every contest with the senate for life, and in the end gained the most complete triumph over it. The fact is the more remarkable, as unanimity was required in every act of the Tribunes, even after their number was augmented to ten. It proves the irresistible force possessed by that branch of a free government, which has the people on its side. To these examples might be added that of Carthage, whose senate, according to the testimony of Polybius, instead of drawing all power into its vortex, had, at the commencement of the second Punic War, lost almost the whole of its original portion.
Besides the conclusive evidence resulting from this assemblage of facts, that the federal Senate will never be able to transform itself, by gradual usurpations, into an independent and aristocratic body, we are warranted in believing, that if such a revolution should ever happen from causes which the foresight of man cannot guard against, the House of Representatives, with the people on their side, will at all times be able to bring back the Constitution to its primitive form and principles. Against the force of the immediate representatives of the people, nothing will be able to maintain even the constitutional authority of the Senate, but such a display of enlightened policy, and attachment to the public good, as will divide with that branch of the legislature the affections and support of the entire body of the people themselves.
PUBLIUS.
