This started as a comment to dpayton’s diary titled Obama Derangement Syndrome and expanded to the extent that I thought it better to write my own diary.

As part of the RedState community, we all are to be on the same side in terms of opposing the policies and direction that Obama and the Democratic Congress would take us and instead trying to preserve and expand our individual liberties, building upon conservative principles.

We all see the terrible actions taking place and the destructive effects that each individually will have on our nation.

The challenge here has to do with perception of the larger picture when you step back and try to discern the larger pattern. It’s like looking at a puzzle where some pieces have been put in place and you see other pieces being prepared for placement and you try to figure out what the final image is going to look like.

The problem is that if you wait until nearly all the pieces are in place, then you will face nearly impossible odds of preventing completion. Conversely if you intuit too soon, you risk coming up with the wrong image.

So what it boils down to is at what point we intuit the image and take action accordingly.

And we all have different points when we are willing to take that inductive leap to intuiting the whole and to take a stand and act on that conclusion.

So to dpayton and others who worry (rightly) about ODS, what many RedStaters are telling you is that many of us as we connect the dots (to change metaphors) are intuiting that what we see is a radical effort to change the Rules that have governed our nation’s political process to create a one-party state. And as we increasingly see classic tactics that totalitarians have historically utilized to seize and hold on to power, we more strongly come to the conclusion that a totalitarian goal is behind these tactics.

Now, you recognize, and we all recognize that a certain percentage on the left (those with BDS) had apocalyptic views of the Bush administration ushering in a Fascist state and rather feverishly connecting the dots to come up with that picture. And they were very wrong, as history demonstrated.

And thus you - and all of us - are understandably skittish about repeating the mirror error and doing ODS with Obama. And caution is certainly in order, because credibility of one’s judgment is at stake.

And so I would leave you with two fundamentals differences between the Bush administration and what we see of the Obama administration.

1) We see a monotonic effort by Obama to federalize and central areas of endeavor that historically have been in state or private hands, most notably the government take-over of GM and Chrysler and expansion into the financial industry. And we see their support for Obamacare and Cap-and-Trade, and federal hate laws legislation - and more notably the whole net-neutrality issue coming to the for - what we see is uniformly and effort to expand the scope of the federal government and to increasingly regulate every sphere of individual and corporate behavior.

When this trend is uniform and always in the direction of increasing government power, then the evidence becomes preponderant that the goal is an all-powerful state and curtailing of individual freedom. The end of just a trajectory is the fundamental idea that rights reside in the government, who gives rights to people as they see fit. This is the root upon which all tyranny finds nurture.

The radical alternative that was expounded in our Declaration of Independence, the novus ordo seclorum upon which our nation was birthed was that rights inherently reside in individuals, who give to government those limited powers as are necessary.

And this ancient deception- that rights reside in the government, not in individuals, is a fundamental move off the bedrock foundation upon which our nation and our liberties are protected and a move onto sand.

Although some of Bush’s actions arguably augured increasing governmental powers (such as the Patriot Act) - in the larger picture of the actions of his Administration, these could reasonably be viewed as aberrations from a general pattern of increasing individual and private power. Conversely, in the Obama administration, the pattern is uniformly towards increasing governmental control.

2) The second line of evidence are the statements and writings of the various people who Obama has appointed to positions of power in his administration - and also the statements and writings of his admitted mentors.

And a preponderance of these individuals by their very words have stake out radical positions that involve revolutionary changes in the system of government of our nation and the adoption of a Marxist-type of government and concentration of governmental powers to impose their programs upon the nation. They don’t want to abide by our Constitutional governance.

And it this is what they’ve said and written, we need to take them at their word. Too many times in the past, people have said “no, they really don’t meant that, it’s just posturing” - and then act shocked when these individuals then proceed to do exactly what they said they would.

Let’s not repeat that error in our time.

So when you weight the evidence, you must at least conclude that the danger signs are evident. At what point you will make that jump, that is up to each person’s judgment.

It’s certainly more comfortable to think that the rules are being honored rather than that an effort is underway to change the rules - especially when the rules have been in place for at 140+ years (i.e. the end of the War Between the States).

But seriously consider whether the game is changing - because all our futures and those of our children and generations to come may be at stake.

This began as a comment to LJ “Beaglescout” Miller’s diary Central Concepts from David Cameron’s Speech to the Conservative Party, but I’ve since decided to expand it a bit more and make it a diary.

Melanie Phillips is one of the most fearless and incisive conservative commentators on either side of the Atlantic who has long been standing against the receeding tide of Britain’s cultural and national values against the multicultural relativism and non-judgmentalism that is eroding away the foundations of its future existence as a Western nation.

And having long suffered through the Labour government, she is quite distressed that the Conservative Party leadership, particularly David Cameron, is resting its political program on the same foundation of sand that the Labour government has been foundering upon.

This latest speech she views as just more rhetorical fluff devoid of substantive content, rhetoric without conviction.

Unfortunately, we in the U.S. also have been suffering from such similar empty - or evenly deliberately deceptive and ephemeral speeches - from our political leadership, and not just from the left side of the political divide.

From Melanie’s review titled Playing it safe (10/8):

So what went wrong with David Cameron’s speech? This was supposed to be the speech that ‘sealed the deal’, the last big chance before the election to show Britain why it should vote for him rather than merely against Gordon Brown.

He blew it.

It was vague, woolly, bland, dull. Far from igniting with the passion of a moral cause, it read like a mechanical assembly of boxes to be ticked. There was hardly any sense of the urgent civilisational threats and challenges to this country.

She then proceeds to eviscerate his speech in agonizing detail. Some excerpts:

[Regarding Afghanistan], a statesman-in-waiting would have done what the government has so conspicuously failed to do…that is, explain to the mystified and dangerously apathetic or even hostile British people why this is not a faraway war in which we should never have got involved but one upon which the security of the region and the free world depends, and that we have to see it through however long it takes…

As for the rest of the speech, parts of it were incoherent. He can’t be against big government but also ‘the party of the NHS’. He can’t be for devolution and for the union which it is weakening. He can’t be for the minimum wage and also free up entrepreneurialism to create desperately needed jobs.

He can’t be for responsibility in family life by giving financial incentives for marriage and giving financial incentives for civil partnerships whose fundamental premise is that marriage is not a unique institution with unique privileges and duties defining its unique role in safeguarding family life, but that its privileges can be detached from those duties and given to others.

Either he’s running scared of the Guardianistas and the BBC — or worse, he agrees with them.

Much of the rest was studiedly vague and took the form of empty statements that welfare dependency would end, people would be protected from crime and would get what they wanted from the school system…

And that is what was missing from Cameron’s speech. It’s not that it was short on policy detail, which was not its role anyway. It’s that it didn’t tell us a story that made us say yes, this man really does grasp not just the economic debacle but the full extent of Britain’s cultural, moral and existential decline – and that it is important that we elect him in order to reverse that decline.

Instead, he played ultra-safe; and so we are left wondering even now whether he’s keeping his powder dry – or whether there isn’t any powder there.

Read it all, and also check out her earlier critical reports from the Conservative Party annual conference:

David Blair (10/7)

The elephants in the room at the Tory party conference (10/6)

David Cameron and the spectre of ‘President’ Blair (10/5)

Read and weep for a once great nation and pray that we do not follow in her footsteps, but that the Lord will raise up leaders who will courageously speak the hard truths - and a nation that will listen and heed.

After reading the following story this morning on Fox News, I am left utterly dumbfounded that our general in charge of the Afghanistan campaign has to make such an appalling statement. How any military leader can in good conscience sacrifice the lives of our American soldiers for such a mission goal is unconscionable.

We might as well turn our Department of Defense into the Department in Charge of Promoting Self-Esteem by Force.

Top U.S. Commander Says Taliban Winning Communication Initiative

America’s top commander says the United States and its allies in Afghanistan must “wrest the information initiative” from the Taliban and other insurgent groups, in an assessment made public last Monday.

Gen. McChrystal said the mission has changed in Afghanistan from a goal of struggle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Afghan population, to one of giving them the ‘trust and confidence’ in themselves and their government, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

On second reading, I see an even more insidious agenda at work, just another example of supplanting American Exceptionalism and the defense of Western culture with multiculturalism and cultural relativism that says that no culture’s values are above anyone else’s - that all are equally valid.

Exactly what Comrade Obama has been preaching since he took office.

How else to interpret this change from “winning hearts and minds” which means promoting and defending our values of freedom and rights of all individuals to ” giving them the trust and confidence in themselves and their government” which means making people feel good about what they now believe in: no change required.

So American and Western values are no longer worth promoting to the rest of the world - we no longer will even attempt to defend them (except as one choice among many equally valid choices)? This is what generations of Americans have shed their bloods for?

So if the people want to maintain 9th century values to oppress women, require strict adherence to Sharia, and bring the world under domination by their version of Islam, including annihilating all infidels (unless they convert) - then we should eagerly participate in help make them fell good about these things so that they have trust and confidence in the themselves and their government.

And if “trust and confidence in themselves” means that they go out and try by force make the rest of the world have the same type of “trust and confidence” - that’s perfectly fine too?

Does that mean our military are now going to be trained to facilitate encounter groups while the Taliban are continuing to assassinate tribal and governmental leaders under their version of “winning hearts and minds”?

This is total intellectual and moral mush.

Indeed, this is nothing short of sacrilege. And if the American people go along with the leadership that produces such spittle, then we will share culpability for this betrayal of American and the world.

Congressman Suggests People Will Don ‘White Hoods’ If Wilson Not Rebuked

In fact, Rep. Johnson not only publicly called Rep. Wilson a racism supporter, but also raised the specter of the KKK rising again if Rep. Wilson is not punished sacrificed as propitiation to the gods.

In an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on “white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

.

I’m surprised he didn’t call for a treason trial for insulting the monarch.

So this is what is meant by “hope and change”? how is this not the fear-mongering that the Democrats have lobbed against all their opponents.

And for that matter, how is it not a violation of House rules to accuse one’s colleague of being a supporter of racism?

I am astonished that given the forces arrayed against us that we have scattered the juggernaut that was ramming Obamacare down out throats and brought to the attention of the American public that there is serious opposition to further government control of our health care system.

However, I am sensing that too many of us are starting to gloat and to prematurely declaring victory from our remarkable defense just as the opposition is wheeling out the big guns and air forces for shock and awe, which should start in just a few hours.

We’ve seen the softening up from a redoubling of the media attacks, trying again to paint our opposition as fringe elements, along with misdirection as to the next point of attack. Even as public option is being bandied about as the “big” issue, the other mandates and government interventions are deliberately slipped in the side door, just as the magician misdirects your attention on the card he is holding up while stacking the deck out of range.

So what do we have ahead: we have Obama’s speech and frenetic activity ahead, which the press is going to magnify into a crushing breakthrough and irresistable momentum, with biased polls and a blanket of commentary as to how the tide is turning. This will be coupled with the unleashing of the AMA and pharmaceutical’s advertising blitz for insisting on reform to complement activities of the AARP and left front groups that have been seeding the ground.

But at this point, the main focus will not be on the American people, but rather on our Republican elected officials in Congress who are desperately holding onto our citadel against all odds.

What we need are Republican leaders in Congress who will say “Nuts!” and stand against the pressures and the seductions to abandon the defenses and find a fig leaf to cover surrender. Trojan horses are being brought forward to the city gates (coops, triggers, mandates, various hidden taxes); appeals to bipartisanship and negotiations with a moving target on the bill provisions until the trap door is sprung. Not to mention the eternal temptation to legislators to DO SOMETHING: pass a law, attact the spotlight to yourself, receive adulation - rather than to say NO, which is never the popular stand to take, as any parent can tell you.

Which means that we can no longer rely on polls and rumblings from the citizenry to carry the day; we need to target our elected officials and remind them continually what is at stake and keep vocalizing the alternative that will be true reform. Remind them that all agreements and promises by Democrats have an expiration date. Remind them that surrender to the Democrats on health not only will buy them no protection in the next election but will embolden the Democrats to use their bully tactics to push through future legislative attrocities such as Cap and Trade and EFCA that will bring America to its knees.

But above, we cannot relax our vigilance. We need to keep kicking and speaking out with the venues that we still have.

A little Friday afternoon diversion after a trying week on the political war front…

BooBooKitten put up a Redhot post earlier today titled Hell on Wheels with the money quote from an article titled Nineteen Minutes in a Car with Harry Reid. She concluded with the following comment:

I would rather ride with Roland D. Lebay in his Plymouth Fury!

which immediately brought this question to mind for BooBooKitchen:

Would you rather ride in a car driven by Ted Kenney after a staff party?

which in turn led to this fill-in-the-blank contest - and you have a choice between two phrases:

I would rather ride with ______________________ than with Harry Reid

or

I would rather _________ than spend nineteen minutes in a car with Harry Reid .

Please stay within the usual RedState guidelines regarding language, etc. and keep your answers out of the gutter. No prizes, though, just tension relief.

Looks like surgeons are starting to get a bit miffed with President Obama for his recent attacks on their profession and their integrity. The American College of Surgeons released late yesterday a press release titled Statement from the American College of Surgeons Regarding Recent Comments from President Obama. Key excerpts include the following:

The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.

Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong. He stated that a surgeon gets paid $50,000 for a leg amputation when, in fact, Medicare pays a surgeon between $740 and $1,140…

Three weeks ago, the President suggested that a surgeon’s decision to remove a child’s tonsils is based on the desire to make a lot of money. That remark was ill-informed and dangerous, and we were dismayed by this characterization of the work surgeons do. Surgeons make decisions about recommending operations based on what’s right for the patient.

…The President’s remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.

Of course, the release then goes on to kiss up a bit to the President and offer him a facesaving exit by concluding in a fit of wishful thinking:

We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.

Nonetheless, the release does contain some surprisingly strong language to challenge the President’s attempts to demonize surgeons as greedy and not acting in their patients’ best interests and to tell people that they need the government to protect them against their doctors.

This would appear to be the first national medical organization to speak against the President. We’ll have to see if this is just a flash-in-the-pan, or if they and other organizations will belated wake up and see what’s coming down the pike - and even more if they actually commit their lobbying and money resources to protect the public in the upcoming fight against destroying our health care system.

But at least it’s encouraging that someone on the provider side has gotten fed up enough with the bullying to risk pushing back.

A dramatization of the representatives of the 13 colonies voting on a resolution to approve a declaration of independence from the British Crown

Excerpts from a letter from John Adams to his wife dated July 3, 1776, the evening before that fateful vote:

Had a declaration of independence been made seven months ago, it would have been attended with many great and glorious effects. We might, before this hour, have formed alliance with foreign states. We should have mastered Quebec and been in possession of Canada.
…

But, on the other hand, the delay of this declaration to this time has many great advantages attending it. The hopes of reconciliation which were fondly entertained by multitudes of honest and well-meaning, though short-sighted and mistaken, people have been gradually, and at last totally, extinguished. Time has been given for the whole people maturely to consider the great question of independence, and to ripen their judgment, dissipate their fears, and allure their hopes, by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by debating it in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspection, in town and county meetings, as well as in private conversations, so that the whole people, in every colony, have now adopted it as their own act. This will cement the union, and avoid those heats, and perhaps convulsions, which might have been occasioned by such a declaration six months ago.

But the day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever.

You may think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this declaration and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not.

As it turned out, of course, as it was July 4th, not July 2nd, that has become the date of our great Anniversary Festival.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And what those 56 brave men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor? Here is what it cost them*:

Seventeen of the signers served in the military during the American Revolution. Thomas Nelson was a colonel in the Second Virginia Regiment and then commanded Virginia military forces at the Battle of Yorktown. William Whipple served with the New Hampshire militia and was one of the commanding officers in the decisive Saratoga campaign. Oliver Wolcott led the Connecticut regiments sent for the defense of New York and commanded a brigade of militia that took part in the defeat of General Burgoyne. Caesar Rodney was a Major General in the Delaware militia and John Hancock was the same in the Massachusetts militia.

Five of the signers were captured by the British during the war. Captains Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Middleton (South Carolina) were all captured at the Battle of Charleston in 1780; Colonel George Walton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Savannah. Richard Stockton of New Jersey never recovered from his incarceration at the hands of British Loyalists and died in 1781.

Colonel Thomas McKean of Delaware wrote John Adams that he was “hunted like a fox by the enemy—compelled to remove my family five times in a few months, and at last fixed them in a little log house on the banks of the Susquehanna . . . and they were soon obliged to move again on account of the incursions of the Indians.” Abraham Clark of New Jersey had two of his sons captured by the British during the war. The son of John Witherspoon, a major in the New Jersey Brigade, was killed at the Battle of Germantown.

Eleven signers had their homes and property destroyed. Francis Lewis’s New York home was destroyed and his wife was taken prisoner. John Hart’s farm and mills were destroyed when the British invaded New Jersey and he died while fleeing capture. Carter Braxton and Thomas Nelson (both of Virginia) lent large sums of their personal fortunes to support the war effort, but were never repaid.

*Source: Independence Forever: Why America Celebrates the Fourth of July

Let us then shake off the seductions of those who believe that freedom is our natural entitlement, and recall that to every generation anew falls the duty and privilege of defending our liberties and working to offer the blessings of freedom to all peoples of the earth.

(cross-posted at And Rightly So!)

On July 4, 1776, history records the beginning of the great American experiment, when the leaders of the newly united States in America cast off the yoke of servitude to a despot and proclaimed to the world that we henceforth were to be a free nation - ushering in a New Order of the Ages, as our Great Seal commemorates, that has transformed the entire globe.

Two Hundred and Thirty Three Later, the President of the United States - enabled by his allies in Congress and abroad who remain silent - has now abjured our nation’s oath to Liberty and issued an ultimatum that solemnly declares that by July 4, 2009, the freely-elected government of Honduras must take upon themselves the yoke of servitude to a despotic president whom they have just liberated themselves from, in accord with their Constitution and the unified support of their Congress and Courts.

And behind that ultimatum is the clear, implicit threat that the United States is prepared to impose its will upon the nation of Honduras by force. Whether we send our troops in, or facilitate surrogate armies to invade that nation, the message to the world is that the U.S. has now betrayed its call, changed its allegiance, and now stands on the side of tyranny against the forces of freedom.

The symbolism of this occurring on the 233rd anniversary of our nation’s founding is no coincidence.

Am I recklessly waxing apocalyptic?

I do not believe so: the miners of old brought along a canary to warn them of grave danger, and abandoning their canary to its fate was a foreshadowing of their imminent deaths as well.

Honduras 2009 is that canary - just as Spain in 1936 was the canary whose demise signaled the ascendancy of the Fascist powers and heralded the coming of a life-and-death war for the future of freedom.

While the U.S. escaped the flames of war for a season, soon we became engulfed in that conflict, in which the blood of many of our people was shed once again to once again secure the blessings for liberty of that generation and its posterity.

And the same will sooner or later befall our generation if we stand by while other hands strike down and slay those canaries that sings of freedom and deliverance from oppression. We may escape the judgment of history for a season if we close our eyes as other peoples and nations fall before us - but our time will come when the boots of tyranny hit our soil again, if we do not take a stand in this hour of need to defend Liberty’s children, our siblings.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Okay, enough with the rhetoric - what action can we take?

Since our President and our Secretary of State have deserted their posts and joined with the forces arrayed against Honduras - and since our Democratic leaders in Congress abet the President with their silence, then it falls to a delegation of our Republican leadership and prominent conservatives and lovers of Freedom to put their bodies on the line.

By that I mean that we assemble a force of Congressional Republicans and other lovers of liberty who will go to Honduras and publicly affirm their solidarity with that government by their presence, proclaiming that an attack on Honduras also will be an attack on American patriots.

Two key interlocking elements: 1) leaders and others to be that physical presence; 2) visibility before the world, which in this day and age means media coverage.

And what do I propose we call this group of witnesses: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Yes, let’s poke a good, sharp stick in the eyes of our leftist totalitarians as after 72 years of usurpation, we reclaim the name of Lincoln for the cause of freedom,- to defend even as he declared 145 years ago a government of the people, by the people, for the people - that it not perish from the earth

Folks, words and columns won’t do - we need Image and Theater to capture the attention of the American people and break through the conspiracy of silence that has shrouded this event to date and prevented the voice of the Honduran people protecting their freedom from being heard.

We need to mobilize and contact our Republican and Conservative leaders: time is desperately short.

(What follows is the publishable portion of my letter…)

Mr. Letterman, you sure thought you were being slick Wednesday night by trying to redirect your vile attacks from Willow Palin to her older sister Bristol. But you know what, you only dug your hole deeper by revealing even more clearly your twisted heart and perverted mind.

So you now would claim to draw the line at age 14. Regardless, what makes your behavior any more acceptable because the object of your pornographic imagination is age 18. You think it’s okay to joke about rape but not statutory rape?

Once a woman turns 18, do you find it perfectly acceptable that if she has sex that means that she is a slut and that any male has the right to f*ck her? Or do you simply have an obsessive hatred of Bristol?

I have a 19-old daughter, not much older than Bristol. My daughter as been well-behaved, but if she had gotten in the family way before marriage and kept the baby, I would be furious if you on national TV talked about your fantasy of her getting assaulted in front of me at a baseball game by a ballplayer, and the next night you called her a slut.

As would any other parent of an an 18 year-old daughter - and those who have daughters who were 18 at one time - and those who have children who someday will be 18 - and those who think that 18 year old girls don’t deserve this treatment. Are you starting to get the picture as to how many people you have rightly offended?

You also had the effrontery to invite Gov. Palin to come on your show but didn’t have the guts to invite her husband Todd. Sarah has declined your invitation, but if I were in her shoes, I would have taken you up on your offer - so that I could serve you in front of the world with a restraining order protecting me and my children.

Well Dave, I don’t know if anything I’ve written here would register with you: misogynists just never seem to get it. But now you face the court of public opinion, whose verdict is being pronounced. And some day in the future, you will face a higher court and have to give answer to a higher authority not of this world. What then will you say on that day?

(cross-posted at And Rightly So!)

Many articles have been written concerning Obama’s speech in Cairo in the past day since the speech was delivered, including some very insightful editorial commentary. Unfortunately, these interpretations analyses have fallen into the same trap that dominates the interactions of the U.S. and the West with the Arab world.

That trap is almost all Western attempts to interpret our relations with the Arab world are based solely upon the English language portion of our interactions. Unfortunately, this is fatally incomplete, as this only encompasses what Western speakers say in our half of the conversation to our people and what Arab speakers want us to hear of their half of the conversation.

What is missing is the other half: what the Arab speakers are saying in their language to their people, and what our Arab audience is actually hearing of our portion of the conversation. And whether what the leaders are saying (in Arabic) is the same text as what their peoples are being told is being said.

Without knowing what is said in both languages, we cannot know whether what we say is what our audience in hearing - and vice versa. And more critically, we need to know whether the two are substantially different - and if so whether this difference is a mistranslation (in which case we need to correct the translation) or more seriously whether the difference is intentional - to mislead or misdirect the English-speaking and/or Arabic speaking audiences.

In brief, what we in the U.S. are hearing and reading in English is what our leaders and the Arab leaders want us (the English-speaking audience) to hear and think is what is really going on. But unless we know the Arabic words - and get an accurate translation thereof, we don’t know what the Arab-speaking leaders want their Arab-speaking audience to hear - and whether there is a deliberate ambiguity or even deception in place in which both sides of the language divide are being told different things in their language.

That is, we need to have answers to the following questions:

1) How were Obama’s words translated in Arabic to the assembled audience?

2) What official text or texts in Arabic have been released by the White House (or other official U.S. agency) or by other countries?

3) What Arabic texts are being published in Arab papers or transmitted on Arab radio stations?

4) What are the English translations of these various texts and what are the implications, especially in terms of possible Arabic/Muslim “code words”?

5) If these Arabic versions vary among themselves, are the differences substantive - and what is the significance of such differences?

6) (Most critically) If the English and Arabic versions vary - what is the significance of these differences?

I am particularly concerned about upon certain curious phrasings in Obama’s words that may be open to varying interpretations depending on how they are translated. Here are some examples just from my parsing of the English side. Others more expert in nuance may be able to identify other possible trouble areas.

1)

And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear…That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it…
Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat. Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.

The Pope is the “defender of the Christian faith”. The Saudi government considers itself to be the “defender (protector, guardian) of the Islamic faith”. Obama here is coming close to identifying himself also as a protector of the Islamic faith - but not of the Christian faith (or other religions). Does the Arabic version use language for Obama that parallels how the Saudis describe their defender/protector role?

[As an aside note, why does Obama multiple times in his speech single out defending Muslim's women's clothing - an issue that is a particular sore point in Europe as well as a few cases in the U.S. and a key issues for those seeking equality of women - and title opposition to such as "hostility to religion".

Also, Robert Spencer has an excellent refutation here of Obama's comment that pursuit of equality for women equates with "hostility towards [Islam] behind the pretence of liberalism”]

2)

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps…They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation.

Although not totally airtight, it juxtaposition of sentences at least strongly implies that Obama is talking about a 60-year “occupation” of Palestinian land, in which case Obama is essentially denying the legitimacy of Israel by echoing the language or Hamas and others who deny the right of Israel to exist. It thus would be interesting to know how “dislocation” and “occupation” particularly are translated and whether they match the language/code words of the Arab rejectionists

3)

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

This appears to go beyond earlier calls to simple halt construction but actually appears to call for the dismantling of all Israel settlements, overturning previous understandings. In any case, the call for a halt to all construction here and earlier calls in the past few days bear a similarity to laws in other Muslim nations concerning other religious communities (dhimmis) that bar construction of their structures and impede natural growth of those communities. Again, Arab translations of these statements (including the speech) could be enlightening.

4) Finally, there are Obama’s earlier repeated statements that America is not a “Christian nation” followed by his statement on June 1st that “if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world”. While Obama technically does not actually call America a Muslim nation, it is quite remarkable that he would even voice this phrase even in the hypothetical, given his previous efforts to avoid titling America as any religion’s nation.

However, my bigger concern is how this was translated to the Arabic world, especially how “Muslim country” was translated - as which “house” Obama’s “Muslim country” belongs to - in order to know how this statement was heard in the Arab world.

To conclude, it’s not enough to parse Obama’s Cairo speech and his other earlier pronouncements on Islam in English - we need to know the Arab versions as well.

(cross-posted at And Rightly So!)

This is the Call to Worship that I delivered at our church yesterday.

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On this Memorial Day weekend, I would like to speak a few words about patriotism, since this holiday and this word are closely entwined. In our era, especially in [our community], many are extremely uncomfortable with or even disdainful of patriotism, equating it with idolatry. But that is overreaction.

Rather, in speaking of patriotism, I would speak of loyalty and gratitude. Loyalty to an imperfect nation, to be sure, but one which is worthy still of loyalty and allegiance - but of course not as a substitute for our loyalty and allegiance to God.

Gratitude for the blessings of liberty, prosperity, individual opportunity and freedom to worship that our nation has stood for over its existence.

And it is the loyalty of the soldiers who have fallen in battle to protect our freedoms and the gratitude that we owe them for their sacrifices that evokes the patriotism of this Memorial Day holiday.

As Abraham Lincoln famously spoke at Gettysburg:

…It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

As we reflect on these words, let us consider the patriotism towards a greater nation that these parting words of the Apostle Paul express, that these words may be ours also (found in II Timothy):

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

At this time then, let us take a moment of silence today to remember our fallen soldiers…and our fallen brethren in the faith.

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And I hope that we all will take time to honor our soldiers on duty to protect our liberty and the families of those who have fallen in battle.

(cross-posted at And Rightly So!)

Earlier today, Leon Wolf unveiled his proposal to end the waterboarding wars, titled “Safe, Legal and Rare”

His post led to me examine what we should do in response “for the children”.

After all, since we can’t expect our children in today’s modern world to subscribe to those traditional values that our Washington D.C. overlords have pronounced “all over”, it is our duty to provide our children with more alternatives than simply abstinence should they choose to when they inevitably engage in certain “private behaviors” under the influence of raging hormones and relentless media indoctrination and peer pressure.

Thus we must also establish classroom curricular instruction to all K-12 school children that will accurately and non-judgmentally instruct them how to engage in these “private behaviors” and how to use prevention tools to spare them the consequences if when they choose to engage in such risky “behaviors”

Such curriculum, of course would include age-appropriate instruction in the following:

(1) the “facts-of-life” about how to engage in these Constitutionally-protected private behaviors” that - if appropriate precautions aren’t take or if these precautions fail - lead to a “delicate condition” in which their “private behaviors” come to the attention of neighbors and/or law-enforcement personnel that makes the unlimited, taxpayer-funded availability of waterboarding necessary to prevent an explosive public scandal should their “condition” proceed to term; and

2) explicit instruction in preventative methods to prevent the need to be waterboarded, for both males and females – complete with classroom instruction in their usage and the free availability of said prevention tools to students that will be dispensed by licensed professional personnel in school facilities. In order to preserve privacy rights of the children, parents will neither be informed of such dispensing and their permission will not be necessary.

At the same time, instructors and law-enforcement personnel - under legislative mandate - will utilize the full power of the state to ensure that students (as well as those who are in the “delicate condition”- especially those in the act of entering the offices of waterboarding providers in order to get waterboarded) are insulated from reading descriptions of waterboarding or viewing photos of the waterboarding procedure as well as being protected from having to read descriptions of waterboarding or listen to arguments against waterboarding or even being within hearing range of waterboarding protesters.

Moreover, no discussion of the negative after effects of waterboarding will be allowed in the curriculum or in classroom discussions - in order to ensure that opinions are not changed such that would threaten the continued legality of waterboarding.

The fundamental character of a representative democracy is that although disputes are inevitable, what holds the country together is not a uniformity of opinion, but rather a common commitment to a process in which all sides are able to participate in open debate through our representatives who work out a resolution.

Sometimes through negotiation/give-and take, a consensus can emerge that a substantial majority find acceptable - in which case the dispute is stably settled for a lengthy time.

At other times, the differences cannot be gapped, and we end up with winners and losers.

The point is that the losers respect the process and know that they will have another chance to make their case and perhaps end up with a result more to their liking. The winners (if they are sensible) in turn refrain from cockiness and gloating and rubbing salt in the wounds because they know (like our medieval ancestors) that the wheel of fortune turns, that political and philosophical tides can and do turn, that a pendulum swings both ways - and they may end up on the losing side sometime in the future.

Or perhaps over time, the losers will see some wisdom in the winners’ position (and/or vice-versa) and a new consensus can come to fruition.

Thus this mutual allegiance to the representative process - coupled with humility by winners and hope for losers - is what forms the glue that has created stable governance for over 200 years. Of course, we still bear the wounds of some of the grievous splits that arose in the past.

The second characteristic unique to the U.S. is the combination of a federal system and a host of checks and balances, the goal of which is to keep decision-making at the lowest level possible (closest to the local community as possible) and to also prevent the rise of a too-powerful central government that will crush local governance, and ultimately result in tyranny.

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So much for the civics lesson; what does this have to do with 2009 and the divisions over social issues (and to a lesser extent over defense issues) that the Republican Party faces, you might ask?

Everything: if our process of representative democracy and limited government is allowed to be swallowed up by dictatorship, one-party rule, an all-powerful government, and the abrogation of the rights guaranteed by our Constitution against government control, then it doesn’t matter which side “wins” or “loses” on the specific issue, everyone has lost. Once arbitrary government rules, nothing is safe for long; everything depends on the whims of those who hold power for the moment.

And with the Democratic hegemony of our Federal government - right now Congress and the Presidency, with the judiciary within their grasp - our 200+-year system of governance faces its gravest threat.

At the same time, it opens an opportunity for Republicans to rally around a new compact rooted around preserving our system of governance, preserving the process of resolving conflict that our nation was founded upon - a process which our Democratic opponents seek to sweep away in their desire for unaccountable control that would substitute force and governmental coercion for debate and liberty.

It is a compact for small government and fiscal restraint that at this point in history must be the glue that holds the Republican Party together.

*A commitment to restrain the tyranny of the courts that would transmute “rights” from our protection from government into a tool for irreversible governmental intrusion and coercion. Indeed, we see how such judicial intervention has inflamed and polarized our nation by preventing debate and negotiation and consensus-building over time (as in the abortion and gay marriage issues, for instance).

*A commitment to arbitrate disputes via the legislative process (or plebiscite where that option is available and utilized) rather than running to the courts to circumvent this process by creating a new “right” that become the basis for more coercion. And not just arbitrate other people’s issues but to also arbitrate the issues that we hold dear.

*A renewed commitment to halt the current massive expansion of our Federal government - and not merely halt but to shrink the scope and power and size of our Federal government by returning to the states (and in turn to local government as appropriate) or private entities authority over issues that they are best qualified to resolve.

Carrying out this commitment specifically must include a ruthless pruning of governmental agencies and a drastic reduction in the number of government employees as a tangible and measurable means towards restoring the proper balance between the Federal government and the states (and local governments).

*A commitment to recognize once again that fundamentally taxes do not belong to the government, but rather that they are property of the taxpayers with which the government has been entrusted as stewards. This commitment must be fleshed out by reducing Federal taxes, in line with reducing its size and powers.

*A commitment to end “beggar they neighbor” policies that redistribute tax revenues among states (this covers pork and other such abuses) and instead to leave these revenues in the hand of the states and ultimately the citizenry and other entities who are the source of said revenue.

*A commitment to oppose those who would advocate and work for the opposite.

Within our compact, let us have our debates over defense/foreign policy; let us make our cases for our passionately-held social issues like abortion and the protection and nurturing of life, or even gay marriage. Disagreement is the strength, not the weakness. The point is to have a common commitment to the process, so that at the end of the day, we are still in community. Let not the losers stalk out; let not the winners cast out the losers - because that which binds us together is stronger than the disputes of the day - or at least needs to be.

And that which binds us together is a common commitment to preserving our individual freedoms and as well as the creation of necessary government for common purposes (e.g. defense, domestic tranquility, transmission of our system to our descendents), and for other purposes that we together make voluntary choices to carry out within our Constitutional framework.

I recognize that conservatism is like a stool that has three (or perhaps four) legs - and that we need all legs to be strong. But each age has its particular exigencies, in which one leg may be acutely threatened with destruction by outside enemies and thus needs to be preferentially defended. And in such an hour, we need to find common cause.

C.S. Lewis gave us this wonderful image in his Screwtape Letters (XXV). Speaking of the design of the Enemy, he writes:

We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under… Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

(By Liberalism, I am confident that Lewis is referring to its classical variant that nurtured our nation’s founding and is a root of today’s conservatism, not its modern day bastard child.)

So facing the Democratic tsunami of tyranny that is rapidly approaching at full speed, we need to put down our fire extinguishers for the moment and address the impending flood.

Our window of freedom is fast closing. Let us stay anchored to the Rock.

This started as a comment to this diary, but expanded into diary length.

In the years I was growing up (1950s and 1960s), Republicans had the image of being the party of country club, social registry, WASP establishment, using the government to promote big business perks at the cost of everyone else. In practice the legislators divided the pie with the majority Democrats - they got some money for their big business clients while the Democrats spent money on social projects (Great Society and all that).

On foreign affairs, things were better: Republicans and the Scoop Jackson Democrats (along with Walther Reuther and Big Labor) were able to maintain and strong defense working majority.

Vietnam broke up the unwritten agreements, pushing the Democratic Party and Labor to the left and anti-defense. (Now the 60s (actually the 70s) radicals have infiltrated and are now in charge of our government under Obama - but that’s another story.)

Meanwhile the Republican establishment found themselves facing a 3-stool Conservatism movement that invigorated a moribund party. However, the status quo interest in the Congressional leadership and Party leadership, coupled with the personal failings of key leaders and attendant inconsistency with public values of Conservatism led to internal fracturing, with the moderates vilifying social conservatism (with some inadvertent help from excesses by some leaders of the interest groups) to try to regain the ascendancy, ignoring in the process the radical shift in the Democratic party, a blindness which persists today in their behavior in Congress.

George Bush let Congress run riot early on (due to his political weakness following the 2000 Florida debacle and his non-confrontational instincts and country-club instincts of politeness) and then took a hands-off approach to this conservative vs. Rockefeller conflict. His acquiescence to Rockefeller Republican “business as usual” regarding big government and spending, and his passivity in defending his programs left an opening for the Obama phenomenon - and his excessive deference to his advisors led to the TARP debacle that sank McCain and emasculated Republicans attempts to reverse the plunge to socialism that TARP has initiated.

What social conservatives need to do is to shore up our small government bona fides, and subsume our social issues to conform to federalist, small government principle. On abortion, as mentioned above, that means emphasizing the desire to return this to state and local level debate and decision-making: which means our goal is to reverse Roe vs, Wade rather than aiming for the courts to impose a Federal anti-abortion policy. Plus a continuing forthright commitment to protecting vulnerable life - which is the most persuasive argument we have.

Gay marriage is a conundrum because it is the state courts that are usurping the legislative and civic debate in favor of imposition - but this will have to be fought at the state level. Attempting to get the federal government involved is shooting ourselves in the gonads given the political realities of the current administration and of Congress in the foreseeable future.

The bottom line is that if social conservatives can promote agenda items in a small government context, then we have the upper hand against moderate canards about socons wanting Federal government interference in private affairs - which will then expose big government moderates for what they are, without the diversion of “government in your bedroom” hysteria.

I’m not sure how to handle the libertarian - conservative disagreement over national defense - but Obama and the Democrats extreme anti-defense and appeasement actions may enable common cause against an existential threat from the left for the time being - especially if those of us strong on defense take a somewhat more cautious approach to foreign military campaigns.

And Obama may provide the chance for some rapprochement with civil libertarians and we also start to see Obama and the Democrats utilize the WOT necessary infringements and twist them to start suppressing domestic dissent. There’s nothing like seeing the beginnings of a real left dictatorship to create an alliance on civil liberties between conservatives and libertarians.

So I see some hopeful trends if we keep our focus on the real dangers of the ongoing Revolution by the Democrats and stop fighting last year’s battles.

Whether the moderate can see the forest for the trees is unclear, but social conservativse at least can clear away underbrush. Inertia is difficult to overcome; but the failure of moderates to perceive the new political environment in this new age will be fatal.

…or any of the other Eastern bloc countries that were taken over by the Soviet army after WWII.

How is what the Obama administration doing any different than nationalization - and by analogy to the title, disguising a take over of a (corporate) government by installing a puppet regime?

If the news reports are accurate, the government has controlling funding for GM without which the company would be unable to continue operations, Obama has just demanded and obtained the CEO’s resignation, the majority of the GM board is also expected to resign, Obama will then dictate the composition of the new Board that will run the company - (puppet board) - which will then “negotiate” with an adversarial auto union - which is undergoing no government take-over - for a new contract which will be subsidized by the government (i.e. U.S. taxpayers) to keep the company operating under the control of the U.S. government, who will call the tune and make all the decisions.

This looks to be a textbook definition of nationalization in substance - and is exactly what the USSR Communists did to the countries of Eastern Europe after WWII. And who knows if Chrysler will also be taken over in like fashion. Any effort to call it anything but nationalization/puppet corporate governance is Orwellian at best and at worse a malicious lie.

Years ago, the saying was “What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA”. Looks like that old song has taken a sinister (in all senses of that word) turn.

Or rather, the new verse is “What’s good for the U.S. President, is good for General Motors”.

On further reflection, is Obama instead emulating the Russian mob model, built on the foundation of our beloved Chicago mafia, of muscling in and taking-over of business and putting his guys in charge?

Not that I’m defending the GM board as worthy of staying in charge. But if the government is going to essentially take management control rather than going the bankruptcy route, let’s not play charades with puppet regimes (or worse) and the other cover-up lies to pretend that GM is still an independent entity.

Funny that this never got mentioned during the campaign last fall, and even now it’s the BBC that’s brought this event to light.

BBC reporter Ian Pannell, discussing the Nosedive in Afghan-US relations, traces the current woes back to a visit last year by Joe Biden to Afghanistan, during which he had a private meeting with Hamid Karzai. Employing the British talent for understatement, Mr. Pannell commented:

A well-placed source describes Mr Biden, exasperated at not getting “straight answers” on drugs and corruption, launching into a verbal tirade and storming out of the meeting.

In a country where honour and decorum are second only to God and country, this was less than tactful.

Curiously, when then Sen. Biden spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations shortly after his return, he somehow neglected to mention this incident.

Had a Bush administration official committed such an offense, the media would have been filled with denunciation of cowboy diplomacy and interviews with academic “experts” decrying the official’s “appalling” ignorance of and disrespect for the cultural mores of Afghan society,

But since the offense came from the other side of the partisan divide, the press of course simply looked away and hurried along to its next criticism of the Bush administration. Instead, all we heard about during the election campaign was how President Obama was going to restore America’s standing around the world. Only a year later are the events of that meeting starting to reach the public - and the source is British, not American media.

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News reports are that the California legislature will be called into session again today to pass a compendium of tax increases that will further cripple the California economy, plus some modest spending cuts to put lipstick on the pig.

Apparently the leadership (both parties) are only one Republican vote in the Senate from passing this.

The fig leaf is that the tax increases will only last two years instead of five years if voters reject a spending cap initiative in a special May election. The talking point of the Republicans promoting this is that the prospect of three more years of taxes will tempt the Democrats, unions, interest groups, and media from opposing that initiative.

This is nonsense: this is simply the road to political suicide for the Republicans.

Please contact California Republican legislators to demand that they stand fast. I will try to refine this with the list of “wobblies” when I can contact Rep. DeVore’s office or someone else in the know. Any help with names will be appreciated by other so that we can focus our energies.

Below is my list of bullet points:

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Current plan will not achieve Republican goals:

If Republicans, allow this budget plan to pass:

If Republicans stand fast:

With the grim news these past weeks culminating in yesterday’s Friday the 13th Massacre, I though I’d share a tender story of unlikely love on this 14th of February.

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In a city park stood a statue of a man and a women frozen in a caress of love, their love unconsummated for many long years.

Early one Valentine’s Day, when the sun had barely risen, an angel appeared before the statue and said, “Since the two of you have brought such enjoyment to so many visitors, I am granting you your greatest wish. I hereby give you the gift of life. You have thirty minutes to do whatever you desire to satisfy your deepest longings.”

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I’ve been acquainted with this quote for quite a few years, now, but following the events surrounding the first several weeks of the Obama administration and his allies in Congress, culminating in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, for the first time I truly understand what the author meant - because that exactly how they view it, as demonstrated by their actions.

Here’s what Saint John had to say to the moderates of his era:

I could wish that you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm…I will vomit you out of my mouth

And with that prologue, I will address the behavior of three Senators with Rs next to their names, those who willingly yielded to the pick-up line of those asking them to be bipartisan.

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