Evil Preaches Tolerance

By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | August 19th, 2012 at 01:46 PM |

RESIZE: AAA

Archibishop Chaput of Philadelphia knows a thing or two about tolerance. I preached a Sunday School lesson about tolerance today. I’ll get into it later. Let me quote the Archbishop though.

We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty — these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it’s never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive.

This year during Lent, he also said that evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good.

We see that more and more in society and as culture is upstream from politics, we are seeing an increasing intolerance for moral virtue creeping downstream into our politics.

During the August recesses of 2009, the media — a creature of an ever more secular culture — reported again and again about hostile tea party crowds and their heckling of members of congress. In fact, of eight documented acts of violence during that August recess, seven were against tea party activists.

The intolerance of the left continues to grow. SWAT teams show up at conservatives doors in the night as a form of intimidation. Union thugs show up at private individuals’ homes to bang on their windows because of policy disagreements.

The President says to bring guns to knife fights, the SPLC labels conservative groups with which it disagrees “hate organizations,” and when nuts do show up with guns the secularists blame conservatives or choose to ignore the act and make excuses for not covering it. “Well,” they say, ” no one died so it isn’t news.”

Increasingly, the left is having a hard time playing the “but the other side does it too” card because the examples and consistency of intolerance for conservative views is growing more and more extreme.

On Twitter, Chris Ziegler flags another example of left-wing intolerance. The Republican Party of Sarasota County in Florida put up a “Repeal Obama” billboard on Friday. Today it stands destroyed.

Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant. Then it tries to silence good. There is nothing new under the sun and what we are seeing here is nothing new, just a change. Tolerance has been redefined to mean accept and it is no longer enough to have values. The values must be the correct values.

The situation will only grow worse and the leader in this nation seems to talk a good game when it is politically advantageous, but otherwise tells his supporters the bring guns to knife fights while his Vice President tells a majority black audience that Republicans want to put them back in chains.

We are rapidly moving to a time when the First Amendment will no longer be as good as the paper on which it is written. It will be only as good as the judges put on the bench.

Tags: Evil, Free Speech, Tolerance

COMMENTS

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evilbloggerlady

And some things the left are pushing are in fact evil. They are fundamentally wrong.
Tbone

the Second Amendment. Don’t be surprised if that is not reiterated in the future.
evilbloggerlady

but we still have the right to speak out. At least for now.
gmscan

?Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Matthew 5:11-12 ESV)
throwback59

as the Archbishop 100 yrs ago but put it more succinctly: “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without conviction.”
Words to live by.
demsaresatanic

that nails it.
Ausonius

Americans need only look to the supposedly “high-minded” Europeans, who have tolerated the forces hostile and destructive to their own traditions for so long and to such a degree that on the day when “Eurabia” becomes a reality, the idea of toleration will immediately be lost, along with all other basic freedoms and rights rooted in the Greco-Roman-Christian tradition.

As a Catholic monsignor once said to us: “Turn the other cheek, yes, but remember you only have two cheeks, so be ready to defend yourself and anyone else under attack.”

Toleration has limits: evil has none.
califgal

is this Akin character from MO trying to throw the election to McCaskill? And tar the rest of the GOP with his crazy assertion that
if a woman was really raped ( a “legitimate” rape, he calls it), she won’t get pregnant?

Jeeeeez. Just give our opponents a reason to call us crazy, anti-science, why don’t you.
Viet71

There are some exceptions. And with the non-activists, there’s hope of dialogue if you can avoid party labels and stick to issues.

But the sad state of the nation today is that Leftists hate Republicans. It’s evident in Leftist blogs and in the media. There is no tolerance of Republicans from the Left.

I trace this lack of tolerance to Roe v. Wade. It first surfaced in a big way in the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas. Since that hearing, there’s been no looking back.

Which is one of the main reasons Roe v. Wade should be repealed. It has spawned complete intolerance of one political party and closed down big areas of debate.
jamesm

brain of mediocre minds. Gone is their love of God. They have replaced it with human(s) becoming their God. Now someones spirit can come from mom and their soul come from the dad. (i.e Katie Couric quote) What a donkey! How many worshiped at the altar of Obama? Dumb askessss!
codenametimna

Pardon me for such a lengthy post but here goes…

Liberalism in itself is an evil, secular humanistic entity which espouses hatred and intolerance toward the things it disagrees with. Such as morality and common decency. The LEFT hates moral constraint, and in effect common decency, and they are doing everything they can to turn America into an atheistic Utopia, ruled entirely by progressive liberal elitists who suppress freedoms and liberties of the people they seek to rule over.

Barack Hussein Obama had a communist father who hated democracy and freedom. You know what they say don’t you? Like father, like son. Barack Hussein Obama is a usurper who listed his own birthplace as Kenya through the literary agency Acton & Dystel. And since he has no common ties to America, he who could care less about the welfare of the United States or its citizens in my opinion. Obama despises capitalism and personal success (possibly because his life has been one big failure), and his administration is deliberately strangling the economy, in order to kowtow to environmentalist wackos. Who themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, are destroying the economy and turning America into a third world Banana Republic in their collective effort to implement a Socialist Utopia in America.

For example, environmentalists in California have destroyed much of the breadbasket in central California, cutting off vital water supplies to farms, in order to save a three inch minnow, while at the same time destroying America’s food crops that would have otherwise fed the entire country. That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. Now they want to control “carbon dioxide” by labeling it a dangerous greenhouse gas. You know, the thing you exhale each time you breathe. And the same thing plankton, trees and other greenery utilize in order to grow and then release “oxygen” back into the atmosphere so human beings, animals and insects can continue to survive. Environmental wackos (big Obama supporters by the way) have an evil agenda and it is to relegate human beings to a subordinate position on Earth and to ruin economic prosperity with their agenda to “protect” mother nature at all costs. Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish!

Liberals have taken over the EPA and the Obama administration kowtows to their wacko environmental agenda! The ONLY reason Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline was because he didn’t want to offend his “wacko” environmental, tree-hugging base. Which shows you right there Barack Obama could care less about the economy or the American people.

Multiple millions of Americans (26 million or thereabouts) continue to be without jobs or are under-employed, and subsequently, are suffering tremendously under Obama’s incompetent and failed presidency. Liberalism is an ideological disease and the cure (at least in part) is to defeat Barack Hussein Obama on November 6th. Defeating his minions in Congress will also further eliminate the disease called Liberalism. Liberals are largely atheistic in practice and their agenda is to worship the creature (nature) instead of the Creator. Romans 1:25 “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”

In other words, progressive liberals give animals and the environment (and their own liberal agenda) greater esteem and reverence than they do actual human beings or for that matter God. No wonder the United States of America is going to hell-in-a-hand-basket! Immoral, corrupt politicians who are running amok in their quest to implement “social justice.” Which is another term for “spread the wealth around”, which is another term for Socialism/Marxism/Communism.

Look at Obama’s childhood mentor (and some say real father) Frank Marshall Davis. Communism flows through Obama’s veins! That’s why he’s acting like a dictator! That’s why he trying to “destroy” capitalism! That’s why multiple millions of Americans are out of work! That’s why “poverty” is at record levels under Obama’s dictatorship, er, presidency! He claims he’s a Christian but then he turns around and endorses things the Bible condemns! Don’t forget he also covered a portrait of Jesus when he spoke at Notre Dame! He continues to prop-up Islam and issues yearly Ramadan proclamations. Yet he is basically silent when it comes to defending Christianity and/or issuing proclamations for Easter! The churches he attends are liberal institutions that don’t believe the Bible as the authoritative Word of God! Jeremiah Wrights’ “church” was a liberal, racist entity that hates white people and Jews! The Obama’s attended that “church” for twenty whole years without ever getting up and leaving! I think Barack Obama “used” Christianity as an attempt to “scale the ladder” of political opportunity. He realized he couldn’t become President if he labeled himself as an adherer of Islam. Especially after the 9/11 tragedy where Muslim terrorists killed 3,000 innocent Americans. So he joined the hate-filled Jeremiah Wright’s racist institution and somehow claims Christianity is now his faith.

Obama dislikes (some say, hates) Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, yet he loves the terrorist Palestinians ruled by Hamas! He rarely denounces Christian persecution in Egypt or elsewhere, but he has NO problem appointing Muslim Huma Abedin to a position within his own administration, whose family has known ties to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood!

In fact, Obama regularly invites the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood to the White House to “discuss” various issues. By the way, the FBI lists the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, in the same vein as Hamas and Hezbollah. I wonder if one of the issues Obama discusses with them… in secret… is perhaps the “decline” of America as we know it, because of the rampant infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood and various other Islamic terrorist groups into the United States of America and also into high-levels of government. Nah! It couldn’t be. Could it? You’d be surprised.

Not only is Obama a prevaricator (he lies to the American people on a regular basis) but he also doesn’t have America’s best interests at heart either in my opinion. Because if he actually cared about America, it wouldn’t be going to hell-in-a-hand-basket under his direction and on his watch. Which it is.

Besides, name me one thing Barack Obama has done for the black community. You can’t. The black community is languishing in high unemployment and rising poverty. Yet Obama does NOTHING for them or any other ethnic group in America, except for illegal aliens. Even Obama’s own brother in Kenya, who is suffering in dire poverty and living in a mud hut, hasn’t received a “dime” from Obama. Yet Obama spouts to the world we should be our brother’s keeper. He won’t even take care of his own family. Why on earth should we believe any thing he says? I can’t. Hopefully the American people will come to their senses and realize they can’t trust Obama either and will vote Barack Obama out of office on November 6th. Along with his cohorts in Congress that do his bidding. Nuff’ said.
runner12

The Left never “tolerates” anyone who disagrees with them or their agenda. They pretend to be the standard bearers for the word, yet in the same breath they trample and destroy the very ideal they claim to uphold.

Those are some very wise words from Archbishop Chaput.
califgal

until some brave politician who is familiar with,. indeed armed with decades of social science empirical data tells the truth: that other groups, including incredibly impoverished immigrant groups who’ve battled name calling and all kinds of discrimination, have risen above the indecencies visited upon them by bigotry and intolerance, and have risen out of poverty within two to three generations to live the American dream.

That they haven’t says someting about them that they simply don’t want to hear and that the pc crowd doesn’t want them to hear. That latter group shouts even the scientists down because they know that while the truth hurts, the truth is liberating, and when people are liberated by the truth, they don’t need “keepers.” The Dems would lose their “keeper” status and so they work to keep silent the truth.
renl57

It started in the 1960s, when two kinds of militant activists arose who had no interest in working with anyone else for social change: Black militants who incited violence in the inner city; and college radicals who rioted on campuses, occupied Deans’ offices, and forced those deans to accede to their blackmail.

First, these radicals got a little older and took over the Dem Party. (That started in 1970, when a bunch of former student radicals got themselves ensconced on the Democratic National Committee.)

Today, the Left looks back on that era as their glory days. They constantly seek to emulate the militancy of the 1960s. New groups, like gays and even atheists, have copied this tactic of heckling the opposition, occupying streets and public buildings, and in general denying their opponents a fair hearing.
earlgrey

You know the libs will try to define all Republicans by this guy.

THis is a reason to vote in the primaries. I know everyone at Red State does, but this might be a good time to remind others. THis is why you do it.

I think 75% of MO residents are against Obamacare and MaCaskill just got a lifeline to stick it out. She could become a Dem hero for saving OCare next year.
Viet71

The reason Roe creates intolerance is that it places an ultra premium on a U.S, Supreme Court seat.
renl57

They are a classic example of the “culture of dependency” writ large.

Because of their unique history–the only ethnic group that was brought forcibly to America in chains–blacks have had to win their rights through government action:

– The Emancipation Proclamation
– Reconstruction
– The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan
– Brown v. Board of Education
– Affirmative action

Blacks’ rights and even much of their prosperity has been given to them by the Federal government. That’s why they just don’t see things the way the rest of us do. The rest of us learned how our Founding Fathers rose up in revolution and *won* their rights by force. That wasn’t the history of blacks in America. The few slave revolts that did take place were crushed.
Viet71

There is today a thriving black upper middle class — in law, in medicine, in other fields such as the arts.

The dependency problem is at the bottom end of the ladder. Lots of both blacks and whites there.
jamesm

This is what I was told by a black teacher who I respected. Many of our greatests sports stars are black. Many of our greatest olympians are black. Many of our greatest christian pastors are black.

Give anyone a choice today if they would move to Africa or stay here virtually all would stay. Notwithstanding the history of 150 +/- years ago the problems of Black community are of their own creation. What values were brought from Africa? I do not know. But those decendants of slaves are happy to be in America. Here is a great poem.

Africa

Thus she had lain
sugercane sweet
deserts her hair
golden her feet
mountains her breasts
two Niles her tears.
Thus she has lain
Black through the years.

Over the white seas
rime white and cold
brigands ungentled
icicle bold
took her young daughters
sold her strong sons
churched her with Jesus
bled her with guns.
Thus she has lain.

Now she is rising
remember her pain
remember the losses
her screams loud and vain
remember her riches
her history slain
now she is striding
although she has lain.

Written by Maya Angelou
jimmyg

All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. That 11 point lead just disappeared.
jamesm

Libs can’t handle the truth and will spin it
http://libertynews.com/ mbecker908

The black “community” will become something other than ghetto filled with warring gangs when black parents care more about the future of their children than they do about being victims and blaming whitey.
PaladinLostHour

… is that he is a lonely voice w/n the ranks of the Archbishops and Cardinals.

Consider Cardinal Dolan’s invitation to Obama, to attend the Al Smith dinner later this fall. They’ll dine together, laugh together – a prince of the church, and President Planned Parenthood. More than a few photos will be taken of Dolan’s grinning Irish mug in proximity to Barack’s broad smile.

And then, having sent every signal possible that the Church is far more interested in proximity to temporal power than allegiance to the eternal..then, Cardinal Dolan will go back to preaching abortion as murder to 16 year old boys and girls faced with crisis pregnancies -= a neat twist: “Speaking truth to the powerless”
renny

The left needed churches and morality and guilt all through the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam protests, but when it decided abortion and homosexuality were the next envelopes to push to deconstruct US society by attacking traditional family foundations, then the left had no use for dead MLK’s or living archbishops–they were impediments to the next stage of commie organization.

So, the Dem. Party is now the party of anti-Christianity in general; really, really anti-Roman Catholicism specifically, anti-nuclear family, anti-any family with a man as husband and woman as wife (words so archaic in English they go back to Old High German), which places it against prob. 90% of the American pop. The only good thing about the deal is no one can win a national election being against the vast majority of the electorate’s beliefs and values.
renl57

I lived through the 1960s and saw it firsthand.

Back then, it was the antiwar and black power movements, NOT feminism or gay rights, that pioneered this rejection of civil and societal norms.

New Left activists like Abbie Hoffman asserted that anti-social–even criminal–behavior was one way to strike back at the political system. And they’ve been that way ever since.
avgjo

1. Quit assuming a defensive posture.

2. When you have power, use it. Put these people thru the concrete (figuratively, of course.)

3. Ideocide is a legitimate means of engagement. Isolate, discredit and destroy ideas of the other side. Use institutions to do it. If we don’t, they will.

4. Quit believing that the other side can be engaged by argumentation and speaking truth alone. Other tactics, including digging up dirt and using it, ‘creative’ interpretation of the law (when you’re in power) and using your current power to neuter the other guys are all legitimate tactics. To continue down the path we’re on is like bringing the Queen’s rules to a gutter brawl.

I wrote ‘simple’, not ‘easy’. To do the above requires (a) a realistic outlook, (b) resolve to win, (c) sustained focus and (d) the ability to act effectively, all of which seem to be in woefully short supply among American conservatives.
warrior300

That’s the problem with some of these Tea Party folks, they are just not bright enough to politically respond to a question without showing their judgmental ignorance. While I agree with the Missouri GOP nominee’s position, his lack of sensitivity to a position that the majority of voters would support is incredibly unbelievably stupid. This was an assured seat for the GOP, and this idiot may have thrown it away.
PowerToThePeople

let him know how it is done. He should have done it like you in your ________________? race.

What race was that where you showed all the ignorant tea party folks how it was done?

If you could not tell, I was being sarcastic. I do that sometimes when dealing with idiots and morons. And yes, that means I am calling you an idiot and a moron.
warrior300

Excellent Coednametema, You hit the nail on the head. However, you go too far in entirely blaming Obama. He is where he is today, because the American society is decadent to its core, and the American people have become as debaucherous as the ancient Romans at the fall of the empire let alone the republic; at the fall of Athens, and at the heights of the Medicis and the Borgias, only to bring their city-states to a crashing crescendo.

It would take a religious revival like the Wesleyan revivals in England, which many secular as well as Christian historians attribute to why England did not go through the violent revolutions of France, Russia, and China. Unfortunately, evangelical Christianity is rapidly dying, and the television preachers are only interested in using Jesus as a commodity to make big bucks. The scriptures say of disciples of Jesus, that “We are in the world, but we are not of the world.” In reality the typical so-called born-again Christian is very much of the world. My money is on the the high probability based on the fulfillment of prophetic scriptures that we are in the last days, which will be fulfilled by 2030 at the latest.
rabidcaveman

And I heard NOTHING about the link you provided.

Goes to show we can’t trust the media at all.
teapartypatriot4ever

The forces of evil will always deny the truth and facts that exist, which contradict them, and validate the good.This is why they do what they do, their reason for radical threats, intimidation, and actual physical violence to silence those who tell the truth, who stand up for Freedom, Liberty, and Goodness.

But as this article by Erik Erickson so explains articulately, is in trying to understand why normal people of normal intelligence would act in the hateful irrational destructive manner they do, ie; radical anti-American Liberalism,, is something we not dwell on, thus in the immediate time, ours must only be to defeat them,, the evil that they represent and do, for if not, we, the good people of this nation and the world, will forever be at their mercy of suffering and misery.
clamdigger53

Loose one,loose the other,im ready are you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Jacobson get2djnow

of our republic. It makes me sad and angry. My children will know how to fight and, with God’s help, survive. The Left is enjoying watching the fall, but they won’t be so pleased with what will replace the edifice they’ve destroyed.
funwithknives

is Truly “A Line in The Sand” that is being crossed as we sit here, messaging each other.

As hackneyed as the phrase sounds ,
how do we “Get The Word Out”, and not appear Semi-Rabid to a layperson?
To be seen as part of a solution?
There is scarcely a person participating on this Idea Exchange blog that cannot recall some recent event that indicates ‘our downhill slide’.
The increasing sense of foreboding is here, and it is now.

….and on some days it scares ‘the everloving snot’ out of me.

I’m no coward,and try not to be an alarmist, but what we see here is A Reality.
Only a fool would fail to see this truth, as Erick so distinctly does.

Are we truly history, repeated? Have the Hordes arrived and we just don’t know it yet?
http://eremitic-fellow.blogspot.com/ rbrianc

I wrote Friday that modern tolerance will eventually rob men of liberty, for it compels us to keep silent for fear of causing offense. And if we are not free to offend, we are not truly free to speak.
dodgeone

that Coednametema hit the nail on the head. I wish more people would open there eyes to just who O is, understand what he stands for and that if reelected an has his way we will called either the Socialist States of America or the United Socialist States of America and I for one want no part of either one.
dodgeone

The black ?community? will need to get rid of the likes of J. Jackson, A Sharpton and others like them who preach that its all the white mans fault that blacks cant get ahead in life because if that was the truth we would not of had 2 black men sit on the Supreme Court bench an O would of never be elected POTUS.
ihateliberals

The left is doing nothing new it’s just that now instead of like it was in the old days the Press is Liberal. In the past the Press was either a littel right leaning or just neutral. The left always uses positive words to describe negative things. Like the word “Compromise”. to a Republican compromise is where you get together and mutually come to a decision. To a Liberal it is what you do when you are loisng your point. In congress if the Liberals are losing their position on a bill they start talking compromise but if like when they and the majority for Obamacare not only did they not compromise they locked out the Republicans altogether. When they talk of Tolerance it only means that those that agree with them are being tolerant and any other point of view is intolerance. Peace means that everything is going their way. Planned Parenthood means to kill babies legally. Entitlement is another word for enslavement. The list goes on and on. One of Satan’s greatest accomplishments was convincing the left that he didn’t exist. At first he tried to convince us that God didn’t exist but when that didn’t work he convinced them that He didn’t exist. Much easier to do. There isn’t much that a liberal thinks is bad except the Conservatives attitude and belief in God. The left will tolerate anything as long as it doesn’t get in their way. The Constitution is in their way and they would gladly burn it if they could. With Obama they may still achieve that goal.
lionelpeach

What if one day black folks wake up from their collective nightmare and decide to finally wash their hands of Democrats and vote Republican. Not that the GOP is without blame, but the effect of this mass movement would be an historically liberating, momentous action that could finally, mercifully, remove diseased liberals out of power and back into coherency. That would truly be power to the people.
acat

There are clear fault lines, Obama has thrown some of them into stark relief.

Mew
drawer22

Cogito, ergo armatus sum.
hoootie

Tolerance is the virtue of a man without conviction.
http://www.lafango.com/brightfame_63 patriot63

Tolerance without conviction by definition is more accurately described as the social acceptance and practice of “immorality”, with no restraint and no regard or consideration for the people who oppose such conduct and lifestyles.
This is a liberal or homosexual’s understanding and perception of “Tolerance”. True tolerance is best described in one word, “meekness”, or to be transparently clear, strength under control, being calm and civil even though one is prevented in having one’s own way or when other’s refuse to agree with one’s own set of ethical and moral standards and wants.
Liberals have no such tolerance. Liberals are more like out of control, immature, undisciplined, spoiled brat teenageres who throws a temper tantrum of stomping their feet, shaking their fists, yelling, making rude and character assissination vulgar remarks towards someone who stands in the way of them having their own way, and this country now has a president who supports such conduct by ignoring the mature “majority consent of the governed”.
Ausonius

In our case the hordes have been generated by our own civilization, the same that generated the amoral politics of Machiavelli, the Calvinist bigots under Cromwell, the Terror and Napoleon in France, Nazism/Fascism, and Communism, as well as our 1960′s student radicals, the extreme environmentalists, and the crypto-Socialist policies of MAObama.

These phenomena are the “dark side” of the same civilization that brought us Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Jefferson and the other American Founding Fathers, Frederic Bastiat, the Austrian School of Economics, Churchill, Adenauer, von Kuehnnelt-Leddihn, Russell Kirk, Reagan, etc.

In the first century A.D., Tacitus wrote an ethnological study of the Germanic tribes, contrasting their lifestyles as morally superior to the increasingly decadent Romans. The Empire coasted under the 5 Good Emperors into the disastrous 200′s, whose destruction – self-inflicted for the most part through civil wars – would lay the groundwork for the future decline and fall in 410-453 A.D.

With the Romans in the 300′s, it would have been hard to find a Roman citizen lionizing the decline of their civilization, especially among those who thought it was declining. Ausonius did his best against the trend of decline, as did others, but the external barbarians and a host of other internal problems proved to be insurmountable.

We will discover in the next decade whether America wants to reverse its fairly recent – and self-inflicted – decline, or whether it will join with its internally generated barbarians and rejoice in the cancerous spread of Mediocrity.
Viet71

America rewards wealth creation, richly.

Here’s how I see America:

Bond clippers
Funders (hedge fund managers, venture capitalists)
Guys like Bill Gates
High-income guys and gals
Working stiffs
Everyone else

America is not headed to the shredder. It’s headed to the unknowable future.
acat

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded ? here and there, now and then ? are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”
— Heinlein
Viet71

Our constitution is a beacon to the world.

The world looks to us and our language.

We must strive to excel, individually and as a nation.

Robert Heinhein grasped the future. I read his second-hand books as a 14-year-old.

Poverty is something I knew. Not as a bad thing but as, today, a point of reference. Poverty is not bad. Expectations mean more.
Ausonius

True: America and the West might be saved yet by the Steve-Jobs types among us, along with the marvels of technology. The Germanic tribes actually enjoyed a technological advantage in military weaponry toward the end: we will probably not see that, but given the Leftist hatred of the military, nothing is guaranteed.

Risk-taking “venture capitalists” (of a sort: capitalists in our sense did not exist, and business was looked down upon by the wealthy) were present in the Roman Empire, although not to the same degree: they may be our saving grace.

“Everyone else,” however, does not encourage me about the future, given the results of the 2008 election.

To be sure, we are fighting rising mediocrity in our politics (look at how many truly mediocre – and worse – politicians from both parties are dominating our country: who voted for them?), in the schools, in the workplace (e.g. recall that the Empire State Building was erected in 13 months: compare that with the 12-years needed to rebuild Ground Zero; locally it is taking 3 years to rebuild a 3-mile stretch of freeway) and in the kulcher (300 channels and theaters with 24 screens of mainly endless mediocrity – and worse.)

And yet all of that could be rendered irrelevant, given a large minority of energetic and creative people – as long as they are not forced into mediocrity by laws promulgated by the mediocrities in governments small and large.

We will see if the trend shows signs of reversal with this year’s election.
thethinman

“Tolerance has been redefined to mean accept and it is no longer enough to have values. The values must be the correct values.”
thethinman

Conservative sites that it’s totally “conservative” tea party types that consistently use vulgar insinuations and language. But then it’s about what you hear kids say in the halls of the local school
thethinman

Of the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America as it falls from it’s position as a world leader and the engine that drove the world economy. Without our spending until most every American is in dept to their eyeballs along with the government, the third world would be the 4th world. But as in the last days of Rome, so the corruption and degenerate hedonistic materialism of the United States shows that the end is near. Regardless of how the Bible describes the last days – it is the same for all nations, usually about 200 – 300 years after they are founded – they fall apart and back into the cesspool of the world. Who knows what nation will be the next power in the world – most likely it will be Brazil. Ah, you thought China – China is still corrupt through and through and too many people with too few resources and energy. Their corner of capitalism is brought to them by you and I, Walmart and the plethora of “dollar” stores. Even the Chinese prefer “foreign” goods to that junk made in China – they should know it’s junk – they make it.
thethinman

Is NOT the power that drives the liberal Socialist Democrat Party, nor the Muslim Fascist in the White House. The power that drives it is a nationwide disease of wanting the government to take care of everything from cradle to grave, a Nanny State and Big Brother. Self reliance and responsibility is dwindling fast. It starts in school with EVERYTHING provided to children with no responsibility on them or their parents to ensure that they are being educated rather than indoctrinated.
http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

We have always shown a resilience and ability to change and adapt.

You probably do not even realize how EXACTLY your post matches criticisms I have heard and read twenty, thirty, and even forty years ago.

RS

EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Evil Preaches Tolerance

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