Tag: liberty

Standing strong

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London:

This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith – it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded in London.

Muslim tolerance

If you want to track how tolerant the “Religion of Peace” is, I would suggest one way is to subscribe to the free e-mail updates from the Voice of the Martyrs. While VOM is committed to showing the persecution of Christians around the world, increasingly a lot of this persecution is coming at the hands of the supposedly-tolerant followers of Allah. This week’s update includes:
+ In Nigeria, “Andrew Akume, a Christian lecturer and dean of the faculty of law at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Kaduna State, has disappeared after receiving a death sentence from a militant Muslim group. …[W]hile the Nigerian constitution professes a secular status for the nation, the 12 states in Northern Nigeria that have implemented Islamic law promote and propagate Islam using public funds.”
+ In Pakistan, “on Tuesday, June 28th, the homes of Christians in three areas near Peshawar, Pakistan were attacked by a radical Muslim mob. The attacks came after a Christian man was accused earlier that day of burning pages that contained Koranic verses. The man, Yousaf Masih (about 60 years old), has worked as a sweeper for almost two decades for the Pakistani military. While cleaning the home of a military officer, he came across a bag of “rough papers,” and the major told Yousaf to burn them. Yousaf is illiterate and had no way of knowing what was written on the papers he was told to burn. Other workers saw the papers and said Yousaf was burning pages from the Koran. The next day police arrested Yousaf. (Insulting Islam, the Prophet Mohammed or the Koran can be punishable by death under Pakistan’s harsh anti-blasphemy laws.) Radical Muslims returned to the area that night and burned an estimated 200 houses. Many were looted by members of the mob, who stole televisions, refrigerators and other items. The mob beat Yousaf’s three sons and his brother, Yaqoob. Police have reportedly arrested 16 people involved in the attacks. A Hindu temple was also attacked, as apparently the mob at first believed Yousaf was a Hindu.”
+ In Saudi Arabia, Christians are regularly persecuted by the Muslim majority, with the full approval of the ruling family. “Within the past two months, at least three groups of expatriate Christians meeting privately for worship in Riyadh have been raided and their leaders put under arrest for several days or weeks. Under the rule of strict Islamic law, Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of any religion other than Islam within its borders.”
+ In Turkey, Christian Yakup Cindilli was beaten so badly by Muslim nationalists, he was in a coma for 40 days. Cindilli’s family, conservative Muslims, continue to pressure him to renounce his faith, but he continues his recovery from the October 2003 attack committed to Christ.
It was semi-widely reported that in Afghanistan, the Taliban set to destroy numerous Buddhist statues, some of which had been around for more than a thousand years.
These are the kinds of things Muslims around the world are responsible for on a daily basis. I’m not saying all Muslims are this intolerant of non-Islamic faiths. I’m just saying that this is happening far too often for this to simply be a “few extremists” we are continually told are responsible for such atrocities. Those “few extremists” sure have a way of getting around.

Herein lies the problem

Nancy Pelosi, on the Kelo decision:

It is a decision of the Supreme Court. If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken. It’s an elementary discussion now. They have made the decision.
The Supreme Court is not the end-all, be-all of what is legal or not in this country. Does no one remember anything from their basic civics class? If the Supreme Court can willy-nilly declare whatever they like unconstitutional or constitutional, where is the system of “checks and balances” we all learned about? Yes, the Court is to act as a check and balance on the other two branches, but likewise, the executive and legislative branches act as checks and balances on the Supreme Court.
There shouldn’t have to be a constitutional amendment on the part of the legislature to overturn Kelo, Ms. Pelosi, because the Court’s decision is unconstitutional and wrong. It’s right there in Amendment number five of the Bill of Rights. New corporate structures to provide increased tax revenue fails to qualify in every way, shape, or form of the “public good” in the eyes of the Founding Fathers.

Apparently, I’m a dangerous citizen

“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” —Charles Beard

We, the Democratic Party, want it both ways

Senator Ted Kennedy, 1981:

“It is offensive to suggest that a potential justice of the Supreme Court must pass some presumed test of judicial philosophy. It is even more offensive to suggest that a potential justice must pass the litmus test of any single-issue interest group. The disturbing tactics of division and distortion and discrimination practiced by the extremists of the new right have no place in these hearings and no place in the nation’s democracy.”
Senator Ted Kennedy, 2005:
“Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement gives President Bush, elected by a divided nation that has become even more divided, a unique opportunity to unite us by choosing for the Supreme Court someone who can win support from a broad bipartisan majority in the Senate and whom the vast majority of Americans will be proud of.”
The enormous difference in the dates shown above–which should be enough to secure support for Congressional term limits–aside, where, dear Senator Kennedy, Democrats, and other members of the radical left, in the Constitution does it say the President of the United States must consult with the Senate on his choices for federal bench appointments? Rather than choosing someone “who can win support from a broad bipartisan majority,” the President should be choosing as a nominee a justice who will abide by the Constitution (aka, an “originalist”), versus one who will make up rights and law based on nothing found within the Constitution (aka, an “activist”).
Something tells me that if enough justices on the Supreme Court fit the former model, rather than the latter, the American people would be quite proud of them, Senator, because the Court wouldn’t be meddling in our lives and we would rarely hear from them.
Here’s hoping the President nominates another Scalia or Thomas. I want to see Kennedy’s face turn all red. Oh wait, too late.
[Thanks to today’s Best of the Web.]

Grab a drop cloth and try not to get spattered

Like Jeff, I would like to see the Democratic Party come back to the roots it showed during the days of Truman and Kennedy, with regard to national security. If we can agree, for the most part, on this one area of policy, then all the domestic stuff we quibble over, such as Social Security, Medicare, et al, might get more attention.

Because I love our two-party system and I respect the members and leaders of the Democratic Party, I offer them this piece of advice at absolutely no charge: When you guys stand so close together, it’s easy to paint you all with the same brush. If you don’t like being accused of being weak on terrorism or of not being serious about the war — and based on your reactions to Karl Rove’s speech last week, it’s clear that you don’t — then take a cue from Senator Hagel of Nebraska. When somebody from the furthest extents of the far left says something ridiculous, don’t just sit there and let it happen. Stand up behind a podium tell America that that’s not what you stand for, that that’s not what you believe in, that those are not your ideas.

You’ll be better off as a party, and we’ll be better off as a country, if you stop letting groups like Move On speak for you.

Independence Day prayer

Thank you, David.

What July Fourth Means to Me

For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July.
Somewhere in our [youth], we began to be aware of the meaning of [important national] days and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.
The day of our nation’s birth in that little hall in Philadelphia, [was] a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words “treason, the gallows, the headsman’s axe,” and the issue remained in doubt.
[On that day] 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their sacred honor.
What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, eleven were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.
John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton. Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.
But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, three million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world. In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation.
It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.
Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.
We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
–Ronald Reagan, 1981

Happy Independence Day

Today is the fourth of July, not the Fourth of July. That is not the holiday we celebrate in the United States today. Today we celebrate our Independence Day (Crikey, did I just quote a mediocre alien invasion movie?), when our Founding Fathers declared finished the document that would become our Declaration of Independence from England. So wish your fellow Americans a Happy Independence Day when you see them, and thank God for the blessing of having been born in–or having the privilege of becoming a naturalized citizen of–the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.

“Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” –Inscription on the Liberty Bell
“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 ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.” –John Adams (1776)
“[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them. … The Declaration of Independence…[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.” –Thomas Jefferson (1821)
Happy 229th Birthday, America!

A Founding Father on property

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” –John Adams
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: the prescience exhibited by the Founding Fathers never ceases to amaze me.