What is it?

Truth, according to Realism, is not a subjective touchy feely process of dialectical thinking like our progressive friends have convinced themselves that it is. The traditional classical definition of truth is a correspondence between our subjective thoughts, and objective existence or reality. Our thoughts are not identical to reality and shouldn’t be confused with reality itself. However, our progressive counterparts, for the most part, believe that reality is entirely subjective, with all of reality being inside the brain of the perceiving subject with nothing independent of it. This philosophy is also known as Epistemological Subjectivism.

The reason this is so important to understand is because in this worldview, there is no duality between the subjective mind and the objective reality that could either correspond or contradict each other. In the world of the epistemological Subjectivist,  nothing can exist except what can be subjectively experienced. As a result, the above mentioned classical definition of Truth loses all

Today, "truth" is . . .

meaning. The Secular Humanist and Postmodernist must redefine truth to fit into this monistic worldview. The most they can hope for in regard to Truth is that there is a consistency within their own thoughts and perceptions, but common sense and logic dictate that even their own perceptions can’t be trusted to be consistent, because they practice even the redefining of the meaning of consistency.

This has devastating consequences when these “thinkers” are in leadership i.e. governments, education, judiciary, business, and “Church,” etc. because the standard always changes. What is True and Right at one point in History becomes Wrong and Evil at another point in History.

Another devastating consequence is the Individual loses his un-a-lien-able Rights because this Individual and his Rights can simply be redefined to fit the vocal and subjectivistic, self-centered majority.

Yep, his notion of "truth".

A perfect example of this is the so-called hate crimes aka thought crimes against anyone who voices a public opinion against Homosexuality. As a result, homosexuals get “special protection” that is not extended to others outside of their privileged group, and totally destroys the unchanging Principle of “Equal Protection under the Law,” To acknowledge that there is such a thing as Equal Protection under the Law would imply that there is an objective principle independent and transcendent of any one particular group, which would repudiate the Secular Humanist and Postmodern mindset.

This Principle is a necessary corollary of the statement in the Declaration that says, “We hold these Truths to be Self-evident, that all Men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain un-a-lien-able Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Because such things as hate crimes is so repugnant to this Principle we truly can say that hate crime legislation completely violates and rapes Reason, Logic and Truth and simply is Un-American!

Murdered because of another's so called "truth"

A Judicial Consequence of such Rape of the Truth is that people are denied substantive Due Process, which concerns itself with the correspondence between the Laws and the Facts of a case, and protects our Un-a-lien-able Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. As a result, a voiceless and handicapped Citizen of Florida was mercilessly tortured and murdered judicially before our very eyes because of the exclusive use of procedural Due Process, which only concerned itself with consistency within the Domain of Law and Court Procedure, completely ignoring the objective reality of a helpless woman’s life. If this can happen to One it can happen to All.

A personal decision makes it the Truth?

Another Judicial Rape of the Truth is seen in the Supreme Court case: “As the postmodernist majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court held in Planned Parenthood v.Casey, 505 US 833 (1992), at 851, ‘At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.’ This legal opinion was promulgated for the purpose of legitimizing the supposed license to kill unborn children.”

Here is a perfect example of those who are trusted with our Constitution and trusted to be honest and have integrity of intellectual thought who are suppose to be the best of American minds in American Jurisprudence setting precedent that the redefining of “one’s own concept of existence”is legitimate legal interpretation of what Life is defined to be in our Declaration.

Intolerance is their "truth."

The media buzz word for today is Tolerance. Let’s look at the word “tolerance” to see how it has been redefined over the decades. In Noah Webster’s 1828 edition dictionary the word tolerance meant, “The power or capacity of enduring; or the act of enduring” (hardship or burden). A. J. Conyer discusses the meaning of tolerance, “By extension toleration applies to enduring a wrong or an injustice.” To the Christian theist tolerance is a virtue associated with wisdom for the purpose of achieving some greater good by exercising tolerance and forbearance of a present wrong. Today in our postmodernist world culture the meaning has been redefined as “Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s culture, our forms of expression and ways of being human . . . . Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others” (UNESCO, 1995 p. 76).

UNLESS – -  you are a Believer in fundamental and unchanging Truth and Reality–you knuckle-dragging neanderthal YOU!

Can it contradict itself? Ah, nope!

In conclusion, Truth is not subjective. Truth is not Relative. There is a Reality independent of our perceptions, and the goal of life is to pursue Truth by conforming our thinking to transcendent, unchanging Reality. The goal is not to use the Law to harm others or to create protected classes of people so as to harm others who disagree with them or redefine our Constitution as a living, breathing document that changes with the whims and lusts of Man. When one group is arbitrarily benefited by Special Law,  others are harmed. Currently, America is being inundated by redefining Secular Humanists and Postmodernists and this will lead to the destruction of Western Civilization if Radical Islam doesn’t get us first.

Conyers, A.J. (2001) The long truce: How toleration made the world safe for power and profit. Spence Publishing, Dallas TX.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 US 833 (1992), at 851.

Recommended Reading:

Adler, M. (2000). How to think about the Great Ideas. Open Court Publishing. Chicago Il.

Sire J.W., (2004). The universe next door: A basic worldview catalog (4th Ed.) InterVarsity Press, Downer Groves, Ill.

This is a wonderful time of year with trees and flowers waking up from their winter naps, and people coming out from their homes to enjoy the outdoors.

Happy Passover!

It’s also the time of year when Christians and Messianic celebrate Yeshua delivering them from our bondage from sin! Jews celebrate their Exodus and being delivered from slavery in Egypt!

Slavery is a picture of sin when discussed in the Bible. At our house, we have a seder on the night of Passover which is, for lack of a better term, a play where we each of us read from a Haggadah, and go through the events that lead up to the delivery of the Jews from bondage in Egypt. However, we also

Seder Plate

add the events of Yeshua’s arrest, death, burial, and resurrection during this Feast of Passover 1,976 years ago. It’s beautiful depicted and shows one how much they are loved.

If you would like to read more about Passover check this out!

By MARK STEYN

This is the time of year, as Hillary Rodham Clinton once put it, when Christians celebrate “the birth of a homeless child” – or, in Al Gore’s words, “a homeless woman gave birth to a homeless child.”

Just for the record, Jesus wasn’t “homeless.” He had a perfectly nice home back in Nazareth. But he happened to be born in Bethlehem. It was census time, and Joseph was obliged to schlep halfway across the country to register in the town of his birth. Which is such an absurdly bureaucratic overregulatory cockamamie Big Government nightmare that it’s surely only a matter of time before Massachusetts or California reintroduce it.

But the point is: The Christmas story isn’t about affordable housing. Joseph and Mary couldn’t get a hotel room – that’s the only accommodation aspect of the event. Sen. Clinton and Vice President Gore are over complicating things: Dec. 25 is not the celebration of “a homeless child,” but a child, period.

Just for a moment, let us accept, as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and the other bestselling atheists insist, that what happened in Bethlehem two millennia is a lot of mumbo-jumbo. As I wrote a year ago, consider it not as an event but as a narrative: You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use?

The birth of a child. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn babe, man is ultimately powerless. For, without new life, there can be no civilization, no society, no nothing. Even if it’s superstitious mumbo-jumbo, the decision to root Christ’s divinity in the miracle of His birth expresses a profound – and rational – truth about “eternal life” here on Earth.

Last year I wrote a book on demographic decline and became a big demography bore, and it’s tempting just to do an annual December audit on the demographic weakness of what we used to call Christendom. Today, in the corporate headquarters of the Christian faith, Pope Benedict looks out of his window at a city where children’s voices are rarer and rarer. Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. Go to a big rural family wedding: lots of aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas but ever fewer bambinos. The International Herald Tribune last week carried the latest update on the remorseless geriatrification: On the Miss Italia beauty pageant, the median age of the co-hosts was 70; the country is second only to Sweden in the proportion of its population over 85, and has the fewest citizens under 15. Etc.

So in post-Catholic Italy there is no miracle of a child this Christmas – unless you count the 70 percent of Italians between the ages of 20 and 30 who still live at home, the world’s oldest teenagers still trudging up the stairs to the room they slept in as a child even as they approach their fourth decade. That’s worth bearing in mind if you’re an American gal heading to Rome on vacation: When that cool 29-year-old with the Mediterranean charm in the singles bar asks you back to his pad for a nightcap, it’ll be his mom and dad’s place.

I’m often told that my demographics-is-destiny argument is anachronistic: Countries needed manpower in the Industrial Age, when we worked in mills and factories. But now advanced societies are “knowledge economies,” and they require fewer working stiffs. Oddly enough, the Lisbon Council’s European Human Capital Index, released in October, thinks precisely the opposite – that the calamitous decline in population will prevent Eastern and Central Europe from being able to function as “innovation economies.” A “knowledge economy” will be as smart as the brains it can call on.

Meanwhile, a few Europeans are still having children: The British government just announced that Muhammad is now the most popular boy’s name in the United Kingdom.

As I say, the above demographic audit has become something of an annual tradition in this space. But here’s something new that took hold in the year 2007: A radical antihumanism, long present just below the surface, bobbed up and became explicit and respectable. In Britain, the Optimum Population Trust said that “the biggest cause of climate change is climate changers – in other words, human beings,” and professor John Guillebaud called on Britons to voluntarily reduce the number of children they have.

Last week, in the Medical Journal of Australia, Barry Walters went further: To hell with this wimp-o pantywaist “voluntary” child-reduction. Professor Walters wants a “carbon tax” on babies, with, conversely, “carbon credits” for those who undergo sterilization procedures. So that’d be great news for the female eco-activists recently profiled in London’s Daily Mail who boast about how they’d had their tubes tied and babies aborted in order to save the planet. “Every person who is born,” says Toni Vernelli, “produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases and adds to the problem of overpopulation.” We are the pollution, and sterilization is the solution. The best way to bequeath a more sustainable environment to our children is not to have any.

What’s the “pro-choice” line? “Every child should be wanted”? Not anymore. The progressive position has subtly evolved: Every child should be unwanted.

By the way, if you’re looking for some last-minute stocking stuffers, Oxford University Press has published a book by professor David Benatar of the University of Cape Town called “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” The author “argues for the ‘anti-natal’ view – that it is always wrong to have children … . Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct.” As does Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us” – which Publishers Weekly hails as “an enthralling tour of the world … anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like.” It’s a good thing it “anticipates” it poetically, because, once it happens, there will be no more poetry.

Lest you think the above are “extremists,” consider how deeply invested the “mainstream” is in a total fiction. At the recent climate jamboree in Bali, the Rev. Al Gore told the assembled faithful: “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here.” Really? The American Thinker’s Web site ran the numbers. In the seven years between the signing of Kyoto in 1997 and 2004, here’s what happened:

•Emissions worldwide increased 18.0 percent;

•Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1 percent;

•Emissions from nonsigners increased 10.0 percent; and

•Emissions from the United States increased 6.6 percent.

It’s hard not to conclude a form of mental illness has gripped the world’s elites. If you’re one of that dwindling band of Westerners who’ll be celebrating the birth of a child, “homeless” or otherwise, next week, make the most of it. A year or two on, and the eco-professors will propose banning Nativity scenes because they set a bad example.

Here we go again. Thousands of Sudanese Muslims took to the street last week to threaten death to a British schoolteacher in Khartoum.

Her crime? She inadvertently committed the felony of allowing her class to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”

The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, has been pardoned by Sudan’s president (after initially being sentenced to 15 days in prison) and sent home to England. Yet that happy ending doesn’t erase the reaction in the streets of Khartoum. The tired story behind irrational anger in much of the Muslim world remains the same.

Watch out if Westerners somewhere are judged blasphemous to Islam when they draw a cartoon, write a novel, make a movie or discuss history.

In their furious reaction, thin-skinned Muslims may issue death threats. And they expect apologies. Sometimes the offense — like the reporting of a Koran flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay — turns out to be false but still causes riots and murdering thousands of miles away.

Likewise, the reaction to this madness is now stereotyped. Often apologies — not condemnation — follow from contrite Westerners. To prevent a recurrence, Western writers, filmmakers, teachers and religious figures quietly edit their work and restrict their speech — but only when Islam is involved.

So-called moderate Muslims, often residing in Western countries, will usually say they deplore such extremism on the part of radicals. Then they claim such intolerance is simply not typical of Islam. Or that the embarrassing story has been reported in exaggerated fashion by those prejudiced against Muslims.

Few, though, ever explain why it is that Muslims — not Hindus, Christians, Buddhists or atheists — are in the global news threatening to kill someone over a toy or a cartoon or an opera.

Finally, the uproar dies down — only to break out again in a new place over a new grievance.

There are certain unspoken rules of the game behind all these incidents. The first is the lack of reciprocity. Christ can be mocked in the Middle East without any consequences.

Muslim leaders can venture to the Vatican at Rome, the ancient center of Christianity, to consult with the pope about the necessity of more interfaith understanding. But should a pope or clergyman want to reciprocate by venturing to Mecca, he better convert to Islam first.

New mosques and conversions to Islam are common in the West. But to send missionaries to, or build a new church in, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Pakistan is to court death.

Condescension is also required. The demonstrator who waves a sword calling for a beheading is often excused. The poor guy must not be educated, rather than just cruel and dangerous. “We’re so sorry for the little mix-up” is the public Western answer to the shout of “Death to you!”

We also know why all this won’t stop, whether in Pakistan or Sudan — or whether over a cartoon or a teddy bear or who knows what next.

A globalized world means communications are instantaneous. What one person in Denmark draws is broadcast immediately to millions in Islamabad and Khartoum. And they are apparently glued to, but very angry at, the modern world that pops up on their television screens.

The Muslim Middle East has much of the world’s oil. So its excesses are put up with by the rest of the world rather than loudly condemned. But after 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid and London, Islamists screaming for a beheading cannot quite be laughed off. Instead they may be the vanguard of something far worse.

Decades of multiculturalism have brainwashed Europeans and Westerners into believing that Islamic furor must be judged in a special cultural context, or is only understood through some real past grievance, usually dating back to the Crusades.

Sometimes apologists dredge up Timothy McVeigh or violence in Northern Ireland as if to prove that supposed Christian-inspired terrorism is just as much a world danger as jihadism. We know it isn’t, but such moral equivalence sounds liberal and might calm down the mob.

Other times we drag Iraq into the conversation and say the armed removal of Saddam radicalized Muslims — as if the fatwa against Salman Rushdie or 9/11 followed the outbreak of that war.

What would stop this unhealthy teddy bear syndrome?

 

• Weaning ourselves off imported oil and therefore the need to appease those who have it.
• Politely informing Muslims that Westerners believe the norms of free speech and expression are to be uniformly applied. No one religion or region gets a special pass.
• Supporting human rights abroad and offering some constitutional alternative in the Middle East to theocracy and dictatorship that both encourage Islamic radicalism.
• And remaining militarily strong.

Remember that the fanatic waving his age-old sword in the Khartoum street over a teddy bear shows the same dangerous derangement as the nut in Tehran who may one day want his hand on the Bomb.

©2007 Tribune Media Services

4 shot outside Colorado Springs church

******
by GEORGE MERRITT, Associated Press Writer

ARVADA, Colo. – A gunman walked into a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries early Sunday and opened fire, killing two of the center’s staff members and wounding two others. No arrests had been made by late morning.

The shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission center, police spokeswoman Susan Medina said. About 45 people were evacuated from the dormitory in this Denver suburb and moved to an undisclosed location.

A man and a woman were killed and two men were wounded, Medina said.

All four victims were staff members, said Paul Filidis, a Colorado Springs-based spokesman with Youth With a Mission.

Brady White, who attends Faith Bible Chapel, where the center is located, said he spoke to some students there, who were unhurt but called the experience “terrifying.”

“They’re just wonderful people,” White said of the center’s students. “Their mission is to know God and to make him known.”

Police identified the victims as Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 23. Youth With a Mission said Johnson was from Minnesota and Crouse was from Alaska. Their hometowns weren’t immediately available.

Cheril Morrison, wife of chapel pastor George Morrison, said Crouse had just hung up Christmas lights at her home and Johnson was “an amazingly beautiful person.”

One of the injured men was hospitalized in critical condition and the other was in stable condition, police said. Both are in their 20s.

Witnesses told police that the gunman was a 20-year-old white male, wearing a dark jacket and skull cap, who left on foot. He may have glasses or a beard.

“There’s no blueprint for this, we’re just going to be honest and pray for one another, cry with one another,” center director Peter Warren told KUSA-TV. “Who knows what was going on in this young man’s life.”

Police with several dogs searched the area through the night, and residents of nearby homes were notified by reverse 911 to be on the lookout. Medina said residents were asked to look out their windows to see the snow had been disturbed during the night. About 4 inches of snow had fallen in the area in the past day.

Mimi Martin, who lives near the center, said she received the warning call at about 9 a.m. warning neighbors to keep their doors and windows locked.

“Why would anybody want to hurt those kids?” Martin said. “I just pray for their families.”

People bundled up against freezing cold attended Sunday services at the sanctuary, about 300 yards from the dormitory on the campus of the Faith Bible Chapel. Police kept tight security on the chapel grounds.

“We never doubted that we would have a service,” said Cheril Morrison. “We felt like our church faithful all needed to be together.”

Darv Smith, director of a Youth With a Mission center in Boulder, said people ranging from their late teens to their 70s undergo a 12-week discipleship course that prepares them to be missionaries.

He said the center trains about 300 people a year.

Filidis said staffers are usually former missionaries themselves and that the “mercy ministries” performed by trainees include orphanage work. He said he didn’t know where the group being trained in Arvada was going to be sent.

Youth With a Mission was started in 1960 and now has 1,100 locations with 16,000 full-time staff, Smith said. The Arvada center was founded in 1984.

Issues analysis

November 26, 2007
Fred Hutchison
RenewAmerica analyst

According to intellectual historian Richard Weaver (1910–1963), a republic devoted to freedom and order requires a rational citizenry who will hearken to the voice of a man of principle. In this essay, we shall define what it means to be a man of principle. Then we shall review the presidential candidates to see if any of them stand out from the crowd according to these principles.

Politics is a moral enterprise

Aristotle defined politics as a moral enterprise. Free citizens deliberate the question “How ought we to order our life together?” Political discussions are full of words like “ought,” “should,” “fairness,” “equity,” and “justice.” Aristotle believed in “moral universals” — that is to say, certain things are universally right and wrong in all human societies. Therefore, he did not hesitate to use the word “ought.”

The leadership of a man of principle is needed when the citizens of a republic are asking the question: “How ought we order our life together?” (See Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Politics. Also see Richard John Neuhaus’ essay “Politics and Bioethics,” First Things, November 2007)

Philosopher Jurgen Habermas distinguishes between political ethics and political morality. He has a truncated view of political ethics, but a broad view of political morality. His political ethics focuses on the process of political discourse, such as how one evaluates and deals with the propositions of political opponents

.

In contrast with his contracted definition of ethics, Habermas tells us expansively that political morality has to do with “the interests of all,” and therefore, political theory is fundamentally concerned with morality. Aristotle and Habermas are as different as men can be, and yet both concluded that politics is a moral enterprise. (See “Public Morality, Public Reason” by Robert P. George. First Things, November 2006.)

Politics as a quest for power

If Weaver, Aristotle, and Habermas are right, a man of principle in politics must believe that politics is a moral enterprise and should speak and act accordingly. He must not behave like Machiavelli or Cardinal Richelieu, who were primarily concerned with enhancing the power, prestige, and influence of the prince.

One who denies that we live in a moral cosmos will inevitably think that politics is solely concerned with the acquisition and use of power. Unfortunately, this is exactly what college students are taught in Political Science 101. The secular university is corrupting the leaders of the future by teaching them to be Machiavellians. The Machiavellian will invariably rule as an unprincipled man as he tramples on morality and ethics in the headlong pursuit of power.

Those who deny that man is a moral being subject to moral laws will be offended by a man of principle. They would ban such men from power and insist that a Machiavellian rules over them.

The enduring popularity of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who both possess a Machiavellian political genius, comes immediately to mind. If Richard Weaver, is right, the political triumph of the most expert manipulators of their fellow citizens might be an harbinger of a crisis of the Republic. A time of crisis is when the leadership of a man of principle is most needed.

Two earmarks of the principled man in politics are: 1) A principled man regards politics as a moral enterprise, and 2) He speaks truth to the people and does not manipulate them.

Due to the low moral tone of modernity, such men are rare. If history is a guide, men of principle tend to emerge during times of crisis. Therefore, a republic needs a man of principle waiting in the wings, ready to take the reins of power with a firm hand in a time of troubles.

A man of principle waiting in the wings

When George Washington answered the call to lead the army, he saved the Republic. When he refused to become king, he saved the infant Republic from reverting to monarchy. When he answered the call to be the first president, he provided an impressive example of how a man of principle could lead a free people and protect their rights, instead of threatening their rights.

Both the friends and enemies of Washington recognized him as a man of principle. If a man of principle appeared today and was waiting in the wings, would the citizens recognize him as such? If the people recognized him, would they hearken to him? The citizens would recognize him if they were sufficiently rational. They would hearken to him if they were sufficiently moral.

Unfortunately, fallen men bridle against the leadership of a man of principle. However, a crisis of the Republic might arouse the survival instincts of citizens. At such a moment, they might call upon a man of principle to lead the Republic through the time of crisis.

Trading a lion for a mouse

Winston Churchill’s party rejected him because he told them unpleasant truths about Hitler that they did not want to hear. They sent Churchill into the political wilderness for a season. Such is the typical fate of the principled man who is stranded in the moral and cultural wasteland of modernity.

Parliament preferred the wishful thinking of the naive Neville Chamberlain, who said, “Peace in our time,” and attempted to appease Hitler. After Chamberlain left the room, Hitler asked, “Why do I have to deal with nonentities?

When the crisis of war came upon them, Parliament dismissed the weak Chamberlain and installed the strong Churchill as prime minister. The imminent danger to the survival of Great Britain brought them to their senses, and they called upon a lion with a great oratorical roar to lead them.

Soon after the allies of WWII were victorious over the axis powers, the voters threw Churchill’s party out of power (July, 1945). The moral commitment and self-sacrificing will of the British were exhausted by five years of heroic leadership and a war of Homeric scope. The Brits wanted relief from the strain of heroism and sacrifice and yearned for a return to a calm, comfortable mediocrity.

Parliament installed the meek and ineffectual Clement Atlee as the new prime minister. The Brits exchanged a lion for a mouse. The obsequious Atlee proceeded to break up the British Empire in order to pander to world opinion and diminish the arduous global responsibilities of Great Britain. Millions died during the ensuing partition of India.

In like manner, congressional Democrats demanded a precipitous withdrawal from Vietnam after Nixon and Kissinger brought the conflict there to a Korea-style settlement. After the unwarranted American withdrawal, millions in Indochina died in a genocidal bloodbath. The Democrats have never accepted responsibility for withdrawing the umbrella of protection that sheltered millions of lives. Atlee never took responsibility for the rivers of blood that were shed during the partition of India. Let millions die — just so we have peace, comfort, and freedom from responsibility. It is the calculation of a moral mouse. Politics is a moral enterprise, and only moral men are fit for it.

When the mouse is away the cats will play

Churchill said, “When the mouse is away, the cats will play.” (When Atlee is away on a trip, parliament will play naughty games.) Churchill also said of Atlee: “He is a very modest man with much to be modest about.”

Jimmy Carter was the American Atlee. As Atlee was promoted during the time of public exhaustion after WWII, Carter climbed to power during the exhaustion following the Vietnam War and Watergate. As Atlee gave away India, Carter gave away the Panama Canal.

The moral of the story is: (1) When the voters reject a man of principle or are demoralized by a long crisis, they are apt to choose a nonentity or a mouse to lead them. A mouse would rather give away precious national possessions than to lead their nations like men of courage. (2) During a time of crisis, the Republic might well turn to a man of principle waiting in the wings. A shaken people might give him a mandate to slay their dragons. (3) Men such as Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill are steady in the face of adversity and don’t quit before the job is done even if they are exhausted.

Their virtues of such men are engraved on their hearts. Their commitments are steadfast and are not blown about by momentary enthusiasms and passing fads. When they speak, they have moral authority. George Washington had such a formidable moral authority that his icy stare could stop a riot. His majestic appearance with a contingent of troops caused the Whiskey Rebellion to peacefully dissolve.

The man of principle is steadfast

A man of principle is steady in the face of evil and adversity, doesn’t quit before the job is done, and has moral authority.

To paraphrase Aristotle, courage is being steadfast concerning things that are harmful. Allow me to amplify the concept by saying that the courage of a political leader is virtuous if the leader does not change his mind concerning things that are evil and harmful in spite of having to endure fiery ordeals, daunting exertions, and the endless toil of faithful service, while enduring the calumny of his enemies. The vicissitudes of fortune do not make him change his account of right and wrong. When Solzhenitsyn clung to his integrity through many years of suffering in the gulag, he gained moral authority in the eyes of the entire world.

The man of principle is not like the fickle American Democrats who changed their minds about the jihadist terrorists being evil and dangerous because they are tired of the war. The courageous leadership of President Bush has saved us from a second great attack terror attack like 9/11. The ungrateful Democrats in Congress are railing against this man who restored their feeling of security.

“This was the unkindest cut of all; for when the noble Caesar saw him stab, ingratitude, more strong than a traitors’ arm, quite vanquished him…” (Mark Anthony’s soliloquy on ingratitude, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare).

Washington and Lincoln endured the bitter calumnies of the ungrateful and were admirable in their moral authority and their steadfastness in adversity. Churchill was particularly admirable in his steadfast insistence that the Nazis were evil and a danger to civilization. Ronald Reagan rightly called the Soviet Union “an evil empire.” President Bush rightly called Iraq, Iraq, and North Korea “the axis of evil.” The principled man correctly identifies the malefactors and calls evil by its right name.

Churchill and Reagan persevered until the job was done. President Bush has been steadfast in pursuing an unpopular war against a great evil that is a threat to civilization. That was principled, and he should be honored for it. However, he has squandered his moral authority by failing to protect American sovereignty by securing the southern border and enforcing the law concerning illegal aliens. That was unprincipled. Bush scores high in the profiles of courage, but ranks below Reagan and Truman in the pantheon of Presidents because he lost moral authority.

All of the Democratic candidates for president have lost patience with the war, and none are willing to call the Islamic jihadists evil. All downplay the danger of the jihadists to the survival of Western civilization. All are Chamberlains and none are Churchills. Among the Republican candidates, Ron Paul is clearly a Chamberlain. His shrill complaints about American sacrifices evokes the whiney voice of a spoiled adolescent who has just discovered that adulthood requires resolution, personal sacrifice, and self-denial.

Rationality and law

Plato says in the Laws that man is endowed with a “divine spark of reason,” which enables them to formulate laws and live as citizens with self-restraint. He said, “We should run our public and our private life in obedience to what little spark of immortality lies within us and dignify this distribution of reason with the name of law. It cannot be an accident that the name of this god-given and wonderful institution, law (nomos), is so suggestive of reason (nous).” (See First Things, November 2007, Plato as Statesman, Mary Ann Glendon)

God gave man reason and a moral sense so that he could live under law. Therefore, Plato rightly noticed the hint of divinity in reason and law. The intimate link between reason and law is discerned by the man of principle. Thus, Plato concluded that the republic that is led by rational men has good laws and is blessed by the gods.

Laws and political principles must be true in accordance with the universal moral law and the understanding of right reason. With regard to moral truth, the man of principle must be “orthodox,” meaning he embraces “correct opinion.” He believes that there is such a thing as truth and virtue, and he means to have them. He is driven (as if by the gods) to go to great trouble to made sure he has got these things right. He disciplines his intellect and plumbs the depths of his conscience in his search for truth. If he is a Christian, he humbles himself before God, in order to be guided by “the spirit of truth.” (John 14:17)

The principled man is both moral and rational. The principled man follows the universal moral law and the councils of right reason. However, he falls short if he does not have self-control. The great men cited in this essay had self-restraint in the use of power. The principled man is restrained in the use of power.

A Republic blessed by the gods

In Plato’s Laws, an Athenian, a Spartan and a Cretan travelers were discussing the laws of a republic. The Cretan shrine to which they traveled was erected to commemorate the divine origin of the laws of Crete. According to the Athenian traveler, Athens was not as blessed by the gods as Crete. Athens had civic disorders caused by the misuse of liberty and the lack of restraint by the rulers and the ruled.

Plato had viewed Athens with different eyes in his youth. The grandiose utopian schema of The Republic written by the young Plato compares poorly with the wisdom of the old Plato who wrote The Laws.

The travelers in Plato’s story concluded that in order to provide restrain the rulers, the government should have checks and balances. The American founders designed the Constitution, complete with checks and balances, as a grand schema to restrain those with power. The mature Plato would have approved.

The travelers also concluded that laws should protect private property, private families should be honored, and homosexuality should be condemned. The old, wise Plato was a defender of family values. The foolish young Plato wanted to abolish the traditional family to make way for a utopian social engineering program and was tolerant of homosexuality.

Those who seek political utopias create a hell on earth. When the family is abolished, the people quickly become depraved, as the English schoolboys did in The Lord of the Flies. They turned their tropical paradise into a nightmare of barbarism.

The dilemma of a Republic

The wise old Plato realized that the laws provide wholesome restraints and boundaries and a regime of freedom and order in balance. However, fallen men tend to chafe against wholesome boundaries and restraints. This is the central dilemma that every republic must face.

Free men who have prospered in a blessed republic perversely test and push against the boundaries that have been established by their forebears to keep them free, safe, and reasonably content. Their wicked hearts lust for the forbidden fruit just beyond the wholesome boundaries.

Edith Wharton wrote in The House of Mirth about a foolish woman who stamped her mail with a boat setting sail with the words “beyond.” Whatever she obtained, she wanted something “beyond.” However good the life the life she enjoyed within the conventions and mores of her society, she wanted something “beyond.”

In a letter to William James, Wharton lamented the depredations of modernism. “Everything that used to form the fabric of our daily life has been torn in shreds, trampled on, destroyed … including hundreds of little incidents, habits, traditions,” which she recorded from her memories. With each social convention, the moderns had thrown off, an understanding of human nature latent in those conventions was lost. (See “The Genius of Old New York,” book review by Cheryl Miller of Edith Wharton, by Hermoine Lee — Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2007)

James Madison, the designer the American Constitution, deeply understood the inherent dilemma of a republic in which fallen men dare to be free, but chafe against the restraints that keep them free. He designed the checks and balances in the Constitution to force ambitious and willful men to crash against each other as they try to break through constitutional boundaries. He knew that mere self-restraint would not suffice, so he harnessed rascals to keep other rascals within their proper jurisdictions. A rascal will intrude on another man’s prerogatives if he can get away with it, but will fight like an angry wildcat if another rascal intrudes on his prerogatives.

Judicial self-restraint

We are living in a dangerous day when many citizens have become hyper-individualistic and have cast off self-restraint. Liberal judges not only refuse to control themselves, but they concoct dubious legal theories to rationalize their intention to break free from constitutional controls. Unleashed from judicial restraint, they yearn to create law as though they were a legislature.

How does a principled Supreme Court justice behave? Justices Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas follow Judge Robert Bork’s theory of “original intent.” When in doubt about the meaning of a constitutional clause, the principled judge studies diligently to ascertain what the founders meant when they wrote the words. The words had real meaning to the founders, and they expected posterity to understand them.

Serious research and intellectual commitment is needed to find out what the words were intended to mean. Study, self-discipline, commitment, and arduous intellectual toil is the way of the virtuous judge. He must restrain himself when he is tempted to take an intellectual or moral shortcut, or to make the words say what he wants them to say. The virtuous judge must place wax in his ears to block out the political and cultural siren songs as the court sails through stormy cultural seas.

In spite of tremendous pressure from wicked men who are chafing against the limits of power built into the Constitution, the principled judge will respect and protect the boundary lines, just as the founders set them down, as Justices Scalia and Thomas are striving to do. In this way, the Republic can survive and be proudly passed down to our children.

The scent of leviathan

One of the causes of the American Revolution was that many colonists suspected that King George III aspired to be a tyrant. When his policy was to recognize no limit on the arbitrary powers of the monarchy — even though his actual exercise of power was moderate by the standards of the day — the foul smell of inordinate personal ambition stung the noses of the colonists, who had grown accustomed to de facto self-government. They thought they smelled what Thomas Hobbes called Leviathan. The colonists were jealous of the liberty and the king was careless in the words with which he defined his policy.

Inordinate personal ambition tempts a man to crash through the boundaries of principle and law. Ronald Reagan said that we should look for the man who seeks office because there is a job that needs to be done that he can do. He said that such a man is willing to give someone else the credit as long as the job gets done. Reagan warned us not to trust the man who seeks office because he wants to be someone. For example, Jimmy Carter had no reason to become president other than his dreams of personal glory.

Aristotle warned against the political leader with libido dominandi, the unbridled lust for power and glory. Shakespeare’s plays are full of warnings against the lust for power. Richard III and MacBeth are about the increasing corruption engendered by personal ambition and the atrocities and public calamities that follow as men of inordinate ambition rise to power. Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar reveals the thoughts of friends of Caesar who were worried that he was getting too ambitious. Cassius smelled Leviathan and called it Colossus.

“[H]e (Caesar) doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs, to peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves…. Now, in the names of all the gods at once, upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he has grown so great?” (Cassius’ soliloquy)

“[L]owliness is young ambition’s ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the utmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend. So Caesar may….” (Brutus’ soliloquy).

The Apostle James warned about personal ambition in a more blunt and pithy manner: “For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed.” (James 3: 13–18)

A moderate personal ambition is natural and healthy, but an inordinate ambition is corrupting. It is not success itself that corrupts, it is an grandiose ambition that brings delusion, infects the moral sense, and stirs up a man to crash through moral and legal boundaries. Beware the man of inordinate ambition.

The realm of politics is peculiarly prone to grandiosity. That is precisely why there is so much corruption and such rampant competition and division in the ranks. Are there any political organizations that are free of internal rivalries? No, not one. However, the leadership of a man of principle retards the rivalries like salt slows the decay of food. The internal rivalries within the Reagan and Lincoln administrations were not pretty, but worked more slowly and were ultimately less damaging than the rivalries in most other administrations.

How does moderate personal ambition get inflated into a foul monstrosity? By lust for power and glory, driven by the raging of infernal pride. These potent poisons destroy the soul. Inordinately proud men who fear for their immortal souls might think twice about a career in politics.

Can a man of principle be ambitious? Yes, if the ambition is free of the proud lust for power and glory. He must see himself as a man with a noble mission who needs influence to carry out the mission. He must conceive the mission as the expression of his deep beliefs and moral convictions, and he must work for the sake of the Republic, not for his own sake. Once again, he must view politics as a moral enterprise and not merely as a means to power by which he can exalt himself in the floodlights of fame, or indulge in the selfish gratifications of power, as he rules amidst his fawning sycophants.

The scent of the sycophant

When Jimmy Carter hired a staff of people in their twenties, it was a sure sign that he was gathering fawning sycophants around him. The sycophants, yes men, and groupies are there to flatter the swollen, but tender, ego of the leader. They will encourage him to use his power to gratify himself. Avoid the man who is followed by sycophants and mediocrities.

In contrast to Carter, Lincoln and Washington surrounded themselves with the greatest men of the day, even though they knew that some of these men would not be afraid to oppose him or think themselves to be better men than him.

President Bush gets middling scores in this department. Cheney and Rumsfeld are men of weight, but Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales are mediocrities.

Harry Truman overcame the temptations of his petty and cantankerous personality by hearing his staff’s advice and then asking them, “Now, what do we have to do for the country?” That shifted their minds away from the question “What do we have to do to make the boss feel good?”

John Adams was like Truman. He was personally petty and cantankerous, but never failed to act upon the best interests of the Republic. I always have a throb of joy when I reflect upon the steady virtues of this indispensable founding father who was disliked and unappreciated in his own day and is now eclipsed only by the glory of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

Arbitrary law and the will to power

The crafting of laws by a legislature is a moral enterprise. Most of our criminal and civil laws and penalties for crimes and torts are based on moral judgments. A legislature filled with men who think politics is only about power would not employ moral reasoning to make proper moral judgments as they craft legislation. Their laws would be arbitrary and unjust.

Principled law is rational and moral. In contrast, Arbitrary law is formed by the manipulative human will to power. The man of principle eschews arbitrary law and arbitrary uses of power.

Principled law is formed (1) by those with proper legal jurisdiction, (2) who discover law and no not create law, (3) who work within boundaries set by the Constitution and longstanding legal precedent, and (4) who insist that law be rational and moral.

The American Republic has long enjoyed a government of laws and not men. When the man of principle vanishes, we shall soon have a government of men who subvert the law to serve their will to power. The new regime of arbitrary power will mean the end of the Republic. America will no longer be the premier nation of the world, but will shrink into a European-style mediocrity.

Boys swimming on a sea of glory

John Gregory Mantle said that the works of many religious people are “learned behavior built upon a corrupt root.” That is the state of a child who is well instructed in right and wrong and follows those instructions by rote and not by a sense of moral conviction. We all know children from good homes who are willing to do their chores, but go groaning and complaining to their task. When faced with the powerful temptations of adolescence, the outwardly good boy sometimes becomes a bad boy.

Beware of the fair-haired boy in politics, who is promoted too rapidly in the springtime of life. Concerning promotions in the church, Paul counsels that it be “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil” (I Timothy 3:6). When the novice is promoted too quickly, he might not have the weight of character to withstand the blandishments of personal glory. Like Lucifer, he might proudly reach beyond his station and be ignominiously cast off his pinnacle of exaltation and fall into obloquy and perdition. Beware the fair-haired boy.

Harold Stassen (1907–2001) was the governor of Minnesota at 31, the youngest governor in American history. As the “boy wonder” he gave the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention in 1940. He never recovered from being the fair-haired boy in the national limelight. He ran for president nine times. A photograph taken late in his life reveals an old man wearing a wig of blond wavy hair with locks coming down to his eyebrows. Fifty years had passed since his famous speech and he still saw himself as the fair-haired boy.

The fall from power of a fair haired boy who has progressed far into the realms of power and glory can be brutal. Shakespeare put these words of woe into the mouth of Cardinal Wolsey after he fell from favor with the king. ” Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man. Today, he puts forth the tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, and bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost…. I have ventured like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory; but far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride at length broke under me; and now has left me weary and old with service, to the mercy of a vain stream that must forever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!” (Henry VIII)

The fair-haired boy makes a proud show of his virtues on the public stage, as did Cardinal Wolsey, but in his heart he is still a rascal and a scamp. When finally exposed, his fall from glory is bitter and heart-wrenching.

The Christian in power

Jimmy Carter had faith in God, and many evangelicals voted for him for this reason. Unfortunately, Carter was a man of shockingly childlike naivety about the forces of evil in the world. He was something of a clown as he grinned and preened for the cameras. Some people of faith never grow up spiritually, intellectually, or emotionally. When a man is running for president, the voter should ask himself if the man is a mature Christian or a perpetual babe in Christ. Discern the spiritual maturity of the Christian candidate.

When Pat Robertson ran for president, my sister and I watched him in a debate and compared him with the other candidates. I asked her how he came off in comparison with the other candidates: as a heavyweight, middleweight or lightweight. She said “middleweight.” In spite of Robertson’s obvious versatility, his heft in Christian broadcasting did not fully translate into the political arena. Men are designed and developed by God for special purposes, but many are not cut out for the maelstrom of politics. Discern whether the man is fitted to the office.

However, faith in God can be the basis of greatness in the political arena. A mature Christian is sometimes amazingly versatile, like Sir Thomas More, “a man for all seasons.” As a Renaissance man of great literary distinction, as a philosopher and theologian, and as a lawyer and judge, More was world class. As a bon vivant and raconteur and wit he had no equal in the circles of Renaissance men or in the court of King Henry VIII. He was a master of diplomacy, court intrigue, and the fine arts of persuasion. He was a fine family man and won friends of exceptional loyalty. He was one of the greatest chancellors of England, a position that requires the mastery of administration, law, finance, and political policy.

To cap it off, More was a man of principle and a living saint. He died a martyr and was canonized a saint after his death. He was an unusually gifted man, as well as a spiritually-minded man of great depth. His fine education and deep spirituality worked together to produce an exceptional versatility that translated brilliantly to the field of politics and public administration.

More was never lifted up in pride by the glory of his office, as was his predecessor, Cardinal Wolsey. More’s secret was the spirituality of the cross. Through meditation on the cross of Christ, More mortified his pride and remained humble. His humility enabled him to convey a winsome sense of humanity.

The Christian world view

One thing religious faith can provide for a president is a coherent world view. Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter was a Christian by religious faith, but he partially adopted a world view of liberal modernism. He had two irreconcilable world views fighting within him, and the frequent result was confusion. Most of his advisors were liberals, and this tipped the balance of his administration towards liberalism.

Although Carter is the most obvious example of the confusion of world views, many politicians are double-minded and have a grey area where two incompatible world views overlap. Many conservative Republicans have failed to fully divest themselves of modernism and retain cactus patches of liberalism on the fringes of their conservative orchard. President Bush is a perfect example of an evangelical and a conservative who occasionally acts like a liberal. Find out if the Christian who aspires to power has a well developed Christian world view.

Alan Keyes, man of principle

My original intention for this essay was to rate all the Republicans according to the principles I’ve identified. Unfortunately, that would require another essay. Several of the Republican candidates look fairly good as men of principle. However, one stands out from the pack: my favorite candidate, Alan Keyes.

Several of the conservative Republican candidates might agree that politics is a moral enterprise, and they ground their moral beliefs in their Christian faith. Alan Keyes goes a step further. He starts with God Himself in defining his premises. Then he reasons from God to his position on moral issues. How do I know this? I have heard him do this in his speeches and debates.

Most candidates balance pragmatism with principle. Keyes does not. How do I know this? As a policy advisor to his campaign, I occasionally suggest we avoid certain positions for practical political considerations. The answer I sometimes get back from the team is that Keyes is not a pragmatist. If he believes in something, he will go for it. When he had a TV talk show, his candor and directness came as a shock to the viewers accustomed to politically correct double talk. We have here a rarity: a truly honest man in politics. Keyes is the “honest Abe” of our day.

Just as Churchill was persistent in calling the Nazis terrorists, Keyes has been consistent in calling terrorists evil and gay sexual perversions sinful. He cannot be intimidated into silence on these issues. That is the real reason he lost his TV talk show on MSNBC. His banishment by the media is reminiscent of Churchill’s banishment by parliament because he refused to be silent about the Nazis.

In my judgment, Keyes is the most intelligent and articulate man in politics. As a defender of constitutional principles, he puts me in mind of Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. As the scourge of arbitrary law, he has given articulate and impassioned speeches throughout the country.

Keyes is the only American politician who openly talks about the cross of Christ during forums that are open to the public. I cannot think of another politician who has done this since William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925).

The deep personal confrontations that Keyes has had with the cross are the best remedy for the pride and inordinate ambition that public figures are prone to. I wrote about the mortification of pride by the power of the cross in my book The Stages of Sanctification, before I met Alan Keyes.

The cross is also a blessed hiding place when the storms of life are overwhelming. If only our political leaders knew about this hiding place when they are shredded by the political meat grinder and need refuge and surcease.

More vs. Wolsey and Keyes vs. Clinton

Recall that Sir Thomas More was prepared for service by the cross. He entered service fit and trimmed of vanity. In contrast, Cardinal Wolsey indulged his pride and his inordinate personal ambition. He held more land and treasures than the king. He tried to become the pope while serving as Chancellor of England. This was a grandiose excess, even by Renaissance standards. The offended king cast him down to ignominious ruin.

The difference between More and Wolsey is the difference between the man of ability who follows the cross and the man of ability who follows the siren song of personal ambition. Alan Keyes is like More, and Bill Clinton is like Wolsey.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a man of principle — Alan Keyes.

*****
UPDATE: Click here for a pdf white paper on the facts regarding Huckabee’s economic leadership

Click here for Michelle Malkin’s piece on the Huckster’s leadership on illegal aliens.

When words and a record get in the way 

Minutemen Bash Founder Over Huckabee Endorsement

Minuteman Project founder endorses Huckabee?!?!?!

Numbers USA  Assessment

MORE REASONS TO BEWARE OF MIKE HUCKABEE

by Pastor Chuck Baldwin
November 27, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

Many Christian conservatives see Mike Huckabee as the best candidate to deliver the GOP from an impending pro-abortion presidential nomination of either Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. Huckabee is doing especially well in Iowa, particularly among evangelicals. Is Mike Huckabee worthy of this support, however? The facts say no.

I have already attempted to warn my evangelical brethren as to the dangers of supporting Mike Huckabee. See here. However, that first column was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Here are more reasons to beware of Mike Huckabee.

Robert Novak recently wrote a column about Mike Huckabee entitled, “The False Conservative.” In the column he said, “Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans.”

Novak also said, “There is no doubt about Huckabee’s record during a decade in Little Rock as governor. . . He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes.”

Novak continued saying, “Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas journalist writing in the conservative American Spectator, called Huckabee ‘a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak.’ Huckabee’s retort was to attack Hillyer’s journalistic procedures, fitting a mean-spirited image when he responds to conservative criticism.”

Calling Huckabee a proponent of big-government is an understatement. “If you listen closely, all the things he supports increase the size, power and cost of government. From subsidies for energy research to increasing money for health care and government housing, the size, power, and cost of government will not shrink under a President Mike Huckabee; they will increase . . . Mr. Huckabee swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution when he became governor, yet many of his proposals are clearly unconstitutional.” (Source: David Ulrich, Letter of the Week, World Net Daily, 10/26/07)

In addition, Dr. Jerome Corsi reports that “Financial inducements arranged by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to establish a Mexican consular office in Little Rock may have violated state law, according to an Arkansas attorney.”

Writing for World Net Daily, Dr. Corsi exposed the fact that Mike Huckabee “worked with some of the state’s most prominent and politically powerful businesses to establish the [Mexican] consulate as a magnet for drawing illegal immigrants to the state to accept low-paying jobs.”

Corsi goes on to report that “Arkansas attorney Chip Sexton provided WND a written legal brief arguing the state government’s sublease to Mexico of office space for the consulate was illegal under Arkansas law. Sexton contended the deal raised questions about the appropriateness of private citizens and corporations in Arkansas providing financial incentives for the government of Mexico to locate a consulate office in Little Rock.”

Corsi also writes that “Robert Trevino, commissioner of Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, told WND he and Huckabee helped arrange state and private financial support to induce Mexico to establish the consulate as a business development ‘quid pro quo.’

“Trevino signed on July 7, 2006, a ‘Facilities Use Agreement’ with Mexican consular officials to rent state government office space for $1 a year on the second floor of the Arkansas Rehabilitation Services building at 26 Corporate Hills in Little Rock.”

According to Sexton, not only did subleasing state government offices to Mexico violate Arkansas state law under Ark. Code Ann. 22-2-114(C)(i) which provides: “After July 1, 1975, no state agency shall enter into or renew or otherwise negotiate a lease between itself as lessor or lessee and a nongovernmental or other government lessor or lessee,” but it was even more offensive in that “there was nothing in the lease or other agreements that would have prevented the Mexican consulate from providing legal assistance to illegal aliens.”

In addition, Corsi also exposed the fact that Mike Huckabee worked with Mexican President Vicente Fox to help provide cheap Mexican labor for Tyson foods and other large Arkansas corporations. According to Corsi, “Trevino confirmed he was state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, also known as LULAC, an activist group strongly advocating for the rights of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S., when on Oct. 3, 2003, he accompanied Huckabee in a state airplane to visit [President Vicente] Fox in Mexico.”

There is more.

The American Spectator reported that “Fourteen times, the ethics commission–a respected body, not a partisan witch-hunt group–investigated claims against Huckabee. Five of those times, it officially reprimanded him. And as only MSNBC among the big national media has reported at an real length, there were lots of other mini-scandals and embarrassments along the way.”

Plus, writing for The Washington Times, Greg Pierce quoted Hillyer as saying, “[Huckabee] used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor’s mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a ‘charitable’ organization he set up while lieutenant governor–an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious ‘charity.’”

Mike Huckabee’s beliefs and actions even border on the bizarre. According to David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, “GOP presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee suggested that as president he would, for the good of the people, support a federal anti-smoking law. You see, as governor, Huckabee supported such laws because, well, he doesn’t like smoking and doesn’t think folks should indulge in so heath-threatening an activity. If he could move on up to the presidency, he would continue his abolitionist crusade at the national level without giving much, if any, thought to the question of whether the Constitution or anything else would legitimize a federal ban on smoking.”

I have yet one more word of warning for those evangelicals supporting Huckabee because he is pro-life: Mike Huckabee will most definitely support Rudy Giuliani should Giuliani obtain the Republican nomination. Count on it.

I ask you, how could a committed “pro-life” conservative support a pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control liberal such as Rudy Giuliani? He couldn’t.

At the end of the day, however, there is absolutely no question that Huckabee will support Giuliani (or any other pro-abortion Republican), because, when all is said and done, Huckabee and his fellow big-government Republicans have no real commitment to the life issue or to any other conservative principle.

Let’s say it plainly: Mike Huckabee is just another big-government, establishment politician who will do nothing to stem the tide of socialism or fascism (pick your poison) emanating from Washington, D.C., these days.

Dear Christian friend, don’t be duped by Mike Huckabee.

© 2007 Chuck Baldwin – All Rights Reserved

Click here for a pdf white paper on the facts regarding Huckabee’s economic leadership

A senior Muslim cleric who is a prominent justifier of suicide bombings met last week with senators and congressmen and consulted last month with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, WND has learned.

NC sez: Rice is sniffing glue as well!

Sheik Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian justice, also claimed in a recently released book for which he was interviewed that the Torah was “falsified,” Jewish and Christian history were “invented,” the Jewish Temples never existed and the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels.

NC sez: Okay, so the Torah is fake, and there is no Jewish or Christian history, but we’re suppose to believe that angels built that disgrace of a building on the Jewish Temple Mount? This is called revisionist history. Only radical Islamists will believe this malarkey.

“I am very glad to have this occasion to speak to Congress and the Senate and have access to groups and individuals that form American policy,” said Tamimi in a statement.

NC sez: I’m sure you are. Here’s a quote for my readers: “Let’s look at your average American Muslim, . . . Siraj Wahaj, the recipient of the American Muslim community’s highest honors. Mr. Wahaj . . . in June of 1991 . . . deliver[ed] a . . . prayer before the U.S. House of Representatives. . . .[A] ppealing to almighty God to guide America’s leaders ‘and grant them righteousness and wisdom.’

This same Wahaj spoke to a Muslim audience a year later in New Jersey . . . . ‘If Muslims were more clever politically,’ . . . ‘they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him . . .[T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.’” (Excerpts from Daniel Pipes, “The Danger Within,” http://www.danielpipes.org/articles/77)

“I emphasized in the meetings the importance of religious coexistence and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved without creating a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” he said.

NC sez: Go back to Jordan where you belong! And get drug treatment while you’re there. It will take away your paranoia!

Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

NC sez: Delusions of grandeur!

He met in Washington last week with a slew of lawmakers as part of a new interfaith religious organization – the Council for Religious Institutions in the Holy Land – formed with the stated purpose of promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

NC sez: Council for Religious Institutions in the Holy Land aka Holy Land Foundation aka terrorist front group raising money in America from ignorant Americans.

The council includes Israeli chief rabbis, top Muslim Palestinian judges and leading Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant clerics from Israel and the Palestinian areas. It is reportedly funded by the United States Agency for International Development, which also provides millions in annual aid to help the Palestinians build infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

NC sez: Another rip off for American taxpayers to fund the very group of Philistines wanting to push Israel right into the sea!

Tamimi and the council met Nov. 6 with Sens. Joseph Liebermann, I-Conn.; Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; and John Ensign, R-Nev. The next day the sheik held meetings with more than a dozen House members, including Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress.

NC sez: Yes, Ellison was so proud that he took his oath of office on Thomas Jefferson’s Koran. We’re still  laughing our butts off over that one!

Tamimi also reportedly met last week with David Welch, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, and consulted last month with Rice regarding how to promote a future Palestinian state.

NC sez: If I were these arrogant gub’ment hacks I would do a quick history of all those folks out there who have tried taking land away from Israel, and what happened to them after they did what they did!

His office told WND the Islamic cleric is slated to meet with President Bush, but no such visit could be verified.

NC sez: Cuz Mr. Suicide Bomber knows he’s in agreement with Mr Bush who states that Islam is a Religion of Piece! Piece of Israel, piece of Jerusalem, piece of Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona and California too!

Tamimi’s Washington trip was timed to generate support for an upcoming U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit at which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to outline a Palestinian state including most of the West Bank. Some reports claim Olmert also is willing to cede sections of Jerusalem.

NC sez: Watch out Olmert! Your judgement is coming soon! If you do this it will be sooner than later!

According to media reports, Tamimi and his group expressed to U.S. lawmakers last week a six-point platform that includes plans to set up a panel representing all the faiths that would condemn media or government incitement against any religious group; a board that would review educational materials for incitement; and a “hot line” to address any emerging crisis surrounding access to holy sites.

NC sez: What a freakin’ phoney!!! This is coming from the wingnut of Islam claiming the Torah is fake, and there is no Jewish or Christian history, which I might add, was here LONG before Mohammad took his flight of fancy!

But in the recently released book, “Schmoozing with Terrorists,” by WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, Tamimi presented a different attitude, stating Jews have no right to Jerusalem or to Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount.

Tamimi also is well-known for his justification of Palestinian suicide bombings and was accused by Israel of inciting violence at the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada that started in September 2000.

When asked to condemn suicide attacks during a video-taped interview with Klein for “Schmoozing” earlier this year, Tamimi refused.

Instead Tamimi stated: “A suicide bomber who sees he will get killed by F-16s prefers to defend himself and has nothing but himself to defend himself. … We believe he who gets killed will go to Allah in the sky and be with the prophets and the martyrs and the just people.”

NC sez: Ya know, if killing yourself is so grand, and you get your 2700 virgins, and all that crap then why not start with yourself, and be the example you claim to be? Isn’t it curious that these killers will indoctrinate these poor refugees brainwashing them into believing that it’s better to die for allah than to clean up their act, –that’s taking responsibility for your own life, to you liberals out there–work hard, stop blaming the world for your plight, that your own comrades got you into, and make something of yourself? Isn’t that curious that it’s all these well fed, and rich Liars who get air time who seem to never die for allah? I guess it’s okay cuz their special–ya know like al-Gore–he gets to use up the world’s supply of clear air for his lifestyle cuz he’s so special!

Tamimi went on during the interview with Klein to claim Jews have no historical connection to Jerusalem or Israel and that the Jewish Temples never existed.

NC sez: If this is true then why are these islamo-Nazis’ hell bent on destroying the ancient artifacts in and around the JEWISH TEMPLE MOUNT? The truth doesn’t set these murderers free! It enrages them to want to kill you!

“Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880′s,” said Tamimi.

NC sez: I guess the Buddhists didn’t exist either, and is why you are destroying their ancient archeology too! Yeah, that makes sense. The Holocaust didn’t happen either.

“About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the Haram Al- Sharif (Temple Mount),” Tamimi said.

NC sez: That’s why the nazi’ are hell bent on destroying the evidence cuz the Temples never existed! Uh, huh! And angels built the mosque . . . . Looney Islamo-Nazi Lies!

The Palestinian cleric denied in “Schmoozing” the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples throughout Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount itself; excavations revealing Jewish homes and a synagogue in a site in Jerusalem called the City of David; or even the recent discovery of a Second Temple Jewish city in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

NC sez: Islam is so jealous of Israel’s accomplishments and achievements in the world and the fact the Israel is the apple of YHWH’s eye. Truth, and history, and Israel’s world accomplishments and achievements, none if it matters to these murdering barbarians! The only accomplishment these killers have claim to fame for is how many Jews they have killed! And now they can start claiming American deaths too!

He said descriptions of the Jewish Temples in the Hebrew Tanach, in the Talmud and in Byzantine and Roman writings from the Temple periods were forged and that the Torah was “falsified” to claim Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs were Jewish when indeed they were prophets for Islam.

NC sez: Ya see these guys are so bad at lying that in English they have a six point plan to bring together all faiths to condemn the media and government who incite “against any religious group; a board that would review educational materials for incitement; and a ‘hot line’ to address any emerging crisis surrounding access to holy sites”

So these holy sites are only so called Islamic holy sites not Jewish or Christian holy sites cuz these two faiths-well, they’re just fake! But out of the other side of their forked tongue their plan is to use the liberal guilt trip line so as to get as much control over everything they can get their hands on! And the wimpy American government will stand by and let it happen!

“All this is not real. We don’t believe in all your versions. Your Torah was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses never mentions Jerusalem. Maybe Jerusalem was mentioned in the rest of the Torah, which was falsified by the Jews.”

NC sez: Yeah, this isn’t incitement at all is it?

Asked about the Western Wall, one of the holiest Jewish structures, Tamimi said the wall was a tying post for Muhammad’s horse and that it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, even though the Wall predates the mosque by over 1,000 years.

NC sez: Historical truth doesn’t matter to these freaks of nature, just lies do.

“The Western Wall is the western wall of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It’s where Prophet Muhammad tied his animal which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah.”

NC sez: Are you referring to those revelations that keep changing year after year after year . . . ? Ah, no, no falsifying of the hollly korrraannnn is there?

Tamimi went on to claim to Klein the Al Aqsa Mosque, which has sprung multiple leaks and has had to be repainted several times, was built by angels.

NC sez: Well, your angels should get better contractors to do their work. I hear there’s cheap laborers south of the border!

“Al Aqsa was build by the angels 40 years after the building of Al-Haram in Mecca. This we have no doubt is true,” he was quoted as saying in “Schmoozing.”

NC sez: Post modernism perfected by the islamo-nazi’!

To interview Aaron Klein, contact Tim Bueler Public Relations by e-mail, or call (530) 401-3285.

Regarding the question of whether or not all people in the world worship the same God, in contradiction to President Bush’s assertion, Jesus Himself declares that the Jewish Leaders who were seeking to condemn Him to death for Blasphemy did not worship the same God as Jesus, or Moses, or Abraham. For if they truly were Abraham’s children and had worshipped the same God as Abraham, they would be doing the same good works of Abraham, and would not have sought to kill Jesus. They would have recognized Him as the true Prophet Whom Moses commanded them in the Torah to listen to and obey.

In Deuteronomy 18:15,18,19 we read about the Prophet like Moses Whom YHWH Elohim will raise up from out of the midst of his brothers (Israel):

Hebrew Names Version–{18:15} The LORD (YHWH) your God will raise up to you a prophet from the midst of you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him.
{18:18} I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers,
like you; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall
speak to them all that I shall command him.
{18:19} It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words
which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

But since they were seeking to kill Jesus, they demonstrated by their actions and the intent of their hearts that they were not Abraham’s children, and did not worship the same God as Abraham. In fact, Jesus described them as children of the Devil, because they did the Devil’s works, and had the same evil will to kill Jesus.

In John 8:39-47 (HNV) we read:

{8:39} They answered him, “Our father is Abraham.”

Yeshua (Jesus) said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do
the works of Abraham. {8:40} But now you seek to kill me, a man who has
told you the truth, which I heard from God. Abraham didn’t do this.
{8:41} You do the works of your father.”

They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have
one Father, God.”

{8:42} Therefore Yeshua said to them, “If God (YHWH) were your father, you
would love me, for I came out and have come from God. For I haven’t
come of myself, but he sent me. {8:43} Why don’t you understand my
speech? Because you can’t hear my word. {8:44} You are of your father,
the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a
murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand in the truth, because
there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own;
for he is a liar, and its father. {8:45} But because I tell the truth,
you don’t believe me. {8:46} Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell
the truth, why do you not believe me? {8:47} He who is of God (YHWH) hears the
words of God (YHWH). For this cause you don’t hear, because you are not of
God (YHWH).”

It is just as true today that not all people worship the same God, just as it was true in Jesus’ day. There is only One true Elohim YHWH, and the Torah commands all people everywhere to worship only Him at all times perfectly. But people are disobedient in their hearts, and commit idolatry, worshipping false gods. The false gods that they worship are revealed by the character of their actions and by the intent of their hearts, as Jesus explained to those Jewish leaders who sought to kill Him. It is not enough to have right actions if our heart is impure and rebellious, and all people everywhere without exception have sinned in their hearts in this manner at least once in their lives. The only One Who was perfectly sinless in His obedience and worship of YHWH was Yeshua (Jesus). As you are aware, the Qu’ran teaches that no man is capable of bearing the sins of another man. It is impossible. The reason why this is true is that men are sinful, and if they cannot bear the weight of their own sins, then how can they bear the sins of another? Not only can we not bear the sins of another man, but we cannot even bear the full weight of our own sins. This is why the sinless Son of God, Yeshua, had to come, in order to make atonement for us and bear our sins that are impossible for us to carry.

In Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (HNV) we read about the servant of YHWH, Who bears upon Himself our iniquities and sins:

{52:13} Behold, my servant shall deal wisely, he shall be exalted and
lifted up, and shall be very high.
{52:14} Like as many were astonished at you (his appearance was marred
more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men),
{52:15} so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their
mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they
see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand.

{53:1} Who has believed our message?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
{53:2} For he grew up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of dry ground.
He has no good looks or majesty.
When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
{53:3} He was despised,
and rejected by men;
a man of suffering,
and acquainted with disease.
He was despised as one from whom men hide their face;
and we didn’t respect him.

{53:4} Surely he has borne our sickness,
and carried our suffering;
yet we considered him plagued,
struck by God, and afflicted.
{53:5} But he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought our peace was on him;
and by his wounds we are healed.
{53:6} All we like sheep have gone astray.
Everyone has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
{53:7} He was oppressed,
yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth.
As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and as a sheep that before its shearers is mute,
so he didn’t open his mouth.
{53:8} He was taken away by oppression and judgment;
and as for his generation,
who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living
and stricken for the disobedience of my people?
{53:9} They made his grave with the wicked,
and with a rich man in his death;
although he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit in his mouth.

{53:10} Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him.
He has caused him to suffer.
When you make his soul an offering for sin,
he shall see his seed.
He shall prolong his days,
and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
{53:11} After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the [23>]light[<23] and be satisfied.
My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself;
and he will bear their iniquities.
{53:12} Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out his soul to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

With faithful and obedient action, we need to completely trust that God will remove all our sins away from us. Not because of any good works that we may have done, but rather because of the perfect obedience and sacrificial death of Yeshua, the sinless Lamb of God. Outside of this mercy, we are completely powerless to remove our own sins and stand acceptable before the Holy One, YHWH. No one will be able to boast before YHWH for any righteous act. Compared to the sinless, pure and holy righteousness of Jesus, it is nothing. Our acceptance before Him is utterly dependent upon His eternal mercy and complete forgiveness of our sins against Him. In order to receive His forgiveness, we must also completely forgive those who have transgressed against us. Forgiveness is not free nor easy, but was purchased at the greatest price possible, the death of His Son. We must also surrender to God our own self-will and self-love, in order to have space in our hearts to receive His forgiveness and righteousness that makes us holy and acceptable before YHWH.