DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION! NO SURRENDER!

PROGRESSIVE BIBLE: MSNBC APPROVED!

THE SHARON STATEMENT

M. Stanton Evans

Written by M. Stanton Evans with the assistance of Annette Kirk, wife of Russell Kirk, and adopted on September 11, 1960, the statement is named for the location of the inaugural meeting of Young Americans for Freedom, held at William F. Buckley, Jr.’s home in Sharon, Connecticut.

The statement is every bit as on-point and relevant today as it was in 1960.  The Cold War reference to "international Communism" was aimed at the Soviet Union.  Obviously, thanks to the leadership of Republicans, most notably President Ronald Reagan, the Soviet Union went down to defeat.  For this reason, "international Communism" is not quite the monolithic threat that it once was.  

And yet we still have Russians supporting rogue states such as Iran and Syria.  We still have China, part Communist, part Capitalist but 100% totalitarian, supporting the rogue Communist nation of North Korea.  Moreover, we are still dealing with the poisonous fruit of approximately 70 years of Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist machinations around the world, including the cultural Marxism and Left-wing anti-Americanism that is so prevalent right here in the United States.  The ideology is still threatening our way of life and our liberties.  But I digress...  

IN THIS TIME of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths WE, as young conservatives believe:

THAT foremost among the transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;

THAT liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;

THAT the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;

THAT when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;

THAT the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;

THAT the genius of the Constitution - the division of powers - is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;

THAT the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;

THAT when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation, that when it takes from one to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;

THAT we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies…

THAT the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;

THAT the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with this menace; and

THAT American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

Jesus has come — our Emmanuel!

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirin’ius was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest,   and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!” When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child; and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.

OUR POLITICIANS NEED TO HEED OUR WISE MEN

IT WASN'T "GUN CULTURE"...IT WAS THIS MONSTER!

ANTI-GUN HYPOCRITES LOVE TO EXPLOIT DEATH

THE LEFT'S SOLUTION: BLAME BITTER CLINGERS

Allahpundit and I are on the same wavelength here as to why the Left can't be trusted when it comes to doing something about guns.  It's difficult to get the anti-gun fanatics to face the facts about guns and mass shootings honestly.  It's especially difficult to take them seriously when loudmouths on their side are making death threats.  Remember when the Left whined about the lack of civility in our political discourse these days following the Tuscon shooting?  As we've now witnessed countless times since then, their idea of "civility" is for those who have opinions with which they disagree to sit down and shut up.

The key passage in Allahpundit's article is this:

But look. With this issue even more so than with other issues, a huge part of the stubbornness and vitriol comes from cultural divisions and suspicions about the other side’s motives, not from policy disagreements. I understand the left’s point about high-capacity magazines; banning them might very well drop the death toll at some of these horrors. It’s not crazy to think so. The best counterargument is the slippery-slope argument and I’ve never thought much of slippery-slope arguments outside the free-speech context.

The truth, though, is that I don’t trust them and find the media groupthink on this subject endlessly irritating. It takes a lot to get a New Yorker to stick up for rural America, but their disdain for “gun culture” is often transparently a function of their disdain for rural culture. The One’s condescending bitter-clinger remarks were a classic expression of it. Much of the mindless “gun control” table-pounding without specifics feels like an ostentatious way for the table-pounder to simply show how much he/she cares, especially vis-a-vis the heartless conservative. And the flailing panicky vacuousness of the Do Something!!!! response, however understandable in the aftermath of Sandy Hook shellshock, grates especially coming from the self-styled "Party of Science."

As Tim Carney noted earlier, some of Our Moral Superiors who are pounding the table for “gun control” can’t even tell you what a semiautomatic or an “assault rifle” is. They’ve shown no compunction about demagoging other mass shootings for their political ends, no matter how thin the evidence was to support their conclusions. We were presented on Friday with a very unusual, very specific fact pattern from a mass killing committed by someone with a very unusual, very specific set of mental problems, and yet the big “scientific” recommendation tonight on MSNBC was to keep an eye on your kid in case he’s shooting too many aliens on the Xbox.

IT'S TIME TO DEAL WITH REAL PROBLEMS

The ghoulish Left-wing tactic of screeching about banning guns - even within minutes of the breaking news - is a way to put those who disagree with that idea on the defensive and equate a defense of the Second Amendment with a lack of grief for the victims.  The point of it is to make it seem as though all defenders of the Second Amendment, all those who own guns legally, are in effect guilty of the crimes committed by Adam Lanza.  Which means that our horror and sorrow is illegitimate in the eyes of self-aggrandizing foreigners such as Piers Morgan.

Calling for a gun ban represents no sacrifice for people like him so it's an easy call to make, with the added bonus of providing some scant evidence that they actually give a damn about society in general. Guns are viewed as a "right-wing" phenomenon and so going after the guns is essentially an assault on the "right-wing" itself.  It's not about curbing gun deaths or mass shootings because they know that criminals and madmen will not observe any laws prohibiting gun ownership.  It's about scoring points against the political enemy, pure and simple, with no cost to their side.  

The only real result of a gun ban would be to leave law-abiding citizens unprotected in their homes.  That works just fine for limousine liberals and clueless celebrities who rely on handlers to do their thinking for them and armed bodyguards to protect them.  The rest of us are on our own.

It's also why very few on the Left are motivated to talk about the problem of mental health in this country.  Guns don't make people become murderers.  Criminality does that. And so does mental illness, which is something that a significant number of mass murderers have in common.  But there is no political capital to be gained in pushing that agenda.  Much more satisfying for the Left to go after the guns and in doing so weaken that pesky Constitution that so often obstructs the path to the kind of totalitarianism they crave.

On the subject of our national mental health crisis, here's an article by Mona Charen that she wrote back in July after the shootings in Aurora, Colorado:

For years, mental-health authorities assured us that the mentally ill were no more dangerous than the average person. That’s true of most, but not all. As Dr. E. Fuller Torrey documents in his essential book, The Insanity Offense, rates of violence among the untreated mentally ill are significantly higher than among the general population and also much higher than among those receiving medication. Between 5 and 10 percent of the untreated seriously mentally ill will commit violent crimes in any given year, accounting for at least 5 percent of homicides in the United States (a huge number in a nation of more than 300 million). For rampage crimes such as the Aurora attack, the percentage of mentally ill perpetrators is much greater, as high as 50 percent.

Since the 1960s, when deinstitutionalization became intellectually fashionable and fiscally alluring to states looking to save money, the mentally ill have been dumped onto the streets. Today, 95 percent of the inpatient beds that were available for psychiatric patients in 1955 are gone. The Treatment Advocacy Center explains that “the consequences of the severe shortage of public psychiatric beds include increased homelessness; the incarceration of mentally ill individuals in jails and prisons; emergency rooms being overrun with patients waiting for a psychiatric bed; and an increase in violent behavior, including homicides, in communities across the nation.” Imagine if we treated the mentally retarded this way.

In many cases of mental illness, a belief that one is not in need of treatment is part of the sickness. Yet most studies show that the majority of those who are medicated against their wishes retroactively approve and believe it should be done again if necessary. In New York, 62 percent reported that being ordered by a court into treatment was a good thing for them.

And a failure in dealing effectively with mental illness is only part of a larger issue: the moral decay of society:
  

It should come as no surprise that the rate of mass shootings at schools and in other public places is increasing. The surge has nothing to do with guns, which have been widely available in the U.S. for years. Gun control laws have been increasing. Instead, there is a direct correlation between the increase in violence and the gradual degradation of morals, ethics and parenting. We are cultivating mental illness in our society.

Parents are allowing television and video games to increasingly babysit their children, even though both have become full of gratuitous violence. A New York Times study of rampage killers found that six of them were into violent video games. Research shows that violent video games and television desensitize people and promote aggressive behavior, despite claims to the contrary. A research scientist at the University of Michigan found that television was responsible for 10% of youth violence. Parents today are neglecting their children, and when things don't go well, rushing to get divorced instead of trying to work things out first. Children suffer emotionally when their parents fight or split up. Parents are ignoring their children so much they don't even see the warning signs that something might be wrong. The New York Times study found that 63 of 100 rampage killers had made threats of violence before the event.

Parents are no longer taking their children to church, where they would learn stability and morals. Fewer than 20% of Americans now regularly attend church. Every year there are 3000 fewer churches across the U.S, even though the population is growing. God and morality have been taken out of the public schools and replaced with political correctness and non-judgmentalism. “Public virtues” are no longer taught in today's schools. People who do not attend church are more likely than churchgoers to have stress and to be less optimistic about the future. When parents split up and there is no father to take the children regularly to church, the children are much less likely to become regular churchgoers than if their mother regularly takes them.

The New York Times study found that at least half the killers in 100 rampage attacks showed signs of serious mental health problems. 48 killers were formally diagnosed with mental illness, often schizophrenia. The mentally ill used to be kept in hospitals, where they were not a danger to others. Beginning in the 1950s in California, the ACLU successfully filed lawsuits to take the mentally ill out of hospitals, known as “deinstitutionalization.” By the 1980s, most state-run mental health hospitals had closed.

Now, most of the mentally ill are out on the streets or in prison. The laws have been changed to state that the mentally ill cannot be hospitalized until they've already attacked someone. As a result, more mentally ill people are incarcerated than in hospitals, with the seriously mentally ill three times more likely to end up behind bars than hospitalized. More than half of all people in prison report that they have mental health problems, and more than 40 percent of the seriously mentally ill have been in jail or prison. A study at the University of South Florida found that the highest users of criminal justice and mental health services were 97 people who had been arrested 2,200 times. It is ludicrous that those 97 people are not contained for their safety and others in mental health hospitals.

The 22-year old Oregon shopping mall gunman who killed two people earlier this week is sadly typical of the rampage murderers the decay of society has spawned. He had this written on his Facebook page, "I'm the conductor of my choo choo train. I may be young but I have lived one crazy life so far." One of his friends said he raised himself; his mother died at childbirth, he never met his father, and he left his aunt's home at age 14.

The left will use the high level of emotion stirred up by this past week's two rampage killings to push through new gun control laws. Liberal New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called upon President Obama to enact tougher gun control laws immediately after Friday's mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Yet demanding more gun control laws will not solve anything. Gun control advocates have already increased the number of laws around the country requiring background checks, waiting periods for purchases, and tracking of firearms. Many of the rampage killers obtained guns illegally. If they can't obtain guns, deranged individuals will find other ways to commit mass murders – by setting fires, making bombs or running people over with vehicles. One day after the shootings in Connecticut, a man in Beijing stabbed 22 primary school students with a knife.

The left should not be allowed to dominate the dialogue after these tragic events with a red herring argument for gun control, in order to sneakily distract Americans from blaming them for what they have wrought. Americans who believe in traditional values must speak up and denounce the degradation of society's morals as the root of the problem behind these rampages, or the tragedies will continue to escalate.

PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
            
Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord: Lord hear my voice.  Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen

CAMPUS CENSORSHIP & CULTURAL WARFARE

For over a generation, shocking cases of censorship at America's colleges and universities have taught students the wrong lessons about living in a free society. This video explains how higher education fails to teach its students to become critical thinkers by supercharging ideological divisions, promoting groupthink, and encouraging an unscholarly certainty about complex issues.



The video is drawn (no pun intended) from Unlearning Liberty, a book by Greg Lukianoff of FIRE.  In it, Lukianoff walks readers through the life of a modern-day college student, from orientation to the end of freshman year. Through this lens, he describes startling violations of free speech rights: 

• a student in Indiana punished for publicly reading a book
• a student in Georgia expelled for a pro-environment collage he posted on Facebook
• students at Yale banned from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on a t-shirt
• students across the country banished to tiny “free speech zones.” 

But Lukianoff goes further, demonstrating how this culture of censorship is bleeding into the larger society. As he explores public controversies involving Juan Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, and Larry Summers, along with campus uproars in which Dave Barry and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show played a role, Lukianoff paints a stark picture of our ability as a nation to rationally discuss important issues. Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate reveals how the intolerance for dissent and debate on today’s campus threatens the freedom of every citizen—and makes us all just a little bit dumber.

 

HARRY REID'S HYPOCRISY RE: THE FILIBUSTER

In 2005, when Democrats were the minority party in the Senate, Senator Reid said breaking the rules to change the rules of the Senate was "un-American" and a "partisan political grab." Today, now that Democrats are in the majority, Senator Reid is singing a different tune.



And for good measure, here are Reid's Senate cronies, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, in 2005 whining about a strategy that they themselves are now clamoring for.  The hypocrisy of these people is almost beyond belief.  Almost...
 

REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR

The USS Arizona Memorial

On this day, 71 years ago, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was devastated in an unprovoked sneak attack by 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four being sunk. Of these eight damaged, two were raised, and with four repaired, six battleships returned to service later in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. 

In addition, 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,282 wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 65 servicemen killed or wounded. One Japanese sailor was captured.

The next day, President Roosevelt addressed a joint-session of Congress, asking for a declaration of war:
 

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. 

Heroic women firefighters on that day of infamy

WHITE HOUSE TEACHING LAPDOGS NEW TRICKS

MSNBC's president, Phil Griffin, recently made this claim: "This channel has never been the voice of Obama. Ever," he told Huffington Post. "People want to talk about Fox. Fox is the voice of the Republican Party." 

And yet on Tuesday, four of MSNBC’s prime time TV hosts were spotted entering the West Wing of the White House for a special meeting with the president. These hosts included, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Al Sharpton and Lawrence O’Donnell. Interestingly, Chris Matthews, a notoriously tingly Obama supporter, was not included on the guest list.  

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest released the following statement on the meeting:

"This afternoon at the White House, the President met with influential progressives to talk about the importance of preventing a tax increase on middle class families, strengthening our economy and adopting a balanced approach to deficit reduction."

As Mediaite reported, MSNBC wasn't the only Left-wing outfit to get a special invitation to meet with the President:

A source familiar with the meeting tells Mediaite that MSNBC personalities were only the most recognizable among the attendees, but there were many other “progressive media” members in attendance, including from the Washington Post, Daily Kos, and the Huffington Post. 

So if Phil Griffin is serious about promoting his network as anything other than the propaganda arm of the Obama administration, he's off to a very poor start.

In a November article in Huffington Post titled MSNBC Battles 'Pro-Obama' Label Heading Into President's Second Term the obvious Left-wing tilt of the network was discussed at length.  

MSNBC President Phil Griffin labels his network's sensibility as progressive, but the cable news channel could also be described these days as simply pro-Obama.

In the final week of the 2012 election, MSNBC ran no negative stories about President Barack Obama and no positive stories about Republican nominee Mitt Romney, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

MSNBC's afternoon and primetime hosts kept their sights on Romney and the Republicans during the election cycle, while spending considerably less time holding Obama accountable on issues like civilian casualties from drone strikes, use of executive power and the Afghanistan conflict, the nation's longest-ever war, which escalated under the current White House. Instead, the network's top partisan hosts –- with the exception of former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough –- seemed to circle the wagons around the Democratic president during his reelection bid.

Former President Bill Clinton remarked earlier this year that MSNBC "really has become our version of Fox," the conservative cable network owned by Rupert Murdoch and run by veteran Republican operative Roger Ailes. While such comparisons invite charges of creating a false equivalency between the two networks, it's generally accepted in political circles that MSNBC hosts are likely to favor Democrats as Fox News hosts pull for Republicans.  

I don't agree with the assertion that MSNBC and FNC are simply two sides of the same coin.  The fact of the matter is that Fox News was created in 1996 to serve the needs of a majority of Americans who were already painfully aware of just how biased the so-called "mainstream" media had become.  More specifically, Fox News was intended to be a more right-leaning network in opposition to the left-leaning CNN.  It didn't take long for the astuteness of providing an alternative to "liberal" programming to become evident.  Fox News has been dominating it's rivals for well over a decade. 

The reason is simple: Fox News is more in tune with the center-right sensibilities of the average American than its counterparts in the Obama Media Group.  It's simply good business to provide a more fair and balanced look at current events than what is offered at MSNBC.  The reality is that Fox is much more mainstream than anything found among the "mainstream" media outlets.

Jim Treacher of the Daily Caller sums it up as well as anybody:

MSNBC does for the left all the things they claim Fox News does for the right. Except in MSNBC's case, it’s actually true. And now they've given up even pretending not to be Obama's lapdogs. I just hope they keep in mind what Obama does to dogs…

REALITY CHECK FOR ANTI-GUN WINGNUTS