The Three Great Scams of Our Time
“Don’t disturb the order of the world, storyteller.”
– Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller.
Corruption, delusion, and mendacity are nothing new as determinants of both personal and collective life. They are staples of human nature. But with the spread of the print and electronic media and the immediate accessibility of information at any time and any place in the “global village,” the opportunity for mass deception has become the distinguishing factor of our time. Sophistry and subterfuge have gone mainstream. The ability of dominant elites to influence and even control the thought-world of vast populations to an historically unprecedented extent is now an integral part of contemporary life.
There are, to be sure, various ancillary elements involved in the ubiquitous public hospitality to blatant fictions and professional guile, including the critical decay of education at all levels and the growing proneness to parasitical entitlements among Western electorates, accentuating the appetite for passivity and stoking what amounts to a handout mentality. A populace coddled by welfare gratuities will accept packaged ideas and doctored reports as readily as they do food stamps, tax exemptions, and government checks.
As a result, intellectual laziness has never been so widespread in a pampered and ostensibly enlightened cultural realm, providing a soft target for media disinformation and political propaganda to work their injurious will. (It must be admitted that even the dispensers of such concoctions are often under the spell of their own stupefactions.) Nothing else, it would appear, can explain the reflexive acceptance among those who should know better of the three consummate trumperies disfiguring the era in which we live: the Palestinian “narrative,” the climate change shakedown, and the ascent of Barack Obama to the most powerful office in the world. Truth is now at a discount as never before and has been increasingly replaced by promiscuous and sovereign mythologies.
1. In a recent “Nakba Day” speech delivered by a Palestinian official on behalf of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was informed that the Jews have no historical right to the land of Israel. “We say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history B.C.E. This is the truth, which must be understood, and we have to note it, in order to say: ‘Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.’”
This speech was a follow-up to an incendiary rant Abbas addressed to the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2011. Standing before a regional map from which Israel had been erased, Abbas insisted that Israel had no connection to the Holy Land, which he claimed was exclusively Islamic and Christian, and received an ovation for his efforts. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post in December 2011, Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO representative to the United Nations, glossed Abbas’ fictive account of the antiquity of the so-called “Palestinian nation,” declaring that Palestinians had “lived under the rule of a plethora of empires: the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans, and finally, the British.” As Alexander Yoffe comments in a comprehensive article in the Middle East Quarterly aptly titled “The Rhetoric of Nonsense,” such unadulterated hogwash offers “not only…an indication of unwavering Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist but…an insightful glimpse into the psyche of their willfully duped Western champions.”
Brilliant Sir.
No, rather pedestrian, actually.
This is “preaching to the converted”. It is designed not to inform or argue a point, but only to confirm. It confirms the beliefs of those it is aimed at, without actually providing any actual proof, new truths, or new arguments. It will not convince anyone “on the fence” of anything, let alone someone who actually dares disagree with the assumptions put on offer. It is not meant to.
For what it is, it is well written and communicates it’s message well. However, please save your enthusiasm for the truly brilliant, the groundbreaking and the convincing. You do neither yourself nor the author any favours by providing jubilant praise unearned – nor, for that matter, unearned vitriol.
My comment is limited to the Palestinian question. I disagree. What are wrong with the old arguments if they are logical, rational and well-thought out? Do you agree that some persons will never be convinced by any marshaling of facts or by any persuasive argument? This is not a comprehensive book or an academic paper on the matter—although these exist—just an article.
Well I sure am glad we got that cleared up.
I read this article,and while there is no real news in it, the thesis was to show three great fraudulent narratives, which the author did effectively rant. You see, since subjective material cannot be adequately ranked with any system of scoring the facts, the author admits that these three great frauds are only the greatest frauds he has experienced. He makes no claim that your rant about another fraud being even more catastrophic would be wrong because you disagree. He merely gets things off his chest and admits that his opinions are his own. That said, I will readily admit that he expressed two of my biggest three fraudulent narratives and a .667 batting average makes this a very big hitting article for me. Should you think he hits closer to .000, it would be incumbent upon you to tell us what complete set of bad narratives would be better. But you better be good, because these were great rants and anything short of this will be viewed as very pedestrian, as you put it. ABO2012
His thesis was that these three “narratives” are intertwined, each having been brought about by the admixture of truth and fable by groups of people who, while probably not in actual conference, nevertheless have certain philosophies and desires for man’s future in common, as well as their opinions that they are the elite and need to guide their fellow man so that he may come the the “correct” conclusions.
“…without actually providing any actual proof, new truths, or new arguments.”
Rough count by memory, a dozen or more actual links, plus numerous quotes by real folks who are (OMG!) named, placed, and dated, should I ever wish to check up on their existence, and the accuracy of their alleged statements, just to see for myself if these people do/do not typically jive with the authors take on their positions, opinions, biases and actions, as he alleges.
All in all, a far better researched and “footnoted on the fly” article than anything you’ll find from the other side….
You sound like one of those over-smart perfumed lefties with a big degree and no dirt under your nails…
You know….like the ones that called puttin’ underwear ON a terrorists head, laughin’ an takin’ pichers, a ‘horrific and inexcusable war crime” in the same league as them cuttin’ OFF heads, live and screaming, on the internet so the families could see?
You know…how a lack of ABSOLUTE perfection on one side, is twisted into proof of failure by shills carrying water for the OTHER side?
I actually largely agree with you. As I said, well written, well argued. But no, it is not “Brilliant”, nor groundbreaking, nor great. A competent, professional piece, by a professional writer.
It does not matter that the “other side” (and “this side”, more often than not) engage in inferior, poorly written and referenced screeds. Quality is not comparison – excellence is not measured on a bell-curve. And we should reserve the terms of excellence for the excellent.
Kevin R. Cross
This article was not written to confirm, as you fallaciously suggest. It was written to inform the ignorant. It was written specifically for people like you.
Really, Mr. Gein? Pray tell, what ignorance do you assume I hold? What evidence to this statement? And how, please, was it determined?
I would suggest you engage in the exercize of rereading my above comment. Perhaps you will, on a second reading, work out what I objected to, and what I did not. For, as to the truth or falsehood of Mr. Solway’s article, I have written not a single word.
Says the critic. Lets see something not so pedestrian from you.
I second your dissent. Every time I read one of Solway’s essays I become a little bit more liberal. At this rate he’ll have me voting for Obama before long!
Typical disingenuous liberal – as if he isn’t voting for Obama no matter what.
Well, I won’t. If Romney can show a bit of backbone and leadership, I’d be more than willing to vote for him. I’ll make my decision based on the candidates’ policies and what I can see (so little, in these days of spin) of each one’s character. An I won’t make that decision until November.
I would vote for a yellow dog against comrade Barack Hussein Obama. The man is a Communist, and I don’t want to see our country regressing any further than it already has. ABO2012
An excellent article, with concise analysis for each of the three myths discussed.
It’s the kind of thing you might send to your children, if they (like mine) aren’t as informed about each of these as you’d like them to be.
The documentation of the Palestinian question was particularly interesting to me. I didn’t need to be instructed about the history of the Jews; but what I didn’t know was how lunatic the arguing by the spokesmen of the “Palestinian” people has become. I certainly didn’t pay attention to whatever Abbas was prating at the UN last September; I’m glad that Mr. Solway was, and has highlighted it for me.
Indeed, brilliant. As is most of Solway’s writing.
ABSOLUTELY!
Well, you have to give a lot of credit to those Marxists who fled fascism and set up camp at Columbia University. They and their progeny did march through our institutions right to the presidency.
Columbia University, home of the Teachers College, the Journalism School and the Goddard Institute.
What are we going to do about, kvetch?
Talk about mendacity….what about McCain’s (and others) spinning of Huma Abedin, to disconnect her from her real ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, smoking Americans in the process?
Truth. In a pig’s eye.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/20/senator-john-mccain-digs-himself-into-a-hole-via-his-indefensibleinexplicable-support-of-huma-abedin-hillary-clintons-deeply-connected-muslim-brotherhood-sister-commentary-by-adina-kutnick-132-2/
Columbia University was important in the history of Progressivism, but was not a home for the Frankfurt School refugees until the 1940s. This coincided with “progressive” capitalists going over to Keynesian economics in 1942. As for the infiltration of communist ideas into the progressive movement, please see http://clarespark.com/2012/07/19/communist-ideas-go-mainstream/. David Solway has written his usual carefully detailed indictment of our current propaganda apparatus.
“The madness, hypocrisy, and outright stupidity that are sweeping the world almost defy comprehension.”
Yes! There is one explanation that makes sense to some Christians, however. There are those who have seen visions, like Pope Leo XIII, who have reported that God would allow the devil a certain period to sow confusion throughout the world. That does fit what is going on today. Just consider the USA. By historical standards, even our poor are fabulously wealthy. We continue to prove to be resilient and creative. My current favorite comeback story is Ford. Left for dead by many, they are now making world class products with impressive technology, like their Ecoboost engines. Then there is Apple. Perhaps the biggest corporate comeback in history. Meanwhile, the once invincible Japanese electronics companies are all foundering and losing money. Once mighty Japan itself is foundering. To add icing to America’s cake, we are in the midst of an energy Renaissance. Natural gas is now seemingly everywhere, plentiful and cheap. Yet, we are on the verge of throwing all of this away, and so much more. We are on the verge of throwing away the culture that made all of this possible. This demonic level of stupidity is perhaps best illustrated by the iPhone carrying “occupiers” and other anti-Western culture types.
God help us all…
Your phrase, “demonic level of stupidity”, says it only too well. I only hope that enough Americans will wake up in time to change things in November but I’m not very confident.
“Corruption, delusion, and mendacity (lies) are nothing new as determinants of both personal and collective life. They are staples of human nature.”
David Solway illustrates this crucial statement with three examples: “the Palestinian ‘narrative,’ the climate change shakedown, and the ascent of Barack Obama to the most powerful office in the world.”
A brief comment on each point which needs to be critically evaluated using primary sources and with careful reasoning:
There are a considerable number of historical written sources – that date back 1900 years – which clearly place the Jews in the area that was once called Palestine. There are scrolls – that are over 2200 years old – which record the habitation of this area by the ancestors of these Jews for over a thousand years. If there were Palestinians living and governing themselves in this area for longer than this, then why are there are no written records of them until in modern times?
Why do those, who are so confident that global warming is going to mean the demise of mankind and that man is the greatest culprit, need to mischaracterize and ridicule critics – many of whom are scientists – as deluded because they want answers to perplexing questions? Why, if they are good scientists, do the not want to allow those – who do not share their unwavering convictions about the nature, causes and consequences of global warming – to subject their data and conclusions to a rigorous examination and alternative interpretations? Surely peer review does not mean only by like minded people?
While is it nothing new to hear politicians and presidents contradicting themselves, it is surely the responsibility of voters to get a good idea of the character, convictions and conduct of the candidate they wish to elect. A voter may be uncertain about how wise and workable the policies of a candidate are and still give him a chance, but can one trust someone who is dissembling and hides whatever may hurt his chances of election or re-election? The media should surely be the public watchdog, exposing dishonesty in all politicians and top public servants, and warning voters. While it is important for the character, convictions and conduct of Romney to be closely and critically examined, it is surely just as important that this be done of Barack Obama and of his performance as president.
puzzled, because common sense is no longer in play, and an outsider for that very same reason.
But don’t worry, at least you’re not crazy.
It is not news that most influential Leftists do not have the emotional ties to this land, in general, as those who wish to conserve. In large part, and very generally speaking, these intellectuals who are out to change the country are 1st or 2nd generation Americans. We have allowed ourselves to be duped by newcomers who have zero respect for this land and its history. I recall Jefferson lamenting what he saw as cultural erosion, and that was just from the country losing its Anglo Saxon character. We are nowhere close to a nation-state any more – and the writing is on the wall. The Left has won. Let’s see if a country of ideas can prevail. Those of us who are lost in the old days and want to continue a society of self reliance and limited government are simply without a home – and in quite a jam as I’m not sure where we will migrate next. We are all wasting our energies on a dying cause.
We are only wasting our time if we do not move together in our efforts. Article V of the Constitution was put into the document exactly for this reason. A Constitutional Convention allows us, ‘We The People’, to once again have a ‘do over’ and re-write the Constitution to be a ‘more perfect union’. We have Tea Party groups in every state in the union and this is where the movement must start.
We can take back our Nation, but we must to it as individuals in each State. If we expect Congress or the bureaucrats to help we are being played for fools. This is a job for real Patriots with a Conservative bent… Join the Tea Party and get involved in you local and State Groups.
We must have a Constitutional Convention and soon….
I have to say that what seems to be your implication, that it’s people who have come to America relatively recently (you said “1st and 2nd generation Americans”–perhaps thinking of Obama himself?) who are working for and supporting the “radical transformation” Obama promised right before his election, doesn’t ring true to me.
Unfortunately, there’s an elite, intellectual strain that wants to “transcend” nationalism (like they supposedly did in Europe, by signing on for the European Union) and be cosmopolitan, citizen of the world types. Or something. A brilliant person I know has definitely signed on for this project, and she has a pedigree stretching back to the Mayflower.
Whereas plenty of people who arrived more recently bring the scars of their encounters with communism or fascism with them, and they appreciate (sometimes more than those of us whose families have been here a long time) what the USA has traditionally stood for.
That really was excellent David. The mind, the filtering screen that interacts with all this now available info, really is under attack via education. The first preference is make much human behavior emotional or instinctive so that the conscious part of the brain never really comes into play.
When it does, education will have had a heavy values and attitudes and role playing emphasis. Reading instruction is back to a Whole word sight approach. That means you can read what you have been taught and exposed to. Instead of developing your own concepts from your personal values and the facts learned at schools, facts are minimized as divisive and not holistic. Concentrating on differences instead of commonalities. No, desired concepts will be provided to serve as the peg for the desired vision. Plus cognitive mapping skills and tools of personal reflection so students can really learn to know themselves.
That’s the key aspect of Outcomes Based Education or its new international better PR sounding successor, Competencies. You can hide the largely affective reorientation firmly inside. I have written about how Common Core and euphemisms like accountability and school improvement are warped to hide so much we would all find objectionable.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/how-social-and-emotional-learning-as-the-primary-focus-is-coming-in-all-the-windows/ was the first post I wrote on the social and emotional focus coming to both P-12 and higher ed at the insistence of the Obama administration and consistent with the U’s goals for education and changing cultures in the West. Th NEA’s contribution to all this is called Purple America and Project Love. I even have the charge sheet for their materials.
Again I don’t think this may be happening. I have tackled this to a level where I have the open declarations of insiders on their purposes and intents and how to hide them.
I know everyone will be shocked it fits in perfectly with the hoax surrounding AGW. Both tools to get at Western wallets and get citizens in the West to voluntarily lay down their liberty and economic freedom. Hopefully for the schemers without even being aware of how much they are giving up for voluntary servitude.
All three of these “scams” really depend, not upon conspiracy per se, but upon a general incompetence, of the uninformed populace but also of the “experts”, who were supposedly well-educated to BE experts–but are in fact not.
It is the incompetence brought about by long-held–religiously held–dogma, culminating in our time on many fronts, in many fields, but most especially in science, the very home of objective thought and understanding.
The human race is at war with unquestioned dogmas, some of them rooted in pre-history, in the earliest myths (which played the part of authoritative science in the truly ancient world, before the rise of the known civilizations). There is new scientific knowledge concerning those earliest and most divisive, most violent, most religious dogmas, that could dissipate much senseless hatred in the world today. But that newly civilizing knowledge is not welcome among the mandarins of academic science, the arbiters of what may be discussed, and who may be considered expert.
What makes this time insane, is that the supposed experts in every field are incompetent. The intellectual and psychological forces at work are beyond their blindered scientific understanding–their obsolete understanding, based upon too small a time frame, too small a sample of, essentially, scientific fads.
“Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.”
The key is to withdraw ourselves from the bogus educational systems and create or sustain the genuine ones, home schooling included. But what does that do for those too brainwashed to withdraw? Do they sense at some stage of societal disintegration that they’ve been had, or do they take their fantasies to the grave?
This is all old news, and yet Jews in America continue to vote for Democrats mostly for their support of abortion.
Isn’t that ironic? One genocide leading to another.
The New religion must cast down the Old in order to take it’s place.
The Olympians cast down the Titans.
Sumer’s refugees cast down shattered Crete.
The Sky King cast down the Earth Mother (Genesis).
600 to 400 BC, ecstasy religions cast down the engineer castes.
We seem to be repeating that.
Perhaps someday all of our history will be but a line in a book-
‘The Green cast down the Temple’.
Interesting phrase, “engineer castes” — any further information on that?
I ask because in Rome — before the Empire, before the Republic, and apparently even before the Kings — the highest religious position was the “Pontifex Maximus”, the chief bridge-builder.
Don’t be too hard on Columbia. As a Columbia alum (economics) I can report that at least in the economics department, sanity, common sense and intellectual rigor prevail. But if you start out by being mentored by a card-carrying member of the CPUSA, hang out with the burnouts at Punahou, hang out with more burnouts at Occidental, travel on an Indonesian passport (for which you have to swear allegiance to the Republic of Indonesia), put in two years at Columbia, study under the lefties at Harvard Law, and become a “community organizer” who knows where you might wind up. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
“Sanity, common sense and intellectual rigor” in economics? “The ‘voodoo’ science”? (Forgive me, Dr. Friedman.)
“Hey, buddy, I found yer problem, right here!”
Nobel Peace Prize.
“Sophistry and subterfuge have gone mainstream.”
Thank you, Brian Williams and your ilk. Without the likes of you none of this would be possible.
Very good, Mr. Solway. You have produced a “keeper”!
Unfortunately, there are many “conservatives” that are still enamored of Man Made Global Warmning….so much so that they lambast other conservatives and balk at supporting conservative politicians that dont genuflect to green-red enviro-doomsday cultish MMGW.
The decline of Christianity in the United States is the cause, not an effect, of the decline of the nation itself. When we allow Satan to run the show (and let’s not be subtle about it: all Marxists are minions of Satan) we throw the doors wide open to rapid destruction.
It may be convenient to blame Satan for the bad things we do, for every time we mess up, but basic Christian teaching holds every person accountable for his or her own actions. Whatever the Scriptures teach about Satan, they certainly do not excuse our thoughts, words and actions when we ignore our Creator and do not care about other people.
+1
As I understand the theology, Satan is the tempter, not the puppet master.
Every generation must choose whom they will serve. Just because the Forefathers were holy does not mean the sons are. They, the sons, must choose also. As Israel of the Old Testament learned every 40 years or so, the next generation would fall and then they were given a choice, serve the Lord or serve some other human tyrant and on and on it went, every generation had to “learn” the ways of the Lord or go into slavery to the rule of fallen man until finally they exhausted the patience of the Lord, then they were scattered unto the four winds until 1948.
Every generation of Americans has had to choose also as did their religiously persecuted Forefathers of Europe. The “Greatest Generation” learned humility in the foxholes of Europe and the Pacific for example and they did not forget but their children and grandchildren must learn also, some have, a lot haven’t which is why we are having this conversation now.
Man no longer has to serve under the slavery and futility of fallen man, man can choose adoption into the new nature of Christ with a new and life giving spirit.
But still one thing remains true today: we all must choose, from one generation to the next whom we shall serve, the liberating, truth loving spirit of Christ or slavery to the fallen nature (given in 3 examples by Mr. Solway) of the original sinner.
Thanks, Jeffrey. I have made a comment below which makes a similar point: I ended it with this question: “Ironically(?) alongside our surfeit in the West of intellectuals we have a dearth of priests. I wonder if there’s a connection between this fact and the fact that ‘sophistry and subterfuge have gone mainstream’”?
More people need to say it more frequently.
You really have to wonder whether the world of Oz will prevail. It sure looks like it.
The Palestinian scam can at least be explained. The hatred of Jews has been so prevalent for so many centuries that one wonders how they even managed to reclaim their homeland. To this day, Europe is as anti-semetic as it has ever been, and the left in the US is the same way. So I can see how the giant lie of Palestine has gained and maintained traction.
Similarly, you can understand how the warmists have got away with their fraud for so long. Climate is certainly a complex topic that normal people don’t understand, and the scam has had a massive infrastructure of so-called scientists who have sold their souls to make it seem true. It’s actually surprising that the fraud has been exposed and the tables turned. It probably wouldn’t have even happened if the leftists hadn’t decided to tank the world’s economy to get their figurehead installed as president in 2008.
Which leads us to the one that is by far the most unfathomable…obama. The reason that it is so unfathomable is that people understand people, it’s all of our specializes after all, and the charlatan is hardly a closed book, despite the massive effort to seal everything about the man’s life. He appears in public and if you knew nothing about his background or ideology, the scam is so obvious that certainly a very high percentage of people know that he is simply a con man. He looks and acts like one. He lies constantly, and it’s clear that he has never governed in his life. His ideology, as well, is an open book.
I believe that 70% of the country knows that he is a fraud. Perhaps most of that percentage didn’t know in 2008, because the tsunami of misinformation was something that would have been difficult for most people to sift through and the unmitigated effort by the msm to sell him as the person who would heal America’s racial conflicts had to be appealing to many. But all that is gone now. It’s clear to even casual observers that he is a lying thug with an agenda to steal the wealth of the country, and bring the US down to the level of Venezuela. Everybody knows it.
So what remains, I think, is that a shockingly high percentage of the public has made the cynical, short-term decision that a small payoff to themselves in the next few years is worth the destruction of the country. Their numbers, of course, are increased by some millions of people who simply hate, for many reasons, the country. This can be the only explanation. Even blacks know what a fraud he is. They know Sharpton is a fraud as well, and OJ and Trayvon Martin. They simply decide that revenging their hatreds, and minor short-term payoffs are worth the total destruction of the United States.
The leftists have been working toward that goal for a hundred years, and they have essentially achieved it. Even if we beat them back in 2012, unless a real leader emerges in 2016 who is capable of explaining the danger to people consumed with next month’s fad, there is very little chance that the greatest social organization in the history of mankind will survive.
It seems that over the long haul, most people can be easily scammed into handing over everything, their lives, their wealth, they family to the elite con artists who have preyed on humanity since at least the time that mankind abandoned hunting and gathering as a way of life. It certainly has been true for the last 10,000 years, and despite the tiny window of the last 250 years when the explosion of wealth triggered by unleashing human freedom lifted hundreds of millions to lifstyles princes had never enjoyed, it looks like humanity is destined to sink back into the dark ages that have dominated our history. Maybe people crave enemies so intensely and are so consumed with jealousy of people who have more than themselves that serfdom is the inevitably prevelant human condition. Maybe most peole actually prefer poverty to wealth, as long as the condition of 99% of other people is equivalent to our own.
As I try to remind puzzled people such as Mr. Solway from time to time:
EVERYTHING is ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE about religion.
Yup!
Not quite, what is at the root of all these discussions is morality, religion is only one source of this topic.
1) The only people of the earth who ever received a deed to land from God Himself is the Jewish People (Exodus). The Jews were given the Land of Canaan in perpetuity, but expelled by the Romans in 79 A.D. Modern day Israel is the reassertion of that God-given right.
2) Having a life-long interest in geology and growing up in the North East, with geologic features from volcanic action, glaciers, and ancient seas it’s apparent the earth has undergone many great changes over the eons; global warming is a fraud; our climate is in constant flux, always has been and always will be.
3) It is blantantly obvious Obama is a fraud, a creation of his handlers; a man who has gone to great legnths to conseal his background. Even if he was born on US soil (which I doubt) he has no cultural connection with average Americans, has never worked a day in his life, has been handed everything and is the least qualified person to ever run for, let alone, be elected president.
“…he has no cultural connection with average Americans, has never worked a day in his life.” Do you think he has at least some connection with people who have gone to college? Do you mean work with his hands? Do you mean he worked less, than let’s say GWB? Obviously he DOES have some cultural connection to MANY Americans, just not those that YOU consider average. And then there is Romney.
It true Dwight this 50% WHITE, 40% ARAB and 10% Black guy has absolutely nothing in common with the Average American and even LESS in common with the average African American. Through his “father” he is connected to Muslim Arab SLAVE TRADERS. He was brought up both as a devout Mosque going Muslim in Jakarta and as a ‘privileged’ RICH kid by his grandparents in Hawaii. One thing he does have in common with many Blacks though is his help from RACIST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.
Born to a Kenyan British Citizen Muslim, alcoholic, polygamous, womanizing, Undesirable mooching alien, absentee Father and an underage mother and adopted by an Indonesian Muslim STEPFATHER. ALL members of BOTH his Paternal Families are Muslims even his Kenyan Grandmother who his LYING Election Committee told us was a Christian has not long returned (AFTER his election of course) from the completing the Haj at Mecca.
He was brought up and schooled as a Muslim in BOTH the State and the Catholic run MULTI FAITH schools he attended in Jakarta. When Barry was in Indonesia you had to be an Indonesian CITIZEN to go to State School, so maybe THATS why the Passport , College and Student loan records are HIDDEN. His contemporaries at school , one of whom is the current head of Garuda Airlines the Indonesian national airline,remember him as a devout Mosque going MUSLIM.
He took KORANIC STUDIES a Muslim ONLY subject at school a fact he himself ADMITS in his book DREAMS. He is on record as saying ‘If the Political will goes against them I WILL STAND WITH THE MUSLIMS” and also “the Muslim call to prayer is one of the MOST beautiful sounds on earth” .
He can also recite the Shahada in perfectly accented Koranic Arabic , must be a result of his MENGAGI studies a subject only DEVOUT Muslims take. According to Muslims anyone who says the Shahada, which calls Allah the PARAMOUNT God (why Paramount are there other LESSER Gods????) and claims Mohammad as his messenger , IS A MUSLIM.
So who is Barry HUSSEIN Soetero Kardashian America’s first Gay, Celebrity USURPER President the man who tells us he has ‘ALWAYS been a Christian” well for a start he is a BLATANT BAREFACED LIAR .
It also raises the questions “Can a member of a RACIST anti White, Anti Semitic, Anti American “Black Liberation Theology” Church which is closer to Islam than it is to Christianity be truly considered Christian? ” “Why if he indeed is no longer Muslim , as he most definitely was, have Muslims not issued a FATWA against him calling for his death as an APOSTATE.
Hi David,
Well said. It’s true that the electronic media has made the dissemination of falsehoods easier, and that an entitled society will not work hard to dig out the truth—even if it’s plainly accessible. That makes our job all the more difficult, yet we persist, since without facts and truth, we are blind to reality.
One important point to remember is that all the high level people in the USA who are charged with this country’s security know Obama is a Constitutionally illegal president due to not being born here.
The top people in the CIA know it. The top people in the FBI know it. The Joint Chief know it. The top people in the State Dept know it, as do the top people throughout the Dept of Defense. Etc, etc.
When Obama is removed from power, all these top level people should be charged with treason.
I think the majority will agree with you, but how do we get this to happen and try to restore a once great country.
Interestingly, I don’t think we know that he wasn’t born here (in Hawaii).
But it’s remarkable that we have been systematically denied access to the documents (especially school and college records) that would indicate whether he was presenting himself as a US citizen or a citizen of, say, Indonesia, when he applied to or attended these institutions.
He can’t be held responsible for what was done to him (e.g., taken to Indonesia) as a young child, but when he’s applying to colleges, especially when transferring to Columbia College from Occidental, I think he’s old enough to take responsibility. It’s truly remarkable that there are no documents available from this period in his life, as well as no people who knew him who are all too willing to talk–hasn’t it been the case that every other president has all kinds of people who knew him when, who want to tell us all sorts of things about him?
yet even from a distance it seemed obvious to me four years ago that Obama was an arrant fraud
“Fraud” was the way I described Obama well before November 2008 — it was so blatantly obvious. “Scoundrel” is also a completely appropriate way to define the man.
It is more than a false narrative that got him to where he is, it’s also the underlying mentality that society must somehow “carry” us through life. Obama is the ultimate revenge of affirmative action, but not because of the policies of affirmative action alone, but because of the underlying concepts that created it. Those concepts have given us a dumbed-down eudcational system and a rampant anti-intellectualism. This has created the perfect storm that gave us a President Obama.
I, for one, and astounded at how many people I know who are intelligent and perceptive who still managed to miss what this awful man was really about, even when I provided them with a mild summation of what he really was. They were dismissive or apathetic. One close friend who read Ayn Rand assiduously (and repeatedly; she must have memorized both Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) actually voted for Obama, and tried to persuade me to do the same. Even when I explained why there was no way I would vote for this man, and used allusions to portions of Rand’s writings to explain to her why I was voting for the other guy, she still didn’t get it. I mean, just “Wow.”
with me — almost every last one of my once close friends and acquaintances didn’t, and still don’t see it.
Back in 2008 I tried to explain to other people why I thought Obama was a Communist. In 2012 I am using the only political tactic that gets through to most people: Whoever shouts the loudest, wins! With that in mind, “OBAMA IS A COMMUNIST AND HE IS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM AND OUR ECONOMY!” That is what to do when we are around our friends this year. ABO2012
My comment applies only to global warming. The ongoing drought in the mid west of the U.S. has increased corn prices by 40% just in recent months. Many ranchers have sold off livestock because they are too expensive to feed. Worldwide food prices will undoubtedly increase. The U.N. has recently made a statement to this effect. This will be used by the alarmists to further their agenda to significantly reduce use of fossil fuels.
While skeptics are patting themselves on the backs because some alarmists like Lovelock are jumping ship, there are about a dozen countries around the world that have instituted “carbon” (CO2) taxes or carbon trading schemes….and more are planning to. California and Nevada are included. The EU is taxing airway traffic inside its borders. Governments are supporting the AGW “settled science” to provide themselves with a new “revenue source”. The alarmists are winning, no matter their ludicrous arguments.
So now the Americans on welfare are responsible for Israel’s problems.
boil down to this: most of the world wants her destroyed.
If Israel were allowed to thrive in peace and quiet, everybody in the world on welfare would be off it.
No Ozzy the Benefit Entitlement JUNKIES who are content to SPONGE off others are more likely to vote for the ANTI SEMITIC Black Racist Barry HUSSEIN Soetero Kardashian to perpetuate their Benefit Culture thus putting Israel in danger.
50% of Americans pay NO INCOME TAX they are SPONGING off the 50% who have to not only support themselves but support THEM too. The top 10% of earners pay 85% of the TAX the only UNFAIRNESS there is that they are paying TOO MUCH to support the FECKLESS 50% who do nothing but TAKE.
“Andrew Klavan justly remarks in an article deploring the president’s egregious lack of character: “Again and again, he reveals himself to be wholly a product of the anti-American, anti-liberal and anti-democratic left at odds with the principles of our founding.” Still, sentient human beings will continue to vote for him.”
Well, of course. They are in agreement with him; why shouldn’t they vote for him?
Good choices.
I would have included Marxism. Scam Obama is a subset thereof.
This essay should be the text of Mitt Romney’s first inaugural address.
Mr. Solway, you’ve outdone yourself. Bravo.
paragraph 17, at the end, you refer to ‘dominical theology’. You mean ‘dominion’ per Rousas Rushdoony and co.
“The madness, hypocrisy, and outright stupidity that are sweeping the world almost defy comprehension.”
Understatement of the century,my friend.It is forgivable.There really are no words to describe how many people today hold and champion and base their beliefs and policies on ideas that are regularly disproved by observable reality. The feeling of talking to one of these people is like staring into the deepest blackest chasm one can imagine and seeing nameless blasphemies of form and substance from the darkest primeval aeons staring back at you. Unfortunately,even if we survive this comprehension-defying stupidity there will be no words in any language I know of with which the most erudite scholars and poets of our time could accurately convey the threat we so narrowly escaped. The next generation of human beings to face this threat will be as unprepared as we ourselves were,looking for Communists and dictators trying to enslave them and being unable to spot the sheer indescribable evil from the dregs of the human spirit that is simultaneously consuming their souls with stupidity and malevolence.
At this point,all we can do is pray to our various deities,deities of the vast and sublime sphere of the Empyrean,deities of light,and music,and philosophy and reason. Princes of Peace,gods of love and hope,and of all the things humans of good character hold dear and swear by that we may be victorious against this threat from outside all moral humanity that masquerades as compassion,intellectualism,humanitarianism all while robbing us of the same.If we are unsuccessful,I despair for the future of humanity.
If it can be said that God measures unto us that which we mete unto others,let no God say that I stood by coldly and cynically jeered at the fate of my fellow man and so deserve to be cast out from the love and compassion of the Almighty.
God bless you all and God help you. At this point,he may be the only one who can.
Amen!
A “narrative” is something that works better than the truth for its producer.
Political Correctness, Multi Culturalism, ‘Yuman Rites’, Affirmative Action, Black Race Hustling, Green NAZISM, Islamophilia, LBGT “RIGHTS!!!!!”, back door insidious SOCIALISM preached in Schools and Universities, Benefit Entitlement JUNKIES, and Dems and Barry HUSSEIN Soetero Kardashian inspired Class Warfare are all destroying the CIVILIZATION that Judeo/Christianity so painstakingly built.
‘Agreed! Kyrie eleison.
This is a Greco-Roman civilization of which the Judeo-Christian tradition is only a part.
“Those whom the God’s would destroy they first make insane”
That in a nutshell is what is happening to the world today.
Even though it has been thoroughly exposed as the disgusting, deceitful, engineered SCAM that it is Green NAZIS the Lame Stream EneMedia and POWER HUNGRY Politicians still wont let it go.
Similarly even though the truth about the LYING, DOCUMENT HIDING, LIFE STORY INVENTING, Criminal, Communist, Socialist, Terrorist and Islamic Radical associating, UNQUALIFIED, INCOMPETENT, INEFFICIENT, USURPER, Barry HUSSEIN Soetero Kardashian America’s first Bisexual, Celebrity, Black RACIST President is already COMMON KNOWLEDGE too many Americans from the RACIST Blacks to the ‘dyed in the wool’ Left wing moonbats to the congenitally stupid could still re-elect him.
The real subliminal question that is bubbling below the surface (excepting Sultan Knish) is, will O leave office if he loses? First he will try to win conventionally. Second he will try to win the Chicago way (on election day and afterward as the ballots are counted & recounted). During the interregnum, will he try the third (Castro/Chavez) method? That should be interesting.
First lets get things straight there is not now and there NEVER has been a Country or State called ‘Palestine’. You therefore cannot be a ‘refugee’ from it nor can it be ‘occupied’. There was however a ‘REGION’ called initially ‘Palestinia’ by the Romans as a play on Phillistines to piss of the INDIGENOUS Jews living there. This was perpetuated at the end of WWII when the whole REGION including Syria,Trans Jordan and what is now Israel and misnamed ‘Palestinian’ Territories. The MUSLIM ARAB INVADERS already have TWO Countries in ‘Palestine’ Syria and Jordan but they now want to carve out ANOTHER country for the ficticious ‘Palestinaians’ . The want to carve this out of Israel.
There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian problem: the myth that this land was “Arab” land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution to the problems of the Middle East, let’s get a few things straight:
* As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn’t take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don’t want it back.
* If you consider the British illegitimate usurpers, fine. In that case, this territory is not Arab land but Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917. And the Turks don’t want it back.
* If you look back earlier in history than the Ottoman Turks, who took over Palestine over in 1517, you find it under the sovereignty of the yet another empire not indigenous to Palestine: the Mamluks, who were Turkish and Circassian slave-soldiers headquartered in Egypt. And the Mamluks don’t even exist any more, so they can’t want it back.
So, going back 800 years, there’s no particularly clear chain of title that makes Israel’s title to the land inferior to that of any of the previous owners. Who were, continuing backward:
* The Mamluks, already mentioned, who in 1250 took Palestine over from:
* The Ayyubi dynasty, the descendants of Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim leader who in 1187 took Jerusalem and most of Palestine from:
* The European Christian Crusaders, who in 1099 conquered Palestine from:
* The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Palestine in the name of:
* The Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, which in 750 took over the sovereignty of the entire Near East from:
* The Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, which in 661 inherited control of the Islamic lands from:
* The Arabs of Arabia, who in the first flush of Islamic expansion conquered Palestine in 638 from:
* The Byzantines, who (nice people—perhaps it should go to them?) didn’t conquer the Levant, but, upon the division of the Roman Empire in 395, inherited Palestine from:
* The Romans, who in 63 B.C. took it over from:
* The last Jewish kingdom, which during the Maccabean rebellion from 168 to 140 B.C. won control of the land from:
* The Hellenistic Greeks, who under Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. conquered the Near East from:
* The Persian empire, which under Cyrus the Great in 639 B.C. freed Jerusalem and Judah from:
* The Babylonian empire, which under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. took Jerusalem and Judah from:
* The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:
* The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites.
As the foregoing suggests, any Arab claim to sovereignty based on inherited historical control will not stand up. Arabs are not native to Palestine, but are native to Arabia, which is called Arab-ia for the breathtakingly simple reason that it is the historic home of the Arabs. The territories comprising all other “Arab” states outside the Arabian peninsula—including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity now formally under the Palestinian Authority—were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century, defeating, mass-murdering, enslaving, dispossessing, converting, or reducing to the lowly status of dhimmitude millions of Christians and Jews and destroying their ancient and flourishing civilizations. Prior to being Christian, of course, these lands had even more ancient histories. Pharaonic Egypt, for example, was not an Arab country through its 3,000 year history. The recent assertion by the Palestinian Arabs that they are descended from the ancient Canaanites whom the ancient Hebrews displaced is absurd in light of the archeological evidence.
There is no record of the Canaanites surviving their destruction in ancient times. History records literally hundreds of ancient peoples that no longer exist. The Arab claim to be descended from Canaanites is an invention that came after the 1964 founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the same crew who today deny that there was ever a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Prior to 1964 there was no “Palestinian” people and no “Palestinian” claim to Palestine; the Arab nations who sought to overrun and destroy Israel in 1948 planned to divide up the territory amongst themselves. Let us also remember that prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the name “Palestinian” referred to the Jews of Palestine.
The only nations that have perfect continuity between their earliest known human inhabitants and their populations of the present day are Iceland, parts of China, and a few Pacific islands. The Chinese case is complicated by the fact that the great antiquity of Chinese civilization has largely erased the traces of whatever societies preceded it, making it difficult to reconstruct to what extent the expanding proto-Chinese displaced (or absorbed) the prehistoric peoples of that region. History is very sketchy in regard to the genealogies of ancient peoples. The upshot is that “aboriginalism”—the proposition that the closest descendants of the original inhabitants of a territory are the rightful owners—is not tenable in the real world. It is not clear that it would be a desirable idea even if it were tenable. Would human civilization really be better off if there had been no China, no Japan, no Greece, no Rome, no France, no England, no Ireland, no United States?
Back to the Arabs: I have no problem recognizing the legitimacy of the Arabs’ tenure in Palestine when they had it, from 638 to 1099, a period of 461 years out of a history lasting 5,000 years. They took Palestine by military conquest, and they lost it by conquest, to the Christian Crusaders in 1099. Of course, military occupation by itself does not determine which party rightly has sovereignty in a given territory. Can it not be said that the Arabs have sovereign rights, if not to all of Israel, then at least to the West Bank, by virtue of their majority residency in that region from the early Middle Ages to the present?
To answer that question, let’s look again at the historical record. Prior to 1947, as we’ve discussed, Palestine was administered by the British under the Palestine Mandate, the ultimate purpose of which, according to the Balfour Declaration, was the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In 1924 the British divided the Palestine Mandate into an Arabs-only territory east of the Jordan, which became the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, and a greatly reduced Palestine Mandate territory west of the Jordan, which was inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Given the fact that the Jews and Arabs were unable to coexist in one state, there had to be two states. At the same time, there were no natural borders separating the two peoples, in the way that, for example, the Brenner Pass has historically marked the division between Latin and Germanic Europe. Since the Jewish population was concentrated near the coast, the Jewish state had to start at the coast and go some distance inland. Exactly where it should have stopped, and where the Arab state should have begun, was a practical question that could have been settled in any number of peaceful ways, almost all of which the Jews would have accepted.
The Jews’ willingness to compromise on territory was demonstrated not only by their acquiescence in the UN’s 1947 partition plan, which gave them a state with squiggly, indefensible borders, but even by their earlier acceptance of the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, which gave them nothing more than a part of the Galilee and a tiny strip along the coast. Yet the Arab nations, refusing to accept any Jewish sovereignty in Palestine even if it was the size of a postage stamp, unanimously rejected the 1937 Peel plan, and nine years later they violently rejected the UN’s partition plan as well. When the Arabs resorted to arms in order to wipe out the Jews and destroy the Jewish state, they accepted the verdict of arms. They lost that verdict in 1948, and they lost it again in 1967, when Jordan, which had annexed the West Bank in 1948 (without any objections from Palestinian Arabs that their sovereign nationhood was being violated), attacked Israel from the West Bank during the Six Day War despite Israel’s urgent pleas that it stay out of the conflict. Israel in self-defense then captured the West Bank. The Arabs thus have no grounds to complain either about Israel’s existence (achieved in ’48) or about its expanded sovereignty from the river to the sea (achieved in ’67).
The Arabs have roiled the world for decades with their furious protest that their land has been “stolen” from them. One might take seriously such a statement if it came from a pacifist people such as the Tibetans, who had quietly inhabited their land for ages before it was seized by the Communist Chinese in 1950. The claim is laughable coming from the Arabs, who in the early Middle Ages conquered and reduced to slavery and penury ancient peoples and civilizations stretching from the borders of Persia to the Atlantic; who in 1947 rejected an Arab state in Palestine alongside a Jewish state and sought to obliterate the nascent Jewish state; who never called for a distinct Palestinian Arab state until the creation of the terrorist PLO in 1964—sixteen years after the founding of the state of Israel; and who to this moment continue to seek Israel’s destruction, an object that would be enormously advanced by the creation of the Arab state they demand. The Arab claim to sovereign rights west of the Jordan is only humored today because of a fatal combination of world need for Arab oil, leftist Political Correctness that has cast the Israelis as “oppressors,” and, of course, good old Jew-hatred.
Excellent post; I would add only that during the Third Reich the Palestinian Arabs were enthusiatic allies of the Nazis; the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler in person to have cozy little chats about how best to implement the Final Solution. This is all a matter of written and photographic record. That so few educated western people are even aware of this now is indicative of one of the most diabolical hoaxes of modern human history.
No-one can rewrite history, but I will say it was a mistake of the victors of WWII not to inflict as humiliating and total a defeat on these Arabs as they had done on the Germans and the Japanese. If they had had any guts the Allies would have kicked every last Arab out of what remained of the Palestinian Mandate into Syria and/or Jordan and forced those countries to accept them or else. That’s what real victors do at the end of a war, and if the vanquished complain the victors simply remind them that they should be grateful for being allowed to live. They do not leave them with any bargaining power. If the Allies had done this back then you can be damn sure that there would be no “Israel-Palestine” conflict today, no endless list of fake and manufactured grievances, no intifadas, no suicide bombers, no “Peace Flotillas”; no bloodsucking UN agency channelling bejillions of dollars into the bottomless trough of “Palestinian misery” and further abetting it…no, the descendents of all those former “Palestinian” Arabs would be long since reabsorbed into the Arab societies of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan from which most of their ancestors came. Nobody would talk wistfully about some nonexistent entity called “Palestine”, which ceased to exist on every world map as of 1947, and is not missed.
Ah well, we’re all allowed to dream.
Simply outstanding original article and response/post. I have saved both for future reference.
Palestinian is derived from Philistine. There does not appear to be any record of what the Philistines called themselves. They were occupants of what is now the Gaza strip area and on and off some lands to the east. If the occupants of Gaza are somewhat descended from the Philistines they have more of an historical claim to the Gaza strip than the Jews. But then the lead article here does not argue that point. All this assertion of claims from history is ridiculous. Should Rome or Egypt claim their old empires? Both the Arab and Jewish claims based on ancient history are fatuous. The only issue is what land was given for the State of Israel by the UN and what belongs to Israel by right of conquest.
Less than twenty years after the Berlin Wall fell, and only seven years after a massive Islamic attack on the United States (followed by Spain, England, etc.), American voters elected a president with a Marxist mentality and clear sympathies for Islam — and cheered him rapturously as a veritable messiah.
That’s just the start of the bizarreness of the Obama presidency. I’m constantly baffled over why so many people just don’t see — or don’t allow themselves to admit — what is so obvious about the scam artist in the White House and all his abettors (or string-pullers).
Ya’ll just write s’dang well. What are you…….doing?
Your article is brilliant, but have you give such level of thought to evolution. There are four, not three great scams of our time. How can so many believe in a scientific “theory” for which there is no scientific evidence, which cannot be tested by the scientic method and for which the more thought is devoted to it, the more unlikely it becomes?
The theory of evolution should be considered a subset of the atomic theory of matter. The latter is humanity’s most well established idea. Once the mechanism of DNA replication was discovered, evolution was perfectly enough integrated into the ATM.
Your problem is not with Charles Darwin it is with David Hume. God is beyond human comprehension. Your likely preference for Biblical explanation is a matter that you, as Tennyson put it, “by faith and faith alone embrace, believing where we cannot prove.” Fighting evolution is a losing proposition. Let it go.
You are who David Solway is referring to. You haven’t a clue.
Evolutionary theory is economically productive. If you suppose it is socially destructive in some way then you may suppose that any argument against Biblical authority is destructive. Do you suppose the sun revolves around the earth?
The global warming nonsense, the Palestinian barbarians, the entirety of the collectivist propaganda I reject. Evolution is a useful theory. Beyond that, I believe it is true. But true or not, some battles are not worth fighting because they alienate potential allies. Really, give it up.
Wow you all got steamed over this one! Good, about dam time. So. I look forward to Nov 6. If That date does not close the loop on O.
Then I look forward to seeing many of you in the street over the next and last 4 years of the US
So check your 6
Not sure of your meaning, but that reads as a prediction of ultimate failure.
“Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO representative to the United Nations, glossed Abbas’ fictive account of the antiquity of the so-called “Palestinian nation,” declaring that Palestinians had “lived under the rule of a plethora of empires: the Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines….”
Funny, I though the *were* the Philistines!
With the discovery of significant gas and, possibly, oil deposits Israel will soon have less to worry about regarding anything the Palestinians have in mind. The country is a like prize fighter thhas whipped himself into great shape and won all his major bouts only to learn that the championship fight is fixed.
The over the top Global Warming rhetoric is cooling down. The myth will subside soon enough.
Yes, Obama was a big surprise. But it only goes to show how far one can go in American politics if your timing is right, you’re are a pathological liar, and a certain well-known and malignant billionaire puts in a ‘fix’ for you just before the election. And don’t forget that the previous president screwed up just enough to anger people into considering Mr. Blank Slate in the first place. I think November 2010 says it all. Pay no attention to the polls, or to that man behind the curtain.
“Andrew Klavan justly remarks in an article deploring the president’s egregious lack of character: “Again and again, he reveals himself to be wholly a product of the anti-American, anti-liberal and anti-democratic left at odds with the principles of our founding.” Still, sentient human beings will continue to vote for him. There is only one word for this: unbelievable.”
I think it may show that Divine Intervention also comes from the forces of Evil.
I have posted this comment at the blog Blazing Cat Fur, run by Kathy Shaidle’s husband. A commenter suggested that I post it here as well:
This is a very fine article.
“The madness, hypocrisy, and outright stupidity that are sweeping the
world almost defy comprehension. The Palestinian faux ‘narrative,’ the
environmental craze, and the Obama myth are the three great examples of
the way the flimflam racket works, predicated on the self-interest of
the useful idiots who know how to game the system, the malfeasance of a
politically indoctrinated media imperium, and the gullibility of a mass
popular audience lobotomized into compliance by a failing intellectual
culture [emphasis mine].
“These three chimeras generally manifest the morbid sense of victimhood and hatred of the modern West [emphasis mine] that is the most contemptible
and dangerous feature of our contemporary world.”
What flummoxes me, however, is Solway’s attribution of “the gullibility of a mass popular audience” and “hatred of the modern West” to “a failing intellectual culture.” The greatness of the “modern West” can be attributed to our Judeo-Christian foundations, which grew out of the values and freedoms fostered by Judeo-Christian principles, not our “intellectual culture.”
The failure of intellectuals and pundits to factor in the damage done to people’s ability to think clearly and discern “flimflam’ rackets by the deep-sixing of the West’s spiritual heritage is disappointing in the extreme.
Our intellects are not the guardians of our minds and souls.
Our spiritual capacities inform our decisions just as decisively; we, however — meaning our pundits and commentators — have jettisoned spirituality to the edges of the conversation — if not excluded it entirely — and appear to hold those who come at issues from an intellectual and spiritual (aka, Judeo-Christian) perspective as somehow anachronistic and tainted.
“What sustains these programs of dissolution is not truth but a semblance
of truth rooted in fantasy, misrepresentation, invention, and dinning
repetition.” With his emphasis on the jettisoning of truth in modern conversations of issues that matter, it is surprising that Solway hasn’t even mentioned the faith based on the Truth — which undergirds the foundational values of the modern West.
I’m disappointed. An otherwise astute article has missed one of the main reasons for “hatred of the modern West” and hatred of the truth: a hatred both in the West and among her enemies of Judeo-Christianity, a hatred that has tainted the understanding of at least two or three generations of Westerners. It’s little wonder the “mass audience” is willing to fall for flimflam rackets — or, as the Scriptures put it, to exchange their spiritual heritage for a mess of pottage.
I later posted this comment at BCF:
On my way to church this morning, I thought “The problem isn’t so much an intellectual failure or malaise in the West as a spiritual failure and malaise.”
We have far too many intellectuals and no dearth of pundits, so why are they so off the mark? My thesis, of course, is that they’ve jettisoned Judeo-Christianity/Truth to the basement, if not right off the property.
Ironically(?) alongside our surfeit in the West of intellectuals we have a dearth of priests. I wonder if there’s a connection between this fact and the fact that “sophistry and subterfuge have gone mainstream”?
But in your dismay at Obama’s being elected to the US presidency you do not emphasise names of those whose instrument he is. We know only some of the names of the Democratic Party hierarchy as the Clintons, the Kennedys, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who, as unbelieving priests are wont, do not apply their strictures to their own lives and actions. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the Black Caucus can be dismissed as the hired guns to assure black voters do as they are told by the high priests/the Massa.
Crucially Americans do not care they worship a chimera. A man absolutely unknown to the truth of his provenance. That the question hangs in the air of Obama’s legitimacy in US Law to the office of President is an outrage.
Except abused, vilified and threatened called birthers by the scene setters refuse to remain silent. Their questions on legitimacy in US Law, of this Obama to the office he holds fall on deaf ears of members of Legislature and Judiciary. Members whose job, whose DUTY it is, contracted with their oath to Uphold and Defend the Constitution with Rights of Americans protected in that fundamental law see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil of this Executive.
Despite his direct challenge to them to DO THEIR JOBS with his ever escalating extensions of Exccutive powers not mandated. Who are these persons with the authority and purview who refuse to stop Obama’s arrogations of the LIMITED powers of the Executive? NAME NAMES.
All transformative leaders in history have used the same scenarios. Always their CHANGES are “for the good of the people”. Terror and tyranny their WMDs to gain and maintain powers over those people. EXCEPT for the one transformation of society the United States of America. THE Model for the world of a truly compassionate, fair, equal and socially just society for the entire world since its inception. That model these New Age vandals are now in process of transforming into one resembling all those others. With a little help from their friends.
Remember these words: He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation”.
Name manes of the members of this Obama/Democratic Party hierarchy cabal.
RE: Climate change: Your entertaining article provides plenty of innuendo, but not much discussion of data. Your reference to “no convincing scientific evidence” ignores the vast body of science. How about the basics:
Rise of CO2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve
Increase in CO2 is human made:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
Evidence of warming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2010_(Fig.A).gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plot_arctic_sea_ice_volume.svg
Your portrayal of a green dystopia which will “resemble the communist nightmare” is humorous, but sadly out of touch with the technology and simple changes to lifestyle that can wean us off fossil fuels:
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_ted_reinventing_fire_an_idea_worth_spreading
http://www.coolersmarter.org/
Your tallies of scientists refuting climate change are bogus – they are not actively doing research in the field of climate science, and they do not publish in peer reviewed climate science journals.
Climate scientists have reached a consensus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
You have a point well taken; some things done in the name of reducing CO2, are harmful – the production of ethanol for fuel, and coal fired greenhouses come to mind. All the more reason to have a scientific analysis of the CO2 content and pursue those technologies with the biggest bang for the buck. A fee & rebate on the price of carbon will also quickly show us the winners.