Individualism vs The Collective Part #1 "The Teachings of Jesus"

After returning from the Religious Educational Congress in Anaheim, I was reminded of several years ago when I heard Jim Wallis, the great apologist for Pol Pot’s massacre of a million Cambodians (Marxism for Christianity; Jim Wallis, Running With the Devil) and also an apologist for President Obama’s lack of a true Christian faith. Jim Wallis’ Sojourners and Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology are two good examples of Liberal Christian Organizations that are co-opting Christianity for their political purposes (a truer meaning of “using the Lord’s name in vain” is using God for your own selfish purposes, not necessarily cursing). In this liberals using Christianity to spread communism. Listening to Jim Wallis he will tell you that Jesus was a Socialist; the truth is Christianity and Socialism are mutual exclusive.

Throughout history dictators and kings have used the concepts of collectivism to control the masses. Then as in now, the leaders cared not for the welfare on any one individual, but the health of the peasants or workers as a whole; for from the peasants/workers came the armies that would be needed and the food grown by the collective farmers needed to feed them. Then along came Jesus and Christianity, where for the first time the individual was the most important the collective non-existent. President Obama has discussed the need for “Collective Salvation”, a belief system advocated by Jeremiah Wright and his Black Liberation Theology. Here we have an almost perfect parallel with the Bible and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The infant church was being corrupted as teachers added complexity, new rules and necessary deeds to earn ones salvation. The pillar of Christianity rests on John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. In other words one is saved, by the grace of God, from eternal punishment for sin which is granted to those who accept by faith God’s conditions of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. More simply put, salvation is gods gift to the world as no amount of deeds could free the world from sin; this is what is referred to in Christianity as “God’s Grace”.

In Christianity, redemption (the paying of a debt) was Jesus’ death on the cross that paid for the sins of the world. However Jeremiah Wright has other ideas. Black Liberation Theology teaches that the white race must redeem themselves for the past oppression of blacks; apparently the sacrifice of Jesus was not enough and the white race will still have to pay off the black race to reach salvation. This best described in Galations 1:7-10 Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Jesus never spoke of collective salvation or collective redemption; in fact it was the complete opposite. Jesus spurned the idea of the collective, in the name of a personnel savior. The health of the collective was not a concern of Jesus, nor was one’s station in life or economic status; in the Lord’s Prayer we pledge to “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (apparently Jeremiah Wright would want to interject an asterisk in the forgiveness part). And of course what is either purposely distorted or lost with Liberal Christian Organizations, is that giving is for the sake of the giver, not the receiver. While Jesus repeatedly directed his followers to feed the poor (and the poor certainly benefited), it was for the sake of the givers repentance (the act of changing your ways to God’s ways) and individual salvation, that Jesus wants us to give; as Jesus said in Matthew 26:11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.

Liberal Christian Organizations believe that communism (or socialism) would create a world according to the teachings of Christ, but the real teachings of Jesus are the bane of Liberal thinking. Jesus taught his followers since all are equal in God’s eyes, that material equality is insignificant; one should simply be the best at what ever their station of life and spend their energies helping others and loving god. To Jesus the collective had no meaning, because he was concerned about the saving the souls of individuals, not the health and/or control of the collective. I close with Jesus words in Mathew 23:13-15; words that could have been directed at Jim Wallis and Jeremiah Wright. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

To Make a Democrat Mad

As the facts start to come out it becomes very obvious that the entire contraception issue was manufactured by the White House. Rather than Obama face the wrath of the electorate as he is unconstitutionally trying to force religious institutions to pay for contraception and abortion, he has used the press to re-define the issue, not about the right to practice ones religious beliefs, but planting the fear that government is going to outlaw contraception It started in January when ABC news, seeming out of the blue queried both Rick Santorium and Mitt Romney if theoretically states could ban contraception. The issue has then latched onto by the Democrats, not only to to create the fallacy of losing contraception rights, but to also avert the attention of the American voter away from huge deficits and high unemployment (using the 1930's formula we are at 16%). 30 year old Sandra Fluke, long time abortion advocate, was recruited by the White House via ex-White House Communications Secretary Anita Dunn who now runs a PR firm. The Democrats tried to interject Ms Fluke at the last minute into a Congressional hearing on the Constitutionality of mandating birth control on religious organization; since Ms Fluke is not a Constitutional expert she was not allowed in. When the Democrats propped her up in her own hearing she introduced no facts, offering only anecdotal information, including an account of an unknown student/employee was denied contraceptive medicine for non-contraceptive medical purposes because Georgetown University would not pay for it. Turns out this is a lie, the Georgetown University health plan does pay for any non-contraceptive use of contraception medicine. As usual, if you want to make a Democrat mad, tell the truth.

Teacher Represents All Republicans as Stupid

One of the lefts favorite attics is to paint all conservatives as stupid. The reason is that it takes a great deal to manipulation of the truth to sell liberalism; aka socialism. So when Conservatives argue the simple truth, it is presented as too simplistic to be intellectual by the left. It is also a tactic of of the indefensible to attack the messenger, rather than try to defend their position; this is especially true of elitist teachers who's progressive world view is unchallengeable in the classroom, leading them to believe that they are intellectually superior. This was a letter to the editor to the Santa Cruz Sentinel responding to such a denigration of GOP messengers.

You (Santa Cruz Sentinel) recently published a letter to the editor from a teacher, Frank Drees. It is certainly not unusual for a teacher to be condescending and have an elitist’s liberal attitude, but I was somewhat surprised at how inane his argument was. “As a teacher it seemed as if 55% of my students came from broken homes and 44% were born to unwed mothers, something I've also read. As for the parents I met, most were as intelligent as a Republican candidate for president.” While I don’t have the room here to dissect such a condescending and liberal ego, lets at least explore the intelligence of the Republican Candidates. Not even considering their political backgrounds as State Governors, State and Federal Representatives, lets just look at their education.


Michelle Bachman; a BA Political Science from JD Oral Roberts University and Master of Law LL.M from William and Mary School of Law.
Mitt Romney; a BA English Brigham Young University and a JD/MBA (Joint Degree) fromHarvard Law School/ Harvard Business School.
Ron Paul; a BS in Biology from Gettysburg College and an MD from Duke University.
Tim Pauley; a BA in Political Science and a JD from the University of Minnesota.
Newt Gingrich; a BA in History Emory University, a MA in History and PhD in Modern European History from Tulane University.
Rick Santorum; a BA Political Science from Pennsylvania State University, a MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, and JD from the Dickinson School of Law of Penn State.

Equal Justice and Protection Under the Law.

Equal protection under the law does not mean having an equal defense, it is related to equal justice; "Equal justice under law" is a phrase engraved on the front of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. This does not mean that everyone is entitled to the best defense money can buy; or that every victim will get the best prosecutor. Having equal justice under the law, means no one is above the law. In other countries at the time of the writing of the US Constitution, a person could rape, kill or steal and if the perpetrator was a person of wealth and/or position and the victim was poor, the perpetrator could have immunity from the law. You notice I did not say immunity from prosecution, but immunity from the law, as the law simply did not apply equally to the rich and powerful. This was not the result of a high priced attorney or a payoff to the judge, it was the result of a criminal justice system that did not protect the poor from the rich and powerful; this is what the rule of law , equal justice and the of concept equal protection, was to eliminate.

The so called equal protection clause did not exist in the US Constitution until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868; the 14th amendment was “reconstruction amendment” designed to address issues the borne out of the civil war. The wording was as follows;

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In essence the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment gave teeth to the 13th Amendment that freed the slaves. At the end of the end of the civil war, the southern states continued to use states rights to continue Jim Crow laws the oppressed blacks. Contrary to popular understandings, the Constitutional rights and protections were meant only to constrain the federal government; the states were empowered to make up any type of government they wanted, using what ever laws they wanted, as long as they acquiesced to the federal government the enumerated powers in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment changed that, saying that the states were also bound to the Constitutional rights and protections. In other words, the equal protection clause guaranteed that no matter which state one was in, they would have the same (or equal) civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Chief Justice Melville Fuller commented on the 14th Amendment said, By the Fourteenth Amendment the powers of the States in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no State can deprive particular persons or classes of persons of equal and impartial justice under the law.

The consequences of the 14th Amendment extended much further than protecting the civil rights of slaves. Many have commented on the convoluted wording of the Bill of Rights. As i said before, the Constitutional rights and protections were meant only to constrain the federal government; it was the states that had the rights and protections not individuals. . Our founders believed that the states were free to have any government they desired as long as they aquisteted to the federal government it's enumerated powers (a list of enumerated powers are found in Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution). Our founding fathers further believed that if any of these governments became too tyrannical, the citizens could simply move to another state. In actuality, many of the states simply adopted most the rights and protections from the Federal Constitution to their State Constitutions, however with the State Courts having jurisdiction. However, the Federal Court started to incrementally incorporate the Bill of Rights into the states. As an example, prior to the 14th Amendment, the states were free to adopt gun control of any kind, including banning them altogether; the reason for the wording of the Second Amendment was to prohibit the Federal Government from disarming state militias. When the Federal Court turned their attention to the second Amendment they determined, the states had to adhere to the rights to bear arms to their citizenry originally written to protect the rights of the states. Where the states had been permitted to strict gun control, the Federal Court is now slowly stripping away this authority. Whether this will continue is unknown as the court was heavily divided on the issue and a change of courts makeup could easily lead to a reverse decision.

Who are these Secular Progressives?

Often when the term Secular Progressives is used the left jumps up and asked, okay who are these secular progressives? Give ma an example of a person or organization. Secular Progressiveism has a two prong definition. First you have the Secular part; secular menas being separated from religion. Secular Progressives do not believe in the "inalienable rights" discussed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, or that God or a creator has any influence on the rights of mankind. SP believe that the rights of man are determined by government, to be given or taken away. Because of this SP believe government is the highest institution known to man.When Elena Kagan was being questioned prior to her appoint as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, she was asked this very question, if there are inalienable rights, not discussed in the Constitution, but endowed by a power greater than man and she said no. Elena Kagan is a SP, certainly Bill Maher is; as far as groups there is the ACLU.

The second part is Progressive; progressive means proceeding in steps; continuing steadily by increments. Progressives believe that the US Constitution is conceptually flawed, because it does not give the government the responsibility to redistribute wealth and thereby fund the mandate that all citizens will at least have an acceptable minimum standard of living; in other wards it is not a socialist document (Progressives have been incrementally introducing this and other socialists concepts since the time of FDR) .

The best example of SP in government is Cass Sunstein, President Obama's Czar of White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. As a scholar, Sunstien is known for believing that “people” (not him of course) as a rule make bad decisions, so they need government to “nudge” them in the right direction, this includes all areas of their lives, such as“ education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, (and) happiness..”; yes happiness, government knows better than you, what direction you need to be nudged to be happy. Sunstien also believes there are problems with the concept of freedom of speech. Sunstien believes that citizens with mutual interests, should not exchange ideas as “like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another.” Sunstien basically believes that the government needs to control the information you hear and that he “doubt(s) whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals”.

Federal Reserve Puts Tax Payers on the Hook for $75 Trillion of BofA Toxic Derivatives

From Bloomberg: B of A Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit This is old news (October 18, 2011) but it never got half the press it deserved. What has also not been well publicized is American banks are no where near out of the woods. While they may have payed off the so called TARP loans, they still have not disposed of the trillions of toxic mortgage derivatives (Credit Default Swaps) that they still show as assets. But the day of reckoning is coming due as Moody continues to down grade these banks, so B of A wants to move these worthless instruments from their investment side, Merrill Lynch to their FDIC insured banking side.

B of A, hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
However, this is completely illegal.

Keeping such deals separate from FDIC-insured savings has been a cornerstone of U.S. regulation for decades, including last year’s Dodd-Frank overhaul of Wall Street regulation.

But, to no ones surprise, the Federal reserve is all in favor of this,

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting.
The issue here is the Fed is a private organization who's board members include those that run B of A and Merrill Lynch! In a blog called Seeking Alpha Avery Goodman explains,

The Federal Reserve is an institution largely controlled by those who are probably the counter-parties to the Merrill Lynch derivatives. No doubt, its approval of the transaction, in spite of the prohibitions of section 23A arise out of a claim that Merrill is not a "bank" as defined under the Act, and, therefore, not an affiliate.

And while this transfer is obviously illegal,

Congress has given ultimate power to the Federal Reserve to ignore its own enabling Act legislation...The FDIC opposed the move, but there is nothing the FDIC can do, except file a petition for a writ of mandamus in court, against the Federal Reserve, seeking a declaration that the approval was illegal. But, the FDIC would lose, because Congress has given the Federal Reserve Board ultimate power to do whatever it wishes.

So there is no stopping this form of thievery unless we abolish or severely restrict the Federal Reserve. This has got to stop!

Why Liberals have to lie Part 6; it's still blame Bush

The following was a response to Mitt Romney flip flopping letter to the editor. However if you read into it you realize the real message is "the Republicans platform will destroy the country."

Mitt is the real flip-flopper

Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, has the audacity to say fellow Republican Rick Perry has flip-flopped on Social Security. Romney will probably win the Republican presidential nomination, but in order to do so, he's lost most of his principles. Mitt has shamelessly renounced his former positions on abortion, gay rights and immigration, making himself indistinguishable from the tea party crowd. Now Mr. Romney is telling us how he will tackle spending and debt. He will abolish Obama's health program on his first day in office by executive order leaving 40 million Americans in a lurch and once again uninsured. Mitt Romney, as president, will eliminate subsidies for Amtrak, leaving millions of rail passengers stranded. Mitt will enact deep reductions in the subsidies for the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And this man wants to be president.

Ron Lowe, Santa Cruz

My Response: I'm no great fan of Mitt Romney, but Ron Lowes letter is typical of the left espousing that if the Federal Government doesn't pay for it, it will never be funded. First of all California pays $90 million a year subsidizing Amtrak. Perhaps the Federal Government can take less from the states and let them use their money as they want to. Ron Lowes Health Insurance rant is a total fallacy. First, even if you want ObamaCare it has yet to be implemented, so those 40 million people don't have any insurance yet to be "lurched" away. Further there have never been 40 million people in the US without health insurance. This again is where the left likes to create numbers to suit their argument. The real number of American citizens that are uninsured is 10-12 million. Yes that's a lot of people, but you don't have to re-create government to insure them. The real issue are the illegal aliens that account for about 10 million more uninsured. But when discussing the drain illegal aliens have on the US economy, the left will claim there are only 10 million, but when they estimate those uninsured, it grows to 30 million.

As far as defunding NPR and the NEA, this is the price they pay for ignoring their mandate to be politically neutral and propagandizing for the left.

Then from under a rock comes the typical blame bush diatribe.

Ca pays more into fed than it receives. The states that receive more than they send to the fed are red states. I am not a fan of illegals being here. Radical right starting wars for PNAC agenda, spending trillions, loaning 14 trillion to foreign banks, death of literally thousands of American soldiers, and running deficits to subsidies family friends needs to be balanced by centrists. The centrists you call lefties, are more conservative than republicans of 20 years ago. Romney s staff is largely radical extremist members of the PNAC authors. Look at what destruction that has done to America. History is false promises like the GOPs unfulfilled Contract with America are just hot air talking points. How about you pay your debts to America for previous fabrications before you get any seats anywhere.

International studies on productivity showed the most productive countries spent less on health care by providing universal coverage. If a job made you crazy hateful of fellow human beings, you could change jobs. Doing something enjoyed raises productivity. Californians spend billions more on health care annually because costs of uninsured is passed onto ratepayers. You would save money by providing universal coverage. So some uninsured patient does not go untreated for TB, and you interact with them making you sick. Deep subject.

Kris Miller

My response: Kris Miller If you paid attention you would know that the Bush TARP money was only $700 billion of which only $432 billion was disbursed and all but $19 billion has been returned with interest. It was the Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke under the Obama administration that opened the flood gates of $1.2 trillion to investment bankers all over the world, mainly through AIG. At the Tim Geithner, was transitioning from the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank to President Obama's Treasury Secretary; Giethner tried to insulate himself by saying he was in limbo at the time (between jobs) and was not involved or aware of the trillion dollars that was distributed by AIG, but emails from lawyers at the New York Fed at the time, instructed AIG not to discuss how the funds were distributed. When congress wanted to know exactly were the money went, Bernanke told our elected officials he did have to tell them how the funds were distributed,  so wasn't going to tell them. Further, no party is immune from war causalities; the Democrats overwhelmingly endorsed the invasion of Iraq, and over a thousand US soldiers have died in Afghanistan since Obama became commander and chief.

What history tells us is the method of implementing socialism is to promise much more than any country can ever deliver and then "reluctantly" impose austerity measures. This is the same for socialized medicine. The US has the most advanced medical care in the world, but when the WHO rates medical care they rate all those with socialized medical care over the US; regardless of the true care delivered and the other systems that ranks the US poor such as Infant mortality are equally as flawed. Socialized medicine is now bankrupting every first world country where it exists;. In the US medical procedures such as MRI's and surgeries are determined by the patient's needs, in countries such as Canada and Britain they ration these medical and surgical procedures; in Britain they have NICE to determine if you will live long enough to justify the expense of any medical procedures.

You also seem to have quite a problem with history, such as the GOPs Contract with America; every aspect of the contract was approved by the House and forwarded to the Senate and President Clinton, where it died. I also will take you to task on the false belief that somehow the country has moved extremely to the right. The reality is the US has been moving left for decades and the recent Tea Party movement of putting the people back in charge of the government and following the Constitution (of all things) has caused a re-aliment to the center, reveling the media and educators as the progressive ideologues that they are.