Christmas 2011

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

This is the time each year we wish for peace on earth and good will to men.  Yet, we seem, each Christmas, to find ourselves lacking that Peace and the Good Will.

This Christmas, again, we find that American troops are far from home, very near the birthplace of the baby who gave his name to the day we call Christmas.  Families will open presents and gather for a family meal and rejoice over the birth of the Christ child, and yet, we cannot bring ourselves to follow the teachings of that baby and stop fighting with each other.  Christ, himself recognized that, a couple of thousand years ago, and said:  “Men will cry peace, peace, but there will be no peace!”

Americans have found themselves in the unenviable position of being the policemen of the world… by default.  It was thrust upon us.  We did not seek it, we did not want it, but we learned, much to our chagrin, that we had no choice.  When the “evil-doers” attacked us on our soil, we were instantly committed.  We have been at war now since September 11^th, 2001.  No end is in sight, no matter what we may have been told.

Back in the mid 1800’s America found herself in another war, much worse that the one we fight currently.  It was a war among brothers.  A war, which was being waged here, on our shores, and the carnage, was biblical in proportion.  Families were torn apart by the war and entire families displaced as the war raged up and down the Middle Atlantic States and even out west, across the Mississippi River.  700,000 Americans lives were loss as a result of that war.  Many of the scars can still be seen today in our buildings and landscapes. Many scars are less obvious, but are there, nevertheless.

I am a Veteran, and I’m a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and as such, I am, acutely acquainted with the scars -- seen and unseen -- of war.   The entire reason for the existence of the SCV is to prevent the memory of what those men did from fading, or being redacted, from the memory of this nation.  We feel that by holding the historically correct (as opposed to politically correct) reasons for that war up to public scrutiny we can learn from it and never allow such a thing to happen on these shores again.

The South was the recipient of more suffering and carnage than were our brothers to the north.  It was a sad, disheartening, time.

Here is a small part of the text of a letter, written to his family, by a Confederate soldier on Christmas Eve of 1863:

" This morning battalion guard mounting began for the three batteries. It is Christmas Eve. I am sitting in my little cabin and my thoughts carry me away to Helena where I see my good wife before the hearth with three children around her; the eldest a girl standing and looking earnestly into her mother’s face; the second a boy, five years old, sitting in a small chair looking into the fire; and the youngest a girl about four, leaning on her mother’s lap--all listening attentively to what their intelligent mother is relating in regard to the visits of Santa Claus having visited them on former Christmas Eves with presents of toys, their curiosity is at its height to know if he will come tonight and fill their stockings. Ah, will not these little innocents be disappointed? Their father has not seen them for twenty months, and is now far away battling for home and liberty, and has no means by which he can convey them toys or money to purchase them. Whether their mother has the means to spare in procuring Christmas presents for them is unknown to me, but I pray heaven to provide her with the necessaries of life, and to bless and cheer the young and innocent hearts of my children during the Christmas holidays. Happy Christmas to my wife and children!"  [From The Campaign Diaries of Thomas J. Kay, CSA and Robert J. Campbell, edited by Wirt Armistead Cate, 1938; entry for December 24th (1863).]

Surely, there were similar letters written by soldiers on the federal side of the lines.

So, as we tear open the Christmas presents, feast at the table piled high with God’s bounty, lets us find time, somewhere during the hectic day, to remember what the child, whose birthday we celebrate, taught us.  Even if we cannot find it within ourselves to put his teachings into practice, we are, I believe, obligated to try.  In the effort, we might just find that peace so often mentioned at this time of year

.

Let us remember our troops, so far from home, in constant danger, because so much of the world cannot bring itself to fight tyranny… of any kind.  Let us pray that those misled peoples will, somehow, find the courage to stand up, like men, and fight the enemies of freedom as our brave men and women are doing.  Let us pray that they come to understand that the brave American soldier, who dies on a foreign battlefield, has given his life for them as well as for his own American family.

And, finally, let us pray that next Christmas will find America, and the world, in a less contentious state than this Christmas.

May God richly bless you and your family this Christmas and in the New Year to come.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and please accept my sincerest gratitude for your past (and continued) support of my feeble efforts at expressing and sharing opinions on those things that affect us all.

    

J. D. Longstreet

Christianity's Triumph ... Alan Caruba

Christianity's Triumph

By Alan Caruba

“By far the most important event in the entire rise of Christianity was the meeting in Jerusalem in around the year 50, when Paul was granted the authority to convert Gentiles without them also becoming observant Jews.”

So wrote Rodney Stark, the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. His most recent book is “The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion” ($27.99, HarperCollins).

For Christians in particular, I recommend it if only because so many have a tenuous grasp of Christianity’s real history, as opposed the versions that too often are casually accepted as truth.

The truth is that the rise of Christianity is one of the most extraordinary stories of the past two millennia. Stark not only has the knowledge of his vast subject, but he writes with such felicity that it is hard to put the 500-page book aside for both its revelations and its devotion to the facts.

Despite the fact we live in a society that has at most only 4% who self-describe themselves as atheists, the more active among them have the audacity to demand that Christmas be banished to the privacy of homes or the pews and pulpits of churches. They rebuke religion in general as the source of conflict and wars, but ignore the spiritual support and ethical lessons that Christianity provides along with its promise of salvation.

While Judaism was the bedrock of morality and faith that gave it birth, Christianity made it more accessible and significantly includes the Torah as part of its liturgy.

To ignore the rise of Christianity is to be ignorant of an essential element of Western history. Likewise, to ignore the threat of Islam whose beginning is usually dated around 622 CE and which exploded following Mohammad’s death in 632 CE is to ignore the greatest threat to civilization, past and present. Less a religion than a battle plan for world conquest, Islam preaches death to all “unbelievers.” Take heed!

Stark provides a summation to his book and, even so, I shall select only parts of it in the interest of brevity.

“The first generation of the Jesus Movement consisted of a tiny and fearful minority” of a religion, Judaism, that had already been around for a thousand years or more before the assertion was made that the messiah had come and was a crucified Galilean rabbi who mainly and briefly preached in that area of Israel.

“The mission to the Jews was quite successful: large numbers of Jews in the Diasporan communities outside of Palestine did convert to Christianity.” The Diaspora were the Jewish communities in the Middle East and throughout the Mediterranean nations, including Rome, living in places where pagan faiths were dominant.

“Christianity was not a religion based on the slaves and lowest classes of Romans, but was particularly attractive to the privileged.” Moreover, in its earliest years, women often played important roles. Contrary to popular belief, however, “Paganism was not quickly stamped out, but disappeared very slowly.” Paganism involved the worship of multiple gods as well as a belief in magic.

Despite impressive cathedrals, in medieval times church worship among Christians was largely ignored and, as often as not, the clergy were ill-informed about the faith and sometimes not even baptized.

Despite what is said of the Crusades, they were a campaign to reclaim the holy land from Muslims who had conquered it and they were led by men who knowingly bankrupted themselves and often died in this cause. Though Christianity had been widely observed in the East, the armies of Islam destroyed all but remnants, thus shifting its survival to Europe in the West.

“Science arose only in the West because efforts to formulate and discover laws of nature only made sense if one believed in a rational creator.” Even the misnamed “Dark Ages” were actually times of technological development. Likewise historians have determined that the Spanish Inquisition was “a quite temperate body that was responsible for very few deaths and saved a great many lives by opposing the witch hunts that swept through the rest of Europe.”

Perhaps the greatest surprise was the damage done by Constantine who, having made it the religion of his empire, gave rise to an indolent and hypocritical Church hierarchy initially composed of Roman aristocracy. It fostered a clergy who were ignorant of the faith and indifferent to its mission. Not until the Reformation was competition introduced, forcing the Church to return to piety, as various Protestant sects emerged, and energized Christianity in the process.

Stark concludes that “The claim that religion must soon disappear as the world becomes more modern is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of academic atheists. Religion is thriving, perhaps as never before. More than forty percent of the people on Earth today are Christians and their number is growing more rapidly than that of any other major faith.”

And that, as they say, is the good news.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit. 

Ron Paul Next To Be “Creamed” By GOP

Ron Paul Next To Be “Creamed” By GOP

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Sometimes I’m a little slow on the up-take but decades of following US politics as my favorite sport has given me enough insight into the way politics works, at the upper levels, to know that the GOP chose its nominee a very long time ago.  Of course, it is Mitt Romney.  All the hoopla, the debates, etc, really don’t matter. For when the smoke clears, the man who will be crowned as the GOP nominee for President of the United States will be Mitt Romney.  You can, as my old Grand pappy would say:  “Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

In the spirit of full disclosure allow me to state clearly that I do not intend to vote for Romney either in the North Carolina Primary or the Presidential Election in November of 2012.  It is a matter of honor for me… not to mention that I am royally PO’ed at the Republican Party for “foisting” Romney on conservative voters under what I consider false colors.  Its as though Romney is wearing a tattoo saying:  “GOP APPROVED: CONSERVATIVE.”

The state motto of North Carolina is:  “To be, rather than to seem.” In Romney’s case I fear it is “to seem, rather than to be.”  I am not the least bit convinced of the validity of Romney’s conservative credentials. 

The GOP has managed to convince me that it is focused on beating Obama.  I, on the other hand, am focused on “saving America.”  And THAT, Dear Reader, is where the focus of all Americans SHOULD be … in my not so humble opinion. 

We have come only a short way from the smoke-filled rooms in which candidates used to be chosen by the party.  In fact, about the only thing that has really changed is that the rooms are now smoke free.  I am convinced that Romney’s victory at the GOP convention was planned, and assured, in one of those legendary rooms.

The endless debates, this cycle, appear to have been dreamt-up by a group of leftists in Hollywood. I honestly think the debates have done the candidates more harm than good -- so far as their individual campaigns are concerned.  On the other hand, the debates have been a storehouse of ammunition for the candidate’s Democratic Party opposition.  This election cycle, with the democratic candidate for President having no opposition from within his own party, the debates have – I strongly believe -- only hurt the GOP candidates.

We have witnessed the effect the GOP leadership has had, so far, on the various campaigns and we are about to see even more. 

We have seen that any candidate posing so much as a hint of a threat to Romney is crushed and destroyed by the party leaders and elite.  Each time any one of the other candidates began to rise in the polls and seemed to present a threat, they have been ground down.

The candidates remaining in the GOP race are
”also rans.”  They either present no threat, whatsoever, to Romney, or they are being hammered into insignificance by the GOP.

Gingrich is getting the squeeze even as I write.  Ron Paul is next.  These two men will be smeared and very nearly ruined if they do not back off. 

Yes, the GOP does eat it’s own.  I have said for many years that the GOP is its own worst enemy. 

Look.  The majority of the GOP voters do not want Romney (especially conservative voters).  One look at his ossified poll numbers will reveal that to a blind man. BUT -- you can bet the farm we are going to have him as our candidate come the Republican Convention next year.

I have a problem with authority.  Always have.  I have even more trouble with those in authority who believe they know better than I do what is best for me. And at this moment, I am livid with the Republican Party for deciding that Mitt Romney is best for me.

Heck, I don’t care for the man.  I didn’t like his father.  I don’t care for his brand of politics, and as a southerner, I am not particularly enamored of the state from which he hails.  And I do not like being pushed -- or herded -- toward a voting booth where I am expected to vote for him -- because the GOP insists that I must.

I vote for a candidate because I am convinced that candidate can do the job the way I want it done.  No amount of pressure will get me to vote for the party’s favorite unless the party’s favorite happens to be my favorite.  I’m wired that way.  If my parents were still living they would quickly, and vehemently, verify that fact.

The thing is – I believe there is a host of conservative voters across America who feels the same way. And the GOP is doing itself no favor by acting as the puppet master pulling the strings on the GOP campaign show.

It has been awhile since I have felt that I really had a choice of candidates from the list of GOP candidates for President.  So, I went to the polls and wrote in a candidate’s name rather than vote for the party’s choice.  I will do that again next year.

For better or for worse, I will decide for whom I cast my ballot… not the GOP, or anyone else. 

This whole GOP campaign has been, and continues to be, a charade.  That is my opinion, of course.  You may think otherwise.  But I defy you to watch what happens to Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul in the next few days and weeks (on top of what has happened to Cain and Bachmann, already) and still hold any belief that the hierarchy of the GOP has not had a hand in their destruction.

It’s enough to make a thoughtful man retch!

Finally, if the Republican Party loses this election, (As I am convinced it will) it has only to look in the mirror to see the culprit.  To learn why – they must look much deeper.  

J. D. Longstreet  

Newt Is Right About the Federal Courts

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

In typical “Newt fashion,” Gingrich has gone and tossed a bomb!  A big bomb!  He told the truth!  How utterly horrible!

Frankly, I was beginning to worry.  The Newt I know, from way back, did not hesitate to blurt out stunning statements of fact in mixed company… I mean, of course, a company made up of democrats and the Mainstream Media, but I repeat myself. 

At least NOW I can relax.  The old Newt is still here.

The instant I heard that Gingrich had advocated the abolishment of some federal courts, I belly-laughed.  The game was ON!  Our liberal/socialist media, I reasoned, would go absolutely nuts.  There would be a rabid frenzy within their ranks as they rushed to their computers and studios to get this FLASH traffic onto the air.  The world must be warned!  There is a conservative madman, who openly speaks the truth, on the loose and America must be warned. Nay, America must be SAVED from this shocking, shocking, attack on the very engine of the liberal, progressive, socialist Movement in America.  We’ve taken to referring to it as: the “Federal Judicial Legislature.”   It is an unelected legislature handing down laws from the bench and forcing Americans to obey those laws on pain of punishment.

Newt has just shaken the Liberal/Progressive/Socialist movement in America to its very core. 

Back in October of 2009, I wrote a commentary concerning the very same subject.  It was entitled:  “Abolition of the Ninth Circuit Court?  In the event you may wish to read it, you will find it (HERE).

In the piece from 2010, I noted the following: “the Constitution grants Congress power to create and abolish federal courts, although the United States Supreme Court is the only court that cannot be abolished. Congress also has the authority to determine the number of judges in the federal judiciary system.”  (SOURCE)

I also noted that earlier 2010, Newt Gingrich had called for the complete abolition of the Ninth Circuit Court.  Gingrich was speaking to the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference at the time. 

Referring to an action by President Thomas Jefferson, Gingrich said: the  “judicial reform act of 1802 abolished 18 out of 35 federal judges, over half…I am more cautious than Jefferson. I would only abolish the Ninth Circuit Court.”   (SOURCE)

I went on to point out that back in November of 2009, Gingrich is reported to have said:  “It is constitutionally permissible, for the legislature and the president to say to a court, you are intolerable, and you no longer exist. And we need that debate because I am tired of secular fanatics trying to redesign America in their image.” (SOURCE)

Allow me to use the same example I used in that commentary back in 2010 to demonstrate why conservatives hold the “Federal Judicial Legislature” in such disdain.

I noted that: On Tuesday, October 27^th, 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that Arizona couldn’t require proof of citizenship in the United States when registering to vote.

“A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday struck down a portion of an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. The court held that the law, Proposition 200, was inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which was passed with the intent of increasing voter registration and removing barriers to registration imposed by the states. The NVRA requires voters to attest to the validity of the information on their registration form, including their citizenship, but does not require them to provide additional proof of citizenship. Proposition 200 went beyond the federal statute, requiring applicants to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote.”  (SOURCE)

In plain language that ruling means that non-citizens will be allowed to register to vote, oh, say, in the 2012 Presidential Election – not just in Arizona -- but in all fifty states!  One does not have to ruminate for very long to understand which political party will benefit from such a ruling, right?

Look.  Newt may be wrong about some things, even a LOT of things ... but he’s right about this.

J. D. Longstreet

The Original Tea Party - December 16, 1773 ... Alan Caruba

The Original Tea Party - December 16, 1773

By Alan Caruba

The modern-day Tea Party is a loose amalgamation of people who came together in March 2009 to protest against passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare. There was a large gathering in Washington, D.C. with estimates of several hundred thousand to a million participants.

There had been other events associated with the Tea Party movement and in the 2010 midterm elections the movement was credited with returning power to the Republican Party in the House of Representatives by supporting candidates that associated themselves with the movement. It is, however, not a political party in its own right.

The story of the original Tea Party that occurred on December 16, 1773 is told in a new book, “Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot” (Quirk Books) by Joseph Cummins, a historian who quite coincidently lives in Maplewood, NJ, my home town for more than sixty years until I moved to an apartment complex one town over. Maplewood has a number of homes from the Revolutionary War era so a sense of history pervades the community. Just up the road is Morristown, the site of one of George Washington’s winter headquarters and Jockey Hollow where his soldiers were billeted.

Cummins’ book is a useful and perhaps surprisingl reminder that Boston was not the only site where British tea was dumped overboard rather than pay even the threepense tax on it. There were in fact similar events in Philadelphia, Charleston, New York, and in the other colonies, Chesterown and Annapolis in Maryland; York, Maine; Edenton and Wilmington, North Carolina; and Greenwich, New Jersey.

The Boston event, however, was no small matter so far as the value of the tea destroyed was concerned. More than 92,000 pounds were tossed into the water. “Tall piles of the stuff floated like huge haystacks in the dim moonlight of the bay. And in the days that followed, many British observers wondered if the residents of Boston had gone insane.”

Tea was enormously popular, comparable to our love of a cup of coffee to start the day, and was part of the social life of the colonies. “One third of America’s three million inhabitants drank tea twice a day.” The colonists consumed between 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 pounds a year.

What is perhaps most telling about the Boston Tea Party was that it rapidly spread to other colonies where tea was boycotted or destroyed.

Cummins draws an interesting analogy between our times and then. “See if this story sounds familiar: During a severe financial recession, the government of the world’s most powerful country discovered that its largest corporation—let’s call it Corporation X—is rife with corruption, mired in debt, and facing financial collapse.”

In the case of Great Britain the corporation was the East India Company in 1773, a global commercial empire of its time that had been granted government permission “to mint money, acquire territory, maintain a standing army, enter into foreign wars, and make peace treaties.” The East India Company had shareholders who expected dividends and its fleets of armed merchants carried gold, silver, silk, cotton, spices, and opium across the oceans.

Tea represented a commodity that generated great wealth. Up to thirteen million tons of it was exported to England, largely from India, and by the mid-eighteenth century tea represented almost fifty percent of the company’s income. The import taxes collected by the British government “added up to a rather astonishing six percent of England’s national budget.”

For the first 150 years of the American colonies existence, the settlers were seldom taxed directly by the British crown, unlike the subjects of England and Ireland. As the result of conflicts such as the Seven Years War, the British treasury was low and Parliament decided to levy some taxes on the colonies. The Sugar Act of 1764 was the first. It severely impacted the molasses-rum trade, one of New England’s biggest businesses.

This was followed by the Stamp Act in 1765 that angered the colonists, but “Massachusetts was the first to erupt in angry protests.” Mobs are a useful instrument for a revolution and the men behind the war for independence knew it; in particular, Sam Adams and his co-conspirators that included John Adams, later to become the second President of the new nation. Much agitation for liberty preceded the Boston Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party was carefully organized and the destruction of the tea from four ships, the Eleanor, Dartmouth, William and Beaver, was undertaken smoothly. What followed, as they say, is history.

The Revolution was a long affair, lasting from 1775 to 1783. Today’s Tea Parties are engaged in what is likely a long struggle to reduce the size of government and secure redress from the imposition of legislation such as Obamacare which will be on the docket of the Supreme Court as 26 States have joined in opposition based on its unconstitutionality.

If the Court should find it constitutional, we could well see a new American revolution as States evoke nullification and refuse to accept or honor the decision. Remember what the first tea partiers knew. They didn’t have, nor did they need “constitutional” rights. They already had “unalienable” rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com

is the place to visit.