“Making Jefferson Proud” – reblog Daniel John Sobieski | American Thinker

Church, State, and Melania Trump

By Daniel John Sobieski, http://www.americanthinker.com
View Original
February 22nd, 2017

Those who have made a career of trying to drive all vestiges of religion from the public square, from manger scenes at Christmas to mentioning God in the Pledge of Allegiance, were not happy when First Lady Melania Trump recited the Lord’s Prayer at her husband’s rally in Florida. The tolerant left mocked the accent of a woman and an immigrant who speaks five languages. They moaned that it was an affront to those who are not Christian. And they brought out that old canard about the separation of church and state.

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We have not seen such outrage since former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow took a knee in thanksgiving on the football field, scorned by a liberal elite that applauds the ungrateful Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem. Neither Tim Tebow or Melania Trump by their actions are violating the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from it. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized those opposed to the free expression of religion and free speech get the establishment clause and church and state thing all wrong:

Even before George Washington is said to have taken a knee in prayer at Valley Forge, men and women of faith and courage endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights have guided this nation to greatness.

Some 45 million people watched Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow complete that 80-yard touchdown pass play to Demaryius Thomas on the first play from scrimmage in overtime to lead his team over the Pittsburgh Steelers in Sunday’s wild card playoff game.

They also saw him take a knee and give thanks to the God he believes in, an act that’s been dubbed “Tebow-ing.”….

The phrase “separation of church and state” in fact appears nowhere in the Constitution but in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to a group of Danbury Baptists assuring them that the First Amendment prohibited Congress from establishing a national church, such as the Church of England.

Of course, Jefferson also said in a letter written to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush dated Sept. 23, 1800, the words that are carved into the Jefferson Memorial:

“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Imposing political correctness upon Tim Tebow or Melania Trump is just that kind of tyranny. Liberals ignore the history of this nation in which Thomas Jefferson also wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our unalienable rights come from our Creator, not government or liberal busybodies. He feared what the British Crown tried to do, impose a state church on all the American people. The fact is that in Jefferson’s time, the state and the church were in fact inextricably linked.

The Founding Fathers did fear the possible establishment of a national church like the Church of England and to prevent it they wrote the First Amendment to say that “Congress” shall make no laws regarding the establishment of religion, meaning any particular religion. But it says nothing about the states and also says that Congress shall make no laws restricting the free exercise thereof.

Anyone who wants to know what the Founding Fathers intended with their words should analyze their actions. As Yale professor Jon Butler writes:

…the 1780 Massachusetts constitution authorized ‘towns, parishes, precincts and other bodies politic to levy taxes ‘for the institution of public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality.’…

Connecticut and New Hampshire had similar laws. Virginia, on the other hand, moved rapidly after the Revolutionary War to disestablish the Anglican church and separate the state from formal religious institutions. Curiously, no framer of the Constitution ever declared that Massachusetts, with its state-supported religious education, or Virginia, with its official secularism, were guilty of violating the 1st Amendment or any other fundamental constitutional principle.

The Constitution mandates government’s neutrality to religion, but its alleged desire to avoid any endorsement of religion has mutated into an unmistakable hostility. Perhaps the most egregious example occurred in April, 1995, when the Murrah Federal Building was bombed and attorneys for the Clinton administration were ready to deny churches the same disaster assistance that every other building with collateral damage received because of the alleged separation of church and state. It took special congressional action to prevent this absurdity. I don’t think this is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind.

We have drifted a long way from the Founding Fathers’ clear intent about the relationship between the free exercise of religion and government. People are no longer free to apply their religious beliefs to their businesses, as the vendetta against Hobby Lobby demonstrates. The Obama administration went to court to force the Little Sister of the Poor to provide contraceptive coverage to their workers. Bakers were forced to bake cakes for gay weddings in violation of their religious beliefs.

As the late Francis Cardinal George of Chicago, former head of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, once observed, President Obama’s idea of religious liberty, an idea shared by many liberals, differs little from Josef Stalin’s:

Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union,” Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George recently wrote.

“You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship — no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. We fought a long Cold War to defeat that vision of society.”

Indeed we did. Our country was founded by those seeking freedom of religion and the free speech and free exercise that comes with it. When Melania Trump recited the Lord’s Prayer at a public event in the public square, she was making Thomas Jefferson proud.

Political Correctness Is Cultural Marxism – American Thinker reblog

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Marx’s key concept was “class struggle.” That’s where PC comes in. PC seeks to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior, just like Marxism, on all Americans and is, therefore, quite totalitarian in nature. PC is, in concept, similar to Marxism, but its focus is upon culture, rather than economics, as the class struggle environment.

by W.A. Beatty, americanthinker.com / July 6th 2013

The excellent AT article “Conservatives Pushing Back” by Bruce Walker explored what we conservative thinkers (We are, after all, American Thinkers) have known for quite some time: political correctness (PC) is to culture what Marxism is to economics. To recognize that fact arms us with what we need in order to push back. As Walker says (emphasis added), “[t]hese marketplace ballots are the key not only to the survival of a non-totalitarian America, but also to the final defeat of those whose minds and wills are chained with hard, cold manacles of leftism.”

Walker’s article is (pardon the pun) right on the money. So, in an effort to further understand PC, exploration of its similarities to Marxism is in order.

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was a German socialist. Marx’s social, economic, and political theories proclaimed that societies progress through class struggle. His focus was upon economics, so Marx concentrated on the conflict between an ownership class that controlled production and a proletariat that provided the labor for production. He referred to capitalism as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” The proletariat, the oppressed workers, were supposed to be the beneficiaries of a social revolution that would place them on top of the power structure.

Marx’s key concept was “class struggle.” That’s where PC comes in. PC seeks to impose a uniformity of thought and behavior, just like Marxism, on all Americans and is, therefore, quite totalitarian in nature. PC is, in concept, similar to Marxism, but its focus is upon culture, rather than economics, as the class struggle environment.

PC, just like Marxism, forces people to live a lie by denying reality. PC takes a political philosophy and says that on the basis of the chosen philosophy, certain things must be true, and reality that contradicts its “truth” must be forbidden — eradicated since it disputes PC, exposes as untrue what PC says is true. People are reluctant to live a lie, so they use their eyes and ears to see reality, to say, “Wait a minute. This isn’t true. I can see it isn’t true; the power of the state [PC] must be put behind the demand to live a lie.” Marxism, by denying economic reality, did exactly the same thing.

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Robert Byrd

PC, just like Marxism, has a method of analysis that always provides the answer it wants. For PC, the “answer” is found through deconstruction, which takes any situation, removes all meaning from it, and replaces it with PC’s desired meaning. Walker references this point when he says, “[T]hat her [Paula Deen’s] devout Christian faith is more the real target than past use of an unhappy word which did not keep Robert Byrd from remaining, by election of his fellow Senate Democrats, the most powerful Democrat politician in America.”

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New Black Panther voter intimidation

PC, just like Marxism, depends upon defining what it considers good and bad groups. It defines good groups as “victims” of bad groups. The victims can never be anything but good, regardless of what their actions may be. Witness what the Black Panthers did in Philadelphia, PA in 2008 and 2012. Any group identified as good by PC (homosexuals, blacks, Hispanics, illegal immigrants, feminist women, mentally and/or physically challenged people, the poor, environmentalists, the list goes on and on) must be shown deference, both physically and linguistically. They must not be offended, must not be insulted.

Any group identified as bad by PC, such as white males or any Christian group, can be offended. This offense, PC practitioners say, “makes up” for past offenses certain to have been committed in the past by bad groups. And what’s worse is that the PC practitioners get to define the offenses committed by the bad groups. This situation, by definition, is a “self-fulfilling prophesy.”

Rush Limbaugh, in 2010, said, “Our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult has taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards.” The PC crowd labeled Limbaugh’s statement offensive and insulting. Imagine that. Limbaugh was just “calling a spade a spade.” Like it or not, PC cannot prevent mental retardation, cannot alter reality. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.

PC, just like Marxism, depends upon expropriation. PC is literally taking over our language, and woe be unto him/her that dares speak the truth. When Marxists took over Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie by confiscating their property. Similarly, when PC takes over our culture, quotas are set. The so-called bourgeoisie are told whom they can and can’t hire, and in what quantities they can hire. As an example, see what the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is currently up to. And let’s not forget affirmative action, a system of expropriation if there ever was one, another PC favorite. When a black or Hispanic student (or some other “victim”), who isn’t as well-qualified as a white student, gains university admittance through affirmative action, the white student’s admittance is expropriated.

PC, just like Marxism, has a single factor explanation of all of history. PC says that all history is determined by power, by which groups have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. Period. PC is all about gaining power for the good groups that it defines. To further that goal, PC literally rewrites history. And PC says that the Bible is actually about race and gender. Nothing is beyond the PC crowd.

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Photo released by George Zimmerman’s defense attorney of his injuries.

As an example of what PC has done and is currently doing, examine the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case/trial. First, always PC, Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama said, “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Then, ever PC NBC doctored the 911 recording; thus, “NBC created this false and defamatory misimpression using the oldest form of yellow journalism: manipulating Zimmerman’s own words, splicing together disparate parts of the recording to create the illusion of statements that Zimmerman never actually made.” Here is what PC tried to do before the trial. “Many viewed the early lack of charges against Zimmerman as unequal justice for a black victim. More than 2 million people signed an online Change.org petition demanding ‘Justice for Trayvon Martin.'” Now, the prosecution is trying to say that Zimmerman is a liar, that his injuries were not life-threatening. I’m quite certain that AT readers can cite numerous other examples.

The U.S. has become an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology and history that has been defined by PC. People convicted of “hate crimes” as defined by PC are currently serving jail sentences for political thoughts contrary to PC. And it’s only getting worse — PC continues to spread.

Marx believed his ideology, his economic system to be true. But, reality contradicted his system. His ideology did not adjust to reality.
Hopefully the PC ideology will soon suffer a similar fate. It is, as Walker points out, a corrupt ideology. The only problem is that we will have no country, will have an economic disaster once people are confronted with reality, when enough people say, “Wait a minute. This isn’t true.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats/Progressives/Liberals who will not adjust to reality continue the PC ideology. And they have convinced the MSM and enough low-information voters to continue to empower them as all three groups continue to ignore reality.

Charlton Heston once said, “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.” Tyranny, yes, but practitioners seem to have forgotten the manners part.

Dr. Warren Beatty (not the liberal actor) earned a Ph.D. in quantitative management and statistics from Florida State University. He was a (very conservative) professor of quantitative management specializing in using statistics to assist/support decision-making. He has been a consultant to many small businesses and is now retired. Dr. Beatty is a veteran who served in the U.S. Army for 22 years. He blogs at rwno.limewebs.com.

The IRS Scandal — a Basic Primer – American Thinker Re-Blog

May 18, 2013

The IRS Scandal — a Basic Primer

By Jonathon Moseley

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Confusion about the IRS scandal is distracting from its importance, so that thinking conservatives should be prepared to debate the issue. Some basics matter.

Conservatives may need to share a summary such as this article to help convince moderate friends.Callers to C-SPAN badly misunderstood these details when Jenny Beth Martin, Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, appeared on C-SPAN television last week. I interviewed Keli Carender of Tea Party Patriots on the radio on May15, who helped clarify some of the pushback and distractions from liberals.

First, don’t let people forget: the IRS scandal is not about conservative accusations. The Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury issued a report finding that the Internal Revenue Service sharply discriminated against conservative organizations. This is confirmed by Treasury’s Inspector General.Second, a group’s political beliefs and positions ought to be totally irrelevant.

Second: Tax exemption must be based on what an organization does, not what it believes or what positions it supports. Whether a group teaches the Constitution or teaches union tactics doesn’t matter, it is educating either way. Therefore, the IRS should not have been looking at the name of the organization, whether liberal or conservative, but on the substance of the organization.

Third, many people don’t realize that nearly all liberal political organizations are tax exempt.

Continue reading “The IRS Scandal — a Basic Primer – American Thinker Re-Blog”