5 June 1968 : Robert F. Kennedy assassinated
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary...more
Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary.
Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He died a day later.
The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election.
Robert Kennedy, John's younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support. Kennedy was perceived by many to be the only person in American politics capable of uniting the people. He was beloved by the minority community for his integrity and devotion to the civil rights cause.
After winning California's primary, Kennedy was in the position to receive the Democratic nomination and face off against Richard Nixon in the general election. As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt Grier accompanied Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster, hiding his .22 revolver. He was only a foot away when he fired several shots at Kennedy.
Grier and Johnson wrestled Sirhan to the ground, but not before five bystanders were wounded. Grier was distraught afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot. Sirhan confessed to the crime at his trial and received a death sentence on 24 April 1969. However, since the Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty sentences in 1972, Sirhan has spent the rest of his life in prison. He has never provided a clear explanation for why he targeted Bobby Kennedy.
Hubert Humphrey ended up running for the Democrats in 1968, but lost by a small margin to Nixon.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Notes from the future, Islam ruling the planet
Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors:
The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a husky voice that he was a Time Traveler come back to talk to me about the future.
Being a sometimes science-fiction writer but not a fool, I said, “Prove it.”
“Do you remember Replay?” he said.
My finger hovered over the final “1” in my dialing. “The 1987 novel?” I said. “By Ken Grimwood?”
The stranger – Time Traveler, psychotic, home invader, whatever he was – nodded.
I hesitated. The novel by Grimwood had won the World Fantasy Award a year or two after my first-novel, Song of Kali, had. Grimwood’s book was about a guy who woke up one morning to find himself snapped back decades in his life, from the late 1980’s to himself as a college student in 1963, and thus getting the chance to relive – to replay – that life again, only this time acting upon what he’d already learned the hard way. In the book, the character, who was to experience – suffer – several Replays, learned that there were other people from his time who were also Replaying their lives in the past, their bodies younger but their memories intact. I’d greatly enjoyed the book, thought it deserved the award, and had been sad to hear that Grimwood had died . . . when? . . . in 2003.
So, I thought, I might have a grizzled nut case in my study this New Year’s Eve, but if he was a reader and a fan of Replay, he was probably just a sci-fi fan grizzled nut case, and therefore probably harmless. Possibly. Maybe.
I kept my finger poised over the final “1” in “911.”
“What does that book have to do with you illegally entering my home and study?” I asked.
The stranger smiled … almost sadly I thought. “You asked me to prove that I’m a Time Traveler,” he said softly. “Do you remember how Grimwood’s character in Replay went hunting for others in the 1960’s who had traveled back in time from the late 1980’s?”
I did remember now. I’d thought it clever at the time. The guy in Replay, once he suspected others were also replaying into the past, had taken out personal ads in major city newspapers around the country. The ads were concise. “Do you remember Three Mile Island, Challenger, Watergate, Reaganomics? If so, contact me at . . .”
Before I could say anything else on this New Year’s Eve of 2004, a few hours before 2005 began, the stranger said, “Terri Schiavo, Katrina, New Orleans under water, Ninth Ward, Ray Nagin, Superdome, Judge John Roberts, White Sox sweep the Astros in four to win the World Series, Pope Benedict XVI, Scooter Libby.”
“Wait, wait!” I said, scrambling for a pen and then scrambling even faster to write. “Ray who? Pope who? Scooter who?”
“You’ll recognize it all when you hear it all again,” said the stranger. “I’ll see you in a year and we’ll have our conversation.”
“Wait!” I repeated. “What was that middle apart . . . Ray Nugin? Judge who? John Roberts? Who is . . .” But when I looked up he was gone.
“White Sox win the Series?” I muttered into the silence. “Fat chance.”
#
I was waiting for him on New Year’s Eve 2005. I didn’t see him enter. I looked up from the book I was fitfully reading and he was standing in the shadows again. I didn’t dial 911 this time, nor demand any more proof. I waved him to the leather wingchair and said, “Would you like something to drink?”
“Scotch,” he said. “Single malt if you have it.”
I did.
Our conversation ran over two hours, but the following is the gist of it. I’m a novelist by trade. I remember conversations pretty well. (Not as perfectly as Truman Capote was said to be able to recall long conversations word for word, but pretty well.)
The Time Traveler wouldn’t tell me what year in the future he was from. Not even the decade or century. But the gray cord trousers and blue-gray wool tunic top he was wearing didn’t look very far-future science-fictiony or military, no Star Trekky boots or insignia, just wellworn clothes that looked like something a guy who worked with his hands a lot would wear. Construction maybe.
“I know you can’t tell me details about the future because of time travel paradoxes,” I began. I hadn’t spent a lifetime reading and then writing SF for nothing.
“Oh, bugger time travel paradoxes,” said the Time Traveler. “They don’t exist. I could tell you anything I want to and it won’t change anything. I just choose not to tell you some things.”
I frowned at this. “Time travel paradoxes don’t exist? But surely if I go back in time and kill my grandfather before he meets my grandmother . . .”
The Time Traveler laughed and sipped his Scotch. “Would you want to kill your grandfather?” he said. “Or anyone else?”
“Well . . .Hitler maybe,” I said weakly.
The Traveler smiled, but more ironically this time. “Good luck,” he said. “But don’t count on succeeding.”
I shook my head. “But surely anything you tell me now about the future will change the future,” I said.
“I gave you a raft of facts about your future a year ago as my bona fides,” said the Time Traveler. “Did it change anything? Did you save New Orleans from drowning?”
“I won $50 betting on the White Sox in October,” I admitted.
The Time Traveler only shook his head. “Quod erat demonstrandum,” he said softly. “I could tell you that the Mississippi River flows generally south. Would your knowing about it change its course or flow or flooding?”
I thought about this. Finally I said, “Why did you come back? Why do you want to talk to me? What do you want me to do?”
“I came back for my own purposes,” said the Time Traveler, looking around my booklined study. “I chose you to talk to because it was . . . convenient. And I don’t want you to do a goddamned thing. There’s nothing you can do. But relax . . . we’re not going to be talking about personal things. Such as, say, the year, day, and hour of your death. I don’t even know that sort of trivial information, although I could look it up quickly enough. You can release that white-knuckled grip you have on the edge of your desk.”
I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.
“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.
I blinked and tried to remember some history. “You mean the Hundred Year War? Fifteenth Century? Fourteenth? Sometime around there. Between . . . France and England? Henry V? Kenneth Branagh? Or was it . . .”
“I mean the Century War with Islam,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or offering to pour me any, he stood, refilled his Scotch glass, and sat again. He said, “It was important to me to come back to this time early on in the struggle. Even if only to remind myself of how unspeakably blind you all were.”
“You mean the War on Terrorism,” I said.
“I mean the Long War with Islam,” he said. “The Century War. And it’s not over yet where I come from. Not close to being over.”
“You can’t have a war with Islam,” I said. “You can’t go to war against a religion. Radical Islam, maybe. Jihadism. Some extremists. But not a . . . the . . . religion itself. The vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceloving people who wish us no harm. I mean . . . I mean . . . the very word ‘Islam’ means ‘Peace.’”
“So you kept telling yourselves,” said the Time Traveler. His voice was very low but there was a strange and almost frightening edge to it. “But the ‘peace’ in ‘Islam’ means ‘Submission.’ You’ll find that out soon enough”
Great, I was thinking. Of all the time travelers in all the gin joints in all the world, I get this racist, xenophobic, right-wing asshole.
“After Nine-eleven, we’re fighting terrorism,” I began, “not . . .”
He waved me into silence.
“You were a philosophy major or minor at that podunk little college you went to long ago,” said the Time Traveler. “Do you remember what Category Error is?”
It rang a bell. But I was too irritated at hearing my alma mater being called a “podunk little college” to be able to concentrate fully.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the Time Traveler. “In philosophy and formal logic, and it has its equivalents in science and business management, Category Error is the term for having stated or defined a problem so poorly that it becomes impossible to solve that problem, through dialectic or any other means.”
I waited. Finally I said firmly, “You can’t go to war with a religion. Or, I mean . . . sure, you could . . . the Crusades and all that . . . but it would be wrong.”
The Time Traveler sipped his Scotch and looked at me. He said, “Let me give you an analogy . . .”
God, I hated and distrusted analogies. I said nothing.
“Let’s imagine,” said the Time Traveler, “that on December eighth, Nineteen forty-one, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke before a joint session of Congress and asked them to declare war on aviation.”
“That’s absurd,” I said.
“Is it?” asked the Time Traveler. “The American battleships, cruisers, harbor installations, Army barracks, and airfields at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in Hawaii were all struck by Japanese aircraft. Imagine if the next day Roosevelt had declared war on aviation . . . threatening to wipe it out wherever we found it. Committing all the resources of the United States of America to defeating aviation, so help us God.”
“That’s just stupid,” I said. If I’d ever been afraid of this Time Traveler, I wasn’t now. He was obviously a mental defective.“The planes, the Japanese planes,” I said, “were just a method of attack . . . a means . . . it wasn’t aviation that attacked us at Pearl Harbor, but the Empire of Japan. We declared war on Japan and a few days later its ally, Germany, lived up to its treaty with the Japanese and declared war on us. If we’d declared war on aviation, on goddamned airplanes rather than the empire and ideology that launched them, we’d never have . . .”
I stopped. What had he called it? Category Error. Making the problem unsolvable through your inability – or fear – of defining it correctly.
The Time Traveler was smiling at me from the shadows. It was a small, thin, cold smile – holding no humor in it, I was sure -- but still a smile of sorts. It seemed more sad than gloating as my sudden silence stretched on.
“What do you know about Syracuse?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked again. “Syracuse, New York?” I said at last.
He shook his head slowly. “Thucydides’ Syracuse,” he said softly. “Syracuse circa 415 B.C. The Syracuse Athens invaded.”
“It was . . . part of the Peloponnesian War,” I ventured.
He waited for more but I had no more to give. I loved history, but let’s admit it . . . that was ancient history. Still, I felt that I should have been able to tell him,or at least remember, why Syracuse was important in the Peloponnesian War or why they fought there or who fought exactly or who had won or . . . something. I hated feeling like a dull student around this scarred old man.
“The war between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies – a war for nothing less than hegemony over the entire known world at that time – began in 431 B.C.,” said the Time Traveler. “After seventeen years of almost constant fighting, with no clear or permanent advantage for either side, Athens – under the leadership of Alcibiades at the time – decided to widen the war by conquering Sicily, the ‘Great Greece’ they called it, an area full of colonies and the key to maritime commerce at the time the way the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf is today.”
I hate being lectured to at the best of times, but something about the tone and timber of the Time Traveler’s voice – soft, deep, rasping, perhaps thickened a bit by the whiskey – made this sound more like a story being told around a campfire. Or perhaps a bit like one of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories on “Prairie Home Companion.” I settled deeper into my chair and listened.
“Syracuse wasn’t a direct enemy of the Athenians,” continued the Time Traveler, “but it was quarreling with a local Athenian colony and the democracy of Athens used that as an excuse to launch a major expedition against it. It was a big deal – Athens sent 136 triremes, the best fighting ships in the world then – and landed 5,000 soldiers right under the city’s walls.
“The Athenians had enjoyed so much military success in recent years, including their invasion of Melos, that Thucydides wrote – So thoroughly had the present prosperity persuaded the Athenians that nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was possible and what was impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The reason for this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strengths with their hopes.”
“Oh, hell,” I said, “this is going to be a lecture about Iraq, isn’t it? Look . . . I voted for John Kerry last year and . . .”
“Listen to me,” the Time Traveler said softly. It was not a request. There was steel in that soft, rasping voice. “Nicias, the Athenian general who ended up leading the invasion, warned against it in 415 B.C. He said – ‘We must not disguise from ourselves that we go to found a city among strangers and enemies, and that he who undertakes such an enterprise should be prepared to become master of the country the first day he lands, or failing in this to find everything hostile to him’. Nicias, along with the Athenian poet and general Demosthenes, would see their armies destroyed at Syracuse and then they would both be captured and put to death by the Syracusans. Sparta won big in that two-year debacle for Athens. The war went on for seven more years, but Athens never recovered from that overreaching at Syracuse, and in the end . . . Sparta destroyed it. Conquered the Athenian empire and its allies, destroyed Athens’ democracy, ruined the entire balance of power and Greek hegemony over the known world at the time . . . ruined everything. All because of a miscalculation about Syracuse.”
I sighed. I was sick of Iraq. Everyone was sick of Iraq on New Years Eve, 2005, both Bush supporters and Bush haters. It was just an ugly mess. “They just had an election,” I said. “The Iraqi people. They dipped their fingers in purple ink and . . .”
“Yes yes,” interrupted the Time Traveler as if recalling something further back in time, and much less important, than Athens versus Syracuse. “The free elections. Purple fingers. Democracy in the Mid-East. The Palestinians are voting as well. You will see in the coming year what will become of all that.”
The Time Traveler drank some Scotch, closed his eyes for a second, and said, “Sun Tzu writes – The side that knows when to fight and when not to will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.”
“All right, goddammit,” I said irritably. “Your point’s made. So we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq in this . . . what did you call it? This Long War with Islam, this Century War. We’re all beginning to realize that here by the end of 2005.”
The Time Traveler shook his head. “You’ve understood nothing I’ve said. Nothing. Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough. They had grown soft since their slaughter of every combat-age man and boy on the island of Melos, the enslavement of every woman and girl there. The democratic Athenians, in regards to Syracuse, thought that once engaged they could win without absolute commitment to winning, claim victory without being as ruthless and merciless as their Spartan and Syracusan enemies. The Athenians, once defeat loomed, turned against their own generals and political leaders – and their official soothsayers. If General Nicias or Demosthenes had survived their captivity and returned home, the people who sent them off with parades and strewn flower petals in their path would have ripped them limb from limb. They blamed their own leaders like a sun-maddened dog ripping and chewing at its own belly.”
I thought about this. I had no idea what the hell he was saying or how it related to the future.
“You came back in time to lecture me about Thucydides?” I said. “Athens? Syracuse? Sun-Tzu? No offense, Mr. Time Traveler, but who gives a damn?”
The Time Traveler rose so quickly that I flinched back in my chair, but he only refilled his Scotch. This time he refilled my glass as well. “You probably should give a damn” he said softly. “ In 2006, you’ll be ripping and tearing at yourselves so fiercely that your nation – the only one on Earth actually fighting against resurgent caliphate Islam in this long struggle over the very future of civilization – will become so preoccupied with criticizing yourselves and trying to gain short-term political advantage, that you’ll all forget that there’s actually a war for your survival going on. Twenty-five years from now, every man or woman in America who wishes to vote will be required to read Thucydides on this matter. And others as well. And there are tests. If you don’t know some history, you don’t vote . . . much less run for office. America’s vacation from knowing history ends very soon now . . . for you, I mean. And for those few others left alive in the world who are allowed to vote.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“I am shitting you not,” said the Time Traveler.
“Those few others left alive who are allowed to vote?” I said, the words just now striking me like hardthrown stones. “What the hell are you talking about? Has our government taken away all our civil liberties in this awful future of yours?”
He laughed then and this time it was a deep, hearty, truly amused laugh. “Oh, yes,” he said when the laughter abated a bit. He actually wiped away tears from his one good eye. “I had almost forgotten about your fears of your, our . . . civil liberties . . . being abridged by our own government back in these last stupidity-allowed years of 2005 and 2006 and 2007 . Where exactly do you see this repression coming from?”
“Well . . .” I said. I hate it when I start a sentence with ‘well,’ especially in an argument. “Well, the Patriot Act. Bush authorizing spying on Americans . . . international phonecalls and such. Uh . . . I think mosques in the States are under FBI surveillance. I mean, they want to look up what library books we’re reading, for God’s sake. Big Brother. 1984. You know.”
The Time Traveler laughed again, but with more edge this time. “Yes, I know,” he said. “We all know . . . up there in the future which some of you will survive to see as free people. Civil liberties. In 2006 you still fear yourselves and your own institutions first, out of old habit. A not unworthy – if fatally misguided and terminally masochistic – paranoia. I will tell you right now, and this is not a prediction but a history lesson, some of your grandchildren will live in dhimmitude.”
“Zimmi . . . what?” I said.
He spelled it out. What had sounded like a ‘z’ was the ‘dh.’ I’d never heard the word and I told him so.
“Then get off your ass and Google it,” said the Time Traveler, his one working eye glinting with something like fury. “Dhimmitude. You can also look up the word dhimmi, because that’s what two of your three grandchildren will be called. Dhimmis. Dhimmitude is the system of separate and subordinate laws and rules they will live under. Look up the word sharia while you’re Googling dhimmi, because that is the only law they will answer to as dhimmis, the only justice they can hope for . . . they and tens and hundreds of millions more now who are worried in your time about invisible abridgements of their ‘civil liberties’ by their ‘oppressive’ American and European democratically elected governments.”
He audibly sneered this last part. I wondered now if the fury I sensed in him was a result of his madness, or if the reverse were true.
“Where will my grandchildren suffer this dhimmitude?” I asked. My mouth was suddenly so dry I could barely speak.
“Eurabia,” said the Time Traveler.
“There’s no such place,” I said.
He gave me his one-eyed stare. My stomach suddenly lurched and I wished I’d drunk no Scotch. “Words,” I said.
The Time Traveler raised one scar-slashed eyebrow.
“Last year you gave me words about 2005,” I said. “The kind of words Ken Grimwood’s replayers in time would have put in the newspaper to find each other. Give me more now. Or, better yet, just fucking tell me what you’re talking about. You said it wouldn’t matter. You said that my knowing won’t change anything, any more than I can change the direction the Mississippi is flowing . So tell me, God damn it!”
He began by giving me words. Even while I was scribbling them down, I was thinking of reading I’d been doing recently about the joy with which the Victorian Englishmen and 19th Century Europeans and Americans greeted the arrival of the 20th Century. The toasts, especially among the intellectual elite, on New Year’s Eve 1899 had been about the coming glories of technology liberating them, of the imminent Second Enlightenment in human understanding, of the certainty of a just one-world government, of the end of war for all time.
Instead, what words would a time traveler or poor Replay victim put in his London Times or Berliner Zeitung or New York Times on January 1, 1900, to find his fellow travelers displaced in time? Auschwitz, I was sure, and Hiroshima and Trinity Site and Holocaust and Hitler and Stalin and . . .
The clock in my study chimed midnight.
Jesus God. Did I want to hear such words about 2006 and the rest of the 21st Century from the Time Traveler?
“Ahmadenijad,” he said softly. “Natanz. Arak. Bushehr. Ishafan. Bonab. Ramsar.”
“Those words don’t mean a damned thing to me,” I said as I scribbled them down phonetically. “Where are they? What are they?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” said the Time Traveler.
“Are you talking about . . . what? . . . the next fifteen or twenty years?” I said.
“I’m talking about the next fifteen or twenty months from your now,” he said softly. “Do you want more words?”
I didn’t. But I couldn’t speak just then.
“General Seyed Reza Pardis,” intoned the Time Traveler. “Shehab-one, Shehab-two, Shehab-three. Tel Aviv. Baghdad International Airport, Al Salem U.S. airbase in Kuwait, Camp Dawhah U.S. Army base in Kuwait, al Seeb U.S. airbase in Oman, al Udeid U.S. Army and Air Force base in Qatar. Haifa. Beir-Shiva. Dimona.”
“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.” I had no clue as to who or what Shehab One, Two, or Three might be, but the context and litany alone made me want to throw up.
“This is just the beginning,” said the Time Traveler.
“Wasn’t the beginning on September 11, 2001?” I managed through numb lips.
The one-eyed scarred man shook his head. “Historians in my time know that it began on June 5, 1968,” he said. “But it hasn’t really begun for you yet. For any of you.”
I thought – What on earth happened on the fifth of June, 1968? I’m old enough to remember. I was in college then. Working that summer and . . . Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. “Now on to Chicago and the nomination!” Sirhan Sirhan. Was the Time Traveler trying to give me some kind of half-assed Oliver-Stone-JFK-movie garbled up conspiracy theory?
“What . . .” I began.
“Galveston,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “The Space Needle. Bank of America Plaza in Dallas. Renaissance Tower in Dallas. Bank One Center in Dallas. The Indianapolis 500 – one hour and twenty-three minutes into the race. The Bell South Building in Atlanta. The TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco . . .”
“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”
“The Golden Gate Bridge,” persisted the Time Traveler. “The Guggenheim in Bilbao. The New Reichstag in Berlin. Albert Hall. Saint Paul’s Cathedral . . .”
“Shut the fuck up!” I shouted. “All these places can’t disappear in the rest of this century, your goddamned Century War or not! I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t say in the rest of your century,” said the Time Traveler, his torn voice almost a whisper now. “I’m talking about your next fifteen years. And I’ve barely begun.”
“You’re nuts,” I said. “You’re not from the future. You escaped from some asylum.”
The Time Traveler nodded. “That’s more true than you know,” he said. “I come from a place and time where your grandchildren and hundreds of millions of other dhimmi are compelled to write ‘pbuh’ after the Prophet’s name. They wear gold crosses and gold Stars of David sewn onto their clothing. The Nazis didn’t invent the wearing of the Star of David . . . the marking and setting apart of the Jews in society. Muslims did that centuries ago in they lands they conquered, European and otherwise. They will refine it and update it, not toward the more merciful, in the lands they occupy through the decades ahead of you.”
“You’re crazy,” I cried, standing. My hands were balled into fists. “Islam is a religion . . . a religion of peace . . . not our enemy. We can’t be at war with a religion. That’s obscene.”
“Have you read the Qur’an and learned your Sunnah?” asked the Time Traveler. “It would behoove you to do so. Dhimmi means ‘protection.’ And your children and grandchildren will be protected . . . like cattle.”
“To hell with you,” I said.
“Your dhimmi poll tax will be called jizya,” said the Time Traveler. His voice suddenly sounded very weary.“Your land tax for being an infidel, even for fellow People of the Book – Christians and Jews – will be called kharaz. Both of these taxes will be in addition to your mandatory alms – the zakat. The punishment for failure to pay, or for paying late, a punishment meted out by your local qadi, religious judge, is death by stoning or beheading.”
I folded my arms and looked away from the Time Traveler.
“Under sharia – which will be the universal law of Eurabia,” persisted the Time Traveler, “the value of a dhimmi’s life, the value of your grandchildren, is one half the value of a Muslim’s life. Jews and Christians are worth one-third of a Muslim. Indian Parsees are worth one-fifteenth. In a court of the Eurabian Caliphate or the Global Khalifate, if a Muslim murders a dhimmi, any infidel, he must pay a blood money fine not to exceed one thousand euros. No Muslim will ever be jailed or sentenced to death for the murder of any dhimmi or any number of dhimmis. If the murders were done under the auspices of Universal Compulsive Jihad, which will be sanctioned by sharia as of 2019 Common Era, all blood money fines are waived.”
“Go away,” I said. “Go back to wherever you came from.”
“I come from here,” said the Time Traveler. “From not so far from here.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Your enemies have gathered and struck and continue to strike and you, the innocents of 2006 and beyond, fight among yourselves, chew and rip at your own bellies, blame your brothers and yourselves and your institutions of the Enlightenment – law, tolerance, science, democracy – even while your enemies grow stronger.”
“How are we supposed to know who our enemies are?” I turned and growled at him. “The world is a complex place. Morality is a complex thing.”
“Your enemy is he who will give his life to kill you,” said the Time Traveler. “Your enemies are they that wish you and your children and your grandchildren dead and who are willing to sacrifice themselves, or support those fanatics who will sacrifice themselves, to see you and your institutions destroyed. You haven’t figured that out yet – the majority of you fat, sleeping, smug, infinitely stupid Americans and Europeans.”
He stood and set the Scotch glass back in its place on my sideboard. “How, we wonder in my time,” he said softly, “can you ignore the better part of a billion people who say aloud that they are willing to kill your children . . . or condone and celebrate the killing of them? And ignore them as they act on what they say? We do not understand you.”
I still had not turned to face him, but was looking over my shoulder at him.
“The world, as it turns out,” continued the Time Traveler, “is not nearly so complex a place as your liberal and gentle minds sought to make it.”
I did not respond.
“Thucydides taught us more than twenty-four hundred years ago – counting back from your time – that all men’s behavior is guided by phobos, kerdos, and doxa,” said the Time Traveler. “Fear, self-interest, and honor.”
I pretended I did not hear.
“Plato saw human behavior as a chariot pulled by precisely those three powerful and headstrong horses, first tugged this way, then pulled that way,” continued the Time Traveler. “Phobos, kerdos, doxa. Fear, self-interest, honor. Which of these guides the chariot of your nation and your allies in Europe and your surprisingly fragile civilization now, O Man of 2006?”
I stared at the bookcase instead of the man and willed him gone, wishing him away like a sleepy boy willing away the boogeyman under his bed.
“Which combination of those three traits -- phobos, kerdos, doxa -- will save or doom your world?” asked the Time Traveler. “Which might bring you back from this vacation from history – from history’s responsibilities and history’s burdens – that you have all so generously gifted yourselves with? You peaceloving Europeans. You civil-liberties loving Americans? You Athenian invertebrates with your love of your own exalted sensibilities and your willingness to enter into a global war for civilizational survival even while you are too timid, too fearful . . . too decent . . . to match the ruthlessness of your enemies.”
I closed my eyes but that did not stop his voice.
“At least understand that such decency goes away quickly when you are burying your children and your grandchildren,” rasped the Time Traveler. “Or watching them suffer in slavery. Ruthlessness deferred against totalitarian aggression only makes the later need for ruthlessness more terrible. Thousands of years of history and war should have taught you that. Did you fools learn nothing from living through the charnel house that was the 20th Century?”
I’d had enough. I opened my eyes, turned, reached into the top left drawer of my desk, and pulled out the .38 revolver that I had owned for twenty-three years and fired only twice, at firing ranges, shortly after it was given to me as a gift.
I aimed it at the Time Traveler. “Get out,” I said.
He showed no reaction. “Do you want more than words?” he asked softly. “I will give you more than words. I give you eight million Jews dead in Israel – incinerated – and many more dead Jews in Eurabia and around the world. I give you the continent of Europe cast back more than five hundred years into sad pools of warring civilizations.”
“Get out,” I repeated, aiming the revolver higher.
“I give you an Asian world in chaos, a Pacific rim ruled by China after the vacuum of America’s withdrawal – this nation’s full resources devoted to fighting, and possibly losing, the Century War – a South America and Mexico lost to corruption and appeasement, a resurgent Russian Empire that has reclaimed its old dominated republics and more, and a Canada split into three hateful nations.”
I cocked the pistol. The click sounded very loud in the small room.
“We were speaking about ruthlessness,” said the Time Traveler. “If you fail to understand it at first, you learn it quickly enough in a war like the one you are allowing to come. Would you like to hear the litany of Islamic shrines and cities that will blossom in nuclear retaliatory fire in the decades to come?”
“Get out,” I said for a final time. “I’m ruthless enough to shoot you, and by God I will if you don’t get out of here.”
The Time Traveler nodded. “As you wish. But you should hear two last words, two last names . . .religious judge Ubar ibn al-Khattab and rector-imam Ismail Nawahda of New Al-Azhar University in London, part of the 200,000-man Golden Mosque of the New Islamic Khalifate in Eurabia.”
“What are those names to me or me to them?” I asked. My finger was on the trigger of the cocked .38.
“These religious officials were on the Islamic Tribunal that sentenced two dhimmis to death by stoning and beheading,” said the Time Traveler. “The dhimmis were your two grandsons, Thomas and Daniel.”
“What was . . . will be . . . their crime?” I was able to ask after a long minute. My tongue felt like a strip of rough cotton.
“They dated two Muslim women – Thomas while he was in London on business, Daniel while visiting his aging mother, your daughter, in Canada – without first converting to Islam. That part of sharia, Islamic law, is called hudud, and we know quite a bit about it in my time. Your grandsons didn’t know the young women were Muslim since they both were dressed in modern garb - -thus violating their own society’s ironclad rule of Hijab — modesty. The girls, I hear, also died, but those were not sharia sentences. Not hudud. Their brothers and fathers murdered them. Honor killings . . . I think you’ve already heard the phrase by 2006.”
If I were to shoot him, I had to do it now. My hand was shaking more fiercely every second.
“Of course, the odds against one sharia court in London sentencing both your grandsons to death for crimes committed as far apart as London and Quebec City is too much of a coincidence to believe in,” continued the Time Traveler. “As is the fact that they would both be introduced to Muslim girls, without knowing they were Muslim, and go on a single dinner date with them at the same time, in cities so far apart. And Thomas was married. I know he thought he was having a business dinner with a client.”
“What . . .” I began, my arm holding the pistol shaking as if palsied.
The Time Traveler laughed a final time. “All of your grandsons’ names were on lists. You wrote something . . . will soon write something . . . that will put your name, and all your descendents’ names, on their list. Including your only surviving grandson.”
I opened my mouth but did not speak.
“According to their own writings, which we all know well in my day,” continued the Time Traveler, “ ‘Hadith Malik 511:1588 The last statement that Muhammad made was: "O Lord, perish the Jews and Christians. They made churches of the graves of their prophets. There shall be no two faiths in Arabia.’ And there are not. All infidels – Christians, Jews, secularists -- have been executed, converted, or driven out. Israel is cinders. Eurabia and the New Khalifate is growing, absorbing what was left of the old, weak cultures there that once dreamt of a European Union. The Century War is not near over. Two of your three grandsons are now dead. Your remaining grandson still fights, as does one of your surviving granddaughters. Two of your three living granddaughters now live under sharia within the aegis of New Khalifate. They are women of the veil.”
I lowered the pistol.
“ Enjoy these last days and months and years of your slumber, Grandfather,” said the scarred old man. “Your wake-up call is coming soon.”
The Time Traveler said three last words and was gone.
I put the pistol away – realizing too late that it had never been loaded – and sat down to write this. I could not. I waited these three months to try again.
Oh, Lord, I wish that some person on business from Porlock would wake me from this dream.
It was not the horrors of his revelations about my grandchildren that had shaken me the most deeply, shaken me to the core of my core, but rather the the Time Traveler’s last three words. Three words that any Replayer or time traveler visiting here from a century or more from now would react to first and most emotionally – three words I will not share here in this piece nor ever plan to share, at least until everyone on Earth knows them – three words that will keep me awake nights for months and years to come.
Three words.
Sincerely,
The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a husky voice that he was a Time Traveler come back to talk to me about the future.
Being a sometimes science-fiction writer but not a fool, I said, “Prove it.”
“Do you remember Replay?” he said.
My finger hovered over the final “1” in my dialing. “The 1987 novel?” I said. “By Ken Grimwood?”
The stranger – Time Traveler, psychotic, home invader, whatever he was – nodded.
I hesitated. The novel by Grimwood had won the World Fantasy Award a year or two after my first-novel, Song of Kali, had. Grimwood’s book was about a guy who woke up one morning to find himself snapped back decades in his life, from the late 1980’s to himself as a college student in 1963, and thus getting the chance to relive – to replay – that life again, only this time acting upon what he’d already learned the hard way. In the book, the character, who was to experience – suffer – several Replays, learned that there were other people from his time who were also Replaying their lives in the past, their bodies younger but their memories intact. I’d greatly enjoyed the book, thought it deserved the award, and had been sad to hear that Grimwood had died . . . when? . . . in 2003.
So, I thought, I might have a grizzled nut case in my study this New Year’s Eve, but if he was a reader and a fan of Replay, he was probably just a sci-fi fan grizzled nut case, and therefore probably harmless. Possibly. Maybe.
I kept my finger poised over the final “1” in “911.”
“What does that book have to do with you illegally entering my home and study?” I asked.
The stranger smiled … almost sadly I thought. “You asked me to prove that I’m a Time Traveler,” he said softly. “Do you remember how Grimwood’s character in Replay went hunting for others in the 1960’s who had traveled back in time from the late 1980’s?”
I did remember now. I’d thought it clever at the time. The guy in Replay, once he suspected others were also replaying into the past, had taken out personal ads in major city newspapers around the country. The ads were concise. “Do you remember Three Mile Island, Challenger, Watergate, Reaganomics? If so, contact me at . . .”
Before I could say anything else on this New Year’s Eve of 2004, a few hours before 2005 began, the stranger said, “Terri Schiavo, Katrina, New Orleans under water, Ninth Ward, Ray Nagin, Superdome, Judge John Roberts, White Sox sweep the Astros in four to win the World Series, Pope Benedict XVI, Scooter Libby.”
“Wait, wait!” I said, scrambling for a pen and then scrambling even faster to write. “Ray who? Pope who? Scooter who?”
“You’ll recognize it all when you hear it all again,” said the stranger. “I’ll see you in a year and we’ll have our conversation.”
“Wait!” I repeated. “What was that middle apart . . . Ray Nugin? Judge who? John Roberts? Who is . . .” But when I looked up he was gone.
“White Sox win the Series?” I muttered into the silence. “Fat chance.”
#
I was waiting for him on New Year’s Eve 2005. I didn’t see him enter. I looked up from the book I was fitfully reading and he was standing in the shadows again. I didn’t dial 911 this time, nor demand any more proof. I waved him to the leather wingchair and said, “Would you like something to drink?”
“Scotch,” he said. “Single malt if you have it.”
I did.
Our conversation ran over two hours, but the following is the gist of it. I’m a novelist by trade. I remember conversations pretty well. (Not as perfectly as Truman Capote was said to be able to recall long conversations word for word, but pretty well.)
The Time Traveler wouldn’t tell me what year in the future he was from. Not even the decade or century. But the gray cord trousers and blue-gray wool tunic top he was wearing didn’t look very far-future science-fictiony or military, no Star Trekky boots or insignia, just wellworn clothes that looked like something a guy who worked with his hands a lot would wear. Construction maybe.
“I know you can’t tell me details about the future because of time travel paradoxes,” I began. I hadn’t spent a lifetime reading and then writing SF for nothing.
“Oh, bugger time travel paradoxes,” said the Time Traveler. “They don’t exist. I could tell you anything I want to and it won’t change anything. I just choose not to tell you some things.”
I frowned at this. “Time travel paradoxes don’t exist? But surely if I go back in time and kill my grandfather before he meets my grandmother . . .”
The Time Traveler laughed and sipped his Scotch. “Would you want to kill your grandfather?” he said. “Or anyone else?”
“Well . . .Hitler maybe,” I said weakly.
The Traveler smiled, but more ironically this time. “Good luck,” he said. “But don’t count on succeeding.”
I shook my head. “But surely anything you tell me now about the future will change the future,” I said.
“I gave you a raft of facts about your future a year ago as my bona fides,” said the Time Traveler. “Did it change anything? Did you save New Orleans from drowning?”
“I won $50 betting on the White Sox in October,” I admitted.
The Time Traveler only shook his head. “Quod erat demonstrandum,” he said softly. “I could tell you that the Mississippi River flows generally south. Would your knowing about it change its course or flow or flooding?”
I thought about this. Finally I said, “Why did you come back? Why do you want to talk to me? What do you want me to do?”
“I came back for my own purposes,” said the Time Traveler, looking around my booklined study. “I chose you to talk to because it was . . . convenient. And I don’t want you to do a goddamned thing. There’s nothing you can do. But relax . . . we’re not going to be talking about personal things. Such as, say, the year, day, and hour of your death. I don’t even know that sort of trivial information, although I could look it up quickly enough. You can release that white-knuckled grip you have on the edge of your desk.”
I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.
“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.
I blinked and tried to remember some history. “You mean the Hundred Year War? Fifteenth Century? Fourteenth? Sometime around there. Between . . . France and England? Henry V? Kenneth Branagh? Or was it . . .”
“I mean the Century War with Islam,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or offering to pour me any, he stood, refilled his Scotch glass, and sat again. He said, “It was important to me to come back to this time early on in the struggle. Even if only to remind myself of how unspeakably blind you all were.”
“You mean the War on Terrorism,” I said.
“I mean the Long War with Islam,” he said. “The Century War. And it’s not over yet where I come from. Not close to being over.”
“You can’t have a war with Islam,” I said. “You can’t go to war against a religion. Radical Islam, maybe. Jihadism. Some extremists. But not a . . . the . . . religion itself. The vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceloving people who wish us no harm. I mean . . . I mean . . . the very word ‘Islam’ means ‘Peace.’”
“So you kept telling yourselves,” said the Time Traveler. His voice was very low but there was a strange and almost frightening edge to it. “But the ‘peace’ in ‘Islam’ means ‘Submission.’ You’ll find that out soon enough”
Great, I was thinking. Of all the time travelers in all the gin joints in all the world, I get this racist, xenophobic, right-wing asshole.
“After Nine-eleven, we’re fighting terrorism,” I began, “not . . .”
He waved me into silence.
“You were a philosophy major or minor at that podunk little college you went to long ago,” said the Time Traveler. “Do you remember what Category Error is?”
It rang a bell. But I was too irritated at hearing my alma mater being called a “podunk little college” to be able to concentrate fully.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the Time Traveler. “In philosophy and formal logic, and it has its equivalents in science and business management, Category Error is the term for having stated or defined a problem so poorly that it becomes impossible to solve that problem, through dialectic or any other means.”
I waited. Finally I said firmly, “You can’t go to war with a religion. Or, I mean . . . sure, you could . . . the Crusades and all that . . . but it would be wrong.”
The Time Traveler sipped his Scotch and looked at me. He said, “Let me give you an analogy . . .”
God, I hated and distrusted analogies. I said nothing.
“Let’s imagine,” said the Time Traveler, “that on December eighth, Nineteen forty-one, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke before a joint session of Congress and asked them to declare war on aviation.”
“That’s absurd,” I said.
“Is it?” asked the Time Traveler. “The American battleships, cruisers, harbor installations, Army barracks, and airfields at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in Hawaii were all struck by Japanese aircraft. Imagine if the next day Roosevelt had declared war on aviation . . . threatening to wipe it out wherever we found it. Committing all the resources of the United States of America to defeating aviation, so help us God.”
“That’s just stupid,” I said. If I’d ever been afraid of this Time Traveler, I wasn’t now. He was obviously a mental defective.“The planes, the Japanese planes,” I said, “were just a method of attack . . . a means . . . it wasn’t aviation that attacked us at Pearl Harbor, but the Empire of Japan. We declared war on Japan and a few days later its ally, Germany, lived up to its treaty with the Japanese and declared war on us. If we’d declared war on aviation, on goddamned airplanes rather than the empire and ideology that launched them, we’d never have . . .”
I stopped. What had he called it? Category Error. Making the problem unsolvable through your inability – or fear – of defining it correctly.
The Time Traveler was smiling at me from the shadows. It was a small, thin, cold smile – holding no humor in it, I was sure -- but still a smile of sorts. It seemed more sad than gloating as my sudden silence stretched on.
“What do you know about Syracuse?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked again. “Syracuse, New York?” I said at last.
He shook his head slowly. “Thucydides’ Syracuse,” he said softly. “Syracuse circa 415 B.C. The Syracuse Athens invaded.”
“It was . . . part of the Peloponnesian War,” I ventured.
He waited for more but I had no more to give. I loved history, but let’s admit it . . . that was ancient history. Still, I felt that I should have been able to tell him,or at least remember, why Syracuse was important in the Peloponnesian War or why they fought there or who fought exactly or who had won or . . . something. I hated feeling like a dull student around this scarred old man.
“The war between Athens and its allies and Sparta and its allies – a war for nothing less than hegemony over the entire known world at that time – began in 431 B.C.,” said the Time Traveler. “After seventeen years of almost constant fighting, with no clear or permanent advantage for either side, Athens – under the leadership of Alcibiades at the time – decided to widen the war by conquering Sicily, the ‘Great Greece’ they called it, an area full of colonies and the key to maritime commerce at the time the way the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf is today.”
I hate being lectured to at the best of times, but something about the tone and timber of the Time Traveler’s voice – soft, deep, rasping, perhaps thickened a bit by the whiskey – made this sound more like a story being told around a campfire. Or perhaps a bit like one of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories on “Prairie Home Companion.” I settled deeper into my chair and listened.
“Syracuse wasn’t a direct enemy of the Athenians,” continued the Time Traveler, “but it was quarreling with a local Athenian colony and the democracy of Athens used that as an excuse to launch a major expedition against it. It was a big deal – Athens sent 136 triremes, the best fighting ships in the world then – and landed 5,000 soldiers right under the city’s walls.
“The Athenians had enjoyed so much military success in recent years, including their invasion of Melos, that Thucydides wrote – So thoroughly had the present prosperity persuaded the Athenians that nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was possible and what was impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The reason for this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strengths with their hopes.”
“Oh, hell,” I said, “this is going to be a lecture about Iraq, isn’t it? Look . . . I voted for John Kerry last year and . . .”
“Listen to me,” the Time Traveler said softly. It was not a request. There was steel in that soft, rasping voice. “Nicias, the Athenian general who ended up leading the invasion, warned against it in 415 B.C. He said – ‘We must not disguise from ourselves that we go to found a city among strangers and enemies, and that he who undertakes such an enterprise should be prepared to become master of the country the first day he lands, or failing in this to find everything hostile to him’. Nicias, along with the Athenian poet and general Demosthenes, would see their armies destroyed at Syracuse and then they would both be captured and put to death by the Syracusans. Sparta won big in that two-year debacle for Athens. The war went on for seven more years, but Athens never recovered from that overreaching at Syracuse, and in the end . . . Sparta destroyed it. Conquered the Athenian empire and its allies, destroyed Athens’ democracy, ruined the entire balance of power and Greek hegemony over the known world at the time . . . ruined everything. All because of a miscalculation about Syracuse.”
I sighed. I was sick of Iraq. Everyone was sick of Iraq on New Years Eve, 2005, both Bush supporters and Bush haters. It was just an ugly mess. “They just had an election,” I said. “The Iraqi people. They dipped their fingers in purple ink and . . .”
“Yes yes,” interrupted the Time Traveler as if recalling something further back in time, and much less important, than Athens versus Syracuse. “The free elections. Purple fingers. Democracy in the Mid-East. The Palestinians are voting as well. You will see in the coming year what will become of all that.”
The Time Traveler drank some Scotch, closed his eyes for a second, and said, “Sun Tzu writes – The side that knows when to fight and when not to will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.”
“All right, goddammit,” I said irritably. “Your point’s made. So we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq in this . . . what did you call it? This Long War with Islam, this Century War. We’re all beginning to realize that here by the end of 2005.”
The Time Traveler shook his head. “You’ve understood nothing I’ve said. Nothing. Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough. They had grown soft since their slaughter of every combat-age man and boy on the island of Melos, the enslavement of every woman and girl there. The democratic Athenians, in regards to Syracuse, thought that once engaged they could win without absolute commitment to winning, claim victory without being as ruthless and merciless as their Spartan and Syracusan enemies. The Athenians, once defeat loomed, turned against their own generals and political leaders – and their official soothsayers. If General Nicias or Demosthenes had survived their captivity and returned home, the people who sent them off with parades and strewn flower petals in their path would have ripped them limb from limb. They blamed their own leaders like a sun-maddened dog ripping and chewing at its own belly.”
I thought about this. I had no idea what the hell he was saying or how it related to the future.
“You came back in time to lecture me about Thucydides?” I said. “Athens? Syracuse? Sun-Tzu? No offense, Mr. Time Traveler, but who gives a damn?”
The Time Traveler rose so quickly that I flinched back in my chair, but he only refilled his Scotch. This time he refilled my glass as well. “You probably should give a damn” he said softly. “ In 2006, you’ll be ripping and tearing at yourselves so fiercely that your nation – the only one on Earth actually fighting against resurgent caliphate Islam in this long struggle over the very future of civilization – will become so preoccupied with criticizing yourselves and trying to gain short-term political advantage, that you’ll all forget that there’s actually a war for your survival going on. Twenty-five years from now, every man or woman in America who wishes to vote will be required to read Thucydides on this matter. And others as well. And there are tests. If you don’t know some history, you don’t vote . . . much less run for office. America’s vacation from knowing history ends very soon now . . . for you, I mean. And for those few others left alive in the world who are allowed to vote.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“I am shitting you not,” said the Time Traveler.
“Those few others left alive who are allowed to vote?” I said, the words just now striking me like hardthrown stones. “What the hell are you talking about? Has our government taken away all our civil liberties in this awful future of yours?”
He laughed then and this time it was a deep, hearty, truly amused laugh. “Oh, yes,” he said when the laughter abated a bit. He actually wiped away tears from his one good eye. “I had almost forgotten about your fears of your, our . . . civil liberties . . . being abridged by our own government back in these last stupidity-allowed years of 2005 and 2006 and 2007 . Where exactly do you see this repression coming from?”
“Well . . .” I said. I hate it when I start a sentence with ‘well,’ especially in an argument. “Well, the Patriot Act. Bush authorizing spying on Americans . . . international phonecalls and such. Uh . . . I think mosques in the States are under FBI surveillance. I mean, they want to look up what library books we’re reading, for God’s sake. Big Brother. 1984. You know.”
The Time Traveler laughed again, but with more edge this time. “Yes, I know,” he said. “We all know . . . up there in the future which some of you will survive to see as free people. Civil liberties. In 2006 you still fear yourselves and your own institutions first, out of old habit. A not unworthy – if fatally misguided and terminally masochistic – paranoia. I will tell you right now, and this is not a prediction but a history lesson, some of your grandchildren will live in dhimmitude.”
“Zimmi . . . what?” I said.
He spelled it out. What had sounded like a ‘z’ was the ‘dh.’ I’d never heard the word and I told him so.
“Then get off your ass and Google it,” said the Time Traveler, his one working eye glinting with something like fury. “Dhimmitude. You can also look up the word dhimmi, because that’s what two of your three grandchildren will be called. Dhimmis. Dhimmitude is the system of separate and subordinate laws and rules they will live under. Look up the word sharia while you’re Googling dhimmi, because that is the only law they will answer to as dhimmis, the only justice they can hope for . . . they and tens and hundreds of millions more now who are worried in your time about invisible abridgements of their ‘civil liberties’ by their ‘oppressive’ American and European democratically elected governments.”
He audibly sneered this last part. I wondered now if the fury I sensed in him was a result of his madness, or if the reverse were true.
“Where will my grandchildren suffer this dhimmitude?” I asked. My mouth was suddenly so dry I could barely speak.
“Eurabia,” said the Time Traveler.
“There’s no such place,” I said.
He gave me his one-eyed stare. My stomach suddenly lurched and I wished I’d drunk no Scotch. “Words,” I said.
The Time Traveler raised one scar-slashed eyebrow.
“Last year you gave me words about 2005,” I said. “The kind of words Ken Grimwood’s replayers in time would have put in the newspaper to find each other. Give me more now. Or, better yet, just fucking tell me what you’re talking about. You said it wouldn’t matter. You said that my knowing won’t change anything, any more than I can change the direction the Mississippi is flowing . So tell me, God damn it!”
He began by giving me words. Even while I was scribbling them down, I was thinking of reading I’d been doing recently about the joy with which the Victorian Englishmen and 19th Century Europeans and Americans greeted the arrival of the 20th Century. The toasts, especially among the intellectual elite, on New Year’s Eve 1899 had been about the coming glories of technology liberating them, of the imminent Second Enlightenment in human understanding, of the certainty of a just one-world government, of the end of war for all time.
Instead, what words would a time traveler or poor Replay victim put in his London Times or Berliner Zeitung or New York Times on January 1, 1900, to find his fellow travelers displaced in time? Auschwitz, I was sure, and Hiroshima and Trinity Site and Holocaust and Hitler and Stalin and . . .
The clock in my study chimed midnight.
Jesus God. Did I want to hear such words about 2006 and the rest of the 21st Century from the Time Traveler?
“Ahmadenijad,” he said softly. “Natanz. Arak. Bushehr. Ishafan. Bonab. Ramsar.”
“Those words don’t mean a damned thing to me,” I said as I scribbled them down phonetically. “Where are they? What are they?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” said the Time Traveler.
“Are you talking about . . . what? . . . the next fifteen or twenty years?” I said.
“I’m talking about the next fifteen or twenty months from your now,” he said softly. “Do you want more words?”
I didn’t. But I couldn’t speak just then.
“General Seyed Reza Pardis,” intoned the Time Traveler. “Shehab-one, Shehab-two, Shehab-three. Tel Aviv. Baghdad International Airport, Al Salem U.S. airbase in Kuwait, Camp Dawhah U.S. Army base in Kuwait, al Seeb U.S. airbase in Oman, al Udeid U.S. Army and Air Force base in Qatar. Haifa. Beir-Shiva. Dimona.”
“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.” I had no clue as to who or what Shehab One, Two, or Three might be, but the context and litany alone made me want to throw up.
“This is just the beginning,” said the Time Traveler.
“Wasn’t the beginning on September 11, 2001?” I managed through numb lips.
The one-eyed scarred man shook his head. “Historians in my time know that it began on June 5, 1968,” he said. “But it hasn’t really begun for you yet. For any of you.”
I thought – What on earth happened on the fifth of June, 1968? I’m old enough to remember. I was in college then. Working that summer and . . . Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. “Now on to Chicago and the nomination!” Sirhan Sirhan. Was the Time Traveler trying to give me some kind of half-assed Oliver-Stone-JFK-movie garbled up conspiracy theory?
“What . . .” I began.
“Galveston,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “The Space Needle. Bank of America Plaza in Dallas. Renaissance Tower in Dallas. Bank One Center in Dallas. The Indianapolis 500 – one hour and twenty-three minutes into the race. The Bell South Building in Atlanta. The TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco . . .”
“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”
“The Golden Gate Bridge,” persisted the Time Traveler. “The Guggenheim in Bilbao. The New Reichstag in Berlin. Albert Hall. Saint Paul’s Cathedral . . .”
“Shut the fuck up!” I shouted. “All these places can’t disappear in the rest of this century, your goddamned Century War or not! I don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t say in the rest of your century,” said the Time Traveler, his torn voice almost a whisper now. “I’m talking about your next fifteen years. And I’ve barely begun.”
“You’re nuts,” I said. “You’re not from the future. You escaped from some asylum.”
The Time Traveler nodded. “That’s more true than you know,” he said. “I come from a place and time where your grandchildren and hundreds of millions of other dhimmi are compelled to write ‘pbuh’ after the Prophet’s name. They wear gold crosses and gold Stars of David sewn onto their clothing. The Nazis didn’t invent the wearing of the Star of David . . . the marking and setting apart of the Jews in society. Muslims did that centuries ago in they lands they conquered, European and otherwise. They will refine it and update it, not toward the more merciful, in the lands they occupy through the decades ahead of you.”
“You’re crazy,” I cried, standing. My hands were balled into fists. “Islam is a religion . . . a religion of peace . . . not our enemy. We can’t be at war with a religion. That’s obscene.”
“Have you read the Qur’an and learned your Sunnah?” asked the Time Traveler. “It would behoove you to do so. Dhimmi means ‘protection.’ And your children and grandchildren will be protected . . . like cattle.”
“To hell with you,” I said.
“Your dhimmi poll tax will be called jizya,” said the Time Traveler. His voice suddenly sounded very weary.“Your land tax for being an infidel, even for fellow People of the Book – Christians and Jews – will be called kharaz. Both of these taxes will be in addition to your mandatory alms – the zakat. The punishment for failure to pay, or for paying late, a punishment meted out by your local qadi, religious judge, is death by stoning or beheading.”
I folded my arms and looked away from the Time Traveler.
“Under sharia – which will be the universal law of Eurabia,” persisted the Time Traveler, “the value of a dhimmi’s life, the value of your grandchildren, is one half the value of a Muslim’s life. Jews and Christians are worth one-third of a Muslim. Indian Parsees are worth one-fifteenth. In a court of the Eurabian Caliphate or the Global Khalifate, if a Muslim murders a dhimmi, any infidel, he must pay a blood money fine not to exceed one thousand euros. No Muslim will ever be jailed or sentenced to death for the murder of any dhimmi or any number of dhimmis. If the murders were done under the auspices of Universal Compulsive Jihad, which will be sanctioned by sharia as of 2019 Common Era, all blood money fines are waived.”
“Go away,” I said. “Go back to wherever you came from.”
“I come from here,” said the Time Traveler. “From not so far from here.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Your enemies have gathered and struck and continue to strike and you, the innocents of 2006 and beyond, fight among yourselves, chew and rip at your own bellies, blame your brothers and yourselves and your institutions of the Enlightenment – law, tolerance, science, democracy – even while your enemies grow stronger.”
“How are we supposed to know who our enemies are?” I turned and growled at him. “The world is a complex place. Morality is a complex thing.”
“Your enemy is he who will give his life to kill you,” said the Time Traveler. “Your enemies are they that wish you and your children and your grandchildren dead and who are willing to sacrifice themselves, or support those fanatics who will sacrifice themselves, to see you and your institutions destroyed. You haven’t figured that out yet – the majority of you fat, sleeping, smug, infinitely stupid Americans and Europeans.”
He stood and set the Scotch glass back in its place on my sideboard. “How, we wonder in my time,” he said softly, “can you ignore the better part of a billion people who say aloud that they are willing to kill your children . . . or condone and celebrate the killing of them? And ignore them as they act on what they say? We do not understand you.”
I still had not turned to face him, but was looking over my shoulder at him.
“The world, as it turns out,” continued the Time Traveler, “is not nearly so complex a place as your liberal and gentle minds sought to make it.”
I did not respond.
“Thucydides taught us more than twenty-four hundred years ago – counting back from your time – that all men’s behavior is guided by phobos, kerdos, and doxa,” said the Time Traveler. “Fear, self-interest, and honor.”
I pretended I did not hear.
“Plato saw human behavior as a chariot pulled by precisely those three powerful and headstrong horses, first tugged this way, then pulled that way,” continued the Time Traveler. “Phobos, kerdos, doxa. Fear, self-interest, honor. Which of these guides the chariot of your nation and your allies in Europe and your surprisingly fragile civilization now, O Man of 2006?”
I stared at the bookcase instead of the man and willed him gone, wishing him away like a sleepy boy willing away the boogeyman under his bed.
“Which combination of those three traits -- phobos, kerdos, doxa -- will save or doom your world?” asked the Time Traveler. “Which might bring you back from this vacation from history – from history’s responsibilities and history’s burdens – that you have all so generously gifted yourselves with? You peaceloving Europeans. You civil-liberties loving Americans? You Athenian invertebrates with your love of your own exalted sensibilities and your willingness to enter into a global war for civilizational survival even while you are too timid, too fearful . . . too decent . . . to match the ruthlessness of your enemies.”
I closed my eyes but that did not stop his voice.
“At least understand that such decency goes away quickly when you are burying your children and your grandchildren,” rasped the Time Traveler. “Or watching them suffer in slavery. Ruthlessness deferred against totalitarian aggression only makes the later need for ruthlessness more terrible. Thousands of years of history and war should have taught you that. Did you fools learn nothing from living through the charnel house that was the 20th Century?”
I’d had enough. I opened my eyes, turned, reached into the top left drawer of my desk, and pulled out the .38 revolver that I had owned for twenty-three years and fired only twice, at firing ranges, shortly after it was given to me as a gift.
I aimed it at the Time Traveler. “Get out,” I said.
He showed no reaction. “Do you want more than words?” he asked softly. “I will give you more than words. I give you eight million Jews dead in Israel – incinerated – and many more dead Jews in Eurabia and around the world. I give you the continent of Europe cast back more than five hundred years into sad pools of warring civilizations.”
“Get out,” I repeated, aiming the revolver higher.
“I give you an Asian world in chaos, a Pacific rim ruled by China after the vacuum of America’s withdrawal – this nation’s full resources devoted to fighting, and possibly losing, the Century War – a South America and Mexico lost to corruption and appeasement, a resurgent Russian Empire that has reclaimed its old dominated republics and more, and a Canada split into three hateful nations.”
I cocked the pistol. The click sounded very loud in the small room.
“We were speaking about ruthlessness,” said the Time Traveler. “If you fail to understand it at first, you learn it quickly enough in a war like the one you are allowing to come. Would you like to hear the litany of Islamic shrines and cities that will blossom in nuclear retaliatory fire in the decades to come?”
“Get out,” I said for a final time. “I’m ruthless enough to shoot you, and by God I will if you don’t get out of here.”
The Time Traveler nodded. “As you wish. But you should hear two last words, two last names . . .religious judge Ubar ibn al-Khattab and rector-imam Ismail Nawahda of New Al-Azhar University in London, part of the 200,000-man Golden Mosque of the New Islamic Khalifate in Eurabia.”
“What are those names to me or me to them?” I asked. My finger was on the trigger of the cocked .38.
“These religious officials were on the Islamic Tribunal that sentenced two dhimmis to death by stoning and beheading,” said the Time Traveler. “The dhimmis were your two grandsons, Thomas and Daniel.”
“What was . . . will be . . . their crime?” I was able to ask after a long minute. My tongue felt like a strip of rough cotton.
“They dated two Muslim women – Thomas while he was in London on business, Daniel while visiting his aging mother, your daughter, in Canada – without first converting to Islam. That part of sharia, Islamic law, is called hudud, and we know quite a bit about it in my time. Your grandsons didn’t know the young women were Muslim since they both were dressed in modern garb - -thus violating their own society’s ironclad rule of Hijab — modesty. The girls, I hear, also died, but those were not sharia sentences. Not hudud. Their brothers and fathers murdered them. Honor killings . . . I think you’ve already heard the phrase by 2006.”
If I were to shoot him, I had to do it now. My hand was shaking more fiercely every second.
“Of course, the odds against one sharia court in London sentencing both your grandsons to death for crimes committed as far apart as London and Quebec City is too much of a coincidence to believe in,” continued the Time Traveler. “As is the fact that they would both be introduced to Muslim girls, without knowing they were Muslim, and go on a single dinner date with them at the same time, in cities so far apart. And Thomas was married. I know he thought he was having a business dinner with a client.”
“What . . .” I began, my arm holding the pistol shaking as if palsied.
The Time Traveler laughed a final time. “All of your grandsons’ names were on lists. You wrote something . . . will soon write something . . . that will put your name, and all your descendents’ names, on their list. Including your only surviving grandson.”
I opened my mouth but did not speak.
“According to their own writings, which we all know well in my day,” continued the Time Traveler, “ ‘Hadith Malik 511:1588 The last statement that Muhammad made was: "O Lord, perish the Jews and Christians. They made churches of the graves of their prophets. There shall be no two faiths in Arabia.’ And there are not. All infidels – Christians, Jews, secularists -- have been executed, converted, or driven out. Israel is cinders. Eurabia and the New Khalifate is growing, absorbing what was left of the old, weak cultures there that once dreamt of a European Union. The Century War is not near over. Two of your three grandsons are now dead. Your remaining grandson still fights, as does one of your surviving granddaughters. Two of your three living granddaughters now live under sharia within the aegis of New Khalifate. They are women of the veil.”
I lowered the pistol.
“ Enjoy these last days and months and years of your slumber, Grandfather,” said the scarred old man. “Your wake-up call is coming soon.”
The Time Traveler said three last words and was gone.
I put the pistol away – realizing too late that it had never been loaded – and sat down to write this. I could not. I waited these three months to try again.
Oh, Lord, I wish that some person on business from Porlock would wake me from this dream.
It was not the horrors of his revelations about my grandchildren that had shaken me the most deeply, shaken me to the core of my core, but rather the the Time Traveler’s last three words. Three words that any Replayer or time traveler visiting here from a century or more from now would react to first and most emotionally – three words I will not share here in this piece nor ever plan to share, at least until everyone on Earth knows them – three words that will keep me awake nights for months and years to come.
Three words.
Sincerely,
164 years of freedom and a slow slide to Socialism
"From 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, until 1940, when the first Social Security checks were paid out, Americans did not receive income from the federal government unless they were pensioned veterans or employees of the government itself. For 164 years, Americans took care of themselves and their own families. With the Social Security Act, they began to slide into government dependency. Today, thanks to Social Security, a majority of Americans over 65 rely on the federal government for a majority of their income. Thanks to Medicare, enacted in 1965, American seniors now rely on the federal government for their health care, too. If Congress does not repeal Obamacare, virtually all Americans will soon depend on government for their health care. We will no longer be a free and self-reliant people -- we will be a government-dependent people." --CNSNews editor Terrence Jeffrey
People should not fear their government...
"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny." --Thomas Jefferson
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Ant & the Grasshoper, American Work Ethic vs. Obama-nomics
I've been thinking a great deal about poverty lately, specifically its causes as well as what our obligations are (both personal and societal) to alleviate it.
This is a dicey subject to address for two reasons. First, because of our current economy, there are many people who are a heck of a lot poorer than they were two years ago. And second, any time someone addresses the issue of poverty, except from a leftist position, they are automatically labeled as cruel, unfeeling, lacking in compassion, and the usual plethora of criticism – without consideration as to whether the arguments have any merit or not.
The reason this issue came up was because of a recent comment on my blog entry "The Ant and the Grasshopper."
I had posted one of those humorous modern-twist rewrites of Aesop's classic fable circulating around the Internet. Most of the readers got a chuckle out of it.
But someone took exception to our amusement and accused us of not being Christian because we preferred the original moral of the story ("Be Responsible for Yourself").
This poses an interesting question. To what extent are we socially, morally and ethically responsible for others? At what point do the Ants share their hard-earned resources with the Grasshoppers? And is it ethical to force the Ants to distribute their resources to the Grasshoppers at the point of a gun? What responsibility do the Grasshoppers have in their own fate?
Let's make one thing clear: In Aesop's fable, what distinguishes the Ant from the Grasshopper is a work ethic. Nothing more, nothing less. The Grasshopper is not down on his luck while the Ant is busy storing food. He is not ill, or handicapped, or in debt, or out of work, or any other hardship an insect might face which would keep him from working toward a secure future for himself. The resources are freely available to both insects. Nothing – nothing whatsoever – is preventing the Grasshopper from getting his rear in gear and storing food for the winter – except an attitude problem.
Yet according to the critic, we should not presume to call ourselves Christian because the Bible admonishes us to love our neighbor as ourselves. The selfish Ant should share his food with the poor helpless Grasshopper regardless of what caused the Grasshopper to get into his predicament in the first place.
So, since I am clearly a flawed Christian unable to appreciate the finer points of loving my neighbor, I need to know to what extent the Grasshopper is called upon to provide for himself before the Ant steps in to keep him from starving in the cold of winter.
Is the Ant required to applaud the Grasshopper's idleness, then uncomplainingly feed him during the winter? Does God smile upon the idle Grasshopper receiving the Ant's hard-earned resources without requiring anything of the Grasshopper in return?
Perhaps. Certainly Jesus died for both the Ants and the Grasshoppers of this world. Not one single one of us – Ants or Grasshoppers – are worthy of such a sacrifice, but He did it anyway.
However I don't believe that releases us from our obligation to try our best to provide for ourselves.
Many of us in this economy are poorer than we were before the downturn due to credit crunches, medical bills, unemployment, inflation, and other unavoidable situations. These people are not Grasshoppers. They are just down on their luck, something that happens to Ants and Grasshoppers alike.
I wish – oh how I wish – people could grasp this very basic concept: No one objects to helping others get back on their feet when they're down. Most of us consider it a privilege, a duty and a pleasure to help those who are down on their luck.
But the Grasshopper is not down on his luck due to misfortune. He simply does not have a work ethic to match the Ant's. Not only does the Grasshopper expect the Ant to help, but he refuses to help himself even when he can. Worse, our government then compels the Ant to help the Grasshopper at the point of a gun, whether the Ant wants to or not. That's when the milk of human – er, insect – kindness starts to run thin.
To forestall the firestorm of criticism undoubtedly in the works by outraged readers, I'll ask again: To what extent should able-bodied, perfectly-capable Grasshoppers be asked to provide their own resources for the winter? Or are Grasshoppers absolved from all responsibility for their own future?
And if the Ants are called upon to love their Grasshopper neighbors as themselves, why are the Grasshoppers excused from returning the sentiment? The Grasshopper, if he loved the Ant as himself, would get busy and store his own food so as not to be a burden to the poor hard-working Ant when the snow flies.
For those who accuse us Ants of un-Christian attitudes with regard to our neighbors, I'll reference a few biblical passages in support of personal responsibility, the most succinct of which is 2 Thessalonians 3:10: "… If a man will not work, he shall not eat." Note that it does not say "Can not work" but "Will not work." Big difference.
It should be obvious to anyone with an insect-sized grain of common sense that government entitlements discourage able-bodied Grasshoppers from working. And on a larger scale, I'm concerned that as more and more Grasshoppers receive the resources which are forcibly removed from the Ants, there will be fewer Ants to support the Grasshoppers.
Since the Bible is ever a handy resource for life's concerns, I'll direct the doubtful to parts of Proverbs 6:
"Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! …it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest – and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man."
Just a thought.
Patrice Lewis is a freelance writer and the author of "The Home Craft Business: How to Make it Survive and Thrive." She is co-founder (with her husband) of a home woodcraft business. The Lewises live on 40 acres in north Idaho with their two homeschooled children, assorted livestock, and a shop that overflows into the house with depressing regularity. Visit her blog at http://www.patricelewis.blogspot.com/.
This is a dicey subject to address for two reasons. First, because of our current economy, there are many people who are a heck of a lot poorer than they were two years ago. And second, any time someone addresses the issue of poverty, except from a leftist position, they are automatically labeled as cruel, unfeeling, lacking in compassion, and the usual plethora of criticism – without consideration as to whether the arguments have any merit or not.
The reason this issue came up was because of a recent comment on my blog entry "The Ant and the Grasshopper."
I had posted one of those humorous modern-twist rewrites of Aesop's classic fable circulating around the Internet. Most of the readers got a chuckle out of it.
But someone took exception to our amusement and accused us of not being Christian because we preferred the original moral of the story ("Be Responsible for Yourself").
This poses an interesting question. To what extent are we socially, morally and ethically responsible for others? At what point do the Ants share their hard-earned resources with the Grasshoppers? And is it ethical to force the Ants to distribute their resources to the Grasshoppers at the point of a gun? What responsibility do the Grasshoppers have in their own fate?
Let's make one thing clear: In Aesop's fable, what distinguishes the Ant from the Grasshopper is a work ethic. Nothing more, nothing less. The Grasshopper is not down on his luck while the Ant is busy storing food. He is not ill, or handicapped, or in debt, or out of work, or any other hardship an insect might face which would keep him from working toward a secure future for himself. The resources are freely available to both insects. Nothing – nothing whatsoever – is preventing the Grasshopper from getting his rear in gear and storing food for the winter – except an attitude problem.
Yet according to the critic, we should not presume to call ourselves Christian because the Bible admonishes us to love our neighbor as ourselves. The selfish Ant should share his food with the poor helpless Grasshopper regardless of what caused the Grasshopper to get into his predicament in the first place.
So, since I am clearly a flawed Christian unable to appreciate the finer points of loving my neighbor, I need to know to what extent the Grasshopper is called upon to provide for himself before the Ant steps in to keep him from starving in the cold of winter.
Is the Ant required to applaud the Grasshopper's idleness, then uncomplainingly feed him during the winter? Does God smile upon the idle Grasshopper receiving the Ant's hard-earned resources without requiring anything of the Grasshopper in return?
Perhaps. Certainly Jesus died for both the Ants and the Grasshoppers of this world. Not one single one of us – Ants or Grasshoppers – are worthy of such a sacrifice, but He did it anyway.
However I don't believe that releases us from our obligation to try our best to provide for ourselves.
Many of us in this economy are poorer than we were before the downturn due to credit crunches, medical bills, unemployment, inflation, and other unavoidable situations. These people are not Grasshoppers. They are just down on their luck, something that happens to Ants and Grasshoppers alike.
I wish – oh how I wish – people could grasp this very basic concept: No one objects to helping others get back on their feet when they're down. Most of us consider it a privilege, a duty and a pleasure to help those who are down on their luck.
But the Grasshopper is not down on his luck due to misfortune. He simply does not have a work ethic to match the Ant's. Not only does the Grasshopper expect the Ant to help, but he refuses to help himself even when he can. Worse, our government then compels the Ant to help the Grasshopper at the point of a gun, whether the Ant wants to or not. That's when the milk of human – er, insect – kindness starts to run thin.
To forestall the firestorm of criticism undoubtedly in the works by outraged readers, I'll ask again: To what extent should able-bodied, perfectly-capable Grasshoppers be asked to provide their own resources for the winter? Or are Grasshoppers absolved from all responsibility for their own future?
And if the Ants are called upon to love their Grasshopper neighbors as themselves, why are the Grasshoppers excused from returning the sentiment? The Grasshopper, if he loved the Ant as himself, would get busy and store his own food so as not to be a burden to the poor hard-working Ant when the snow flies.
For those who accuse us Ants of un-Christian attitudes with regard to our neighbors, I'll reference a few biblical passages in support of personal responsibility, the most succinct of which is 2 Thessalonians 3:10: "… If a man will not work, he shall not eat." Note that it does not say "Can not work" but "Will not work." Big difference.
It should be obvious to anyone with an insect-sized grain of common sense that government entitlements discourage able-bodied Grasshoppers from working. And on a larger scale, I'm concerned that as more and more Grasshoppers receive the resources which are forcibly removed from the Ants, there will be fewer Ants to support the Grasshoppers.
Since the Bible is ever a handy resource for life's concerns, I'll direct the doubtful to parts of Proverbs 6:
"Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! …it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest – and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man."
Just a thought.
Patrice Lewis is a freelance writer and the author of "The Home Craft Business: How to Make it Survive and Thrive." She is co-founder (with her husband) of a home woodcraft business. The Lewises live on 40 acres in north Idaho with their two homeschooled children, assorted livestock, and a shop that overflows into the house with depressing regularity. Visit her blog at http://www.patricelewis.blogspot.com/.
Elitist disdain - Now here is CHANGE we can use!
"According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they're ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans -- for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn't an 'electoral wave,' it's a temper tantrum." --Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson
Cheer up; it could be worse
"Turning to the U.S. economy and the latest reading on the job market for August. Employers cut 54,000 workers from their payrolls, less than what analysts had predicted. The unemployment rate ticked up a notch: 9.6 percent now as discouraged workers restarted their job search. It's a mixed picture here, but it's giving some encouragement to those who are out there looking, some who are hanging onto their jobs and their businesses by a thread." --NBC's Brian Williams
Our Nung Allies know this story all too well...
"Politically divided, committed to two wars, in a deep recession, insolvent and still stunned by the financial meltdown of 2008, our government seems paralyzed. As European socialism implodes, for some reason a new statist U.S. government wants to copy failure by taking over ever more of the economy and borrowing trillions more dollars to provide additional entitlements. As panicky old allies look for American protection, we talk of slashing our defense budget. In apologetic fashion, we spend more time appeasing confident enemies than buttressing worried friends." --historian Victor Davis Hanson
Summer of Recovery - Jobless Claims UP AGAIN!
"It's not as bad as it could've been. That, as the Labor Day weekend began, was the cold comfort that many in the media took from the still-dismal August jobs report. Can't we expect something a little better? True enough, 68,000 new private-sector jobs were created last month, showing that private businesses, though gasping for breath, aren't dead yet. But overall, 54,000 jobs disappeared, raising the toll during the 'Recovery Summer' Vice President Joe Biden ridiculously hailed two months ago to 238,000. Nor was the uptick in the unemployment rate to 9.6% from 9.5% what you expect in a 'recovery.' This is not 'better than expected'; it's worse than expected. This can be gauged not by market expectations for modest job creation, but by long-term experience watching how jobs are created in a normal recovery. By that gauge, we're in the worst jobs slump since World War II. ... If it wasn't clear to everyone by now, it should be: All the actions this government has taken -- the $700 billion TARP program, the $862 billion 'stimulus,' the health care takeover, financial reform -- haven't 'saved or created' 3.8 million jobs, as claimed. Instead, they've destroyed millions of jobs -- and with them, the hopes and dreams of those who've lost the jobs. But the administration remains clueless, hinting that it may seek another 'stimulus' costing billions. This bunch is either willfully doing damage to the U.S. economy, or completely incompetent. On Friday, the president actually patted himself on the back, saying the employment report was 'positive news' that 'reflects the steps we've already taken to break the back of this recession.' If there's one thing that marks this administration as different from others, it's the steadfast refusal to remove its ideological blinders and learn from its mistakes." --Investor's Business Daily
BATF and the Night of Terror
by Bob Lesmeister
"What are you doing in my house? Get out of my house!"
This is what Janice Hart screamed as she witnessed agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (BATF) literally tearing her home apart. What had Janice Hart done to have her house destroyed? NOTHING. BATF had the wrong house and the wrong suspect. In what has become the rule instead of the exception, BATF agents blatantly and knowingly violated Hart's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th Amendment rights. In addition, agents once again forcefully abused children in the "pursuit of their duties."
As related by Margie Boule in the Washington OREGONIAN, in the evening of February 5th Janet [sic] Hart had just returned home to her house outside of Portland, Oregon, from the grocery store with her two young daughters when she noticed law enforcement agents swarming in and out of her home. Little did she realize that they had literally torn the inside of her house apart in the search for guns that didn't exist. When she stormed up to the side door (it had been torn off its hinges and then nailed back on) demanding an answer a BATF agent yanked her inside telling her she was going to jail. In typical BATF fashion, Hart was not informed of the charges against her, she was not read her rights, nor was she allowed to see after her children.
The children were terrified. Both daughters heard the BATF agent say Mrs. Hart was headed for jail and they became horrified. As Hart's daughter told THE OREGONIAN, "I was crying. They (BATF agents) say, 'Shut up and get back in the car.' So, I put up my knee like to get out, and he shut the door on my knee." BATF may call this act of child abuse an "accident" or something that happened in "the heat of confrontation" but the truth is, agents have been engaging in this sort of behavior since the inception of the BATF as a bureau. The most blatant case being the storming of the Branch Davidian compound with automatic weapons, knowing full well that children would be caught in the crossfire. Another incident was the case of Del and Melisa Knudson. During a raid on the Knudson home (no illegal firearms were found), Mrs. Knudson was hand-cuffed and forced to leave her 21-month old daughter unattended in a bathtub. Luckily, the baby didn't drown. Evidently, the agents were not concerned with the baby's welfare nor that of the parents.
As the daughters were being held outside the home, Hart was forced inside. In what must have seemed like a scene from a Gestapo raid in Nazi Germany, Janice Hart witnessed the destruction of her personal property by the "secret police." As she related to THE OREGONIAN, "I'm screaming, 'Oh my God, what are you doing to my house?' They told me to shut up. They said I could talk later. And they kept saying, 'You're going to prison, Janice.' The whole house was totally destroyed."
BATF agents in the kitchen were throwing plates and dishes on the floor. In the bedroom agents were ripping clothes off hangers and dumping them on the floor. Dresser drawers were overturned and strewn all about. Hart's life was terrorized, her children were abused, her house destroyed, and her personal belongings ravaged. During the Gestapo-style raid, while Mrs. Hart was in custody, BATF agents did not bother to insure that Hart was indeed the subject of their warrant. They simply didn't bother to check. And what's worse, when it was obvious the had the wrong person, they continued to terrorize Hart and her family.
In a complete violation of Hart's civil and constitutional rights, BATF agents herded her into the basement of the house and interrogated her. Like a scene from some cheap detective move, agents gave her the "third degree."
"There's about eight of them down there," she told the OREGONIAN, "and they're asking my over and over my name, my Social Security number, my birthdate. On and on, over and over. And I'm saying, 'What did I do?'"
Hart was forced to answer questions for over an hour before she was read her rights and then agents refused to allow her to call an attorney, both serious violations of Hart's Constitutional rights knowingly violated by BATF. George Kim, main investigator, should have known better. The person cited in the warrant was Janice Marie Harrell, who had used "Hart" as an alias, but that's where the similarity ends. The Janice the BATF was in search of had a scar on her face. Janice Hart did not. Harrell was a street woman, while Hart was a working-class homeowner with two children. Hart's eyes were a different color than Harrell's, her hair was different and she was heavier than the real suspect. There was nothing in Hart's background or physical appearance that matched Janice Marie Harrell.
"They pulled up my sleeves, looking for scars," said Hart. Of course, they weren't there. "I say, 'How do I remove scars? Scars don't disappear.' That's when he (Kim) started getting this expression on his face like 'I think I messed up.' But of course, they don't admit that to you."
So, when it's obvious that Agent Kim and his bumbling agents have the wrong person, do they release Hart? No, they arrest her. They read Hart her rights and take her to the Portland slammer. It was at the Portland police station when things finally turned around. The Portland police, professional and conscientious, treated Hart as a person, without intimidation and threats. Immediately upon being fingerprinted, they released her because it was obvious that Kim and his Keystone Cops had arrested the wrong person. It took Portland police 30 seconds to recognize that Janice Hart was not Janice Harrell and they released her, while Kim and his agents were standing nearby scratching their heads.
OREGONIAN reporter, Margie Boule recounted Hart's story for local Portland BATF resident agent in charge, Pete McLouth and he basically said that his agents did indeed pick up the wrong person. He couldn't deny it because Harrell was picked up shortly after the terrorist raid on Hart's home. That's about all he said, however, because McLouth took the standard BATF line of "I can't talk about it because it's an ongoing investigation."
The search warrants used by the BATF in the Hart case were much like the ones used in the Branch Davidian case. Someone, with hearsay knowledge, tipped BATF off. There was no evidence that Janice Hart was Janice Harrell and absolutely no evidence or even the slightest indication that Hart was illegally dealing firearms.
The raid was conducted simply because of one person's gossip. Even though Janice Hart no longer faces criminal charges, she is still feeling the harassment of BATF. She now suffers both sleep and eating disorders. She and her older daughter visit a psychiatrist to deal with the stress and her 4-year-old daughter has had related problems in school. Added to that, Hart's neighbors are no longer the friendly sort. To them, Hart is still a criminal subject of a police raid.
What is evident once again from this raid is the fact that BATF agents did not feel that violent behavior, destruction of property, violation of rights and child abuse would be challenged. It shows once again that silence from the top, read that to mean BATF Director Stephen Higgins' office, is taken as a green light to commit atrocities in the name of the law. Director Higgins is well aware that violations are being committed on a daily basis by his agents, yet he has done nothing and continues to do nothing about it. He once again has proved himself to be an ineffectual and incompetent law enforcement officer. Over the past year it has been shown that sexual harrassment and intimidation even within the ranks of the BATF has gone unabated and violent terrorist raids on innocent citizens continue at an alarming rate. This continues because the Director allows it. One word or one directive from Higgins could prevent future Constitutional and civil rights violations by BATF agents, but so far, he denies there is a problem. Unless citizens get involved and pressure the White House to appoint a professional person with integrity and respect for the Bill of Rights to head BATF, the abuses will continue.
Tom Cloyd, writing an editorial to THE OREGONIAN in response to the raid, sums it up best. "But the horror and violence go even beyond this, for child abuse was apparently involved in this case. Three children, ages 12, 9 and 4 were in the car when Hart arrived home to find it being trashed by federal agents. The children had to watch this act of incomprehensible violence and the 12-year-old was physically abused when and agent closed a door on her leg to keep her from getting out of the car. I hope others will join with me in demanding that federal law enforcement agents of all sorts be briefed on the Bill of Rights, be held accountable to the public for their actions and be prosecuted when they take our society's legitimate and law-driven pursuit of justice into their own hands."
Unfortunately, it seems that Director Higgins is unconcerned with the Bill of Rights as he permits his agents to violate the law time and again without censure or reprimand. I try hard not to draw parallels to the Gestapo of the 1930's and 40's and Stalin's ruthless NKVD, but breaking down of doors, the destruction of property, illegal interrogations etc. of innocent people by BATF are so close to "secret police" tactics that they could be right out of the KGB manual. Russia's first secret police was formed by Ivan the Terrible in 1565 and they were every bit as cruel as their descendants in the Cheka and the KGB. French biographer and historian Henri Troyat describes some of Ivan's secret police tactics: "Husbands were tortured in front of wives, mothers in front of children." I'm sure 12-year-old Nina Hart and 4-year-old Randi Hart know the feeling.
"What are you doing in my house? Get out of my house!"
This is what Janice Hart screamed as she witnessed agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (BATF) literally tearing her home apart. What had Janice Hart done to have her house destroyed? NOTHING. BATF had the wrong house and the wrong suspect. In what has become the rule instead of the exception, BATF agents blatantly and knowingly violated Hart's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th Amendment rights. In addition, agents once again forcefully abused children in the "pursuit of their duties."
As related by Margie Boule in the Washington OREGONIAN, in the evening of February 5th Janet [sic] Hart had just returned home to her house outside of Portland, Oregon, from the grocery store with her two young daughters when she noticed law enforcement agents swarming in and out of her home. Little did she realize that they had literally torn the inside of her house apart in the search for guns that didn't exist. When she stormed up to the side door (it had been torn off its hinges and then nailed back on) demanding an answer a BATF agent yanked her inside telling her she was going to jail. In typical BATF fashion, Hart was not informed of the charges against her, she was not read her rights, nor was she allowed to see after her children.
The children were terrified. Both daughters heard the BATF agent say Mrs. Hart was headed for jail and they became horrified. As Hart's daughter told THE OREGONIAN, "I was crying. They (BATF agents) say, 'Shut up and get back in the car.' So, I put up my knee like to get out, and he shut the door on my knee." BATF may call this act of child abuse an "accident" or something that happened in "the heat of confrontation" but the truth is, agents have been engaging in this sort of behavior since the inception of the BATF as a bureau. The most blatant case being the storming of the Branch Davidian compound with automatic weapons, knowing full well that children would be caught in the crossfire. Another incident was the case of Del and Melisa Knudson. During a raid on the Knudson home (no illegal firearms were found), Mrs. Knudson was hand-cuffed and forced to leave her 21-month old daughter unattended in a bathtub. Luckily, the baby didn't drown. Evidently, the agents were not concerned with the baby's welfare nor that of the parents.
As the daughters were being held outside the home, Hart was forced inside. In what must have seemed like a scene from a Gestapo raid in Nazi Germany, Janice Hart witnessed the destruction of her personal property by the "secret police." As she related to THE OREGONIAN, "I'm screaming, 'Oh my God, what are you doing to my house?' They told me to shut up. They said I could talk later. And they kept saying, 'You're going to prison, Janice.' The whole house was totally destroyed."
BATF agents in the kitchen were throwing plates and dishes on the floor. In the bedroom agents were ripping clothes off hangers and dumping them on the floor. Dresser drawers were overturned and strewn all about. Hart's life was terrorized, her children were abused, her house destroyed, and her personal belongings ravaged. During the Gestapo-style raid, while Mrs. Hart was in custody, BATF agents did not bother to insure that Hart was indeed the subject of their warrant. They simply didn't bother to check. And what's worse, when it was obvious the had the wrong person, they continued to terrorize Hart and her family.
In a complete violation of Hart's civil and constitutional rights, BATF agents herded her into the basement of the house and interrogated her. Like a scene from some cheap detective move, agents gave her the "third degree."
"There's about eight of them down there," she told the OREGONIAN, "and they're asking my over and over my name, my Social Security number, my birthdate. On and on, over and over. And I'm saying, 'What did I do?'"
Hart was forced to answer questions for over an hour before she was read her rights and then agents refused to allow her to call an attorney, both serious violations of Hart's Constitutional rights knowingly violated by BATF. George Kim, main investigator, should have known better. The person cited in the warrant was Janice Marie Harrell, who had used "Hart" as an alias, but that's where the similarity ends. The Janice the BATF was in search of had a scar on her face. Janice Hart did not. Harrell was a street woman, while Hart was a working-class homeowner with two children. Hart's eyes were a different color than Harrell's, her hair was different and she was heavier than the real suspect. There was nothing in Hart's background or physical appearance that matched Janice Marie Harrell.
"They pulled up my sleeves, looking for scars," said Hart. Of course, they weren't there. "I say, 'How do I remove scars? Scars don't disappear.' That's when he (Kim) started getting this expression on his face like 'I think I messed up.' But of course, they don't admit that to you."
So, when it's obvious that Agent Kim and his bumbling agents have the wrong person, do they release Hart? No, they arrest her. They read Hart her rights and take her to the Portland slammer. It was at the Portland police station when things finally turned around. The Portland police, professional and conscientious, treated Hart as a person, without intimidation and threats. Immediately upon being fingerprinted, they released her because it was obvious that Kim and his Keystone Cops had arrested the wrong person. It took Portland police 30 seconds to recognize that Janice Hart was not Janice Harrell and they released her, while Kim and his agents were standing nearby scratching their heads.
OREGONIAN reporter, Margie Boule recounted Hart's story for local Portland BATF resident agent in charge, Pete McLouth and he basically said that his agents did indeed pick up the wrong person. He couldn't deny it because Harrell was picked up shortly after the terrorist raid on Hart's home. That's about all he said, however, because McLouth took the standard BATF line of "I can't talk about it because it's an ongoing investigation."
The search warrants used by the BATF in the Hart case were much like the ones used in the Branch Davidian case. Someone, with hearsay knowledge, tipped BATF off. There was no evidence that Janice Hart was Janice Harrell and absolutely no evidence or even the slightest indication that Hart was illegally dealing firearms.
The raid was conducted simply because of one person's gossip. Even though Janice Hart no longer faces criminal charges, she is still feeling the harassment of BATF. She now suffers both sleep and eating disorders. She and her older daughter visit a psychiatrist to deal with the stress and her 4-year-old daughter has had related problems in school. Added to that, Hart's neighbors are no longer the friendly sort. To them, Hart is still a criminal subject of a police raid.
What is evident once again from this raid is the fact that BATF agents did not feel that violent behavior, destruction of property, violation of rights and child abuse would be challenged. It shows once again that silence from the top, read that to mean BATF Director Stephen Higgins' office, is taken as a green light to commit atrocities in the name of the law. Director Higgins is well aware that violations are being committed on a daily basis by his agents, yet he has done nothing and continues to do nothing about it. He once again has proved himself to be an ineffectual and incompetent law enforcement officer. Over the past year it has been shown that sexual harrassment and intimidation even within the ranks of the BATF has gone unabated and violent terrorist raids on innocent citizens continue at an alarming rate. This continues because the Director allows it. One word or one directive from Higgins could prevent future Constitutional and civil rights violations by BATF agents, but so far, he denies there is a problem. Unless citizens get involved and pressure the White House to appoint a professional person with integrity and respect for the Bill of Rights to head BATF, the abuses will continue.
Tom Cloyd, writing an editorial to THE OREGONIAN in response to the raid, sums it up best. "But the horror and violence go even beyond this, for child abuse was apparently involved in this case. Three children, ages 12, 9 and 4 were in the car when Hart arrived home to find it being trashed by federal agents. The children had to watch this act of incomprehensible violence and the 12-year-old was physically abused when and agent closed a door on her leg to keep her from getting out of the car. I hope others will join with me in demanding that federal law enforcement agents of all sorts be briefed on the Bill of Rights, be held accountable to the public for their actions and be prosecuted when they take our society's legitimate and law-driven pursuit of justice into their own hands."
Unfortunately, it seems that Director Higgins is unconcerned with the Bill of Rights as he permits his agents to violate the law time and again without censure or reprimand. I try hard not to draw parallels to the Gestapo of the 1930's and 40's and Stalin's ruthless NKVD, but breaking down of doors, the destruction of property, illegal interrogations etc. of innocent people by BATF are so close to "secret police" tactics that they could be right out of the KGB manual. Russia's first secret police was formed by Ivan the Terrible in 1565 and they were every bit as cruel as their descendants in the Cheka and the KGB. French biographer and historian Henri Troyat describes some of Ivan's secret police tactics: "Husbands were tortured in front of wives, mothers in front of children." I'm sure 12-year-old Nina Hart and 4-year-old Randi Hart know the feeling.
Mortgage Slavery, King Obama Style!
I read a great article from the Roseburg Beacon on how Tax Freedom Day moved up to August 19th this year. This is the day that the average worker labors to pay for government at all levels. As the pace of government expansion has grown quickly in the last two years, it takes 34 more days of work since 2008 to feed government. If it continues at this pace we will work for the government 365 days of the year in just seven years from now. If we worked all year to satisfy government, wouldn’t that make us slaves? What is we work more than half the year to feed government? Doesn’t that make us half-slaves?
The Kings of old England allowed people to live on their property if they paid their yearly tribute. These are now called property taxes. Today, in our country, if the government wants your property so that someone else can pay more tribute, your property can be expropriated or made worthless until you give in. This is especially worrisome for our personal security and safety as the federal government now owns most of the mortgages in our nation. Owned by government?
The Kings of old England allowed people to live on their property if they paid their yearly tribute. These are now called property taxes. Today, in our country, if the government wants your property so that someone else can pay more tribute, your property can be expropriated or made worthless until you give in. This is especially worrisome for our personal security and safety as the federal government now owns most of the mortgages in our nation. Owned by government?
Oregon, the state of excess
I had a young couple with a new baby renting from me on a HUD (government assisted rent) contract. They claimed that the man threw a rubber dog chew toy on the floor. It bounced and put a small crack in a window. A visiting home health nurse noticed the crack and questioned the mother. The nurse told her, “You leave your husband today, or we take your baby!” The husband was charged with domestic violence (not domestic abuse as he did not abuse her). He was forced to attend anger management classes and a restraining order was put on him. He could not see his wife or his child without court supervision for a year.
Now here’s where it gets even more interesting: the father called to tell me this story to break his lease. Since he was not allowed to visit, he no longer qualified as “head of household” on the HUD contract. His wife could not take over the lease without going through HUD’s long wait list. He was crying when he told his story, yet I found it hard to believe. Oregon Children’s Service Division called to tell me I could not hold the breaking of the lease against her in a domestic violence situation. He verified the man threw a dog toy down and acted like I did not take domestic violence seriously. This means that I, the property owner, must absorb the losses from a broken lease that the government refuses to call broken. I’ll know better next time.
Now here’s where it gets even more interesting: the father called to tell me this story to break his lease. Since he was not allowed to visit, he no longer qualified as “head of household” on the HUD contract. His wife could not take over the lease without going through HUD’s long wait list. He was crying when he told his story, yet I found it hard to believe. Oregon Children’s Service Division called to tell me I could not hold the breaking of the lease against her in a domestic violence situation. He verified the man threw a dog toy down and acted like I did not take domestic violence seriously. This means that I, the property owner, must absorb the losses from a broken lease that the government refuses to call broken. I’ll know better next time.
Parents, Mark Your Calendars: September 14th Is Obama Day At School!
Yesterday, White House sources confirmed that President Obama will deliver another back-to-school address aimed at all of the nation’s children. That’s right, the president will make September 14 the second-annual Obama Day at your local school!
You might recall last year’s Obama Day, for which the U.S. Department of Education put out teaching guides that gave parents across the country reasonable cause to fear a day of liberal politics and celebrating President Obama. You might also remember the divisive national uproar that precipitated, which ultimately culminated in a relatively staid — but nonetheless campaign-esque — speech, not to mention a fair amount of after-the-fact sneering at people who either didn’t want public-school kids exposed to left-wing politicking or just wanted their kids, you know, left alone by the president. Finally, you might recall the May Parade magazine graduation “address” the president wrote that offered just the kind of profit-denigrating, “service” extolling rhetoric that people feared eight months earlier:
Of course, each of you has the right to take your diploma and seek the quickest path to the biggest paycheck or the highest title possible. But remember: You can choose to broaden your concerns to include your fellow citizens and country instead. By tying your ambitions to America’s, you’ll hitch your wagon to a cause larger than yourself. You can choose a career in public service or the nonprofit sector, or teach in an underserved school. If you have medical training, you can work in an understaffed clinic. Love science? You can discover new sources of clean energy or launch a business that makes the most efficient and affordable solar panels or wind turbines.
So will this year’s Obama Day be as controversial as the last installment? Probably not.
For one thing, unless the White House is not just wearing blinders, but living in a full-on isolation tank, it won’t authorize the release of any lesson plans to go with the talk. And if it does, it will scrutinize them, put them before focus groups, and torture them until they give up any and all material that could be even minutely controversial.
Second, while there is plenty of anger to go around right now, there’s been no burning summer of discontent like last year’s spree of town-hall conflagrations. It seems the growing ranks of fuming Americans are now more focused on ballot boxes than soap boxes.
Finally, last year there was a sense that President Obama — who’d led the “stimulus” charge, driven the takeover of GM and Chrysler, was championing huge and incomprehensible health-care legislation, and had repeatedly been in Americans’ faces — was simply too much in our lives. Directing his near-ubiquity toward peoples’ kids only made matters worse. Oh, and some of the rather off-putting stuff from the “Cult of Obama,” as Gene Healy dubbed it, probably didn’t help.
This year, while certainly still a presence, it seems the president has made himself more scarce.
So the coming address is not likely to launch nearly the same seismic outrage as last year’s. But there’s still good reason to object to it.
No doubt the speech will feature prominent backdrop propaganda, sweeping views of packed-in, star-struck students, and camera angles designed to make the president appear just a bit larger than life. You know — standard campaign stuff many people don’t want in their schools. The speech will also almost certainly tout “major achievements” in education by the administration, especially the mega-overrated Race to the Top. So it will be politically self-serving — though masked by the plausible explanation that it’s just about “the children” — and yet another reminder why the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to interfere in education.
But there is one other, more mundane argument against this speech, and it is being made — as it was in 2009 — by the Washington Post’s Jay Matthews: the president will once again be eating up student learning time. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has often opined, American students probably need to spend significantly more time learning, not less. Yet his boss has apparently decided that every year he is going to take a little of that precious time and say “this is mine — look at me!”
And so we have to ask ourselves: Are the benefits of students being told to work hard and stay in school really worth the myriad problems that go with a controversial, inevitably politicized, time-grabbing, national presidential address? The answer can only be a resounding “no.”
You might recall last year’s Obama Day, for which the U.S. Department of Education put out teaching guides that gave parents across the country reasonable cause to fear a day of liberal politics and celebrating President Obama. You might also remember the divisive national uproar that precipitated, which ultimately culminated in a relatively staid — but nonetheless campaign-esque — speech, not to mention a fair amount of after-the-fact sneering at people who either didn’t want public-school kids exposed to left-wing politicking or just wanted their kids, you know, left alone by the president. Finally, you might recall the May Parade magazine graduation “address” the president wrote that offered just the kind of profit-denigrating, “service” extolling rhetoric that people feared eight months earlier:
Of course, each of you has the right to take your diploma and seek the quickest path to the biggest paycheck or the highest title possible. But remember: You can choose to broaden your concerns to include your fellow citizens and country instead. By tying your ambitions to America’s, you’ll hitch your wagon to a cause larger than yourself. You can choose a career in public service or the nonprofit sector, or teach in an underserved school. If you have medical training, you can work in an understaffed clinic. Love science? You can discover new sources of clean energy or launch a business that makes the most efficient and affordable solar panels or wind turbines.
So will this year’s Obama Day be as controversial as the last installment? Probably not.
For one thing, unless the White House is not just wearing blinders, but living in a full-on isolation tank, it won’t authorize the release of any lesson plans to go with the talk. And if it does, it will scrutinize them, put them before focus groups, and torture them until they give up any and all material that could be even minutely controversial.
Second, while there is plenty of anger to go around right now, there’s been no burning summer of discontent like last year’s spree of town-hall conflagrations. It seems the growing ranks of fuming Americans are now more focused on ballot boxes than soap boxes.
Finally, last year there was a sense that President Obama — who’d led the “stimulus” charge, driven the takeover of GM and Chrysler, was championing huge and incomprehensible health-care legislation, and had repeatedly been in Americans’ faces — was simply too much in our lives. Directing his near-ubiquity toward peoples’ kids only made matters worse. Oh, and some of the rather off-putting stuff from the “Cult of Obama,” as Gene Healy dubbed it, probably didn’t help.
This year, while certainly still a presence, it seems the president has made himself more scarce.
So the coming address is not likely to launch nearly the same seismic outrage as last year’s. But there’s still good reason to object to it.
No doubt the speech will feature prominent backdrop propaganda, sweeping views of packed-in, star-struck students, and camera angles designed to make the president appear just a bit larger than life. You know — standard campaign stuff many people don’t want in their schools. The speech will also almost certainly tout “major achievements” in education by the administration, especially the mega-overrated Race to the Top. So it will be politically self-serving — though masked by the plausible explanation that it’s just about “the children” — and yet another reminder why the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to interfere in education.
But there is one other, more mundane argument against this speech, and it is being made — as it was in 2009 — by the Washington Post’s Jay Matthews: the president will once again be eating up student learning time. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has often opined, American students probably need to spend significantly more time learning, not less. Yet his boss has apparently decided that every year he is going to take a little of that precious time and say “this is mine — look at me!”
And so we have to ask ourselves: Are the benefits of students being told to work hard and stay in school really worth the myriad problems that go with a controversial, inevitably politicized, time-grabbing, national presidential address? The answer can only be a resounding “no.”
We Don't Like Either of You
By Jim Yardley
Numerous opinion polls show that after the November elections, the Republican Party will have regained enough seats in the House to take back the majority position and the Speakership. Results for the Senate are less amenable to forecast, but even so, gains up to and including a remote chance for a majority are possible there as well.
It is necessary to remind Republicans of one salient fact about this predicted shift in political strength as a result of the 2010 midterm elections, and it is a fact that can be expressed in just a few words:
You may have a majority, but you do not have a mandate to govern in any way that you choose.
The Democrats have had a majority for six years, and they have controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House for the past two years. Their disastrous ouster in November will be because they tried to govern as if they had a mandate, and quite clearly, they didn't.
Significant majorities of American citizens have been opposed to many of the initiatives that have come out of Washington since January 20, 2009. The so-called Stimulus, Obamacare, the auto company bailouts, and other programs have all been based on Democratic Party claims that they held a popular mandate for "change." That these changes have been opposed by large majorities of voters in every case hardly indicates that such a mandate ever existed, except in the minds of political speechwriters and MSM apologists.
It should be clear that the Democratic Party majorities were a direct result of dissatisfaction with the direction the nation had taken in terms of limitations of personal freedom, the seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increasing threats of Islamic fundamentalism, and the other items on a stunning list of Republican failures. In retrospect, it seems clear that the 2006 and 2008 elections were no so much a vote for Democrats as they were against Republicans.
The 2010 midterm election appears to be shaping up as a vote against Democrats. Republicans should give that sentence a bit of thought. Americans are not voting for you. They know you are just as likely as Democrats to be venal, corrupt, stupid, doctrinaire, foolish, and shortsighted. Unfortunately, Republicans are the only option available.
This theme has been echoed several times in recent days. Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Grover Norquist, one of the original contributors to the Contract with America, who, 25 years ago, founded the organization Americans for Tax Reform. Mr. Norquist, a man who could hardly be called nonpartisan, compared the upcoming midterms to 1994, when the Republicans took the House. In his words:
There wasn't a Tea Party movement in '94. There was a Perot movement, which was much less visible and organized. This time we have a thousand mini-Perots (in the Tea Party leadership) who are against the Democrats and for the Republicans.
Well, the voters are certainly against the Democrats. As for being for Republicans, Walter Shapiro offered this assessment in his Politics Daily article describing President Obama's continuing rejection of the reality of voter motivation in 2008:
Obama has often spoken with frustration about his failure to receive enough credit from either the media or the voters for his long string of landmark legislative victories climaxing with health-care reform. But maybe the president's fatal error was that he saw the 2008 election as a mandate for far-reaching change when, in truth, it was a narrower rejection of Bush administration economic and military policies.
In essence, the balance of power in Washington is an endless ebb and flow of disgust for both parties, since each seems to react to the delusion that accompanies election to office. The delusion consists of the belief that (a) the voters love them, and (b) they have a mandate to govern.
The sudden and surprising emergence of the Tea Party movement is perhaps a response by voters to the seemingly endless series of elections that consists of voters going to the polls to "throw the bums out." It appears that the ordinary citizens of the United States want to be able to vote for something and are tired of being forced to merely choose which candidates to vote against.
Both parties should also be very, very afraid of the Tea Parties. Democrats still don't take them seriously and try to marginalize them by referring to them as "teabaggers," homophobes, racist, bigots, and so on. Perhaps the Democratic Party should keep track of the number of Tea Party-endorsed candidates who move into offices currently held by Democrats next January -- it should be very educational. They should also remember that pain is Mother Nature's tuition bill, and they are about to learn something.
Republicans view the Tea Parties differently but show the same condescension. Professional Republicans seem to think that Tea Partiers are available for their use as shock troops and can be ignored until the next election. That's why they seem so shocked when a candidate endorsed by the Tea Party wins a primary against their own chosen candidates. I refer Republicans to the paragraph above regarding tuition payments.
In short, both parties have to understand that the majority of American voters don't like either party. Until either party can produce candidates whom we are willing to vote for, instead of choosing which one to vote against, the Tea Parties and registered independents will continue to grow in size and influence until both Democrats and Republicans are listed in the encyclopedia next to the Whigs and the Bull Moose Party.
Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller, Vietnam veteran, and libertarian (small "l"). Jim blogs at jimyardley.wordpress.com, or he can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com.
Numerous opinion polls show that after the November elections, the Republican Party will have regained enough seats in the House to take back the majority position and the Speakership. Results for the Senate are less amenable to forecast, but even so, gains up to and including a remote chance for a majority are possible there as well.
It is necessary to remind Republicans of one salient fact about this predicted shift in political strength as a result of the 2010 midterm elections, and it is a fact that can be expressed in just a few words:
You may have a majority, but you do not have a mandate to govern in any way that you choose.
The Democrats have had a majority for six years, and they have controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House for the past two years. Their disastrous ouster in November will be because they tried to govern as if they had a mandate, and quite clearly, they didn't.
Significant majorities of American citizens have been opposed to many of the initiatives that have come out of Washington since January 20, 2009. The so-called Stimulus, Obamacare, the auto company bailouts, and other programs have all been based on Democratic Party claims that they held a popular mandate for "change." That these changes have been opposed by large majorities of voters in every case hardly indicates that such a mandate ever existed, except in the minds of political speechwriters and MSM apologists.
It should be clear that the Democratic Party majorities were a direct result of dissatisfaction with the direction the nation had taken in terms of limitations of personal freedom, the seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increasing threats of Islamic fundamentalism, and the other items on a stunning list of Republican failures. In retrospect, it seems clear that the 2006 and 2008 elections were no so much a vote for Democrats as they were against Republicans.
The 2010 midterm election appears to be shaping up as a vote against Democrats. Republicans should give that sentence a bit of thought. Americans are not voting for you. They know you are just as likely as Democrats to be venal, corrupt, stupid, doctrinaire, foolish, and shortsighted. Unfortunately, Republicans are the only option available.
This theme has been echoed several times in recent days. Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Grover Norquist, one of the original contributors to the Contract with America, who, 25 years ago, founded the organization Americans for Tax Reform. Mr. Norquist, a man who could hardly be called nonpartisan, compared the upcoming midterms to 1994, when the Republicans took the House. In his words:
There wasn't a Tea Party movement in '94. There was a Perot movement, which was much less visible and organized. This time we have a thousand mini-Perots (in the Tea Party leadership) who are against the Democrats and for the Republicans.
Well, the voters are certainly against the Democrats. As for being for Republicans, Walter Shapiro offered this assessment in his Politics Daily article describing President Obama's continuing rejection of the reality of voter motivation in 2008:
Obama has often spoken with frustration about his failure to receive enough credit from either the media or the voters for his long string of landmark legislative victories climaxing with health-care reform. But maybe the president's fatal error was that he saw the 2008 election as a mandate for far-reaching change when, in truth, it was a narrower rejection of Bush administration economic and military policies.
In essence, the balance of power in Washington is an endless ebb and flow of disgust for both parties, since each seems to react to the delusion that accompanies election to office. The delusion consists of the belief that (a) the voters love them, and (b) they have a mandate to govern.
The sudden and surprising emergence of the Tea Party movement is perhaps a response by voters to the seemingly endless series of elections that consists of voters going to the polls to "throw the bums out." It appears that the ordinary citizens of the United States want to be able to vote for something and are tired of being forced to merely choose which candidates to vote against.
Both parties should also be very, very afraid of the Tea Parties. Democrats still don't take them seriously and try to marginalize them by referring to them as "teabaggers," homophobes, racist, bigots, and so on. Perhaps the Democratic Party should keep track of the number of Tea Party-endorsed candidates who move into offices currently held by Democrats next January -- it should be very educational. They should also remember that pain is Mother Nature's tuition bill, and they are about to learn something.
Republicans view the Tea Parties differently but show the same condescension. Professional Republicans seem to think that Tea Partiers are available for their use as shock troops and can be ignored until the next election. That's why they seem so shocked when a candidate endorsed by the Tea Party wins a primary against their own chosen candidates. I refer Republicans to the paragraph above regarding tuition payments.
In short, both parties have to understand that the majority of American voters don't like either party. Until either party can produce candidates whom we are willing to vote for, instead of choosing which one to vote against, the Tea Parties and registered independents will continue to grow in size and influence until both Democrats and Republicans are listed in the encyclopedia next to the Whigs and the Bull Moose Party.
Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller, Vietnam veteran, and libertarian (small "l"). Jim blogs at jimyardley.wordpress.com, or he can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Obama Needs Your 401(k) to Balance His Budget
Bob Adelmann | Sep 06, 2010 |
The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth…pennies on the dollar.”
The move to confiscate those retirement dollars for government purposes was best illustrated by Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 when she announced plans to seize her citizens’ private pension funds. Writers at the Heritage Foundation said that while Kirchner claimed such seizure was necessary to protect her citizens’ investment accounts from the global meltdown, “most observers believe[d] her real motive [was] to use the $30 billion in seized assets to ease the massive debt obligations her leftist spendthrift government [had] run up.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, saying that “taking over the…pension fund assets [would] ease the cash crunch faced by [her] government.”
Corsi said he has a letter from the Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Debt, informing U.S. citizens that the federal government is rolling out a new program called “Treasury Direct” that will allow citizens “to purchase, manage, and redeem…savings bonds” electronically, as well as offering an option to purchase such bonds automatically through payroll savings or a personal checking account. This happened to coincide nicely, according to Corsi, with a bill offered by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to create “Automatic IRAs” that would require all employers and employees to invest in IRAs using that automatic deduction option, “whether they want to do so or not.”
And this happened to coincide also with a program being pushed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called “Retirement USA” which would create a government-forced retirement program with assets being directed into special Treasury Retirement Bonds, or R-Bonds. “Retirement USA” is promoting the idea that all workers have a “right” to a government retirement account, in addition to Social Security and any private pension plans those workers already have in place. Others behind “Retirement USA” also support more government dependency for workers, including the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Pension Rights Center.
All of this is being promoted by the idea that individual citizens aren’t saving enough for their retirement, and that consequently government has to “do something.” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash., above photo), Chairman of the House Ways and Mean’s Committee’ Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is confused about whose money is in those 401(k) plans: the individual contributor, or the government. He said that “since the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment [Congress is making] of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax savings], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”
The worldview of Rep. McDermott is revealing, and brings clarity to the point of view of many in the Washington establishment that the $4.5 trillion currently invested in 401(k) plans and other private pension plans that enjoy tax breaks actually belong to the government, and that when Congress loses $80 billion that would otherwise flow to Washington due to those tax breaks, it’s an “investment” that must “generate what we say it should”, or else it must be replaced with something else that works better.
The real “story behind the story” was revealed by Joe Wolverton here when he said,
…since the day of his inauguration, Barack Obama and his congressional co-conspirators have consistently and unapologetically set out to systematically nationalize the economy of the United States: first the banks; then the insurance companies; then the auto industry; then healthcare; and now the piece de resistance, the private savings accounts of millions of middle-class Americans.
But, thanks to the SEIU and their program “Retirement USA,” it’s all dressed up to look like a good deal for unsuspecting owners of retirement plans. In “Making the Case for a New System” they take the view that “A secure retirement is part of the American dream. Yet our retirement system is failing many Americans. Social Security is the cornerstone of our system, but as currently structured, is not meant to be our only retirement program. Pensions and savings plans are supposed to fill the gap, but too many workers don’t have plans, and too many plans don’t do the job.” They complain that:
* Private retirement plan coverage is not UNIVERSAL…
* For millions of Americans, private retirement benefits are not SECURE…
* And Private retirement benefits are not ADEQUATE…
And, continues “Retirement USA”’s website, “Social Security must be preserved and strengthened… [and] we must encourage employers to offer and maintain them.”[emphasis added]
Underlying all of this is, of course, the statist presumption that government knows best what’s good for the citizens, and when the citizens’ behavior fails to meet government expectations, then mandates and force must be used to do for those citizens what the government thinks is best.
And the fact that Washington is looking at annual trillion-dollar deficits “for as far as the eye can see,” that $4.5 trillion of private monies is just too tempting to ignore.
This article originally appeared at www.thenewamerican.com and is reposted here with permission.
A publication written by "We the People," The Constitutionalist Today is comprised of articles from a range of writers, journalists, and bloggers. As such, the opinions herein may not reflect the opinions of our staff, management, or editorial board.
The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth…pennies on the dollar.”
The move to confiscate those retirement dollars for government purposes was best illustrated by Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 when she announced plans to seize her citizens’ private pension funds. Writers at the Heritage Foundation said that while Kirchner claimed such seizure was necessary to protect her citizens’ investment accounts from the global meltdown, “most observers believe[d] her real motive [was] to use the $30 billion in seized assets to ease the massive debt obligations her leftist spendthrift government [had] run up.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, saying that “taking over the…pension fund assets [would] ease the cash crunch faced by [her] government.”
Corsi said he has a letter from the Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Debt, informing U.S. citizens that the federal government is rolling out a new program called “Treasury Direct” that will allow citizens “to purchase, manage, and redeem…savings bonds” electronically, as well as offering an option to purchase such bonds automatically through payroll savings or a personal checking account. This happened to coincide nicely, according to Corsi, with a bill offered by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to create “Automatic IRAs” that would require all employers and employees to invest in IRAs using that automatic deduction option, “whether they want to do so or not.”
And this happened to coincide also with a program being pushed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called “Retirement USA” which would create a government-forced retirement program with assets being directed into special Treasury Retirement Bonds, or R-Bonds. “Retirement USA” is promoting the idea that all workers have a “right” to a government retirement account, in addition to Social Security and any private pension plans those workers already have in place. Others behind “Retirement USA” also support more government dependency for workers, including the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Pension Rights Center.
All of this is being promoted by the idea that individual citizens aren’t saving enough for their retirement, and that consequently government has to “do something.” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash., above photo), Chairman of the House Ways and Mean’s Committee’ Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is confused about whose money is in those 401(k) plans: the individual contributor, or the government. He said that “since the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment [Congress is making] of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax savings], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”
The worldview of Rep. McDermott is revealing, and brings clarity to the point of view of many in the Washington establishment that the $4.5 trillion currently invested in 401(k) plans and other private pension plans that enjoy tax breaks actually belong to the government, and that when Congress loses $80 billion that would otherwise flow to Washington due to those tax breaks, it’s an “investment” that must “generate what we say it should”, or else it must be replaced with something else that works better.
The real “story behind the story” was revealed by Joe Wolverton here when he said,
…since the day of his inauguration, Barack Obama and his congressional co-conspirators have consistently and unapologetically set out to systematically nationalize the economy of the United States: first the banks; then the insurance companies; then the auto industry; then healthcare; and now the piece de resistance, the private savings accounts of millions of middle-class Americans.
But, thanks to the SEIU and their program “Retirement USA,” it’s all dressed up to look like a good deal for unsuspecting owners of retirement plans. In “Making the Case for a New System” they take the view that “A secure retirement is part of the American dream. Yet our retirement system is failing many Americans. Social Security is the cornerstone of our system, but as currently structured, is not meant to be our only retirement program. Pensions and savings plans are supposed to fill the gap, but too many workers don’t have plans, and too many plans don’t do the job.” They complain that:
* Private retirement plan coverage is not UNIVERSAL…
* For millions of Americans, private retirement benefits are not SECURE…
* And Private retirement benefits are not ADEQUATE…
And, continues “Retirement USA”’s website, “Social Security must be preserved and strengthened… [and] we must encourage employers to offer and maintain them.”[emphasis added]
Underlying all of this is, of course, the statist presumption that government knows best what’s good for the citizens, and when the citizens’ behavior fails to meet government expectations, then mandates and force must be used to do for those citizens what the government thinks is best.
And the fact that Washington is looking at annual trillion-dollar deficits “for as far as the eye can see,” that $4.5 trillion of private monies is just too tempting to ignore.
This article originally appeared at www.thenewamerican.com and is reposted here with permission.
A publication written by "We the People," The Constitutionalist Today is comprised of articles from a range of writers, journalists, and bloggers. As such, the opinions herein may not reflect the opinions of our staff, management, or editorial board.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Where’s the Food? The Fear of Uncertainty
As the economy continues to sink deeper, forcing more people into unemployment lines, uncertainty is driving otherwise clear thinking people into a horde mentality that poses a growing danger to society. A recent episode in Tulsa involving a federally subsidized food distribution program is illustrative of the new reality of this uncertainty as increasing numbers of people begin to wonder where their next meal will come from.
Iron Gate, a church-sponsored food distribution program, and recipient of federal stimulus dollars, provides food boxes to eligible low income families. Typically these boxes, containing about 30 pounds of food, are distributed monthly for free to about 165 families who qualify based on their income and dependent status.
It didn’t take long for some bits of erroneous information to spread through viral emails and social media before the hordes converged upon the church to receive their share of free food. At the unexpected sight of 2000 people lining up one morning, the alarmed staff of Iron Gate had no choice but to suspend the food box distribution.
If you have ever witnessed the scene of a promotion van pulling up at a local fair and then throwing out samples of food, you may have been shocked at the sight of healthy, stampeding people to get their free bag. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine the ugly scene of a crowd of adults, stoked with the fear of uncertainty, as they jostle for position in a line for free food boxes.
It was a frightening situation heightened by a misinformed crowd jammed together in the hot Tulsa sun expecting something for free. The same scene is likely to be repeated in many other towns and cities as local food banks are reporting a 40 to 50% increase in traffic largely from first time recipients.
As these types of federal and state subsidized free food distribution programs continue to expand, the growing throngs of economically displaced people, fearing an uncertain future, will likely become increasingly panicked at the thought of empty pantries.
The societal danger is that as the crisis worsens, demand for food assistance will grow exponentially, both because of the food shortage and rising prices. As the economic uncertainty continues to spread the entitlement mentality will creep among those who are marginally affected by financial circumstances. Observers of the Iron Gate incident noted that the line of 2000 was comprised of a broad cross section of the economic strata that included many people without immediate need for assistance.
The bigger threat is that as a liberal-minded government continues to expand the supply of free food, it will actually aggravate the problem, by creating a growing dependency class and consuming an ever-larger portion of the market for food. It has the potential of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy which can only exacerbate the problem.
A family in economic distress can be pushed over the edge when there is fear as to the source of their next meal. While this may be a way of existence for hundreds of millions around the world, American families haven’t faced that kind of uncertainty since the 1930s. As more families join the ranks of the economically distressed, their collective fear could strain the tolerances of society and the ability for the government to provide for them. It is a frightening situation.
Iron Gate, a church-sponsored food distribution program, and recipient of federal stimulus dollars, provides food boxes to eligible low income families. Typically these boxes, containing about 30 pounds of food, are distributed monthly for free to about 165 families who qualify based on their income and dependent status.
It didn’t take long for some bits of erroneous information to spread through viral emails and social media before the hordes converged upon the church to receive their share of free food. At the unexpected sight of 2000 people lining up one morning, the alarmed staff of Iron Gate had no choice but to suspend the food box distribution.
If you have ever witnessed the scene of a promotion van pulling up at a local fair and then throwing out samples of food, you may have been shocked at the sight of healthy, stampeding people to get their free bag. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine the ugly scene of a crowd of adults, stoked with the fear of uncertainty, as they jostle for position in a line for free food boxes.
It was a frightening situation heightened by a misinformed crowd jammed together in the hot Tulsa sun expecting something for free. The same scene is likely to be repeated in many other towns and cities as local food banks are reporting a 40 to 50% increase in traffic largely from first time recipients.
As these types of federal and state subsidized free food distribution programs continue to expand, the growing throngs of economically displaced people, fearing an uncertain future, will likely become increasingly panicked at the thought of empty pantries.
The societal danger is that as the crisis worsens, demand for food assistance will grow exponentially, both because of the food shortage and rising prices. As the economic uncertainty continues to spread the entitlement mentality will creep among those who are marginally affected by financial circumstances. Observers of the Iron Gate incident noted that the line of 2000 was comprised of a broad cross section of the economic strata that included many people without immediate need for assistance.
The bigger threat is that as a liberal-minded government continues to expand the supply of free food, it will actually aggravate the problem, by creating a growing dependency class and consuming an ever-larger portion of the market for food. It has the potential of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy which can only exacerbate the problem.
A family in economic distress can be pushed over the edge when there is fear as to the source of their next meal. While this may be a way of existence for hundreds of millions around the world, American families haven’t faced that kind of uncertainty since the 1930s. As more families join the ranks of the economically distressed, their collective fear could strain the tolerances of society and the ability for the government to provide for them. It is a frightening situation.
Vermont, those little rascals!
*THIS MAY MAKE YOUR DAY!*
Vermont State Rep. Fred Maslack has read the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as Vermont 's own Constitution very carefully, and his strict interpretation of these documents is popping some eyeballs in New England and elsewhere.
Maslack recently proposed a bill to register "non-gun-owners" and require
them to pay a $500 fee to the state. Thus Vermont would become the
first state to require a permit for the luxury of going about unarmed and
assess a fee of $500 for the privilege of not owning a gun.
Maslack read the "militia" phrase of the Second Amendment as not only the right of the individual citizen to bear arms, but as a clear mandate todo so. He believes that universal gun ownership was advocated by the Framers of the Constitution as an antidote to a "monopoly of force" by the government as well as criminals. Vermont 's constitution states explicitly that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" and those persons who are "conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms" shall be required to "pay such equivalent.."
Clearly, says Maslack, Vermonters have a constitutional obligation to arm themselves, so that they are capable of responding to "any situation that may arise."
Under the bill, adults who choose not to own a firearm would be required to register their name, address, Social Security Number, and driver's license number with the state. "There is a legitimate government interest in knowing who is not prepared to defend the state should they be asked to do so," Maslack says
Vermont already boasts a high rate of gun ownership along with the least restrictive laws of any state .. it's currently the only state that allows a citizen to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. This combination of plenty of guns and few laws regulating them has resulted in a crime rate that is the third lowest in the nation.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
This makes sense! There is no reason why gun owners should have to pay taxes to support police protection for people not wanting to own guns. Let them contribute their fair share and pay their own way.
Vermont State Rep. Fred Maslack has read the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as Vermont 's own Constitution very carefully, and his strict interpretation of these documents is popping some eyeballs in New England and elsewhere.
Maslack recently proposed a bill to register "non-gun-owners" and require
them to pay a $500 fee to the state. Thus Vermont would become the
first state to require a permit for the luxury of going about unarmed and
assess a fee of $500 for the privilege of not owning a gun.
Maslack read the "militia" phrase of the Second Amendment as not only the right of the individual citizen to bear arms, but as a clear mandate todo so. He believes that universal gun ownership was advocated by the Framers of the Constitution as an antidote to a "monopoly of force" by the government as well as criminals. Vermont 's constitution states explicitly that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" and those persons who are "conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms" shall be required to "pay such equivalent.."
Clearly, says Maslack, Vermonters have a constitutional obligation to arm themselves, so that they are capable of responding to "any situation that may arise."
Under the bill, adults who choose not to own a firearm would be required to register their name, address, Social Security Number, and driver's license number with the state. "There is a legitimate government interest in knowing who is not prepared to defend the state should they be asked to do so," Maslack says
Vermont already boasts a high rate of gun ownership along with the least restrictive laws of any state .. it's currently the only state that allows a citizen to carry a concealed firearm without a permit. This combination of plenty of guns and few laws regulating them has resulted in a crime rate that is the third lowest in the nation.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
This makes sense! There is no reason why gun owners should have to pay taxes to support police protection for people not wanting to own guns. Let them contribute their fair share and pay their own way.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Kind Obama has new Tax's for you! Just in time for Christmas!
In just six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.
They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.
These will all expire on January 1, 2011.
Personal income tax rates will rise.
The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).
The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.
All the rates in between will also rise.
Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.
The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
* The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
* The 25% bracket rises to 28%
* The 28% bracket rises to 31%
* The 33% bracket rises to 36%
* The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family.
The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.
The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.
The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.
The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax.
This year only, there is no death tax. (It’s a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don’t make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don’t have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family’s assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn’t make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That’s 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?
Higher tax rates on savers and investors.
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.
The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.
These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave:
Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or healthreimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The "Special Needs Kids Tax"
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.
There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.
Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.
Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Third Wave:
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.
The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000.
This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment.
In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.
There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available..
Tax credits for education will be limited.
Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.
Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.
The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.
This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.
PDF Version Read more:; http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171##ixzz0sY8waPq1
And worse yet?
Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!
One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the "new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!
Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.
If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt.. That's what you'll pay next year.
For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.
Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries......
On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001,
as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."
- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.
Why am I sending you this? The same reason I hope you forward this to every single person in your address book.
People have the right to know the truth because an election is coming in November
They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.
These will all expire on January 1, 2011.
Personal income tax rates will rise.
The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).
The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.
All the rates in between will also rise.
Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.
The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
* The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
* The 25% bracket rises to 28%
* The 28% bracket rises to 31%
* The 33% bracket rises to 36%
* The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family.
The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.
The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.
The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.
The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax.
This year only, there is no death tax. (It’s a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don’t make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don’t have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family’s assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn’t make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That’s 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?
Higher tax rates on savers and investors.
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.
The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.
These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave:
Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or healthreimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The "Special Needs Kids Tax"
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.
There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.
Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.
Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Third Wave:
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.
The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000.
This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment.
In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.
There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available..
Tax credits for education will be limited.
Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.
Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.
The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.
This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.
PDF Version Read more:
And worse yet?
Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!
One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the "new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!
Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.
If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt.. That's what you'll pay next year.
For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.
Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries......
On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001,
as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."
- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.
Why am I sending you this? The same reason I hope you forward this to every single person in your address book.
People have the right to know the truth because an election is coming in November
Friday, August 27, 2010
Blowback - Cash For Clunkers
Speaking of the auto industry and the government, the Cash for Clunkers program has had an entirely predictable result -- prices for used cars have jumped 10 percent over last year. When people traded in their used cars on new cars they likely would have bought anyway under the Clunkers program, the government ordered those assets destroyed rather than resold. That contraction of supply has caused price increases for those who can least afford it. As blogger Ed Morrissey put it, "In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families. Nice work."
Reflecting its typical "we know best" disdain for the peasants
Regulatory Commissars: They Knew Drilling Ban Would Kill Jobs
With unemployment hovering at 9.5 percent -- real total unemployment, called U6, is much higher -- what's another 23,000 jobs lost? Apparently, not much to Barack Obama. Previously unreleased documents show that his administration issued the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling despite knowing the ban would kill thousands of jobs. According to The Wall Street Journal, the documents reveal that Michael Bromwich, the head regulator of offshore oil exploration, told Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that the temporary ban "would result in 'lost direct employment' affecting approximately 9,450 workers and 'lost jobs from indirect and induced effects' affecting about 13,797 more."
Also, regardless of confirmation from the region of the moratorium's devastating impact, the government says the ban will continue. That's right -- the beatings will continue until morale improves. Reflecting its typical "we know best" disdain for the peasants, the administration has even claimed the impact wasn't as bad as industry experts said. Try telling that to those 23,000 former workers.
In related news, House Republican Leader John Boehner has called on Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Tim "Tax Cheat" Geithner, National Economic Council Head Larry Summers, and the rest of the White House economic team. (Senior Economic Adviser Christina Romer and Budget Director Peter Orszag have already abandoned ship.) Pointing to "job-killing tax hike[s]," skyrocketing spending and a penchant for new regulations, Boehner said, "We've tried 19 months of government-as-community organizer. It hasn't worked." A political chess move to be sure, but we won't argue that government-as-community organizer is getting rather expensive.
With unemployment hovering at 9.5 percent -- real total unemployment, called U6, is much higher -- what's another 23,000 jobs lost? Apparently, not much to Barack Obama. Previously unreleased documents show that his administration issued the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling despite knowing the ban would kill thousands of jobs. According to The Wall Street Journal, the documents reveal that Michael Bromwich, the head regulator of offshore oil exploration, told Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that the temporary ban "would result in 'lost direct employment' affecting approximately 9,450 workers and 'lost jobs from indirect and induced effects' affecting about 13,797 more."
Also, regardless of confirmation from the region of the moratorium's devastating impact, the government says the ban will continue. That's right -- the beatings will continue until morale improves. Reflecting its typical "we know best" disdain for the peasants, the administration has even claimed the impact wasn't as bad as industry experts said. Try telling that to those 23,000 former workers.
In related news, House Republican Leader John Boehner has called on Obama to fire Treasury Secretary Tim "Tax Cheat" Geithner, National Economic Council Head Larry Summers, and the rest of the White House economic team. (Senior Economic Adviser Christina Romer and Budget Director Peter Orszag have already abandoned ship.) Pointing to "job-killing tax hike[s]," skyrocketing spending and a penchant for new regulations, Boehner said, "We've tried 19 months of government-as-community organizer. It hasn't worked." A political chess move to be sure, but we won't argue that government-as-community organizer is getting rather expensive.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Ground Zero, New York
Take a look at the Ottoman Empire's habit of building a Mosque on the holy ground of the Empires they've conquered. If you ask me, that is the impetus behind the Ground Zero Mosque. Next step: Iran will seize Iraq the 2nd Holiest place in Islam. Step Two: Iram will seize Saudi Arabia, the Holiest place in Islam. They will unite the entire Muslim world under one banner, control 1/2 of the world's oil reserves, cut off all oil to the US and the west. The rest, as they say, is history and so will be the once great nation of America. No Islam-O-phobia at all.
Obama White House revokes your right to privacy
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)
It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism." (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (Comment on this story.)
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html#ixzz0xmADY9EI
That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)
It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism." (Read about one man's efforts to escape the surveillance state.)
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (Comment on this story.)
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013150,00.html#ixzz0xmADY9EI
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