ARE US GUN OWNERS FUELING MEXICO'S DRUG WAR?

By Erich Pratt
April 5, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently stated that resurrecting the Clinton semi-auto ban would help stop U.S. guns from getting to the Mexican drug cartels. Before imposing any new legislation, however, there are at least ten questions the Obama administration should be forced to answer.

10. Are Mexican drug dealers really standing in line at American gun stores, waiting to transport thousands of guns back into Mexico?

9. This country imposes a Brady Law background check for anyone who purchases a gun from a gun dealer -- a law that is intended to keep guns from getting into the wrong hands. Does this mean the Brady Law is ineffective and needs to be repealed?

8. Press reports indicate the Mexican drug cartels are compiling automatic weapons, grenades, and grenade launchers. Since those weapons aren't available to the average U.S. citizen, doesn't this, once again, support the old adage that "when guns are banned, only criminals will have guns"?

7. What about drugs … aren't they illegal? Or, are we to believe the Mexican cartels are getting their drugs from American citizens, as well?

6. Even in this country, we have seen government-issued weapons being lost, stolen or illegally sold to the criminal market. So given the fact that our government has shipped millions of guns to arm crooked military and police departments in Central America over the past 50 years, is it really too difficult to believe that many of those guns have trickled into the hands of the Mexican drug runners?

5. Americans are supposed to believe that 90% of the cartels' guns come from the U.S. -- a factoid that is supposed to justify more gun control. But given the fact that 75-90% of all illegal immigration comes across our southern border, why does this scandal not justify immediate action to seal our border?

4. Many politicians assume the answer to every crime problem is to punish law-abiding gun owners. But isn't that as silly as thinking that a ban on money is an appropriate response to the illegal profits being made by the drug "industry"?

3. Mexico has always treated the emigration of its citizens into the U.S. as a situation that is our problem. Well, if guns really are flowing across our southern border into Mexico, shouldn't this gun traffic be their problem?

2. The Obama administration seems to be following Rahm Emmanuel's dictum that, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Given this prevalent theme, doesn't the whole US-guns-are-going-to-Mexico refrain seem to be a self-serving effort on Eric Holder's part to justify his call for resurrecting the Clinton gun ban?

1. Already more than 60 Democrat congressmen have issued a letter to Eric Holder to object to his calls for more gun control. This is noteworthy, since the last time an administration tried to ram a semi-auto ban down the throats of the American people -- in 1994 -- millions of pro-gun Democrats crossed party lines to usher in a Republican majority in Congress and in state legislatures across the country. So the last question gun owners should ask is: "Mr.Holder, do you feel lucky?"

© 2009 Erich Pratt - All Rights Reserved

IT ISN'T CAPITALISM, IT'S GREED

By Marilyn M. Barnewall
April 8, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Why is the economy not growing? Why are none of the "jump-starts" being injected into the economy by Fed Head Helicopter Ben Bernanke and Treasury Tim (Forgot to Pay My Taxes) Geithner not working? Why will hundreds of billions of dollars President Obama got approved to stimulate the economy not work? Why didn't the first $800 billion work - or the checks that were sent out to all Americans so they could spend the money and stimulate the economy?

What is the problem?

The problem is, the American people have begun doing the right thing - saving - while the government continues doing precisely the thing that got us into the economic mess in the first place: Overspending.

Have you ever tried to put a roof on a house without first building four walls on which the roof can be placed? The actions being taken by the government to "stimulate" the economy is a little like that. They're trying to put a roof on a house with no walls and the roof keeps falling to the ground. Puzzled statesmen like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Neighborhood Organizer Barack Obama stand around with puzzled looks on their faces wondering why the roof cannot be made to stay up just because there are no walls.

To understand why the economy is not improving gives people a frightening insight into the way the minds of politicians think. Many have law degrees, but few, if any, understand the business of banking. We have economists who understand econometric models which, because they were filled with misassumptions, keep spitting out wrong answers. Without accurate computer models to guide them, without correct assumptions, economists are at a loss.

What can we tell about how politicians think from what they have done to fight the abominable unemployment statistics and all of the other data that tells a very clear story?

We can tell that they think things are going to go back to the way they were. We should take up a collection and send each of them a copy of the song "Memories." because no matter what they think, things will not go back to the way they were. I hate to tell that to a man Warren Buffet's age - I'm not far behind him - but it's true.

The computer models that spit out statistics about economic trends and what it means when averages are missed have been wrong for a long time. GIGO applies here - Garbage In, Garbage Out.

The current crisis started with the Community Reinvestment Act and moved to NAFTA. It started before then, but that was the first time our politicians made it apparent they thought the new era of technology and service could totally replace the industrial and manufacturing era.

In 1860, we moved from an economy driven by agriculture to an economy driven by industry and manufacturing. Did we tell Mexico or the nations of South America they should produce our farm goods? No. The agriculture economy may have taken a back seat to Henry Ford's Model T, but agriculture, which had been the driving force of the American economy for a hundred years, remained in tact in America.

In 1960, we moved from an economy driven by industry and manufacturing to an economy driven by technology and the service industry. Instead of maintaining our industrial base and keeping our manufacturing businesses strong, we shipped those jobs off to Mexico (at first) and then to any nation that could provide lower cost labor than was available in the U.S.A. For those who do not recognize it, that is called "corporate greed."

And so the current problem began.

If the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department were able to fix the banking industry tomorrow, how many Americans would rush out to borrow money?

It is, of course, an unanswerable question. so, let's approach it from a different perspective.

How many people do you know who feel totally secure about their jobs and ongoing salary increases? How many of them feel totally secure about their retirement funds? How many of them trust the government? How do the 5 or 6 million documented people who are out of work borrow money from a bank for a new car or a home mortgage when they have no way to repay the loan?

The economy is not growing because people are not spending money. When people do not spend money, businesses do not grow. They do not hire people to create products that people are not buying. People who are earning enough to spend see what's going on around them and, rather than spend, spend, spend like the government wants them to do, they save, save, save. And they are right to do so! The old American economy was dependent upon the ongoing indebtedness of us all. the "service" economy. That's what failed. but the politicians haven't figured it out, yet. The American people, however, have.

This seems a pretty basic and logical problem. All it requires to solve it is a little common sense. the one commodity with which America's politicians are certainly not blessed.

We've learned that some banks got "too large to fail" because of the impact it would have on the "total system." That tells me there's something wrong with the total system and the people who created it. It tells me the politicians and bureaucrats who want to make bigger the "too big to fail" organizations that caused the problem in the first place don't know up from down.

We've learned that the people who regulate Wall Street don't know what the hell they are doing! It was apparent that when the Securities and Exchange Commission did away with the "uptick" law in July of 2007, that made it possible for greedy little men who manage huge amounts of money to manipulate the stock market. to literally cause large companies to fail. If the uptick law were reinstated, it would help prevent such manipulations.

I began writing about the Community Reinvestment Act being at the base of the home mortgage problem years ago. I wrote my first article about Fannie Mae in 2003.

For those who wonder why so many of us think the current economic crisis has been manufactured to pull a J.P. Morgan of yesteryear - buy up your competitors by using the media to create a run on the business or bank - it's simple. The reason it's simple is because anyone with an IQ two points above plant life can see what the problems are. The problems are over in right field and government and the Fed (which is not part of the government) are trying to catch fly balls in left field. Government batters are facing the stands rather than the pitcher's mound. Either these people should go on record as being dumber than dumb, or they are helping to manufacture an economic crisis that will remove sovereignty from nations all over the world. Those are the only two possibilities.

Someone needs to tell Barney and Chris and Ben and Tim and Barack that the days of consumer spending for things people want but don't need is over. People have learned a great deal during the almost two-year ordeal of broken promises and outright lies.

They have learned that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were doing everything in their legislative power to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac making bad mortgage loans to people who couldn't afford them. They have learned that John McCain and George W. Bush tried to stop them and were ineffective. They have learned that they have a President who, during a Monday night speech to the nation, adamantly rejects earmarks because of the seriousness of our economic crisis - and the next day says he will sign a budget that has 9,000 of them.

A lot of people are going to tell you that the status of our economy proves that capitalism does not work. What a bunch of balderdash! We haven't had a capitalist economy in America since the first job was sent to Mexico under NAFTA.

What we have is a bunch of greedy people who we, the people, have elected to office. Keep in mind that Adam Smith who created the capitalist system (just as Kark Marx created the socialist and communist systems that redistribute wealth) said that capitalism was a profit-motivated form of economics. He made it very clear that when greed became the driving factor behind an economy, it was not capitalism at work. It was greed.

© 2009 Marilyn M. Barnewall - All Rights Reserved

Marilyn Barnewall received her graduate degree in Banking from the University of Colorado Graduate School of Business in 1978. She created the first wealth creation (credit-driven) private bank in America in the 1970s. Prior to her 21-year banking career, she was a newspaper reporter, advertising copywriter, public relations director, magazine editor, assistant to the publisher, singer, dog trainer, and an insurance salesperson and manager.

She was named one of America's top 100 businesswomen in the book, What It Takes (Dolphin/Doubleday; Gardenswartz and Roe) and was one of the founders of the Committee of 200, the official organization of America's top 200 businesswomen. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-08), Who's Who of American Women (2006-08), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-08), and Who's Who in the World (2008).

Web site:

E-Mail: marilynmacg@juno.com

TAXPAYER TEA PARTIES ALL ACROSS AMERICA

By Margaret Goodwin
April 5, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Have you had enough taxation, regulation, over-spending, over-borrowing, bailouts, stimulus packages, and redistribution of wealth? How well is your government serving you?

• Our elected representatives are gutting our economy with irresponsible borrowing and spending for Toxic Asset Relief Programs, bailouts, and stimulus packages that benefit their major campaign contributors at your expense.
• They're diluting all of our savings, income, and retirement funds by printing up trillions of dollars of toilet-paper currency, leading to hyper-inflation and the devaluation of every dollar you own or earn.
• They're mortgaging our nation to China and other foreign powers, and indenturing our children and grandchildren to pay off the astronomical debt they're incurring in our name.
• They're driving the industries that sustain our economy off-shore through prohibitively expensive and increasingly restrictive regulation, ostensibly to protect "the environment" and prevent "climate change."
• They're establishing a whole new elite class of government employees who produce nothing, but are compensated more highly than the private sector can afford to match, and are paid at the expense of the taxpayers.
• They created this economic crisis by establishing social engineering as economic policy, and now they're pretending to get us out of it the same way they got us into it -- by loosening up credit, promoting risk-free mortgages for those who still can't afford to buy homes, and investing our money in the same toxic assets that are threatening the world economy!

On top of that, they plan to expand entitlement programs, under the misguided belief that government should provide for everybody who can't or won't provide for themselves -- at the expense of those who do. They believe they need to pass even more laws to protect us from ourselves. States are drafting new regulations to determine how we can and can't use our private property.

And, at every level, they're absolutely convinced that they know how to spend our money better than we do.

If the founding fathers could have even imagined the plethora of laws, regulations, ordinances, taxes, licenses, permits, fees, etc. that we are subject to today, and which are constantly increasing, they would roll over in their graves. Yet our current administration, and Congress, seem to believe we do not have enough government. They want to see government expanded at an even greater rate than it's already expanding. One has to wonder what these people think the ultimate role of government should be. -- It's certainly a far cry from what our founding fathers intended.

If you've had enough, and you're ready to stand up and send a message to your legislators that their days in office are numbered unless they STOP THE SPENDING, STOP THE BORROWING, STOP THE TAXING, STOP THE PORK-PADDING, and STOP REGULATING OUR ECONOMY INTO INSOLVENCY, find your nearest Taxpayer Tea Party and join us in protest on April 15.

It's time to take a stand against overtaxation and overregulation. Please join me, and millions of others, in telling our government Get Your Hand Out of My Pocket and Leave Me Alone!

To find the Taxpayer Tea Party nearest you, click here.

© 2009 Margaret Goodwin - All Rights Reserved

FROM FREEDOM TO SERVITUDE
PART 1


By Berit Kjos

April 9, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

THE POWER AND PERVERSION OF LAWS

"Watching the markets... two interlocking phrases immediately come to mind: Ordo ab Chaos, and Crisis Equals Opportunity. Ordo ab Chaos is a Latin phrase and the motto of the Thirty-Third Degree of Freemasonry.[1] It means, 'Order out of Chaos.'”[2] Carl Teichrib

"Never waste a good crisis." Hillary Clinton [see video]

"...the financial crisis will lead to the creation of a global central bank and a global single currency within 15 years."[3] Stephen Gallo

“Once a nation parts with control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws.”[4] W.L. Mackenzie King [former Prime Minister of Canada]

"I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God... and the curse, if you do not obey...." Deuteronomy 11:26-28

During the Nazi occupation of Norway (1939-1945), my father joined the Norwegian resistance movement and was willing to die for his country. But when the post-war years brought creeping socialism, he became disillusioned. Finally he chose to immigrate to America, which shone like a beacon of opportunity across Europe's war-torn lands.

Entering New York's harbor some years later, we gazed in awe at the Statue of Liberty. But even as we ate our first hamburger soon afterwards, America was changing. Dwight D. Eisenhower, our war-time hero, was now president. John Foster Dulles -- a founding member of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) -- was his Secretary of State.

Like most Americans, we had no idea what was happening "behind the scenes." We didn't know that Dulles had been a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation -- or that he collaborated with Alger Hiss, an active member of the Communist Party, and had helped draft the preamble to the UN Charter back in 1945.[5]

Nor did we realize that our Secretary of State had chaired a 1942 Federal (later renamed National) Council of Churches conference. In an article titled Conforming the Church to the New Millennium, I summarized the conference report. While Hitler's armies were ravaging Europe, the Council used that devastating crisis as an opportunity to promote its agenda:

a world government of delegated powers
immediate limitations on national sovereignty
a [single] democratically controlled international bank
a universal system of money
worldwide freedom of immigration
even distribution of the world’s natural wealth.[6]
Does that sound familiar? Apparently that last point didn't originate with Obama! Even Time magazine was shocked! Here's its summary of the report:

“Some of the conference’s economic opinions were almost as sensational as the extreme internationalism of its political program. It held that a ‘new order of economic life is both imminent and imperative' – a new order that is sure to come either ‘through voluntary cooperation within the framework of democracy or through explosive political revolution.’”[7]

Considering Alger Hiss' influence within the Council of Churches and friendship with Dulles [See note], it shouldn't surprise us. His Marxist goals fit right into a church establishment already infiltrated with socialist ideology. [8] In spite of his Marxist aims, he served President Roosevelt both in the State Department and as his adviser at the 1945 Yalta Peace Conference, where much of eastern Europe was handed over to Stalin. His leftist ideology may even have prompted his assignment as the Secretary General of the United Nations Charter Conference in 1945.[9]

In our UN Chronology, you can follow the hidden threads toward world government. Notice that today's radical "change" simply means that we are nearing the completion of goals set long ago. As President Thomas Jefferson said,

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”[10]

It's true! Unscrupulous leaders have traded the solid guidelines of our Constitution for evolving laws that conform to global standards and human greed. Since the Constitution was written for a nation that valued God's moral guidelines, it crumbled under the pressures of power-hungry globalists, financial transnationalists, and the deceptive promises of pragmatic socialists. They all saw God's Truth as an obstacle to their success.

To understand this radical shift, let's take a closer look at the three sets of laws that have influenced this nation -- both for good and evil.

1. OUR CONSTITUTION WITH ITS PROMISE OF FREEDOM

Whether Christian or not, most of our nation's founders based the Constitution on God's moral law. They knew that freedom to follow God would be essential to future prosperity.

In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington exposed the main threats to the authority of the Constitution:

"Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion [i.e. Christianity] and Morality are indispensable supports. ...[V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."[11]

Washington concluded with warning about the "mischiefs of foreign intrigue," the lure of "imaginary common interest," and the consequences of failure to "prevent our nation from running the course, which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations." In other words, if we don't follow God's ways and guard the foundations of this nation, it will be destroyed -- just like the Roman empire.

2. EVOLVING LAWS AND GLOBAL TREATIES (See Total transformation)

True to socialist ideology, our current administration seems determined to control every aspect of life: speech, beliefs and values, education, food, health care, money, the way we serve God or each other, etc. May we, like the early disciples, have the courage and strength to "obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29)

Most of us are familiar with the various new bills (omnibus, stimulus, budget, etc.) loaded with earmarks that Obama had promised to purge. Costing taxpayers trillions, they seemed designed to deepen, not resolve, the current financial crisis.

But that apparent fiasco fits the plans of socialist change agents such as Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. They -- like Obama four decades later -- knew how to engineer a crisis that would 'force change through chaos.'[12] Former federal prosecutor James H. Walsh explains their Marxist manipulations:

"Cloward and Piven held that poor people can only advance when society is afraid of them.... Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary aims, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive [community] organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation’s wealth.....

"New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani called the Cloward-Piven Strategy 'an effort at economic sabotage.'.... Cloward and Piven were joined over the years by nouveau billionaires led by George Soros. Through his Democracy Alliance, they funded ACORN.....

"On the horizon are proposed taxes led by the Obama-sponsored Global Poverty Act that would tax every U.S. man, woman, and child $2,500 for a total of $845 billion to help the United Nations eliminate global poverty. The goal remains the same, to redistribute the wealth of the nation."[13]

In other words, social engineering is changing America along with the rest of the world! For example, Obama's Global Poverty Act calls for communitarian partnerships between the --

1. Public sector (government, which writes the laws and sets the standards)
2. Private sector (business, which supplies resources)
3. Social sector (civil society, especially churches, which provide human servers trained in political correctness).

This three-legged system would be governed by globalist elites. Unlike communism, such a communitarian system would allow people to "own" their property, but both ownership and ideology would be governed, assessed and tracked through laws and regulations based on unthinkable global standards aimed at worldwide social solidarity. After all, Obama has agreed to "stepped up US-UN cooperation."[14]

Our old Constitution-based laws are rapidly being replaced by new laws that end virtually every freedom that we have treasured. This transformational legal system fits the UN's rising body of international laws as well as the 67-year-old vision of John Foster Dulles. But is this what Americans want? Or are most people too distracted by entertainment and Huxley's "feelies" to notice? Take a look at the road ahead:

a socialist world government to "coordinate" the crisis and guide the solution [See The emerging New World Order]
drastic limitations on national sovereignty [UNESCO's War Against National Sovereignty]
a [single] democratically controlled international bank and a universal system of money. [One World, One Money]
open borders and global migration based on UN decrees. [The UN Plan for Global Migration]
redistribution of the world’s wealth. [Smiling at Socialism & Scorning the Bible] [15]
In this new system, "We, the people" of America will no longer count. Our government -- elected to serve us -- will become our 'masters.' Ashley Mote (an independent member of the European Parliament) shows us what happened in Europe, the model for the other planned "regions" under the UN:

"Even the EU's public face - the unelected commission - is part of the charade. Power does not lie with them. It lies with the senior staff running their departments.... We do not know what their budgets are, how they are financed, or who approves their costs. Indeed, we do not even know what powers they have been given, nor by whom.... The other 24 commissioners, each appointed by the other member states... are figure-heads. They take the flak in the public arena, and make announcements decided for them by their senior staff, with the guidance of the secret committees....

"The European Parliament sits below this vast superstructure... designed to create an illusion of accountable democracy. A condescending pat on the head for voters held in contempt.... In effect, the left has said to the multinationals: you can have your markets stitched up for you, if we can indulge ourselves in endless social engineering. Big business has agreed. The result is a largely supportive parliament both from the left and right of the political divide. The 'Americas' is moving in the same direction!"[16]

3. GOD'S UNCHANGING LAW

The old Christianized Europe leads the way. Rejecting its Christian foundations, it has filled its spiritual vacuum with forces far greater than it can control without total repression. Ponder this recent example:

"A few years ago, the left-wing London Guardian newspaper called Sweden the most successful society the world has ever known. But Sweden today is being rocked by a large influx of Muslim immigrants.... Wide-open immigration policies... have made Malmo, which is now one-quarter Muslim, one of the most racially divided cities in Europe. Most Muslim immigrants are concentrated in one district, where the male unemployment rate is 82 percent. Crime affects one of three families in the city and rape has tripled in 20 years.... In one housing project in the district, fire and emergency workers will no longer enter without police protection.

"Malmo has been so accommodating toward immigrant Muslims that a local Muslim politician and imam has even declared, 'The best Islamic state is Sweden!'... Right-wing Swedish Democrats, who support limits on immigration, have been stigmatized by the left-wing Swedish media as fascist and bigoted.... 'I think the best prediction is that Sweden will have a Muslim majority by 2049, so we know where that country’s going.”[17]

America is marching to the same tune -- right into the embrace of the planned world government.

While most Americans still call themselves Christian, few can define the gospel or explain the holy character of the God they claim to know. Churches have replaced Biblical Truth with energizing entertainment, and Biblically illiterate members are being trained to follow group consensus, not the Word and ways of our sovereign God.

At a time such as this, we ought to "tremble" at God's Word! For unlike us, our mighty Lord doesn't change! His laws are operational as well as eternal. The world may ignore them, but it can't escape the consequences. As He told us through Moses over three thousand years ago:

"...when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them... your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God. ... you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’
"...if you by any means forget the Lord your God, and follow other gods... you shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God." Deuteronomy 8:10-20

Demonstrating a patience that far exceeds mine, he told His beloved Israel, “'In returning and rest you shall be saved. But you would not." The rebellious people refused his gracious invitation. (Isaiah 30:15) So has most of the Western world.

Today that call still rings out: "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:28) What will we answer?

Note concerning Alger Hiss: "Mr. Dulles worked side by side with Mr. Hiss in the State Department and in the various conferences that planned the United Nations. But how many American church people knew that Mr. Dulles and Mr. Hiss worked together in The Federal Council of Churches and that both were chairmen of important committees of the Council?"[6]

Endnotes:

1, Albert G. Mackey, An Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, Volume 2, (Masonic History Company, 1917), p.537.
2, Carl Teichrib, "The Joseph Principle and Crisis Economics"
3, Stephen Gallo, "head of market analysis for Schneider Foreign Exchange" quoted in "Global bank, global currency within 15 years," BR-News, 3-1-09
4, W.L. Mackenzie King, One World, One Money
5, John Foster Dulles
6, Edgar C. Bundy, Collectivism in the Churches, (Wheaton, IL: Church League of America, 1958), pps.165, 179.
7, Time magazine, March 16, 1942
8, See Treason in the Church
9, UN Chronology
10, Thomas Jefferson
11, George Washington
12, Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, "A Strategy to End Poverty," The Nation, 5-2-1966,
13, Obama, Voter Fraud & Mortgage Meltdown
14, "Ban, President Obama discuss boosting US-UN cooperation," UN News Center, 3-10-09
15, The UN Plan for Global Migration
16, Ashley Mote, "Beware the Secret Heart of the EU,"
17, Sweden Rocked by Radical Muslims

© 2009 Berit Kjos - All Rights Reserved

THE BATTLE IN THE STATES: FREEDOM Vs. PROTECTION

By Tom DeWeese and Mark Lerner
April 6, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Across the nation, state legislatures are struggling to take back their Constitutional rights as they also seek ways to protect us from outside threats. This has led to some near schizophrenic legislative sessions with laws swinging widely from left to right.

Making it more difficult to get a handle on the situation is the fact that there has been an outgrowth of near "rabid" anti-immigration groups that have sprung up demanding near-Hitler-style tactics to "fix" the problem. While the situation is certainly serious and demands action, these groups openly admit that they are willing to surrender their liberties if that is what it takes to end illegal immigration. They may deeply regret that cavalier dismissal of liberty. Once lost, it is rarely regained.

To address these issues, three very distinct, but widely variant legislative actions have appeared in the states.

First, legislation dealing with protecting the integrity of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty has been introduced across the nation, passing in at least 21 states. The states are reacting to the frightening growth of the federal government through anti-terrorist legislation such as the Patriot Act and Real ID, as well as the outrageous spending included in the bailout and stimulus bills.

Second, to address the illegal immigration issue, legislation in many states would provide state law enforcement with the ability to share information through direct electronic access. Many law-enforcement agencies are eagerly supporting such legislation. Yet, this type of legislation clearly contradicts the intent of the states sovereignty effort.

Third, again racing back to the other side to protect personal privacy from federal surveillance, there is legislation introduced to prohibit the collection of biometric samples/data, social security numbers and the use of RFID chips in state driver's licenses.

One might ask, what do these pieces of legislation have to do with one another? They each go to the heart of a battle being waged across our country to decide how much Constitutional power the federal government has to collect, retain and share the personal information of each citizen, and how much power it has to force states to provide it?

Tenth Amendment legislation is exactly what the name implies - that states have Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and powers. It puts the federal government on notice that states will not act as its surrogates. The legislation unequivocally tells the federal government that its power comes from the citizens and the states and that federal powers are limited and defined rather than unlimited and arbitrary.

Fusion Centers

As for those patriots who believe the illegal immigration is so dire that liberty should be thrown on the bonfire, perhaps they need to better understand what they are demanding.

Legislation introduced in several state legislatures, and currently in debate, allows state and local law-enforcement agencies to have direct access to one another's databases. Some of the anti-immigration patriots might see it is as prudent legislation until one takes a closer look.

Most states now have Fusion Centers. Fusion Centers were originally intended to allow local and state law-enforcement to work alongside federal officers so that activity suspected of being terrorist related could be identified and responded to by all three law enforcement entities in a coordinated manner. Fusion Centers have representatives of all three working side-by-side in one office.

Fusion Centers are funded primarily by the federal government. Some believe them to be an effective tool to fight terrorism with little that one could find objectionable. The problem is, Fusion Centers have overstepped their intended purpose. This is typical when dealing with the issue of technology and invasive databases. Mission creep is just too easy.

In state after state we see Fusion Centers focusing on all suspected criminal activity, including misdemeanors. Some would ask you to believe that the mountain of information about citizens being accumulated actually stays within the borders of a state unless a citizen is suspected of terrorist activity. However, the Fusion Center in Oklahoma has been directed to develop procedures for the sharing of information with the FBI and DHS.

This means that direct electronic access is not limited to just state law enforcement agencies and departments. Since local, state and federal authorities are working together, there is no plausible reason to believe federal law enforcement will not gain access to all information a state law enforcement or local law enforcement authority would have.

The Missouri Outrage

All citizens should take note of a document produced in Missouri by that state's Fusion Center. That document targeted activists, including supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr. It directed Missouri law enforcement to give special attention to those holding such political beliefs and consider them to be a security risk and potential domestic terrorists. According to the same document, members of militias should also be singled out. According to the Missouri report, anyone advocating limited government and objecting to the massive growth of the federal government is to be considered a security risk.

Whether a citizen is a Democrat, Republican or Independent, the idea that citizens supporting their candidate of choice should be categorized as domestic terrorists is outrageous. The document is so inflammatory that the Lt. Governor of Missouri suspended the head state law enforcement officer in the Fusion Center. It is also worth noting that the Oklahoma Fusion Center will develop privacy protocols. One might reasonably ask why the privacy issues were not fully addressed before the Fusion Center became operational?

However, the issue of the collecting, retaining and sharing of citizen's personal information is not unique to Fusion Centers. Law enforcement in each state has information sharing agreements, not only with federal agencies/departments, but also with foreign entities and international organizations.

There is a literal web of Memorandums of Agreements, laws and other mechanisms such as participation in international organizations that has entrapped all Americans. The most personal and sensitive information of Americans is being shared globally.

Oklahoma's SB 483

A prime example of such dangerous legislation that could lead to an international surveillance state is Oklahoma's SB 483, which will authorize the Commissioner of Public Safety (DPS) the authority to enter into "agreements" with other state agencies and allow these other agencies "direct electronic access" to the DPS database of computerized photos.

Moreover, the Federal Department of Homeland Security is targeting such state databanks and clearly has stated it wants full access to them. It then intends to share them with international databanks. That is why every state must carefully consider the dangerous side-effects of such legislation being promoted as simply an answer to illegal immigration and terrorism.

As Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key says, such legislation is "incrementally putting into place systems that could, 1) violate citizens constitutional rights, 2) unintentionally harm innocent citizens, 3) allow for the continual effective dissolution of our rights enumerated in the Constitution."

Biometric data and Social Security numbers

The final piece of the puzzle is the third tier of legislation making rounds in several state legislatures that would prohibit state governments from collecting biometric samples/data and social security numbers of citizens who apply for driver's licenses. In direct opposition to bills such as SB 483, Oklahoma is considering such legislation which calls for the removal of existing biometric information and social security numbers from the state motor vehicle database. Such legislation is intended to protect our personal privacy.

Under the provisions of the Real ID Act of 2005, states that comply with that law are required to collect the digital facial biometric samples of all citizens who apply for a state driver's license. In layman's terms, this means you can be identified while walking down the street by a CCTV/surveillance camera. Your facial image would be scanned and the image would be converted to biometric data and compared to images stored in state or federal databases, including your motor vehicle database.

Again, in Oklahoma, some lawmakers have figured out the only way to stop the federal government and international organizations from getting their hands on citizens personal information is to stop collecting the information and putting it in state databases.

It is important to note that the legislation does not impede Oklahoma law enforcement from collecting the information either through a search warrant or as a result of a person being charged with a crime. One lawmaker stated it should not be a "novel" idea that the presumption of innocence is protected or that privacy means something. A Pennsylvania lawmaker stated that we have been told many times since 9/11/2001 what privacy does not mean but we do not hear what it does mean.

Abuse of power by the federal government is and has always been a concern. Our forefathers addressed the potential for abuse in our Constitution. Since the 1950's we have witnessed many abuses of power including revelations about what the FBI, NSA and DHS have been doing since 9/11/2001, invading personal privacy, monitoring phone calls, home invasion without notice or warrants, etc.

The abuses have become a pattern of complete disregard for our Constitution. Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst who previously worked for Naval Intelligence and the Department of Defense came forward and stated American citizens were having their phone calls intercepted, emails read and financial transactions monitored. He came forward because he said he did not want to live in a police state.

The Inspector General of the Justice Department stated the FBI had abused National Security Letters and obtained information improperly. The Inspector further stated the FBI was not forthright in disclosing all the National Security Letters it had issued. In one three year period alone, the FBI was issuing an average of over 100 of the letters a day. National Security Letters, by their very nature, avoid the need for search warrants. Some in the U.S. Senate have accused DHS of "bullying" states to comply with the Real ID Act 2005. DHS has been asked to adhere to what is known as FIPP (Fair Information Practice Principles) and yet has failed to do so. FIPP requires, among other things, that there be transparency when information is being collected.

Our driver's licenses are the link between everything we buy and sell. You need a driver's license for just about everything these days. The vendor who produces 95% of all drivers' licenses has proposed a Real ID Solutions driver's license in which a citizens "political party affiliation" would be on the face of the driver's license. The same vendor, who happens to be the largest biometric company, made their biometric facial recognition technology available to the Red Chinese government. The Communist Chinese did exactly what one would expect from a totalitarian state. They used the technology to identify dissidents -- people who were opposed to the policies of the government. Does that sound like the Missouri situation?

Most Americans have never heard of Enhanced Driver's Licenses. These licenses contain RFID chips that can allow for the tracking of people and also for "bad" guys to obtain your personal information by stealing your unique identification number contained on the chip and linking that number to your identity. The current Secretary of Homeland Security is on record saying she believes that Enhanced Driver's Licenses should be issued by all states.

Consider DHS's pilot program that relies on a computer software program to help determine if you present a threat to our government. This pilot computer program, called "Project Hostile Intent," makes assessments about the way we walk and dress, as well as other behavioral characteristics. The computer program will make a judgment as to whether or not you present a threat. That means when you are walking down the street keep in mind that a camera lens could be pointed at you. Make sure you are dressed "right" and do not walk in a funny manner. What are the chances of you, or someone you care about, being picked out by the camera? Considering the hundred's of millions of taxpayer dollars that DHS has released for CCTV/surveillance cameras the chances are getting better everyday that you won't be left out. Cameras are going up so fast that they remind me of the postal mailboxes that used to be placed on about every block. The cameras are everywhere.

America is at a crossroads. States have finally awakened to rediscover their Constitutional powers in the Tenth Amendment, yet as they do so, they are also being pressured to surrender the liberty and privacy of every American in the name of security. Americans are concerned, listening, and are ready to take action. State lawmakers are also ready to listen. All citizens have to do is take a few minutes of their time to contact their state and national lawmakers and say enough is enough.

Terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other groups such as Hamas have trained hundred's of thousands of terrorists. Our intelligence community only knows the names of a very small percentage of these people. The fact is that terrorists do not need driver's licenses to carry out acts of terrorism. They can use passports and international driver's licenses while in our country to facilitate their goals. Criminalizing all Americans into a surveillance state is not the answer.

Legislation to protect us from the surveillance state is being considered in state legislatures across the country. Many states are rising up against implementation of Real ID. Others are passing resolutions to take a stand for state sovereignty. But others are going in the opposite direction with legislation to allow massive databanks of our most personal information to be shared internationally.

In Oklahoma there is still time. The same is true in other states. Oklahoma residents should call their elected leaders in the state's House of Representatives and say they oppose SB 483.

Every American should now call their state representatives and tell them to support Tenth Amendment legislation and any bills that would end the orgy of collecting and sharing of information, starting with citizens' biometric information and social security numbers.

These new efforts to create a surveillance society represent a threat to almost everything guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, from freedom of speech to freedom to be secure in our homes, to the freedom of being innocent until proven guilty. The time to stop it is now.

Mark Lerner is the Director of the Stop Real ID Coalition.

© 2009 Tom DeWeese - All Rights Reserved

COMMUNISM THRIVES: OBAMA'S DEADLY "CHANGE" LIVES ON

By Greg Evensen

April 9, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

Never in my lifetime did I believe that I would ever witness the takeover of our nation by revolutionary forces dedicated to one socialistic goal. Naively, I held on to the presumption that when it REALLY came down to it, this nation would not allow communism the final victory. I based my life and my family’s safety and prosperity on that view. I just could not accept that my fellow citizens would encourage the rape and murder of our history, the betrayal of our collective sacrifices in times of war, and defeat in the centuries old debate over how much control Washington should exert over its populace.

We have experienced the destruction of our republic in a way that leaves virtually no possibility of a systemic change reversal toward our former sovereign status. Collective forces including global bankers, industrialists, social engineers specializing in tyranny, and the corrupted elites of every nation have realized their final victory over freedom, liberty and national identity.

The incredibly painful reality is that we have allowed for creeping incrementalism to wear us down for the final assault waged over the previous two years. It was during this time, that Wall Street, the banks, investment houses and corporate businesses crested in lunar orbit with unsustainable and unjustifiable run-ups in share values and the profane “margins” in the derivatives markets. Military misadventures killed our troops and our national morale. Universities have continuously and unrelentingly driven morality from the minds of our young and taught us that right is wrong and wrong is right. Public schools would take a pregnant girl to get an abortion, but go apoplectic if students ate ice cream at lunch.

In the meantime, these same students kill for sport on video games downloaded on their laptops.
And we wonder why Americans by the millions voted for a president devoid of every shred of “morality” except that of his Illuminati handlers

I have waged the battle for many years that has sought to insure our communities some hope that police forces would cling to their oaths and ultimately protect us from the absolute evil found in some of the state capitals and Washington itself. I have lectured, written, broadcast and lobbied for republic values and sovereign laws. Along with thousands of others just like me, I have tried to avoid this day and I have completely failed in my “mission.” The struggle, the battles, the war---has been lost. I am now a prisoner in my own land, awaiting an attempt to imprison me or worse. After all the battles I have been through, actual physical combat and armed confrontations too numerous to count in the streets of America, I face the prospect of standing the final battle virtually alone—at least that is how I view the near term future.

Only an enraged and unrelenting populace can change that fate for many of us. Only those who have felt the bitter sting of loss imposed by a leadership poised to sweep away all of our freedoms can fight back with the strength borne of desperation and personal betrayal. It will be those, who in the final hour gave their all for the ultimate fight for freedom, indeed the last great battle for freedom.

It will be high stakes all the way. Either we will emerge completely victorious or we will crawl out utterly defeated. It REALLY has come down to that. No hyperbole here, just ultimate, brutal reality. We will either survive as free people, or we will perish as a defeated people. To perish in the fight is to live on with God. To live as slaves in Obama’s communist America is not an option for me. If I am permitted to see a free republic victory, then all glory to God and thanks to my fellow patriotic freedom fighters. We cannot quit now or expect someone else to stand up to this bully government. There simply is no one else to resist these traitors.

I have reached that conclusion because I am now witnessing the final insult to a lifetime of advocacy from the ramparts. I watch as Americans continue the slaughter of their moral absolutes by vicious and vile people who advocate for the Obama nation and every horrific inch of the drunken excess called stimulus. I am incredulous at the “debates” in congress by officials who have sold out their fellow citizens, their common sense and their trust to the whorehouse that is Washington, D.C. I am sickened by men and women who justify abortion up to the moment of delivery as a human right for the mother but a human disaster for the child. Obama believes this is an absolute necessity in our brave new world of change. This same Obama who is of questionable heritage, unknown national origin, and the most incapable immoral leader in our history, is an object of delirium among nations who know nothing of him or his pending ultimate national betrayal.

Corrupted officials who demand that we pay unjust and unlawful taxes are hired for cabinet positions having not paid their own taxes. Truly, what do they know that we don’t? Eric Holder, the leftist moron, who occupies the chief law enforcement office in the land, makes John Ashcroft look flawless in retrospect. Hillary Clinton struts around the globe proclaiming United States authority to meld us into that (you know-for paranoids only, doesn’t really exist) global governance mindset that even has the Supreme Court drooling over how quickly we can all think globally, not constitutionally.

No matter how we paint this picture, the outcome is the same. It took hundreds of years, but the ancient evil ones among us have clutched the victor’s laurel wreath. Patriots, constitutionalists, anti-abortionists, militia supporters, UN haters, gun rights activists (you know, the ones the Fusion centers and various state police agencies long to stop, harass and incarcerate for their beliefs) are on the lists for government action and action IS pending.

Machine gun executioners under the employment of bailout giants in business and banking have melted down their barrels as they put millions into financial death and disruption across America.

Millions more were put to death by guillotines mounted on flatbeds and parked outside the agencies holding retirement programs and various savings plans meant to give peace of mind to those who worked decades to provide for THEMSELVES. The countless millions who have escaped this deadly fate by doing absolutely nothing and reaping the benefits handed out by the Executioner-in-Chief and his satanically inspired minions in government; deserve nothing but our scorn and absolute rejection. They include the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, NOW, NARAL, ACORN, affirmative action plans, entitlement programs and their recipients, and the thousands of other money sucking programs designed to divide Americans from each other, their legitimate constitutional government and the ideals of a prosperous free system of production and individual work environments.

I make it a habit to draw battle lines clearly and identify the “enemy” of our people and our republic.

I do it because many will not. They shy from it through fear, intimidation and the desire to be on everybody’s nice list. I detest Morris Dees, the communist leader of the SPLC mentioned earlier. I abhor Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Abraham Foxman, Catholic Cardinals who excuse sanctuary churches and illegal sanctuary cities. I hold complete contempt and rejection for the acceptance of sodomy, gay rights, gay marriage, or gay acceptance of any kind. Keep quiet about your perversion and practice if you must, in foul secrecy. I do not want to know what your preferences are. I will wage war with illegals that have come to this nation to violently take property, jobs, benefits, and possessions of native born farmers and ranchers. I will identify and pursue with any and all means available the maniacs who murder babies. The same goes for pornographers, drug dealers and child molesters. They have no place in our communities, our states or our nation--and certainly not under any protection or “color of law” anywhere, for any reason or by any jurisdiction, PERIOD!

Those ultimate fools who legislate day and night to seize my firearms are subject to my use on them if they force the issue. Firearm self-defense is a tool to resist tyranny and a natural right of every citizen. These are common sense virtues. Why are we discussing them? It is because common sense and virtue died with the republic. The same traitors that cheat us out of our liberties are the same ones that fear our right to own private land and defend it with deadly force if trifled with. We are the last guardians of the former American Republic. Make no mistake about that. Without us, the legions of freedom haters on earth, the Zionists, the communists, the globalists, and the Islamic Jihadists, would have enslaved America a long time ago.

So perhaps for the last time, for I see no reason to keep rehashing the obvious for the same choir month after month, I give you this solemn pledge and assessment.

The time has come for the freedom protectors still left in America to join with others of like mind, body and spirit in a defense force that will not yield another micron to the invaders, usurpers, sell-outs and true evil servers living amongst us in America. To allow them to do so is cowardly and insures that a potential victory will be that much more costly for those brave enough to make the final stand.

If any less confrontational, but successful way is possible in defeating this evil, then I say let’s pursue it. If rational thinking and common sense says no, confrontation and revolutionary change is at hand, then let it begin. We are losing precious daylight needed to identify, chase down and eliminate every last vestige of the enemy who will surely hunt us down first, if unopposed.

I may stand alone, and I may go down quickly, but by God Almighty, I will not go with my head bowed and in chains. As I have prayed many times before going into battle, “Dear God, if I am to fall today, let me be successful long enough to help turn the tide toward victory and allow me to bring down enough of the enemy so that my fellow soldiers can make it home, and my family may live in peace and freedom…..Amen.”

© 2009 Greg Evensen - All Rights Reserved

A TERMINUS CONTINUUM

By Sheriff Jim R. Schwiesow, Ret.

April 4, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

He is a pathetic and pitiful sight to behold is this old man. His countenance is jaundiced, yellowed by the diseases of the ages that have wracked his bony skeletal frame. Host to pestilential parasitic organisms - the gasses of which gurgle through disintegrating decomposing innards and exude through yellow-orange rotted teeth with the fetid effluvia of carrion - this old man is an offense to all by his very presence. Lesions and crustaceous afflictions spot his body in an ugly disfiguring diffusion and cadaverous eyes peer from deep within their sunken sockets with a diminished and dying light. He is a sight to behold is this old man, an obscene, lamentable, distressful and pitiful picture that etches itself upon the conscious and submerges pity in a shuddering wave of repulsive reflex. Who is this old man?

This old man is metaphorically speaking; the United States inclusive of its people its leaders and its social, commercial and governmental institutions, a once mighty virile and morally justified Republic this nation is now near the end of its days and no more than a senile putrid pestilent walking corpse.

Today I received an email from one who expressed outrage over the fact that some, including this writer, have stated that this is a sick nation. The lady expressed her thoughts thusly, “I am entirely sick and tired of those who say that ours is a sick nation.” I am constantly amazed at the ignorance, nay the absolute lack of ability of the people in this country to discern the nature of the circumstances that are upon them, to profit from experience or to comprehend reality. It would seem that they exist with their head continually in the sand and with only their rear end exposed to the world. They have absolutely no comprehension of the prophetic events that are upon them, in other words they think with the wrong end of their anatomy.

This nation is progressing steadily and relentlessly through a seamless progression of presaging occurrences that are being stepped out by supernatural intervention. To think or counsel that men control their own destiny or that they can rely on their own strength and wisdom is analogous to saying that a dog should control his master. Apart from the GOD of creation men have no wisdom and their strength is puny indeed, the fact is the wisdom of men is spiritually assigned by the Eternal and those who reject Him as their creator and master have no wisdom, no discernment and no future.

This is the state of being in this nation today and we can thank our poor-spirited denominational churches in great part for that state of being, if the pastors and leaders of these would preach the Gospel and the unadulterated and convicting Word of Almighty GOD instead of the silly sentimental and politically correct worldly slop that is delivered from the pulpits in a seeming preponderance of American churches today this nation wouldn’t be in its present sorry state.

The United States, a once stalwart sound just and socially healthy Republic, has been transformed into a discredited systemically perverse socially filthy and hedonistically inclined socialistic democracy, the people of which are unable to discern good from evil or holy from profane, neither can they differentiate between that which is divinely given and that which emanates from the occult kingdom of the prince of darkness.

A NATION OF LIARS AND CHEATS

There was a time when I had great admiration and regard for the fact that Americans seemed to stand out in the world for their shrewd and calculating thinking ability. But, all of that is in the past and Americans are now – in my estimation – collectively a perverse deceived and ignorant people. Since they are shallow of thought, poorly educated, seriously deprived of historical knowledge, have little in the way of sound moral values and - most importantly - have no spiritual discernment they are receptive to lies and disposed to utter lies. In fact if the way they gobble up with relish the lies uttered in our political campaigns is any indication, they love lies and esteem them above truths.

Though the boldest and most prolific liars in our society are the politicians we have found, through the course of the current economic collapse, that no sector of society is devoid of liars. The unions, corporate entities and the financial institutions abound with liars. The lies of these are just more subtle and more often in the form of prevarication and misrepresentation. The pharmaceuticals are an outstanding example; they are absolutely notorious in this regard. Their advertisements are, without exception, based on lies and deceit and the people eat it up with a spoon. They have raised deceit and prevarication to an art form with their fake doctors, paid actors, and perverse Hollywood shills. How these people can live with their conscience is beyond me, they have most certainly – by the deceptive hawking of their pernicious chemical concoctions - condemned hundreds of thousands of people to misery and death and all of this to obtain the sole object of their worship, money.

But, without a doubt the champions of all liars are the politicians. I suspect that sprinkled among this great cadre of political liars and cheats are some honest individuals, unfortunately they are overshadowed by the cheats and must share the spotlight with their venal comrades. A clean conscience must be their reward and their salvation in the world of politics. Unfortunately these would seem to be far in the minority since for the most part our politician’s utter lies boldly continually and unremorsefully without the slightest reservation. It is not without good reason that the Bible states that all liars shall have their part in the lake, which burns with fire and brimstone.

It is has been perfectly fascinating to observe the ongoing step-by-step destruction of this nation, to be sure it is frightening distressing and lamentable, but unarguably fascinating. The Clinton and Bush administrations enabled the advance elements of a satanic blueprint for the dismantling of the Republic and the institution of a godless democratic socialist system of despotic governance that renders the people irrelevant and selectively dispensable. These administrations in fact carried the water that has enabled Barack Obama to be the final arbiter of our fate. If this nation survives the first term of Obama it will be a monumental surprise and if there should be a second term for him it will be a major miracle.

Both the Bush and Clinton regimes enveloped a great collection of deviant personages and Obama has melded many of these with his own appointments of crooks, liars, and tax cheats to cast a malefic assemblage to assist him with his transforming of the United States into a Marxist communist regime. The bad news that I have for Mr. Obama is that it is highly unlikely that he will survive the coming holocaust that he is being demonically led to provoke.

Morally deficient and socially deviant ultra liberal Democrats are now in charge of this nation and they have a kindred spirit in Barack Obama. These are like cockroaches; they do their dirty work under the cover of darkness and in the backrooms via secret meetings. Their values are perverted and their works are inimical to that which is good and just. It is this unholy union, along with the debasement of the people, that will put the finishing touches of destruction upon this nation.

The Republicans who are now righteously indignant in regard to the disastrous policies of these political miscreants have short memories. They seem to have forgotten that they acquiesced to George Bush’s trashing of constitutional liberties and guarantees. And they also seem to have forgotten that it was Republicans who cowardly supported and enabled the programs and legislation of minority ultra liberal Democrats that have inflicted such great social and fiscal damage upon the nation, its people and its institutions. For eight long years they controlled congress and for eight long years they genuflected to soulless and socially depraved Democrats and all but rubber-stamped the pernicious and disastrous initiatives that destroyed our social standards of morality or justice. As I have so often stated our politicians - both Republican and Democrat - are a product of the people. If this were not so they would not have been elected to office and kept in office, they merely reflect the collective values of the people who put them into office.

A NATION OF MURDER & MAYHEM

The young people of this nation have been socially acclimated to violence. Delivered to a rudderless course in life by an abandonment by parents and religious leaders, corrupted by godless socialist oriented schools and guaranteed rights that they do not possess by government bureaucrats and social do-gooders they do what comes naturally from a sinful nature, they sin and they sin boldly and to a severe and serious degree. Nothing in their undeveloped conscience limits their natural instinct to do uncompassionate and selfish acts. As juveniles they are most often held harmless by a very stupid liberal and corrupt system of justice and consequently they learn that there is no upshot for wrongful criminal behavior.

To further the training of these potentially future criminals; they are mentored in depraved and gratuitous violence by television producers, the movie industry, the producers of pornography and by the soulless designers and producers of viciously demented video games and computer software. Each day our society turns out the makings of more future adult criminals.

We are progressively becoming a people of sociopathic leanings. Increasingly, in fact daily, we read of the meandering violence of conscienceless, merciless, and sadistic homicidal predators. Dear reader if you would have a way to number these in our society today you would be frightened beyond imagination. Potential mass murderers, serial killers and criminally deviant personalities are continually on the prowl in every section of this country. One is subject to the predations of these everywhere, in the wilderness, in the rural areas, and in the suburbs and the cities.

Every day of every week we receive the news of mass murders, senseless and unfathomable family slaughters and of the unfortunate and pitiable victims of serial killers. As I write this column the newscasts report another mass killing, a homicidal gunman rampaged through a senior care center killing eight elderly residents and a nurse. Before that could be assimilated it was followed by a report of a murder by a male family member who stabbed an older sister critically and then cut the head off of another of his sisters who was, on that day, celebrating her fifth birthday.

These conscienceless killers have raged through restaurants, malls and shopping centers, fast-food establishments, places of employment, churches, schools, and universities and colleges. These merciless slayers are not psychotic or victims of mental disease they are psychopaths who kill with pre-meditation and with intent. They have no more feeling or compassion for their victims than they do for a sack of garbage, they are the finished product of an egregiously corrupt society and they are as mentally healthy as their counterparts of Hitler’s Third Reich who cold-bloodedly and inhumanly slaughtered millions of innocent human beings.

A TIME OF RETRIBUTION

And I will bring distress on men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land. --Zephaniah 1:17-18

I have previously written that we have come to a point of no return, and I have seen nothing, nor do I contemplate anything in the future, to alter that belief. Some tell me that we are living under a new covenant and that Old Testament scripture is of no consequence and has no meaning for our age. Before anyone takes heart from this contention they would do well to recall the revelation to John, by our LORD Jesus Christ, of the apocalypse. My Bible tells me that GOD is changeless and that He is the same past present and future. We know from scripture that many nations of old testament days came to a point in time when GOD turned His back to them and delivered them unto complete destruction and captivity.

"Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God: for the day of the Lord is at hand: for the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, He hath bid his guests" --Zephaniah 1:7

The time has come when prayer for this nation will not help, GOD rejects it. Now is the time for total judgment. Keep the faith; the reward for those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ comes on the other side of this.

© 2009 - Jim R. Schwiesow - All Rights Reserved
Jim Schwiesow is a retired sheriff with 46 years of law enforcement service. He served with the Unites States Army with the occupation forces in post war Berlin, Germany, and has a total of nine years of military service, which includes six years in the U.S. Army Reserve.

His law enforcement service includes: three years in the military police, fifteen years as an Iowa municipal police officer, and twenty-eight years as the duly elected sheriff of Sioux County, Iowa.

Jim has written a number of articles, which have been published in various professional law enforcement journals.

E-Mail: jimr@orangecitycomm.net

Web-Site: www.sheriffjimonline.com

"HE IS RISEN"

By Chuck Baldwin
April 7, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

As we approach Resurrection Sunday, it behooves us to remind ourselves (Christians should need no reminder) of the significance of this season. Along with the virgin birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ form the cornerstone of the Christian faith. Indeed, the resurrection of Jesus separates Christianity from all the world's religions.

Furthermore, the overwhelming number of America's founders understood the connection between the Christian faith and the rise of these United States. John Quincy Adams said, "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

Adams also said, "From the day of the Declaration . . . They [the American people] were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct."

Then, on July 4, 1837, Adams said these words, "Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before?"

Daniel Webster also acknowledged the relationship between our founders' Christian faith and America's creation. He said, "Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary."

Noah Webster, the man who is called the Father of American Education, said, "Education is useless without the Bible." He also said, "The Bible was America's basic textbook in all fields."

Noah Webster went on to say, "In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. . . . No truth is more evident to my mind, than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."

One more quotation from Noah Webster is necessary at this point. He said, "The religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government."

These sentiments were the sentiments of America from the inception of our great country. Remember, the voyagers of the Mayflower made a covenant between themselves and Almighty God. It is called the Mayflower Compact, and in it they said the reason they had made the voyage and determined to plant a colony in the new world was "for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith."

It was only in the last half of the 20th Century that America began trying to distance itself from its Christian heritage. Yet today, educators, entertainers, chief executives, and politicians are in the process of supplanting our Christian heritage with the pseudo-religions of secularism, multiculturalism, and universalism.

What many people do not understand is that when America abandons its dependence upon the God of the Bible, it will--at the same time--surrender the very foundation of our liberty and independence. As Thomas Jefferson said, "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?"

Patrick Henry agreed with Jefferson. He said, "It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains."

As we celebrate the vicarious death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ, let us remember the importance of preserving liberty within these United States of America. And this commitment involves much more than attending church once a week or repeating an occasional catechism. It means we must seek to incorporate the principles of liberty and independence into the very fabric of our lives and work. It means we will offer eternal vigilance to the fundamental principles upon which America was built. Liberty has no guarantees or assurances. Each generation must work to preserve, protect, and defend the principles of constitutional government, or else liberty will be lost.

The angel spoke of Christ, declaring, "He is risen." And so He is. And because Christ lives, liberty and freedom may also live. Why? Because "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

HAPPY EASTER!

*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link.

© 2009 Chuck Baldwin - All Rights Reserved

Plans for Mass Graves Confirmed: Government Surveying Cemetery Readiness for Flu Outbreak
The State of New York Division of Cemeteries has sent out “Mass Fatality forms” to cemeteries in that state to collect data about their ability to deal with the high volume of casualties that would occur if their were a flu pandemic or other disaster. The form letter that this office received was dated April 4, 2007, so clearly preparation for such disasters has been ongoing for some time.

Along with other data, cemetery officials were asked in this survey:

“Should a prolonged mass fatality disaster or pandemic flu occur in your community would your cemetery be able to provide temporary or permanent internment space for a significant number of disaster or flu deaths in additional to your current burial services?”

Cemetery owners were also asked to detail the business structure and capacity of their facilities, including proximity to roads, train lines and airfields. The Division of Cemeteries requested data to calculate the number of acres that could be made available “at 950 graves per acre.”

It is clear that emergency and disaster forces are being mobilized at the state and federal level. There is no data to predict what disasters could come – forces of nature, false-flag attacks, biological attacks/ flu outbreaks, quarantines etc. However, a pattern of data including news items, reports, photos and tips have all pointed to an incremental gearing up for a cataclysmic situation that includes mass casualties.

Whether it is half a million plastic coffin liners videotaped at a truck depot, or massive expansion at dozens of cemeteries across the country or FEMA and Homeland Security agents preparing for an avian bird flu outbreak, it is clear that government agencies are expecting something to happen and their agencies are expanding in accordance.

As previously reported, a number of incidents have demonstrated a federal preoccupation with a mass casualty incident – and it started before 9/11 ever happened.

The state of Colorado issued an executive order in 2000 asserting its authority to bury victims in mass graves and/or cremate bodies under emergency situations.

Jim Erickson of The Rocky Mountain News reported February 8, 2003 that:

The state of Colorado could seize antibiotics, cremate disease-ridden corpses, dig mass graves under extreme circumstances, and executive orders drafted for use in the event of a bioterrorism attack.

D.H. Williams reported in February, on an Indiana county municipal official who received detailed requests from FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security in regards to locations for mass graves, preparations for regional refugees, preparations for economic collapse, and budget cuts under a GM collapse, as well as the locations of major installations, emergency assets, and more.

The official says that he became concerned about the intentions of the FEMA, and DHS officials after repeated meetings where scenarios were discussed that included a bird flu outbreak, as well as fires, floods, and earthquakes.

The authorities have warned in their white papers that United States could face rioting; financial collapse seems very possible; and now it is clear that preparations include widespread death, and emergency conditions. What do they see coming?

shummer60 - God help America when Obama Abandons Isreal. Judgement Will Be SERVERE!!!

Upheaval in Mideast Alliances
Israel’s Plans for Iran War on Hold
US May Abandon Israel & Form New Partnership With Iran?
While
Israel Realigns Itself With Russia?

Our big story in this week's A-O Insider Report is a SPECIAL REPORT that revolves around reports from Washington that President Obama is working secretly on a deal to make Iran a strategic military and economic ally. The deal will involve distancing America from its special relationship to Israel. Meanwhile, reports from Israel last indicated that Israel's new Prime Minister may attempt to forge a new economic and military alliance with Russia.

This Special Report was originally going to cover Israeli plans for military action against Iran under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamine Netanyahu, but before we could get the article published, new revelations leaked that such plans had been cancelled as Israel learned of President Obama's intent to make Iran an ally of the United States.

Our report features extended details and the logical reasoning for this dramatic shift in American foreign policy. We must stress that the information we're passing along is not yet a done deal but rather the intention of the White House. Iran has yet to respond.

PROFOUND PROPHECY IMPLICATIONS!

If President Obama's proposal to Iran becomes a reality, and if Israel realigns with Russia - the Biblical Prophecy implications would be profound and could or would likely impact on the Magog prophecies and the Babylon prophecies if not other related prophetic issues.

This special report is in addition to the regular, weekly A-O Intelligence Digest, which we've delayed by a day or so, in order to get this special report published.

The upcoming Intelligence Digest edition will provide background coverage for the upcoming G-20 Summit and a possible move to begin developing a new 1-world currency to replace the US Dollar. Other stories will deal with Obama's secret meeting with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the admission by an Obama aid admitting that alleged Illuminist leader, Henry Kissinger provides daily instructions to the Obama White House. We'll also be providing insight into how Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu managed to convine the liberal Labor Party to join his coalition government.

Also later this week, we hope to feature a special report on Iran's clandestine attempts to overthrow the governmet of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. It's actually an Islamic civil war that is developing between the Shi'te sect and the Sunni sect within the world of Islam. As part of our coverage on this clandestine war that has begun to emerge, we're also providing an additional backgrounder article on the two Islamic sects and show the geo-political and strategic impact of these two divisions within Islam and it's relationship within Bible Prophecy perspective. We'd intended to have these articles ready and published last week but we were sidetracked by the stunning news about Obama's intent to radically transform US policy towards Iran.

If you're a donor to The A-O Report, you've got access to The A-O Intelligence Digest and also to The A-O Insider Report for donors.

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The End of Christian America
The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

Jon Meacham
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009
It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.

"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated. Being less Christian does not necessarily mean that America is post-Christian. A third of Americans say they are born again; this figure, along with the decline of politically moderate-to liberal mainline Protestants, led the ARIS authors to note that "these trends … suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians." With rising numbers of Hispanic immigrants bolstering the Roman Catholic Church in America, and given the popularity of Pentecostalism, a rapidly growing Christian milieu in the United States and globally, there is no doubt that the nation remains vibrantly religious—far more so, for instance, than Europe.

Still, in the new NEWSWEEK Poll, fewer people now think of the United States as a "Christian nation" than did so when George W. Bush was president (62 percent in 2009 versus 69 percent in 2008). Two thirds of the public (68 percent) now say religion is "losing influence" in American society, while just 19 percent say religion's influence is on the rise. The proportion of Americans who think religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" is now at a historic low of 48 percent. During the Bush 43 and Clinton years, that figure never dropped below 58 percent.

Many conservative Christians believe they have lost the battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage, and that the country has now entered a post-Christian phase. Christopher Hitchens —a friend and possibly the most charming provocateur you will ever meet—wrote a hugely popular atheist tract a few years ago, "God Is Not Great." As an observant (if deeply flawed) Episcopalian, I disagree with many of Hitchens's arguments—I do not think it is productive to dismiss religious belief as superstitious and wrong—but he is a man of rigorous intellectual honesty who, on a recent journey to Texas, reported hearing evangelical mutterings about the advent of a "post-Christian" America.

To be post-Christian has meant different things at different times. In 1886, The Atlantic Monthly described George Eliot as "post-Christian," using the term as a synonym for atheist or agnostic. The broader—and, for our purposes, most relevant—definition is that "post-Christian" characterizes a period of time that follows the decline of the importance of Christianity in a region or society. This use of the phrase first appeared in the 1929 book "America Set Free" by the German philosopher Hermann Keyserling.

The term was popularized during what scholars call the "death of God" movement of the mid-1960s—a movement that is, in its way, still in motion. Drawing from Nietzsche's 19th-century declaration that "God is dead," a group of Protestant theologians held that, essentially, Christianity would have to survive without an orthodox understanding of God. Tom Altizer, a religion professor at Emory University, was a key member of the Godless Christianity movement, and he traces its intellectual roots first to Kierkegaard and then to Nietzsche. For Altizer, a post-Christian era is one in which "both Christianity and religion itself are unshackled from their previous historical grounds." In 1992 the critic Harold Bloom published a book titled "The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation." In it he cites William James's definition of religion in "The Varieties of Religious Experience": "Religion … shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine."

Which is precisely what most troubles Mohler. "The post-Christian narrative is radically different; it offers spirituality, however defined, without binding authority," he told me. "It is based on an understanding of history that presumes a less tolerant past and a more tolerant future, with the present as an important transitional step." The present, in this sense, is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods. The rising numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans are people more apt to call themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious." (In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 30 percent describe themselves this way, up from 24 percent in 2005.)

Roughly put, the Christian narrative is the story of humankind as chronicled in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—the drama of creation, fall and redemption. The orthodox tend to try to live their lives in accordance with the general behavioral principles of the Bible (or at least the principles they find there of which they approve) and anticipate the ultimate judgment of God—a judgment that could well determine whether they spend eternity in heaven or in hell.

What, then, does it mean to talk of "Christian America"? Evangelical Christians have long believed that the United States should be a nation whose political life is based upon and governed by their interpretation of biblical and theological principles. If the church believes drinking to be a sin, for instance, then the laws of the state should ban the consumption of alcohol. If the church believes the theory of evolution conflicts with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, then the public schools should tailor their lessons accordingly. If the church believes abortion should be outlawed, then the legislatures and courts of the land should follow suit. The intensity of feeling about how Christian the nation should be has ebbed and flowed since Jamestown; there is, as the Bible says, no thing new under the sun. For more than 40 years, the debate that began with the Supreme Court's decision to end mandatory school prayer in 1962 (and accelerated with the Roe v. Wade ruling 11 years later) may not have been novel, but it has been ferocious. Fearing the coming of a Europe-like secular state, the right longed to engineer a return to what it believed was a Christian America of yore.

But that project has failed, at least for now. In Texas, authorities have decided to side with science, not theology, in a dispute over the teaching of evolution. The terrible economic times have not led to an increase in church attendance. In Iowa last Friday, the state Supreme Court ruled against a ban on same-sex marriage, a defeat for religious conservatives. Such evidence is what has believers fretting about the possibility of an age dominated by a newly muscular secularism. "The moral teachings of Christianity have exerted an incalculable influence on Western civilization," Mohler says. "As those moral teachings fade into cultural memory, a secularized morality takes their place. Once Christianity is abandoned by a significant portion of the population, the moral landscape necessarily changes. For the better part of the 20th century, the nations of Western Europe led the way in the abandonment of Christian commitments. Christian moral reflexes and moral principles gave way to the loosening grip of a Christian memory. Now even that Christian memory is absent from the lives of millions."

Religious doubt and diversity have, however, always been quintessentially American. Alexis de Tocqueville said that "the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States," but he also discovered a "great depth of doubt and indifference" to faith. Jefferson had earlier captured the essence of the American spirit about religion when he observed that his statute for religious freedom in Virginia was "meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination"—and those of no faith whatever. The American culture of religious liberty helped create a busy free market of faith: by disestablishing churches, the nation made religion more popular, not less.

America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse. The belief in an order or a reality beyond time and space is ancient and enduring. "All men," said Homer, "need the gods." The essential political and cultural question is to what extent those gods—or, more accurately, a particular generation's understanding of those gods—should determine the nature of life in a given time and place.

If we apply an Augustinian test of nationhood to ourselves, we find that liberty, not religion, is what holds us together. In "The City of God," Augustine —converted sinner and bishop of Hippo—said that a nation should be defined as "a multitude of rational beings in common agreement as to the objects of their love." What we value most highly—what we collectively love most—is thus the central test of the social contract.

Judging from the broad shape of American life in the first decade of the 21st century, we value individual freedom and free (or largely free) enterprise, and tend to lean toward libertarianism on issues of personal morality. The foundational documents are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (though there are undeniable connections between them). This way of life is far different from what many overtly conservative Christians would like. But that is the power of the republican system engineered by James Madison at the end of the 18th century: that America would survive in direct relation to its ability to check extremism and preserve maximum personal liberty. Religious believers should welcome this; freedom for one sect means freedom for all sects. As John F. Kennedy said in his address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960: "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist … Today I may be the victim—but tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

Religion has been a factor in American life and politics from the beginning. Anglican observance was compulsory at Jamestown, and the Puritans of New England were explicitly hoping to found a New Jerusalem. But coerced belief is no belief at all; it is tyranny. "I commend that man, whether Jew, or Turk, or Papist, or whoever, that steers no otherwise than his conscience dares," said Roger Williams.

By the time of the American founding, men like Jefferson and Madison saw the virtue in guaranteeing liberty of conscience, and one of the young republic's signal achievements was to create a context in which religion and politics mixed but church and state did not. The Founders' insight was that one might as well try to build a wall between economics and politics as between religion and politics, since both are about what people feel and how they see the world. Let the religious take their stand in the arena of politics and ideas on their own, and fight for their views on equal footing with all other interests. American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other.

Political victories are therefore intrinsically transitory. In the middle of the 19th century, the evangelist Charles Grandison Finney argued that "the great business of the church is to reform the world—to put away every kind of sin"; Christians, he said, are "bound to exert their influence to secure a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God."

Worldly success tends to mark the beginning of the end for the overtly religious in politics. Prohibition was initially seen as a great moral victory, but its failure and ultimate repeal show that a movement should always be careful what it wishes for: in America, the will of the broad whole tends to win out over even the most devoted of narrower interests.

As the 20th century wore on, Christians found themselves in the relatively uncontroversial position of opposing "godless communism," and the fervor of the Prohibition and Scopes-trial era seemed to fade a bit. Issues of personal morality, not international politics, would lay the foundations for the campaign for Christian America that we know as the rise of the religious right. The phenomenon of divorce in the 1960s and the Roe decision in 1973 were critical, and Jimmy Carter's born-again faith brought evangelical Christianity to the mainstream in 1976.

Growing up in Atlanta in the '60s and '70s, Joe Scarborough, the commentator and former Republican congressman, felt the fears of his evangelical parents and their friends—fears that helped build support for the politically conservative Christian America movement. "The great anxiety in Middle America was that we were under siege—my parents would see kids walking down the street who were Boy Scouts three years earlier suddenly looking like hippies, and they were scared," Scarborough says. "Culturally, it was October 2001 for a decade. For a decade. And once our parents realized we weren't going to disappear into dope and radicalism, the pressure came off. That's the world we're in now—parents of boomers who would not drink a glass of wine 30 years ago are now kicking back with vodka. In a way, they've been liberated."

And they have learned that politics does not hold all the answers—a lesson that, along with a certain relief from the anxieties of the cultural upheavals of the '60s and '70s, has tended to curb religiously inspired political zeal. "The worst fault of evangelicals in terms of politics over the last 30 years has been an incredible naiveté about politics and politicians and parties," says Mohler. "They invested far too much hope in a political solution to what are transpolitical issues and problems. If we were in a situation that were more European, where the parties differed mostly on traditional political issues rather than moral ones, or if there were more parties, then we would probably have a very different picture. But when abortion and a moral understanding of the human good became associated with one party, Christians had few options politically."

When that party failed to deliver—and it did fail—some in the movement responded by retreating into radicalism, convinced of the wickedness and venality of the political universe that dealt them defeat after defeat. (The same thing happened to many liberals after 1968: infuriated by the conservative mood of the country, the left reacted angrily and moved ever leftward.)

The columnist Cal Thomas was an early figure in the Moral Majority who came to see the Christian American movement as fatally flawed in theological terms. "No country can be truly 'Christian'," Thomas says. "Only people can. God is above all nations, and, in fact, Isaiah says that 'All nations are to him a drop in the bucket and less than nothing'." Thinking back across the decades, Thomas recalls the hope—and the failure. "We were going through organizing like-minded people to 'return' America to a time of greater morality. Of course, this was to be done through politicians who had a difficult time imposing morality on themselves!"

Experience shows that religious authorities can themselves be corrupted by proximity to political power. A quarter century ago, three scholars who are also evangelical Christians—Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch and George M. Marsden—published an important but too-little-known book, "The Search for Christian America." In it they argued that Christianity's claims transcend any political order. Christians, they wrote, "should not have illusions about the nature of human governments. Ultimately they belong to what Augustine calls 'the city of the world,' in which self-interest rules … all governments can be brutal killers."

Their view tracks with that of the Psalmist, who said, "Put not thy trust in princes," and there is much New Testament evidence to support a vision of faith and politics in which the church is truest to its core mission when it is the farthest from the entanglements of power. The Jesus of the Gospels resolutely refuses to use the means of this world—either the clash of arms or the passions of politics—to further his ends. After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the dazzled throng thought they had found their earthly messiah. "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone." When one of his followers slices off the ear of one of the arresting party in Gethsemane, Jesus says, "Put up thy sword." Later, before Pilate, he says, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight." The preponderance of lessons from the Gospels and from the rest of the New Testament suggests that earthly power is transitory and corrupting, and that the followers of Jesus should be more attentive to matters spiritual than political.

As always with the Bible, however, there are passages that complicate the picture. The author of Hebrews says believers are "strangers and exiles on the earth" and that "For here we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come." In Romans the apostle Paul advises: "Do not be conformed to this world." The Second Vatican Council cited these words of Pius XII: the Catholic Church's "divine Founder, Jesus Christ, has not given it any mandate or fixed any end of the cultural order. The goal which Christ assigns to it is strictly religious … The Church can never lose sight of the strictly religious, supernatural goal."

As an archbishop of Canterbury once said, though, it is a mistake to think that God is chiefly or even largely concerned with religion. "I hate the sound of your solemn assemblies," the Lord says in Amos. Religion is not only about worshipping your God but about doing godly things, and a central message of the Gospels is the duty of the Christian to transform, as best one can, reality through works of love. "Being in the world and not of it remains our charge," says Mohler. "The church is an eternal presence in a fallen, temporal world—but we are to have influence. The Sermon on the Mount is about what we are to do—but it does not come with a political handbook."

How to balance concern for the garden of the church with the moral imperatives to make gentle the life of the world is one of the most perplexing questions facing the church. "We have important obligations to do whatever we can, including through the use of political means, to help our neighbors—promoting just laws, good order, peace, education and opportunity," wrote Noll, Hatch and Marsden. "Nonetheless we should recognize that as we work for the relatively better in 'the city of the world,' our successes will be just that—relative. In the last analysis the church declares that the solutions offered by the nations of the world are always transitory solutions, themselves in need of reform."

Back in Louisville, preparing for Easter, Al Mohler keeps vigil over the culture. Last week he posted a column titled "Does Your Pastor Believe in God?," one on abortion and assisted suicide and another on the coming wave of pastors. "Jesus Christ promised that the very gates of Hell would not prevail against his church," Mohler wrote. "This new generation of young pastors intends to push back against hell in bold and visionary ministry. Expect to see the sparks fly." On the telephone with me, he added: "What we are seeing now is the evidence of a pattern that began a very long time ago of intellectual and cultural and political changes in thought and mind. The conditions have changed. Hard to pinpoint where, but whatever came after the Enlightenment was going to be very different than what came before." And what comes next here, with the ranks of professing Christians in decline, is going to be different, too.

Read more about NEWSWEEK's poll on religion in America here .

With Eliza Gray

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583
© 2009