A Hollywood Worldview In Washington

Right-Wing Extremism?

From: The Pen of Diana West

After reading and rereading the surreal Department of Homeland Security intel report on “right-wing extremism” that clearly designates conservative political dissent as part of the threat, I finally figured out why it all seems so familiar.

First, there’s the report’s leading villain, the “military veteran” returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan — the “potential lone wolf” terrorist with the lethal capabilities. That could raise goose bumps in anyone, right?

Then there are the “white supremacists” well known for their “longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, interracial crime and same-sex marriage.” (I don’t get the connection either.) According to the government, we just might see a growing movement of similarly pro-life, pro-law-and-order, pro-marriage … “white supremacists.” Enough to make anyone hyperventilate, of course. . . .

The fact is, we’ve seen this cast of characters before — many times before — in all of the schlock Hollywood movies that year after year harvest a diseased crop of villains from the American heartland, endlessly returning them to the screen as the “crazed veteran,” the “religious zealot” and the anti-immigration “Nazi.” These are the stock villains — all racist, naturally — who are now similarly demonized in the government’s report.

This fantastic worldview that sees the country imperiled by military heroes, traditional values and even border security meshes perfectly with the also-official flip side to such paranoid liberal fantasy: namely, the harmlessness of the Islamic brand of “extremism,” which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently renamed, and with a straight face, “man-caused disasters’. . . .

How to make it stick? The DHS report repeatedly reaches back for inspiration to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building, citing “military veteran” and domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, one of 42 million veterans who, not incidentally, have not blown up a federal building . . . But while the DHS report is thin on specifics and devoid of sources, it nonetheless quite helpfully exposes the federal government’s outrageous strategy to portray conservatism as “right-wing extremism.”

The report defines the term this way: “Right-wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration. . . .”

What we are seeing, in other words, is the most extraordinary governmental attempt in history to limit the spectrum of debate by demonizing a range of positions as “right-wing extremism.” This attempt is surely not only unconstitutional but also un-American.

Read the entire article. . . .

Rick Warren Apologizes For Support Of California’s Proposition 8

From: The Desk of Jim Brown

California mega-church pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren says he apologized to his homosexual friends for making comments in support of California’s Proposition 8, and now claims he “never once even gave an endorsement” of the marriage amendment.

Pastor Rick Warren Monday night on CNN’s Larry King Live, Pastor Rick Warren apologized for his support of Prop. 8, California’s voter-approved marriage protection amendment, saying he has “never been and never will be” an “anti-gay or anti-gay marriage activist.”

“During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement, never — never once even gave an endorsement in the two years Prop. 8 was going,” Warren told the CNN audience on Monday.

Continue reading. . . .

And thus we see the “have it both ways” mentality of a pastor who is supposed to be a leader in the American Christian church.  If he did not endorse Proposition 8 and support it; if he believes the Bible is the Word of God – he should have.  The tragic story here is that the desire to achieve and maintain fame often demands that one compromise his principles.

Elementary Thoughts: Remembering – Part 7

Early one morning a principal was confronted by two very tired looking children and their teachers who asked for a few minutes of his time. He listened as the teachers asked the children to tell him where they had been since one o’clock that morning. The two brothers told the principal that they get up at that time to go with their parents to work. The parents had hired themselves out as a cleaning service to a couple of the local bars. Because of their schedule, the parents had to clean the bars immediately after they closed. The children accompanied them each evening to work. By the time the cleaning was finished, it was time for school. The boys arrived at school at 7:45 a.m. to eat breakfast and then to begin their day at school. Neither child was doing very well in school. Both were under ten years of age.

While I commend any parent for taking an honest job to make the money needed to support his or her family, you have to seriously question the judgment of the parents in this case. They may have been paying the bills, but these boys were becoming physically and emotionally exhausted by the demanding schedule they were keeping because the parents were able to make more money doing this kind of work than they were at previous jobs where they had been employed. Moreover, while the boys were in school, the parents had gone home to sleep.

The previous stories illustrate dramatically at least one very important point. Many American adults have, consciously or unconsciously, assigned their children to a very low status in their order of life’s priorities. The average adult of today looks upon the responsibility of child rearing with a much different attitude than those parents of just a couple of generations ago. “In her provocative book The Time Bind, sociologist Arlie Hochschild suggests that many parents are actually choosing to overwork as an escape from family life. Back in the nineteenth century, home was pictured as a haven from the stress and pressure of the workplace. But for many of the parents Hochschild interviewed, home is a place filled with the incessant demands of noisy children, endless piles of laundry, and few tangible rewards – while at work they enjoy adult sociability and feel that their hard work is appreciated. One mother of three told Hochschild, ‘I usually come to work early just to get away from the house.’” As Pope John XXIII said, “It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.” The precious heritage from the Lord, to which a lifetime of committed devotion and sacrifice was once given, is now often unwelcome and even consciously destroyed.

Spending What We Do Not Have

Quoting Victor Davis Hanson:

“President Obama inherited from George Bush a $500 billion — and growing — annual budget deficit and a ballooning $11 trillion national debt. Obama nevertheless promised us an entirely new national health plan, bigger entitlements in education and a vast new cap-and-trade energy program. But there is a problem in paying for the $3.5 trillion in budgetary expenditures that Obama has called for in the coming fiscal year. Proposed vast additional taxes on the ‘rich’ still won’t be enough to avoid tripling the present budget deficit — and putting us on schedule over the next decade to add another $9 trillion to the existing national debt. During the Clinton years, we got higher taxes but eventually balanced budgets. During the Bush administration, we got lower taxes but spiraling deficits. But now during the era of Obama, we apparently will get the worst of both worlds — higher taxes than under Clinton and higher deficits than under Bush. In other words, we — through our government — are spending money that we don’t have.”

It Must Be A Coincidence

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.

Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.

Want to bet?

John MacArthur On Rick Warren’s Gospel