Are Progressives Anti-American?

I posit that they are; and there is ample evidence that I am right.

 At a recent dinner meeting, Rudy Giuliani made the charge that “President Obama does not love America.” Scott Walker, the front-running Republican candidate for President, was sitting near him, and Mr. Walker would not refute Giuliani’s claim. Walker has since been attacked by the liberal press for not denying that Giuliani’s claim is legitimate. It seems that some in prominent positions in America share my opinion.

 Progressivism developed in the 19^th Century as a broad philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advancement in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to improve the human condition. Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from barbaric conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of scientific knowledge as the foundation of society. A factor in the development of Progressivism in America was the obvious abuses of power that were developed by unbridled capitalism in the Industrial Revolution of America. Original principles of Progressivism included the value of the past, nobility of Western civilization, worth of economic/technological growth, faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason, and the intrinsic importance and worth of life on earth. However, the noble principles of Progressivism have eventually morphed into the ideology of the far left in American politics and economic policy.

 American Presidents who have claimed the mantra of Progressivism in their own times have been Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama.

 In his well-known book, “Culture Wars,” (published in 1991) author James Hunter points out some enlightening results of public surveys measuring the attitudes of Americans toward our nation. Although the data are old, they still point to truth, which few can legitimately refute. These surveys were aimed at finding the differences between orthodox Americans and Progressives in our nation. For instance:

1. When asked, “How much confidence do you have in the ability of the United States to deal wisely with present world problems?” Progressives were twice as likely as their orthodox counterparts to say, “not very much” or “none at all.”
2. When asked if the United States “acts as a force for good in the world, 81% of the orthodox answered “yes,” while 51% of Progressives answered that the United States was “neutral” or “a force for evil.”
3. When asked if they agree with the statement, “America treats the people of the Third World unfairly,” 85% of Progressives answered “yes.” A majority of orthodox respondents disagreed with that statement.
   The divide between people oriented on conservative (orthodox) political viewpoints and people oriented along progressive (liberal) viewpoints defines itself in their attitude about what is freedom and what is justice. Cultural conservatives, i.e., the “orthodox” believers in Hunter’s book, define freedom economically (freedom of economic opportunity) and justice as righteous living (treating one another with dignity and respect). On the other hand, Progressives look at freedom socially (as individual rights) and justice economically (as equity in income and social services).
   Progressives look at our American polity with great suspicion, tending to confirm the beliefs of many conservatives that they actually belong to the “Blame America first bunch.” On the other hand, Conservatives still cling to the belief that America is a “City on a hill,” an America that still has a “manifest destiny,” to save the world for freedom, civil rights, and free market entrepreneurism.
    Two vignettes serve to illustrate my points:
    We all remember the famous comment made by Michelle Obama when her husband was first nominated for President in 2008—“This is the first time I have ever been proud to be an American.” I guess she had been ashamed of America before the nomination.
    The other vignette was something that happened to me in a Denver store after I had been attending a Republican meeting. I was wearing a necktie, which had on it an image of the American flag. A young man came up to me and said, “I see you are a Republican.” I asked him how he knew that; and he told me he was a political science student at the University of Denver. He attended many political meetings around the city, and he noticed that at Democrat meetings, he saw symbols of loyalty to China, Tibet, and Somalia, but very few references to America. When he visited Republican meetings, he saw only symbols of American flags and references to the United States.
    Yes, I still believe that Progressives in America deserve to be called the “Blame America first bunch.” I believe that America still holds the moral high ground in both domestic and international politics. I still believe that America is a “City on a hill.” And…I believe that Progressives have a very opposite belief about America.

What ISIS Really Wants

  “Man is a witness unto his deeds.” Qur’an 75:14

There is a very illuminating article recently published in the National Journal, explaining the motives, the problems of, and the probable solutions to the uproar in the Middle East. The article is headed with the title of this post. I strongly recommend this article to anyone who really wants to understand the radical Muslim attitude in its fullness.

Readers of the article will quickly become aware of the intricate and highly organized structure of ISIS, its threats to Western culture, and its inherent weaknesses. The article clearly shows the probable trajectory of this malignant political and military organization. There are, indeed, weaknesses of ISIS manifested within the Islamic religion, itself, which may be its undoing, yet.

 

Where Is Victory Over ISIL?

Our government does not recognize that we are in a shooting war with ISIL. We need LEADERSHIP to confront this violent regime. Our government needs do something meaningful militarily to confront the violence. All the President does is make ridiculous statements of how we are "standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies." Nobody believes that.

Both President Wilson and FDR led the country effectively into war aimed at victory; President Obama is not doing anything like that.

I am frustrated with our government!!

What Trumps Freedom of Speech?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech….” First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

These days we are facing a challenge to one of our most sacred Bill of Rights freedoms, i.e., the freedom of speech. Mob rule and the sacrosanct procedure of being “politically correct” seem to be overtaking this American freedom cornerstone. Will we, Americans tolerate speech that challenges our basic worldviews? Will we allow open debate on issues that we consider unassailable? Will we allow promotion in the public square of subjects such as racism, sexism, homosexuality, creationism, anti-Americanism, Christian theology, and anti-Islamic protests?

It is common belief that some of the above subjects are beyond the pale of acceptable public discourse, and they should be suppressed. But…just how far should our society go in suppressing these disturbing subjects?

An essential freedom-of-speech paradigm was established in 1949 by the Supreme Court in Terminiello v. Chicago. In that case a vitriolic, racist speaker spoke to an auditorium packed with supporters. Outside the auditorium was what was described as “a surging, howling mob hurling epithets’ at those who would enter.” The police blamed the mob’s action on the speaker, Arthur Terminiello, a Catholic priest under suspension by his bishop. He was convicted of disturbing the peace and fined.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, reversed the conviction and ruled that Terminiello’s speech was protected by the First Amendment. The court said that the police, instead of taking action against the speaker should have protected him and controlled the crowd, including making arrests if necessary.

University of Chicago law professor Harry Kalven Jr. would later coin the term “heckler’s veto” to describe what would have happened had the court decided otherwise. First Amendment rights could be “vetoed” by others who create a public disturbance that forces the silencing of the speaker. I wonder…do we exercise a “heckler’s veto” these days against speech that we consider offensive or unacceptable to our predetermined viewpoint?

I do not think there is any question about subjects such as slavery and racism, as in the Terminiello decision; those are subjects that society does not have to tolerate; but nevertheless, the Terminiello decision indicated that it is not acceptable in America to shout down a dissenting opinion.

I would speak, specifically, about speech aimed at silencing opposition to one of society’s sacred cows—the evolution argument. Ever since the mid-1990s general opinion in the scientific community has deemed it stupid and irrational to even question the “fact” of evolution. Everyone who attempts to do that is considered irrational, because the question has been finally settled in the minds of scientists and those in institutions of higher learning. Even the population, as a whole, considers the question solved, i.e., the scientific methods have answered the question once and for all. These scientific methods are often referred to as methodological naturalism.

Even though methodological naturalism is widely accepted as a way of getting at some forms of truth, its principles, themselves, have not been proven conclusive in all kinds of truth determinations. Specifically, methodological naturalism has not been able to disprove the existence of a Creator God. Other questions unanswered by scientific methods are, these: Does science prove naturalism, or does it merely assume it? Has the metaphysical basis for traditional biblical morality been destroyed by scientific discoveries?

The media and the court systems of America are busy shutting the doors on anyone who would promote ideas of faith and religious certainty into academic and public discourse. Teachers are prohibited from entering their religious beliefs into their classrooms. The subject seems to be closed. I would posit that this kind of prohibition is a form of “heckler veto” of discordant and controversial idea sharing; and, as such, it represents an erosion of freedom of speech.

More on this subject can be found in Phillip E. Johnson’s book, Reason In The Balance.

People Do Not Believe in Science, Anymore. Really?

...the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers. James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879

I have been in a conversation with one of our daughters lately; she tells me that people are losing confidence in science, generally. This lack of confidence in scientific belief is causing them to do some bad things. For instance, they are not giving their children immunizations because they think that adverse side effects of vaccines cause all sorts of bad things, such as autism.

I will admit that scientific reasoning does not hold the high ground in the thinking of many people that it did 100 years ago, when Enlightenment philosophy was the predominant pattern of belief. However, science has been a huge benefit to humankind in the last 200 years or more. No thinking person can really deny that. Just think of how science has impacted your life whenever you get in a car or airplane, turn on the electricity, or use the internet.

The problem with general belief which our daughter notes is caused by the fact that scientific thinking has invaded areas where it does not belong. To summarize the problem, scientists answer the question of “what” in the puzzled human mind; but it does not answer the question of “why.” Scientists can examine our universe and find out many things about how it works; but they cannot tell us why the universe is here in the first place. And…try as they may, they cannot tell us how and why life exists. The question of life gets even more complicated when they try to explain such things as consciousness, imagination, art, morality, kindness, and many other things.

The “incredibility” of scientific understanding comes when scientists try to extrapolate their bench research findings into philosophical and less objective fields of understanding.

Some scientists fail to understand that there are several ways to get at truth. For instance:

1)   Experimental truth is obtained in laboratories of one kind or another. Making hypotheses, testing them against collected data, drawing conclusions, and relying on replicability to confirm findings. This is the home ground of scientific understanding; and it is the area where science shines as an expounder of truth.

2)   Historical truth is obtained by consulting historical records. For instance, if one wants to know how many Irish immigrants lived in Detroit in 1910, one consults historical records.

3)   Mathematical truth is obtained by deducing facts from previously confirmed formulas.

4)   Psychological truth is determined by interviewing people. For instance if one wants to know what is going wrong in a marriage conflict, one must interview the two people in the marriage.

5)   Philosophical truth is obtained by logic and reasoning with words. This truth relies on history and common sense.

6)   Sociological truth is obtained by interviewing a randomly chosen group of people and applying statistical models to the collected data.

7)   Theological truth relies on historical records and reliance on the only one who was there in the beginning, God, Himself, as expressed in the Bible.

When scientists push their naturalistic disciplines to their logical extreme, they logically come to the conclusion that God does not exist as a real actor—they see Him as a construct of human imagination.  Whenever scientists step out of their area of competence, they draw down doubt on their competence and believability. Their system of thought, when applied to areas outside of their area of competence invariably brings them to a belief in a purposeless evolution of molecules to life and, furthermore, to a belief in purposeless life evolution. Common sense contradicts this purposeless process. A person who looks at the internal workings of a human cell can tell with just a bit of common sense that all the “random change, natural selection, and passage of time” rhetoric we hear from scientists is nonsense; and it makes their arguments silly. The scientific method does not translate well into many areas of truth searching.

It seems that some scientists deny data that does not fit with their naturalistic, atheistic, presuppositions. Data of that kind shows the common observation that the various parts of our universe are extremely well coordinated to work together to produce the livable planet, which is our home. Scientists do not have an explanation for that in their paradigm of a “purposeless” creation.

No reasonable person is going to denigrate the reputation of science unless the purveyors of that discipline begin to jump the limits of their discipline and claim the right to determine things outside their area of competency. Scientists deserve to be disbelieved when their beliefs erode into areas only served by non-objective facts regarding ultimate truths.

It must be added that distrust in science has resulted from the terrible wars and mass killing that has taken place in the 20^th Century mediated by ingenious scientific killing devices. This kind of skepticism should not negate the many beneficial effects of scientific advances in medicine, public health, and other fields.     

Can You Tolerate A Government that Lies to You?

“The social contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.” H.G. Wells

We Americans put up with an awful lot of plain old evil in our society; but there is one thing that we simply will not tolerate—that is a government that tells us lies. Lately, the American people have had a very strong suspicion that the government has been lying to us about the scandal at the IRS, the Fast and Furious scandal, and the debacle at Benghazi, Libya. It has been very hard to know just how many of our suspicions have been true, because of the skillful way the administration has covered up the facts.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the large majority of governmental information is supposed to be available to the people; but the executive branch has worked hard, time and time, again, to keep important information away from the public and from legislators who need the information in order to design laws. Congressional committees have had great difficulty getting information out of the executive branch. Some legal watchdog groups like Judicial Watch have had better success in getting the President and his helpers to turn over information; but even they have had huge difficulties obtaining information. Following is a list of excuses the administration has used to deny information to people who need it:

“You can’t have it because of ‘executive privilege.’” “You can’t have it because it is in an ongoing investigation.” “You can’t have it because it is classified (by the President).” “You can’t have it because the effort to get it will be too onerous.” “You can’t have it because all of our computers crashed simultaneously.” “You can’t have it because there is no pertinent information there, anyway. Trust me.” “I only knew about that when I read it in the newspaper.” “That happened more than six months ago. Forget it.” “Nobody told me about that. I can’t be connected with that problem.”  “We’re putting that on hold; we’ll get it to you later (months later).” “We had no reason to believe the data was located there.” “If you want that information, you have to sue us for it.” And then…when they finally turn over some information, all the important data is blacked out! I ask you—is this freedom of information? There may be some truth to some of the above excuses; but, by and large, these excuses indicate cover-up of government failures.

“Transparency” in government has become a joke in this administration, despite the fact that President Obama promised before he was elected that if he were elected President, he would institute the most transparent administration in history.

Well, it seems that there will never be anything like transparency in this administration. Nevertheless, the American people seem to have suspected a deliberate cover-up of information that might be damaging to the administration; and they have acted on that suspicion. The electorate has placed in the House of Representatives the largest majority of Republicans in years; and they have elected ten more seats in the Senate than the Democrats occupy.

It is my personal opinion that the President should be impeached and replaced with someone who will be more honest with the American people.  

America’s Failed Foreign Policy

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.  Winston Churchill

A recent Wall Street Journal article of 12-30-14 outlines pretty well the sad and desperate state of United States “foreign policy,” if that is what it might be called.

ISIL, or Islamic State, rose to dominate much of Iraq after its armed forces captured the northern city of Mosul in June, followed by a sweep toward Baghdad.

Islamic State’s rise was made possible not merely because the U.S. wound down its military presence in Iraq but because Mr. Obama chose to eliminate that presence. Under intense pressure from the Pentagon and our regional allies, the White House later in the year committed useful if limited air support to the Iraqi army battling Islamic State. Without question, the U.S. was behind the curve, and with dire consequences.

Islamic State’s success has emboldened or triggered other jihadist movements, despite Mr. Obama’s assurance that the war on terror was fading.

Radical Islamists are grabbing territory from U.S. allies in Yemen. They have overrun Libya’s capital and threaten its oil fields. Boko Haram in Nigeria, the kidnappers of some 275 schoolgirls in April, adopted the ISIL terror model. U.S. allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, are struggling to cope with the violence spreading out of Syria and Iraq. Mr. Obama can only hope that the Afghan Taliban do not move now to retake Kandahar after he announced this week with premature bravado “the end of the combat mission.”

In February, the crisis in Ukraine began and worsened quickly, as Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces occupied Crimea. Next came the Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine, with a Malaysian airliner shot down in July, killing 283 passengers. Through it all, Mr. Obama refused the pleas of Ukraine and staunch allies such as Poland to provide the Ukrainian army with the basic means to defend itself. He limited his support to non-military supplies, such as battlefield food rations.

The danger is that Mr. Putin, supported at home by a massive anti-U.S. propaganda campaign, will next move on Moldova or Estonia, even in the face of Western economic sanctions. The collapse of world oil prices has intervened to force Mr. Putin to confront his own weak economy, but the threat of Russian expansion remains.

President Obama’s attitude toward foreign policy is encapsulated in one of his recent remarks on NPR “I believe in diplomacy, I believe in dialogue, I believe in engagement.” He said Iran could be “a very successful regional power” that is “abiding by international norms and rules.”