Reap the Whirlwind September 14, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Egyptian embassy attack, Islam religion of peace, Libyan embassy attack, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama foreign policy, Obama Indonesia, Obama Muslim
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In 1219 the Shah of the Islamic Khwarezmid Empire (present day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan), Ala ad-Din Muhammad had the ambassadors of Genghis Khan killed. This affront to diplomatic convention led to a devastating invasion and the total destruction of the Khwarezmid Empire.
No-one would advocate the slash and burn/take no prisoner response of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. However, to allow the first murder of an American ambassador since the Carter debacle to go unanswered is beyond the pale of poor leadership straying towards the realm of either complete ineptitude or dereliction of duty.
President Obama reminds us at every turn that Islam is the religion of peace. He also goes out of his way to teach us about the many contributions Muslims have made to world civilization. He even told NASA Administrator Charles Bolden that his most important mission as the head of America’s space agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world. There is a pattern here. Mr. Obama is using the Bully Pulpit and every avenue available to him as the most powerful man in the world to sow the wind with the seeds of Islam’s rise and America’s decline.
Being a Christian I obviously have an opinion concerning the theological truth of Muhammad’s answer to the need all people feel for God. I confess Jesus as my Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead. That is enough to say I believe the fundamental tenets of Islam do not match reality as I perceive it.
Being a Historian I have an opinion on the peaceful History of Islam. It is fiction. Islam has been a religion of war since its invention. Over and over Islamic powers and movements have attacked those who choose not to follow their prophet. They also forbid the free exercise of religion in any land unfortunate enough to fall under their power. They deny human rights, political rights, and economic rights. They oppress women making them possessions of their fathers, husbands, or brothers in a legal code based upon the very foundation of the religion: the Koran.
Have Christians done things wrong? Yes. Every Christian Historian, Theologian, and Preacher has branded the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Encomienda System of forced labor and conversion in Spanish America as aberrations and a blight upon the faith. Were these horrendous crimes as terrible as those of Islam? Yes. The difference is that they were all clearly contrary to the Bible which forms the basis for Christian faith while the depredations of Islam are the logical expressions of the Koran.
According to his school records in Indonesia Mr. Obama was listed as a Muslim. He attended Islamic education during the six years he lived there which was mandatory in all schools in Indonesia at that time. He tells us that the morning call to prayer is the most beautiful sound on earth. A Pew Research study finds that 17% of registered voters believe Barak Hussein Obama (the name he used when he was sworn in to be our president) is a Muslim. Thirty one percent said they weren’t sure. What evidence has not been sealed by presidential order is conflicting and confusing. He says he isn’t. He says he is a Christian, and I cannot know his heart. We can judge his actions. For over twenties years he was a member of the church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright whose brand of racist Black Liberation Theology is a branch of the worldwide Liberation Theology movement which has been branded as a heresy by the Catholic Church where it was born as well as by leaders of most other denominations. It is widely regarded as the Christianized version of Marxism.
In the past three + years Barak Obama has done everything imaginable to advance the cause of radical Islam by giving major speeches in Egypt and Turkey where he assured the world America is not a Christian nation, Supporting a Mosque at Ground Zero, approving and supporting the so-called Arab Spring that toppled regimes supportive of America and installed Islamist ones. Now paraphrasing his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright who was quoting Malcolm X, Barack’s chickens are coming home to roost. Only it is our brave Foreign Service workers and representatives who are paying the price.
As Americans are shocked by the violence in the Mideast because of a movie, does anyone in the media reflect on the fact that American Christians don’t behave this way when their religion is insulted and denigrated even when it is done at taxpayers’ expense? No, the Corporations Once Called the Mainstream Media drank too much Kool-Aide and are too far in the tank for the Progressives to mention anything like that. Instead they defend an administration whose well-worn socialist slogan, “Forward” should be, “Obama – Biden Hey! It Could Be Worse” and whose answer for everything is “It’s somebody else’s fault.”
One day after radical Islamists in a country Mr. Obama sent America to war to free kill an American ambassador all the Media can talk about is that Mitt Romney reacted poorly.
How does Obama’s failure to protect America, its prestige, and its interests become Romney’s gaff? It is through the collusion of a complicit media that is nothing more than the communication arm of the DNC. No matter how the communication commissars seek to deny that they are purveyors of a tainted product the obvious bias and advocacy of the Progressive agenda is visible for all to see as reporters unaware of an open microphone coordinate what questions to ask Romney to steer a question and answer session in the direction that fits their play book. They fall over themselves to accuse Mr. Romney of politicizing events and undermining American foreign policy as they conveniently forget that Mr. Obama used the deaths of American servicemen to attack McCain and Bush in 2008.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Ottoman Empire which had once ruled from India to Morocco and from Arabia to Vienna was known as the Sick Man of Europe. It was still vast in extent, rich in trade and natural resources, but its economy was in a shambles and consequently it was no longer able to maintain its military power and was now the victim of continuous attacks and invasions by neighbors who wanted a little plunder or territory. Britain took Egypt. Spain took Morocco. Italy took Libya. Serbia, Greece, and Romania first gained their independence and then started chewing off piece after piece as the Turks blustered and pretended that they were still a great power long after the national will to do what was necessary to remain a power had vanished.
Under the pro Islamist, anti-colonial leadership of Barack Obama America is careening towards a foreign policy of defeat and shame. His domestic agenda is spending us into oblivion and the poor house.
The recent tragic events in Egypt and Libya, the on-going turmoil throughout the Islamic world and its violence against Americans all ostensibly over a movie shows the religion of peace for what it really is: a religion of intolerance, hatred, and war. These same events and our reaction to them show the Obama administration for what it is too: the Sick Man of American History.
This November let’s take the cure and let America be America again or we will learn that if you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Is There Any Hope of Change September 7, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: 2012 election, Chicago politics, Cloward-Piven Strategy, Dr. Robert Owens, military vote, National Debt, Obama agenda, Progressive agenda, Romney agenda, Ryan Plan
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The two major political parties have a lock on power in the United States. The election laws, the media and family voting patterns all collude to make the election of a third party candidate to the Presidency a near impossibility. The closest in the lifetime of anyone reading this happened in 1992 when Ross Perot garnered 18.91% of the vote and not one electoral vote. He has long been blamed for causing the defeat of Bush the Elder and the election of Clinton the Last. Whether Mr. Perot did have such a dramatic effect on the presidential election is still debated. Just as in most theological debates both sides offer well-constructed arguments supported by what they consider irrefutable scripture references or in this case, the life’s blood of political statements: statistics.
One certainty that cannot be debated is that Perot did not have an honest man’s chance in Washington to be elected.
Consequently either Barak Obama will continue as America’s president or he will be unseated and Mitt Romney will replace him. There may be others running. There may be better qualified people. There may be someone who could inspire and lead us all into a second century of American ascendance; however, despite whomever else there may be it will be either the Democrat Obama or the Republican Romney. Life may not be fair but it usually is predictable, and this is as predictable as the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. One of the two parties of power will win.
Given this preordained outcome is there really any hope of change? Or will we continue to watch helplessly as the perpetually re-elected parties continue to spend us into oblivion?
With Mr. Obama’s second term there is no doubt that all we can expect is more of the same, on steroids. Mr. Obama has said, “I think that after this election, we’ll be in a position to once again reach out to Republicans and say that the American people have rendered a judgment, and the positions we’re taking are well within what used to be considered bipartisan centrist approaches.”
A divided government, if the Republicans maintain control of the House, might slow things down, however Mr. Obama has shown he is ready, willing and with the silence of Congress able to rule by decree. If Congress won’t pass the Dream Act he imposes it. If Congress won’t pass Cap-N-Trade he regulates it into being. So we know that if he wins a second term it will be his way or the highway. His agenda will continue to be the national agenda and four more years might be enough to sink the ship of state in a Cloward–Piven Strategy overwhelming the system scenario.
Four more years of the Obama led Democrat Progressives and we may be fundamentally transformed beyond recognition. The heritage of our Founding Fathers may become the lost cause of a failed experiment in individual liberty and economic freedom as America descends into the morass of a welfare state based on re-distribution and political correctness. In other words, the dream of Obama’s father.
That is one side of the coin. What about the other?
If we get Tweedledee instead of Tweedledum will it be morning in America again? Will the ghost of the Gipper lead us from the government’s shovel-never-ready Great Recession into a new era where things are made in America again and everything’s coming up roses?
There is no way from where we are: 16 trillion in debt, a decimated industrial base and a large proportion of our population addicted to government handouts, back to being the largest creditor in the world, the largest manufacturer, a land of self-reliant patriots without major dislocations, and dare I say it, austerity.
Mr. Romney’s fifty nine point plan to save the economy is a well-crafted and well-presented plan to revitalize America’s economy through a pro-capitalist free market approach. It is however not as easy to explain or present as tax the rich and give everyone else free stuff. Since it is better known and has been more widely and perhaps more eloquently presented the Republicans appear to be fronting with Paul Ryan’s plan to save America. Both the Romney and the Ryan plan are a clear step away from the plunder policies of Mr. Obama and his Progressive shock troops.
However, neither Republican plans adequately addresses the entitlement time bomb. Neither projects a balanced budget in any timely fashion and neither proposes any way to ensure that future Congresses live by any restraints imposed. Both promise to preserve our imperial defense spending needed to support two wars and more than 100 foreign bases. Both rattle sabers in the direction of Syria and Iran. What we have is an effort to slow the growth of the debt by reducing the yearly deficits.
Slowing the growth is decidedly better than accelerating but the debt keeps growing and the abyss that looms ahead of us is the unsustainability of the debt. A future rise in interest rates will sink the ship as the service on the debt wipes out the government’s ability to keep its promises or meet its obligations. This is the very scenario the Progressives have been progressing towards. The people who tell us never to let a crisis go to waste have long worked incrementally to lead us to the crisis at the end of the Constitution. A final crisis when limited government will be completely unshackled and the central planners will triumph.
If Romney wins he and his administration may put a speed bump on the expressway to the poor house, but unless they are ready to shut down the gravy train and turn off the spigot of re-distribution we will merely postpone the day of reckoning. Slower is better than faster when it comes to assuming room temperature; however, unless we turn this ship around we’re headed for the shoals of bankruptcy and the reefs of insolvency either way.
Even though Mr. Obama makes the Carter Administration look like the good old days don’t count out the machines ability to pull an election out of their hat. From no voter IDs and Black Panthers patrolling the polls, from polling places in cemeteries, to every obstacle imaginable in the way of people in our armed forces voting this will be a no-holds-barred Chicago-style campaign by the Democrats. The Progressives know this is the one they need. This is the election that will seal the deal and finally transform America into a re-distribution center with them picking all the winners and losers. They win…America loses.
As one example of how the institutions the Progressives have built over the years will line up to re-elect Barack Obama, look at the recent moves of the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve is moving to inject massive amounts of money into the economy, while keeping interest rates near zero, before the election in a clear move to help re-elect President Obama. How are they going to do this? Will they just print more money? No, they wouldn’t do anything so crude or easy to see as that. Instead, they will announce an open ended mandate to purchase Treasury Bonds and mortgage backed securities. This is QE (Quantitative Easing) 3 in all but name. In QE1 the Fed bought $2.3 trillion of securities and in QE2 $600 billion of Treasuries. How big will this round of pump priming be? According to San Francisco Fed President John Williams, since this is an open ended authorization it could eventually be, “at least as large as QE2 or arguably even larger again.” The casino stock market will soar, and the Fed, through its Chairman, will continue to assure us inflation is small, negligible, and nothing we won’t be able to handle. Then again, what’s a little inflation if it helps re-elect a president whose goal is to swamp the system.
Expect an October surprise such as action against Iran or Syria. Expect an encouraging jobs report right before the election that will be revised lower later. Expect the Obama Administration to do whatever it takes to win.
Romney’s road may still lead to the poor house but Obama’s is a bullet train to nowhere. Is there any hope for change? Not with what we’ve heard so far. Maybe there is a chance to switch from the certainty of near term collapse to the promise of at least a few more stations and a few more track changes before we hit the wall. Who knows with enough time maybe enough people will get up off the couch, turn off the game, and pay attention to make a difference. At least that would be a change we could all hope for.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Socialism is as Socialism Does August 31, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Bill Ayers, Dr. Robert Owens, Frank Marshall Davis, fundamentally transform America, Obama’s firsts, Obama’s socialist agenda, Progressive agenda, Progressives, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Saul Alinsky, socialism, transformational president, Utopia, utopians
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Ronald Reagan taught us, “How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.”
Barack Obama’s mentor as a young man was communist party member Frank Marshall Davis. As a community organizer he was a follower and promoter of the communist fellow-traveler Saul Alinsky’s methods and goals. As a professional in Hyde Park he associated with socialist radicals such as Bill Ayers. As an up-and-coming Chicago Politician he attended the church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, an outspoken proponent of the socialist Black Liberation Theology. As president he appointed communist Van Jones to be one of his many Czars. Mr. Obama says he is not a socialist. However, simple logic tells us if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck you can be relatively certain it’s a duck.
Mr. Obama has told us that he seeks to be a transformational president like his idol FDR. He was bold enough to tell us just days before the election in 2008 that he would fundamentally transform America. In just one term he has accomplished much along the way to changing us from what we have always been into what the Progressives have always wanted us to be.
How has Barak Obama transformed us? Into what is he transforming us? A look at his impressive *list of firsts as president of these United States points in the direction he is herding us:
- First President to have a Social Security number from a state where he has never lived
- First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States
- First President to violate the War Powers Act
- First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
- First President to require that all Americans purchase a product from a third party as a condition of citizenship
- First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and then joke that shovel ready wasn’t quite as shovel ready as he thought
- First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters
- First President to by-pass Congress and implement laws such as the Dream Act and Cap-n-Trade through executive fiat
- First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees
- First President to tell a CEO of a major corporation (GM) to resign
- First President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space
- First President to cancel the National Day of Prayer and to say that America is no longer a Christian nation
- First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present
- First President to send the families of fallen service members a form letter signed with an auto-pen
- First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it (DOMA)
- First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases
- First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory
- First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN)
- First President to actively try to bankrupt an American industry (coal)
- First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case
- First President to appoint 45 czars to his office
- First President to golf more than 100 times separate times in his first three and a half years in office
- First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records
- First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing to earn it
- First President to go on multiple global “apology tours” and concurrent “insult our friends” tours
- First President to go on 16 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer
- First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife
- First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense
- First President to publicly read from the Quran & tell us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth
- First President to recite the Muslim call to prayer in perfect Arabic
- First President to tell the military men and women that they should pay for their own private insurance
- First President to side with a foreign nation over one of America’s 50 states (Mexico vs. Arizona)
Mr. Obama is leading us from being the first among nations to being just another vote in the United Nations. Now there’s a level playing field for you. And now it’s time for another election, some say our most important, some say perhaps our last.
In many ways this election cycle is refreshing. For generations the Progressives have pretended to be something they are not to win elections. They have pretended to be dedicated to the American dream of personal liberty, economic freedom and the belief that America was different from other nations, that as the world’s first and most enduring modern experiment in a republic based on limited government we were exceptional. Although the policies of the Progressives have always been at odds with this assumed identity at least every election cycle they would tip their hat to the America of our fathers and portray themselves as a Thomas Jefferson or an Andrew Jackson.
Therefore, 2012 is shaping up to be the election where the Progressives cast aside their mask and run as who they are: the American version of socialism promising to tax the rich and spread the wealth around, from each according to their ability to each according to their need.
If Mr. Obama wins re-election on this platform the Progressives will finally have their chance to give Americans the same kind of cradle-to-grave utopia the happy people of Russia, China, North Korea, and Hitler’s Germany have had the fortune to endure. If Mr. Obama wins re-election espousing the true intentions of the Progressives, to change the constitution from a rock solid foundation for freedom into a living document that is a dead letter, he will succeed at his vow to fundamentally transform America.
He will fundamentally transform the dreams of our fathers for a land of liberty and opportunity into the dreams of his father who was a pro-communist social engineer and America will become just another country trying to build heaven on earth by plundering some to benefit others.
As to his utopian beliefs and aspirations President Obama has said, “I am confident we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth”
President Reagan also told us, “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it, and hell where they already have it.”
*Lists of Mr. Obama’s firsts are found numerous places. The sources referenced for each first are merely representative of the many available for each.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
The god Particle I Don’t Think So August 23, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Big Bang Theory, Dr. Michio Kaku, Dr. Robert Owens, God particle, Higgs Boson particle, Higgs particle, Large Hadron Collider
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Arrogance is a funny thing. Not Ha Ha funny, but funny none-the-less. I was watching one of America’s leading physicists the other day, a man made famous by his co-authorship of String Theory and made popular by his ability to make people without a scientific education believe they understand what he’s talking about. He repeatedly made the statement that today physicists understand 99.9%of how the Universe works and that the .01% that was missing is the never before seen but previously postulated Higgs Boson particle popularly known as the god particle.
The reason he was on a popular news show was because other scientists in Switzerland had announced that they had found the ever elusive god particle by producing a mini-Big Bang in the world’s largest cyclotron by smashing atoms together. The Big Bang is what atheist scientists have to call creation because all their evidence proves that the universe, just started. They have come to believe that at one moment there was nothing and then a split nano-second later there was everything. Since they find it impossible to believe that God merely said, “Let there be” and it was they instead have mentally manufactured the Big Bang Theory, which along with the Theory of Evolution is taught to every school child as if it were established fact.
The Big Bang Theory goes like this: once upon a time there was nothing except the tiniest of points that contained the essence of everything. They even say there was no time because time itself was nonexistent before the Big Bang. Then spontaneously this tiniest of points exploded and in a flash it expanded into gases and stars and planets and galaxies. Using rooms full of chalk boards these highly educated scientists prove that all of everything came from something: a teeny tiny point of compressed something.
They piously tell us all their observations prove this is so. All their chalk filled blackboards prove this is so. All their experiments prove this is so. And now after they have discovered 99.9% of the truth the production of the missing god particle absolutely proves it is so. Just give them a little more time and they will be able to tell us exactly how the universe created itself.
How nice.
Luckily there are these eloquent popularizers who are able to act as a verbal interface allowing the scientifically and mathematically challenged masses peek behind the curtain. It’s a good thing because it is our tax money that pays for all their orbiting telescopes, cyclotrons, and blackboards. And since the majority of us are Christians who believe God created the world it’s convenient to have someone to explain to us why all the money we spend proves we are actually deluded provincials with a quaint faith in an unseen Father who created and upholds everything with His word, wrote a book to tell us about it, and then sent His only Son to die at our hands for our redemption.
Now that is money well spent. Pay billions and billions to have scientific shamans to tell us that what we believe are fables and what they believe is fact. Maybe we should spend our billions on magic beans instead, and then we could climb up to heaven and find out what really happened. Or maybe we should build a tower that reaches into heaven so our priest-king-scientist could give God a physical, and then tell us all about why He isn’t there.
Our super smart highly educated and well financed scientists tell us they don’t operate on faith; instead they operate on logic and objective evidence. Yet when you examine their chain of thought and peer into their evidence it is a fabric of conjectures based upon one leap of faith after another. They have convinced themselves the air castles they have constructed are more than science fiction, but why should we believe them? They do sound sincere and they do act as if they know what they are talking about, but so does the flim-flam man who tries to sell us the Brooklyn Bridge or the politician who tells us they can manage the debt and give everyone everything.
For one thing their very confidence that they have the universe 100% or even 99.9% figured out ought to tell us these wizards aren’t ever going to really give us a heart, or courage, and certainly not a brain. They may give us a medal or a degree and then explain how they are just what they promised when they aren’t but they can’t deliver on the real thing. When Toto finally pulls the curtain back will we then realize we have spent billions upon billions to supposedly prove fantasies labeled as truth when we have had the truth all along: God created the universe, and we are here because of Him, in Him, and for Him. That may be too simplistic for the wizards to believe but their flights of fancy ought to be too fantastic for us to swallow.
For instance all these grand theories of everything never tell us where the incredibly compressed point comes from. They never tell us how long the point was in a state of perfect equilibrium just hanging there in the nothing. They never tell us what would have caused the point to explode. Yet they try to tell us they have it all figured out. Go figure.
I find it comical that believing in an all-knowing all-powerful God who created everything and everyone is too hard for people to believe but when a highly educated, highly financed, and media savvy spokes model tells us that everything created itself millions of people nod their heads and stand in line to give them more money for more experiments and blackboards so that we can expand our knowledge to what 110%?
This all reminds me of two things.
One:
There have been other times when societies and their wizards thought they knew everything.
A man named Ptolemy once proved that the whole universe revolves around the earth. Eventually a complicated model was constructed by dedicated mathematicians and philosophers to demonstrate and prove how it worked. Galileo among others was arrested, tried, and convicted for saying the Earth revolves around the Sun. Once the alchemists knew there was a philosopher’s stone that would turn iron into gold. At one point the leading lights of science knew the world was flat while Columbus knew he could sail from Europe to Asia in a straight line. In the 1890s scientists assured us we knew everything about everything. Now the Big Bang explains it all and the god particle is the key to understanding how nothing became everything.
Two:
All these theories of everything that eliminate God remind me of the story about a scientist who when asked where his computer came from didn’t know so he said, “There was a pile of parts laying in a junk yard for billions of years and one day they were struck by lightning and out popped this computer.” This scientist had a blackboard full of equations that proved he was right. He had spent billions of tax dollars conducting of experiments that proved he was right. And he sounded very convincing when he explained it all. His theory was accepted and taught in all the schools, so now our children can come home and tell us where computers come from.
And the cow jumped over the moon.
It also reminds me of the story about a scientist who said to God, “You’re not so much. I’ve figured out how to create life in my laboratory.”
“You have?” said God.
“Yes I have and I’m willing to have a competition to prove I can create life just like you,” said the scientist as he wrote two rooms full of equations to show God how much he knew.
“Okay,” said God as He stooped down picked up some dirt and started fashioning a man.
The scientist picked up some dirt and started pouring it from one test tube to another when God smiled and said, “Hey! Get your own dirt.”
Even if we can prove how something happened does that tell us why? Since every chain of events has to have a beginning our wizards have had to come face-to-face with “In the beginning.” However, without faith they can’t see the forest for the tree. So instead of giving God the glory for his creation they try to construct creation without a creator, which reminds me of the atheist who knows there is no heaven and prays there is no hell.
I love to listen to the wizards. I read their books and watch their shows. However, I march to the beat of a different drummer, “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Education is the Foundation of the Future August 16, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: American Exceptionalism, fundamentally transform America, liberalism a mental disorder, Progressive Education. Dr. Robert Owens
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Have you ever asked yourself, “How can Progressives like President Obama hate America? How can anyone who was raised in the most free and prosperous society in the History of the world believe America is an imperialistic power and the source of evil?”
If we can’t understand our adversary we may defeat them, but we will never know what it is that motivated them. This lack of understanding leaves us open to assault by the same forces in the future. If we wish not only to defeat Barack Obama and the forces of Progressivism in the November elections but also to set America on the path to restoration we must understand the root cause of the Progressive delusion and modern Liberalism which Michael Savage has correctly labeled a mental illness, and I consider a Socially Transmitted Disease.
If you want to understand something it is necessary to learn where it came from and how it came to be. Even if President Obama was educated partially in his adopted country of Indonesia he is a prime example of the assembly-line progressive education that has become the norm in America today: bash America at every chance and cram the idea of a living constitution and the necessity for government intervention in every aspect of daily life.
We’ve all heard horror stories of the anti-American bilge being pumped into our youth in today’s schools, so the following personal experiences shouldn’t shock anyone too much.
As an educator I participated in a program that combined college and high school classes so that students could earn credit towards their high school diploma and at the same time work on an Associate Degree. I was happy to work in this program, and I helped many hard working students earn their Associates at the same time they earned their high school diploma giving them a decided advantage when they went on for their Bachelor degree.
During the course of my years in the trenches of blended education I was in control of the college side of the class; however, I had no authority to stop the blatant dissemination of Progressive propaganda that made up the totality of some teachers’ curriculum. While in the classroom I strive to present material in such a way as to lead students in the direction of critical thinking. I would present both sides and urge students to evaluate and come to their own conclusions. Many times after a semester of teaching Political Science students would come up and ask, “Now that the class is over tell us, which are you a conservative or a liberal?”
Many of my high school teacher colleagues were not so subtle. Here are two examples that were more the rule than the exception in many classes:
- One Political Science class had the following assignment; watch Fahrenheit 9/11by Michael Moore and then write an essay on how many ways President Bush lied to trick America into an unjust war.
- In a History class the students were assigned to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and then write an essay on the dehumanizing effects of capitalism.
The list of such blatant and crude attempts to mold our children into good little Progressives that I witnessed would fill a book on how not to teach, but this is nothing new. I am sixty three years old and though not as out-in-the-open or in-your-face I was subjected to the same type of illiberal liberalism when I was a youngster in school.
In grade school I did encounter one History teacher who had been in the profession since before my father was born. She still thought it a good thing to teach American History as an objective subject instead of a vehicle for her own agenda. She inspired students to look at the evidence and think. She however was the exception. From Math to English, from Geography to History teachers were constantly extolling the benefits of government social programs and depicting America as a world-class bully marching around imposing its will on poor little nations that couldn’t protect themselves.
In high school I was suspended for accusing a Social Studies teacher of being a communist. Years later he admitted that he in fact had been a communist since the forties. Another teacher rejected any History paper that he felt was too patriotic which he dismissed as jingoism. A teacher of Russian spent more time in class extolling the virtues of the USSR than teaching the language. When I complained about this forty five minute daily propaganda session I was again suspended. All of this took place back in the 1960s. This isn’t a new problem.
The Progressives realized long ago that if they could take over the nation’s education system they could raise up generations of Americans with no conception of the uniqueness of America as the world’s bastion of freedom and liberty. Today we see the fruit of this campaign: legions of voters ready to throw away our heritage for a government check. The descendants of the Founders are willing to surrender their freedom to strive for the best in exchange for the security of just enough to get by.
So as the wisest woman I have ever known, my wife asks me, “What can we do now?”
Back in the early 90s we decided that what we needed to do was go to school so that we could become teachers. Neither of us wants to impose our ideas on others, but we do want to present the materials in an objective manner and help our students acquire the critical thinking skills necessary to be informed citizens. Whenever a student asks me to figure out what their grade is during a semester I tell them, “If you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. If you teach him to fish he can eat forever.” I then proceed to teach them how to find an average and how to translate that into a letter grade.
What can we do now? We can’t all become teachers but we can all become involved in our local school boards. We can all do our due diligence and find out what is being taught at our local schools, and we can follow the procedures to correct what is wrong and implement what is right. One thing is for sure if we do not regain control of our schools we will lose the future. Our leaders are leading us down the primrose path to collectivism. Our education establishment is conditioning America to accept it. Step-by-step, inch-by-inch we have strayed from a federal republic operating on democratic principles with liberty and justice for all to a centralized bureaucracy dispensing cradle-to-grave loot taken from producers and redistributed to non-producers. We may have gotten here step-by-step but we are not too many steps away from one step too many. Barack Obama has stated that his goal is to fundamentally transform America. From stimulus slush finds, shadow governments, and imperial edicts he is systematically remaking us into a centralized state based on social democracy and wealth redistribution.
In 1962 the leader of the socialist slave camp we knew as the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, said “The United States will eventually fly the Communist red flag…The American people will raise it themselves. We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.”
Education has led the way to this precipice and only education can lead our way back. If we don’t learn from our mistakes and once again begin building up America through education we may learn that Khrushchev was right.
Did we win the Cold War defeating an enemy dedicated to our destruction to end up proving the wisdom of a cartoon character, “We have met the enemy and he is us”?
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
If it isn’t Right it’s Wrong August 10, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: abortion, culture war, Dr. Robert Owens, free trade, gay agenda, gay rights, politically correct, traditional values
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Back in the nineties when Pat Buchanan was wise enough to label the Culture War for what it was some of us asked, “How can a moral wrong be a civil right?” This was back when those coming out of the closet were asking for freedom, and not trying to deny freedom to others. Today the radical homosexuals froth at the mouth and impose boycotts against anyone with the impudence to say they support traditional values and with the bad taste to say they are married to their first wife.
The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media joins the radical homosexuals distorting what was initially said and fanning the flames of hate. Pandering politicians join in the pile-on and use their offices and the power voters entrusted them with to punish a lawful business because their CEO exercised his first amendment rights and stated something that not too long ago was so widely accepted it never would have had to be said.
Culturally the majority of Americans now live in a nation controlled and subjugated by a vocal minority intent on forcing their values on the rest of us.
Back in the nineties after America had defeated the Evil Empire we stood unchallenged as the world’s sole superpower. Our industrial base was an 800 pound gorilla in everybody’s room. We were the largest creditor nation in the History of the world. Our science and our technology were the definition of cutting edge. Today China rises like the red dragon in the East. We are the largest debtor in the History of the world. The fastest computer, the largest accelerator, and the number one computer and smart phone manufacturers are all in Asia. Our manned space vehicle program is a memory, our astronauts have to hitchhike to a space station we paid for and built, and the Chinese have just announced they are going to the moon to replace the stars and stripes with communist red.
Technologically we are standing still at best while former third world nations lead the way to a brave new world.
Politically we are watching the Mideast go south. We are bogged down in a quagmire in Afghanistan where the ultimate winner won’t be the corruption we have installed as government. The Chinese control the Panama Canal and the Port of Los Angeles. NATO had a hard time defeating the definition of a tin-pot dictator and his band of sub-Saharan mercenaries.
How did all this happen? How did it happen so fast? Is there anything we could do to reverse our slide into insignificance? Is there anything that will be done to lead the way back from the brink?
How did all this happen? How did it happen so fast?
The Culture War has been waged aggressively by its proponents: those who wanted an end to America’s traditional Judeo-Christian ethics and those who wished to profit politically by the end of the America we had known and loved. The coalition of social deviants, media boosters, and political panderers rolled over a live-and-let-live public as they achieved their dreams and changed moral wrongs into civil rights. It is now considered unacceptable to state your personal beliefs if they diverge from the culture of the lowest common denominator. Political correctness strangles freedom from college campuses to board rooms. The murder of unborn babies has made the womb the most dangerous place for an American child. Television, movies, and music are filled with vile hateful filth. Triple X superstores and legal gambling are now the trophies for the victors and tombstones for the vanquished in a war Mr. Buchanan was pilloried for having the courage to name.
What about the technology?
In their exuberance and hubris our leaders, Bush the First and Clinton the Last, decided that we could make free trade work for our advantage when it had killed every other empire that ever followed it to cheap consumer goods and industrial destruction. Ross Perot was ridiculed when he would ask, “Do you hear that giant sucking sound?” That’s American jobs being sucked out by NAFTA.” But he was right. Our balance of trade with Mexico went from more than a billion dollars a year surplus in 1994 to more than a 64 billion deficit in 2011. This was followed with so-called free trade agreements with country after country systematically turning a positive balance of trade into a negative.
Then when we combined free trade agreements with an American innovation, shipping with containers, we set the stage for our markets to be overwhelmed by Chinese imports. Today if the balance of trade and the content of that trade were examined it becomes apparent that America is fast becoming a de-industrialized colony of China as they have been a financial colony of ours. We supply them with vast amounts of invisible credit via the pegged, undervalued, yuan-dollar exchange rate and raw materials while they supply us with cheap manufactured goods. Our own money is inflating a mercantilist predator poised to devour our industrial base. Even our military now relies on Chinese parts and our security may rest upon components that are designed to either malfunction or provide a backdoor for hackers.
What about politics?
Bush the First crowed about creating a New World Order and couldn’t beat a womanizing bubba in a tux. Clinton the Last spent his Peace Dividend buying votes and gutting the military. Bush the Next led us into a war in Iraq we never should have fought and refused to leave a war in Afghanistan he didn’t notice we had won. Obama the Destroyer of Worlds leads from behind while following the UN, apologizes for American exceptionalism, and bows to foreign leaders. When you fight a war against an enemy you won’t name how will you know if you have won?
Is there anything we could do to reverse our slide into insignificance?
How do you end the degradation of our society into an open sewer of licentiousness? Values are taught in the home or they are picked up in the street. Ethics are passed on by people who believe there are absolutes and who live consistently as if those absolutes actually matter. Telling our children to do as we say not as we do has produced generations of people who do whatever they want. Hedonism and conspicuous consumption have combined to give us a world where getting what you want is prized above getting what you deserve. Let those who live right be salt and light in this world and those who seek the day instead of the night will follow. Billy Graham, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Bible are right Larry Flint, Hugh Heffner, and Bill Clinton are wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
Take the steel boot of regulations off the throat of industry and innovation. Allow economic freedom and the invisible hand of entrepreneurship will once again transform America into the powerhouse of industry and technology. Adam Smith and Milton Friedman had it right; Keynes and the Progressives have it wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
End the so-called free trade, and insist upon equitable trade. If someone uses tricks to add fees to our products add the same fees to their products. If someone restricts our products in their markets put the same restrictions on their products. Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan had it right; our progressive politicians have it wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
Return to what was once traditional American policy: a friend to all and entangled with none. Why are American troops still garrisoned in Europe, Japan, and Korea? Why are America’s finest stationed in hundreds of bases in over 100 nations? Bring our troops home. Let them guard our own borders from the hordes that now walk across them every day. Let their bases provide an economic stimulus to American towns and cities instead of those of foreigners. Washington, Hamilton, and Monroe had it right. The Bush dynasty, Clinton, and Obama have it wrong. And if it isn’t right it’s wrong.
What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. How do we restore what’s wrong with America? We do what’s right.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
No Joke July 27, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: dead people voting, Democrat corruption, Dr. Robert Owens, Eric Holder, illegals voting, Motor Voter, Voter Fraud, Voter ID
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Fido, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Juan Valdez walk into a polling place. No this isn’t the beginning of a joke it is a key part of the Chicago Plan to re-elect the worst President in American History.
The Voter Participation Center (VPC), a left wing organization whose work to register Democrat voters exemplifies the process used for generations in Chicago to ensure the Outfit/Machine maintains control of the government, the power, and the swag. The VPC is mass mailing pre-printed voter registration forms to selected voter blocks known to be part of the Democrat coalition, African-Americans, Latinos, young adults, and single women. In their effort to extend the Chicago system to the rest of the country VPC mailed nearly 200,000 third-party voter registration forms to Virginia residents in June. This has resulted in more than 15,000 new voters being registered.
However, there are a few problems with this exercise in Chicago-style democracy. They are violating rules set forth in the state code and the Virginia Constitution requiring that voters fill out their own form. The State Board of Elections, which the group says pre-approved their forms and their methods, has asked the group to stop filling in the forms prior to sending them to the people, and pointing to the errant forms they have also raised questions concerning how the group obtained lists of registered voters. In addition, according to Justin Riemer, the Virginia State Board of Elections’ deputy secretary, forms have been sent by the group to “deceased infants, out-of-state family members, and non-U.S. citizens, among others.” Given the fact that these forms can be mailed in and that the Federal Government will sue any State that has the chutzpah to require a photo ID to vote don’t be surprised if in this, the most crucial election of our lives Fido, Casper, or Juan cast their vote to continue the occupation of Washington by the Progressive Statists and their totalitarian plans.
The list of problems with Democrat voting procedures that have ensured their iron-fisted rule in the tottering hulks of our once great cities is as long as it is disturbing. There are the great Democrat machines that have used every form of voter fraud and intimidation to dominate the urban political scene in America for generations in places such as Philadelphia, Detroit, and of course the Mecca of corruption President Obama’s adopted hometown and political base, Chicago. In East St. Louis and Indianapolis there are actually more registered voters than eligible citizens.
As the Obama Justice Department circles the country like a bird of prey waiting to pounce on any jurisdiction that attempts to purge the dead the illegal immigrants or felons from the voting lists, it is apparent that voter fraud has been elevated from a crime to a national policy. So far Attorney General Holder has sued Florida, Georgia, and Texas while investigating Pennsylvania. Yet there is no time or resources spent on investigating sixteen counties in Texas with more voters on the rolls than in the census or sixteen jurisdictions in Illinois that also have more registered than eligible. There also was no interest in prosecuting the clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party who patrolled voting locations armed with clubs while making racist statements to voters. And the most reprehensible case of voter suppression of all is the campaign waged to limit the vote of our active duty military.
Any attempt to slow the growth of phantom voters is met vigorously by the Federal Government with strident accusations of racism saying that anyone who requires a photo ID to vote might as well burn a cross on the White House lawn. This is patently absurd. It takes a photo ID to do many things people do every day. You need a photo ID to:
Get a Driver’s license
Buy alcohol
Buy cigarettes
Apply for welfare
Apply for food stamps
Cash a check
Purchase a firearm
Make any large credit card purchase
Open a bank account
Rent an apartment
Be admitted to a hospital
Get a marriage license
And yet according to Attorney General Holder any jurisdiction that requires a photo ID to vote is placing an undue burden on minorities akin to a poll tax collected by a man in a white hood. But for security purposes you needed a photo ID to get into the NAACP meeting recently to hear Mr. Holder speak in a state he is currently suing over their requirement of a photo ID to vote. The irony never ends in a world that is fast becoming the theater of the absurd.
Add into the mix that most states offer free IDs and provisional ballots that are counted once ID is verified to anyone who shows up without an ID, and it’s easy to see the righteous battle against voter ID is really a reprehensible defense of voter fraud.
And just in case the actual living citizens of America show up to vote in great enough numbers to compete with Fido, Casper the Ghost, and Juan the Obama administration has retained the services of thousands of lawyers. These devil’s advocates will challenge the vote in any district that goes against them or to defend themselves in any jurisdiction with the gall to challenge their manufactured majority.
Passing over the debates of who is Barack Obama, where did he come from, and what motivates him we must deal now with the Fete Accompli. He has been legally sworn in and has run the country into the ground for almost four years. We cannot afford four more years of the Progressive’s spend us into oblivion with the Cloward–Piven Strategy as national policy. We cannot afford another four years of international support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s march to power in Middle East and serial apology tours. We cannot afford another four years of trillion dollar yearly deficits. We cannot afford another four years of Barack Obama if America is to have any chance to remain the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If we don’t end this soon the Progressives will end it later.
If we don’t reassert our devotion to constitutionally limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom we will sink into a quagmire of endless entitlements for the idlers paid for by plundering the productive. In four short months we will have an opportunity to choose. The opponents of liberty are lined up to steal the election, but we can overwhelm them if we will all show up and vote. Make sure every Patriot is registered, and do anything and everything you can to make sure everyone you know votes, because you can bet Fido, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Juan Valdez will. And that’s no joke.
Keep the faith. Keep the peace. We shall overcome.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
What’s A Patriot to Do? July 20, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, election 2012, Obama anti-capitalism, Obama Marxist, Obamacare, Progressives
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Mr. Obama may not be the only President we have ever elected who has little real world experience, but he may be the first who has none. And hopefully he will be our last.
President Obama’s latest insult to hardworking Americans has drawn massive press, at least in the portion of the Media that isn’t consumed with repeating and debating his false allegations concerning Romney’s business record. It isn’t hard to understand how a Marxist would consider the accomplishments of a capitalist to be criminal. It also isn’t hard to understand how a Marxist would believe that no one can accomplish something on their own; they do believe it takes a village to raise a child after all. What is hard to understand is how America was gullible enough to elect a Marxist president when the evidence of his beliefs, his associates, and his political activities were so easy to see.
What will be utterly beyond comprehension is a majority of our fellow voters drinking the kool-aide a second time when it is obvious from Mr. Obama’s rhetoric that he is selling a blatantly anti-capitalist and anti-American line of constitutional suicide.
With serial apology tours, bowing to foreign leaders, and abandoning our surrogates to help install the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, it is obvious Mr. Obama is a walking disaster for America’s foreign policy. It is also obvious from the recession he has managed to turn into the Great Recession that his spread around the wealth transfer policies are an unmitigated disaster on the domestic front. His record wouldn’t inspire anyone except a fellow American hating Marxist to vote for him, so his only viable tactic is to make the other guy totally unacceptable. In the coming months watch as the President, his fellow traveler mouth pieces, and the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media turn squeaky clean bland, boring Mitt Romney into a nefarious arch criminal who has built a massive criminal enterprise on the backs of exploited victims.
Even if President Obama really believes personal accomplishments, except his own of course, are merely the trophies of exploitation that doesn’t mean the rest of us should accept this as a legitimate premise for discussion. The Democrat Media may want to spend endless hours asking Mitt to explain why he threw grandma off the cliff after stealing her Social Security check, but that doesn’t mean any sane person should waste time considering it.
A better question might be if capitalists have claimed personal success unfairly while using roads and electric grids built by others why is it fair for Mr. Obama to claim as his own the fame for killing Osama when someone else started the campaign and someone else executed it? Why aren’t the failures of his forays into venture socialism such as Solyndra, the Volt, or anything else his fault? Our Dear Leader is a walking example of socializing the costs while personalizing the profits. If it goes bad it was someone else’s fault, but if it goes right it was all him. He has changed the famous Truman quote to “The Buck Stops with You” and since the teleprompter told him to say it he was able to do it with a straight face. The saddest thing of all is that the dumbed down crowds he wows probably don’t know he changed the quote at all.
All of this is shaping up as a surreal election cycle. We have a Democrat doing everything imaginable to lose. He is abandoning the white middle-class, attacking capitalism, and lavishing insult after insult upon anything and everything Americans have always held dear including our founding principles. We have a Republican who passed the template for Obamacare and can’t generate as much excitement as a Saturday night of rearranging your sock drawer.
America hangs in the balance.
If we re-elect a Marxist on a platform of class warfare and soak the rich, I imagine we will see class warfare and soak everybody. If we elect a middle of the road Massachusetts Republican with a veneer of conservatism who is enamored of the foreign affairs advice of John Bolton, the angriest of the neo-con war hawks I imagine we might get a reprieve on the Marxism as the government grows to sustain more wars for peace.
What’s a patriot to do? Are we teetering on the edge, past the tipping point, or already careening into the Abyss? Do we throw away our vote on someone with no chance to win? Do we choose the lesser of two evils knowing that we will still be choosing evil? Do we do as one of my oldest friends is doing: sell everything and leave the country before all this progressivism hits the fan? Do we store food, bury guns, and wait for the zombie apocalypse?
The answers could be so simple. Domestically we could cut taxes, cut regulations, and let the economy surge. In foreign affairs we could follow the direction laid out by the founders: a friend to all and an enemy to none, withdraw our far flung international police precincts, make our homeland an impregnable fortress and let trade be our currency and peace be our policy.
Instead we face a future of austerity and contraction based upon a bloated government swallowing ever more of the American pie no matter who wins. We face endless interventions and undeclared wars in quagmires defending a status quo that is no longer tilted in our favor. China, the rising dragon of the East, is playing chess as our dithering Progressives moan about chickens coming home to roost, and political correctness prevents us from doing what we should do when we should do it.
We are truly between Barack and a hard place with every forward indicator pointing down.
These are times when I draw upon the true source and summit of my being and remember that the God of Heaven and Earth has not left us without understanding. We face these problems because we have forsaken Him, and the only way back is through Him. He told us long ago, “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” That isn’t just an observation it is a promise. And unlike our fickle politicians who merely want to tickle our ears, God always keeps His promises.
Therefore as we turn to face the change don’t be discouraged, don’t be depressed, and don’t worry. God has our back if we will give him our faith. For He also told us, “A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you.”
Keep the peace. Keep the faith. We shall overcome.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
How Chicago Plays Ball July 6, 2012
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics.Tags: Chicago politics, Dr. Robert Owens, Obama Chicago politician, Obama corruption, Obama intimidation tactics
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In Chicago they play “Chicago Ball.” This is a form of soft ball that is as location specific to the Chicago area as Hoover Ball is to West Branch, Iowa. In this game a sixteen inch softball that is as hard as a baseball is used with no gloves. If at least one or two fingers aren’t broke in each game it must have been in girl’s division. It is a rough sport, and everyone who plays it knows it. Catching a line drive is like catching a cannonball in the stomach and catching a high pop-up is like having an incoming meteorite land in your hands.
In Chicago they also play another kind of ball that is rough, and everyone knows the rules. They call it politics. In other places they call it organized crime.
Back in the Dream Time, elders were honored because of their accumulated knowledge. If Pops knew a better way to saddle horses, that knowledge helped Junior since he saddled horses. Today if Pops knows how to tune-up cars what good is that when cars don’t need to be tuned-up anymore? Now the old are relegated to extolling their own relevance while exclaiming, “I’ve never seen that before.” Doddering ancients who use their cell phones merely to talk wonder why their grandchildren never answer their emails as Gen Z tweet each other: “Don’t trust anyone over fifteen.” The world is moving so fast not only is today tomorrow’s yesterday the generations are living in different todays today. Gen X and Y parents with their once hip lap-tops under their arms stare in wonder as their pre-teen Gen Zs text with one hand while Wii skydiving in the backseat. For these new additions to middle-age who’re just old enough to remember Star Trek imagine Captain Kirk visiting Captain Picard pointing at Commander Data and saying, “What’s that?”
After years of being treated as if the Wisdom of the Ages were as relevant as Confucius in a fortune cookie, now that we have Chicago on the Potomac the wisdom gained in the City that Works is suddenly spot-on. Of course George the Second’s doctrine of pre-emptive war made one old saying make sense beyond the Southside, “Never start fights, but if you have to hit someone back first once in a while that’s all right.” Then again ACORN has shown the everlasting relevance of Chicago’s best known adage, “Vote early and vote often” as well as eternal life or ACORN by another name is still the same corrupt mob of community organizers organizing their way to personal power and prosperity.
With President Obama and the Chi-Town hustlers large-and-in-charge, Windy City Proverbs may help many believe what kind of change we’ve stepped in. Such as “Everybody cheats so if you don’t cheat you’re a cheater,” or “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.” Maybe the taxman could use, “They must not have wanted it they didn’t have their hand on it.” Looking at our Congress, “If you’re going to get mad at thieves you’ll never have any friends” comes to mind. Thinking of the new Green Home Efficiency Inspectors they want us to deal with when buying or selling a home is reminiscent of the Chicago Fire Marshal conscientiously telling a young business owner, “We’ll save the city some gas money if we just do the inspection right here in my office,” while patting his desk indicating where to place the money.
The Obama Administration started off with some Southside swag calling the biggest earmark in history a stimulus bill aimed at shovel ready jobs. Then again as the President later joked, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.” After this predictable Southside of Chicago opening act the poster child for a different kind of politics continued the virtuoso performance calling ward-heelers czars and followed a time-honored Second City tradition in the Minnesota recount by finding a bag of votes giving us a good laugh by installing Al Franken in the once revered United States Senate.
Who says you can’t go home again? They may turn the old neighborhood into Yuppie Heaven by knocking down the middleclass housing and putting up three-story imitation Victorians but right here right now the machine that gave no-show jobs to half the wise-guys on the corner as well as Michelle at the hospital is in the process of not just fixing tickets but fixing everything else. The political descendants of Big Bill Thompson, Richard the First and Richard the Second parlayed community organizing into a national organization that should make the Five Families green with envy.
Having fixed the economy and with health care, hate-crimes, immigration, and cap-and-trade all queued up to flow through the system before the voters get a chance to register their disapproval, Don Barak also had the opportunity to begin fixing the highest court in the land. In the Chicago justice system ( an oxymoron) lawyers give out printed pricelists stating how much acquittals cost verses dismissals and the old saying concerning courthouses goes, “It may say justice on the outside but that doesn’t mean there’s any on the inside.” Since the Democratic Machine and their Me-To Republican allies rubber-stamped Mr. Obama’s first pick for the A-Team, how do the prospects for judicial restraint and the Constitution look? Fine if you fit the profile for the protected or promoted classes, but not too good if you naively look for that lady wearing the blindfold and holding the scales.
Joining the sisterhood on the bench, Ms. Sotomayor felt her gender and her race made her uniquely qualified to reach wise decisions and believes international law should be consulted when weighing appeals. She should feel right at home with the former chief counsel for the ACLU who apparently believes American Citizenship is the right of all mankind. In one decision she said, “You would have a huge statelessness problem if you don’t consider a child born abroad a U.S. citizen.” And now they have turned Chief Justice Roberts to the Dark Side. Ah justice, what is it good for? Or as they say in Chi-town, “How much justice can you afford?” The difference between Chicago Prime and Chicago on the Potomac is in the original version mayors serve for life followed by a power struggle. Vive la Différence!
How does Chicago Ball fit into all these old sayings? There are multiple sayings associated with playing ball. Such as, You have to swing the bat to have a chance to hit the ball,” or “I ain’t cheating if they don’t catch me.” So how do our now nationalized Chicago Pols play ball. One recent example is in the financing problem faced by the owner of the Chicago Cubs. The plans to renovate the dilapidated Wrigley Field were being held up because of the current owner’s political associations. And that’s how they play political ball in Chicago.
And how does that translate to Chicago-on-the-Potomac? In 2009 the Obama Administration played Chicago Ball with the Drug Industry to get their support for Obamacare. These types of tactics have become standard operating procedure for the Obama Administration as department after department make their wishes known and their power felt.
And just recently the President strong armed the Supreme Court asserting any interference with his take-over of 1/6th of the economy would be unprecedented. What was unprecedented was his use of manipulation and brow beating to pressure a supposedly independent court to become another place where the fix is in, or as they say in Chicago Ball “When they send out their best hitter, aim for the head.”
And if this article makes you feel politically as if you’ve had your fingers broken, well that’s just the way they play ball in Chicago.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 