Tuesday, July 12, 2011, the demonstration was simply escorting former first lady Nancy Reagan at the Betty Ford Memorial Service.
We must expect that again.
G. W. BUSH—DEMONSTRATES THE CHARACTER, MANNERS, INTEGRITY AND, YES, COMPASSION WE AMERICANS MUST ALWAYS EXPECT IN OUR PRESIDENT
DO WE HAVE TRUST FUNDS OR IS OBAMA, INCREDIBLY, TELLING THE TRUTH?
Your government is giving you two different and opposing answers. They both cannot be true but paradoxically they both could be false.
July 12, 2011 “I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Mr. Obama told CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.
But just two months ago, May 13, 2011 CNN reported Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pronounced the Social surety and Medicare trust funds would be solvent for years. Certainly problems loom in the future but the funds have balances securing them in the short term.
Social Security and Medicare — the country’s two biggest entitlement programs — will run dry earlier than expected, according a report Friday from the programs’ trustees.
After the programs’ trust funds are exhausted, Social Security and Medicare will be taking in only enough money to pay a portion of promised benefits to retirees.
Social Security will have sufficient resources to pay 100% of promised benefits through 2036. That’s one year earlier than last year’s forecast because the economic recovery has been slower than expected and seniors are living longer.
Meanwhile, Medicare’s hospital insurance program, otherwise known as Part A, should be able to pay full benefits through 2024, the trustees project.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner urged policymakers to take steps to shore up the two programs.
But those cannot both be true. Either the trust funds have the money to go substantially to the projected dates or they do not. The President knows which is true and so do you. There is no money in trust funds (even though there are trustees). They are only an accounting entry. We all know it.
We also know that, as there were funds to make those payments July 13 and 20th, there will be funds to send the August 3rd benefits. So does the President. Like the hockey puck, Timothy Geithner, the President is lying. So, while only one claim could be true, the fact is both claims are knowingly false making both men liars.
We are experiencing the sorriest most dishonest Administration in America’s history. We must change that in the next 15 months.
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REPOST: THE ETERNAL MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE DAY
Official Nation Anthem of the United States of America
You know this first verse well. Take a look at all four verses. The wonderful video is a former marine singing the 4th verse.
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
‘T is the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov’d homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us as a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Fantastic! Here is a short history:
In 1814, about a week after the city of Washington had been badly burned, British troops moved up to the primary port at Baltimore Harbor in Maryland. Frances Scott Key visited the British fleet in the Harbor on September 13th to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes who had been captured during the Washington raid. The two were detained on the ship so as not to warn the Americans while the Royal Navy attempted to bombard Fort McHenry. At dawn on the 14th, Key noted that the huge American flag, which now hangs in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum, was still waving and had not been removed in defeat. The sight inspired him to write a poem entitled Defense of Fort McHenry; later the poem was set to music that had been previously composed by a Mr. Smith. The song was immediately noted as an inspiring song that should be the national anthem of the United States of America. It was accepted as such by public demand for the next century or so, but became even more accepted as the national anthem during the World Series of Baseball in 1917 when it was sung in honor of the brave armed forces fighting in the Great War. The World Series performance moved everyone in attendance, and after that it was repeated for every game. Finally, on March 3, 1931, the American Congress proclaimed it as the national anthem, 116 years after it was first written.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S VISION FOR A SECOND TERM—MANY BELIEVE, YES HE CAN, ACHIEVE IT
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FAST AND FURIOUS WILL BE A BIGGER SCANDAL THAN WATERGATE
And Obama knew from the beginning
I write a daily email distribution, the DAILY CALL. The subject line yesterday was: DAILY CALL July 8, 2011 -FAST AND FURIOUS BIGGER THAN WATERGATE! I wrote:
This “Fast and Furious” will go right to the top of the Justice Department including Attorney General Eric Holder. I expect when it is finished, Holder will be in prison. (On the other hand, Casey Anthony ya’ know.) It is not clear that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will be criminally culpable but the situation at Treasury could not be more serious. Fast and Furious was a secret inter-agency government program to make assault weapons available for sale to Mexican drug cartels. Supposedly to lead authorities to the cartel leaders. The program failed to identify cartel leaders but the Assault rifles did show up killing people including U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry last December 13th.
To bring you up to speed, John Hinderaker at Power Line gave us the best early report Wednesday:
This morning, there was a stunning development in Congress’s investigation of the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running program: it was revealed that on July 4, Kenneth Melson, the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Obama administration’s intended fall guy in the scandal, broke ranks with his superiors. Without their knowledge, he gave an interview to Darrell Issa’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, accompanied only by his personal attorney. While a transcript of that interview is not yet public, it is clear that he blew the whistle on senior officials in the Justice Department.
This morning, Issa and Senator Charles Grassley released a letter that they sent yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder. It is explosive, to say the least. You should read it in its entirety.
By Thursday, “Fast and Furious” was in many places on the Web and on talk radio—notably Rush. Chairman Issa appeared on Fox News.
I have read the five page letter to Attorney General Holder. It does not have Director Melson’s testimony but is more than a mere shot across the Holder bow. The Washington Post almost certainly will not have a Woodward and Bernstein on the case. It will not matter. There is no doubt, Fast and Furious will have (has) Andrew Breitbart with Righteous Indignation! There will be a righteous army on this. It could include some of us.
The likely political culpability cannot be overstated. This will quickly become a stink that the overwhelming percentage of Americans will not tolerate. Democrats will separate themselves from Obama himself. President Obama will likely not be impeached but he will be (altogether now) “A One Term President.”
This scandal is still largely kept out of the old corrupt media. But it is moving and moving quickly. I said Breitbart would be in with Righteous Indignation. Bullseye. Big Government’s ARW Hawkins had this piece Thursday, WHICH WAS WORSE: WATERGATE OR OPERATION ‘FAST AND FURIOUS’? With only the information available Thursday, Hawkins correctly went right to the heart of the matter. Read it all.
After The Washington Post broke the news of the Watergate break-ins in 1972, the Nixon administration circled the wagons. And in 1997 – a full 25 years after the fact – Katherine Graham, who was with The Post in 1972, vividly recalled how “Nixon began making threats of economic retaliation against the paper.”
According to Graham, Nixon bullied the paper, sought to silence it, and launched a “campaign to undermine public confidence in [it].”
Judging from what Graham said, it appears that Nixon wanted to be sure people understood that if they continued to pry into Watergate or talk about Watergate or break news about Watergate as it unfolded, there would be harsh ramifications. (Keep in mind – Nixon had nothing to do with planning Watergate. Only with covering it up once he learned of it after the fact.)
Honestly folks, Watergate provided the Left with such a singularly sweet opportunity to bring down a Republican president that they’ve never gotten over it. As recently as 2004, MSNBC sent reporters to the streets to be sure up and coming generations had not forgotten what Nixon had done. (I don’t want to belabor the point, but Nixon had nothing to do with planning Watergate. Only with covering it up once he learned of it after the fact.)
So for covering up something up, Nixon was crucified by Left: to the point that by the summer of 1974 it became evident the House of Representatives was going to bring up impeachment charges against him. But he nipped those plans in the bud by resigning office on August 9, 1974, and flipping the “V” for victory to the hippies and the war protestors as he boarded the chopper that carried him away from the White House.
No one died during the Watergate break-ins or as a result of Nixon’s cover-up.
Switch gears and jump to 2009, and the ATF’s special operation “Fast and Furious.” An operation with which you’re all familiar by now, where upwards of 2500 guns in Arizona were sold to “straw purchasers” under the assumption that those guns were going to end up in the hands of Mexican cartel members who could then be arrested.
Talk about an embarrassingly ignorant plan.
Jump now to 2011 – of the approximately 2500 guns sold only a few hundred have been recovered and at least one federal agent, Brian Terry, lost his life due to this ludicrous operation.
Talk about a cover-up: this operation was somehow planned and conducted without the full knowledge of the Acting ATF Director, the Justice Department, or President Obama having any knowledge of it. (By “full knowledge” I mean that Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson says knew about it, but was kept “in the dark” regarding the extent of the operation, and the involvement of other agencies like the FBI and DEA.)
In other news, on July 5th Jack Tapper (ABC News) peppered Obama’s White House Press Secretary with questions about “Fast and Furious” in front of the rest of the press reporters, but the most substantive answer that Jay Carney gave was: “The president takes this very seriously.” (In all fairness to Carney, he’s clueless because Obama keeps him clueless.)
Look folks, this is ridiculous. Where is Chris Matthews? Where is that Keith guy who used to work for MSNBC? Where are all the freaks who wanted to hang George W. Bush in effigy for supposedly-lying about Iraq?
Why are they silent in the face of so great a cover-up?
Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa are pressing for answers on “Fast and Furious,” yet the Justice Department is doing its best to keep people from talking. (Grassley and Issa actually had to send a letter to the Justice Department to ask them to avoid pressuring people into not talking and to provide protections for those who do.)
Remember: No one died during Watergate, yet Nixon had to resign. Federal Agent Brian Terry is gone due to “Fast and Furious” – it’s time for someone to lose their job, if not go to jail or face impeachment charges in the House of Representatives.
One of Holder’s (and Obama’s) tactics is offensive. They have the power of the United States Department of Justice. They use (and abuse) it. Within a week Fox News reported the Justice Department Launches Criminal Probe Into Deaths During CIA Interrogationsand The Blaze reported GOP Leaders Blast Obama for Bringing Somali Terrorist to Civilian Court. I exhort you to check these two out. Both will be contentious and news dominating. Neither will bring down a presidency but will be used to deflect attention from the Fast and Furious scandal.
President Obama in on Fast and Furious
Hang onto your hat—this goes right to President Obama! Fast and Furious was funded with STIMULUS! (Human Events) That’s right. $10 million to buy guns to stimulate the killing power of drug cartel kingpins. Murdered U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry and many other known killings would make this gruesomely the most successful component of the $787 billion Stimulus.
MSNBC or Allen Combs will offer the defense that President Obama didn’t know the $10 million guns for drug kingpins was in Stimulus. But that can’t be. In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama promised to go over legislation one line at a time before signing any bill. So we know the president of the United States of America was in on this scandal from the beginning.
As I began, the likely political culpability cannot be overstated. This will quickly become a stink that the overwhelming percentage of Americans will not tolerate. Democrats will separate themselves from Obama himself. President Obama will likely not be impeached but he will be (altogether now) “A One Term President.”
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NATALIE NICHOLS TAKES ON THE GOOD OL’ BOYS IN BOWIE COUNTY TEXAS FOR GOD AND AMERICA
Another story of our present Great Awakening inspires confidence.
Are you like Linda Smith, understandably and rightly concerned because so few Americans seem to care about saving—restoring America? Meet Natalie Nichols. Mrs. Nichols, 34, is a northeast Texas housewife and mother who was inspired by Sarah Palin in 2008. She ran for the position of Clerk of Commissioner Court for Bowie County, Texas in 2010 and won—as a Republican! No Republican won elections; none even ran—until Mrs. Nichols.
In Nichols’ absence, June 13, 2011, the Commissioner Court voted to remove the Pledge of Allegiance and the invocation from the session records. The battle lines were drawn when Nichols refused at the June 27th session to remove the record. There is an interesting presentation of this developing confrontation at the Red Flame Wire. No one can write the story better than our irreplaceable Pamela Geller writing for World Net Daily Wednesday. Here is Pamela’s piece in its entirety:
There is a holy war being waged against G-d in America – not against Allah, of course. Despite the relentless gains Islamic supremacists have made in imposing Islamic law on the public square, non-Muslims have enjoyed no such privileges. Quite the contrary: Non-Muslims are being forbidden to even invoke the word G-d.
Now Natalie Nichols, a newly elected county clerk in Texas, is fighting back against a rogue court that actually voted to remove the Pledge of Allegiance and an opening prayer from the court’s official records. She refuses to do it, has made it her official stance and is now actually being threatened with legal action by a representative of the district attorney’s office. But Nichols is standing firm: She has stated that she would rather be removed from office than acquiesce to this.
Of course, the district attorney is a Democrat. Nichols, who was inspired to go into politics by watching Sarah Palin in 2008, was the first-ever Republican woman elected to a county-wide office in the history of Bowie County, Texas. “Since our county’s been in existence,” she told me, “it was just understood that if you wanted to run for office, you ran as a Democrat or you had no chance.” Nichols, however, was not interested in doing that: “I wasn’t about to compromise my values to get into office, and I will not compromise them now that I am in office. I ran as a Christian conservative and I am a Christian conservative.”
As county clerk, Nichols keeps the minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners Court, which are held before an audience and begin with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. While Nichols was away attending a county clerk training conference on June 13, the Commissioners Court voted to remove the invocation from the minutes of a previous meeting. Why? Nichols said that County Judge Sterling Lacy told her that he “didn’t want some group like the ACLU to come in and sue.”
They removed the Pledge from the minutes also. Nichols commented: “Are we now afraid to be patriotic in America? Well, I am not. I will not sit down while people drag our country into a direction that makes me not even recognize it anymore.” Nichols is fighting this decision, against heavy odds. Judge Lacy remarked ominously: “What she hasn’t thought through are the unintended consequences” of her stand.
Nichols responded: “Contrary to what Judge Lacy seems to understand, I have thought through the unintended consequences of being a party to removing an official record of saying the prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. I have thought through the impact it will have on my grandchildren to read the history of our county and errantly think that our customs were such that we didn’t proudly proclaim a love of God and Country.”
Yet there are many more like Judge Lacy. Just last week in Houston, the Houston National Cemetery informed veterans, as well as volunteers at the cemetery, they could no longer use the words “G-d” or “Jesus” during funerals or even on condolence cards. Why? Because these words are “offensive.”
This is outrageous. It is yet another craven example of the left’s war on America. America is not godless. Are “Jesus” and “G-d” being singled out here? When I called the Houston National Cemetery to inquire, I was told that the person I would need to speak to about this matter, Arlene Ocasio, was off this week (how convenient). I further inquired as to whether this prohibition includes “Allah” and was tersely told that “the matter was in litigation” and that no comment would be forthcoming (again, how convenient).
I’d like to see them try to forbid use of the word “Muhammad,” but I suspect that this will not pose a problem, since the number of Muslim soldiers in this veterans’ cemetery is … minimal.
In any case, Ocasio should be fired. Immediately. This is out of control.
But in Bowie County, it is Natalie Nichols who is facing that prospect. “I’m already being warned of rumblings of attempts to remove me from office,” says Nichols. “What Judge Lacy seems to have done is underestimate the capability of a patriot to know full well the possible consequences of going against the political establishment and being A-OK with whatever consequences may result. Those who came before me pledged their lives, fortunes and their sacred honor to ensure that we had the freedoms we hold so dear. I will not dishonor them, regardless of any threat made against me. I didn’t seek office to gain a career. I ran for office to make a difference.”
If only we had a million like her.
Like our dear and precious Pamela, we have only one of Natalie Nichols but we have a million who, like us, have or will hear The Call of this present Great Awakening. Join in the search for more of them. America will be restored!
THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA IN THIS PRESENT GREAT AWAKENING
In my post, The Eternal Meaning of Independence Day. . . .
I mentioned my friend, Linda Smith, who was understandably and rightly distressed because those around her were disinterested (didn’t know and didn’t care) in how and why America was born—why we celebrate. But America, by 1965, had gone to sleep. She had slept twice before; then, each time—a Great Awakening. What about now? Make no mistake: we have a present Great Awakening. This one is marked, not so much by powerful National preaching and revival, but by individuals or groups finding a mission. (See a mission towards the top of the side bar on this page.)
We only need to look for This present Great Awakening to find it. The 2010 Liberty List (top tool bar) is a wonderful example. The Spirit of America is another.
Isn’t that wonderful? Teamwork Patriotism Excellence! Their “Flash Mob at Cape Cod Stop and Shop – Spirit of America” is an inspiring example of our present Great Awakening. Take a look!
IN ISLAM TODAY, “THE SLAVE TRADE IS A THRIVING BUSINESS”
My friend, Amil Imani, has written another profoundly insightful and important piece, Islam’s Useful Idiots, at Family Security Matters. Here it is in its entirety. Please, I exhort you to read it all.
Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” that Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also live in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.
Useful Idiots are naïve, they are foolish, they are ignorant of facts, they are unrealistically idealistic, they are dreamers and they are willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy. They are anarchists, they are aspiring revolutionaries, they are neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population. Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the “Politically Correct.” He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception.
The Useful Idiot derives satisfaction from being anti-establishment. He finds perverse gratification in aiding the forces that aim to dismantle an existing order, whatever it may be: an order he neither approves of nor feels he belongs to.
The Useful Idiot is conflicted and dishonest. He fails to look inside himself and discover the causes of his own problems and unhappiness while he readily enlists himself in causes that validate his distorted perception.
Understandably, it is easier to blame others and the outside world than to examine oneself with an eye to self-discovery and self-improvement. Furthermore, criticizing and complaining—liberal practices of the Useful Idiot—require little talent and energy. The Useful Idiot is a great armchair philosopher and “Monday Morning Quarterback.”
The Useful Idiot is not the same as a person who honestly has a different point of view. A society without honest and open differences of views is a dead society. Critical, different and fresh ideas are the life blood of a living society—the very anathema of autocracies where the official position is sacrosanct.
Even a “normal” person spends a great deal more energy aiming to fix things out there than working to overcome his own flaws and shortcomings, or contribute positively to the larger society. People don’t like to take stock of what they are doing or not doing that is responsible for the conditions of which they disapprove.
But the Useful Idiot takes things much farther. The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.
The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as “Political Islam,” or “Radical Islam,” for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter—the Quran—is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the “real Islam” constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.
Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam because it prefers to believe them. It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and non-political.
But Islam is political to the core. In Islam the mosque and State are one and the same—the mosque is the State. This arrangement goes back to the days of Muhammad himself. Islam is also radical in the extreme. Even the “moderate” Islam is radical in its beliefs as well as its deeds. Muslims believe that all non-Muslims, bar none, are hellfire bound and well-deserve being maltreated compared to believers.
No radical barbaric act of depravity is unthinkable for Muslims in dealing with others. They have destroyed precious statues of Buddha, leveled sacred monuments of other religions, and bulldozed the cemeteries of non-Muslims—a few examples of their utter extreme contempt toward others.
Muslims are radical even in their intrafaith dealings. Various sects and sub-sects pronounce other sects and sub-sects as heretics worthy of death; women are treated as chattel, deprived of many rights; hands are chopped for stealing even a loaf of bread; sexual violation is punished by stoning, and much much more. These are standard day-to-day ways of the mainstream “moderate” Muslims living under the stone-age laws of Sharia.
The “moderate” mainstream of Islam has been outright genocidal from inception. Their own historians record that Ali, the first imam of the Shiite and the son-in-law of Muhammad, with the help of another man, beheaded 700 Jewish men in the presence of the Prophet himself. The Prophet of Allah and his disciples took the murdered men’s women and children in slavery. Muslims have been, and continue to be, the most vicious and shameless practitioner of slavery. The slave trade, even today, is a thriving business in some Islamic lands where wealthy, perverted sheiks purchase children of the poor from traffickers for their sadistic gratification.
Muslims are taught deception and lying in the Quran itself—something that Muhammad practiced during his life whenever he found it expedient. Successive Islamic rulers and leaders have done the same. Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, for instance, rallied the people under the banner of democracy. All along his support for democracy was not a commitment of an honest man, but a ruse. As soon as he gathered the reins of power, Khomeini went after the Useful Idiots of his time with vengeance. These best children of Iran, having been thoroughly deceived and used by the crafty phony populist-religionist, had to flee the country to avoid the fate of tens of thousands who were imprisoned or executed by the double-crossing imam.
Almost three decades after the tragic Islamic Revolution of 1979, the suffocating rule of Islam casts its death-bearing pall over Iranians. A proud people with enviable heritage is being systematically purged of its sense of identity and forced to think and behave like the barbaric and intolerant Muslims. Iranians who had always treated women with equality, for instance, have seen them reduced by the stone-age clergy to sub-human status of Islamic teaching. Any attempt by the women of Iran to counter the misogynist rule of Muhammad’s mullahs is mercilessly suppressed. Women are beaten, imprisoned, raped and killed just as men are slaughtered without due process or mercy.
The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Amil Imani is an Iranian-American writer, poet, satirist, novelist, essayist, literary translator, public speaker and political analyst who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam both in America and internationally. He has become a formidable voice in the United States against the danger of global jihad and Islamization of America. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Imani is the author of the riveting book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and the upcoming thriller Operation Persian Gulf.
Posted in Jinad/Shariah, Liberty, World Events
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THE ETERNAL MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE DAY
A friend, Linda Smith, is understandably and rightly distressed. She went to a 4th of July Party in a very affluent neighborhood, live band and all. She found no interest in the others, including the band, in honoring the birth of America. Linda came face to face with a challenge of our times; too many Americans don’t know and don’t care how and why America was born—why we celebrate.
There are many great ways to explain this exceptional country. Power Line’s Scott Johnson found a profound and compelling argument. It is Abraham Lincoln’s. Scott offered it July 4th, 2004 and every July 4th since. To honor America, Abraham Lincoln and Scott Johnson, here is Scott’s post in its entirety:
THE ETERNAL MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE DAY
On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience when Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas invited Lincoln to come join him on the balcony to watch the speech. In his speech Douglas rang the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and fall for Douglas’s Senate seat.
Douglas paid tribute to Lincoln as a “kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent,” but took issue with Lincoln’s June 16 speech to the Illinois Republican convention that had named him its candidate for Douglas’s seat. In that speech Lincoln had famously asserted that the nation could not exist “half slave and half free.” According to Douglas, Lincoln’s assertion was inconsistent with the “diversity” in domestic institutions that was “the great safeguard of our liberties.” Then as now, “diversity” was a shibboleth hiding an evil institution that could not be defended on its own terms.
Douglas responded to Lincoln’s condemnation of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision — a condemnation that was the centerpiece of Lincoln’s convention speech. “I am free to say to you,” Douglas said, “that in my opinion this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine.”
Lincoln invited Douglas’s audience to return the next evening for his reply to Douglas’s speech. Lincoln’s speech of July 10, 1858, is one of his many great speeches, but in one respect it is uniquely great. It concludes with an explanation of the meaning of this day to Americans with matchless eloquence and insight in words that remain as relevant now as then.
Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.
We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they
find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]
Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of “don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down” [Douglas’s “popular sovereignty” position on the extension of slavery to the territories], for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice—“Hit him again”], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices—“me” “no one,” &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of “no, no,”] let us stick to it then [cheers], let us stand firmly by it then. [Applause.]
Thank you, Mr. Lincoln. Let us stick to it then. Let us stand firmly by it then. (Posted annually since 2004.)
THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER—ALL FOUR VERSES
Official Nation Anthem of the United States of America
You know this first verse well:
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Added July 24, 2011 The National Anthem sung by America’s service acedemy choirs for Super Bowl XXXIX February 6, 2005, at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, enjoy:
Now, please consider verses 2, 3 and 4:
On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
‘T is the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov’d homes and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us as a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Fantastic! Here is a short history:
In 1814, about a week after the city of Washington had been badly burned, British troops moved up to the primary port at Baltimore Harbor in Maryland. Frances Scott Key visited the British fleet in the Harbor on September 13th to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes who had been captured during the Washington raid. The two were detained on the ship so as not to warn the Americans while the Royal Navy attempted to bombard Fort McHenry. At dawn on the 14th, Key noted that the huge American flag, which now hangs in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum, was still waving and had not been removed in defeat. The sight inspired him to write a poem entitled Defense of Fort McHenry; later the poem was set to music that had been previously composed by a Mr. Smith. The song was immediately noted as an inspiring song that should be the national anthem of the United States of America. It was accepted as such by public demand for the next century or so, but became even more accepted as the national anthem during the World Series of Baseball in 1917 when it was sung in honor of the brave armed forces fighting in the Great War. The World Series performance moved everyone in attendance, and after that it was repeated for every game. Finally, on March 3, 1931, the American Congress proclaimed it as the national anthem, 116 years after it was first written.
The Patriot's Trumpet 