Chavez Hails "Comrade Obama"

Don't take our word that there is a committed Marxist in the White House. Here is Venezuela's Marxist President saying that he and Fidel Castro may be more conservative than "Comrade Obama."

From Reuters
Tue Jun 2, 2009

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp.

During one of Chavez's customary lectures on the "curse" of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM's bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the U.S. government a 60 percent stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might.

"Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right," Chavez joked on a live television broadcast.

During a decade in government, Chavez has nationalized most of Venezuela's key economic sectors, including multibillion dollar oil projects, often via joint ventures with the private sector that give the state a 60 percent controlling stake.

Obama has vowed to quickly sell off General Motors once the auto giant is back on its feet, but the government will initially control the company after a $30 billion injection of taxpayer funds.

Chavez, a vehement critic of the U.S. "empire," has toned down his rhetoric since Obama took office in January and the two men shook hands during a summit in Trinidad and Tobago in April.

Is the Obama Administration More Concerned About Radical Anti-Abortionists Than Radical Islamists?

From The Fox Forum
By Father Jonathan Morris, L.C.

This week we have witnessed two apparently similar drive-by killings by enraged activists. Suspect Scott Roeder has been charged with killing late-term abortion provider George Tiller as he served as an usher in his church. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad is charged with shooting and killing an army recruitment officer (and wounding another) as the victim stood outside his office. Both cowardly suspects fled the scene. Both men are now in police custody. Both were motivated by what they considered their religious convictions.

"The Obama administration is giving the impression that they consider the threat of additional crazed anti-abortionists, ready to kill abortion providers, to be greater than the threat of additional radical Islamists ready to strike domestic targets."

With the two events having so much in common on the surface, it would seem logical to suggest—-and some in the media are already doing this—that radical anti-abortionists like Scott Roeder offer a threat to our national security that is on par with radical Islamists like Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. Nobody says this outright, but much of the reporting I have seen assumes crazed individuals with warped religious ideology who act independently of any organized group are just that–crazed individuals — and that they’re basically all alike.

In my opinion, we make a grave mistake if we follow the media’s lead.

Yes, both Scott Roeder and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad acted independently in their crimes this week. But while Scott Roeder’s ideology was just the fruit of his own psychological imbalance, Abdulhakim’s ideology is shared by dozens of well organized groups and thousands of men and women who have done harm to our country in the past and have sworn to wreak greater havoc on our homeland and military in the future. Proof of this important distinction between the nature of these two tragic events has been the unanimous condemnation of Scott Roeder’s crime by every major pro-life group in our nation. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, we get nothing but silence from the leaders of the particular strain of Islam that Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad studied in Yemen.

In other words, it is crystal clear that Scott Roeder, the man suspected of killing Dr. George Tiller, in no way represents the pro-life cause he heralded, while Abdulhakim will be considered a hero by many of his fellow Islamists whose cause is the destruction of America and Christianity in particular.

This distinction seems to escape not only our nation’s media but also the leaders at the top of the current administration. In fact, based on their law enforcement decisions and political responses to these two events this week, the Obama administration is giving the impression that they consider the threat of additional crazed anti-abortionists, ready to kill abortion providers, to be greater than the threat of additional radical Islamists ready to strike domestic targets.

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government will begin to provide increased security at abortion clinics and for abortion providers. But no announcement was made about increased security of military recruitment centers. With all the intelligence we have about Islamists who want to kill our soldiers, you would think that this recent murder at an Army recruitment center would have deserved at least the same response from the Attorney General.

More significant still was President Obama’s decision to release a statement condemning the killing of Dr. George Tiller and calling for mutual respect in the abortion debate. Notice how in this case President Obama went to the cause of the murder—disrespect for human life. But so far, the President has not seen fit to release a statement rejecting the radical Islamist motivation of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, even though he is about to embark on a trip to the Muslim world this week, where the killer’s anti-American sentiment was cultivated.

Every murder is wrong and demands our condemnation. Also worthy of condemnation is the administration’s politically correct obfuscation of these two murders. It’s a mistake to treat a handful of crazed anti-abortionists as a greater threat to our national security than the countless faithful followers of a fanatical Islamist ideology that continues to threaten our very existence.

Obama Condemns Bush's "Gulag" Before Announcing His Own

Hat Tip: Real Clear Religion

Former Westminster Cardinal Won’t Join Tony Blair Faith Foundation After All

From LifeSiteNews
By Hilary White

Until today, the website of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (TBFF) still carried a note saying that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor was expected to join their Advisory Council. But today a statement from the organization has said that the Cardinal will not join the Blair Foundation after all.

Parna Taylor from the Foundation told LifeSiteNews.com via e-mail, “We can totally understand Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor wanting to review his commitments” since his retirement. Taylor said that the Foundation had “always valued the private advice” given by the Cardinal.

“While they support the broad aims of the Foundation,” Taylor continued, “we do not expect the Advisory Council members to agree with Tony Blair on every aspect of policy past or present. Their role is to provide advice and guidance, alongside many other senior religious figures who provide such insights on a less formal basis.”

The Tablet news magazine reports that since Blair launched his Foundation in 2008, “it had been intended that the cardinal would join the advisory council once he had stepped down as Archbishop of Westminster.”

It is unclear precisely why the Cardinal has reconsidered joining the Foundation. However, his plans to do so had been heavily criticised by many faithful Catholics and members of the life and family movement in Britain. Tony Blair, who was received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal O’Connor in December 2007, has been described by John Smeaton, the director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, as the “principal architect” of the culture of death in Britain during his decade as Prime Minister, largely on account of his support for abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

But Blair’s stock with the Catholic Church seems to have fallen since the installation of Archbishop Vincent Nichols as the replacement of the long-serving Cardinal O’Connor. After Blair gave an interview to a homosexualist magazine in which he chastised Pope Benedict for refusing to change the Church’s teaching on homosexuality, Nichols commented that the former Prime Minister’s strong “political instincts” have not helped his understanding of his religion.

Nichols told the Times, “Maybe he lacks a bit of experience in Catholic life.”

The Blair Foundation states that its purpose is “to promote respect and understanding about the world's major religions and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world.” Blair himself has described the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as encouraging "faiths" to come together, overcoming differences in "doctrine." A large part of his work, he said, is to urge religious leaders to reinterpret "religious texts" metaphorically rather than literally. He said religious leaders need "to treat religious thought and even religious texts as themselves capable of evolution over time."

But Blair has been dispraised even by many on the left for his lack of depth as a religious leader.

In May, the Guardian’s Hugh O'Shaughnessy wrote that the “wheels are coming off” Blair’s religious project. O’Shaughnessy quoted Dr. Ghada Karmi of Exeter University who called him “at best – a total irrelevancy.” O’Shaughnessy noted that having annoyed the Vatican, and given “the hostility – and ridicule – that the Blairs and their associates stir up” he is “increasingly unlikely to achieve his ambition of becoming president of the EU.”

Stephen Pound, a Catholic Labour MP said that Blair’s “hubris” is “extremely counterproductive.”

“Entrance to the Vatican is only gained through a series of iron-clad, hermetically sealed, heavily padlocked and bolted doors, and I can hear them creaking shut as we speak.”

Alabama's Ten Commandments Judge Running for Governor

From Associated Press
By Phillip Rawls

An Alabama judge known for refusing to move a granite monument of the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the state's judicial building is again running for governor, with his message Monday going beyond his longstanding call for the government to acknowledge God.

Ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore's kickoff speech focused on economics, social issues and criticism of the federal government.

"While an ever-increasing national government deficit devalues our dollar and plunges us into a recession, federal power intrudes into private business, undermining our free enterprise system upon which we've always been based," said Moore, who is running as a Republican.

Moore became known as Alabama's Ten Commandments judge when he was presided over circuit court in Gadsden in 1997-1998 and waged a legal battle to display a homemade plaque of the religious laws in his courtroom.

The attention over his plaque helped him win the race for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000. As head of the state judicial system, he placed a granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the state judicial building. A federal judge ordered him to remove it, but he refused, claiming a right to acknowledge God.

That decision caused the Alabama Court of the Judiciary to kick Moore out of office in 2003.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Sunlit Uplands: We "Rejoice" in Being #1 in More Ways than One

Sunlit Uplands' #1 ranking by BlogNetNews is not the only proof of our effectively promoting the traditional values of "Faith, Freedom, Defense of the West, and Renewal of the Culture" in South Carolina's blogosphere.

Our effectiveness can also be measured and validated by the volume and intensity of vitriol sent our way by obviously disturbed and threatened liberals. The more effective we are at promoting our values, and thus the greater the threat the Radical Left perceives us to pose to theirs, the more intense and hostile will grow their attacks.

And on that scale, Sunlit Uplands is hurtling headlong toward the top as well. As evidenced by one particularly disturbed liberal, whose reactionary bile can only be described as over the top.

Perhaps overcome by a rush of wishful thinking, South Carolina's #4 Liberal Blogger wore his religious bigotry and personal hostility (dare we say "hate"?) on his sleeve Monday when he gleefully imagined my death:

"One can only wonder what [Cassidy's] last thoughts would be if someone ran him to ground in his parish at confession (surely, as an aside, those sessions must be truly marvelous exercises in magical realism) or taking communion for the astonishing and popular spew of hate and bigotry his blog presents daily, and pumped a few lead rounds into him."

Several observations...

First, this is an instructive example of what the word "hate" means to the left-wing hypocrites who seek ultimately to criminalize the free speech and thought of anyone who dares disagree with them.

1. If a conservative traditional values advocate merely expresses disagreement with or opposition to liberals' repressive political agenda, such mere expression constitutes "hate and bigotry."

2. On the other hand, if a member of the anointed left publishes a blog post graphically fantasizing about the violent murder of a conservative, that is of course merely reasoned discourse.

We also note that South Carolina's #4 Liberal Blogger makes frequent reference to all things "gay," even posting at the top of his blog a running count of how many times even our socialist president has failed to sufficiently safeguard the "rights" of those who engage in homosexual behavior.

Thus, we feel comfortable simply asking if SC#4LB should be judged by the same standard routinely demanded by professionally-aggrieved homosexual activist groups.

Their repressive thought- and speech-control rationale goes something like this, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: "Anti-gay rhetoric and anti-gay violence go hand-in-hand. The right wing is creating the most hostile atmosphere for (homosexual) people in recent memory. Hate violence is a logical extension of these rhetorical, legislative, and electoral attacks. When anti-gay rhetoric escalates, so does anti-gay violence. Hate crimes are a result of that intolerance. No one should condone violence against any group of people, nor should they contribute to an atmosphere that fosters such intolerance and violence."

Thus, because Dr. James Dobson publicly advocates traditional Biblical morality, he is accused by homosexual activists and their left-wing media allies of being morally responsible for inciting the beating death of Matthew Shepard. (In other words, by merely expressing a traditional moral code, Dobson is characterized as evil, hateful, and reprehensible.)

If Cardinal Maida of Detroit publicly supports in his state a Marriage Protection Amendment such as that approved by 77 percent of South Carolina voters, then homosexual activists say he is morally responsible for inciting the falsely alleged beating death of a homosexual senior citizen in Detroit -- who as it turned out, according to the medical examiner, died of arthritic paralysis. (In other words, merely by defending the mainstream value of traditional marriage, Cardinal Maida is portrayed as both evil, hateful, and reprehensible -- or as one prominent homosexual activist called him, "recklessly wicked.")

Similarly, if Sunlit Uplands regularly posts comments promoting traditional American values, Biblical morality, or even sacred music, then -- in the eyes of disturbed leftists such as SC#4LB -- this author obviously must also be both evil, hateful, and reprehensible. (And in good company, at that.)

Which raises this simple "what's good for the goose" question:

By painting Dr. Dobson and Cardinal Maida and myself as evil, hateful, and reprehensible, and thus obviously worthy of contempt, do homosexual activists and their allies create a climate of hostility in which someone might be encouraged to commit acts of violence against us? Does anti-conservative rhetoric and anti-conservative violence go hand in hand? When anti-conservative rhetoric escalates, does anti-conservative violence follow? No one should condone violence against any group of people, so should liberals continue to contribute to an atmosphere that fosters intolerance and violence toward conservatives?

If merely expressing a different point of view amounts to "hate," as leftists define the term, does that term not all the more so apply -- in the real world -- to SC#4LB's graphic imagining of my being pumped full of lead while at church? Should I now go running to the federal government to demand special protection? If someone gives me a dirty look, or worse, should I demand specially-enhanced prison sentence for my assailant? Should SC#4LB be held criminally responsible, arrested, and charged with inciting a "hate crime"?

Forbid it, Almighty God.

In the meantime, we are promised by Christ Himself that we are "blessed" when we are reviled and persecuted for righteousness' sake, when they say all kinds of evil against us falsely for His sake, and we are under His direct instruction to "rejoice and be exceedingly glad" when it happens.

It is in that spirit that we know that the time, energy, personal hostility, and intensity with which the Left attacks us is one of the surest measures of how effectively Sunlit Uplands is threatening their repressive agenda.

Along with our #1 ranking in South Carolina's blogosphere, that's cause for a lot of rejoicing.

And so we shall. And be exceedingly glad while we're at it.

The Problem with Conservatives

This is well worth a read. The TEA parties that have taken place and will be held across America are a great sign that Americans want a restoration of freedom. What is needed is for the Republican Party to present a clear agenda, as they did in the Contract with America in 1994, for a restoration of the principles and freedoms that flow from the classical liberalism on which the nation was founded. In sum, it means America's return to Constitutional government.

From NY Conservative Examiner
By Todd Keister

By any measure, modern conservatism is suffering. The Republican Party, long the home of America’s conservatives, has become little more than a watered-down version of the socialist Democrat Party, and has been turned out of office from the congress and White House, to the state houses and governor’s mansions across the country.

Commentators have proclaimed the death of conservatism, and the Republican Party apparatus continues to helplessly grope in the darkness for a plan to regain lost power and influence. Endless articles have been written about the “future direction” of the party; some see a move toward conservatism as the solution, while others seek to increase the size of the party by offering Democrat-like goodies and giveaways to targeted demographic groups.

The problem for conservatives is partly one of nomenclature and partly one of confusing Republican Party politics with the ideology of what conservatives believe in. “Conservative” is in truth a relative term and not an ideology; it refers to someone who favors the established order of things, instituting change slowly and deliberately, and maintaining his county’s traditions and values. This can have a very different meaning depending upon place and time. A conservative German in 1918 favored the overthrow of the newly-established democratic republican government and either a return to monarchy, or establishment of a dictatorship. A conservative Russian would have favored either absolute monarchy or communist dictatorship depending upon whether it was 1918 or 1993.

Both conservatives and liberals in the modern United States are labeled incorrectly. Modern American conservatives are actually classical liberals, meaning they favor limited self-government, individual rights over collective rights, equality before the law, and liberty over equality of outcomes. Today’s so-called liberals are anything but; they favor the state over the individual, equality of outcomes over liberty, collectivism, and state control of every aspect of life from vehicle gas mileage to the amount of water a toilet can use per flush and what kind of light bulb a citizen may burn in his own home. In other words, they are socialists.

American conservatives could once have been properly called so; they believed in “conserving” the America that was built upon the ideals of classical liberalism. They stood for the maintenance of America’s great governmental and societal institutions; a strictly limited federal government, free markets, free citizens, and Judeo-Christian values.

Read the rest of this entry >>