Free Speech & A Free Society - More Than Just an Intelectual Exercise

For anyone who can remember the 60's, or knows what history is, knows that - that period was supposed to be the decade of change. It was supposed to usher in a new freer, open society. What resulted was drug addiction & homelessness. For all the talk of freedom, and a free society, generation after generation (on university campuses) have tried to relive the 60's . Each time with the hope of achieving the goals of an improved world (freer) - yet each time all that results is rhetoric.

The irony is that since the 90's freedom has steadily been eroded, the popular view is that it's the right doing the damage. However, the left is often more to blame than the right - and specifically socialism (which exists on both the left and right). However, the right is exclusionary - where the left is inclusionary. Historically, the right has come in after the damage caused by the left. Each are facilitated by their twin siblings nihilism and anarchism. All of socialism has it's common roots in modernist and post-modernist philosophy. The the overall goal of socialism is to engineer the great society (a utopia). The left are environmentalists, believing that they can use the environment to changing society - to bring them to the right thinking. The right are eugenicists (geneticists) believing the change comes through genetic engineering. Each has it's "defectives" who must be eliminated for the good of the society. On the left, it's the mentally defectives and on the right it's the genetically defectives. Each are ushered to a "happy death" (the definition of euthanasia).

Socialism emerged from imperialism with a sibling - individualism. Socialism emerged as an elected monarchy, keeping the state at the center of society. While individualism (the first born) emerged with the individual as state & sovereign. The first version of individualism emerged in the late 1700's as America (and Americanism) while socialism emerged later from the French revolution. Europe kept the monarchist system, while America adopted the Roman senate system (evolving from the British parliamentary system). This sets the stage for events that are occurring in neo-modern era socialism (beginning in the 1990's).

In then 1990's, after the nihilism of the 60's & 70's; following the anarchy of the 1980's (in the wake of the 60's & 70's drug addiction); afterwhich was the brief emergence of the right and individualists - came the new era of the left (now commonly referred to as the socialists). The history of socialism was set to repeat itself, with each side ignoring theirown past - insisting that this time things would be different. Yet almost 20 years on, the rhetoric of a free society still rings empty in the dead halls of academia (a result of post-modernism). In this era, pseudo-intellectualism it's face; pseudo-intellectualism and intellectualism have become synonymous. The cries of freedom have become self defeating - even in environments supporting free speech. An example, (from a free speech group - Schools Have NO RIGHT Telling Us What We Can and Cannot Say On facebook ) "u should NOT be a part of a group you DO NOT agree with" and from the same person, "i think that if some1 calls some1 a nigger, on fb, wearther Whoever it is, Police N School Borad should get involded!!!!!!" . This massive contradiction has kept the concept of a free society just that - a concept; rhetoric.

True freedom cannot just be thought about - or remain more than mere rhetoric. Real steps must be taken to move forward, the first was Americanism in the late 1700's and the next is Global Americanism, which came into reality just in 2000. Now there's a choice you can just sit there and talk about a free society or you can become a citizen of Democratic Earth (with just a click of the mouse) and take the next step forward - out of rhetoric and into reality.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Democratic-Earth/41596002135

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-American-DE-Incorporation/275003827086

http://www.facebook.com/pages/DE-NGO/383262473112

http://www.facebook.com/pages/DE-Court-of-Justice/403168666689

[Articles of Interest] Rush Limbaugh: "Toby Harnden is right"

Posted By: Toby Harnden at May 27, 2009 at 16:59:25 [General]

Posted in:
Foreign Correspondents

Thanks to my mother-in-law, commenter VinceP1974 and @JenFidel via Twitter for alerting me to the fact that Rush Limbaugh highlighted this blog post of mine about Colin Powell and Tom Ridge on his nationally-syndicated programme yesterday. 

With an estimated 13.5 million listeners a week, Limbaugh is the
most popular talk radio host in America. Here's what he said, according
to the transcript on his site:

RUSH:  Interesting piece - it's a blog -
by Toby Harnden at the UK Telegraph.  The headline of his piece here: 
"What Right Do Colin Powell and Tom Ridge Have to Lecture the
Republican Party?"  Now, these are the questions of a British blogger
who reports out of the United States.  He writes this:  "Why does
Powell now seem to think he has the right or credibility to lecture
Republicans on how their party should be run?"  He voted for Obama, and
he did so very publicly.  He saved his endorsement of Obama at a very
propitious strategic moment and did so in public after the Republican
Party had nominated a candidate supposedly ideal to somebody like
General Powell.  That would be John McCain.  "So why does Powell now
seem to think he has the right or credibility to lecture Republicans on
how their party should be run?  Just as he did not just go quietly into
the polling booth and vote for Obama, Powell is not working discreetly
behind the behind the scenes at party gatherings to press his case,"
which is what I just said.  

Where are his policy
prescriptions?  Where does he stand?  What is he doing to organize the
Republican Party, if he's now the leader of it, in opposition to this
radical extremism that is being presented to the country from the
Democrat Party?  Now, Mr. Harnden writes, "It's easy to feel some
sympathy for Powell. He was clearly marginalised during the Bush
administration."  You know, I really think there are three reasons to
explain Colin Powell.  One of them is race.  I mean, there's no way he
wasn't gonna support Obama, coming out and doing so publicly.  Also
he's angry at Bush and the Scooter Libby thing proves that.  But I
think the third element that explains Colin Powell, he went up and, you
know, he was the point man at the United Nations with the slide show
and the official presentation on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction,
and even though we haven't found any, a lot of people believe they were
there, Colin Powell no doubt feels profoundly humiliated and
embarrassed with the people he cares about most, the Washington, DC
political elites.  

I think he's on a rehab tour to get his
reputation back, and it's working.  The rest of the DC establishment
hates Bush, so it's an easy call, come out and oppose Bush, come out
and oppose the Republican Party.  We've all known that the way a
Republican ingratiates him or herself in the DC political structure is
to go on any television show in DC you can find and rip your own party,
and maybe take it a step further:  endorse the other guy.  In fact, if
the other guy happens to share race with you makes it even easier.  So
there's a lot of rehab going on here, but Toby Harnden is right.  What
right does Powell and Tom Ridge have to lecture the Republican Party,
especially when they don't put forth any particular position on
issues?  

Original Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2009/05/27/rush_limbaugh_toby_harnden_is_right

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[Articles of Interest] Barack Hussein Obama: US "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world"

Posted By: Toby Harnden at Jun 3, 2009 at 04:14:00 [General]

Posted in: Foreign Correspondents

It is important to note that "if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world".

So says President Barack Obama. Or I should say: Barack Hussein Obama.

That's right: Barack Hussein Obama. Say it proud. Say it out loud. The middle moniker that dared not speak its name during the election campaign is now front and centre of the US president's attempt to woo the Muslim world, the theme of his visits to Riyadh on Wednesday and Cairo on Thursday.

Petrified of the potential political fallout of being branded a Muslim, Candidate Obama - a practicing Christian - never used the name "Hussein" and its use was frowned upon as a forbidden code for the nutty accusation that he was some kind of Islamic Manchurian candidate.

No more. To say Barack Hussein Obama - BHO for short - now appears to be the height of political correctness.

As I argue in this analysis for the Telegraph dead tree edition, Obama is seeking to return to a Middle East policy based on realism - buttressed by the bona fides of his own multi-cultural (including Muslim) background.

In Strasbourg two months ago, the president tried out his full name. Days later in Ankara, he was introduced to the Turkish parliament by his full name.

As ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the Obama administration is embracing the new president's inner Muslim, as it were. Deputy national security adviser stated that Obama had "experienced Islam on three continents...growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans [are] a key part of Illinois and Chicago".

So that's once, twice, three times a Muslim?

Just in case the Arab world hasn't yet got this message of inbuilt tolerance, Mr Obama himself has gone a step further. In an interview with France's Canal Plus released on Tuesday evening, he suggested that the United States might be a Muslim country.

Obama said he wanted to "create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians".

So far, so blah - President George W. Bush often expressed much the same sentiments.

But then, as is his habit , Obama turned the concept around. "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. 

"And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.  And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples."

Obama said in Turkey that Americans "do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation". John McCain was criticised in 2007 for saying the US was "a Christian nation", later amending this to "a Judeo-Christian valued nation".

Of course, the concept of separation of church and state, which derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution, means that the US is not officially a Christian nation or a nation of any other particular religion. Which means, I suppose, that the US is as much a Muslim nation as a Christian one.

It's a bold - some might say audacious - turnaround by the president.

It's also a classically Obamaesque move.

During the 2008 campaign, he skillfully made himself, through his life story, the personification of change.

Now, implicitly contrasting himself with the born-again, evangelical Bush who pursued a post-9/11 "crusade" against terrorism, Obama is presenting himself to the Islamic world as the personification of a new, tolerant - and, yes, partly Muslim - America.

UPDATE: The excellent Don Surber crunches the numbers and points out that Obama's claim is highly dubious. According to Surber, the US has an estimated three to eight million Muslims, less than one per cent of the world's total and less than at least 23 other countries.

The average claim for the US Muslim population is about six million. The precise figure is difficult to get because it's not included in US census data and many put the figure at much, much less.

But even if we assume there are six million Muslims in the US, that makes it only the 34th biggest Muslim country in the world - behind Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, China, Ethiopia, Algeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Tanzania, Syria, Malaysia, Niger, Senegal, Ghana, Tunisia, Somalia, Guinea, Kenya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso and Tajikistan.

UPDATE 2: Debbie Schlussel cites a reputable survey by Pew that puts the number of Muslims in the US at 1.8 million. This would make it the 48th biggest Muslim country, after the above list plus France, Libya, Jordan, Israel, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Germany, Kuwait, Oman, Eritrea, Lebanon and Serbia and Montenegro - and just above Britain, which would be the 50th.

Original Source: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2009/06/03/barack_hussein_obama_us_one_of_the_largest_muslim_countries_in_the_world

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[Articles of Interest] Barack Obama: all the bad guys are giving President Pantywaist the finger

Posted By: Gerald Warner at May 29, 2009 at 19:41:52 [General]

Posted in: UK Correspondents

Kim Jong-il, the charismatic and popular (if you are a Pyongyang resident and covet a life expectancy of more than 24 hours) Dear Leader of North Korea, is on his sixth or seventh missile this week. See the pretty vapour trails streak across Asian skies, in an impressive firework display to celebrate the arrival of President Pantywaist in the Oval Office.

School's out! Suddenly it is playtime for all the naughtier elements in the more "reclusive" parts of the world who enjoy kicking Uncle Sam's butt but didn't much relish tangling with Dick Cheney and (what was that other guy's name?). This time Comrade Kim is really throwing his toys out of the playpen. He has even unilaterally revoked the 1953 armistice between the Korean War belligerents, which means, in case anybody is interested, that North and South Korea are once more at war.

So, what is the response of the Messiah in the Oval Office? Really severe rhetoric, is the answer. The soundbite manufacturers have been burning the midnight oil and the auto-cue is going into meltdown. So is the confidence of Asian leaders. The word is out: the most powerful nation on earth has got itself a pussycat for a president and all the bad guys are queuing up to give him the finger.

It is a measure of Obama's acknowledged impotence that some of those who are now cheeking him are doing so with a degree of sophistication they had not previously exhibited. Irony and sarcasm are being deployed in an unlikely place: Tehran. It is the worst-kept secret in the world that Iran is dependent on North Korea for the development of its nuclear programme. When Kim last lit the blue touch-paper, in 2006, Tehran roundly supported him. This time the mullahs have come up with a more teasing ploy: they have righteously condemned him.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said piously: "We recommend all countries not to waste national resources and their people's wealth on moving toward nuclear proliferation and making weapons of mass destruction." You have to have respect for a man who can deliver a statement like that with a straight face. On Britain's Got Talent such a virtuoso performance would have knocked Susan Boyle off the radar.

President Pantywaist's enemies are taking his measure and they are liking what they see. Perhaps, in some Macchiavellian way, Obama thinks the appointment to the Supreme Court of a Latina woman of apparent bias, who seems unlikely to find in favour of a white male American, will either appease or frighten his foes. Come back, Dick Cheney, all is forgiven.

Original Story: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/05/29/barack_obama_all_the_bad_guys_are_giving_president_pantywaist_the_finger

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