Obama vs. Lincoln

I've never especially been an Abraham Lincon fan, but he did have a lot of wisdom in his head and he spoke a lot of truth.

Now, Barack Obama.....well, let's just consider the following:

Obama:  "If you've got a business, you -- you didn't build that!  Somebody else made that happen."

Lincoln:  "That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise."

What Barack Obama is, and what the Democratic Party has become, is one of the saddest things in human history.  The United States, never a perfect country, of course, began with great principles, a shining light, a gleaming hope for mankind.  The restoration of New Testament Christianity arose from the ground planted by the men who founded America.  Countless millions came to America to be what they could be, not what "somebody else made...happen."  That is the very thing they fled from in the first place!

Barack Obama and the Democrats are doing everything they can to destroy that.  And they are having an untold amount of success in doing so.

Baseball Trivia Question

The baseball All-Star game is tonight (well, Tuesday night in America), and in keeping with that spirit.  I have a trivia question, the answer of which will probably surprise a lot of people.

Who holds the American League record for most shutouts in a season by a left-handed pitcher (9)?  (This man also led the league in ERA in 1916 and for pitching the longest shutout, 14 innings, in World Series history.)

The answer?..........Well, I'll give it to you in Chinese first, and then tomorrow I will give it to you in English:  贝比鲁斯

If you can't wait till tomorrow to know the answer, copy and paste that Chinese into an online translator.

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The answer to the trivia question is........Babe Ruth.  A lot of people forget that, before he became perhaps the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, he was one of the greatest pitchers, including holding the records mentioned above (he won almost 100 games as a pitcher before he became a regular player and had a lifetime ERA of 2.28, which is also one of the lowest in the history of the game).  He was almost exclusively a pitcher his first five years in the baseball (1914-18).  Over his entire career, he averaged 46 homeruns per 162 games.  Given that ratio, if he had been exclusively a hitter from 1914-18, he would have ended up with over 900 homeruns in his career (eat that Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron).  He had a CAREER slugging percentage of .690 (total bases divided by at bats), a figure that Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and Joe Dimaggio never reached even one time in their careers.  Babe also had a lifetime OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) of 1.164--that's for his entire career.  Again, Aaron, Mays, and Dimaggio never got that high in any single season. 

Incidentally, the Babe's debut in baseball was on July 11, 1914, 98 years ago today.  Mom, that was....a few years...before you were born....

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The National League won the All-Star Game, 8-0, which means they will get home field advantage again in the World Series this year.  Bud Selig, in all his idiotic glory, may have cost the Rangers another championship...

According to the United States Government....

....people who love freedom are terrorists.

The Department of Homeland Security (perhaps George W. Bush's biggest mistake) recently released a study which defined the following people as terrorists (based upon Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism, a 2011 study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, whoever they are...).  Anyway, these frightening folks are "terrorists": 

--Americans who believe their “way of life” is under attack;
--Americans who are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”;
--People who consider themselves “anti-global” (presumably those who are wary of the loss of American sovereignty);
--Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”;
--Americans who are “reverent of individual liberty”;
--Americans who are opposed to killing unborn babies.
 
Hoooooo-huuuuummmm....
 
Why should anybody be surprised that government thinks that people who believe in freedom are "terrorists"?   Government, intrinsically, is opposed to freedom.  The very purpose of government is to limit freedom.  That's what laws do--limit freedom.  In some cases, that is a good thing, of course.  We don't murderers having the "freedom" to murder.  But, even with that, the laws against murder limit the murderer's freedom to murder!  Every law passed by government, in some way, limits freedom.  Again, in many instances, that's what needs to be done.  But giving government the power to pass laws that restrict freedom makes government very, very dangerous to individual liberty.  Our Founding Fathers knew that, which is why they wrote a document (the Constitution) which specified exactly what the federal government can and cannot do.  They feared government and knew that it was the greatest enemy of individual liberty.  Unfortunately, thanks to Abraham Lincoln and a few others of his ilk, it didn't work (read my recent "Village Idiot" post for further explanation of this). 
 
The point is, it is in government's interest not to let freedom flourish.  If I'm government, I want power, I want to limit freedom.  That's good for me.  But bad for the people's liberty.  The more government, the less liberty for the people; the more liberty for the people, the less government control.  This isn't rocket science; it's common sense, and even more, it's history. 
 
So, how can it be any surprise that the United States federal government writes a document which defines people who believe in "individual liberty" and who are "suspicious of centralized federal authority" as "terrorists"?  Hahaha.  Are the American people ever going to wake up (no, they aren't) and realize that Washington, D.C., is a classic historical case of governmental power, and that it is the very thing the men who founded America warned about and tried to prevent? 
 
And rebelled against.
 
Thomas Jefferson, where are you when we need you so badly?
 
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One more thought along this line; I've made it before on this blog, but I'll include it here for any new readers.  Regarding liberty:  the more that humans control themselves, the less government they need.  If people would conscientiously live according the teachings of Jesus Christ, we wouldn't need government (or very little).  As James Madison said, "if all men were angels, we wouldn't need government."  But this is the major reason why liberals, "progressives", hate religion.  Liberals, "progressives", believe in government as the solution to man's problems (with themselves in control of the government, of course).  The more religious, i.e., "self-governing" people are, the less government they need.  That is, they don't need liberals.  Thus, it has been a major goal of liberalism to destroy Christianity in America.  And in direct proportion to the success they have had, we have seen government grow in the United States.  Remember the Benjamin Franklin quote I posted a few weeks ago:  "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."  Do you think liberals don't know that?  Well, the "intellectuals" do, and that's why they are so vicious in their attacks on Christianity and in their attempts to silence those who truly exalt the teachings of Jesus.  Liberal, I don't need you.  I have a higher Master than you, one a whole lot smarter and wiser, whose ethical standards put yours to shame, and, if they were applied properly, would solve every, single solitary problem America has.  Without you, liberal.  But I know that's why you hate God and Christianity.  Well, there's one more reason.... 

Sometimes words have to be defined to be understood.  "Freedom" is one of those.  To the men who founded America, "freedom" meant the absence of governmental control over the people.  Moral law (God's) does exist, but people should freely choose to obey that law, for the betterment of themselves and respect for other people's rights.  But that's not what the modern liberal means by freedom.  To him, "freedom" means "sex."  That is the only thing liberals don't want government to control--people's right to have as much sex as they want, with any adult they want, and without having any responsibility or consequences.  And if an accident DOES happen (a baby conceived), somebody else's freedom should be limited (taxes) in order to pay to get rid of it.  Otherwise, to the liberal, there is no such thing as freedom.  You have only one course of action--obey to what the liberal tells you to do.

Liberal=government=Department of Homeland Security=hatred of individual liberty...

The Village Idiot and the Village Genius

Here's a great quote from a recent article by Thomas Sowell:

"John Roberts is no doubt a brainy man, and that seems to carry a lot of weight among the intelligentsia — despite glaring lessons from history, showing very brainy men creating everything from absurdities to catastrophes. Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius." ("Judicial Betrayal," 7/3/12)

The last sentence bears repeating: "few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius." I have often said--even told my students--that the stupidest people in the world are so-called "intellectuals." Most of them have no common sense, they rarely live in the real world where they themselves must accept the responsibility and bear the consequences of their fallacies, and worse yet, too many of them don’t believe in God.  It hasn’t been the Gomer Pyles who have started wars and killed untold millions, but Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and a whole host of such “intellectual” leftists who thought they had the genius to re-make the world according to their own vision (and, in their subjectivism, they never agreed on what that vision is), and, all the while, they completely ignored history and the moral and spiritual laws that the Creator handed man for his own good. 

That’s the quintessence of stupidity.  And barbarism.  And human tragedy.  And the reason why the United States, and most of the world, is in a mess right now.

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I haven’t written on the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare because, to me, it was ho-hum.  How could anybody be surprised at the decision?  When was the last time the SCOTUS was right about any major decision?  Why, why, why do we expect “intellectuals” to do the right thing?  They rarely ever do.  So, of course, the Supreme Court got it wrong.  Ho-hum.

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Overlooked in all of this, and a point I haven’t seen anybody talk about, is that nowhere in the Constitution does that document make the Supreme Court the final arbiter of what is “constitutional” or not.  I know that, from very early in the history of the United States (actually from even before Marbury v. Madison), the Court has taken it upon itself to declares laws of Congress and/or the states unconstitutional, and it has been accepted practice ever since.  But, again, where does the Constitution give the Court that right?  That 9 (or 5) unelected, unaccountable scoundrels have the ultimate power to decide what is to be bound upon the rest of the people can hardly be considered in harmony with a republican form of government or the intentions of the Founders.  In that sense, Chief Justice Roberts was right—the legislature makes the laws, regardless of how stupid they might be.  The executive “executes” (enforces) the laws, and the judiciary is to apply the laws.  That’s by simple definition.  If Congress makes an unconstitutional law, technically, it’s up to Congress to repeal it.  If they don’t, the states have the right to nullify it (nobody can be forced to obey an illegal law), as a warning to the national legislature.  If Congress still doesn’t repeal it, and insists on continuing to enforce its unconstitutional (tyrannical) mandates, the states have the right to secede from the Union—that’s the ultimate Damocles’ sword the Founders put over the head of the national government to help keep it in check.  If Congress insists on going beyond the delegated powers given to it in the Constitution, then the states, who created that Congress in the first place, have the right to secede—Congress won’t have anybody to govern anymore!  The United States government exists by the “consent of the governed,” and if all, or part, of those “governed” no longer consent to that government, then they have the right to leave it and form their own.  (Abraham Lincoln concurred in that view, which was, by far, the majority opinion of the Founders of the country.  It had to be since that is exactly what they did to England!)  Otherwise, those people are no longer free, but enslaved.  That’s the way the country was founded and intended.  The Southern states tried to make it work.  They failed.  Now, the federal government defines its own powers, so it is hardly surprising that there are virtually no limitations on what it can do (keep in mind that the SCOTUS is a part of the federal government, thus a major part in allowing Washington, D.C., to determine its own dominion).  Article One, Section 8, of the Constitution means nothing anymore because it can mean everything.  That is hardly what the men who founded the country had in mind.

Jefferson, et al, knew exactly what they were doing, and it was the most brilliant governmental construction the human mind has yet conceived.  The only thing is, it didn’t work.  And it didn’t work because of the very thing those men feared and tried to prevent—the undying, unquenchable thirst that humans—especially so-called “intellectuals”—have for power.  It is an intoxicant that has killed more of God’s creatures than any other vice in history.  And it is the intoxicant that is the main motivation of Barack Obama and the “progressives” whose one obsession is to control the United States of America and to create a utopian vision that only they can see.  That scares me to death.  Because other such “progressive” visionaries have been named…Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot…

History teaches that man has been plenty barbaric even when he acknowledges there is a God in heaven.  Man, without God, has absolutely no boundaries and no controls—and no reason to have any.  And so much the worse for the countless, nameless millions who have lived—and brutally died—under such a system. 

Give me Gomer Pyle any day of the week.