A Seventeenth-Century Trump?

David Byrne

Democrats are outraged. From their perspective, the worst human has assumed the highest office in the land. Trump is allegedly so bad, there have even been suggestions that the Electoral College rebuke over two hundred years of tradition and elect Hillary Clinton as president, thereby denying Trump a legitimate victory. Green Party demands for recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin threaten to delay if not derail a final vote of college electors to ratify the election result. Michael Signer argues in Time Magazine that the Electoral College was designed precisely to stop a “tyrannical mass leader” like Trump. To many liberals, these ideas make sense.

An analogous event happened in late seventh century England when unprecedented steps were taken to ensure the “worst possible human” didn’t maintain the highest office in the land. The culprit’s name was James II. His crime? He was Catholic.

After the English Civil War and the reign of Oliver Cromwell in the middle of the seventeenth century, Charles II was “restored” to the English throne. Charles accepted Anglicanism (although he was received in the Catholic Church on his deathbed), but there was a shadow over much of his reign because his younger brother and heir to the throne, James II, was openly Catholic (he converted around 1670).

English antipathy to Catholicism in the second half of the seventeenth century cannot be exaggerated. Catholics were akin to twenty-first century racists. The derogatory term to describe them was Papist. They were scapegoated and persecuted. They had to be eliminated. They weren’t fit to rule. They were… deplorable.

Opposition to James II was so strong, it led to the creation of the West’s first political party, the Whigs—the liberals of their day. The Whig Party had one goal, prevent James from inheriting the throne, despite his legitimate claim. He was to Whigs what Trump is to liberals. His reigned threatened the nation. Everything that had been gained would be lost.

James II ascension to the throne after Charles II death in 1685 can be likened to Trump’s victory: Life as we know it is over. There were, in fact, rebellions against James. Not My King could have been uttered to describe James. Audaciously, he allowed Catholics to occupy high offices in England and he sought religious freedom for Catholics. Things only got worse when a male heir was produced, suggesting perpetual Catholic rule. The Whigs had to act.

They hatched a plan. James II’s daughter was Mary, a legitimate heir to the throne. And she was Protestant. She lived in the Netherlands with her husband, William of Orange, a prince. Radical steps were taken—equivalent of the Electoral College rebuking Trump—when the Whigs wrote letters to William and Mary, offering them the English throne, if they could overthrow James II. It was unprecedented, but necessary for the Whigs. The fate of the nation hung in the balance. William and Mary agreed.

In October 1688, William’s fleet, with roughly 40,000 men, set sail for England. Upon landing, James’ army melted away, reluctant to fight for a king they were taught to despise. After minimal bloodshed, James evacuated the throne and fled to France in January 1689. This is England’s “Glorious Revolution” The King was overthrown, a seventeenth century coup d’etat against a hated Papist.

William and Mary were proclaimed joint monarchs by Parliament, but they became “limited monarchs.” Their powers were curbed by a “Bill of Rights,” which required free elections, freedom of speech and prohibited levying taxes without consent of Parliament. In theory, there was religious toleration, except a Catholic could never take the throne in England. This remains the case. Unlike the Tory royalists, Whigs sought to expand the power of Parliament at the expense of the monarchy.

The Whigs and their anti-Catholic zeal may seem strange to us, but Whigs included some of the intellectual luminaries of the seventeenth century, such as Isaac Newton and John Locke (history is littered with very intelligent people believing very irrational things).

The Glorious Revolution needed intellectual justification, and Locke provided it. In his Second Treatise on Government (1690), Locke argued that in the state of nature, all men are free and equal. People originally came together in the state of nature to protect their liberty and property (Protestant feared Catholics in England would return their property to the Church). Locke stated “Political power is that power which every man in the state of nature has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the governors, whom the society has set over itself with this express or tacit trust that it shall be employed for their own good.” Locke continued that a contract existed between the government and the governed, and when the government violated the contract, it can be overthrown. Implicitly, James II violated this contract.

Locke’s interpretation of the Glorious Revolution had profound historical consequences. It contributed to the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson and American Revolutionaries inherited Locke’s views about the nature of government, the belief in equality of men, and the subsequent justness of revolution.

Will liberals have as much success as Whigs in preventing their bete noir from achieving the most powerful position in the land? Probably not. This only demonstrates the strength of anti-Catholic sentiment in late seventeenth century England.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/seventeenth-century-trump

Image credit: KENWOOD HOUSE (SUFFOLK COLLECTION) “James II as Duke of York” by Studio of Sir Peter LELY (1618-1680).

The Enemy That Won’t Be Named--Fundamental Islam

The Enemy That Won’t Be Named

Regis Nicoll

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, chosen by president-elect Trump to be national security adviser, again finds himself in the crosshairs of liberal ire. This time for calling Islam a political ideology masked behind religion.

A registered Democrat, Flynn served in the Obama administration until, in his words, “the stand I took on radical Islam,” led to his early retirement.

Liberal aversion to the phrase, “radical Islam” is a symptom of what psychologists call, the “false consensus bias”—the belief that, in the global brotherhood of mankind, everyone shares the same wants, needs, desires, and values.

However, while everyone wants peace, the Western liberal and the radical Islamist promote vastly different means of achieving it—the former, through an ethic of universal tolerance and the latter, through the universal “purification” by the sword.

Waste Not a CrisisUnder the false consensus, a liberal in the West, for whom religion is largely irrelevant, cannot conceive that it could be any different for the shooter who goes on a killing spree in a crowded night club, screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Or, as just happened yesterday morning, an Ohio State freshman and Somali Muslim refugee who drives his car through a crowd of students injuring nine. Such a person can’t be motivated by religion, because religion is an outward expression of our primal longings, making every variety, even that of the jihadist, a “religion of peace.” Thus, televised beheadings and crucifixions are not acts of religious devotees, but of madmen given to fear, anger, xenophobia, depression, or the increasingly fashionable, “causes unknown.”

The tragic consequence is that each terrorist act becomes a crisis, not to be wasted, for politicians eager to mount their hobbyhorses of gun control, mental health care, and military action—measures that are ineffective at best, and counterproductive at worst against the “enemy that won’t be named.”

Consider gun control. Even if all the ammunition and firearms in the world were rounded up and destroyed, the person intent on purifying the world will attempt to do so, be it with explosives, incendiaries, chemicals, biotoxins, knives, and vehicles, all of which have been used to great effect. On July 14, 2016 one of the most efficient terrorist attacks occurred in Nice, France. In only a matter of minutes, one man, armed with a 19-ton cargo truck, was able to kill 84 people and injure over 300 others.

As for mental health care, while some psychological problems have been exhibited by some jihadists, mental illness is not a common factor in Islamic terrorism. Thus, contrary to common depictions, the typical jihadist is not some deranged psychopath, but a religiously informed foot soldier who believes he has a divine commission in the imminent apocalypse.

The Enemy is Not TerroristsThen there’s military action, which has not, and never will, defeat the “enemy that won’t be named,” because “enemy that won’t be named” is not the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other jihadist group; it is the ideology upon which those groups are founded—namely, fundamental Islam.

Notice I didn’t say “radical” Islam, but “fundamental Islam”—Islam in its most pure and aboriginal sense. Fundamental Islam looks toward a utopian state where every aspect of public and private life is governed by Islamic law under a church-state theocracy. Its holy texts and the life of its founder, Muhammad, teach that the use of forceful means is commendable to achieve those ends. To the mind of the fundamentalist, vigorous military resistance by the “crusaders,” even when successful, only serves to validate Islam’s role in apocalyptic prophesy.

Cotton-candy LiberalismThe perpetrators involved in Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, and Orlando came from various backgrounds and claimed allegiance to different Islamic groups, but they all were united by the same ideology: Islam, according to its historical readings. Take ISIS, for example.

Contrary to the liberal progressive who characterizes that ideology as “un-Islamic,” in a smart piece for The Atlantic contributing editor Graeme Wood writes,

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

According to Princeton Islamic expert Bernard Haykel, politically correct liberals and embarrassed Muslims alike who denounce the religious ties behind terrorist attacks, have a “cotton-candy view” of the faith that willfully ignores what Islam “has historically and legally required.” The jihadist who participates in beheadings, crucifixions, and slavery is not following some corrupted version of Islam. Rather, he is “faithfully reproducing its norms of war” which were established in the Quran and advanced by Muhammad—says Haykel.

Foolish SchemesThe failure to recognize this connection makes Islamic terrorism and its operatives, incomprehensible to the modern mind. For instance, in a frank discussion about his brain trust of three dozen interdisciplinary experts, Gen. Michael K. Nagata, U.S. commander in the Middle East, admitted, “We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it.” Even after months of meetings, Gen. Nagata confides, we couldn’t agree on “whether the main objective of ISIS is ideological or territorial.” Well, the fact is, it’s both.

The territorial ambitions of ISIS are driven by its ideological purity. Fundamental Islam promotes the establishment of an Islamic state under the direction of a caliph whose duty is to expand the caliphate through offensive jihad, if necessary, until what Allah wills done is done on earth as it is in heaven.

“Muslims [and western apologists for Islam] can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do,” writes Wood. “But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combated, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.”

One of the foremost schemes is to ignore and obfuscate any connection Islam has to the barbarism done in its name by using politically correct substitutes like “domestic terrorism,” “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” and “lone wolf” attacks. Another is to deny the connection by expunging public statements to the contrary by the perpetrators and characterizing such as radicals, extremists, and crazies acting against the “true” reading of Islam and independently from any known terrorist group.

A Better IdeologyThe scheme, along with the military half-measures it sires, has proven (and will continue to prove) ineffective against the War on Terror. That’s because—channeling James Carville—“it’s the ideology, stupid!” And the only way to defeat an ideology is not with political correctness and air strikes, but with a better ideology.

Sadly, victory will be difficult for a country that has become ignorant, if not embarrassed, about the extraordinary ideology of its founding—one that for over 200 years has caused citizens of the world look to it as a beacon of freedom, equality, and opportunity.

The constitutional “givens” of common human dignity and natural rights derive from the Christian teaching that all men are created in God’s image. By contrast, Islam regards man as God’s creation, but without godlikeness, a being who needs redemption not by a Savior, but by the remembrance of Allah’s will, and whose path to paradise is only certain by death in holy war. Absent are the Western ideals of inherent human worth, individual liberty, and equality.

Because of its Christian-inspired ideology the United States, a nation of immigrants, has an immigrant problem, while Muslim-controlled countries have an emigrantproblem and a well-documented history of human rights violations.

What’s more, the core of that better ideology in recent years has led to the conversion of as many as 7 million Muslims worldwide. As one Middle Eastern missionary observed—giving heft to the conviction of Victor Hugo that one can resist the invasion of armies, but not the invasion of ideas—“More Muslims have become followers of Jesus in the last ten years than in the last 14 centuries of Islam.”

However, as long as our political class operates under the false consensus, failing to recognize what makes Islamic terrorists do the things they do and what makes America the exceptional nation it is without embarrassment and apology, our unnamed enemy will remain unnamed and undefeated, ably resisting our best political and military strategies as the House of Islam is advanced, slowly and incrementally, by the House of War.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/enemy-wont-named

In Denial about Islam

William Kilpatrick

“The times they are a-changing.”  ∼ Bob Dylan

Rival gangs battle in the streets and set fire to cars. Uncovered women are considered fair game. Molotov cocktails are hurled at police stations.

Syria? No, Sweden. For a long time, Sweden has been importing Middle Eastern immigrants into its small nation, and now it is experiencing many of the problems of the Middle East. The same thing is happening in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, and England.

It’s often said that we in America just have to look at history to understand the fate that may be in store for us. But it’s no longer necessary to consult history books. All you have to do is look at what’s happening right now on the other side of the Atlantic.

In Germany during the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,000 crimes. But since the data only includes crimes that have been solved, the actual number of migrant crimes is likely far higher. In many parts of the country, police say they are unable to maintain law and order. More than 20,000 purses are snatched each year in Hamburg, and gangs of migrant youth have taken control of parts of the Jungfernsteig, a prestigious boulevard. The situation is much the same in Bremen, Berlin, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, and Stuttgart. All over Germany, migrant gangs and roving bands of migrant youth operate with near impunity.

Meanwhile, France has suffered through a string of massacres: first, at the office of Charlie Hebdo and at the Hyper Cacher market, then at the Bataclan Theater, and most recently along the Boulevard des Anglais in Nice. A recent survey by the Red Cross reveals that more than fifty percent of French citizens live in constant fear of another jihad attack.

Unless the French, the Germans, and the Swedes resist at some point soon, they, along with other European states, will someday be Islamic states. Europe is in the midst of a massive historical change, the significance of which rivals the fall of the Roman Empire. What we are witnessing is the gradual but inexorable substitution of one civilization for another.

Except that we are unreliable witnesses. We see, but we don’t see. Americans are being afforded a preview of what can happen here, but many seem unable to grasp the lesson. As in Europe, we suffer from a bad case of denial.

Of all the factors contributing to Islam’s hostile takeover of Europe, perhaps the most important is denial. If you deny the reality of Islamization, you can’t effectively resist it. The reality is that Europe is in a life and death struggle, but the denialists insist that it’s just business as usual. They assure us that terror has nothing to do with Islam (so don’t worry), that immigration is just cultural enrichment (it’s good for you), and that there are no no-go-zones (but it’s best to avoid them).

In Europe it’s not only the leaders who are in denial. The average citizen is expected to go along with the delusion. If he doesn’t, he can face arrest, prosecution, fines, and even jail time. In the Netherlands, individuals who post Facebook comments critical of Islam or immigration can expect a visit from the police. In Germany, citizens who express “xenophobic” views on social media risk having their children taken away. Meanwhile, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has ordered the British Press not to report when terrorists are Muslims.

Once upon a time, the West celebrated its “alarmists.” Paul Revere became an American hero for sounding the alarm about the British advance. Likewise, Churchill was lionized for warning of the gathering Nazi storm. By contrast, contemporary Paul Revere’s risk being arrested—and not by enemy sentinels, but by the representatives of those they are trying to alert. Western officialdom doesn’t want its citizens to be alerted. It wants them to stay asleep.

This officially enforced denial explains why many if not most Europeans were caught off-guard by the migration invasion of 2015-16. Although it was entirely predictable, few saw it coming. That’s because no one was allowed to talk about Muslim immigration except in glowing terms. It was a no-go subject, and everyone understood that opposition to immigration would bring charges of racism and xenophobia. In short, there was never any public debate or discussion about the downside of immigration.

Americans are fortunate in having the European experience with Islam before their eyes. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that they are paying attention. We are making the same mistakes that have led Europe to its present crisis. Instead of charting our own course, we are treading in Europe’s footprints. And few seem to notice that the footprints are leading up to the edge of the abyss.

Once again, the main problem is denial. The reason that the denialists cling to their denial is that they live in the past. European denialists live mentally in the post-war years. They must prove to themselves that Europe has abandoned its anti-Semitic ways. And for some insane reason, they have decided that the way to make up for Europe’s past sins is to welcome the “new Jews” (Muslims) into their midst. In short, they have made a colossal error and since it’s not easy to admit that you rank with history’s greatest blunderers, they must continue to maintain that the disaster unfolding around them is nothing more than a rough patch on the road to the multicultural Promised Land.

American denialists live mentally in the 1970s—the age of sensitivity. They still think that tolerance, diversity, and sensitivity to the “other” are the highest values. They believe that you show your sensitivity by yielding to the demands of whatever racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual minority is currently favored by the social and media elites. And what could be more sensitive than to open your borders to any and all comers, no questions asked?

But, as our Nobel Laureate poet reminds us, the times are always changing. In order to deal with changing times, it is sometimes necessary to change one’s mindset. When the changes are revolutionary in nature, it may be time to discard the comforting narratives of one’s youth. In the early years of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln put it this way:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present… As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

In facing the global Islamic challenge, we cannot afford to be trapped in the “dogmas of the quiet past”—especially when many of the dogmas that developed in the sixties and seventies did not serve us well even then.

As Lincoln said, we must “think anew and act anew.” But there is little evidence that our current leaders, mired as they are in outworn narratives, are capable of doing that. This is not to say that there is nothing to be learned from history. It’s because we’ve become detached from history that we fail to recognize that Islam’s current aggressiveness is a continuation of an ancient pattern.

Our “dogmas of the quiet past” are really dogmas of the recent past. These days, our cultural memory extends back only a few decades. If we had a better acquaintance with the far past we would more readily grasp the changes that are happening today right before our eyes in Europe.

Here’s another wake-up headline from across the sea:

Sharia patrol attacks girl for not wearing hijab

Sweden? No, Austria. But if could be Sweden—or Germany, or France. And if we continue to cling to our naïve dogmas, it could happen in America—much sooner than we imagine.

The times they are a-changing.     

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/in-denial-about-islam      

                                                                                                                                                        

“This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!”

The President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University gave a lecture to students they’ll never forget.  Recently a student complained about a sermon that made him feel guilty and blamed the school for making students feel uncomfortable.  This is not uncommon.  Many universities now are so afraid of offending even one student, that political correctness has run amuck.  However, this University is based on religion and so one would expect that discipline, good character and personal accountability would be a big part of the curriculum.

Everett Piper, who is the President of the school, wrote a letter to the students admonishing them that playing the victim, blaming others and not admitting mistakes is not a way to live a productive and meaningful life.  Here is the letter titled “This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!”

This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!

This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.

I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”

I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization.

So here’s my advice:

If you want the chaplain to tell you you’re a victim rather than tell you that you need virtue, this may not be the university you’re looking for. If you want to complain about a sermon that makes you feel less than loving for not showing love, this might be the wrong place.

If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university.

source okwu.edu

Socratic Reflections on Election Day

This column appears on the second Tuesday of November of the fourth year. On this sober day, this country freely (rigged or not!) chooses its fate. “Fate” and ”choice” for once go hand in hand. That we not talk about the candidates’ merits seems fitting. Things cannot turn out well. Our souls have already accepted too much evil for it to be otherwise. Elections are the “democratic” way of killing a tyrant without bloodshed. They can also choose a tyrant without overt revolution. We have already done this twice with Mr. Obama. So we can relax, in a way. Nothing is new.

The trial and death of Socrates (399 B.C.) inaugurate our civic tradition. We examine our souls in their light. Socrates clarifies the relation between truth and the city, between those who are “personally” opposed – but allow evil to happen – and those who die, politically or literally, rather than deny the truth that is theirs to affirm whatever the regime.

Socrates was accused of confusing the citizens by his probing search for truth. His accusers claimed that he did not believe in the gods of the city. He affirmed that spiritual things existed. He was charged with corrupting the youth. He thought that the youth were already corrupted by the sophists hired to teach them whatever they wanted to hear. These sophists are often called the first paid university professors.

Socrates explained that he followed the goddess at Delphi, who told his friend that Socrates was the wisest man in Greece. He doubted it. So he went around the city to find someone with better answers. He found that the ones who were thought wise were not really so. Leisured young men listened to him and imitated him. This angered their fathers, the rulers of the city. They accused him of corrupting their sons. They determined to kill him.

Socrates defended himself before a court of 501 citizen-judges. He explained that he was really the city’s benefactor. He prevented it from going to sleep by neglecting the important things, like what things are true and what things are not. When threatened with death, he replied that death was not the worst disorder. Doing evil was worse. We do not know whether death is an evil or a release to a life in which we are judged, where we live with those who did not renounce the truth, even when they were killed for holding it.

Socrates Drinking the Hemlock by Antonio Zucchi, 1767 [Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire]

The court condemned Socrates to death. He was to give a counterproposal. He thought that he deserved free room and board at the city’s expense. All he did with his life was to go about and ask the citizens to examine their lives. Were they living as a human being ought to live? If they were not, their lives were not really worth living. The city was embarrassed to kill their most famous citizen. Why could he not just pay a fine or go into exile or stop philosophizing and annoying everyone?

To accept any of these escapes, Socrates thought, would implicitly be an admission of guilt. It would be unjust for him to accept them. Socrates was hard on those who brought about his condemnation. He told them bluntly that for the rest of history, those who knew of his trial would say that they were the people who unjustly killed the best man. Political choices can taint our souls, forever. Plato wrote the Republicto prove this truth. No escape from evil is found in this world or the next for those who cause the great crimes in politics.

Socrates is content with the verdict of death. He knows that it is not the greatest evil. No evil can harm a good man. Modern politics, less confident about judgment and afterlife, believes it has corrected Socrates about the life of the city. It maintains that we can live a good life by being a politician, especially if we mitigate or eliminate the distinction between good and evil.

Socrates was not so sure. “Do not be angry at me for speaking the truth,” he told the jury. “No man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private not a public life if he is to survive for even a short time.” (31e-32a) Socrates proved that not even the private life was safe in a polity that placed conformity to the laws of the city before the standard of truth.

This day is, as I said, sobering. With it, Socrates’ distinction between public and private mostly disappears. Socrates will not be condemned for impiety to the gods or corrupting the youth, but for not agreeing with and obeying the laws of the state, as they are rapidly being formulated for what will inevitably be called our “good.”

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2016/11/08/socratic-reflections-on-election-day/

© 2016 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Bigger than Hillary Clinton: The Establishment Cesspool of Dishonesty and Corruption

November 4, 2016
Newt Gingrich

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If you are as surprised as I am at the depth of dishonesty and corruption that has been revealed in this campaign, then you will understand why I am writing this particular column the weekend before the election.

Americans are faced with a crisis of dishonesty and corruption vastly bigger and deeper than Secretary Hillary Clinton. Defeating her is necessary if we hope to clean up our dishonest and corrupt capitol city, but in many ways Hillary is merely the most prominent face in an entire network of dishonest people.

I have been actively involved in politics and government since August of 1958.

In all those years, nothing prepared me for the avalanche of blatant corruption and dishonesty that has been exposed and detailed during this campaign.

The dishonesty infects the news media, the Justice Department, the IRS, the Veterans Administration, the State Department, and the White House, among others.

From lying about Benghazi, to lying about the Affordable Care Act, lying about the payments to Iran, lying about corruption, incompetence, dishonesty and failure at the Veterans Administration–the pervasive willingness to lie infects our government.
Secretary Clinton’s dishonesty has been breathtaking in its brazen contempt for the American people. She has mastered the art of memorizing lies and then repeating them with such arrogance and assertiveness that she almost convinces you, even when you know everything she is saying is false.

Now with the various Wikileaks, court-ordered disclosures and hard work by a small number of reporters (especially at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) we have learned that Hillary’s mendacity is merely the most public in a network of corruption and dishonesty so pervasive it can only be described as a cesspool that threatens the entire American system.

One of the greatest dangers to our entire system of self-government under the laws has been the growth in foreign influence seeking to buy control of American policies and actions.

Our Founding Fathers were vividly aware of the danger of foreign money and influence-seeking to control our politics and our government. In fact, they wrote a prohibition against foreign influence buying into the Constitution.

Article I, Section 9 says, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

“Emolument” is a fancy word for payment.

Congress has implemented this ban through the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, which specifically prohibits spouses of public officials from receiving payments linked to foreign governments. Thus, during the eight years Hillary was in the Senate and the four years she was Secretary of State, every foreign government payment to President Bill Clinton or to the Clinton Foundation was expressly prohibited by the Constitution and by federal law.

Why were the Founding Fathers 229 years ago worried that people like the Clintons would introduce foreign corruption?

First, they had lived through the corruption of the British government, and rebelled against it. As Gordon Wood has described authoritatively, the Americans embraced the Whig critique of and hostility to corruption. Their passion for limited government was in part driven by the depth of their hostility toward government corruption. 

Decades before Lord Acton warned that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” the Founding Fathers were designing a constitution to enforce the law and limit dishonesty and corruption.

Second, many of the Founding Fathers had read Roman and Greek history. They had a profound sense of the degree to which corruption destroyed liberty and the rule of law leading to dictatorship and tyranny.

If you read Colleen McCullough’s magnificent novels about the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Caesar you will see sobering parallels.

Volume one is called The First Man in Rome. Already, in that first book (set around 100 B.C.), foreign rulers had learned that the Roman Senate had grown corrupt and could be bribed. The cancer of dishonesty was growing throughout the Roman power structure.

McCullough would have understood the Clintons and the cesspool of corruption they live in and preside over.

Donald Trump says he will drain the swamp.

We all need to understand how big a job and how great a struggle that will be.

President John Adams warned: 

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

We are now testing the capacity of America to survive immoral, dishonest corrupt leaders and a network of corruption that is pervasive and frighteningly powerful.

If, in John Dean’s words, The Watergate cover-up was a “cancer on the Presidency,” then the scale and influence of today’s dishonesty and corruption is a cancer threatening the very survival of the rule of law and the American system of self government.

Lincoln, seeking to prevail in a crisis of the Republic, went to Gettysburg and rallied the American people with these words:

It is for us the living…to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Now it is our turn to rededicate ourselves to the same cause–to reject the pervasive dishonesty and corruption that threatens our system and our institutions, and to return once again to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

That is how important next Tuesday is.


http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2016/11/bigger-than-hillary-clinton-the-establishment-cesspool-of-dishonesty-and-corruption/

Anonymous Just Released SHOCKING Video of Huma and Hillary Clinton – SCANDAL! Kosar Featured Contributor November 1, 2016

http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/anonymous-just-shocking-video-huma-abedin-muslim-hillary-clinton-scandal/

Anonymous Just Released SHOCKING Video of Huma and Hillary Clinton – SCANDAL!

Kosar

Featured Contributor

November 1, 2016

There’s no question that Huma Abedin’s estranged husband Anthony Weiner has a perverted history. But the Hillary Clinton scandal is far worse!

Weiner, who clearly has serious personal problems, was too close to highly classified material that was transmitted between his wife and Hillary on an unsecured emails server.

Now, the hacker group Anonymous has exposed shocking, scandalous details about Huma Abedin which show exactly what she’s all about.

Hillary’s closest personal assistant has extensive personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and her mother is a member of the group’s counterpart organization for women. With ties to Saudi Arabia, where she was raised, she started interning for Hillary at age 20 while working at a Jihadist legal publication which endorsed Sharia law.

Abedin’s family business is tied to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s family. How did she even pass a security background check? You have to see this…

Anonymous frequently takes liberal views about politics. But its’ clear that they are joining with WikiLeaks to expose the globalist corruption of Hillary Clinton and her criminal conflicts of interest. Hillary has broken laws that would send any other politician to prison for many decades, and yet Hillary Clinton is still the Democrat nominee for President in 2016.

The ties to Huma and Hillary run so deep that long-term rumors have swirled for years about the true nature of their relationship. Huma knows where the proverbial “bodies are buried,” which is why her current cooperation with FBI investigators has to be troubling for Team Hillary.

Anonymous also exposed just how expansive Hillary Clinton’s criminal career is. This is on a scale never-before-seen in American politics:

Share this important information with your family and friends before it’s too late!

And if you think Hillary belongs in a jail cell, LIKE our Facebook page: Hillary is a Criminal!

Fr. Amorth: The Role of Mary & Angels Against Evil

Kathleen Beckman

Fr. Gabriel Amorth’s important last book and testimony emphasizes the role of Mary and angels in the defeat of evil. As the Church anticipates the celebration of the one hundred year anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, and in light of Mary’s prophecy at Fatima, Father Amorth provides good food for thought.

Excerpt from An Exorcist Explains the Demonic

Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces

“In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph”: Mary’s prophecy at Fátima reassures us that besides the body-to-body [struggle] with the demon (the exorcism), the earthly anticipation of the eschatological struggle between the Mother of God and the ancient dragon (cf. Rev. 12) also has her attention. Despite rampant sin and despite the man who abandons God, considering him only a useless impediment to his own unrestrained liberty, the tribulations of the Church will have an end. And the finale will be good: God will have the last word on history. For this reason, Mary is always invoked during the exorcism; although, to tell the truth, the old ritual did not include an invocation to her. Adding her to the ceremony is a practice I borrowed from Father Candido, however. It is a necessity, and the current ritual has gotten around this deficiency. During the prayer, the priest repeatedly invokes her intercession and her powerful action. Without her, little is accomplished in the struggle against Satan. It is always God who liberates one from his influence — it is good to keep repeating it—but His ear is especially attuned to the mediation of Mary, the Mother of His Son.

What role does the Virgin have in the liberation of the obsessed? Mary, as the Hail Mary says, is “full of grace.” She is the mediatrix of God’s every grace for all men, particularly for those who suffer much, including those who suffer from spiritual evils. The enmity between Mary and Satan—proclaimed solemnly by God in the first book of Genesis (Gen. 1:3–15) and manifest in the eschatological struggle with the dragon — makes her the number-one enemy of the demon. She will be the one to crush his head at the end of time.

The help of the Virgin, however, goes beyond the exceptional situations of the demoniacs. In man’s every struggle against Satan and sin, it is always she who represents the extraordinary and the irreplaceable. The demon is terrified of her. In order to be very clear, I wish to cite an episode at which I personally assisted many years ago. During an exorcism, Father Candido asked the devil a question: “Why are you more afraid when I invoke Mary than when I implore God Himself?” He responded: “I feel more humiliated being conquered by a simple creature than by God Himself.”

Mary is a creature like us, but, having been elevated to be the Mother of God, she has extraordinary power. Also for this reason I ask the persons who assist me to pray the Rosary. It is the most advisable prayer in that context, prayed individually, not aloud and collectively, as it is often prayed in church before Mass, so as not to disturb the exorcism. I would add that the Rosary, being the prayer most appreciated by our Lady, is an extremely powerful arm against the devil, and I warmly recommend it to anyone suffering from spiritual evils. This prayer has, in fact, a strong power of protection and liberation from evil. One day Sister Lucia, a seer of Fátima, revealed that God has conferred a power so great on the Rosary that there is no evil—personal, family, or social—that cannot be defeated by its recitation with faith.

What, then, can we ask of Mary in the Rosary? There is nothing else to ask of her except for the gift of peace — for the world certainly, but also for ourselves; for the serenity of our heart, so that we may be able to accept our crosses, so that we may know how to recognize the gifts that we receive each day from the good God and thank Him for this. It is also important to pray the Rosary together as a family in order to invoke peace in our homes and in our parochial communities, in workplaces, in nations, and in the world. Wars and the division of souls are unequivocal signs of the presence of the devil, which, not by chance, in Greek means “divider.”

I also recall that on March 25, 1984, St. John Paul II consecrated the world to Mary. It was a very important gesture in an epoch in which communism still represented an explicit threat to Christianity. During an exorcism, I asked an unclean spirit who was persecuting someone why he had so much hatred to- ward John Paul II. He replied: “Because he has ruined our plans.” I imagine that he was referring to the fall of communism. At Fátima, when the Virgin affirmed that her “Immaculate Heart will triumph,” what could it mean if not to trust in the Lord and her maternal help always—particularly before the danger of discouragement that lies in wait for everyone, but, above all, for those suffering from evil spirits, because often waiting for the results can seem interminable. It also means that, with the help of Mary, we must continuously engage ourselves in converting to God, so that we will know how to do His will — that is, to pardon and to love — and so that we may know how to make every event an occasion of sanctification and the realization of God’s plan for us. Mary brings us to Jesus, because initially she allowed the Holy Spirit to touch her intimately, permitting her to generate Jesus in time.

The Help of the Angels 

What role do the angels have? We have already spoken of their choice for or against God in the third chapter. The word angel derives from the Greek angelos and means “messenger of God.” The angels are spiritual creatures, without matter. They are pure forms and have a nature different from that of men, who have a material and spiritual nature together. The angels are subdivided into angelic hierarchies according to the mission that is entrusted to them by God. They cannot reproduce or die: in fact, they have been created directly by God.

At the moment of our birth, Divine Providence assigns each of us a guardian angel, with the specific task of protecting us, assisting us, and interceding for us so that at the end of life we can arrive at our destination, which is paradise.

We have already seen that entire legions of angels have chosen the tragic road of rebellion against God, refusing to obey and to adore Him and, indeed, they tried to substitute themselves for Him. As a consequence of their choice, the devils radically changed their mission: now, in fact, they use their superfine intelligence for the unique objective of destroying men and making them their companions in misfortune. As Revelation tells us, that gigantic war that was fought in the heavens among the angels and the demons has another battle held here on earth: they are in a continuous battle for our lives and our hearts.

From all this, one can affirm that the angels who remained faithful to God have a certain degree of power against ordinary temptations as well as extraordinary spiritual evils. Why? Because they are of the same nature as the devils, and they fight with the same spiritual arms. The angels intercede with God in favor of the one being tempted; for this reason, we exorcists always invoke them during the prayers on the obsessed. Among the angels we give precedence to the three archangels, in particular to St. Michael, the most powerful in the struggle against demons. Incidentally, I am among those who regret that, after Vatican II, the prayer of protection to St. Michael the Archangel, recited after Mass, was eliminated. It seems to me to have created an impoverishment, a void. It is true, however, that one can freely say it privately.

In brief, it is good to invoke the angels often, even apart from their help with extraordinary spiritual evils. I always advise imploring their assistance. Our guardian angels have a special power of intercession with God, which is always the beginning of liberations (from demons). The angels help, they intercede, but they themselves do not have the power to liberate the possessed from the terrible effects of demons.

Mary, Mother of Grace, pray for us. Angels of God, protect us.

http://catholicexchange.com/fr-amorth-role-mary-angels-evil

Editor’s note: An Exorcist Explains the Demonic is available from Sophia Institute Press. 

By Kathleen Beckman

Kathleen Beckman, L.H.S. is President and Co-Founder of the Foundation of Prayer for Priests (www.foundationforpriests.org), a global apostolate of prayer and catechesis for the holiness of priests through spiritual motherhood and fatherhood. An international Catholic evangelist, author, radio host, Ignatian certified retreat director, she assists priests in the Church’s ministry of healing, deliverance and exorcism. She also serves in Pope Leo XIII Institute, Magnificat, and Radio Maria. Often featured on Catholic TV and radio such as EWTN, the Catholic Channel, and Ave Maria, she hosts the weekly program, “Eucharist, Mercy & Saints” which airs internationally on Radio Maria. She and her husband are business owners and have two grown sons. Sophia Institute Press published her two latest books: Praying for Priests: A Mission for the New Evangelization (‘14) and God’s Healing Mercy: Finding Your Path to Forgiveness, Peace & Joy (‘15). Her reversion to the faith in 1991 came through the Eucharist and Mary. In her words, “The Eucharist is the heart of my life”. More at www.kathleenbeckman.com.