The American Standard Bearer

The point can be argued that while we as a society are busy debating various popular dangers that may or may not confront us (i.e. global warming), there are forces at work that may pose a greater threat to our long term well-being. One danger, in particular, may be the fallout from a philosophical shift – from worship of God to worship of science.

One of the Gods of modern science, Dr. James Watson, is known as a co-discover of DNA and as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and not as well known for his views on infanticide and now, Jews. He has argued that parents should be allowed up to three days after the birth of a child to decide if the child should continue to live or be, as Stalin might say, liquidated.

Unfortunately, he is not alone in the notion that a baby (or your elderly mother for that matter) has no moral claim on life unless society grants that claim. Dr. Peter Singer, who holds forth at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, places even less value on humans by suggesting that parents should have up to 28 days to give the thumbs up or thumbs down on their newborn infant. Didn’t know a baby would cry all night long? No worries, we’ll snuff him for you.

Now Watson is back in the news, telling Esquire magazine that anti-Semitism is just all right with him. He claims it is justified in order to “maintain the concept of a free society.” Of course, a free society means that one has the right to hate whomever one wants, which is not the same thing as celebrating freedom by justifying hatreds.

The Baker’s Dozen, Yale University’s revered a-cappella vocal group, wound up on the receiving end of a serious beat-down New Years Eve. A few members were hospitalized and one required jaw surgery.

The incident occured at a private party at the home of a prominent San Francisco police official, where the men were the guests of honor. As the group struck up a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” they were loudly heckled by a couple of young men who were reportedly uninvited guests. In fact, the ensuing ruckus was so noisy and wild that it ended the party.

As the Baker’s Dozen left, one of the hecklers got on his cell phone and called for back-up. Minutes later, the heckler’s posse arrived and confronted the singing group not a block away and then proceeded to pummel them. As of now, no arrests have been made.

It’s not clear why the singers from Yale were heckled and beaten, but given the political climate in some quarters of San Francisco, where anti-Americanism is de rigueur, and the American flag is regarded as a symbol of evil rivaling the Nazi swastika, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it was the strains of our National Anthem that triggered such a violent reaction.

After making a simple promise to her brother-in-law, Mary-Ann Elmore of Pittsburg, California, found herself in hot water. At least that’s what she thought.

Elmore promised her brother-in-law, when he left for a tour of duty in Iraq, that she would hang the American flag in her apartment window until his return. Everything seemed to be going along fine when, after a few months, she received notification from the apartment complex management to remove the flag or face a stiff fine. The America-haters in the front office were either unaware of U.S. law regarding the right of residents to display the American flag, or they consciously ignored it.

In either case, they tried intimidation to get the flag out of view, threatening Elmore with a $300-a-day fine. But rather than accept their ultimatum, she decided to fight back. Elmore discovered through the internet that President Bush had recently signed into law the “Freedom to Dispaly the American Flag Act of 2005,” which revealed that her tormentors were actually in violation of Federal law.

Elmore quickly contacted KGO-TV, the local ABC station in San Francisco, who then contacted the apartment management to inform them of their blatant lawlessness. Management apologized to Elmore and she got to keep her flag in the window.

The moral of the story is this: the internet allowed Elmore to find the information she needed – information she may never have discovered going through normal bureaucratic channels – proving once again that the internet is making it harder and harder for the bad guys to operate.

A group of armed Mexicans crossed the U.S. border in Arizona Wednesday night and began firing on a Border Patrol outpost. The good news is that the outpost was manned by a contingent of National Guard soldiers that are there as part of this administration’s promise to protect our borders. The bad news is that the President’s initiative of sending U.S. troops to the border is an empty gesture, or more to the point, a deliberate charade.

You see, not only are the National Guard soldiers completely unarmed, they are not permitted to confront or have contact of any kind with people entering this country illegally. Having no way to defend themselves, our soldiers on Wednesday night were forced to run for their lives. It reminds me of the scene in the movie, Blazing Saddles, in which the townsfolk fool the bad guys with cardboard cutouts of themselves. We might as well put cardboard cutouts of National Guard soldiers on the border – it would be at least as effective at a fraction of the cost.

And now, because Bush has once again deceived the American people into thinking he is serious about protecting the borders, armed private citizens are moving on the border to protect our unarmed soldiers. Carmen Mercer of the Minuteman Project told Worldnet Daily that armed Minutman members were headed for the border to patrol “side-by-side” with National Guard troops “until the Governor or the President allow them to defend themselves…”

If that wasn’t dangerously convoluted enough, you may recall the case of U.S. Border Patrol agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos who were recently handed a prison sentence of more than a decade each for shooting at, and wounding, a Mexican drug smuggler who fled back into Mexico. The officers claimed that Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, the man who was attempting to smuggle 800 pounds of marijuana into the country, or an accomplice, fired at them. Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila claimed he did not. The U.S. Government, given the choice between the word of a dirtball smuggler and the word of their own Border Patrol agents who risked their lives to apprehend this criminal, chose to believe the smuggler.

As a result, the bad guy’s wound was nursed at a U.S. hospital, courtesy of your tax dollars, and he was sent back to Mexico with an apology for his rough treatment. And the good guys are going to jail for performing their duties while President Bush ignores calls by California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and many others to intervene on behalf of Compean and Ramos.

Just a scant decade or two ago, these events would almost certainly have caused a national uproar. Today, they’re a mere blip on the news radar screen and then they’re gone.

The cultural elite here in America have been harping for decades that we Americans should follow the lead of sophisticated European nations like, say, France. Well, don’t look now but the leader of the European Union is sinking fast.

New Years Eve marked another wave of violence as 400 cars were set ablaze by what the media elites kindly refer to as “youths” while the rest of us prefer to recognize them as “disaffected Muslim youths.” The major news outlets hardly mentioned the rioting, if at all, signalling that these events are no longer newsworthy since they happen with such regularity.

The other big news from France is that they have achieved a very difficult milestone – zero economic growth. With an aging ethnic French population that expects a government pension upon retirement and a growing Muslim youth population that doesn’t feel particularly obligated to the French, particularly elderly pensioners, the prognosis for a happy ending does not look good.

As you may already know, newly elected Congressman and Muslim convert Keith Ellison of Minnesota will be sworn in this month with his hand on a Koran. And, as it turns out, it won’t be just any Koran – it will be a copy originally owned by none other than Thomas Jefferson.

In today’s Washington Post, reporters Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts can barely contain their glee at the prospect of the first Muslim in Congress turning the tables on naysayers the likes of Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode by planting his calculating hand on “an unassailably all-American provenance,” Jefferson’s Koran.

It seems incredible that the Washington Post, a newspaper that has oftened warned of the dangers of an impending Christian theocracy, is giddy at the prospect of an impending Muslim theocracy, given the fact that typically nations with a Muslim majority live under theocratic rule. Do the folks at the Post realize that very few of them would survive a week in a country governed by Islamic law?

Incidentally, Argetsinger and Roberts may want to consider that besides his Koran, Jefferson was also an ardent adherent of that other “unassailably all-American provenance,” slavery.

The Associated Press posted this photo yesterday along with the following caption:

“A Palestinian steps on an American flag, a sign of disrespect in the Arab world, during a rally against the execution of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, in the village of Halhul, near the West Bank city of Hebron, Monday, Jan. 1, 2007.”

Evidently the AP caption writer, sequestered away in a caption writer’s cubbyhole in a newsroom somewhere, was worried that we, the dolts that make up the news-consuming public, might not get the point. Therefore, it must be emphasized that in the Arab world (i.e. Palestine, Iran, Detroit, Brooklyn, Seattle), stepping upon an American flag is considered a sign of disrespect. Sheesh.