The American public, and Christians in particular, are being deluged once again with talk of the thoroughly ambiguous concept of “social justice.” It is, after all, election time. Thus the pseudo religious among us must make their pitch for the Christian vote, on whatever spurious terms they can concoct.

In its raw form, “social justice” merely references the prevailing societal attitudes of the day, relegating any defining standards of right or wrong, good or evil, and moral or immoral to a snapshot of the existing consensus. Biblical principles notwithstanding, “social justice” has throughout time been equally applicable to those crowds shouting “crucify him,” the burning of “heretics” at the stake during the inquisition, and even the holocaust.

It is therefore no great wonder that the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright, in his venomous and racist rantings against America, would seek refuge under the umbrella of “social justice” when attempting to defend his positions.

In its modern form, it represents a conglomeration of environmental extremism, coupled with the Marxist concept of a government empowered to confiscate the property of one citizen for the purpose of purchasing the loyalty of another. But since the ultimate reality of such false generosity and sanctimony conflicts with foundational Biblical truth, substitute “truths” must be cited in their stead. No less a mutation of reality is sufficient to legitimize socialism or environmental extremism under the guise of “spirituality.”

Possibly the most notable and outlandish example in recent memory is Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fabricated “scripture” asserting that one must worship the environment in order to worship God. Those who are truly familiar with Scripture know that the first chapter of Romans contains a stern admonition against that very notion. But while few among Pelosi’s ranks have ever had any interest in fact as derived from such dry and rigid source material, their current transparent attempts to redefine Christian citizenship merely represent a continuation of similar sordid efforts over the years.

The stunning collapse of Democrat fortunes in the 1994 elections caused party operatives to realize that they had suffered from an enormous disconnect from mainstream America and its traditional values. But, being thoroughly unwilling to actually embrace or even comprehend those values, liberal Democrats concluded that the only alternative, if they were ever to regain that portion of the electorate, was to offer an alternative set of “values” that might resonate with the American heartland while not conflicting with the liberal socialist agenda.

So instead of overhauling their party platform, they determined to reinvent American “Christianity” in a form that would make it compatible with Democrat political objectives. That they have enjoyed any success at all in this brazen endeavor is a sorry testimony to the condition of the Church in America.

Initially, Bill Clinton stumped tirelessly, with the help of the liberal media, to construct a scandal of black church burnings. Though he may have gained some short-term political mileage from it, the issue evaporated into thin air once the ‘96 elections were over, he had secured his second term as president, and the issue had outlived its usefulness to the Clinton strategists. Ultimately, most of America failed to take the bait.

Since that time, a broader and more insidious scheme has been implemented. With the help of the ever present liberal clergy, who studiously avoid and actively discourage “political involvement” on those prickly issues of abortion and sexual immorality, a new direction and rationale for “Christianity” has been established in the past few years. The two main pillars of this counterfeit spirituality are environmentalism and socialism. Not surprisingly, in regards to these issues those same liberal clerics are only too willing to lend a hand.

Concurrently, “Christian” populists, such as California megachurch pastor Rick Warren have done their best to open the floodgates of this modern “leaven,” by supplanting stodgy old religionists and their narrow perspective of sin and redemption with the delightfully more flexible concept of “purpose.” Under its auspices, saving an ostensibly endangered species might rate comparable spiritual glory with saving souls, while clearly representing far less of an affront to “old scratch.” It is therefore liable to incur far less of a backlash from his leftist minions in the political arena or on the nightly news.

So, what are the real consequences facing a society that embraces these false premises of “spirituality” while abandoning the truth? The same as they have always been throughout history: decline and eventual ruin. And the evidence is mounting before our eyes.

Like some pagan culture whose members starve in the streets while worshipping the abundant livestock living in their midst, western civilization has amazingly opted to burn its own food supplies in order to produce fuel, though abundant oil supplies lie within its soil and just off its shores.

Meanwhile, the elites who have squandered a disproportionate share of those resources, traveling on their private jets to “environmental conferences,” will continue to do so while the common citizen must endure greater and greater hardship in order to merely stay warm and get to work. Yet does the “Earth goddess” rejoice at this? Or is it merely those demigods of liberalism laughing at their extensive ranks of useful idiots? Social “Justice” indeed.

Chalk one up for “environmentalism” that will neither clean the planet nor make life better for its inhabitants. Yet the easily deceived are made to swell with sanctimony while those spearheading the movement gain in power and stature.

Ditto for the much older ploy of redistributing wealth. Under its influence, the nation’s economy stagnates, working citizens on every rung of its economic ladder are increasingly driven to lower levels, and those in power increase their dominance. Nevertheless, the ruse continues under the premise of “fairness.”

Americans are not ignorant of the crushing effects of rising energy costs, or the debilitating effect of excessive taxation. What is critical is to immediately enlighten them as to the inarguable cause and effect relationship between these burgeoning adversities and the fraudulent leftist ideologies that spawned them. Only then can the nation avert a continuation of its descent from once being that “shining city on a hill” to a dim caricature of its former glory, and an increasing reflection of third-world hardship and squalor.

The Taliban suffered a big loss in Pakistan/Afghanistan this month and so did al Qaeda in Iraq, but the MSM has been practically silent on these great successes. It only goes to show that the media is so completely sold on the claim that the war is lost that they aren’t interested in doing any real reporting on the war.

Not only has Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki headed up a brilliantly successful attack on rebel leader and Iranian backed Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army in Basra, but it seems that Maliki’s hard-line against Sadr has convinced Iraq’s main Sunni block to return to their places in the Iraqi government. Sadr has called for a ceasefire between forces loyal to him and the Iraqi government. At this point, al-Maliki seems poised on a breakthrough in Iraqi affairs that could lead to more involvement and less bloodshed. This is all something that few expect possible only a few months ago.

The western press has reported the information above widely, if not enthusiastically, but that isn’t the only good news in Iraq. What seems to have been given short shrift is the fact that al Qaeda has been severely hurt in Iraq, even “decapitated.”

April 22, 2008: Between mid-March and mid-April, al Qaeda suffered major losses in Iraq. American and Iraqi troops killed or captured 53 al Qaeda leaders. These include men in charge of entire cities (or portions of large cities like Mosul or Baghdad), as well as men in charge of various aspects of terror operations (making bombs, placing them or minding the bombers). Most important, nine of the ten most senior men involved, were captured, and interrogated. This led to locating more al Qaeda staff, and assets. Hundreds of weapons and explosives caches have been discovered this year, as a result of interrogating captured terrorists. The result has been a sharp fall in suicide bomber attacks, and the ones still carried out are against soft targets (civilians), including the recent funeral of two men earlier killed by terrorists. This was part of an al Qaeda campaign to force Sunni Arabs to switch sides again and support terrorism. But these attacks have the opposite effect, causing more hatred for al Qaeda.

Of course that first bit of Iraq news is certainly good to hear about and the western news media has done some reporting on the matter. But, seeing as how al Qaeda is America’s chief concern, one would think that its decapitation in Iraq would be something that at least the news media in the U.S.A. would be highly interested in. But we’ve heard practically nothing about this good news from our media. And what holds for the unreported good news in Iraq is repeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the efforts against the resurgent Taliban there.

At the end of April the Taliban was handed a major set back in the Khyber Agency area of Pakistan, but little of this has been reported in the western media about it.

For the better part of the year thus far, al Qaeda and the Taliban have been reaching out of their strongholds in the tribal Warzistan area of Pakistan and seeking to extend their influence deeper into Pakistan. Up until recently they seemed to be having great success, but they have at last overreached themselves. Recently, they’ve suffered a major defeat.

One of the Taliban’s focuses has been in attacking the Western alliance’s supply lines that run through Pakistan into Afghanistan. On March 20th, for instance, the Taliban really shook up NATO when they destroyed 40 gas tankers at Torkham — the border crossing in Khyber Agency into Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. This and a smattering of successful smaller attacks gave the Taliban/al Qaeda a measure of success emboldening them to further efforts and a major push.

That major push came in the form of a campaign to gain influence in the Khyber Agency. Since the Taliban and al Qaeda work through tribal alliances and influence, a major stumbling block for them had been a lack of sympathetic tribes in the Khyber Agency. However, the Taliban had imagined that with a recent agreement with a leader in the Khyber Agency they had, at last, found their way into the area.

The Taliban hit on one of the few Salafis in the area, Haji Namdar, as their point man. Namdar is not a traditional tribal, he’s a trader who has worked in Saudi Arabia. His Salafi ideology and the fact that he is a practicing Muslim lent him credibility – and trustworthiness – in the eyes of the Taliban.

Namdar came on board, offering to provide the Taliban with sanctuary for their men, arms and supplies along the main road leading to the border area. He gave these assurances to Taliban leaders in his own home.

With this new alliance in place, the Taliban planned and launched several military attacks on western convoys until last Monday they captured some workers of the World Food Program.

But here is where things began to go awry for the Taliban and their al Qaeda associates. Instead of letting the Taliban retreat to regroup and plan their next moves, the local paramilitary forces kept up the chase. The Taliban stopped to fight and killed five soldiers, but they had no re-supply of ammunition and so ran out. Both the paramilitary forces and the Taliban called in reinforcements and the battle ground to a stalemate. Eventually, though, the Taliban forces captured a local political agent (representing the central government in Karachi) and they used this hostage as a shield to escape the stalemate.

They tried to disperse to safe houses in the area arranged for by their new ally Haji Namdar to rest and refit. But to the Taliban’s shock they found that every safe house had government troops inside waiting to gobble up those Taliban members attempting to seek safety there.

It turns out that Haji Namdar sold his Taliban associates out for $150,000 in local currency provided by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence services.

Their worst suspicions were confirmed when Namdar broke his cover and announced on a local radio station that Taliban commanders, including Ustad Yasir, should surrender or face a “massacre”, as happened when local tribes turned against Uzbek fighters in South Waziristan in January 2007.

Namdar said that he had the full weight of the security forces behind him, and he did not fear any suicide attack.

This is all good news, off course. It shows that all the people in the Afghanistan/Warzistan/Pakistan triangle aren’t sold out to al Qaeda and the Taliban. This was a major setback for the Taliban and has sent them running back to their Warzistan strong holds.

But, it is a story that the western media are not doing much to cover, sadly. And it’s all because it is a success in the War On Terror, something that the western media does not want to advertise.

There’s not much point left to arguing whether the provocative vitriol purveyed by Trinity United Church’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in his sermons was warranted, understandable, excusable or in any way accurate. This columnist and an increasing number of Americans believe Wright’s tirades were wholly inexcusable and thus by nature cannot be explained away, as many have attempted to do. One would no sooner argue with a Holocaust denier, as such excursions are folly.

Nor is there much profit in attempting to divine whether former Trinity congregant and likely Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama subscribes to Wright’s philosophy or was ever exposed to Wright’s anti-American, racist rhetoric. Obama isn’t going to disclose that without sufficient motivation, and it is difficult to imagine this occurring, as it would prove him a liar based upon what he has already declared. Only the most gullible or self-deceiving individual would believe the extent of Obama’s stated ignorance as regards Wright’s bigotry given the extent and length of their association.

As though it was a long-awaited pop-culture or rare event such as a Rolling Stones tour or a pope’s visit, Jeremiah Wright’s PBS interview with far Left icon Bill Moyers on April 25 was promoted with nearly the same fanfare and (in this case, inordinate) hype. The probability is very high that few in America were especially eager to hear any more from Wright, even if it was a slightly more articulate, lower-volume version of his sermon fare peppered with subjective history and a healthy dose of propaganda.

The Moyers interview, which might have been called “The Audacity of Wright,” was rather disgusting. Most of Moyers’ on-camera time was spent gazing at the reverend with a strange, mooning stare; at times, it looked like he wanted to kiss him. For the most part, the reverend came off as a sincere if somewhat uncultured smoothie.

Wright covered a lot from his professional history, including his pastoral calling, hobnobbing with both the powerful and notorious of the ‘Sixties era, and even his assault by a bigoted testosterone junkie in the Secret Service during the Johnson administration. Much of this was conveyed in calmly-delivered anecdotes.

At other junctures, Wright was spinning so fast he could barely be seen. His response to the controversy surrounding venomous statements made during his sermons was surrealistically subjective. His view of Americans’ reaction to his radical rhetoric being “very, very unsettling” was the height of audacity.

A white bigot of similar caliber (who would never have been given a comparable media forum, and rightly so) expressing surprise and vexation on the part of television viewers taking exception to his bigoted drivel would be deemed either a dishonest opportunist or a dull-normal.

Yes, it’s unfortunate that Wright perverts scripture and extrapolates the Jesus message into a bludgeon for vile sociopolitical criticism. Yes, it’s profoundly disturbing that an individual seeking the highest office in the land may subscribe to this message. And yes, it’s troubling and dangerous that men like Wright use civil activism to enrich themselves while effectively disenfranchising “those they would save.”

Individuals such as Wright are what they are for a myriad of reasons. The real story now is how manifestly seditious members of the establishment press are in validating this perverse clown and those like him, providing a forum for them not only to lie and rationalize indefensible acts, but to widen the scope of their influence.

Americans must bear this in mind when the other controversial Obama associates who have been recently exposed are trotted out and validated by the press in the coming months ahead.

A pocket stuffed with a wad of bills, free poker games in Vegas, a wallet suddenly flush with cash. There were bogus cover stories for trips to the “motherland” where secrets were passed and clandestine couriers who helped deliver materials into foreign hands.

In his book The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud said of religion and morality,

Without a doubt, psychology has in a great measure become a bastion of secularism, born of atheism and molded in its lukewarm fires. As to this, in her piece “With God as My Shrink,” Pamela Paul quotes Brigham Young University psychology professor Scott Richards as saying, “Not only was Freud antireligion, but the behaviorists who came afterward were extremely eager to avoid religion in order to establish psychology as a respected science.”

Perhaps this dehumanization is why psychiatry has quite a history of using humans as guinea pigs. There was Benjamin Rush (the father of American psychiatry) and his bloodletting; Nazi experiments; electric shock and lobotomies; our MK ULTRA mind-control program; and Canadian psychiatrist Heinz Lehmann, who illegally used Thorazine on subjects in the 1950s. Then, reviewing the book Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, Brian Doherty tells us about:

The light of God’s truth has been snuffed out in Europe, now the least Christian and the most secularized and socialized part of the world.

I’ve been thinking about the 1800 presidential election a lot lately. Partly because a book on the subject has been lingering in my consciousness, but mostly because its example has served as a rebuttal whenever someone says this year’s election could become the most contentious in American history. People who say things like that ought first be able to name twenty presidents, and probably even their opponents, before waxing philosophic on the tone of modern elections.

For whatever is wrong with our electoral system, it pales by a dozen shades to what lingered in the air during our country’s infancy, when even the presence of truly great men wasn’t enough to keep things reasonable. Mere historical ignorance cannot account for the belief things “have never been worse” – you have to willfully suspend knowledge of campaigns past. For example: Writing for National Review Online, Kathleen Parker lamented the pre-taped appearances of Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama on the professional wrestling program Raw and wrote, in all seriousness, “Talkin’ tough never looked sillier – nor a presidential race more embarrassing.” 1

By this reasoning, delivering a few dopey lines on a wrestling show is more intellectually offensive than running on a promise to turn the United States into a military eunuch and hurl it into Canadian style socialism faster than the other candidates. A presidential race never looked more embarrassing? For Parker to write those words straight-faced, she had to conveniently forget that Bill Clinton actually answered the question about his underwear, that Michael Dukakis drove that tank, that Jesse Jackson uttered the phrase “Hymietown,” that John Kerry asked an Ohio shop keep “Can I get me a huntin’ license here?” and that Ron Paul … well, ran for president.

Electoral history is littered with hundreds, and possibly thousands, of examples of this magnitude and much worse, if only you bother to find them, which Parker didn’t, because doing so would have flown in the face of her thesis that professional wrestling is simply beneath people running for high office. (Perhaps not the world’s noblest profession, but no one has ever been able to explain to me how watching professional wrestling is any less of an intellectual drop than watching NASCAR, Survivor, a Miley Cyrus concert, or Countdown with Keith Olbermann.)

Modern candidates must either conform to the times in which they live, or stagger backward to the days of conducting entire campaigns from their front porches. Nearly five million people watched Raw that night including, as the New York Times points out, 1.45 million males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four.2 You poke fun at yourself on a wrestling show because it humanizes you to the viewers, and perhaps open doors to some voters who otherwise might not have thought about you. An Obama spokesman echoes this sentiment in the same Times piece: “[T]his campaign has been about reaching out to new voters and getting them involved in politics, so it’s important to reach as broad an audience as possible.”

This may be irrelevant to Kathleen Parker who, while admitting the wrestling stuff was harmless fun, turns to wonder why fun should have any place. “Clinton’s [most controversial Pennsylvania primary ad] posed the correct question: Whom are voters going to trust to be commander in chief? In this too-long campaign, in which Hill-Rod, Cookie and Slugger seek to out-cute each other for the connoisseurs of human mauling machines, the answer is increasingly less clear.” Fine, but would you suppose that ambiguity exists because the senators each spent fifteen minutes cutting wrestling promos, or because they’re so much alike it’s virtually impossible to tell whether there are any real differences between them?

1 “Meet Hill-Rod” by Kathleen Parker, last accessed 28 April 2008.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZDRlMDBjYjJlYjZjNTFiZjE4YzM5YWNmOTk0ZjE5NjE=

2 “Better Days, and Even Candidates, Are Coming to W.W.E.” by R.M. Schneiderman, last accessed 28 April 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28wwe.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=media&pagewanted=print

-By Warner Todd Huston

College textbooks are overpriced and something should be done. Why, Congress should even step in! That is the message that The New York Times wants us to understand and I can’t say it is, in and of itself, entirely the wrong message — save the whole bit about Congress stepping in, of course. But, as is typical of The New York Times, their story is only a small part of the whole story. In their exuberance to shake a finger at book manufacturers and in their hurry to blame capitalism the Times missed the bigger story.

The Times reports that “College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s.” They also report that a bill is pending in Congress that would “require publishers to sell ‘unbundled’ versions of the books…” This, the Times feels, is the right move to solve the problem. Any first year economics student, however, knows there is far more to it than just slapping more regulations on book publishers.

Still, the Times thinks it has the prescription for what ails our students.

“The bill is a good first step. But colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway costs. That means using digital textbooks, which can often be presented online free of charge or in hard copies for as little as one-fifth the cost of traditional books. The digital books can also be easily customized and updated.”

The Times gravely assures us that, “Right now, textbook publishers are calling the tune.” Naturally, The NYT acts as if these evil capitalist textbook companies are abusing their status as official providers of books merely to rip-off our students. But the Times doesn’t bother to fill the reader in on the full story. The greater story is far more disgusting than just that of a textbook company taking advantage of our students.

As far as our high schools go, the problem starts with the state textbook boards that create the standards that they impose on textbook manufacturers. These boards are political boards that impose political decisions on what our textbooks will be “allowed” to have in them. Textbook manufacturers spend millions of dollars a year lobbying the members of these textbook boards in states all across the country. Textbook companies wine and dine these state board members and this wasteful spending needlessly drives up the costs of manufacturing books.

These boards do not institute educational standards on the bookmakers, but political ones. So, book publishers spend millions to attempt to mollify these state textbook boards. Sometimes books are re-written many times to satisfy these political operatives.

But, the problem in many of our universities, while somewhat similar, is even more incestuous. Textbook manufacturers often shower university textbook boards with monetary gifts in the hopes that the board will award them with the textbook contract. Often, these textbook companies spend thousands of dollars sending textbook committee members to fancy resorts to “preview” the new books.

To “encourage” the use of their books, book manufacturers often send the school boxes of free books. Sometimes professors then begin to sell these books on ebay for a tidy profit or to students at slightly less than the new costs.

All these practices and restrictions drive up costs.

For its part, The New York Times appeared to be blaming over exuberant capitalism for the sky-high costs of books. But, there is no “capitalist” principle at work here at all. “Outrageous pricing” isn’t the problem so much as a complete lack of market forces in action to curb prices.

When a student enters a classroom he is told which book he will use, not which ones he can choose from. Therefore there is no competition. The student has no choice and that being the case, the book manufacturer has no forces to oppose their high prices. No market forces guide prices and book manufacturers can charge whatever they like.

Then we get to the textbooks actually written by the professors that a university then adopts for that professor’s class or his department. These, being specialty, small-run printing items are also exorbitantly high in price. And, once again, there are not market forces to put commons sense caps on pricing.

It cannot be denied that there is much that the textbook manufacturers are doing, though, to take advantage of their customers. Often times “new” editions are published that feature little change of any import over last year’s edition. Sometimes only a few graphics, or a new visual look is added from one year to the next. But these new books are always sold as “new” editions that supplant the old and schools are told that they must buy these books all over again. This prevents students from previous years from being able to sell used books to future classes and ensures that book publishers get to sell the same basic textbook fresh to every new class, each and every year.

These students are a canned audience with little or no choice but to acquiesce to the book publisher’s and the college’s demands. It’s a scam from step one.

Now, there is no doubt that the comfortable textbook publishing establishment isn’t too keen on altering the cozy arrangements they have with the schools, school boards, and professors, it’s a racket that can’t be surpassed for bundles of unearned cash all around. But, new technologies should be taken advantage of and currently they are underutilized.

The New York Times ends their piece with this line: “Cash-strapped students and their families need all the relief they can get.”

That is certainly true, but let’s not put the onus on the book publishers as if it’s all that eeeevil capitalism that is is to blame. The entire den of thieves needs to be chased out into the sunlight. From the undeserved gifts that college book boards get, to the sweetheart deals that professors get for writing and using the books, all the way to the manufacturers, the entire textbook world is a complete scam.

So, the Times is right, something should be done. But we don’t need Congress to do it. We need the whole system addressed and the place to do that is at the state level for state funded schools and with the alumni and new students who are electing to pay their tuition at the private schools.

Someone should tell The New York Times that the Federal government is not needed here.