Let me be very clear, right off the bat. I'm not calling the president or his administration, his closest White House advisers and consultants, jihadists.
Good buddy Keith Olbermann, you can sit back down and cool off. You've named me "Worst Person in the World" twice already, misconstruing things I've written here, so I'm not giving you an excuse to do it again.
I was appalled several days ago, when the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, angrily called tea party members "terrorists." It was almost unimaginable, even for a man known for his countless gaffes and misstatements, to openly make such a charge. This is the man who, if anything tragic happened to the president, God forbid, would be the president of all Americans!
To falsely label millions of patriotic, newly energized and politically active citizens (like me) with a name seared into the national consciousness by the violent attacks on the World Trade Center, the suicide bombers wreaking havoc and mayhem from Mumbai to Israel, throughout the Middle East and Europe, and the attempts to murder more Americans here on our own soil, is simply unconscionable. A slander unworthy of a local congressman, let alone a man elected to serve and represent us all, even those who dissent and disagree with his political goals.
So I'm sure not doing that here. This isn't some kind of "slap back"; this is a series of questions for reasonable people to consider, as we collectively try to make some kind of sense of the economic and political, even social and religious, turmoil in which we're all struggling.
(Story continues below...)
We are in a dire situation in this country today, and small publications like this one do not have the huge resources of George Soros pouring in like our liberal friends.
Worth Reading is not funded by the government like NPR.
Worth Reading is not funded by the government like PBS.
Please become a supporting member and help fund this ongoing effort to provide you with news and commentary relevant to our divided nation.
Help us get back our simple conservative values. Remember, the Bigger the Government - the Smaller the citizen!
We've all got to face it, we've got to question where we're headed and why we're embroiled in such an increasingly hopeless mess. It seems horribly Orwellian to see our blessed, prosperous nation buried in an avalanche of unjustifiable, unpayable debt … while our leadership argues, right up to the brink of government bankruptcy, over how many additional trillions of dollars we should add to the debt annually! With the president and his minions seeking at least an additional $15 trillion over the next 10 years!
At this writing, joblessness is stagnant at just under 10 percent, home sales are in the dumper, food prices are rising, gas prices are through the roof (while we're prohibited by government to drill for and use our own oil), and public unrest and disapproval of our government is nearing 70 percent. But those in charge seem still determined to steer us into ever greater debt and governmental control. It's past time to ask some nitty gritty questions.
What is "jihad"? It's an Islamic word, variously interpreted as "the struggle" or "the journey." But a struggle for what? A journey toward where?
"Jihad" is currently understood as a word for "holy war" – and that's exactly how we see it in action, as destruction and violence and the killing of thousands erupts suddenly and viciously all around the world. The "struggle" is obviously for the domination, the subjugation of all peoples under a Shariah society. Whether or not the Quran is correctly understood as commanding this, the several million fatally committed to jihadism believe they are doing the will of Allah.
And if they could have their way, if they could force their will on us,what would America be like? All citizens would take their orders from an all-powerful government; those who obey without question might have some privileges, those who don't would be imprisoned or killed; religious freedom would be nonexistent; "wealth" would be "distributed" at the whim and direction of the religio/political dictators; and courts would dole out punishment according to the jihadist guidelines.
Impossible in America? Are you watching what's been happening all around us, just the last two and a half years?
Let me quote David Horowitz in his publication "Breaking the System: the Obama Team's Strategy for Changing America." The title is inspired by Barack Obama's declaration on election eve, 2008: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
Horowitz writes: "The burden of the national debt has become so great that even Barack Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton describes it a national security threat. 'I think that our rising debt level poses a national security threat … in two ways: It undermines our capacity to act in our own interests and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable. And it also sends a message of weakness, internationally.'"
In fact, Obama himself said in March 2006: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." [emphases added]
Joe Biden, that is exactly what we tea-party "terrorists" have been yelling at you and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and those who just agreed in "bipartisan" legislation to add 4 trillion more to our impossible debt! Is our president a "terrorist," too?
Or a "jihadist" who has found the path, the "journey" to the economic collapse of our country, with all the resulting "fundamental transformations"?
According to the Congressional Budget Office, in the first 20 months of Obama's presidency, the national debt increased by $2.5260 trillion. Yes, he came into office confronting the disastrous TARP bailout enacted by Bush. But the subsequent explosion of sovereign debt under Obama's rule was neither inevitable nor unavoidable; as Rahm Emanuel said then, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Quickly then, another trillion dollars was printed by the Fed and massive government programs were enacted by a bewildered Congress, incurring many trillions more in future debt. These actions were both avoidable and deliberate, "in the face" of an electorate that opposed all of it!
And that was just the beginning. Where is this "journey" taking us … and can we possibly survive the "struggle"?
