Yes, the culture of the West is superior to all the rest in every way that affects life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Here’s part of what Daniel Greenfield writes at his website Sultan Knish, thoroughly endorsing our boast on behalf of a maddeningly diffident and self-deprecating Western world, specifically America:

We are better than them. When all the other arguments for why we can’t fight back have been exhausted this is the one that remains in the background presenting our moral exceptionalism as the reason we shouldn’t fight to protect ourselves.

“Fight back? But then we’d be no better than them?” If we waterboard then we are no better than the headchoppers and mutilators. If we profile then we are no better than the genocidal jihadists. …

But is that really the difference between us, that we treat everyone equally even when they are cutting our throats, and the moment we deviate from the standards of the Trial Lawyers Association then we’re no better than the Taliban or Al-Qaeda? Does our exceptionalism derive from our laws, in which case if we compromise our laws then we [have] given up the only worthwhile thing about us and there is nothing more to fight for – or are our laws the means by which we protect our individual and national exceptionalism?

We are better than they are, is the argument put forward so often by those who do not truly believe that we are, and even when they do they don’t understand why we are. The Bill of Rights did not spring full-grown out of a barbaric culture …

We are not better than they are because we guarantee civil rights to our enemies – we are better than they are because of Michelangelo, the microchip and universal education. We are better than they are because of Shakespeare, the space shuttle and the World Trade Center. We are better for all the reasons around us, the accomplishments, the achievements, the knowledge we have gained and the society we have built.

Our laws were crafted to protect these achievements, the exceptionalism of the individual from the government, and that of the nation from internal and external enemies. The laws have no individual life apart from the culture of the nation that created them and maintains them. It would be possible to transpose the United States Constitution to Indonesia, Libya or Pakistan and it wouldn’t last a single day there. No mere document can safeguard rights and freedoms that a culture does not value, and no culture that does not value them is deserving of their protection if such protection has the cumulative effect of destroying those same rights and freedoms.

Freedom isn’t just defended on the battlefield, by the time things get that bad then the damage will be hard to contain. We defend it every day by defending the culture that makes it possible. Against external enemies there is the war of armed conflict, economic competition and geographic positioning. Against the internal enemy there is the culture war, the war of ideas and institutions. …

Governments are instituted to keep laws and laws are implemented to keep the people. Governments serve the law, but the law serves the people. And the people are not some random mass, they are not defined by passports and identity cards or place of birth – the people are the keepers of the flame of their culture. This need not be a matter of birth, immigrants can be among the greatest heroes and natives among the greatest traitors. But no one who is committed to the destruction of the culture, in concrete or abstract terms, in the immediate present or the indefinite future, can enjoy the protection of legal codes that exist to protect the freedom of the individual within the integrity of a free culture.

The more sophisticated a culture becomes the less it is concerned with survival. Bubbles grow in its centers of government and learning within which philosophies and ideas seem more real than reality. Opposing philosophies struggle to lobotomize the culture with revisionist histories and social philosophies that place their own ideal at the center of all human striving. But ideas are sterile without a culture to carry them forward. Kill the culture and the ideas become orphans that [are] adopted in an altered form by some other culture – if they are lucky.

Tolerance and civil rights are worthless unless the countries and cultures where they are expressed are also defended. Any form of tolerance which leads to its own destruction is not only poisonous to a host culture, but is also literarily self-destructive. All healthy entities whether biological, organizational or intellectual contain the means for their own continuance and self-perpetuation. Any entity which does not is poisonous and must be treated as such, and to defend any idea or code above the survival of the culture that carries it is a homicidal act.

When conflict comes, two questions are asked. Is the threat real and is our culture worth fighting for. The latter question is most often asked by elites whose bubble ideals no real culture can ever measure up to, and by outsiders who have the least invested in the survival of the culture.

“If we do this how are we any better than they are?” is the question of the bubble elite whose abstract ideals exist apart from flesh and blood people, who do not measure their ideals by the culture, but measure the culture by their ideals, and always find it wanting, who think that the culture with its millions of people and centuries of history exist to shepherd their ideals and die for them – and ought to be grateful for the privilege of dying so that no Muslim is ever profiled at an airport.

The bubble elites distrust nationalism and patriotism because they center not around ideas, but the people’s sense of solidarity. The only exceptionalism that they will accept is the exceptionalism of ideals, and if the nation does not represent its ideals then it does not deserve to live.

In the face of such reasoning it is important to remember that we are not better than our enemies because we represent ideals, but because we create ideals along with skyscrapers, paintings, high powered microscopes, novels, better mousetraps, systems of philosophy, muscle cars, musical styles, theorems, charities and sandwiches.

Of course a comprehensive list would be immensely long, but we’d like to add computers and the internet to Greenfield’s samples. How did people endure existence before they came into common use?

We are makers and shapers, movers and thinkers, seers and doers. We reach for the stars and find ways to keep premature babies alive. We are imperfect, dynamic and changing – and the world would be a much poorer place without us in it.

Whatever we do to protect ourselves against outside enemies in thrall to a hostile ideology, regardless of where they were born is fully justified by our accomplishments, our past, our present and our future – and even if all these things were not present by our right to individual, national and cultural survival.

It is not by becoming pacifists that we will be better than them, but by fighting for what we have and who we are. And if we do not stand up for our countries, our peoples and our cultures then we will not inherit the moral high ground, but the low killing pits of the victims of the thousand year spree of terror. There is no moral high ground to be gained in refusing to struggle to your utmost for the things that you hold dear, only through the struggle to protect our individual and national exceptionalism, can we gain the high ground and justify the assertion that we are better than them.

The Europeans are discarding the rich Western culture built and paid for with blood and tears by their forefathers through hundreds of years, as though it were trash. Will Americans, who so enormously augmented and enhanced it, preserve it now that it’s under severe threat? Not if Obama, the Democratic Party, the Occupy Wall Street protestors, academia and the mass media have their way.

If there must be a culture war, dulce et decorum est to become warriors on the side of our inherited, enlightened, culture.

You might consider this post to be a recuiting ad. We want YOU!

Ron Paul must not be elected president because he is dangerously unrealistic in his opinion of what the role of the US should be (effectively none at all) in world affairs.

But his proposals for cutting government spending, and so reducing the power of government, should be seriously considered by whichever Republican candidate is elected.

Here’s an outline of his ideas from an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily:

Paul proposes cutting $1 trillion within a year, including closing down five Cabinet agencies, the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and the Interior, and reducing most other federal spending to 2006 levels. …

He would slash the federal workforce by 10% and reform Washington’s fiscally doomed entitlements by letting younger Americans opt out of Social Security and Medicare. Medicaid and other social welfare programs would become block grants for the states, giving flexibility to local government.

The regulatory nightmares of ObamaCare, Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank would all be dumped into the ashcan of history, the Bush tax cuts on income and investment would be extended, the corporate tax lowered to 15%, and the estate tax abolished.

That would be a good start – but only a start.

This is the video of Gaddafi being killed (its makers say). Or perhaps it pictures a man who has already been shot and bludgeoned to death. If it is Gaddafi lying there dead – good that he has gone. He was a cruel tyrant, smarmingly courted, through many years, by Western politicians, Blair, Sarkozy, and Obama most notably among them.

Those who are shrieking and baying round the man or the corpse are the savages that NATO forces – mainly British, French and American – have been helping to overthrow the tyrant and seize power. From this video alone it would be reasonable to suppose that they are unlikely to rule any more morally than did their prey.    

See the Mail Online’s report and pictures here.

Here’s some great news from the Washington Post:

Iran’s nuclear program, which stumbled badly after a reported cyberattack last year, appears beset by poorly performing equipment, shortages of parts and other woes as global sanctions exert a mounting toll, Western diplomats and nuclear experts say. …

They complain of these several “woes”:

Analysts say Iran has become increasingly frustrated and erratic as political change sweeps the region and its nuclear program struggles. …

At Iran’s largest nuclear complex, near the city of Natanz, fast-spinning machines called centrifuges churn out enriched uranium. But the average output is steadily declining as the equipment breaks down …

Iran has vowed to replace the older machines with models that are faster and more efficient. Yet new centrifuges recently introduced at Natanz contain parts made from an inferior type of metal that is weaker and more prone to failure …

Western diplomats and nuclear experts say Iranian officials have been frustrated and angered by the program’s numerous setbacks, including deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists. Four Iranian scientists have been killed by unidentified assailants since 2007, and a fifth narrowly escaped death in an attempted car-bombing. …

But that Stuxnet worm is the damnedest thing:

The studies of Iran’s struggling uranium program draw on data collected by U.N. officials … The inspectors’ report documented a sharp drop in output in 2009 and 2010, providing the first confirmation of a major equipment failure linked to a computer virus dubbed Stuxnet. Western diplomats and nuclear experts say Stuxnet’s designer intended to attack and disable thousands of first-generation centrifuges at Natanz, undercutting Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. Many experts suspect Israel created the virus, perhaps with U.S. help, but neither nation has acknowledged any role.

Iranian scientists replaced more than 1,000 crippled machines. Afterward the Natanz plant appeared to quickly recover, and production rates soared to surpass levels seen before the attack. Yet, the gains have not lasted, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. …

The world owes a debt beyond price to Stuxnet’s designer. He has saved it – at least for a time – from nuclear war. But he’s not very likely to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. That’s reserved for terrorists and community organizers.

There is an old British saying … “Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” The idea, of course, is that when a crisis arises, a leader will also arise to show the way out of it.

So Andrew Klavan writes at PajamasMedia, in an article titled Mitt Romney versus The End of Western Civilization.

He goes on:

But those of us who feel the upcoming presidential election represents a crossroads of sorts are starting to find this faith in providential leadership somewhat shaken. We’re starting to think that if the man is cometh-ing he better hurry-eth up and geth here already.

Because Mitt Romney ain’t the guy. While he may win the Republican presidential nomination by default — and while he may indeed win the presidency due to desperation — it is clear from every word he says that he understands neither the peril nor the needs of the present moment. …

The professionals and money guys in the Republican establishment don’t seem to mind that. As always, they feel that they are the old pros who take care of the all-important business of electability while we children in the base worry about such nonsense as principle and the preservation of the republic. It’s these establishment types who have traditionally delivered the truly electable choices like Bob Dole and John McCain while staunchly protecting us from extremists like Ronald Reagan. On Fox News’ Journal Editorial Report this weekend, the Wall Street Journal‘s Dorothy Rabinowitz … seemed to give voice to that establishment opinion when she said that “reason is going to have to prevail” among conservatives and that they’ll ultimately have to abandon the likes of Herman Cain and “all of the alternatives that are warming their little hearts, that they’re playing with,” and learn to live with Romney as their guy.

And I fear she — and all those she speaks for — may be right. …  Cain seems like a terrific fellow but he has no foreign policy knowledge and his 9-9-9 plan is a mistake — a new tax that will never go away and will grow bigger than he imagines. Michele Bachman is wonderful on the economy, but her social policy is ill-informed and out-of-date. Perry can’t think on his feet, Huntsman’s a bore, and Ron Paul is a better cult leader than candidate. So far, Romney is, in fact, the best candidate actually in the race. I’m sorry, but there is something to be said for realism when you’re dealing with, you know, reality.

But he’s still not the guy. And just for the record, just to explain, the problem is not that he’s a moderate per se. It’s not that he has changed his mind from time to time. It’s not even his failure to renounce Romneycare, so similar to the disastrous Obamacare. … The problem is that Romney doesn’t understand that we — America — the west — are in crisis: a crisis of debt, a crisis of confidence, a crisis of identity and ignorance wherein journalists, professors, politicians, and priests have become one with the moral idiots occupying Wall Street.

Go on Romney’s website. Look at his proposals. There’s nothing wrong with them, for the most part. They seem intended to repeal the Obama administration and set us back on the path we were on before. That would be fine if Obama were the cause of the crisis, but he’s the symptom of the crisis, its incarnation as it were. Obama and his ideas are the creation of 40 years of moral error and political failure drip-drip-dripped into the consciousness of the country through our schools, news media, and culture. He could never have won our highest office if the electorate had not been bred by that error to foolishness, and then spurred to an act of panicked stupidity by a crisis that had already come.

It’s not Obama’s presidency that needs to be repealed — not just Obama’s presidency — but all the ideas that made Obama’s presidency possible.

To do that, we need a man not just of policies but of vision, not just of proposals but of high ideals. A mere Romney might — might — take us back from the brink to which Obama has sped us, but that would only delay the fatal catastrophe. Worse, it would perforce recreate the exact same set of circumstances that got us into this mess in the first place.

Could Romney be made to understand the nature and depth of the crisis that Western civilization is in? If he could be made to understand it, would he then see how to save it? And if he saw how, would he have the cunning and mettle to do it?

If not – and we agree with Klavan that Romney is “not the guy”, that he doesn’t have it in him  – is there a man or woman anywhere in America who could and would? Who has the depth and completeness of understanding, the power of leadership, the moral strength, the resourcefulness? Is there a potential political giant, greater than has ever existed before, waiting in the wings?

Failing such a genius, it seems we’ll have to make do with a Romney.

We are libertarian conservatives, “minarchists”, emphatically not anarchists.

Having a libertarian bent, we like much of what John Stossel writes in an article at Townhall:

Here’s my fantasy: Libertarians are elected to the presidency and to majorities in Congress. What would happen next? Well, if libertarians were “in charge,” you’d have more freedom and prosperity.

Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you’d have been called crazy. There’s got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal rules.

Society would work the same way — and does to a large extent even today. “Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government,” Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. “It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. … Common interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government.”

Yes. Common interest is the wellspring of morality.

If libertarians were “in charge,” there would be laws to protect us from foreign enemies and those who would steal from us or injure us. Today, by contrast, under the rule of Democans and Republicrats, we’re drowning in rules — 160,000 pages’ worth. Micromanagement kills opportunity and freedom.

Maybe if there were a way to have more competition among governments, things would be better. Competition forces people to become more efficient and to get rid of stupid rules. What if we let people take over some unused land in America to create areas with fewer rules, simpler legal systems, smaller government?

Stossel quotes Michael Strong , who with his wife Magatte Wade founded the Free Cities Project.

Strong said, “We want to encourage thousands of people to create new governments that have different rules, each competing for customers with the best education and best health care, the most peace and prosperity you could imagine.”

We expect that where government interfered least with the economic life of the people there would be the greatest prosperity. Where it had nothing at all to do with education or health, the people would stand the best chance of being well educated and effectively cured. Where it most strongly protected liberty, they would probably endure the least crime. Where it armed the people most formidably they might least expect to be invaded.

Are there any free cities along the lines Strong and Wade envision?

“Hong Kong and Singapore are the best examples,” Strong said. “Now they are among the wealthiest places on earth.”

True – and proof that small government, doing little more than enforcing the rule of law, works well.

And there is a free city in Dubai because the emirate wanted to create a financial sector …

And did, though the emir had to abandon sharia law in the free city to achieve what he wanted:

“Dubai was brilliant,” Strong said. “They looked around the world. They saw that Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in world in eight years.”

It’s what libertarians have said: Freedom works, and government, when it grows beyond the barest minimum, keeps people poor.

As liberty is most likely to bring prosperity, why are libertarians a political minority?

Is it because many people fear it, and if so why?

Some want governments to be parental and care for them “from the cradle to the grave”. They think such welfare governments can guarantee that they’ll  be fed, housed, educated, medically treated all through their lives.

They could not be more wrong. The welfare states of Europe are rapidly going bankrupt.

And besides, what a government provides a government can withhold. To put yourself wholly in the power of a government is to put yourself not into safety but into danger. You are most safe when you control your own life, and the government does no more than guard your liberty. (And as everything governments do they do badly, it is wise to own a gun.)

Some need to feel that there is “someone in charge” – a king, a chief, a Secretary-General of the Communist Party, a powerful president, a Father in Heaven.

We don’t want someone in charge. Neither on earth nor “in heaven”. Throughout our earthly lives we want the rule of law, that wholly abstract authority, emotionless, fixed. (As Lord Denning, the British judge, said: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you”.)

And we delight in a universe that does not have and does not need “someone” to make, maintain, rule, watch over, manipulate, or give a damn about it.

Yesterday the Attorney General announced that an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, in Washington, D.C. has been foiled.

The Saudi Ambassador was to be killed by a bombing of a restaurant he frequents in the capital, so many others would have been killed and wounded.

The plot also involved attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina.

Barry Rubin writes at PajamasMedia:

The case is still being developed, and it isn’t clear whether the origin of this plot goes back to Tehran.

By which he means: Did the government of Iran order the attacks?

That does not need to be asked. In a despotism there are no free agents who decide for private reasons to attack another country. Although there is division among the internal powers of Iran – between the supreme “spiritual leader”, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and the president, Ahmadinejad; between either or both of them and the Revolutionary Guards; and probably between factions in every section of government and the military – it had to be one or some or most or all of them who approved such a plan as this.

According to ABC’s sources, Manssor Arbabsiar — an Iranian American living in Texas — approached an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, thinking he was speaking with a member of a Mexican drug gang for help in the proposed attacks. He said he was acting on behalf of a cousin, Gholam Shakuri, who might be a Revolutionary Guard official involved in terrorist operations.

He offered $1.5 million for the killing, with a $100,000 down payment in two installments being paid by Arbabsiar while on a visit to Iran.

These two men have been charged with conspiracy to kill, among other charges. Arbabsiar, who is now cooperating with the prosecution, also offered to provide opium in large quantities for the Mexican drug cartels. Apparently, the FBI has a lot of evidence, including recordings of meetings and telephone calls with Arbabsiar.

Reuters reports more details:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said one of two men charged in the plot, both originally from Iran, had been arrested and confessed. The other, who was still at large, was described in the criminal complaint as being a member of the elite Quds Force, which is part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. …

U.S. authorities arrested the other man, Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 29. …

The assassination plot began to unfold in May 2011 when Arbabsiar approached an individual in Mexico to help, but that individual turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The confidential source, who was not identified, immediately tipped law enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the informant in July and August for the plot, a down payment on the $1.5 million requested.

Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during telephone conversations with Arbabsiar …

Rubin comments:

Let’s assume that this story is accurate. What’s most important here is not the innate sensationalism of this dramatic story, but its political implications. An Iranian official — perhaps two according to the indictment — is directly linked with a plan to stage terrorist attacks on American soil in which Americans would certainly have been killed or injured. This amounts to an act of war. 

Indeed, it is the first time in modern history that a foreign government has been caught planning a major terrorist attack on American soil.

President Barack Obama, Homeland Security, and other top agencies and officials have the evidence and full briefings into this matter if they choose to access them. What effect would this have on U.S. foreign policy?

What effect should it have?

Already, they have had high-quality intelligence. We know this from the congressional testimony of Defense and State Department officials:

– Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

– Iran is harboring al-Qaeda leaders on its soil and letting them plan attacks on America from that safe haven.

– Iran is training and supplying the Taliban with weapons and training to attack and kill Americans.

– Iran is deeply involved in attacking and killing U.S. personnel and citizens in Iraq.

And that’s not all. Is this sufficient evidence to persuade Obama that Iran regards itself as being at war with the United States? That the top priority of U.S. Middle East policy — and very possibly the number-one priority of U.S. foreign policy generally — should be to counter Iran and revolutionary Islamism? And I don’t mean by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezballah as moderates!

Yes, it should have been the top priority years ago, but Obama has continued to hold out his hand in friendship to the monstrous regime.

Will there be a change now, Rubin asks.

Is this case going to be the smoking gun — or, perhaps, the smoking bomb — that gets U.S. policy on the right course? It should be, though I suspect it isn’t. …

Does Obama even understand the significance of it?

He has known about the plot since June, so the question is, “Why break it now?”

Jihad Watch asks that question and suggests an answer with another question:

 To divert attention from his spiraling scandals and plummeting fortunes?

But there is another – or additional – possible reason for the timing.

The announcement of the plot was made by Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been issued with a subpoena to appear before the the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in connection with the  “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal. Was it timed to make him seem extremely competent at his job and even perhaps indispensable?

If so, it’s a miscalculation. To have the Attorney-General make the announcement is to indicate that the administration sees the plot as a problem for law-enforcement, when in fact it is a grave act of aggression by a foreign power against the United States, and as such should be understood as a cause of war.

It has long been apparent that Obama hates to make decisions. And he hates to attack an Islamic country unless other Islamic countries give him the nod. This time, of course, Saudi Arabia will be pleased to have Americans risk their lives in an assault on Iran to punish the regime and prevent it developing into a nuclear-armed power. Obama would rather the Israelis bombed Iranian nuclear installations (especially – we suspect – as their doing so would then allow him to condemn Israel for an act of  aggression).

So will he or won’t he strike back at Iran? Our guess is that he won’t. He’ll go to the UN and ask “the international community” – a wraith lodged permanently in the mind of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – to consider setting a date for a meeting of the Security Council to discuss what warnings of what actions might be sent to the Iranian government without provoking it too severely.

Down with evil corporations

(Hat tip Andrew M)

We know not to expect a confessed atheist to stand as a conservative candidate for the presidency. We simply omit the religious beliefs of candidates from the factors we consider in our assessment of them, unless they themselves make religion an important part of their policies.

In the present line-up there are a pair each of Catholics, Santorum and Gingrich;  Baptists, Cain and Paul; Evangelical Christians, Bachmann and Perry;  and Mormons, Romney and Huntsman. And Gary Johnson is a Lutheran.

To us it makes no difference what name their brand of superstition bears. We politely overlook the lot. If they’re not embarrassed to display a belief in the supernatural, we’ll treat it as we would a disfigurement it would be rude to stare at.

But when believers themselves make a big point of trumpeting their own nonsense and denigrating everyone else’s – that’s entertainment.

Send in the clown. His name is Dr Robert Jeffress, and here first, at his webesite, is what he has to say about … Dr Robert Jeffress:

Dr. Robert Jeffress is the senior pastor of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Dr. Robert Jeffress’ bold, biblical, and practical approach to ministry …

as opposed to other pastors’ timid, anti-biblical, and impractical approach to theirs? …

has made him one of the country’s most respected evangelical leaders.

Respected, that is, by the 10,000 members of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

He goes on to inform us that –

Vision America [an organization that works to get the religious into active politics] honored Dr. Jeffress in 2006 with the Daniel Award for his steadfast commitment and boldness in proclaiming the uncompromising Word of God.

Uncompromising? The Word of God is “uncompromising”? With what? “Uncompromising” suggests firm consistency, so by “the Word of God” he  cannot mean the Christian bible. Great anthology of fiction though it is, it’s a thicket of contradictions.

So what can he mean?

We suspect he means he is uncompromising in his scorn for all religious beliefs except his own particular set, on the certainty of which he will not be swayed a fraction of an inch.

And – yes!  We find next, reported here, that –

 On his show Pathway To Victory, Jeffress said that Satan is behind the Roman Catholic Church. …

Jeffress calls the Catholic church a result of “the Babylonian mystery religion” found in the Book of Revelation, and says the Catholic Church represents “the genius of Satan.” …

This is the Babylonian mystery religion that spread like a cult throughout the entire world. The high priests of that fake religion, that false religion, the high priests of that religion would wear crowns that resemble the heads of fish, that was in order to worship the fish god Dagon, and on those crowns were written the words, ‘Keeper of the Bridge,’ the bridge between Satan and man. That phrase ‘Keeper of the Bridge,’ the Roman equivalent of it is Pontifex Maximus. It was a title that was first carried by the Caesars and then the Emperors and finally by the Bishop of the Rome, Pontifex Maximus, the Keeper of the Bridge.

You can see where we’re going with this. It is that Babylonian mystery religion that infected the early church, one of the churches it infected was the church of Pergamos, which is one of the recipients of the Book of Revelation. And the early church was corrupted by this Babylonian mystery religion, and today the Roman Catholic Church is the result of that corruption.

Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, ‘pastor how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation.’

Isn’t that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don’t do it with purple paper and red ink, you’re not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.

And that’s what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.

So he won’t be voting for Santorum or Gingrich.

Next, on Mormonism:

“It is not Christianity, it is not a branch of Christianity,” Jeffress said, “It is a cult.”

So he will not be voting for Romney or Huntsman? Right:

Jeffress went on to explain that many evangelical Christians will not vote for Romney because he is a Mormon and therefore not “indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God.” He even claimed that Romney’s Mormon faith “speaks to the integrity issue” as it explains why he has reversed his position on abortion rights, among other issues. … “He is not a “true, born again follower of Christ.”

Jeffress does, however, enthusiastically support Perry:

Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit with a fiery endorsement.  

Chris Moody, writing at Yahoo! News, comments:

Labeling Mormonism as a cult does not put Jeffress outside of the Southern Baptist mainstream. The denomination officially recognizes Romney’s church as a cult, and has done so for years. …

“The Southern Baptist Convention has officially labeled Mormonism as a cult, so this is not some right-wing extremist view. It’s a view of the largest Protestant denomination in the world,” [Jeffress] said. “I think there are a lot of people who will not publicly say that’s an issue because they don’t want to appear to be bigoted, but for a lot of evangelical Christians, that is a huge issue, even if it’s unspoken.”

So what is the difference between a cult and a religion? We googled that question and found no direct answer but this description of a cult:

1. Thinking in terms of us versus them with total alienation from “them.”

2. The intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to recruit and hold members.

3. The charismatic cult leader. Cultism usually involves some sort of belief that outside the cult all is evil and threatening; inside the cult is the special path to salvation through the cult leader and his teachings.

Which seems to fit Dr Robert Jeffress’s views, technique, boastfulness, and doctrine.

Here is the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of a cult: 

1. formal religious veneration: worship

2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also: its body of adherents.

And what is a religion?

1. the service or worship of God or [sic] the supernatural

2. commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

And “cult” is given as a synonym of “religion”.

So the answer is: no difference. Mormonism is a cult, Christianity is a cult, Judaism is a cult, Islam is a cult, Hinduism is a cult, Buddhism is a cult …

But please don’t let that stop Dr Robert Jeffress. His fresh-faced vanity, his belief in Satan and eternal life, his chat about the Blood of Christ and Salvation, his contempt for the fish god Dagon …

All divinely ludicrous.

The Environmental Protection Agency is a curse on the American nation, and must be abolished.

Its innumerable regulations “to protect the environment”  make energy more expensive, and consumers poorer.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

Those [in the US] who fancy themselves to be green progressives are about to get some unwelcome “progress.” Thanks in part to environmental rules, electricity bills are headed for double-digit increases. …

A review of regulatory filings by the news source found that “utilities are seeking permission to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars in new charges to customers to help upgrade aging infrastructure and build new or retrofitted power plants that comply with tougher environmental regulations.” …

Yes, the environmentalists’ bill is now coming due. Some cost hikes are unavoidable. The electrical grid, like other infrastructure, needs to be updated and improved. But the costs due to “tougher environmental regulations” are avoidable. …

Trying to scrub and eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, for instance, is counterproductive. CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s a naturally occurring gas necessary for life on Earth.

But the environmentalists are extreme in their loathing of man-made carbon emissions, and their agenda is supported by many policymakers.

Remember when a 2008 presidential candidate said if he’s elected his cap-and-trade policy would bankrupt anyone who tried to build a coal-fired power plant on his watch?

Well, President Obama has yet to get a cap-and-trade scheme through Congress, yet he is seeing a version of the future he wanted unfold. American Electric Power, which provides electricity to customers in 11 states, plans to retire five of those hated-by-the-left coal plants, which generate enough power to light 3 million homes; retrofit a number of other coal plants at a cost of $8 billion; and add at least two natural gas plants by the end of this decade. …

AEP is not the only power company that is having to pass on the costs of decarbonization and other environmental regulations to its rate payers. The entire industry has to play the game whose rules are fixed in Washington and state capitals. 

Because of this game, “consumers,” the Chicago Tribune reported, “could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40% to 60% in the next few years” due to “pending environmental regulations” that will make coal-fired generating plants, which produce about half the nation’s electricity, more expensive to operate. “Many,” continued the Tribune, “are expected to be shuttered.”

This is only the beginning of higher prices.

National Economic Research Associates estimates that the cross-state air pollution and proposed maximum achievable control technology rules could cost the electric power industry $21 billion annually (which will be paid by customers), kill an average of 183,000 jobs a year, and reduce the typical family’s disposable income by $270 a year.

The people behind the policies that drive power bills higher will argue that their motives are pure. They’d say they’re simply trying to make the planet a healthier place.

They’re unlikely to say that their real motive is to gain ever more political power, but gain it they do – and bear the burden with beatific equanimity.

More expensive energy cannot make people healthier, only poorer and colder.

As the  IBD editorial rightly concludes:

They  ignore how much cheap energy has promoted health and accelerated the prosperity that has contributed to our wellness. As such, there’s nothing progressive about the environmentalists’ agenda.