Two books we recommend are CRY WOLF by Paul Drake and STEALTH JIHAD by Robert Spencer. 

They are both about the extreme danger to our civilization of infiltration by uncivilized aliens.  

‘Cry Wolf’ is modeled on George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ but tells a new story for a new political era. The farm animals keep the farm going after the human owners have died. Fences, vigilance, and guard dogs keep the wild animals out.  But first an act of compassion – temporary shelter for a wounded deer – and then a professorial owl’s lectures on the merits of ‘Multi-Animalism’ and the sin of xenophobia induce them to let in more and more feral beasts, to their ultimate doom.

‘Stealth Jihad’ is about the step-by-step advance of Islam within the United States, towards the political end of transforming the country into an Islamic tyranny.  

The allegory and the factual account reinforce each other.  

Looking after our health and getting medical treatment when we need it is our own responsibility, like getting food, clothes and shelter, and should not be the business of the government. Now medical research finds that treatment for many diseases needs to be  tailor-made for individuals, and ethnicity and gender can make a difference.

Peter W Huber writes (read his whole article here):

No privacy-protecting, discrimination-banning law, no promise that someone else will pay, will ensure that a drug that suits others will suit your genetic profile too… 

This is where diversity blather gives way to the rigorous diversity science that’s taking over the medical show. Drugs supply almost all the real health care these days, because human hands are too big to grapple with the microscopic things that cause most of our problems. Eugenic drugs reflect how biochemically separate and unequal people are. Some, indeed, target genes that track sex, race, or ethnicity; their FDA licenses affirm truths unmentionable in polite society and approve conduct illegal in every other sphere of commerce and public life. All are terrible news for anyone determined to pull people together, pool medicine’s costs, equalize its benefits, and lose diversity in the crowd. The doctors of equity promise universal access to the Mayo Clinic, where the real doctors now brew discriminatory cures and card your genes at the door…

The patient’s chemistry matters as much as the drug’s. Americans are biochemically diverse. Only so much can be learned at the Mayo Clinic; the rest has to be learned from patients whose chemistries weren’t invited to the trial. Trying to invite them all leads to quagmire and stifles learning before it begins. Getting from where we are now to universal care at the pharmacy will involve far more information than Washington can ever hope to assimilate.

 For those who think that Paulson’s ‘bailout’ is good for the country, or that smooth-talking Obama is the right choice for President with his campaign promises to enlarge the welfare state with a national health service and by ‘spreading the wealth around’, here is a cautionary quotation, used as an epigraph  to their book Free To Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman.

It was spoken from the bench by Judge Louis Brandeis in 1928.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. 

Russia is clambering up the global victory stand, knocking other countries out of the way in an effort to reach her place at the top. It is a climb that the country responsible for the death of millions and the misery of billions will refuse to lose. In the last 18 years, the designs for a ‘liberal democracy’ has not been a success per se for Russia; it has been a weary aspiration, full of ideals that Russia’s powerful persons frequently misplace in order to better themselves and their future.

The truth is that Russia has not as yet changed from the cruel autocracy it has always been; it does not look set to do so either. The only apparent difference is the rise of a new elite: the oligarchs.

The question that many ask of this nouveau riche is where did their power and wealth come from? How did they become the phoenix that rose out of the ashes of the broken Soviet state in the 1990s? The most honest explanation is the result of the small reforms pushed through in the 1980s by Gorbachev. These reforms succeeded an embarrassing attempt by the Politburo to reinvigorate Lenin-Marxist economics by clamping down on ‘unearned incomes’. What this quite meant was beyond the understanding of the Soviet security services. One result of this order was the prevention of privately sold vegetables. The militia searched vehicles coming into major cities – searching for, as the newspaper Nezavisimaia Gazeta put it, “Criminal Tomatoes.” Gorbachev was extremely embarrassed by this, and realising the need for reform, changed the law in order to allow small privately owned businesses to exist – these were called the cooperatives.

So finally, as the tyrannical fire of the Communist state was starting to dwindle, the freedom of capitalism was permitted in small doses. This is where the oligarchs enter the stage – one example of whom is the prominent billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Although his first few businesses, such as a café at the Mendeleev Chemical Institute, were a failure, his fortunes soon changed completely, as did hundreds of other Russians, when they exploited a small loophole in Soviet law. Khodorkovsky took a bunch of temporary workers, called them his labour collective, and claimed subsidies from the Gosplan (the state institution for economic planning). He then took these subsidies, told the banks he had to pay his workers in real money, and was allowed to redeem the subsidies for actual cash, which he immediately turned into dollars, freeing this wealth from the dragging burden of the failing rubles. Hundreds of entrepreneurs exploited this loophole, and the Soviet state, in an effort to save their economy unwittingly gave more and more subsidies to the cooperatives – the result of which simply multiplied the fortunes of these Russians. By the collapse of the Soviet Union, hundreds were fast becoming, or had already become vulgarians with a rosy future – persons who succeeded as the state failed. This success had its integrity challenged however – it was marked with shady loans and sales of banks for fractions of their worth.

Not all oligarchs came to prominence with this relative honesty. Many of the wealthy are petro-oligarchs, men who have made their fortune by buying up the State’s largely untapped reserves of oil. In the 1990s, Yeltsin gave oil, metal and banks to the sycophants of his administration. The other prospering Russians seemed to have simply had the fortune to be in the right place at the right time. Poorer Russians will give each other knowing looks and say, “KGB, or Politburo…” These are often unproved rumours, but who was better placed to cash in on the rise of the most prosperous industries in the world than those who had controlled it not a few years previously?

One example is Vagit Alekperov. He was the Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy under the USSR, and miraculously managed to acquire a lot of oil assets in the 1990s. He now enjoys a personal wealth of $1.3 billion.  And what of Vladimir Gusinsky? He built a huge media empire, starting this effort in the 1980s, while enjoying a close relationship with Filipp Bobkov, a KGB general who personally supervised Soviet repression of political dissidents, Christians and Jews.

When Putin arrived on the scene in 2000, he told the nouveau riche that he would not carve up the Russian economy but he warned them to keep out of politics. Wealth may not always buy power, but it certainly gives certain ambitions – and some oligarchs could not resist trying their hand. Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky were the first casualties of the oligarchs’ foray into politics, resulting in their exile just a short time later. The brutal retaliation of the Russian state has targeted journalists, political dissidents and the wealthy – men and women who have been threatened, attacked and murdered at home and abroad.

Putin plays a clever game however, and regularly meets with business leaders, in order to inform them that they will be tolerated but that they must not think or act against the state. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported a meeting in 2007: “The topics under discussion were chosen to show business its place (as was last year’s meeting, devoted to ‘the social responsibility of business before society’).”

The oligarchs are shining trophies of success for Russia, and the state is eager to show them off. Yet that same state is desperate for Russia to not become an overt plutocracy. The occasional fervent repression of rich individuals and removal of their political voice could be the wish of the state for itself to be seen as proletarian. Putin is careful to never display his wealth, but some suspect it to be vast. Anders Åslund wrote in his book, ‘Russia’s Capitalist Revolution’: “Everybody around Putin is completely corrupt, but many think that the president himself is honest. In February 2004, presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin named three men as Putin’s bagmen, including Gennady Timchenko, the co-founder of the Gunvor oil-trading company. After Rybkin made this statement, he vanished from the political stage. In September, the Polish magazine Wprost wrote that Timchenko, a former KGB officer and member of Putin’s dacha cooperative in St. Petersburg, has a net worth of $20 billion. Officially, Timchenko sells the oil of four Russian oil companies, but how are the prices determined to generate such profits? In an interview in Germany’s Die Welt on Nov. 12, Stanislav Belkovsky, the well-connected insider who initiated the Kremlin campaign against Yukos in 2003, made specific claims about Putin’s wealth. He alleged that Putin owned 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz (worth $18 billion), 4.5 percent of Gazprom ($13 billion) and half of Timchenko’s company, Gunvor (possibly $10 billion). If this information is true, Putin’s total personal fortune would amount to no less than $41 billion, placing him among the 10 richest in the world.”

In response to these allegations, at a press conference in February of this year, Putin replied: “This is true. I am the richest person not only in Europe, but also in the world. I collect emotions. And I am rich in that respect that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with leadership of such a great country as Russia. I consider this to be my biggest fortune. As for the rumors concerning my financial wealth, I have seen some pieces of paper regarding this. This is plain chatter, not worthy discussion, plain bosh. They have picked this in their noses and have smeared this across their pieces of paper. This is how I view this.” This is a very Russian answer.

This state of affairs is reminiscent of feudal Europe. When William I conquered Britain, he rewarded flatterers of his court. Men such as the Earl of Northumbria, who had not fought him, were given large amounts of land. And although the Russian emancipation of the serfs was back in 1861, the Russian people are still very much subservient to the state and the oligarchs, that is, the Tsar and the landowners.

The financial turmoil that has engulfed the World economy has revealed the remnants of the Soviet state that still subsists in Russia. The oligarchs lost a huge amount in the recent stock market crashes, in which shares have fallen by 75% since August. Vladimir Lisin, the steel magnate owner, has lost $11.2 billion since July; Vagit Alekperov, the President and one of the biggest shareholders in Lukoil, has lost $5.13 billion; and Uralkali Dmitry Rybolovlev has stacked up losses of $7.3 billion. Meanwhile, ordinary Russians know very little of their country’s and their oligarchs’ failures. A recent poll found that 57% of Russians believed their country to be flourishing, up from 53% a few months previously. And the state-controlled media have been banned from using words such as, “crisis” and “decline”. Just as Soviet propaganda films purported, Russians are still told how terrible life in the West is. Supposedly desperate Britons are throwing themselves in the Thames; we can no longer afford to bury the dead; and the Queen is pawning her jewellery. Russia tells its people that the Motherland will be the rescuer of Europe. The state affirmed this by giving a large loan to bankrupted Iceland recently, while Western countries refused to help. The media asks Russians to thank the genius and leadership of Vladimir Putin for their country’s stability and strong position during the financial turbulence.

The truth is that oligarchs are simply pawns of the state, at the mercy of the current tolerance of the Kremlin. Putin is preparing to reinstate himself as President – so completing the transition to an authoritarian method of rule – but as the economy worsens, his forbearance from destroying the providence of Russia’s financial elite is looking to lessen fast.

As in Soviet times, it is true in Russia that if one pulls oneself up, out of the misery of the bottom of the pile, then one will risk the painful drop from the top right back to the bottom; albeit from the nocuous control of the state, the lethal prison, forced labour, Siberian exile, or the gun. Ten years ago, life had never looked better for the oligarchs – through both serendipity and dishonesty they looked set to live a comfortable life. Now they find themselves in a collapsed attempt at democracy, in an atmosphere that is breeding wanton ideals of despotism. A recent Russian reality television show has Stalin set to win ‘The Greatest Russian Ever’ award. Stalin – a man responsible for the death of tens of millions of people.

The sensible oligarchs, such as Roman Abramovich, have moved to Europe, partly because of the large number of crimes accused by the Russian state and business partners against them. Abramovich in particular, emerged triumphant from the so-called ‘Aluminum Wars’; he left behind him over 100 gang fighters dead, a fellow oligarch exiled to Siberia and “numerous officials and executives” found murdered.

Russia never became a state with a free economy. Most of the oligarchs made their fortunes in a dying state through cruel and backhanded measures. And just as they rose so spectacularly, they will fall so too – especially as oil prices continue to plummet. They are bizarre figures – successors to the KGB heads and party officials – all of whom enjoy a limited autonomy in their respective areas of control; but they are still, and will always be ultimately at the mercy of the callous Russian state.

 ‘Conscience,’ Hamlet says, ‘does make cowards of us all.’

Or does cowardice claim the name of conscience – steal its identity – in order to excuse itself? 

Conscience should drive us, as individuals, to do what we believe to be morally right. But it may be a self-flattering word we use to explain why we do certain things that we actually do out of craven cowardice itself, or the sort of moral vanity that makes us want to appear virtuous rather than to act virtuously.

Governments, nations, and crowds also cover their actions with the same deceptive claim, attributing to conscience what they really do out of weakness, fear, stupidity,  hypocrisy and ideological romanticism.  

False conscience calls itself by many other names, among them these: political correctness; respect for multiculturalism or ‘diversity’; a striving for ‘social justice’ or economic equality or ‘fairness’;  remorse for (largely imaginary) historical sins. Under such names all kinds of idiotic, unjust, destructive and evil things are done.    

Exempli gratia from the real world: 

In the US millions of voters elect an unqualified candidate to political office because he is black.

Navies refrain from capturing pirates, or (even better) summarily killing them, because ‘they have human rights’.

Liberal democratic welfare states keep and protect alien Islamic preachers of terrorism and sedition, lavishly house, feed, educate and medically treat them (and their pluralities of wives and families) at the expense of their intended victims, the indigenous population, because if they’re returned to their own countries they may be tortured or executed – or even because some witness at their possible trials might be tortured.

Western governments abrogate freedom because citizens use it to criticize Muslims and their beliefs. 

European police refrain from enforcing the law against Muslim offenders.  

In Britain the rule of a single Law of the Land, the very thing that makes it possible for people of different provenance to live together in harmony, is arbitrarily abandoned by the acceptance of Sharia as a second system of law, although it is incompatible with and contradictory to the enchorial system. 

Western nations reduce their defensive power to the point of ineffectiveness while vicious tyrannical regimes, inimical to the West and motivated by a declared intention of aggression, acquire arsenals of nuclear weapons. 

Governments interfere in markets and impoverish the people.  

Jillian Becker  November 21, 2008

Dear readers,

We have created a Facebook group for atheist conservatives. We invite you to join.

Access the group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=46205284160 .

We look forward to seeing our readers there!

 These were composed by a twelve-year-old satirist : 

1. Thou shalt not commit global warming

2. Thou shalt only eat organic food

3. Always claim that anything thou dost is for the poor

4. Remember that only whites are racist

5. Depend on the government to make thy decisions

6. Remember that anyone richer than thou is just being greedy

7. Feel good about thyself and thou needest not think well of anyone else

8. Recycle

9. Thou shalt not use more toilet paper than is strictly necessary

10. Ride the bus

11. Thou  shalt not smoke

12. Thou shalt not fatten

13.  Judge not that ye be not criticized

14. Remember that a cold house is a good house, but use not air-conditioning

15. See no war, hear no war, speak no war

16. Remember that marriage is a union between two or more living things

 Here’s a delicious article by Burt Prelutsky (from Townhall):

By this time, I don’t think it will shock anyone if I come right out and admit that I’m not a bleeding heart. When I read about a lava flow or an earthquake taking 500 theoretically innocent lives on the other side of the world, my first reaction is to ask myself if I knew anyone who might be visiting Sumatra or Mongolia. If the answer is no, my second reaction is to get on with my life.

There are, I’m well aware, many nicer, kinder people around – the sort of folks who immediately organize collection drives, so that blankets, canned goods and medical supplies, can be rushed to the survivors. Quite honestly, that would never even occur to me. In fact, when the giant tsunami hit Indonesia a while back, my initial thought was that, as with Sodom and Gomorrah, God was sending a long overdue message to a part of the world where the child sex trade is a major industry.

I do have a hunch, though, that a lot of the same people who are always ready to provide pajamas and peanut butter to people they don’t know are the same ones who hold candlelight vigils outside prisons when serial killers are being executed. Whenever I see them huddled outside in the cold, looking as if they’re posing for stained glass windows, I always find myself wondering how they treat their spouses and their kids when they pack up their candles and go back home.

All that being said, it should come as no big surprise when I confess that I am not in line to receive awards from the ecological zealots. That’s not to suggest that I wouldn’t offer bounties for the hides of spray-painting vandals (aka taggers, graffiti artists, public nuisances). But I certainly wouldn’t ban cigarette smoking in the great outdoors or even in bars and restaurants if the owners wish to encourage that sort of thing. If you don’t like cigarette smoke getting in your eyes, lungs or clothing, you eat, drink and get a job someplace else. If rolling out the red carpet to smokers is a really lousy idea, the place will go out of business. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in a free society.

Something else I find irksome is the constant moaning over endangered species. I recently read an article that claimed the earth has gone through four major periods of mass extinctions. About 440 million years ago, give or take a month or so, 85% of marine animal species were wiped out. Roughly 70 million years later, many species of fish and marine invertebrates perished. Then, 245 million years ago, another major extinction of sea and land creatures took place. Finally, a mere 65 million years ago, 75% of all species – including dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers – took French leave. The causes of these massive upheavals have been attributed to volcanic eruptions, huge meteorites and climatic changes which obviously had nothing to do with human beings or the internal combustion engine.

When I read about all those species vanishing from the face of the earth, my immediate reaction is “So what?” But after due deliberation, my response changes from one of mild disinterest to one of jubilation. Imagine if every single time you went outside to collect your newspaper, you had to fight a tyrannosaur for it or had to worry that a pterodactyl was going to swoop down because its idea of fast food is you.

Apparently, there are presently 10 million different species of animal life on earth. Even though, according to this article I read, only a small percent of all animal life has been evaluated, the ecologists estimate that 750 species of fish, 290 species of reptiles and 150 species of amphibians, are currently at risk.

Inasmuch as dogs, cats, horses, llamas, bunnies, cows and guinea pigs, aren’t on the list, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a darn. I mean, how many different kinds of reptiles does anyone need to be really, truly happy?

Thanks to Al Gore and his motley crew, I’m willing to wager that a lot of you suddenly flashed on a mental image of a polar bear going down for the third time. My question is, who cares if polar bears disappeared once and for all? The truth of the matter is that nobody would really miss the vicious brutes. And, what’s more, baby seals would throw a party. 

To those of our readers who seek comfort  at this ‘I can’t-believe-it’s-really-happening’ moment, I recommend the comic-tragic novel BEND SINISTER, by the great Vladimir Nabokov. It’s about a country – for which V N even invents a language – being taken over by a new leader whose equalizing ideology is called EKWILISM. 

Here are some quotations to whet your appetite:

A citizen (a grocer) enthuses: ‘Our Ruler is a great man, a genius, a one-in-a-century-man. The kind of boss people like you and me have been always wanting… "I," he said, "am born to lead as naturally as a bird flies." I think it is the greatest thought ever expressed in human language, and the most poetical one… He is certainly the brainiest man I have ever met… Now it is the State that will help me along with my business. It will be there to control my earnings… I shall make much more than I ever did because from now on we all belong to one happy community. It is all in the family now – one huge family, all linked up, all snug and no questions asked…’

The origins of Ekwilism lie partly in the schooldays of the Ruler, Paduk [Toad]. A new headmaster comes to his school ‘with ideas resolved to develop what he termed "the politico-social consciousness" of the older boys. He had quite a program – meetings, discussions, the formation of party groups – oh, lots of things. The healthier boys avoided these gatherings for the simple reason that, being held after class or during recess, they encroached upon one’s freedom.’ One boy in particular, the protagonist of the novel named Krug, ‘made violent fun of the fools or trucklers who fell for this civic nonsense. The headmaster … warned Krug (who was at the top of his class) that his individualistic behavior constituted a dreadful example [and warns him that he will be given poor marks if he does not conform]  … The position was interesting: here was this headmaster, a liberal with robust leanings towards the left, an eloquent advocate of Uprightness and Impartiality, ingeniously blackmailing the brightest boy in this school … because the boy would not join any group whatsoever… All he asked for was that they follow their social and economic instincts, while the only thing he condemned was the complete absence of such instincts in an individual… Under these circumstances he felt justified in pointing out to the teachers that if Adam Krug passed the final examinations with honors, his success would be dialectically unfair in regard to those of Krug’s schoolmates who had less brains but were better citizens…’ [Paduk , who later becomes the Ruler, responds enthusiastically to the headmaster’s ideas and program.] 

The theory of Ekwilism is propounded by a  philosopher named Fradrick (sic) Skotoma. In brief, it’s this:  ‘At every given level of world-time there was, he said, a certain computable amount of human consciousness distributed throughout the population of the world. This distribution was uneven and herein lay the root of all our woes. Human beings, he said, were so many vessels containing unequal  portions of this essentially uniform consciousness. It was, however, quite possible, he maintained, to regulate the capacity of the human vessels… He introduced the idea of balance as a basis for universal bliss and called his theory "Ekwilism". This he claimed was quite new. True, socialism had advocated uniformity on an economic plane, and religion had grimly promised the same in spiritual terms as an inevitable status beyond the grave. But the economist had not seen that no leveling of wealth could be successfully accomplished, nor indeed was of any real moment, so long as there existed some individuals with more brains than others…It is important to note that while suggesting a remoulding of human individuals in conformity with well-balanced patterns, the author prudently omitted to define both the practical method to be pursued and the kind of person or persons responsible for planning and directing the process… He died soon after his treatise appeared and so was spared the discomfort of seeing his vague and benevolent Ekwilism transformed into a violent  and virulent political  doctrine, a doctrine that proposed to enforce spiritual uniformity upon his native land through the medium of the most standardized section of the inhabitants, namely the Army, under the supervision of a bloated and dangerously divine State.’  

If, as you read, any resemblance strikes you to any existing new Ruler and his doctrine, point it out to everyone you can. Laughter, even bitter laughter, comforts and consoles.  

 Obama speaks of a WIND OF CHANGE blowing through America.  In February 1960 the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan  made a speech in which he said that the WIND OF CHANGE was blowing through Africa. 

We are not accusing Obama – or his speech-writers –  of plagiarism. He can leave that to his veep, who notoriously plagiarized a speech by the British Labor Party leader, Neil Kinnock. 

What we want to point out is this: the Wind of Change that blew through Africa was an ill wind that brought no African country much good. Barely a single one is more prosperous than in Macmillan’s day, even among the few that became more democratic.  In sheer numbers, far more Africans are exposed now to civil war, invasion, oppressive government and profound impoverishment than in the 1960s.  Some populations have experienced, or are even at present experiencing, genocide; some, massacre on a vast scale; some, in considerable numbers, actual starvation.  

 One can only hope that Obama’s Wind of Change is not the same wind.