Monday, January 16, 2012

Ten Years Later

Via Vox Popoli & California Tree of Liberty


Let me be blunt. If you do not actively support Ron Paul’s campaign to be the next president of the United States of America – if you do not pray on a daily basis for his success – then you are a fool. You are a complete, unadulterated and unmitigated fool. It doesn’t matter if you are a liberal Democrat who bought into Barack Obama’s fraudulent hope and change propaganda or a conservative Republican who is still reeling with the shock from eight years of ceaseless ideological treachery by George W. Bush. If you have even a modicum of concern for the survival of America, either as a nation or as a constitutional ideal, there is demonstrably only one candidate who has any understanding of the size and scope of the challenges presently facing the American people.


NB: I didn't bother mentioning Huntsman in the column because I didn't consider him a genuine candidate. As it happens, he ended what passed for his campaign on Sunday night. Fittingly, Romney didn't bother showing up to accept Huntsman's endorsement.

Dr. Ron Paul: 6 Reasons He Is Electable & Will Win + Tom Davis endorses Paul

Contrary to the false propaganda proclaiming that Dr. Ron Paul is "not electable", his numbers are rising, his support growing and he stands an excellent chance of winning both the GOP nomination and the 2012 presidential race.

Dr. Paul's opponents are desperate to stop Americans from listening to, and subsequently electing Ron Paul. Opponents of liberty falsely present Ron Paul as "unelectable" to the American people, attempting to plant subconscious seeds doubt of "don't listen to him, don't vote for him in the primaries or caucuses because he'll never win". This strategy is failing as more Americans hear Dr. Paul speak, leading them to contribute to his campaign and vote for him. The American public understands Dr. Paul's common sense approach and trusts him. The other candidates are clearly in the race to serve their egos and personal agendas. The "Dr. Paul is not electable" rumors are deliberately created and spread solely as a calculated attempt to confuse honest, hard-working American with falsehoods such as "Ron Paul is crazy, anti-women, anti-Israel and anti-blacks. He's isolationist, he'll wreck the country, he's anti-government". These are simple "control the masses" fear tactics to try and stop Americans from actually listening to Dr. Paul, hearing his logical and intelligent plan and deciding for themselves.

Dr. Paul went from third in Iowa, to second in New Hampshire and may win South Carolina. The new video about Romney's career, King of Bain, depicts Romney as a deceptive and greedy man with Wall Street connections who made his money destroying viable companies. The film portrays as Romney unnecessarily eliminating jobs of hard-working people while getting rich himself.

Romney is the unelectable candidate, not Dr. Paul.

6. Dr. Paul not an "isolationist".

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Tom Davis To Endorse Ron Paul

S.C. Sen. Tom Davis – the leading fiscal conservative in South Carolina state government and one of the most coveted endorsements of the 2012 “First in the South” presidential primary – will announce his support for U.S. Rep. Ron Paul on Sunday.

NC's Legal Holiday Observes Lee’s Birthday January 19th

Remembering Robert E. Lee: A Week-Long Observance

North Carolina’s Legal Holiday Observes Lee’s Birthday January 19th

Lee the Man of Honor:

“The public images of Lee are many. There is the young, handsome officer of the Engineer Corps, the dutiful husband and affectionate father, the fighting soldier of the Mexican War, and the world-renowned commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. And there is the peace-loving, quiet, fatherly college president. They are all Lee, all facets of the same basically simple, straightforward person.

Many of Lee’s best qualities came from his mother, for he hardly knew his father. Dr. Wiley says:

“He grew up to be more of a Carter than a Lee. The outstanding traits of the Carter family were geniality, devotion to family – they intermarried to a confusing extent – loyalty to community, and devotion to church. The Carter’s were traditionally religious, but none was fanatic. They mixed revealed religion and noblesse oblige in a delightful manner, with little thought of creed or system. Lee’s mother was a true Carter. She taught him to revere the Carter code, and to avoid the pitfalls into which his father had fallen; namely, recklessness, extravagance, debt and irresponsibility in business matters. She held up constantly to Robert the axioms sacred to the Carter family: economy, moderation, self-control, courtesy, gentility, honor and devotion to duty.”

It is these old-fashioned virtues which make Lee a symbol of all that is best in the Anglo-American tradition. He should be remembered not merely as Lee the soldier or even as Lee the educator, but also as Lee the man – the man of honor, the great gentleman, good and decent human being who others – even his enemies – knew could be trusted without reservation.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix’s in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world “This was a man.”

I have this quote on a large portrait of him which looks like it was painted from the photograph of him standing on the back porch on his return to Richmond from Appomattox.

(Robert E. Lee, The Man and the Soldier, Philip Van Doren Stern, Bonanza Books, 1963, page 254)


NC's Legal Holiday Observes Lee’s Birthday January 19th

1965 Mercury B/FX Comet Cyclone 289 CI, 4-Speed

  • I had the 289/271 in my '65 fastback.

  • S93 1965 Mercury B/FX Comet Cyclone 289 CI, 4-Speed Photo 1
  • After the 427 High Riser Comets mowed down the A/FX competition in 1964, Lincoln-Mercury returned with even more resolve in 1965, broadening its assault with small-block powered Comets targeting the B/FX class. Bill Stroppe Engineering was contracted to build 15 lightweight Comet Cyclones with blueprinted 289 high performance engines and the proven L-M formula for saving weight: fiberglass hood, doors, fenders and bumpers, lightweight plexiglass windows, rudimentary bucket seats and radio, heater and soundproofing deletes. The heart of these cars was the Cobra-proven 289/271 HP small block which, when fitted with optional Weber downdraft carburetion, generated almost 400 horses at 7000 RPM, enough to trailer most competitors and thrill the fans who flocked to watch the FX cars.

    Formerly of the prestigious Pat McGroder Factory Muscle Car Collection, this rare 1964 Mercury Comet B/FX factory drag racer is one of the 15 originally built by Stroppe, and one of only 9 now known extant. It is presented in its original configuration, including Borg Warner T10 4-speed, tube headers, traction bars and full racing rubber, in this case mounted on period-correct Cragar SS wheels, an exceptionally rare and valuable artifact from drag racing’s golden Factory Experimental era.

Intelligent Design versus Evolutionary Ideology

Mike Scruggs

The irreducible complexities of micro-cellular biology, along with common sense logic and an elementary understanding of probability, are smashing Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Looking at cells under a microscope in 1859, Charles Darwin concluded that these tiny jelly-like blobs must be the lowest building blocks of life. All life, including mankind, he thought, must have evolved from a single cell. The method of this evolution was random mutation of cells plus natural selection—the survival of the fittest. The gradual evolution of the cell progressing over many millions of years eventually became fish, reptiles, birds, insects, animals, apes, and men. No Almighty Creator, he thought, was necessary to life, only random mutations and the unguided, pitiless, and indifferent fortuities of nature. Darwinists believe that similarities in the anatomy of marine and animal life, and especially apes and men, must be due to common descent from distant ancestors. Two frequently cited examples of evolutionary evidence are from studies that showed that the color of moths and the beak size of birds could change over a few generations of natural selection under different environmental conditions.


Darwin’s theory pleased many men. It freed them from guilt and fear of a God they preferred to ignore and reject. Many others, however, found Darwin’s theory implausible. They just couldn’t accept Darwin’s fantastic creation narrative of fish flopping on a sandy beach until the fittest developed suitable lungs and became reptiles or of lizards falling out of trees until the fittest developed wings and became birds. They just couldn’t see how unguided mutations resulted in lungs or wings instead of dead fish and lizards. It did not mesh with common sense and a basic understanding of probability. Still others recognized that the theological implications of Darwinism were incompatible with revealed religion and any solid anchor of right and wrong.

The electron microscope has revealed a much more complex reality within the cell. The cell is not the basic unit of life. Within the cell is an amazing diversity and complexity of cellular machinery and coded genetic information ( DNA). This was brilliantly described in Michael J. Behe’s 1996 book, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. The “black box” in the title of Behe’s book is a term used by scientists to indicate phenomena that they observe but cannot understand or explain. To many people a computer is a black box. They know it works but do not understand how and why.

Darwin thought the cell was the basic unit of life, but it was really a “black box” to him. Darwin’s whole theory of the chain of evolution is punctuated with many theoretical black boxes. There are the numerous points in Darwinism’s theoretical chain of life that cannot be explained. For example, unless there is some intelligent guiding agent, what would cause a genetic line of fish to start developing lungs and survive long enough to become a genetic line of reptiles, or what on earth would cause lizards, who survived falling out of a tree, to start having baby lizards with wings. Why wings and why two wings? Just lucky? Why not bungee cables?

At almost every step in Darwin’s theory of evolution someone has to pull a rabbit out of a black box. Darwin’s theory of evolution might as well be called Merlin’s theory of evolution. It is long on fantastic narrative and magic tricks and short on empirical evidence. So far no substantial and enduring evidence of one species evolving into another species has ever been produced.

Behe describes the inner workings of the cell as being irreducibly complex. A biological system is irreducibly complex if it has a number of different components that must fit together and work together to accomplish a task, but if you remove one of the essential components, the whole system fails.

Beneath the electron microscope, these inner workings look something like man-made machines—varied and incredibly complex machines. If you remove only one of many critical parts of such machines, they become useless. Darwin’s theory cannot explain irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity makes Darwinism look absurd.

As a simple example of irreducible complexity, Behe uses a mousetrap. Most basic mousetraps have five parts: a platform for attaching the other parts, a metal hammer to crush the mouse against the platform, a spring, a catch that releases on pressure by an unfortunate mouse, and a metal bar that holds the hammer back when the trap is set. All the parts must fit together. If you remove one part, you do not have a mousetrap that is 80 percent efficient. You have a pile of useless parts and many still healthy and unmolested mice.

How probable is it that all this microbiological machinery working at its purpose is only the result of random mutation and natural selection of the fittest cells or most mobile bacteria? Intuitively, it is about as possible as a tornado sweeping through an auto junk yard in Knoxville and leaving a fully assembled 2012 Lexus containing two sets of car keys on my driveway in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Common sense and rudimentary probability deny the plausibility of Darwinian evolution at both the micro and macro biological levels.

Behe and a growing number of other microbiologists believe that the incredible complexity and coordination of many life systems is strongly indicative of Intelligent Design. For example, the human eye and the human blood-clotting system require breath-taking coordination, design, and wisdom. Indeed, even the tiniest human infant is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

Another logical fault of Darwinism is that it always sees similarities among species, such as between apes and men, as deriving from a common ancestral origin. Common design does not demand such a conclusion. Common design can mean a common intelligent designer or Creator.

Darwinism, however, has become such an entrenched political ideology that its adherents prefer wrong answers to any truth outside their materialist dogmas.

M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All

For Wall Street Occupiers or other decriers of the “social injustice” of college tuition, here’s a curveball bound to scramble your worldview: a totally free college education regardless of your academic performance or background. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) will announce on Monday that they intend to launch an online learning initiative called M.I.T.x,which will offer the online teaching of M.I.T. courses free of charge to anyone in the world.

Secular Theocracy: The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny

January 11, 2012
David J. Theroux

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we are told that real progress requires expanding this domain by pushing religion ever backward into remote corners of society where it has little or no influence. In short, modern America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.

For the renowned Christian scholar and writer C.S. Lewis, such a view was fatally flawed morally, intellectually, and spiritually, producing the twentieth-century rise of the total state, total war, and mega-genocides. For Lewis, Christianity provided the one true and coherent worldview that applied to all human aspirations and endeavors: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (The Weight of Glory)[1]

In his book, The Discarded Image, Lewis revealed that for Medieval Christians, there was no sacred/secular divide and that this unified, theopolitical worldview of hope, joy, liberty, justice, and purpose from the loving grace of God enabled them to discover the objective, natural-law principles of ethics, science, and theology, producing immense human flourishing. [2] Lewis described the natural law as a cohesive and interconnected objective standard of right behavior:

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We're Screwed '12 Tees and Bumper Stickers

Well, if it's Romney, I'll get a bumper sticker to put on top of my badly tattered We're Screwed '08, though I do have one new one left.



Order


Dear Brock,

Remember how sad we were during the '08 election and we hoped for the brighter days of the '12 election? Yeah. That.
Back by popular demand...

We're Screwed '12
tees and bumper stickers help you spread the news in your winter/spring/summer/fall of your discontent. Tees are still $18 and still made in the USA. Bumper Stickers are still $4.

There's always '16, right?

POB 2401
Manassas, Virginia 20111

NC Patriots of ’61 – Brigadier-General James J. Pettigrew

North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial Commission"
of Tyrrell County

North Carolina Patriots of ’61 – Brigadier-General James Johnston Pettigrew

Born on the 4th of July, 1828 at Bonarva plantation, Tyrrell County, the supremely-gifted James Johnston Pettigrew was the son of accomplished planter Ebenezer Pettigrew who also owned nearby Belgrade and Magnolia plantations. James attended Bingham Academy in Hillsborough and entered the University of North Carolina at age fifteen, graduating with a perfect academic record in 1847. His scholastic career was so brilliant that upon his graduation President James Polk offered him appointment as assistant professor at the Naval Observatory in Washington, under accomplished scientist Matthew F. Maury.

In 1849 Pettigrew left for Europe where he earned a civil law degree from the University of Berlin; and then toured extensively in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Austro-Hungarian empire. He returned to Charleston in 1853 and served as the junior partner of relative James Louis Petigru. James Johnston Pettigrew was elected to the South Carolina General Assembly in 1856, and wrote a celebrated report against the reopening of the foreign slave trade.

He returned to Europe in 1859 to enlist in the Sardinian army during the Franco-Austrian war, though unsuccessfully. He returned to Charleston and was in command of South Carolina’s First Regiment of Rifles from December 1860 to the capitulation of Fort Sumter. He subsequently enlisted in the Hampton Legion, was elected colonel of the 12th South Carolina Regiment, and by July 1861 was in command of the 22nd North Carolina Regiment. Pettigrew’s field officers in this regiment were Lt.-Col. John O. Long of Randolph County, and Major Thomas S. Galloway of Rockingham County, and the men enlisted from Caldwell, McDowell, Guilford, Alleghany, Stokes, Caswell and Randolph counties.

Promoted to brigadier in March 1862, Pettigrew formed a brigade composed of Col. Collette Leventhorpe’s 11th North Carolina; the 44th North Carolina under Col. Thomas Singletary; the 47th North Carolina under Col. George H. Fairbault; Col. James K. Marshall’s 52nd North Carolina; and the 26th North Carolina, the regiment of Col. Zebulon Vance before he had been elected governor. The commander of the 26th was twenty year-old Col. Henry King Burgwyn, Jr., one of the youngest and most able colonels in the Southern army. Pettigrew led this brigade at the battle of Seven Pines where he was wounded and captured, imprisoned at Fort Delaware, and exchanged.

Joining the Army of Northern Virginia in early June, 1863, Pettigrew’s Brigade successfully assaulted McPherson’s and Seminary ridges at Gettysburg on the first day, and sustained great casualties. General Pettigrew led (General Henry) Heth’s Division during Pickett’s assault on the third day. During Lee’s movement after Gettysburg, Pettigrew was wounded for the fifth time, fatally, in a rearguard action on the Potomac with Northern cavalry. He died on 17 July.

A friend said of Pettigrew: “More than all he loved liberty…but he felt that to love liberty was an empty mockery, unless that love was exhibited in the sacrifice which its acquisition requires. With him to be free, was to be prepared for and to engage in the struggle it demands.” Another said: “He was my beau ideal of what a gentleman and a soldier ought to be.”

Matthew Fontaine Maury wrote of him after the war: “I considered Pettigrew the most promising young man of the South, and, as young as he was, I advocated for him the post of our Generalissimo.”

General Pettigrew’s body was taken to Raleigh where, on 24 July, it lay in state in the capitol, surrounded by wreaths, weaved by the fairest ladies, of flowers from the fairest gardens in the town. Buried temporarily in Raleigh, his remains are now at home at Bonarva, in the family burial ground adjacent to Lake Phelps.

(Source: Carolina Cavalier, Clyde N. Wilson, Chronicles Press, 2002)


NC Patriots of ’61 – Brigadier-General James J. Pettigrew

How To Destroy A Country — Part 3

Below is the final installment of a three-part series by Paul Weston about the deliberate destruction of British culture, and of Western Civilization itself.




by Paul Weston

Continued from Part 2

Segregate the Generations. In the course of a political argument, an ancient old lady was told by her grandson that she came from a different generation, to which she replied: “No, I come from a different civilisation.”

Quite so. There is little point in controlling the medium of Socialist education if the wisdom of the older “reactionary” generations can still be passed down to the younger. In Africa, the tribal elders are respected and listened to, but in Britain those over a certain age are mocked at worst, or sidelined at best, because they come from a pre-revolutionary era. Those born after 1970 come from the post-revolutionary era, and never the twain shall meet. The educational and media establishments are run in the main by the young or the very young, all soaked in Marxist ideology, and their output is principally aimed only at the young. This is deliberately done in order to ensure the segregation of those who could present an alternative voice to their incessant and twisted Socialist propaganda.

Promote Conformity in the guise of Individualism.