Ron’s Musings

Continue reading Ron's commentaries at Ft Hard Knox.

Some Much Needed Perspective

Two days until election day and both liberals and conservatives alike are worried.  Tuesday has the potential to be another razor close election, though some liberals are predicting an Obama landslide.  On the other side, Tammy Bruce, filling in on the Laura Ingraham show Friday predicted a McCain win. I don’t know about you but these nail biters are taking their toll on me.

As someone with strong political views and a solid conservative ideology, it has been pretty standard for me to place a great deal of confidence in my political philosophy.  That’s true both in the capacity of that philosophy to win the day in the arena of ideas and in its ability as a governing philosophy to create sound government.  I assume the other side feels pretty much the same way about their political philosophy and ideals.  For both, Wednesday will either be a day of celebration or a day of mourning.

Following the ‘06 elections I was fairly depressed for several weeks.  I wondered how we’d survive as a nation with liberals in control again.  Certainly the results of that election haven’t exactly produced or inspired a lot of confidence in the American people.  The current Congress has the lowest approval ratings since congressional approval ratings have been taken.  But America is still here.  We haven’t disappeared into the abyss.

Lately I’ve been ruminating on the wisdom of placing so much faith in a political philosophy.  While I’m not prepared to jetison sound political thinking, I recognize that the basic problems in this country are not the result of politics, cries to the contrary not withstanding.  While a political party or philosophy may encourage right behavior or wrong behavior, it is what is in people’s hearts that dictate the choices they make, not what party is in power.

I recognize that not all readers are Christians but I am.  And what has been on my mind lately is the fact that, as far as I’m concerned, God is still in control.  Some will find that a difficult statement to swallow.  For you I am truly sorry.

I’ve always said that my Christian faith informs and directs my political philosophy.  I still believe that but I’ve come to realize that I’ve managed to get the cart before the horse.  I’ve elevated the political philosophy above the Christian faith without ever realizing I’ve done so.  And that is a problem.

It is my sincere belief that no matter who wins the presidential election on Tuesday, God will still be in control.  If the Democrats achieve a 60 vote fillibuster proof majority in the Senate and make substantial gains in the House so that Republicans can’t do a thing to stop them, God will still be in control!

With such a perspective I expect to wake up Wednesday morning with a smile on my face regardless of the election results because God is in control.  I’ve found that He does a much better job of running things than I do and for that I am eternally grateful.  I really don’t know how anyone survives in this world apart from faith in God.  I think I’d place all my faith in political philosophy and I’d be eternally disappointed, disillusioned and depressed.  I don’t want to live that way and I’m resolving not to.

I still hold the same ideological beliefs, the same political philosophy I did.  I still believe conservatism is superior to liberalism.  But I recognize that neither philosophy is going to change people’s hearts.  Only God can do that!

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What Does the GOP, and This Country, Need?

I know I wasn’t going to be posting here but this is just too important.  This is cross posted from Ft Hard Knox.

 

It’s an interesting question.  The GOP loses in the ‘06 election were widely attributed, both by GOP leadership and the media, to unhappiness over the Iraq war.  While there was certainly unhappiness over the war, it was clear to most conservatives that the war was not the reason for the loss.  Rather, the abandonment of conservative principles by the Republican Congress was the issue.  Under the Bush administration we saw the largest growth of the federal government since LBJ’s Great Society.

Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education.  George W. Bush grew it beyond all recognition and Congressional Republicans went right along.  Until the Democrats gained control of Congress the President had yet to use his veto pen.  All the while GOP leadership and President Bush claimed the mantle of conservatism.

When Bush first ran in 2000 I knew he was no conservative.  I voted against him in the primaries.  Compassionate conservatism was nothing but a smoke screen for big government.  Since then GOP leadership embraced this big government "conservatism" and their governance was hardly distinguishable for the Democrats.  With spending out of control and government growing at an increasing rate, the conservative rank and file said "enough."  If the GOP was going to abandon us, why should we support them?

Here we are two years later with a huge RINO for a nominee and a GOP leadership still in denial.  While McCain gave lip service to conservatives at CPAC, his actions in the last couple of weeks have demonstrated that he cares nothing for conservatives and apparently believe he doesn’t need us to win.  Instead, McCain is pandering to the middle, to moderates and independents.  Indeed, it appears that McCain would like to rid the GOP of conservatives altogether.

Mark Levin has pointed out that McCain isn’t campaigning for other Republicans.  He appears to be concerned only about his own elections.  Of course, it might simply be that McCain’s agenda depends on a Democrat Congress and he isn’t interested in putting that at risk.  So if McCain wins in November he will have no coat tails at all.  I cannot remember another Republican presidential candidate who has done so little to help his own party.

The bottom line is this; the GOP has completely lost its way.  While no one can seriously argue that the Republican Party was always conservative, it was not, its bread and butter since Reagan has been conservatism.  Every time a conservative runs on a conservative platform, they win.  Even the Democrats run conservatives to win elections. 

Now the GOP appears to believe that conservatism isn’t the path to victory.  That, of course, betrays a fundamental lack of core values in the first place.  Conservatism isn’t merely a path to power, although it will certainly lead to that.  Conservatism is a core set of values.  It sees inherent value in the individual.  It seeks to empower the individual to build his own life.  It denies that government is the answer to the problems of individuals.  It maintains that government should be restricted to only those functions that individuals cannot do for themselves and that are authorized by the Constitution.

The Republican Party today does not believe any of those things and the internal fight to change that has been all but lost.  What are called victories are little more than slowing liberalism around the edges.  Every action the GOP takes ends up moving the country to the left to some degree.  There is never any movement back to the right.

Ronald Reagan was an intellectual and a pioneer but he wasn’t the first.  Goldwater came before Reagan and he was the conservative’s conservative.  Yet he lost horribly.  The country was not yet ready to embrace conservatism.  It took Jimmy Carter to pave the way for Ronald Reagan.  Without Carter’s dismal administration it is doubtful that conservatism would have taken hold as it did.  A truly bad Democrat President with a Democrat Congress was the catalyst needed to wake the country up and help them see the value of political conservatism.  Average people were already living in a conservative way but they had not yet made the transition from personal conservatism to political conservatism.  The Carter administration was necessary to show the way.

I submit that we are in a similar situation now.  We’ve suffered through a Republican Party that is hardly distinguishable from the Democrat Party except in rhetoric.  The Democrats have become hard line liberals while the Republicans have become moderate liberals.  Conservatism is nowhere to be found in the political landscape save for small pockets of disenfranchised individuals who still hold to the philosophy.  We need another Carter.

McCain cannot fill that role because he is a Republican.  He is the poster child for the problems we face as conservatives.  If elected he will surely work tirelessly to give us open borders and amnesty for 20 million illegal aliens already here.  He will decimate our economy with punitive policies based on climate change.  His lack of understanding of basic economics combined with his climate policy will cause America to fall from her position as an economic powerhouse.  And when he accomplishes all this, who will get the blame?  Hint, it won’t be the Democrats.

The damage to the GOP will take a generation to repair if it can be repaired at all.  More likely it will die and be replaced with another party of unpredictable makeup and philosophy.  That’s a high price to pay for voting for the lessor of two evils.  And let’s face it, we are where we are because we’ve continued to vote for the lessor of two evils time and again.  When RINOs run we think we have no choice but to support them because the alternative is worse.  This is what Thomas Sowell calls first stage thinking.  We look at the short term but ignore the easily predictable long term consequences.  Typically politicians are guilty of this but I submit that conservatives have also been guilty of it.  And voting for the lessor of two evils is still voting for evil.

This slow boil is never going to work.  Like the proverbial frog in a pot, the heat has risen too slowly for most people to notice.  By the time they do, this country may well be so far gone that it cannot be turned around.  The only way is to turn up the heat and elect another Carter.  Barak Obama is that Carter.  He is the solution, albeit not the solution the Democrats think.  They believe he will be their savior.  Instead, he will be their downfall for at least a decade, longer if the GOP can regain its soul and keep from being corrupted by Washington power.

Many conservatives are waiting to see who McCain picks as his VP before deciding whether to vote for him.  I submit that who McCain picks is irrelevant.  Unless McCain dies in office, his VP pick will have no power and no ability to set policy.  McCain will be the leader of the Republican Party.  He will set the agenda if he is President.  Under any circumstances a McCain presidency will be devastating to the GOP and to this country.  At the risk of sound melodramatic, if this country is to be saved, Barak Obama must be elected President of the United States.  Any other outcome of the presidential election in November will do irreparable damage both the the Republican Party and the United States.

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Tags: America, conservatism, McCain, Obama

40 Years Later: King’s Legacy

As expected, all three presidential candidates are giving speeches today commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  And rightly so.  Dr. King’s struggle was a righteous struggle.  By the time of King’s rise to leadership, the plight of blacks in much of America was bleak.  The south in particular was engaged in such blatant racial discrimination there was little argument that it wasn’t happening.  Rather, it was being justified on all kinds of spurious grounds.  Racism was alive and well and many whites truly believed that blacks were inferior and therefore, discrimination was justified and justifiable.

King worked against such thinking and he did so following the path Gandhi had followed to end British oppression in India.  King was committed to several things.  First he wanted equal treatment for blacks.  He wanted the end of black and white counters and water fountains.  He wanted the end of black seating at the back of the bus.  He wanted a "colorblind society" so that everyone was "judged by the content of their character" rather than the "color of their skin."

And King was clear about how to achieve such a color blind society.  The civil rights movement would be successful not through terrorism and violence but through non-violent civil disobedience.  King, like Gandhi, believed accepting the consequences of his actions.  As a result he willingly spent more than a few nights in jail.  That’s character.

Many have since attacked King on many fronts.  Some have claimed he was an adulterer.  Others claim he was a crook.  King is in good company as many of America’s greatest historical leaders have also been thusly attacked.  Jefferson has been attacked for owning slaves.  Washington has been attacked both for owning slaves and for alleged adultery.  In each case the goal has been the same.  That is to marginalize the arguments and goals of the one being attacked posthumously.

Whether the attacks come from the left against Washington and Jefferson or from the right against King, such attacks are misguided and wrong.  While alive any leader is fair game for criticism and even after death it is fair to look at the facts of a leader’s life.  But using such examination in an attempt to negate particular arguments is simply fallacious.  It is the logical fallacy of the ad hominem attack.  It is mean spirited and betrays an inability on the part of the attacker to defend his or her position on its merits.

I don’t know what kind of man King was personally.  I was a child when he was gunned down.  But I know that his goals were good goals.  A colorblind society was and is a good ideal.  And much progress has been made in the last 40 years.  Blacks are not relegated to special counters, bathrooms and water fountains.  Blacks are able to achieve anything white’s can achieve, something hardly possible in Kings day.  But all is not well in race relations.  Alas King’s goals have been hijacked. 

While there are very many in the black community still working to fulfill King’s dream, many others actively work against it.  Instead of working for a colorblind society, they work for a color based society.  Instead of the content of one’s character, these people seek to have all manner of decisions based mailing or solely on the color of one’s skin.

People like Jesse Jackson and Georgia Congressman John Lewis have built entire careers on the back of Martin Luther King.  While giving lip services to King’s goals, such men have worked against their fulfillment because any successes undermine their own legitimacy.  Indeed, if race ever becomes irrelevant they will be out of work entirely because all they know how to do is be victims.

I still have hope that America will grow past all this.  But I fear that it will not happen until all those who were part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s have passed away.  Until those who still remember how they were treated are gone, there may not be full healing.  And that’s really too bad because they, like all our elders, have much wisdom to offer all of us.  Unfortunately, for many, that wisdom is buried beneath too many layers of resentment and self imposed victimhood.

I agree wholeheartedly with Martin Luther King’s dream.  I too dream of a color blind society where all men and women are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  For character is what matters.  But I fear I will not see it in my lifetime because to many are vested in victimhood.

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Tags: MKL, race relations, Racism

UK Independent reports the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent

On Saturday, the conflict over Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial got its first international news coverage. One highlight is the conversation that Leonard Doyle, U.S editor of the UK Independent, had with Tom Burnett Sr.:

Tom Burnett, whose son Tom Jnr died in the crash, said of the design that it is “aesthetically wonderful,” but “a lot of it contains Islamic symbols”. He added: “We ought to just throw the design out and start anew because it really dishonours those who died.”

Towards the end, Doyle moseys around to the bombshell, reporting the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a fact. The bad news is that Doyle immediately tries to dismiss this explosive information by making a completely irrelevant and factually preposterous counterclaim:

Part of the blame must lie with Paul Murdoch, architect of the winning design who initially described it as a “Crescent of Embrace”. The title caused the internet to erupt with conspiracy theories. Then someone noticed that the arc actually pointed towards Mecca. The fact that this was also the direction to Washington DC was lost on the conspiracy theorists.

No, the direction to Mecca is NOT the direction to Washington. The shortest-distance direction to Mecca (the way that Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca) heads northeast from the western Pennsylvania crash-site. Some people find that counterintuitive, but Pennsylvania and Mecca are both in the northern hemisphere, with Mecca being about 2/3rds of the way around the hemisphere. Thus the direction to Mecca takes a shortcut towards the north pole. D.C., in contrast, lies southeast from the Shanksville crash site.

The errant claim that D.C. and Mecca lie in the same direction is a red herring anyway. what difference would it make if people facing into the giant crescent were facing Washington? Is there a religion of facing Washington five times a day for prayer? Were the hijackers of Flight 93 followers of such a religion. No. They faced MECCA five times a day for prayer. That is why the Mecca direction matters.

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab,” and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The memorial now being built in Shanksville will be the world’s largest mosque by a factor of about fifty (and there are some really big mosques).

Doyle is not the first person to try to dismiss the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent by claiming that the crescent also points to something else. Of course it DOES point to a host of other places. It points to everything on the line between the crash site and Mecca. Earlier this year the crazy Dr. Daniel Griffith noted that one of those points turns out to be the Vatican. So what? There is no religion of facing the Vatican for prayer.

The Independent should issue a correction

Given that Doyle’s attempt to dismiss the Mecca orientation of the crescent was based on an absurdly wrong factual claim (that the direction to Mecca is the same as the direction to Washington), the Independent ought to issue a correction, especially given the importance of this error to Doyle’s reporting. Without the factual error, his illogical pretense that the Mecca orientation would not matter if the crescent happened to also point to Washington simply disappears. The Mecca orientation would then stand in naked disgrace before the Independent’s international readership. Is that enough of a prize to make a serious push for?

Doyle has already been asked for a correction, without reply. Our petition, however, gives us a new tool for dealing with such recalcitrant parties. We are up to about four hundred signees after one week, and over half say they are willing to engage in activist measures like forwarding emails. Maybe this is a good opportunity to fire a test shot, and unload a minor deluge of correction requests on the Independent. I

If you want to pitch in, just copy and paste the following short note into an email:

To the Editors of the Independent:Please correct a glaring factual error in Leonard Doyle’s article on the Flight 93 Memorial (”Conspiracy or coincidence? Flight 93 memorial attacked over crescent shape,” March 29, 2008). Doyle’s reporting of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent is much appreciated, but he then tries to dismiss the significance of this orientation by making the factually ridiculous assertion that the direction to Mecca from the Shanksville Pennsylvania crash-site is also the direction to Washington:

… someone noticed that the arc actually pointed towards Mecca. The fact that this was also the direction to Washington DC was lost on the conspiracy theorists.

The shortest distance direction to Mecca is to the northeast from Shanksville. Washington is to the southeast. It is important to correct Mr. Doyle’s errant excuse for dismissing the Mecca orientation of the crescent because orientation on Mecca is actually very significant. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab” and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The planned memorial will be the world’s largest mosque. Please include this significance of the Mecca orientation in your correction. Respectfully yours,

If you haven’t yet signed our online petition, please give it a look. Also, Tom Burnett Sr. just released a public appeal for people to spread the word about our petition effort. If anyone wants to forward or post Tom’s letter, it is available for copy and paste here (scroll to bottom for HTML format).

Glaring omissions in Doyle’s report, amounting to cover up

If the Independent’s correction policy extends to dishonest reporting by omission, there are two other key facts, fully known to Mr. Doyle, that the Independent should publish. While he was driving to Shanksville, Mr. Doyle talked to Alec Rawls by telephone for almost a half an hour, mostly about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent.

Doyle was fully apprised of the double dealing of Memorial Project spokesmen who in private conversation admit the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent and make excuses for it (basically, they all assume it is coincidental), while in the newspapers they deny that the crescent points to Mecca. For example, when Superintendent Hanley was asked directly about the Mecca orientation by a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette last summer, she claimed that:

“The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site.”

Thus Doyle was fully aware of the controversial nature of the Mecca orientation claim, yet he did not report it as a matter of contention. He reported it as an fact. That means one of two things. When Doyle talked to Hanley (who is quoted in his article), she may have acknowledged the Mecca orientation of the crescent to him. Alternatively, Doyle could have checked the Mecca orientation of the crescent for himself. (Alec Rawls told him how. It takes literally 2 minutes to verify.)

Which is it Mr. Doyle? Either is explosive and should be reported. If a reporter for a major newspaper verifies for himself that the Flight 93 crescent points to Mecca, he damned well ought to say so! If Memorial Project personnel admitted the Mecca orientation of the crescent, after a long history of denying it in to the press, that is newsworthy!

Why is Doyle holding back? This is cover-up, just like his attempt to dismiss the Mecca orientation with the red herring about the direction to Mecca also being the direction to Washington.

A perverted concept of “balance”?

Doyle’s behavior is a puzzle. If he wanted to cover up the Mecca orientation of the crescent, why did he report it at all? In two and a half years, only one other reporter bothered to fact-check and report the orientation of the crescent. (Kirk Swauger at the Johnstown Tribune Democrat wrote last summer that: “[The Mecca orientation claims] seem to be backed up by coordinates for the direction of qibla from Somerset that can be found on Islam.com. When superimposed over the crescent in the memorial design, the midpoint points over the Arctic Circle, through Europe toward Mecca.”)

One possibility is that Doyle may be pursuing a perverted concept of balance, akin to the left wing preference for equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity. The facts tilt in favor of the critics of the crescent, so in order to write a story that presents the two sides as equally valid, Doyle buries the facts, not completely, but enough to write a story that does not advantage either side. Of course if the facts went against critics of the crescent, this concept of balance would go out the window (as it should). But when the facts support conservative voices, this perverted concept of balance seems to be a second mode that the West’s left wing media falls into.

That’s just a theory. Perhaps Mr. Doyle can offer a better explanation. His article is in many ways quite a nice one, telling the story of Flight 93, and of Tom Burnett Jr.’s decision to do something to stop the hijackers. Give Doyle credit also for reporting the most explosive fact (the Mecca orientation). Then he dismisses the Mecca orientation with a completely fraudulent dodge, and omits how the Project has been denying the Mecca orientation for years. Very odd.

Doyle also fails to mention that every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign.

In contrast to his fabricated grounds for dismissing the Mecca-orientation of the crescent, Doyle simply repeats without comment the Memorial Project’s claim that the design was changed to remove “any perceptions relating to Islamic symbolism”:

The crescent became a circle, with two symbolic breaks, one where visitors will walk along the flight path, the other at the crash scene.

Would it have been too much to note, as was clearly explained to Mr. Doyle, how every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent.

The circle is still “broken” in the exact same spots, creating the exact same crescent. This is even how architect Paul Murdoch explains the crescent design: the terrorists broke the circle, turning it into a giant (Mecca-oriented) crescent. The only change in the “redesign” was to include a broken off chunk of the circle, which now floats out behind the mouth of the crescent.

After long conversations with Tom Burnett, Alec Rawls and Bill Steiner (who has been organizing opposition on the ground in Pennsylvania for two years) Doyle actually knows more about the Islamic symbolism in the crescent design than any other reporter who has covered this story. If he would just report the truth, he could do some real good, and advance his own career at the same time, by breaking the story of a lifetime. Instead, he has decided to hide the truth, even using blatant disinformation to do it. Sure looks like ideological bias.

Click here to insist on a correction.

To join, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.

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Tags: Flight 83 Blogburst

Petition for Congressional Investigation

A petition to stop the crescent memorial is now being circulated on the ground in western Pennsylvania. As a complement to this old fashioned canvassing effort, an electronic petition has also been created at ipetitions.com. Please circulate far and wide!

The petitions highlight four cases of apparent Islamic symbolism in the memorial design. Here is the text (electronic):

Call for Congressional investigation of Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial

Many features of the chosen Flight 93 Memorial design are intolerable:

1. THE GIANT CRESCENT. The centerpiece of the original “Crescent of Embrace” design was a giant red Islamic shaped crescent. Every particle of this original crescent design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees. The giant crescent is still there.

2. IT POINTS TO MECCA. The giant crescent points to Mecca. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab,” and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The Flight 93 Memorial is on track to become the world’s largest mosque.

3. THE ISLAMIC SUNDIAL. The minaret-like Tower of Voices is a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial (one of many typical mosque features that are realized in the crescent design, all on the same epic scale as the half mile wide central crescent).

4. THE 44 BLOCKS. There are 44 glass blocks on the flight path, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists. Intentional or not, these features are entirely unacceptable. This travesty must stop and investigations must begin.

1. We the undersigned call on our state and federal legislators to undertake their own thorough and independent investigations of the Flight 93 Memorial design. The truth must come out.
2. We ask that the crescent design be scraped entirely and that it be replaced with a new design that is not tainted by Islamic or terrorist memorializing symbolism.
3. We demand a fitting and proper memorial that HONORS the brave men and women of Flight 93.

Please take a minute to electronically sign this petition. All signatures collected by the end of April will be printed out and delivered to the May 3rd public meeting of the Memorial Project, along with Xeroxes of the hand-signed petitions.

That is just the start. There will be another public meeting in August, where we hope to present a much larger pile of petitions, and all signatures will eventually be delivered to the Pennsylvania state legislature and to Congress. Keep sending until the crescent design is stopped!

In the short term, we have a number of supporters in the Pennsylvania legislature at this point who are working to gain backing for an investigation. A demonstration of public demand should help that effort.

The paper petition

In order to make the paper petition self-sufficient, there is a second page, to be printed on the back of the petition, that provides explanations and graphical documentation of the four highlighted cases of Islamic symbolism. The idea is to have a petition that can circulate virally. Anyone can print it out and have enough information right on the petition itself to know that the objections are legitimate. (Mailing instructions are also included.)

Here are the back-side explanations of the four intolerable features:

1. THE GIANT CRESCENT

The original Crescent of Embrace design was a giant Islamic shaped crescent with the crash site placed between the crescent tips, in the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag:

The redesign was supposed to eliminate these Islamic symbol shapes, but as Congressman Tom Tancredo wrote to the Park Service in November 2007, these features remain completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguised the crescent with a few additional trees. Architect Paul Murdoch’s refusal to eliminate the Islamic symbol shapes suggests intent, but intentional or not, these symbol shapes are unacceptable. Congressman Tancredo is now calling for the crescent design to be scrapped in its entirety, and we join in that request.

2. IT POINTS TO MECCA

Several credible analysts have found that a person facing directly into the giant crescent (still present in the redesign) will be facing almost exactly at Mecca:

The green “qibla” circle in the graphic above is from the prayer-direction calculator at Islam.com. It shows the direction to Mecca from Somerset PA (ten miles from the crash site). The red arrow shows that a person standing between the crescent tips and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca.

This Mecca orientation claim must be authoritatively investigated and answered. If it is true that the crescent points to Mecca, and hence can serve as an Islamic prayer direction indicator (the central feature around which every mosque is built), then whether this construct was intentional or not, it indelibly taints the design.

3. THE ISLAMIC SUNDIAL

Anyone can see the overt similarity between a traditional Islamic sundial (left-hand image) and Tower of Voices part of the Flight 93 Memorial (right-hand image):

When the shadow of the traditional sundial reaches the outer curved vertical in this photo, it will be time for Islamic afternoon prayers. Shadow calculations confirm that, on any day of the year, when the shadow of the 93 foot tall crescent shaped Tower of Voices reaches the inner arc of trees, it will also be time for Islamic afternoon prayers.

4. THE FORTY-FOUR BLOCKS

Tom Burnett Sr. does not want Tom Junior’s name inscribed on one of the 44 translucent blocks that are to be emplaced along the flight path. Forty-four is the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists:

The left side of this graphic shows the Memorial Wall, which follows the path of Flight 93 down to the point of impact. At eye level are 43 glass blocks. Forty are inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes. Three are inscribed with the 9/11 date.

Right-hand image: the 44th glass block sits at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway, where the flight path crosses the upper crescent tip. It marks the spot where, in architect Paul Murdoch’s description, the terrorists broke our humanitarian circle, turning it into a giant (Islamic shaped) crescent. This circle-breaking, crescent-creating feat is memorialized by the inscription: “A field of honor forever.”

The Park Service dismisses the suspicious block count on the grounds that the 44th glass block is much larger than the others. Mr. Burnett is not comforted by the magnificence of the 44th block, and neither are we. This design must be stopped, and investigations must be launched!

Other petition formats

The same four intolerable features are described in the annotated “Map of Betrayal” that was the subject of one of last month’s blogbursts. Thus the map makes a perfectly serviceable back side for the petition, providing an alternative petition/flyer combination.

The information on the map is denser than the explanations above, but has its own intrigue, showing how the different terrorist memorializing parts fit together like an elaborate puzzle.

The petition being circulated on the ground now in Pennsylvania is still another variation. It has slightly different wording than the electronic petition, and slightly different explanations of the four points than presented above. All the different formats are interchangeable. They all highlight the same four objectionable features, and they will all be delivered together to state and federal legislators.

Until we get a Congressional investigation, the petition will be an ongoing tool for raising awareness and registering opposition. If you participate in any activist fora or email lists, please forward the text and links along. (The electronic and paper-petition links are collected together on this petition Page at CrescentOfBetrayal.com.)

Blogburst blogroll

To join, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.

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Tags: Flight 93 Blogburst

Who Wants Theocracy?

Yesterday I wrote about Jefferson and the separation of church and state. Today I want to address the question of theocracy more directly. As I mentioned yesterday, there are many on the left who seem to believe that the religious right really wants to institute a theocracy in America. Nothing could be further from the truth! I’m sure there is an insignificant minority who really would like theocracy but being insignificant, they really don’t need to be dealt with in any significant way.

For the overwhelming majority of evangelicals and anyone on the religious right, what we want is what the First Amendment guarantees. We want to exercise our religious beliefs without government interference. But because freedom of religion has been reinterpreted to mean freedom from religion, that has become increasingly difficult to do.

I was a double major in college. My majors were political science and religion. Typically people looked at me like a grew two heads when I told them this. But I made a concerted effort to deal with the intersection of religion and politics in my studies. One thing that was taught in Constitutional Law class was that there is a fundamental tension between the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. I submit that this is simply not the case.

The tension has been introduced by activist courts who have placed greater weight on the establishment clause than the free exercise clause. Additionally, the courts have expanded the the notion of establishment well beyond the original meaning of an official state religion or church. That was, in fact, the original intent. Americans greatly feared a state church, many of them having fled precisely that in coming to America. The First Amendment, in part, guarantees there will be no state church in the United States.

Today the courts regularly claim that, for example, a teacher in a public school, by merely exercising his or her free speech and free exercise rights, is engaged in establishing a state religion. The very idea is preposterous but it is claimed none the less. So in this interpretation, the free exercise clause and the free speech clause of the First Amendment are trumped by the establishment clause, thus the tension that is claimed.

Rightly understood the First Amendment has no tension. Indeed it is quite simple. You and I are free to believe whatever we chose about God and religion or to believe nothing at all. At the same time the government is prohibited from establishing a state church, from regulating how we practice our religious beliefs and generally from interfering in religion in any way.

Amazing that clear meaning has been distorted beyond recognition today. The result is this tension where government violates the free exercise clause and the free speech clause in the name of the establishment clause. Interpreted that way there is, indeed, much tension but it is an imposed tension that did not exist originally.

The Constitution guarantees every government employee, whether a teacher or an office worker, and every elected official, the right to practice their faith in what ever way they see fit. And that includes proclaiming their faith in the normal course of their duties. While they may represent the state in some sense, they clearly do not have the authority to establish a religion or church in the name of the government.

The anti-Christianity disciples are clearly biased against Christianity. While claiming to want nothing more than to preserver what the founders intended, they go to great lengths to distort that intent. They twist it to their own ends so that it bears little, if any, resemblance to the original intent. And I believe they do so knowingly simply because they are hostile to Christianity. They see Christianity as a threat to their own belief system. And where Christians are generally willing to bring their beliefs to the table in the arena of ideas, the other side doesn’t think their beliefs can prevail unless they suppress Christianity. Certainly no idea has much chance to prevail if it cannot be heard in the public square and that is really what they are after.

For more on this subject and the efforts to combat Blogs Against Theocracy, visit Dakota Voice.

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Tags: ACLU, atheism, Christianity

American Theocracy?

From time to time you hear from someone or other who claims America is becoming a theocracy.  Many believe the religious right controls the Republican Party and wants to institute theocracy in America.  I have little patience for such rhetoric simply because it is demonstrably false.

Many of these same accusers love to tout "separation of church and state" and its hallowed place in the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution  nowhere contains anything like separation of church and state but that is no deterrent to the disciples of the philosophy.

Jenn Sierra of Ft Hard Knox has written extensively about the subject of religion and the founding of America.  She rightly points out that, for example, most of our founding fathers were very religious people who often referred to the providence of God in establishing this country.

There is a group called Blogs Against Theocracy that last year began a blogswarm dedicated to the separation of church and state.  From their site:

The theme [of the blogswarm], like always, is the Separation of Church and State — we are for it. But the variations on the theme are many…This is not a bashing of religion - peeps can believe what they choose, however they choose — but it is a reminder that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government.

They claim to have no animus against religion but it instructive that they’ve again chosen Easter weekend for their blogswarm.  That seems to me to be a clear attack against Christianity in particular.  While I agree with their assertion that government should stay out of religion, their claim that religion should stay out of government is code for Christians staying out of government.  Indeed, the disciples of the separation of church and state never challenge any religious perspective save Christianity.  When schools want to promote Islam, for example, there is never a peep from these folks.  It is only Christianity that is anathema to them.

Lets deal a little with this so called separation of church and state.  They claim it’s in the Constitution.  What they refer to is, of course, the First Amendment to the Constitution.  The relevant clause says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  That’s it.  In that straightforward statement they find the separation of church and state.

The phrase "separation of church and state" comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association.  The Danbury Baptists feared the establishment of a state church, something many had originally fled Europe to escape.  They wrote to Mr. Jefferson expressing their concerns.  Jefferson responded with the following letter.

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th Jefferson
Jan. 1. 1802.

This "wall of separation" Jefferson mentioned has been twisted beyond all recognition by today’s disciples of anti-Christianity.  Indeed, what formerly was freedom of religion has become freedom from religion.  And that means freedom from any exposure whatsoever.  It matters little to these disciples that there is not a shred of evidence suggesting the founders intended such.

Notice the closing statement in Jefferson’s letter.  He claims to be praying along with the Danbury Baptists "for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man."  When such a statement is issued today by anyone in government it is universally condemned by the anti-Christian disciples.  They seem content to reference Jefferson when they can twist him to their own ends but willfully neglect his full statement, likely because they condemn that portion of the statement.

Jefferson never argued in favor of the elimination of the influence of religion upon government.  Neither did any of the other founders.   Blogs Against Theocracy would have you believe otherwise.  Don’t be fooled.

Over the next several days, this blog and others will be working to set the record straight as Blogs Against Theocracy works diligently to convince Americans that falsehoods are true.  That is to be expected.  I hope they won’t mind too much our calling them on it.  What we are doing is not a blogburst.  Each blog working in this effort will have its own original content rather than the same content being duplicated across blogs.  So you will benefit from working your way through each blog and reading the posts.  In this way you can become better educated about the religious beliefs of our founding fathers and what they intended in the Constitution.

For more information visit Dakota Voice, the organizing blog behind this effort.

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Tags: ACLU, atheism, Christianity, Religion

Is Obama Wright?

News broke a few minutes ago that a McCain staffer had been suspended for circulating a YouTube video via Twitter.  The video was titled, Is Obama Wright?  I’ve watched the video and embedded it below.  It is spot on!  That McCain has a problem illustrates the problem conservatives have with him.  Or maybe this was just a way to get broader exposure for the video.  I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise.  Anyway, enjoy the video below and tell you friends about it.

 

How can any truth loving individual have a problem with this?  All it does is connect the dots where most of the media have been unwilling to do so.

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Tags: Jeremiah Wright, McCain, Obama, video

QiblaLocator confirms Mecca orientation of Flight 93 crescent

Reader Max K. found another Islamic website with a Mecca-direction calculator. It can be used to construct yet another graphical demonstration that the Flight 93 memorial points to Mecca. Muslims face Mecca for prayer, with the direction to Mecca calculated by the great circle method. Enter your street address into the search field at QiblaLocator.com and it brings up a Google map with a red line showing the Muslim prayer-direction (or "qibla") from your home. At the Flight 93 crash site, Skyline Road passes through the center of what is to become the giant central crescent of the planned memorial. Enter "Skyline Rd, Shanksville PA" into the QiblaLocator search box and it generates this map:

Red line points to Mecca. (Azimuth, also in red: 55.19° clockwise from north.) To see how this direction to Mecca compares with the orientation of the planned memorial, first impose some orientation lines on the Crescent of Embrace design:

 

The short black line connects the two most protruding tips of the half-mile wide central crescent. The long black arrow shows the orientation of a person standing between the crescent tips and facing into the center of the crescent. (Every particle of this original design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few additional trees.) Next just lay the site-plan graphic on top of QiblaLocator’s Google map:

The red and black lines are almost parallel. To be precise, the upper crescent tip is the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall, Entry Portal Wall. The bottom crescent tip is the last pair of red maple trees at the bottom end of the crescent walkway. Connect these tips, and the perpendicular bisector (black arrow) points 53.5° clockwise from north (within two degrees of the exact direction to Mecca). A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The Flight 93 Memorial will be the world’s largest mosque. Earlier Mecca direction graphics In 2005, Sarah Wells constructed a somewhat similar graphic. She used the Mecca direction calculator at Islam.com to get a qibla line that she superimposed onto the memorial site plan:

Green "qibla" circle shows direction to Mecca from nearby Pittsburgh. Again you can see that a person standing between the tips of the crescent and facing into the center of the crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca. Sarah’s graphic and the QiblaLocator graphic both demonstrate that the giant crescent points to Mecca in the way that Muslims define the direction to Mecca (by the "great circle" or "shortest distance" method). The first graphic to show the Mecca orientation of the crescent memorial was posted by the pseudonymous Eaotin Shrdlu on September 10, 2005, two days after the crescent design was unveiled:

The large map projection and the small site-plan inset both have north at the top. Etaoin’s graphic shows that direction to Mecca from crash site (green line) and direction of person facing into crescent (red line) are the same. University of Pennsylvania Professor Tim Baird, a member of the Flight 93 Advisory Commission, says that everyone involved in the Memorial Project is fully aware of the factual accuracy of the Mecca direction claim. Nevertheless, they all stand by as Project spokesmen keep denying the Mecca orientation in the newspapers. The Project even found an academic fraud to tell the press that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca:

Daniel Griffith, a geospatial information sciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 18, 2007.)

Any Muslim would have denied this absurdity, but the Post Gazette does not want Griffith’s fraud exposed, because the Gazette itself has been fully complicit in covering up the Mecca orientation of the memorial since 2005. Post Gazette reporter Paula Ward told Alec Rawls in 2006 (download 3, p. 108) that editors and reporters at the Post Gazette saw all of the demonstrations of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent back in 2005 and made a top level editorial decision not to publish this explosive information. Editor Tom Birdsong thinks it would hurt the Democrats, so he is not going to publish it, and neither are other newspapers. This shouldn’t be a right-left issue, but try telling our newspaper editors that. Which leaves it up to the rest of us to get the word out about Islamic and terrorist memorializing symbolism in the Flight 93 Memorial. This is going to have to be passed person to person. You can help. To join our blogbursts, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.

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Tags: Flight 93 Blogburst

Where Loyalties Lie

This morning Barack Obama gave his race speech where he dealt with the issue of race and his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  While it was certainly a rousing speech, expertly delivered, it reveals some serious and profound misunderstandings and misconceptions held by Senator Obama.

The largest and most glaring of those misconceptions is his understanding of the church and loyalty.  Clearly Obama puts his loyalty to Jeremiah Wright over his loyalty to scripture or the church.  He equated rejecting his pastor with rejecting his grandmother.  Nice words but very far off the mark.

For Christians who understand the church, placing a man, any man, above the church and its mission is unthinkable.  That doesn’t mean that you totally reject someone with whom you disagree.  But you certainly do not remain under his leadership and authority when he is so clearly in conflict with scripture and the church.  I’m not talking here about a single local church.  I’m talking about what the Bible refers to as the bride of Christ.  To hold any man above that is hold that man above Jesus himself.

Certainly Senator Obama is free to do just that.  But he goes on about his Christianity when he appears to have little understanding of the meaning of that term.  Christianity is NOT about membership in an organization.  But that’s precisely how Barack Obama has presented it.  It’s as if Obama’s church was the local Kiwanis club and, while you didn’t always agree with the president, you liked him none the less.

The church, both universal and local, isn’t a civic organization.  It isn’t a club.  It is the one institution on earth tasked with spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.  And while I agree wholeheartedly that the church should be caring for the poor and the downtrodden, that is not its primary goal. 

Barack Obama spent more than 20 years under the authority for Jeremiah Wright and, apparently, never found anything he said to be so far off the mark that he would consider removing himself from that authority.  I dearly love my pastor but if he were to ever advocate, for example, returning to slavery or the notion that blacks were genuinely inferior to whites, I would have leave that church.  I would not stop loving that pastor but I could not remain in a church, under a pastor, that was in such conflict with scripture and the biblical mission of the church.  That Barack Obama could remain in such a church reveals one of two things.  Either he actually agreed with wrights’ positions or he did not see any problem with being under the authority of a man who holds such strong views in conflict with the Bible.  Either is unacceptable in my view.

In the end it is even worse.  Obama didn’t only sit under the authority of Jeremiah Wright as a member of the church.  Wright was a mentor to Obama.  That means that for years Obama has been inculcated with the hate that spews from Wright’s mouth.  It is very difficult for me to accept what Obama wants us to believe, that through all that mentoring he absorbed none of Wright’s hate for whites and this country. 

Barack Obama is, perhaps, the most dangerous presidential candidate we’ve ever seen in this country.  I sincerely hope the American people aren’t fool by the slick presentation of his excuse because it just doesn’t hold water.

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Tags: Church, Jeremiah Wright, Obama


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