The Fabric of Our Lives

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Pres. Abraham Lincoln, quoting Jesus Christ.

When my mother was teaching me to do needlepoint and crochet, I had a tendency to make the stitches too tight. The result was a stiff piece of cloth you could’ve used for a sack grain; nothing would get in between those stitches.

She suggested moderation: make the stitches too tight and the fabric wouldn’t be able to breathe; it would become some stiff that it would actually tear at the first pull. What’s more, in terms of clothing, the wearer would become too hot and stifled since no heat could escape and no air could circulate. Too tense and too dense.

Neither should the stitching be too loose. All the heat would escape, making the clothing useless to the wearer. Eventually, too, it would completely unravel and fall apart. She said I needed to be more relaxed. Too loose is no use.

The same could be said of our society. Our federated republic, at least as it was originally intended, is about as perfect a form of government as anyone is likely to see in history. America was woven together so as not to be too tight, as the monarchies of Europe, stifling the freedom of its people and creating such a growing intensity of heat that the people eventually had to throw it off.

Neither was it so loose as to be useless as a form of government. Our federated republic offered enough security, liberty, and safety as to keep our people comfortable, yet still united in a common purpose. The checks and balances of our government was meant to serve as a barrier against any one purpose or group from gaining too much power. Too loose a form of government, and you would have anarchy and lawlessness. Every garment always comes with a pattern to sew, crochet or knit it together.

America’s pattern is the U.S. Constitution. Throw it aside, disregard it, destroy it and America would come apart at the seams. Those who complain that it’s too confining are those would dance naked through the streets and see Americans turned into vulnerable, hungry, ignorant and naked dependents.

I’m sorry to see that even Fox News is celebrating the Egyptian “victory.” They claim it’s a moment for a joy, but I feel dismayed, just as I did on September 11th. For the time being, the socialists, communists and Islamists have joined forces to tear the fabric of their societies apart and supposedly reconstruct the fabric. What Fox doesn’t realize – and perhaps these united forces don’t realize, either – is that they have different patterns for “reconstructing” it.

I suspect neither side has any intention at all of re-weaving the fabric of Egypt; her walls are down for good. That will make it easier to join her to the other Muslim states into one whole, seamless Islamic cloth. Egypt will not have an independent government, nor will Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, nor even distant Indonesia. They will be brought under one flag.

The communists have the same idea for the Westernized countries. No symbol of that breakdown is more important to them than the breaking down of the United States. They mean to dissolve the borders between the states, extract the states’ separate powers, and make Congress, particularly the House of Representatives.

That’s why the Tea Parties are so crucial. That’s why I didn’t take offense that Morristown didn’t want to read about foreign affairs (or what they think are conspiracy theories). They, and all the Tea Parties, need to keep on doing exactly what they’re doing on the local and state level. That’s why my advice was not to go national. That isn’t to say they shouldn’t network and share best practices with one another; only that the unification on a national level should be very limited, as the federal government was meant to be.

Whether Morristown wants to hear it or not, we are in a dire situation. The Tea Parties are our best defense against what’s coming. They absolutely need to keep going and not despair. Even now, communist organizations are planning to stage Egypt-style demonstrations. This is why I told the Tea Parties not to give up on the Tea Party. We must not yield our town squares to their domination.

They have a right to use them, just as we do; they don’t have the right to usurp them and claim them for their own. Unlike the Egyptians, after they’ve had their say, they have to go home again. Already, party affiliations in many towns make it difficult to secure a permit to assemble, at least for Conservatives. There’s a saying: “Use it or lose it”. If we abrogate our right now to assemble in public, we will lose it forever.

I take issue with the Media’s notion – and that includes Fox News – that democracy was victorious yesterday. It was no such things. No one elected anyone, no one campaigned, no one was vetted. Not only the presidential palace was threatened but their parliament as well. Their president resigned under threat of violence. Mubarak did himself no favors repressing elections and stealing money. There was nothing peaceful at all about these protesters, camping out in Tahrir Square with signs that read “Global Intifada.” This is what comes of Fox News having a Muslim owner, an ostensibly friendly one.

We laughed about poor Christina Aguilera getting caught up in the moment, flubbing the Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl. But it seems Fox News has gotten caught up in the moment in Cairo (the other stations are blatantly cheerleading, but that’s to be expected) and have flubbed their newscasts. They are doing a great disserve to their American conservative viewers. This is no moment to be celebrating, not in the free world.

This is the Tea Parties’ moment to hold together the fabric of America. They’ve been doing a good job and have enjoyed some victories. Because we didn’t win the Senate, Obama and the Socialists still holds the reins on foreign policy. MSNBC is supposedly featuring a program on Feb. 21st called “President of the World.” He interfered directly with Egypt’s internal affairs and himself summoned the rioters back to the square just as they were beginning to disperse to assure Mubarak’s speedy resignation. With his troops caught between having to fire on their own people or allowing the mobs to destroy the parliament, of all places, Mubarak resigned. In doing so, Obama completely circumvented Egypt’s constitution and its line of succession. Some democratic victory. They’re planning the same thing here. The only thing that stands between them and autocracy is – us.

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. He was a president who was soundly criticized for usurping too much power during the Civil War and acting on fiat, against the advice and consent of the Senate. He felt he had to take the chance, force the South to remain in the Union, and most importantly, free the slaves.

“Our popular government has often been called an experiment,” Pres. Lincoln said in a message to Congress on July 4, 1861. “Two points in it our people have already settled – the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains – its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.

“It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”

We can do this. We Americans can stand united against corruption, evil, and tyranny.

Mark Your Calendars

Why are the mobs clamoring for Mubarak's resignation?  What's their hurry?  Why is there a group called "The April 6th Movement" helping to organize these "protests"?  Well, April 6th was the birthdate of Rousseau and the death of Richard the Lionhearted.  But in the Islamic world purview, April 6th is Lailat-ul Qadar - the night the Koran descended to Earth in the year 610 A.D.

Call Me Crazy, But....

“There is only one Lord of the Rings, only one who can bend it to his will. And he does not share power.” Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

“’Saruman,’” I said, standing away from him, ‘only one hand at a time can wield the One, and you know that well, so do not trouble to say we! But I would not give it, any, I would not give even news of it, now that I learn your mind. You were head of the Council, but you have unmasked yourself at last. Well, the choices are, it seems, to submit to Sauron, or to yourself. I will take neither. Have you others to offer?’” Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Ch. 11.

The Morristown Tea Party was very unhappy with my last posting and asked me to take them off my list. So I obliged them. It’s not the first time. As I’ve said before, they pulled me off the podium at the first tea party, when I made the focus of my speech education. But I was right.

Then moderate RINOs were trying to pull them off the Conservative track, I did verbal battle with them at the meetings and on the group’s website. The group finally ordered me off the website. But I was right. Alas! Prophets are without honor in their own countries.

There’s just so much reality average people can deal with before they say, “Go away! Shut up! I don’t want to hear any more! You’re scaring me! You’re just a nut!” Only I’m not one of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians ready to storm the palace, or wherever Mubarak is holed up.

I think Morristown mistakenly identifies with the Egyptian protesters. They think the protesters are like Tea Partiers, clamoring for freedom, simply looking to oust a corrupt despot. They’re not, though. Morristown isn’t very studied on Islam or Middle Eastern history, although they have addressed the issue of terrorism here in America. Neither is anyone else, apparently. They probably figure they’ve got enough problems right here in good ol’ New Jersey, without worrying about what’s happening half a world away.

Though it’s sad, I’m glad they kicked me out. Now I definitely know I’m right.

Unfortunately. I feared all along that these days were coming upon us, but I hoped I was wrong. I wanted to be wrong. Everyone told me I was wrong. The truth is like a hard nut. You can either take the risk and bear your teeth down on it, cracking the shell and finding the nugget of truth inside. Or you can put it aside, fearing to break your teeth and jaws, because you haven’t the fortitude to break through the shell and discover what lies within.

We’re a very settled, comfortable people, we Americans. Aside from the shock of 9/11, we haven’t really known any sort of war or violence since the 1960s. Younger Americans weren’t even born yet, or were only very small children. The notion that there’s a body of religious fanatics intent on taking over the world seems fantastic and unbelievable. The Media, for its part, plays up to that willing disbelief. Egypt is also so far away, a country most Americans have never visit us. The Egyptians want what we want, they assure nervous Americans. To believe otherwise is too negative and frightening. The Tea Parties have just won an incredible victory. They can’t be blamed for not wanting to hear that the that victory is small in comparison to the veritable tsunami that is building far across the ocean.

Initially, the French Revolution was successful. The monarchy was deposed, replaced by citizen committees where there were no actual leaders. That set up the vacuum for the Islamicized Napoleon to take power. The French could do nothing with him. It took a consortium of European leaders, led by the Duke of Wellington, to depose Napoleon. Then there were another 50 years or so of more revolutions until France began to settle down into the modern Republic we know today.

Rid of Napoleon, a century or so later (give or take a decade or two), France – and all of Europe – was threatened by yet another tyrant. It took an alliance with America to rid herself of that dictator. Now, once again, France is the seedbed of revolution. This time, America herself has been corrupted. Who will come to the rescue this time? Luke Skywalker?

I believe there’s always hope and nothing has to be written in stone, as it were. But we can’t fight this enemy with our eyes closed, wishing the bogeyman away, pretending he doesn’t exist. The world can still make one last stand for freedom and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Nor can we fight it with a negative attitude. Or a complicit one. Last night, I was watching a program last night about physicist Stephen Hawkins and the incompatibility between the theory of relativity and quantum physics. He had a theory about positive and negative electrons and black holes. The positive electrons have the ability to escape the gravity of a black hole, whereas the negative electrons are too weak; they’re pulled in and crushed.

We’re being lied to. No matter how friendly Muslims may appear, the peaceful Muslims have the same goal as their violent brethren: the domination of Islam. The friendly are simply like any other “missionaries,” whose goal is to gather us in, like stray sheep. They don’t want violence any more than the comfortable middle-class suburbanites of Morris County. They don’t approve the tactics of the extremists; but they share the same beliefs.

The stage has been set and the chess pieces are all in place. Yesterday, the Egyptian mobs were moved in and out and in and out again by Obama. They’re building for a final surge, it seems, after today’s Friday prayers. The Egyptian military has only two choices: to fire on their own people or to let the mobs overthrow the government (corrupt as its current occupants are, the structure itself is still sound). Perhaps it will not come to pass. We all hope not.

I was watching the news last night. It was the middle of the night in Egypt and all seemed calm. I’m sorry, but while I hope for the best, I do, in fact, fear the worst. This is simply the calm before the storm. The Muslims have not changed in the 14 centuries since Mohammed gathered the clashing tribes of the Arabian peninsula under one religious umbrella. We are the only ones who have softened and shut our eyes and our ears to the facts - and these protesters don’t look and haven’t acted very peacefully; they’re anger may be justified. Then again, maybe it isn’t. As has been pointed out, we know very little about the real nature of the Egyptians. Our reporters over there can’t be sure whether they’re being told the truth or not; they can only take what they’re told at face value. To the Muslims, our love of peace is a weakness to be exploited. There may not be anything we can do about it, but one thing, at least, we should not do and that is allow ourselves to be deceived.

Many thanks to Glenn Beck for pointing out that this is the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. We see how well that worked out and how helpful Obama was in assisting the students crying out for democracy there.

As for MTP, or any conservative pundits whom this rather negative news upsets, I can only quote Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind: “I’m sorry if the truth offends you.”

Obama's Secret Password

Well, my blog was barely a half-day old when my prediction of a communistic council in Egypt came true. I said the military can enforce order, but it can’t really rule politically; not in a democracy. I made up my mind to make a second posting today - once I got home from work, because this just couldn’t wait until tomorrow. But something told me to hold on, that all was not over yet – indeed, trouble hadn’t even begun. Reports, I presume from the White House, stated Mubarak was going to announce his immediate resignation. Crowds began building in Tahrir Square in anticipation of a celebration.

“Yeah, but what if he doesn’t announce his resignation?” I wondered. What then? Was Obama building up the mobs for a let-down he knew perfectly well was coming? It seemed to me the ever-truculent and very proud Mubarak would never consent to bow down before such throngs. That was before noon.  It was mere minutes between seeing the password and reading the latest news.

Meanwhile, I was in the midst of some good-deed doing. I wanted to leave a message on the White House website. I was attempting to do a good deed for a community-minded colleague who bet us that she would never get to meet this president whom she admires, even though I don’t particularly. I highly recommend letting this particular president know what you think. But no threats or violence. Threats and violence are unworthy of us. In any case, the violence will come soon enough, or rather, too soon. Just be patient.

I filled in all the information and my comments. At the bottom, as with all websites, you have to type in a password so their site knows you’re a human being, not spam. Fine, fine, fine. The password was: al-Kufah. There was a second word (there are always two words) which I think was noorsq (Queen Noor of Jordan, perhaps?). But the name al-Kufah intrigued me. It was so unusual that it could have been a random password. I was so intrigued that I forgot all about the second password. I wrote the name down, finished the message I wanted to send, and then went to Google (and Wikipedia) to find out where Kufah is (what little I know of Arabic is that it means “of someplace” or “from”).

Kufah is a city in Iraq, about 110 miles south of Baghdad, and northeast of Najaf, on the banks of the Euphrates River. The estimated population in 2003 was 110,000. Along with Samarra, Karbala, Kadhimiya and Najaf, Kufah is one of five Iraqi cities that are of great importance to Shia Muslims. The city contains the Great Mosque of Kufah, one of the earliest mosques in Islam, built in the 7th century. Kufah began as a city in the Sassanid Empire (224 to 651), the last pre-Islamic empire in Mesopotamia. Prior to that, it was part of the Parthian Empire, one of the two main powers in Western Asia and Europe (the Roman Empire was the other, which was succeeded by the Byzantine Empire).

The Sassanid Empire encompassed all of modern Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Dagestan), southwestern Central Asia, part of Turkey, certain coastal parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf area, and areas of southwestern Pakistan, even stretching into India. The name for the Sassanid Empire in Middle Persian is Eran Shahr which means Aryan Empire.

The Sassanians were conquered by Caliph Umar, also known as Omar, a great admirer and friend of the Muhammad, secondly only to his greatest companion, Sadiq-e-Akbar. Umar became the second Muslim ruler after Muhammad’s death and ruled for 10 years.

Under Umar, the Islamic caliphate expanded at an unprecedented rate, ruling the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and more than two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire. His legislative abilities, his firm political and administrative control over a rapidly expanding empire and his brilliantly coordinated multi-pronged attacks against the Sassanid Persian Empire resulted in the conquest of the Persian Empire in less than two years. His reputation was then made as a great political and military leader. He was killed by a Persian captive.

Is there still anyone out there who thinks the Muslims couldn’t possibly reinstate their caliphate? If Umar could do it in the 7th Century in less than two years on horse and camelback with only primitive weapons, with modern, more sophisticated weapons, technology, and plenty of help from the Communists, it wouldn’t be hard at all. Anybody still want to underestimate them?

I sent the White House a message, and the White House certainly sent me one, on the very day Egypt’s downfall began. I now pass the message on to you, my readers.

The password is: Yikes.

Yikes, indeed. Now I’m home and I discover Mubarak did, indeed, refuse to step down although he says he’s transferred power to his Vice President, and there’s a throng of 100,000 angry Egyptians in the square. Is this Obama’s storm-the-Bastille moment? He certainly will deserve the blame for violence, if that’s what happens. He owns this moment.

Further speculation is useless. For now, we can only wait and see what happens next.

Born Leaders

Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever.
General Tagge: But that's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?
Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.
Star Wars IV: A New Hope

“Democracy – what is it?” Glenn Beck asked on his television show. He may well have asked. What it isn’t is a Republic, with a leadership, a constitution, a legislature, and a court system. In a true Democracy, the people would vote on everything, from electing the president, his cabinet or ministers, the legislature (just as they do in a Republic), and the judges in the court system.

No elected official would make any appointments at all, supposedly. In a social democracy, or communism, everything would be done by committee. What the people don’t realize, since it’s never really been tried, or when it has, it’s failed, what a chaotic disaster it would be.

Individual freedom would be the first thing to be thrown on the trash heap of history. Anything you’d want to do would have to be approved first by a committee (believe me, I know – I live in a condominium complex. Their new set of rules and regulations is 25 pages long). You haven’t many choices in such a complex. The board decides what’s best for the community of residents living here. You can make no renovations to the inside of your unit (which you own), except on an emergency basis, without prior approval. In order to remodel my kitchen, to take out the ancient cabinets, I must submit a written request first.

You learn to deal with living that way, by and by. Being single and living alone, it has its advantages. But for our nation to surrender its individuality, to resort to a cubicled country where a bureaucracy decides your every move is unthinkable for a nation whose very foundation is liberty and prosperity.

I used to be a vice president of a community organization. Like Mubarak, I remained in office too long and the natives started getting restless – and like Mubarak, by the time it was time to go, I was only to glad to go. I resisted because there were individuals who wanted to change the nature of our organization in a way that I knew violated our band’s constitution and the intentions of its founders.

The leader of this rebellion wanted to replace the band’s director with a committee of directors, and eliminate the other officers’ positions. Five band directors instead of one, I asked, incredulous. That was crazy. I had the unfortunate task of being in charge of directing the band’s elections (for that reason alone, the day I lost the election, I wanted to do handsprings all the way home).

I said I would think about it; but it only took me five minutes to realize what disaster such an arrangement would be for our little marching band. I imagined this five-headed band director trying to decide which street the band was supposed to turn down, with mere minutes to spare. The band would come to a halt, bringing the parade behind to us a halt, which is grounds of disqualification in a judged parade – you have to keep moving.

Or deciding which music to play as we approached the reviewing stand, with the judges marking our band down on their clipboards. I said, “No.” I wouldn’t consent to allowing a committee to run for band director. One office, one person.  They could appoint all the assistants they wished, but only one person could hold the office, make the decisions, and be held accountable for them.

Our rebel was a committed Liberal who screamed at me with the foulest profanity that I wasn’t even giving the idea a chance, that I was just opposed to change. I had committed the high crime, in this person’s eyes, of thinking for myself and disagreeing. Still, I held firm.

When I had the chance, I spoke to the other members of this committee, reasoning with them about the drawbacks of such a system and what a detriment it would be to the band. The illustration of the five-handed band director convinced. “When you come down to it, some one person has to make the decision. We don’t have time on the street for a committee to debate and vote on which march we’re going to play or how long to wait after a stop for the band to resume marching. Someone’s just going to have take the chance and call it.”

They agreed and the proposal of a committee band director was mercifully abandoned.

This is the way the Liberal Socialists want to rule the world – by committee. The Socialist Islamists have different ideas and eventually they’re going to come to an impasse. Make no mistake – the Muslims won’t be turning to Allah for earthly guidance; they’ll be turning to their mullahs, their clerics. The Socialists, to their union leaders. Regional governors, indeed.

It took a lot of guts to stand up to that rebel musician on our band, who was much bigger than I was. But I stood my ground because I knew I was right. That’s what being a leader means. Sometimes a decision may not be popular, but it is right.

The Communist Socialists appear to be advocating a “leaderless” world, a world with no bosses. Or presidents, prime ministers, or drum majors. Just a loosely connected mob meandering down the street. Or so they would have their followers think. A very convenient arrangement, as no single individual could be held accountable, either.

In a recent issue of Smithsonian, the magazine noted how The Mall has no individual statues. In past times, history would erect monuments to individual leaders of courage and character. Now our monuments are to the faceless common man.

We do owe an enormous debt to all those unknown (well, to us) soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their country. But we shouldn’t forget those who led them into battle, making their own sacrifices as well. The Medal of Honor website is full of their stories.

Most veterans don’t consider themselves “heroes”; they reserve that honor for those who fell in battle. It’s fine that we honor the average G.I. Still, we should not allow the Socialists to remove the individual leaders from our public spaces and consciousness. To tear them down, to scrape their names from the columns of history, is to attack the philosophical “individual”. The Socialists don’t want us to think of ourselves or anyone else as individuals, but only as a member of the team, a particle in the masses, a cog in the machine. They don’t want anyone to stand out, to be better, to be a hero.

That is the Socialist’s notion of democracy, of fairness, of justice. In Hungary, when the Communists took over, they tore down all the statues of local heroes. They declared that they’d brought a “new order” and that the slate was now wiped clean. Al Qaeda blew up the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan.

But eventually, someone more powerful will come along and wipe out their structure and rearrange them into cronies and lackeys petitioning for his favor, just as the emperor in Star Wars disbands the “imperial” senate and sets up his own “bureaucracy.”

No one can blame the common people for mistrusting their representatives. Not when they act like bureaucrats - passing laws for which the people never gave their consent and are detrimental to the nation as a whole – crooks, or fools. A Republican Congressman from New York was forced to resign just today for placing a photo of himself, topless, on a dating website, advertising himself as single when he isn’t.

Speaker Boehner demanded his immediate resignation, which this Congressman submitted along with an apology. Obviously, this man was not a born leader. All that district can do is try again. It makes you wonder what such people are thinking when they seek public office. Nothing seems to cure them of it, either. One scandal no sooner ends, than another crops up.

But the Communist Socialists and the Islamic Socialists promise to solve all that. In the first instance, since they control the Media, the Communist Socialists would make sure never heard about it, thereby relieving you of the worry. The Muslim solution would be to sentence the offender to death by stoning.

That is our fate, if true leaders don’t start showing up to lead the way back to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Doing Your Homework

In school, I was at best a mediocre student. I rarely paid attention, seldom did my homework, and thanks to bullying, used every excuse to miss school. Every year, I pushed the edge of the absentee envelope.

Yet, when it came to our nation’s history, I was an excellent student. I learned about the Muslim Brotherhood from my father, who fought in World War II. My parents taught me about the Holocaust and evils of both Nazism, Socialism, and Communism. The suffix “-ism” said it all: a derangement of some sort. My best friend taught me about astrology and the Great Conjunction. Even my parents, who would never give a second thought to astrology, knew about it. When we would go into the city in the early Sixties, I remember seeing scraggly men wearing sandwich board signs stating, “The End of the World is Near” and “The End of the World is Coming.”

My parents told me not to worry about it; they were just crazy men who somehow escaped from the mental hospital. “The men in white coats need to round those guys up,” my father laughed. But then came The Cuban Missile Crisis. They didn’t laugh anymore. They knew what was coming and were greatly concerned for our future.

I visited my friend when she moved to San Francisco. I was in college, and it was a summer between semesters. We were attending an astrology conference. Much of the talk was about the Great Conjunction of 1962 and the Anti-Christ. I also learned about precession and what it meant in astrological terms. In short, we’d been lied to: we were entering the Age of Capricorn, not Aquarius. The age of tyranny and big things.

The peace sign was based on a Teutonic rune symbolizing evil. From an astrological, or even astronomical standpoint, this circled symbol looked just like the scientific symbol for the Earth, but with the equatorial line broken.

Once I got back to school, I decided to do a little research and look up the newspaper for the alleged birthday of the A.C. When I requested the microfilm, the librarian, a man, gave me a rather nasty look and mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch.

I proceeded to one of the carrels to put the film into the machine. As I set everything down, I heard the librarian say to someone, “Yes that’s the date she asked for. No, I don’t know why she wanted it. She’s down that way.”

I hadn’t even settled in yet when a young, Middle Eastern man popped up at the end of the aisle. I looked at him and he looked at me. At last, he went away, having no real business there; I had won the stare-down. But now I was more suspicious than ever. Every once in awhile he would come back. Once he even came to look over my shoulder.

I examined the full week of papers. The headlines spoke of unnerved populations, particularly in India, praying to their gods to spare them from whatever calamity was to befall them – earthquake, fire, tidal wave, meteor, nuclear war. A religious group in the American Midwest camped out on a mountain, believing a spaceship was going to arrive to rescue them. But no calamities rocked the foundations of the earth.

The headlines, other than the reports about the Great Conjunction, spoke of space travel and improvements in communications, futuristic stuff. There were other telling stories about labor unrest and civil rights. But it was a birth notice that caught my eye; a royal birth, that occurred earlier that week. I’d found what I was looking for. I made a copy of the page and brought the microfilm back to the research librarian. He wouldn’t look at me.

The fact didn’t fit the theory exactly, but it was awfully close. Over the years, I kept myself up to date on the progress of this theory. As events unfolded, the more I was convinced that I solved the puzzle. Not the 666 or name-of-the-beast Revelationary stuff, but the development of a true, global dictator and how such a person would accomplish their goal. The prophecies said that he would be young, like Jesus, preach peace, and lead the young.

This person’s 30th and even 33rd birthdays came and went, but the world didn’t come to an end. He didn’t ascend the throne until just after his 37th birthday, when his father died. Young enough. But he didn’t conquer the world or anything. He remained quietly on his throne and even became a U.S. ally. He’s now 47. Certainly not young.  I thought perhaps the prophecies were wrong.  I hoped they were.

He married a beautiful and well-educated Palestinian woman. As queen, she co-authored the book, “The Sandwich Swap.” As for his own life, he was born to a British, but Muslim mother. He was initially passed over for the throne because of this birthright. However, his father changed his mind just before his death. It’s not known whether his mother was born a Muslim or converted. But she was (and is) a Westerner.

The battle plan to dominate the world requires a counterpart on the other side in the West – presumably Obama. He, too, certainly fits the bill. Where the other hails from an impoverished country that must rely on foreign aid, Obama presides over the freest and most prosperous country on Earth. Or at least it was.

We’ve been “redistributing our wealth” to foreign countries for decades. Obama is hammering the final nails into our financial coffin. He and the Socialists are choking off our energy supplies which are important not just to commuters but to industry. There’s no truck in the world that’s going to operate efficiently on natural gas. Modern trucks currently run on diesel fuel, but it’s incredibly expensive.

If Egypt falls, and the Islamists control the Suez Canal, a major route to oil will be cut off. If the countries along the southern Mediterranean fall to Sharia law and the countries along the north coast fall to Communism, the Mediterranean itself will be cut off. The Somali pirates rule the Horn of Africa and Indonesia pirates, the China Sea and South Pacific. The supply of oil in South America is ruled by military communist dictators like Hugo Chavez.

Chavez and Obama are great buddies. We can get our oil, but at a price they, not the market, will dictate. Obama has choked off our own oil resources. In such a precarious position, industry will grind to a halt. Businesses – capitalism – will be at the mercy of a socialist world government. Only those Corporations large enough to buy off corrupt bureaucrats and donate to socialist causes and campaigns will survive. We see already how much power such Big Brother Corporations wield. Witness George Soros.

We will be forced into trading with one world currency. You can buy all the gold in the world; but it will buy you nothing if it’s not guaranteed and recognized by the government. In the United States, it’s illegal to buy pure gold and in any case, you can no more mint your own coins than you can print your own greenbacks. All money will be exchanged for the required currency – probably with the global leader’s face on it.

The global leader. The Socialists and the Muslims are comrades in arms. But a day will come for them. Remember – to socialists, democracy means no single leader. The French mistook the Latin word res for rex - rex publica – “public king” (as opposed to an hereditary one). European Socialism will eventually come to blows with Islamic Socialism and their notion of a caliphate, with one dominant leader. That may very well be our guy from the college library search.

There are many theories as to the stages of a Revolution. One of my college professors had a theory. I can’t remember how many stages his revolution had. It might have been three. This particular theory had to do with the leadership of revolutions.

The first stage begins with a society that needs “changing”. The leader is one of those fiery visionaries who agitates for anarchy, a total breakdown of the society. He incites the disenfranchised to violent rebellion.

Once the goals of the first stage have been achieved, the rebels start rearranging things. The inspirational firebrand steps aside for someone with better organizational and team building skills. They’re so busy rebuilding their society that they don’t realize what’s really happening to their well-planned anarchy.

The final stage could be called “Respectability” or “The Establishment Phase”. Now the rebels are in power. They’re the new leadership, prone (though they don’t know it yet) to the same weaknesses - myopia, arrogance, corruption, and elitism – as their predecessors.

The professor shook his head sadly at this cycle. If only they didn’t have to progress into those latter two stages, he told us. They lose their youthful zeal, their vision, their ideals, he said. They become old. They become – The Establishment. The Machine.

The Socialists promising us “change,” a New World Order, are simply erecting a bigger, global machine from which no one who doesn’t own a spaceship will escape. It’s frightening talk, I realize. But sometimes being afraid is a good thing, as long as you don’t bury your head in the sand. This is not something, pundits would say, that will happen by tomorrow. Yet, you’d be surprised how quickly tomorrow can get here, especially when the Socialists have been planning this “reconstruction” for the last 70 or 80 years, laying the foundation of our prison brick by brick around us.

Sand – it’s a very poor foundation for a world government and a world government is a very poor foundation for freedom or even peace. Still, I only talk of the material world, not the spiritual. We’ve been systematically driven away from our churches by secular sabotage; going to church isn’t “cool.” We do seem to have a decadent culture, mostly driven by media images of a drunken Lindsay Lohan, teens idolizing gangsta rappers and drug dealers, and scantily clad bodies. A far cry from the modestly dressed Greeley, Colo., church dancers who so shocked Sayyid Qutb.

They are the actors in a long-running play to demonstrate America’s supposed decadence and decay. The few actors over 30 in this production are the Conservatives (the villains) and the Liberals (the heroes). They do lure our young people to committing all manner of foolishness and stupidity like doing drugs, dying their hair purple, and listening to nerve-wracking music (well, when you’re high or drunk, you don’t notice or care). In the play, it’s also okay to lie, steal, cheat, and have babies before you get married, or abort them, if you find pregnancy inconvenient.

Our young people place great faith in these performers. After all, they condone all the bad things adults warn kids against. They prop up young people’s confidence when mature people tell them they’re being stupid. The young believe them when they say that everyone who has any sort of savings or a nice car is evil and greedy, that global warming is going to cause the end of the world, and that the world can work very well without all those nasty fossil fuels. It’s a case of the irresponsible promoting responsibility, nihilists advocating change, teenagers babbling about tolerance and acceptance (yeah, right) as well as keeping the earth clean (their dorms and cafeterias are neat-free zones, however) and violent thugs preaching peace.

The Devil, they say (someone we never hear much about), loves chaos, but only insofar as it enables him to rule. He wants to be able to crack that fiery whip over our heads and cackle at us for our lack of foresight, fortitude, and faith. He couldn’t have picked a better time. The Socialists have made the world ripe for the picking and the Islamists wait at the ready, whips (and swords) in hand, dismissive of any notions of a spiritual realm that cannot be gained by those who don’t follow the rules. They want to rule heaven and earth and will move heaven and earth to do so.

Crazy as they are, the extremists not only believe in the real world, but worship it. If you don’t believe in anything else, believe this: they want to and will cover the world in darkness, if we allow them to do so.

Arianna On Line

In May of 2009, George Soros funded the investigative unit of Arianna Huffington’s website, The Huffington Post. While we were watching the chaos in the Middle East, Arianna Huffington has sold her website to America On Line. And as a consequence, she has become the CEO of AOL. What an unholy alliance that is. She has vowed to make AOL the Liberal Voice of America. Essentially, that must mean that George Soros now controls AOL.

Excuse me, but AOL was already pretty “Liberal”. I don’t know how much more Liberal it could get, even with Arianna at the helm. Still, the political chatrooms were diverse – and nasty. I expect Arianna has arrived to take her broomstick and sweep out all those icky Conservatives and Republicans who are giving her Liberal darlings a run for their money.

This must be the Liberal’s way of preparing for “Net Neutrality.” Arianna, of course, will be given a Net Neutrality pass. No one will demand of Arianna that she give the opposition “equal time.” She’s also found a safe home for her website. Under the banner of American Online, which essentially owns now, no one is going to shut her down.

This move will also place The Huffington Post at the vanguard of the blog wars. She’ll reach a wider audience now that won’t be able to escape her vindictive blatherings against freedom and liberty. They might just as well rename the service Socialist On Line.

She has gained great power with this acquisition and move. Millions of internet users have their e-mails with American On Line, including myself. Those e-mails are part of the link to many blogs. Fortunately, I also have another e-mail address to which I can change my blog’s address.

One of the planks of Communism is to control the means of communication. Soros’ cronies now control one of the major internet providers, and one of the oldest. According to the website, 24Ahead:

“The program's [The Investigative Fund] startup budget will be $1.75 million. The money will be provided by the Huffington Post and the Atlantic Philanthropies. The Bermuda-based Atlantic Philanthropies is headed by Gara LaMarche, who used to be a vice president of liberal uber-philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute. LaMarche is a member of Soros's Democracy Alliance, a billionaires' club that is organizing to impose socialism on America.”

America On Line had the nerve to impose itself as my homepage. I un-imposed it and replaced it with the Fox News homepage instead. I hope people are paying attention to this news item, because it’s not very good news for those who enjoy freedom of speech, especially on AOL.

The Star-Mangled Banner

As I am not a fan of any sport, I did not really watch much of the Super Bowl last night. I tuned in for a few minutes just before the half, just in time to tune out the black-eyed peas. The kick-off is what I always dread though. I don’t live in mortal dread of my team fumbling the ball, but I cringe at the notion that the diva-of-the-moment will mangle the Star Spangled Banner. The words “Star Spangled Banner” seem to confuse them. The star of the show is the banner; it is not a banner to headline a star.

They never miss. Or rather they never fail to miss a note, screech of key, wail the words instead of singing them, or forget the words entirely. According to reports, Christina Aguilera did not disappoint. She did, in her own words, do what many divas and musicians do: she “got caught up in the moment.” It’s happened to me; it happens to all of us with a song we particularly enjoy and the audience shares that enjoyment. We forget we’re supposed to be performing, putting our own emotions aside for the sake of the audience.

Aguilera accidentally changed the words in the song's fourth line, which reads as: “O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?" Instead, she merged the lyrics with the song's second line, which she had just sang (“What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?”), belting out: “What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleaming?”

If these rock n’roll divas would do a little less belting and a little more singing, they might just get the words right, instead of getting caught up in their own performances. The big mistake all these years has been turning the national anthem into a solo when it should be a chorus, with everyone singing it. Divas and divos make a hard song harder by adding more notes than it already which has (which is a lot of notes).

During the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key, accompanied by the American Prisoner Exchange Agent Colonel John Stuart Skinner, dined aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant, as the guests of three British officers. Skinner and Key were there to negotiate the release of prisoners, one being Dr. William Beanes. Beanes was a resident of Upper Marlboro, Maryland and had been captured by the British after he placed rowdy stragglers under citizen's arrest with a group of men. Skinner, Key, and Beanes were not allowed to return to their own sloop as they had become familiar with the strength and position of the British units and with the British intent to attack Baltimore. Key was unable to do anything but watch the bombarding of the American forces at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore on the night of Sept. 13–14, 1814.

When the smoke cleared, Key was able to see an American flag still waving and reported this to the prisoners below deck. On the way back to Baltimore, he was inspired to write a poem describing his experience, “The Defence of Fort McHenry,” which he published in The Patriot on Sept. 20, 1814. He intended to fit the rhythms of composer John Stafford Smith's “To Anacreon in Heaven.” It has become better known as "The Star Spangled Banner". Under this name, the song was adopted as the American national anthem, first by an Executive Order from President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 (which had little effect beyond requiring military bands to play it) and then by a Congressional resolution in 1931, signed by President Herbert Hoover.

In the fourth stanza Key urged the adoption of “In God is our Trust” as the national motto. (“Let this be our motto, in God do we trust.” The United States adopted the motto “In God We Trust” by law in 1956. Perhaps the song needs a further Executive Order, requiring that the singer prove they know the words and can sing the tune before performing the National Anthem in public.

Socialist Politics, As Usual

We were told by the State Department, the Liberal Media, and even some Conservatives, that the Egyptian riots weren’t about Israel, the U.S., or Islamicism; it was about an overeducated, unemployed, starving population. So the West held back.

Now, we’re told that it’s all about politics, politics as usual. Some politics, such as the restoration of freedom of the press and free elections, are issues with which we Americans can sympathize. Others are not. Unclear is what the opposition means by “constitutional reforms”. The state of emergency powers will be lifted. Understandable, at least in a civilized society, but possibly dangerous in a country where we’re told protestors throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails are exercising their right to assemble “peaceably.”

Secretary of State Clinton, meanwhile, assures Egypt that the United States will be open to discussions with the Muslim Brotherhood. (formally known as “The Society of the Muslim Brothers”). The United States also opened diplomatic relations with the Irish Republican Army (who eventually gained seats in Northern Ireland’s legislature) and Yassir Arafat (another Noble prize “laureate”) and Hamas.

My mother is always criticizing me for buying books instead of going to the library. Owning the books, however, while expensive, is very useful when I need to quote an author quickly, without having to get in my car and drive to the library, hoping the book is there (which it may not be). Admittedly, the library is less than five minutes away, but I prefer the leisure of having the book at hand when I need it, whether it’s Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, or, in this case, “The Looming Tower.”

Written by Lawrence Wright in 2006, with the subtitle, “Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11”, the book begins with a detailed account of the origins of The Society of the Muslim Brothers. Wright didn’t win the Nobel Prize for his book, but he did win he Pulitzer.

Wright begins by telling the story of an immigrant from Alexandria Egypt, Sayyid Qutb (prounounced kuh tub). He left Egypt in November of 1948, a country in “rags and tears” with an arrest sentence put on his head by the infuriated Egyptian king, Farouk. A civil servant in the Ministry of Education, born in poverty, he had become a popular literary and social critic, one of Egypt’s most esteemed writers.

At first, not a particularly observant Muslim, he became radicalized by the British occupation and Farouk’s complicity. “Egypt,” Wright tells us, “was racked by anti-British protests and seditious political factions bent on running the foreign troops out of the country – and perhaps the king as well.”

Qutb was fairly Westernized. He dressed in Western fashion, loved classical moved and Hollywood movies. He read translated versions of everything from British poetry to Einstein’s theories, and “immersed himself in French literature, particularly Victor Hugo.”

Still, he regarded the West as a cultural threat. “The distinctions between Capitalism and Marxism, Christianity and Judaism, fascism and democracy were insignificant by comparison with the single great divide in Qutb’s mind: Islam and the East on one side, and the Christian West on the other,” says Wright.

Qutb arrived in New York during the festive holiday season. 1948 was a prosperous year for America. The unemployment rate was under 4 percent; “anyone who wanted a job, could get one,” Wright notes. “Half of the world’s total wealth was now in American hands.”

He found New York filled with promise – and misery and decadence. Even on the journey across the Atlantic, he had been propositioned by a drunken woman who asked to share his bed. He slammed the door on her (rightly, I might add). What he saw were drunken alcoholics sleeping in doorways, pimps, prostitutes, and youth gangs. Qutb took heart in the way New York welcomed immigrants; each ethnic group had its enclaves. Unfortunately, one of those enclaves belonged to dispossessed European Jews.

A single bachelor, he has a singular disgust for America’s loose sexuality – even in the Fifties. Eventually he moved to a small-town in Colorado, where he observed men and women dancing close together. He came to view Americans as beasts, “a reckless, deluded herd that only knows lust and money,” referring to the Kinsey Report, with which he was familiar.

Qutb was a fervent anti-Communist and noted the anti-Communist fervor of American society. A year before he was exiled from Egypt and came to America, he wrote, “Either we shall walk to path of Islam or we shall walk the path of Communism.”

“He predicted,” Wright says, “that once the average American worker lost his dreamy expectations of becoming rich, American would inevitably turn towards communism. Christianity would be powerless to block this trend because it exists only in the real of the spirit – ‘like a vision in a pure, ideal world.’ Islam, on the other hand, is ‘a complete system’ with laws, social codes, economic rules, and its own method of government. Only Islam offered a formula for creating a just and godly society. Thus, the real struggle would eventually show itself: it was not a battle between Capitalism and Communism; it was between Islam and Materialism. And inevitably, Islam would prevail.”

Hasan al-Banna founded the Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928. The Brotherhood was founded for the express purpose of turning Egypt into an Islamic state. “Within a few years, the Brothers has spread across the country, and then throughout the Arab world,” notes Wright, “planting the seeds of the coming Islamic insurgence.” In February 1949, al-Banna – the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood - was assassinated in Cairo. “The assassination,” Wright says, “occurred just as Qutb’s book, “Social Justice Islam was being published – the book that would make his reputation as an important Islamic thinker.”

James Heyworth-Dunne, a British Orientalist and a convert to Islam, spoke to Qutb about the danger the Muslim Brothers posed to the modernization of the Muslim world. “If the Brothers succeed in coming to power in Egypt,” Dunne warned, “Egypt will never progress and will stand as an obstacle to civilization.” Dunne offered to translate Qutb’s book and pay him a fee of $10,000, “a fantastic sum for such an obscure book,” Wright notes. Qutb refused, later saying, “I decided to enter the Brotherhood even before I left the house.”

Qutb returned in 1950 to an Egypt and an Arab world humiliated by their defeat in the war against Israel. The Egyptian government ruled without popular authority. Qutb, instead of becoming more liberalized, as his friends had hoped, came home more radicalized against what he viewed as the morally and religiously bankrupt West. “Modern values,” Wright writes, “secularlism, rationality, democracy, subjectivity, individualism, [sexual freedom], tolerance, materialism – had infected Islam through the agency of Western colonialism. America now stood for all that. Qutb’s polemic was directed at Egyptians who wanted to bend Islam around the modern world. He intended to show that Islam and modernity were completely incompatible. His project…was to take apart the entire political and philosophical structure of modernity and return Islam to its unpolluted origins.” Separation of the sacred and the secular, state and religion, were the hallmarks of modernity, which had enslaved the West.

“But Islam could not abide such divinity. Islam, in Qutb’s view, was total and uncompromising. It was God’s final word,” Wright notes. “Only by restoring Islam to the center of their lives, their laws, and their government could Muslims hope to recapture their rightful place as the dominant culture in the world. That was their duty, not only to themselves, but to God.”

Wright tell us that Egypt outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in 1948. “But by that time, the Brothers had more than a million members and supporters – out of a totally Egyptian population of 18 million. Although the Brotherhood was a mass movement, it was also intimately organized into cooperative ‘families’ – cells that contained no more than give members each, giving it a spongy, clandestine quality that proved difficult to detect and impossible to eradicate.”

With al-Banna’s approval, a secret and violent underside to the Brotherhood had been organized, targeting not only the British and Egypt’s dwindling Jewish population, but also bombing symbols of Western influence such as movie theaters, and the assassinations of judges and political leaders.

“By the time the government murdered al-Banna, in an act of self-protection,” Wright notes, “the secret apparatus posed a powerful and uncontrollable authority with the Brotherhood.” In 1952, in a military coup, King Farouk was put aboard his yacht and sailed into exile. Gamal Abdul Nasser, an Egyptian, was now in control of the country.

You can read much more in Wright’s book about the Muslim Brotherhood, their ties to the Nazis during World War II and to Al Qaeda leading up to the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Once you’ve read "The Looming Tower," you’ll realize why our present administration is so supportive of this Egyptian-Arab uprising and its complete disdain for Israel. Nothing is more surprising than that a U.S. president who goes by the name Barrack Hussein Obama, his manifest Christianity not withstanding, himself strong-arms regulations such as the health care package into legislative existence, would lend an ear to the socialistic pleas of the Muslim Brotherhood.