The British and Portuguese Philosophies

/0 Comments/in , /by

Dedicated to Nicholas Maxwell

It is indeed a fact that the title of my latest article, From Knowledge to Wisdom, is literally the same as Nicolas Maxwell’s work. And as we know, there isn’t, spiritually speaking, any coincidences. And that’s why we are now reading his work to find, eventually, actual connections between the Portuguese and British philosophies.

Concerning European thought, it is perfectly known that both philosophies have a distinct role compared to the French and German ones. Firstly because the former seem especially related and traditionally “confronted” with the Continental culture. Secondly because both spiritual traditions have a unique interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy, chiefly regarding on practical fulfilments based on living and spontaneous experience (1). Moreover, it is known that the Aristotelian notion of experience was not inspired on mechanical or technological procedures, those barely practiced in Antiquity and increasingly developed in the Modern Age. Besides, the works of Baron of Verulam, namely the Novum Organum, were most useful in pointing out why the induction problem needed to be solved beyond syllogistic exercises practiced by medieval scholars in a purely formal registry.

We don’t think, like many western academics do, that the British thought is simply reduced to empiricism, pragmatism and materialism. In Bacon’s scientific methodology, the crooked mirror and the theory of the idols are, for example, true philosophical resources to understand how the human mind can wrongly judge, while distorting, the immanent forms of nature itself. And that is why the induction process, going from sensible experience to lower axioms or propositions, is fundamental to guarantee new and general axioms based on intermediary ones. So, the “living axioms” or the middle ones were meanwhile considered, not according to a syllogistic method stemming from abstract propositions, words and notions, but under the light of a natural history, made of particular facts gradually and carefully inducted to perform the knowledge of forms (2).

This same process was, curiously enough, analogical to the Socratic induction, in which the crucial aim was to extract concept definitions, especially regarding the negative cases, under the method of exclusion, in order to conclude for the positive ones (3). So, as Socrates was always ready to persecute dialectically the divine world of Ideas, Francis Bacon was trying to implement aninduction methodology capable of perceiving the interplay of matter, forms and motion in nature, mostly invisible to human senses. Moreover, the mathematics application on Bacon’s operative induction was just an auxiliary one, scarcely coming after the process in which the multiple would give its place to the simple (4), the incommensurable to what was susceptible ofmeasure, the insensible to what could be calculable, vagueness or confusion to what offered certainty, as we can similarly experience or testify before the alphabet letters and note music itself.

On the other hand, Galileo Galilei was not the founder of the experimental method, according to some academic manuals of philosophic history. The true one was indeed Francis Bacon, whose experimentation methodology was an admirable model of investigation of causes about the elastic, fluid and ethereal elements. An example of this can be found in his work, Novun Organum, where he makes the famous investigation of the form of heat.

It is possible that some historians of science could see or detected in Bacon a forerunner of Karl Popper in respect of the method of falsification. Despite of everything, we think that Bacon’s natural philosophy should be investigated further into the limits and the possibilities of classical knowledge, principally enunciated by John Locke, David Hume and by the German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant. Subsequently, the problem is to know how the empirical facts and the formal sciences expressed by logical and mathematical propositions work.

In other words, the problem emerges as a remote one. So, Francis Bacon needs, perhaps, to be strongly reconsidered in order to weigh how Aristotle’s physical, logical and metaphysical thought was eradicated in the Modern Age. Therefore, a new scholastic system was born based on mechanical science and, naturally, more and more dependent on mathematical logic and analytical thought.

Crucial it is as well to see how John Locke had, effectively, recognized mathematics as an independent knowledge domain facing the empirical one. And how, in turn, David Hume conceived the same thing with one single exception: the mathematical concepts would have their origin in sensitive or perceptual experience. And last but not least, how Bertrand Russell reduced mathematics into formal logic (5).

So, at this point supervenes, according to our perspective, the philosophical problem of the present Anglo-Saxon culture: a specific form of positivism due to a contemporary deviation from the philosophia perenis, mostly represented by Aristotle’s logic. In fact, the Greek philosopher did not conceive a mathematical logic.

Aristotle´s induction is indeed the first logical inference by which the human spirit operates the transition of the multiple towards the unit. Philosophy, by considering images (fantasmata) originated in senses, begins with audacity of inferences just to transcend time and space determinations. In fact, the process of conception can be no more reduced to mathematical abstraction, as currently demonstrated in geometric postulates or paradoxical notions (6) which, by itself, are in contradiction with natural experience.

Fractional, negative, irrational, imaginary numbers are just mathematical fictions, like when we define a point without dimensions, or even a line without breadth. Mathematical fiction can also include the tendency of the polygon to the circumference and, most of all, the non-distinction between straight lines and curves. We must recognize that similar fiction represents a different world outside nature and life, a world in which industrial and machinery activity are solidly dependent.

Basically, the damaging consequences of modern science is certainly the centre of the Portuguese philosophy inquiry, especially regarding the calculating progress based on extensive and disqualified abstraction. Mathematics cannot hence explain phenomenal motion in spite of the possibilities of non-superficial and volumetric operations of arithmetic – multiplication and division -, whose respective incognita is foremost implicated in generation and corruption phenomena. But, of course, there also exists the Pythagorean point of view, a deeply one dependent at least on a minimum of divine revelation, or, more precisely, on a speculative process beyond all kinds of quantitative applications confined to extensive observation, construction and experimentation.

It is out of question that William Hamilton’s studies about the “quantification of the predicate” are useful to modern logic, namely those ones regarding Morgan and Boole’s studies. But it is also true that Aristotle’s logic is not a particular case of the theory of classes as is commonly presented in academic institutions. Aristotle’s logic surpasses the conversion of combined propositions, useful for lawyers and judges, as celebrated in the classical period of Roman rhetoric, but, in the end, not capable of realizing a philosophical speculation or a wisdom inquiry.

Therefore, if the process of academic culture expands and communicates human knowledge, the art of invention increases much more and infinitely the living world of metaphysical wisdom. The British thinkers, logicians, psychologists, epistemologists, can meanwhile recognize that even Sherlock Homes, a fictitious character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, used an investigative method in many senses beyond the positivism of the Nineteenth Century. Deduction, induction (7), abduction (8), all this can be undoubtedly found in Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. Nevertheless, we shall carefully listen to the man who was, fictitiously speaking, an experimentalist in “Baritsu” (9) and, more surprisingly, unacquainted with something referred to Philosophy: «imagination is often the mother of truth».

 

 

brasao(1) Aristotelian experience is not a locked up process. In fact, it is not possible to reach the universal by just knowing partial, regular or cyclical accidents extracted from induction reasoning. Empirical process demands also deduction reasoning for conclusive universal science. In this sense, the Portuguese discoveries were consequently inspired in the empirical “revolution” of Aristotle’s cosmology, particularly represented in the realistic vision of Henry, the Navigator, or even more through the classification of zoological, botanic and mineralogical phenomena.

(2) The following passage is a specific expression of Bacon’s non-Aristotelian Aristotelianism: «There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of the middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms at last. This is the true way, but as yet untried» (Novum Organum, I, Aph. XIX, Bacon, IV, 1901, 50).

(3) This induction method goes beyond the remit of induction by simple enumeration. By that it means that Bacon’s induction is especially founded on collection, comparison and exclusion of factual qualities in things and their hidden structure.

(4) Bacon’s natural philosophy is concerned with simple natures or the ultimate ingredients of things, as, for instance, heat, light and weight. In this particular sense, Bacon´s interpretation concerning the basic structure of matter is not identical with natural law.

(5) Two main things overtop Russell’s objective in his way to logicism: 1. Mathematical truths can be translated into logical truths; 2. All mathematical proofs can be recast as logical proofs, or more properly, theorems of mathematics can constitute a proper subset of the theorems of logic, like numbers can be identified with classes.

(6) Worth of memory is Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum, in which method does not enter Aristotle´s third term. And that is why dialectics are especially important in this paradoxical method, where God Himself is presented like a sphere whose centre is everywhere and its circumference nowhere. In short, Nicholas of Cusa conceived God as a non- physical centre of all beings and all things.

(7) Despite Holmes’s deductive proceeding, inductive reasoning is often valorized: «It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts».

(8) Abduction, originally formulated by Aristotle, is a syllogism in which the second premise has only the character of probability.

(9) “Baritsu”, or more correctly Bartitsu, was an eclectic martial art and self-defence method created by Edward William Barton-Wright, a British engineer who lived for three years in the Empire of Japan. Bartitsu was developed in England in the years 1898-1902 and became somehow immortalized as “Baritsu” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The “New Art of Self-Defence” combined several fighting styles like fencing, boxing, wrestling, savate, jujitsu and a walking stick as a means of self-defense. At the present, it is known as the martial art of Sherlock Holmes.

19Miguel Bruno Duarte is a Fellow in Philosophy and Political Science at the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

Postformat Gallery: Multiple images with different sizes

/0 Comments/in , /by

Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lor

Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.

Read more

Our Schools are Killing our Children – Part I

/0 Comments/in , /by

1. The Takeover of our Schools

The Littleton, Colorado, school shooting affair has provided yet another place exposing the unraveling threads of our civilization.

The world has never been a “safe” place to live. At any point in history, there have been nearby threats to life and limb, and even more, to our spirits. There are persons abroad in any society who despise truth except as a tool for their own ends, who have no use for righteousness, and who are not lovers of souls other than their own. And they do very poorly even at loving themselves because their behavior is heading them pell-mell for self-destruction, the cosmic junk heap, hell.

Truth-righteousness-love is the three-strand plumbline by which God measures, and by which we must measure, our spiritual lives. Yet these three qualities are not of interest to a substantial (but often indeterminate) segment of the human population — which makes them enemies of God, and enemies of the common good. If you are not interested in truth, righteousness, and/or love, you are an enemy of the common good, of the Kingdom of Heaven, and of the King.

We have had in America, arguably, for a country this large, until recently the safest and therefore the freest place to live in the world at any time in human history. Safety and freedom go together. The less the safety (i.e. the more the sin), the more external control there must be on our behavior. Only a moral society can be a free society. Our founding fathers universally recognized that fact, and built our constitution on that principle.

A moral society is a self-governing society, a society which has a commonly accepted set of values by which it rules itself — independently of coercive interference by civil government.  In a free society, there is a clear distinction between society and civil government, the government being limited primarily to the role of protector, referee, and servant of society.

One of the most easily recognizable symbols of this relative freedom and safety in America has been our school system. Parents by the droves have sent their children off to school day by day, secure in the thought that their children were in safe hands.

For the first time in American history, that is no longer true. Beginning in the 1960’s, and then escalating in the 1970’s, parents began more and more taking their children out of our so-called “public” education system (which is now neither public nor education), and either home schooling them or sending them to independent schools. Something like 10% of American children receive home schooling today.

Their concerns were chiefly intellectual and spiritual. They saw that government-controlled schools were not in fact educating their children. Perhaps a few foresaw the violence to come. But the violence was inevitable — as if scripted into the school curriculum.

William Coulson (who with Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, engineered the entry of “non-directive” methods from therapy into education), along with Maslow, saw the disaster the team had created, and has since the 1970’s been telling people to stop using their non-directive techniques.

He visited a school in New York City shortly after a woman had been beaten and raped by a gang of teens who had gone “wilding” in Central Park. He told the teachers that they (using his own non-directive methods) were training their students to go wilding. They, of course, did not believe him. Non-directiveness teaches students to have no authority other than their own feelings. If it feels good to beat and rape, then that is sufficient justification. Whether or not intended by the teachers, that would inevitably be the effect. And so it has been.

About 1991, during a sermon in a church near Pittsburgh, I commented that “Our schools are killing our children…” I had outlined the nature of Outcomes Based Education and the mind-control methodology of our government-controlled schools, and the predictable violent results of non-directive education. Later, I thought my statement was a bit strong.

But it was not strong at all, it was too little and too late.

Eric Harris, co-assassin with Dylan Klebold at Littleton, had written: “My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law…. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame.” Or as a song has it: “There is no right or wrong, only boring and fun.”

That is the culmination of the non-directive “self-esteem” training which we have been force-feeding our children for nearly three decades. Eric and his friend were simply putting into practice precisely what the Supreme Court had told us in Casey that every woman possesses — the right to self-determination subject to no outside control, the right to invent one’s own meaning of life (i.e. morality) including the right to kill her child at will.

There is a direct line from those Supreme Court abortion decisions of the last 50 years to student murders in our schools. Our schools are killing our children, and our courts are mandating the philosophy of life which justifies such horror.

What, then, pray tell, is the difference between what Klebold and Harris did and what the abortionist does? The abortionist gets paid. The boys just did it for fun. The boys were amateurs, the abortionist is a professional.

Eric Harris was not a bad student. As Coulson predicted, he learned very well. The problem was that he did not have sufficient moral backbone or sufficient reality contact to live above the teachings which he was absorbing. He did what he was told. Each of us in the human race has a spoiled brat within — which would like to believe just what Eric wrote. But most of us have sufficient control over the brat in us to hold it in check. The two boys said to the brat, “Go for the gusto!”

We can be very grateful that most of the students have enough backbone and reality contact to live above the philosophy of life to which they are being subjected in government-run schools.  They have enough common sense to mostly ignore it.  But not completely, only mostly.

2. Why Did They Done It?

Mrs. Katzenjammer (in the Katzenjammer Kids cartoon of the 1940’s) in exasperation used to ask that question of her rambunctious kids. We are asking it today of our murderous kids. Vy did they done it???  Mrs. K showed no obvious awareness of the fallen nature of her kids, nor do very many of today’s commentators and questioners. They do not know vy they done it. Attempts to psychologise on it are inane and empty.

A Washington Times weekly headline (4/26) notes that “Schools lack moral center: Experts”. Like we needed experts to tell us what government education has been mandating. The tragic fact is that many still do not get it. Apart from the law and grace of God, there is no way to understand vy they done it. Still less to do anything substantial about it.

The Washington Times of April 23 echoed a theme commonly heard after each of the recent school shootings:

Nothing in their lives seemed to indicate that their sons, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, would soon be responsible for the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, say friends and neighbors.

And then in the 4/26 Times weekly edition:

Until their sons launched a bloody rampage on Columbine High School…, both the Harris and Klebold families appeared to be living their versions of the American dream.

Are we to believe that these “normal” parents, living their version of the “American Dream”, were unable to discern any trouble in their children? It turns out that Dylan Klebold had already been in trouble with the law, and that both boys were a part of the “Trench Coat Mafia”, a paramilitary “Gothic” group. Yet even in view of the many earlier teen-on-teen killings, these boys were not being closely enough watched, and there was great surprise when they engaged in such violence.

Why did they done it??? From God’s point of view, the question is moronic. He has told us vy we do such things. St. Paul repeated the warning yet again in Romans 1:18 ff. In three stages. We begin by subverting truth. Then we fall into worshipping the creation rather than the Creator. And thirdly, bereft of truth, and cast into a false dependency and obedience relationships (idolatry), we are inevitably ensnared into irrational, compulsive, addictive, …and lethal behaviors.

St. Paul thus gives a common sense analysis of the logic of being a creature — and hence a dependent being. If you are a dependent being, you had better find Someone dependable, on whom to rest the weight of your dependency. All other ground is sinking sand. Sin all begins with a choice which in some way subverts truth.

Eric himself was kind enough to tell us vy they done it — because they wanted to. We have trouble accepting the reality of freewill. We want to psychologise everything so we can control it. We do not want to deal with the fact that we choose to enter the covenant God is offering, or, as taught by our government, to be our own sovereign.

3. Discernment

But the American public cannot discern good science from the arrant nonsense paraded to justify homosexual behavior. The American public cannot discern that killing babies in the womb is evil.  Taking the life of another person without cause or due process is socially acceptable in America. That is appalling. The American public is persuaded that truth, especially moral and religious truth, is a relative matter.

So why should we expect citizens and parents with such an incapacitated mindset to discern perverted and violent behavior beneath the surface of their children’s psyches? We are today the people of whom Scripture speaks — eyes to see but cannot see, and ears to hear but cannot hear. We are spiritually blind and deaf.  And dumb.

Government-controlled schools have pounded into the heads of parents that they, the parents, are defective raisers of their own children, that they need the expertise of the experts, and that the experts have decreed — the children know best.

So only the bravest parents will risk public, and possibly legal, censure by peering too closely into the thinking and lifestyle of their offspring. Or by saying “no” and making it stick.

“Oh, that trenchcoat Mafia stuff… That was just a game. Why take it so seriously?” Like Dungeons and Dragons, which is no doubt “just a game” for many children, the trenchcoat Mafia was an evil game celebrating darkness. Games which celebrate darkness blur the line between good and evil, and thus provide cover under which stealth thoughts of murder and violence sneak under the radar of naive, unobserving, and spiritually blind parents. And so they have.

In the same weekly edition of the Washington Times, retired Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former West Point psychology professor, says:

“Anywhere television appears, 15 years later, the murder rate doubles. …television is the single most pervasive influence in the lives of children in America. They spend more time watching TV than any other single act….”

Not in our house, they didn’t.

4. Why They Done It…

We have lost the capacity as a people to discern good from evil, and that fatal flaw has reached right into our civil law and our courts, into our schools and our churches, and right down into our child-raising. Although the reasons are quite evident, we really do not know vy they done it. To repeat what I have said many times before….

They done it because their culture and their parents have told them that self-centeredness is “IN”, and self-discipline and self-giving are “OUT”. That message was signed and sealed in 1962 (Engle v. Vitale) by our Supreme Court which told the God of the Universe that He could not talk to our children in government-controlled schools, nor the children to Him.

We have now for 37 years, by coercive force of law, taught our children that God (the only being who can obligate us to do anything at all) is irrelevant to growing up. Where is the surprise when they take our words to their logical conclusions?

Then in 1973 (Roe v. Wade), our treasonous Court declared that it was legal to trash the lives of our unborn children for any reason or no reason at all — so long as it made the mother feel good. And finally in the 1990’s (Casey), the Court admitted and proclaimed the very foundation of it all — that we each have an inalienable right to invent our own meaning of life, to define our own right and wrong, and that we are thus responsible to no one outside of ourselves.

The Court did not mean that, of course. We all understood that, although we are no longer under obligation to God, we do remain under the strictest obligation to the Court. They would be quiet incensed to hear that we thought otherwise. The Court has taken what God defines as sin and made it into the highest good. It has turned self-will and rebellion against God into the law of the land — and made itself into God.

If that is not an overthrow of our Constitutional order, what act of treason needs to be added to make it so? Some of us believe William Clinton to have sold America out to the Chinese Communists. But what is that along side of our Court selling America out to Satan?

In all my reading of history, I do not know of a single culture in which the parents allowed the teachers of their children to tell the children that they, the children, knew more than their parents. And where in the world has there been a culture in which school children thought it would be fun to mount lethal attacks on their classmates? And not only thought it, but did it?

And whose voices are being heard most vocally in Littleton to return to prayer? According to one report, the children!  Where are their parents? the clergy?  No doubt busy psychologising rather than repenting of their betrayal of God and of our children. Why are the parents leaving any of their children in government-run schools? If parents, fathers especially, will not begin to take charge again of their own lives and of their own families, our increasingly lethal and outlaw government will continue to do it for them — and produce more children made in their own outlaw image.

Our children are paying a terrible price for this betrayal and for our own cowardliness — and there is more to come.

The womb is today (yes, literally and statistically) the most dangerous place in the world for a child to be. Nearly one third of the population in the womb will die a brutal death at the request of the mother. The world, the flesh, and the devil, using the Court and the education system, with the mealy-mouthed compliance of the legislatures and churches, have turned American public schools into perhaps the second most dangerous place for a child to be.

5. Silencing the Dream

Were Eric and Dylan and their families part of the mainstream American dream? It depends on which dream you think is the “American” one.

If you choose the American dream of the first colonists of the early 1600’s, or the American dream of the founding fathers two centuries later, one has to conclude that Eric and Dylan were enemies of that dream, and that their parents were at best woefully ignorant, if not enemies, of it.

The (yes, imperfect and incomplete) dream of the first and founding Americans was of truth, righteousness, and love, and of a constitutional order in which public discussion of the basic religious issues of life would be guaranteed. It was of a culture which understood itself to be both personally and corporately responsible before God. It was of a government which knew itself to be under a law higher than itself, under the law and grace of God.

But the American dream of today is that every person ought to be allowed to live as he wishes, that self-will and self-definition are the highest values. So, God, take note. You may have created us, but You have no business directing us.  We are “non-directive” now.  So butt out.

The understanding and faith and values upon which America was founded, and upon which it became the greatest, safest, and most free nation on earth were subverted through our Government School System (the Church of Secular Materialism), and through the abysmal ignorance, cowardice, and appallingly poor strategy of those who should have been defending the ramparts of America’s Godly heritage — our politicians and clergy.

Christians were so divided among themselves, and so incapable of responding to burgeoning secular forces that we gradually gave up the fight, secluding ourselves within our church walls, finally leaving the public space to the anti-Christ forces of non-directive education.

“Non-directive” was aimed not at parents but at God. God was successfully silenced (as it were) in the public arena by silencing those whom God had called to be His witnesses. (See I Kings 18, Isaiah 40-50, Acts 1, and Rev. 12:11) That silencing could never have happened had not civil government taken control of our children — along with our own sheep-like compliance and cooperation.

The legitimate American Dream is the Godly dream, not the dream of self-centeredness unleashed to seek its own final demise. We will not recover and secure that dream until civil government is removed from all education.

Dr. Earle FoxDr. Earle Fox is IAI’s Senior Fellow in Philosophy of Science and the Worldview of Ethical Monotheism.

This article was originally published at TheRoadtoEmmaus.org. See also Dr. Fox’s new Book Abortion, the Bible and America.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

Indented Quotes and Images – beautiful

/0 Comments/in /by

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.

Read more

Danger Ahead — Part I

/0 Comments/in , /by
Murdered by fanatical countrymen, Anwar El-Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin paid the ultimate price for peace, but the shelf life of the product they purchased is rapidly expiring. Hosni Mubarak’s downfall removes from the scene one of the few obstacles that have delayed the establishment of the grand Islamic strategic unity designed to establish the Universal Islamic Caliphate, and in so doing, to wipe Israel off the map. A few factors, which the enlightened minds of the usual international commentators cannot even remotely discern, contribute to the rise in danger level of this moment to the nth degree:

The Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological matrix of the revolutionary forces in the Islamic world, may not have given the initial impetus to the rebellion in Egypt, but it is surely the only political organization prepared to take advantage of the chaos and rule the country after Mubarak’s exit. The U.S. government is well aware of this and welcomes the rise of the Brotherhood, proving once again that Barack Hussein Obama has been deliberately working in favor of the enemies of the West. The soothing evasive responses by the State Department in recent days are so contradictory that they amount to a confession of falsehood: first, the Department of State swore that the Brotherhood would remain on the sidelines; then, when it became impossible to continue believing this, it assured us that the Muslim organization had changed, that it had become peaceable and meek as a lamb. Commentators hostile to the government noted that, in turning against Mubarak, Obama was following the example of Jimmy Carter, who, under the same pretext of promoting democracy, helped overthrow an allied government and ended up turning Iran into one of the most fearsome enemies of the United States, a dictatorship a thousand times more repressive than that of the former Shah. The difference, I believe, is that Carter seems to have acted out of sheer stupidity, while it is quite evident that Obama, whose career was sponsored by a Saudi pro-terrorist prince, and whose ties with the radical left are the most compromising you can imagine, is pursuing a rational plan designed to weaken the position of his country in the international context while systematically demolishing the economy at home.

The agricultural policy of the Obama administration seems to have been calculated to foment rebellion. Egypt, a desert country, depends primarily on American wheat, the price of which has risen 70 percent in the last months even as the dollardecreased in value, creating an untenable situation for the Egyptian people. Months earlier, economic analysts warned that the whole thing was about to explode (see http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/31/107813/egypts-unrest-may-have-roots-in.html).

In other Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Jordan, and Yemen similar rebellions are gradually taking shape, and they are always directed to the same goal: to eliminate pro-Western governments and expand the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, an ally of Hamas and other terrorist organizations. The state of panic that has spread among these governments can be assessed by the fact that, in recent months, they have imported more wheat than ever before, making the life of Egyptians even harder. [End of Part I. To be continued].

Olavo de Carvalho is the President of The Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. This article was originally published in the Brazilian newspaper Diário do Comércio on February 5, 2011, and translated from the Portuguese by Alessandro Cota.

Rebuilding Our Nation’s Foundations

/0 Comments/in , /by
Recently, I reviewed for movieguide.org a terrific DVD called “Agenda.” The documentary presents a quote from Josef Stalin from the 1930s:

“America’s … resistance is three fold: its patriotism, morality and spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

By the time I entered NYU School of Law in the early 1970s, I was a product of this campaign to undermine patriotism, morality and spiritual life that had captured the hearts and minds of the cultural Marxists and their fellow travelers, who were (as the Marxists intoned) useful idiots. Let me explain.

My parents were actors. My father was a Hollywood cowboy star in the 1930s. He won the box office in 1936. They were wonderful people, but not people of Christian faith. They dabbled in different philosophies, religions and metaphysics.

Dartmouth, Cambridge and finally NYU School of Law convinced me that the traditional Christian faith of the Founding Fathers was illusory and drove me into the arms of the hard left. My Constitutional Law professor was Norman Dorsen, who for many years headed the vile, left-wing ACLU. Even so, I thought both Norman and the ACLU were too conservative, so I joined the Communist-linked National Lawyers Guild while studying at NYU.

This prestigious law school and the other top 10 had unwittingly bought into the cultural Marxist mindset, so no one would sink so low as to read the actual U.S. Constitution. Relativistic case law would trump any of the dead white males who had founded the country.

DVD explains how Marxism became a part of the fabric of “The Land of the Free”: “Cultural Marxism: The Corruption of America”

Then, after working at the U.S. attorney’s office and putting together the funding for five feature films, a friend challenged me to read the Bible. Halfway through the Gospel of Matthew, God called me to Christ. He opened my eyes. I became very patriotic. Morality became liberating. My spiritual life became paramount. Thus, Jesus Christ turned me from anti-faith and values to the Good News of His Kingdom, including the value of patriotism, morality and Christian faith.

So, to counteract the “Agenda” of the Stalinist left now trying to run the United States, we must rebuild the foundations of patriotism, morality and spiritual life.

The foundation of the United States Constitution is the Declaration of Independence. Its foundation, as it says clearly, is that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It stipulates that civil governments are instituted only by the consent of the governed to protect those God-given rights.

Thus, the foundation of our government is not the will of King George, nor the whim of the mob; rather it is the unalienable rights given by our Creator. Without the Creator, our rights are not unalienable, and if we forget the Creator, the government moves quickly and inexorably to lord it over us and our children and grandchildren.

It is a story as old as time: Power corrupts.

In 1 Kings of the Hebrew Bible, Ahab and Jezebel look over their castle wall and lust after a little piece of land that belonged to poor humble Naboth. When they steal his land, however, they face the consequences of violating God’s law.

Marx and his Communist buddy Engels didn’t understand that “thou shall not steal” actually protects the little guy against those who have the troops and the power. The United States Constitution, which we would not read at my prestigious law school, recognizes this. It points out that we own the land, not the government. We do not lease property and money from the government. The government does not have the right to interfere with our private ownership.

One of the wisest legal minds I know is Neal Markva. One day a fire department official came into Neals’ attractive new law offices and said, “We are here to inspect.” He asked, “By what authority?” The officer could not answer, so he left and came back with the fire chief, who said, “We are here to inspect.” Neal said, “By what authority?” They came back with some paltry bureaucratic regulation. Neal took out the Virginia Constitution and asked them where it gave them authority to come on his property.

The Constitution recognizes freedom of religion, speech, assembly, the right to bear arms, the right to life, the right to a speedy trial and much more, as part of the unalienable rights granted by our Creator. When our administration and civil government get uppity, it charges us to change, rearrange and rebuild them.

It is time for us to rebuild the foundations: patriotism that enables us to live in peace and prosperity, by reading and rereading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; morality that frees us from theft, murder, sickness and impoverishment at the hands of feudal lords who are the government bureaucrats, by knowing the foundation of the one true faith, the Bible; and our spiritual life by getting to know Him who granted us our unalienable rights, so we can be free to be His children, the heirs to His Kingdom.

Once upon a time, President Teddy Roosevelt told his generals to “grab yourself a Bible to find out what He wants us to do.”

Today is the day to ask, “What does He want us to do?”

11

Dr. Ted Baehr is the founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE, chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, and a well-known movie critic, educator, lecturer and media pundit. He also is the author of several books, including “The Culture-Wise Family” with legendary entertainer Pat Boone, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Study of Culture, Media, and Mass Entertainment at the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought. For more information, please call 800-899-6684 or go to the MOVIEGUIDE website.

This article was originally published at wnd.com on December 4, 2010. The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

State Interposition

/0 Comments/in , /by
How many of you received your Constitution when you came in tonight? Well, you are going to need one! We are going to read it and that is a radical thing! When I was a student at Harvard I took Constitutional Law class and we never read the Constitution. We only read the opinions of the Supreme Court about the Constitution. Tonight as we sketch out a blueprint to for state action to recover constitutional liberty and law for America, we are actually going to look at the document and read what it says.

Let me read the words to you [from the 10th Amendment], “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Now I have talked to many people about the 10th Amendment and most do not ask the next question, What are those powers not delegated to the United States nor prohibited to the states but reserved to the states or to the people?

Now tonight I do not have time to expound on very many of those powers so I am going to speak on one power that has been forgotten in all the literature I have read–the power of interposition. Yet, at the very heart of liberty in America is the exercise of lower civil magistrates to interpose between the people and a tyrannical government. Indeed, if you read the Declaration of Independence it was the lower civil magistrates of the colonial assemblies that risked their lives fortunes and sacred honor to interpose themselves between the people and a tyrannical king and a lawless Parliament. If you look at the last paragraph of the Declaration, the Charter of the United States, you will see that they were the representatives of the United States of America and they declared the independence of the States There was never a time in the history of the colonies that they were one national government. There was no such thing as one nation. It was a nation of free and independent states because it was the officers of the state that interposed between the people and the tyrannical king and the lawless Parliament.

So it is today. The states are established by the United States Constitution to interpose between their people and a tyrannical government that has taken over the nation in Washington, D.C. I want to talk to you tonight about four practical action opportunities for the states of the United States to interpose between the people whose liberties and lawful opportunities are being stolen by a tyrannical government that has taken over in Washington, D.C. We are going to talk about political interposition; second, then legal interposition; and third, economical interposition and lastly, offer some solutions to these issues.

When, you look at how the Constitution was ratified, it would state by state, not to the people as a whole because the people of the United States do not act as a whole they act by state by state. This was to retain the principle that this was a union of free and independent, sovereign states and the officials of each state had a duty to protect the liberties of the people of the states they represented. One way they would protect the liberties of the people was that the proposed Constitution would not become the Constitution of the United States unless it was ratified by at least 9 state conventions composed of representatives elected by the people of those original states. Retaining the power of the states to interpose between the people of the states and this new government should this government not obey the new written constitution.

Political Interposition.

In presidential elections there is only one authority who determines [how the president is to be elected]. Article 2, Section 1, paragraph 2, states, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. But no senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or profit under the United States shall be appointed an Elector.”

Do you know that the state legislature of New Hampshire could decide that the presidential electors of this state would be appointed by the state legislature? There is nothing in the Constitution that commands that the President be popularly elected! Do you know that the Congress today completely governs the manner by which the President is elected in America through a Federal Election Commission that subsidizes the President with your money. I know that most of you have not checked that box on your tax return form! Do you know that it does not matter? They still take your money! That box is only there to give Congress guidance as to how much of your money will be appropriated to subsidize the presidential elections. Perhaps some of you read just recently in the Wall Street Journal where one of the new members of the Federal Election Commission stated “Did you enjoy the Democratic and Republican National Conventions? You should have! You paid for them!”

Not only that but they give special licensing privileges to some candidates and not to others. What we would see in the October debates is “Tweedle Dee” and “Tweedle Dum” because the FEC is composed of three Democrats and three Republicans. It is deliberately designed that way by Congress to shape the political debate. So it will be either a Democrat or a Republican, and it is getting hard to tell the difference. This is a licensed “duopoly!” Isn’t it interesting that the government is chasing Microsoft when they ought to be chasing the Democratic and Republican Parties that have monopolized the elections.

Yet, Article 2, Section 1 paragraph 2 says that it is the state legislatures that have the authority to determine the manner by which presidents are elected. Congress has no authority to limit campaign contributions to a presidential candidate. Congress has no authority to prohibit soft money, hard money, or stolen money–paper money–They have no authority and it is time for the state legislatures to step in and say, “We will do our constitutional duty. We will determine the manner by which the President is elected according to Article 2, Section 1, paragraph 2!” That, ladies and gentlemen, is political interposition and it is time for the state legislatures to take their constitutional duty seriously and determine the manner in which the president is elected.

Now if you don’t believe this then turn to Article 2, Section 1, paragraph 4 and you will see what Congress’ role is. “The Congress may determine the time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” That is all the Congress has authority to do, to determine the time. The place where the electors meet to elect the President is determined in the 12th Amendment. Contrast that language with Article 1, Section 4 which states, “The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.”

Notice that the State legislatures have authority to set the time, places and manner of holding elections for the House and the Senate. But there is an escape clause. The Congress does have authority with regard to the time place and manner with respect to the members of the House and Senate but by the constitutional text itself they only have the authority to determine the day on which the electors and the Electoral College meet.

Now turn back to Article 2, Section 1 and see that not one member of the House and not one member of the Senate can be one of those Electors. They are disqualified. Why? If you read the Federalist Papers you would know that they did not want the President to be dependent upon the Congress. They wanted the President to be responsive to the State Legislatures and the States. It was designed deliberately to enhance the power of the States, vis a vis that the one elected to the highest office the land would not be a tyrant but would be responsive to the interests of the people state by state.

Legal Interposition

The United States Supreme Court recently struck down the partial birth abortion statute enacted by the Nebraska State Legislature and in the process the other statutes passed over 35 other states. In addition, the Supreme Court also struck down a Texas case that people could no longer pray at a football game. Now those from Texas will know that these are fighting words when you can’t pray at a football game!

If George W. Bush was a Constitutional governor he would have told the Supreme Court, “We will not obey that lawless order!” If the governor of Nebraska was doing his constitutional duty he would have told the Supreme court, “We will enforce the law prohibiting partial birth abortion in this state! I don’t care what the Supreme Court has said!” But neither the governor of Texas nor Nebraska has read Article 6 of the Constitution. See today State officials would have you believe that the only one who has a Constitutional duty is the Court. In fact they believe that the Court is Supreme! Now Article 6 does not say that this Supreme court is the supreme law of the land! To the contrary it says, “This Constitution, and all the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land.” A Court opinion is not the constitution! It is just a Court opinion. Sir William Blackstone put it this way, “Court opinion is evidence of Law. However, today most Court opinions is bad evidence of law because they don’t pay attention to the law! They don’t read the Constitution they just read their own opinion.

Turn to the second paragraph of Article 6. “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution;” not the opinions of the Supreme Court about what the Constitution means. Every state officer whether they are a governor, state legislator or attorney general, or local prosecutor, or police officer or sheriff is bound by Article 6 to support this Constitution. If the United States Supreme Court renders a decision contrary to the Constitution, what are these officials by their oath of office bound to do? Disobey! Disobey! Guess what that would do? That would require the President to send out the National Guard. Now can you imagine the President sending out the Guard to a Texas football game?

You see the power of the state to interpose on behalf of its people in the name of this Constitution is a power that has been neglected not because it isn’t in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution but because they would rather have you not know that they have that duty. Life is much easier to say “the Supreme Court has spoken. We must obey.”

However, Article 2, Section 3 says that the President “…shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…” Now if a state governor would refuse to obey a Supreme court opinion, it would require the President to decide what the Law is. He would have to determine whether or not the Supreme Court opinion was lawful. If he sent out the National Guard we would know that it was only by force and not by law what that decree was for. We have not seen a constitutional governor for some time in our nation.

It was too bad that Governor Fob James and the great state of Alabama forgot its history when they didn’t reelect Fob James. Remember what he said that if a federal court tells Judge Roy Moore to take Ten Commandments off the wall of his court room, I’ll be at the door of the Court House. That is the type of governor that this Constitution is speaking of. That is the type of governor we must insist upon. That’s the kind of governor that would interpose and do his constitutional duty on behalf of his state against a tyrannical Supreme Court. After all, one thing about Courts is that they cannot enforce their own opinion. That is why Alexander Hamilton called them the least dangerous branch. The only one who can enforce a court opinion is the one who has executive power. If a governor who has executive power in a state says, “I will not execute that Supreme Court opinion,” then it is going to require the President to send out the troops.

Economic Interposition

We have heard much talk tonight about the 16th Amendment. There is no question that it has been used to rob the people of what is rightfully theirs. Many times, instead of asking what kind of economic power they have, the State officials hide behind the 16th Amendment and say, “Well, it is because the Federal Government takes all the taxes and sends them to Washington that we just don’t have any power any more because we cannot raise enough money from the people.”

I am working on a case right now by filing an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of the Clean Air Act on the grounds that it was an unlawful delegation of Congressional power. If you look at the statute to find out what the rules are in regards to clean air, you cannot find them in the statute even though Article 1, Section 1 vests all legislative power in the Congress and the very essence of legislative power is to pass the rules. Instead the EPA passes the rules. But did you know that they don’t enforce them? Did you know that when the EPA passed the rules on ozone and particulate matter in the air that they don’t enforce them? Do you know who does? The states! The states enforce the federal standards for clean air which were not even enacted by Congress.

Now by what constitutional authority does the state enforce federal law? The answer is none, zero! Nada! How do we know that? Because we, unlike most governors, have read Article 2, Section 2. The President “…shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided that two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law…” Now did the President appoint the Governor of New Hampshire? No! The people of the state of New Hampshire did. So is the Governor of New Hampshire a federal officer? No! Yet, the clean Air Act requires him to enforce the clean air standards passed by the EPA.

Now why would Congress do that? Because it is regulation on the cheap. It is cheaper that way. It is called unfunded mandates. They mandate the state officials to enforce the federal law because they don’t to take the money they have and spend that money to enforce the rules. Do you want to know another reason the Congress does not want to spend the money? Because they do not want to make the hard choices. When the EPA hands down a new rule about ozone or particulate matter, it is up to the Governor to decide which industries have to be shut down. He has to make the tough choices. You know what these governors should do? Make the Federal officers enforce it. Then Congress might say, “If you want your highway funds…” But if 50 governors said we won’t enforce it, then what?

You know the governors meet periodically. Have you ever watched what they talk about? They become a lobbying organization. Like all the rest, they go to Washington to see how much they can get of your money instead of doing their constitutional duty by saying, “Look Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States vests all executive power in the President. He has only the authority to appoint other federal officers and that has to be done with and by the advice and consent of the Senate. We are not one of those officers. We cannot enforce this law and we won’t enforce this law.

That is what two sheriffs did when they passed the Brady Bill. The Sheriff in Montana and Arizona did this and were taken to Court and the United States Supreme court agreed with them. But the United States Supreme Court would not have had the opportunity to agree with them if they had acted like all the other sheriffs and never challenged it.

Unless the state officials do their constitutional duty and refuse to lend the economic power that they still have despite the 16th Amendment, [we will not see this changed] because Congress doesn’t want to spend that money. Not to just enforce many environmental laws but also educational laws. We have heard very eloquently tonight that the United States government has no authority over education. What would happen if the school board said, “We will not take your money!” I have read recent studies that educational quality does not turn on how much money they spend. As a matter of fact I have seen that the more money they spend the worse the education they have. We need to get away from this notion that if you spend more money you get more quality. In fact, do you know where all that money goes? It goes to the people who do not teach! Now we have discovered that teachers teach because they cannot do, and administrators don’t teach because they cannot teach!

So Congress has essentially enslaved the states just as much as the Court has usurped state power.

The FCC has hijacked the presidential election process. It is time to not only for political interposition, not only for legal interposition, not only for economic interposition but it is also time for Constitutional interposition.

You know the greatest danger for our liberty is not in Washington D.C. But in New York City. If you have been following the newspapers recently they have just had a conference on Global Government. It was the United Nations. I have a copy of the United Nation’s Charter. I suggest you read it but not before going to bed! We are told that the Charter is a treaty. It is not. It was never designed as a treaty. It was designed as a Constitution for world government from the beginning.

Like the United States Constitution, it has provision whereby it may be amended without it ever being submitted to the United State’s Senate for ratification. It has its own internal amendment process just like the United State’s Constitution may be amended without the unanimous consent of the states, the UN Charter may be amended with the unanimous consent of the member nations. The new members may be added without all the members agreeing. Libya could be added tomorrow.

Some people say, “Yes, but we have veto power in the Security Council.” But veto power is not according to the Constitutional provision in regard to a treaty. If a new member is to be added to the United Nations, it should only be if it is ratified by the Senate, if it was a treaty. But it was never designed to be a treaty! Indeed, all you have to do is read the first words of the Charter, “We the people of the United Nations.” Look at the Preamble to the United States Constitution. What does it say? “We the People of the United States…” If the UN Charter was a treaty it should say, “We the government officials of the various member nations…” They are the ones who have authority to make treaties. Why did they say “We the People of the United Nations”? Simply because they were displacing the Constitution of the United States with a new Constitutional document. But unlike the Constitution of the United States, it has never been submitted to the People of the United States for ratification. It is an illegitimate document and organization and must be resisted!

I read President Clinton’s speech that he gave at this Council on Global Government and he was giving kudos to Kofee Anan, that wonderful United Nations beaurocrat who is the only one who came up through the ranks to become Secretary General. This is what he said, “This man is sent from heaven.” There is only one I know who has been sent from heaven. There is only one who is Prince of Peace. The United Nations would bring peace by outlawing war. They outlaw war by ridding us of our national boundaries. Then everything becomes a police action.

Is that really what they are about? In a human development report 2000 that was issued just about a month and one half ago Kofee Anan said, “The United Nations is composed of member nations but it exists for the benefit of the peoples of the world and no national boundaries will stand in the way of our reaching the peoples of the world!” That’s Koffe Anan. That’s the United nations and the way it is designed.

Some say, “Well, they have not yet taxed us!” Oh yes they have. Article 1, Section 7 of the United States Constitution says, “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…” Do you know where the bill originates that raises revenue for the United Nations? In the General Assembly. That’s why they bill us! It would be the same as if the EPA said, “This is the amount of money we need. Now you owe it to us Congress!” You see we are already being taxed without representation. It already violates that principle upon which the Revolution was founded–No taxation without Representation! We must resist the illegitimate and unlawful United Nations that would usurp the power of the people to constitute the government as this nation had been founded.

What shall we do then? May I propose that cities, counties, and states pass laws declaring that they are United Nations free zone? There is a way to combating an illegitimate intrusion upon the national sovereignty of the nation and the sovereignty of the 50 states. It is time that the people rise up and remind our government officials that we constitute the government–THEY DON”T! And we reconstitute the government, they don’t! It is time for action in this arena. Last week we continued to be betrayed by the President of the United States and his minions in the Senate who were afraid to stand on principle.

In the House of Representatives there is a bill numbered 1146. It is sponsored by 17 members of the House. The leading sponsor is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Two years ago Ron Paul by amendment to the appropriations bill got 54 votes from members of the House to get the United States out of the United Nations and the United Nations out of the United States. I had the privilege of writing the constitutional analysis, some of which I shared with you this evening, in support of HR 1146. If you want to see that analysis, it is on the Internet at www.libertycommittee.org.

If you are someone who prays, and if you don’t you ought, may I ask you to pray the prayer based upon Proverbs 21:1, “The heart of a king is a channel of water in God’s hands. He moves it whichever way that He wishes.” Indeed, if we are to see action as I have outlined to you tonight in having the state officials interpose and once again bring the presidential elections back home where it belongs, out of the clutches of the FEC; if we are to see state officials exercise the legal authority they have to defend the Constitution against unconstitutional opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States; if we are going to see state officials who are willing to exercise the economic power they have even though they might risk losing some of those federal funds; and if we are to see the People of the United States rise up and say, “We are the ones who constitute our government. We will not be a part of an unconstitutional United Nations,” we need to pray for what I have outlined for you tonight is impossible. But with God all things are possible for He is the One who moves the hearts of kings.

I was once involved with a Christian Law school that had to go before the American Bar Association to be accredited. I can assure you that the American Bar Association was not happy that the Bible has reentered a law school classroom. This law school I was associated with was of all places Oral Roberts University. We got one vote from a committee in June and 22 against us in 1981. We had another opportunity to get a second review and there was 21 against us in June. In August the ABA accredited the Law school. Why? Because God moves the hearts of even an accrediting authority of the ABA. How do I know this? Because we took them to court. Guess what God gave us an activist judge who said to the ABA, “if you do not accredit that Law School I will!”

Now the ABA could have appealed and taken it to a higher court. Instead they folded. The second committee where we only got one voted unanimously. The chairman of that committee spoke on our behalf and voted for us. Two weeks later I got a letter with a newspaper article in which that man who voted and spoke for us said, “the biggest mistake the ABA has ever done is accredit the law school at ORU. “The heart of a king is like a channel of water in His hands, He moves it whichever way He wishes.”

So if we are to see a blueprint of restoration where the states take their constitutional duty and right of interposition, we need to be on our knees praying that even though those state governors who do not want to do it would be moved by God to do what they do not want to do. You see God is not out of the nation building business. He still moves kings and governors and presidents and judges. We just need to take a stand. In order to take this stand, we need to know what the Constitution says.

Jesus Christ, who is my political hero demonstrated that when He encountered the devil in the wilderness. When He was challenged by the devil to turn the stone into bread, and He had the power to do so for He was the Son of God, He showed He did not have the authority to do so for He said this, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Satan picked up on that in the next temptation when he said, “Jump off the pinnacle of this Temple.” And then he quoted Scripture, “for the angels will take care of you.” Remember what Jesus said? You live by every word of God. He responded by that word, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Then Satan showed Him all the kingdoms of this world. He said there you are. They are yours for the taking if you will “bow down and worship me.” Jesus said, “Thou shalt worship the Lord your God and Him alone.”

Remember each time that Jesus responded He said “It is written! It is written! It is written!” If we are to serve in this nation, then we not only have to know the written Word of God, we also need to know the written word of this Constitution! If we neglect that written word, then how can we hold our state officials to what is written?

Even Chief Justice Marshall, if you read the case of Marbury v. Madison said that the reason why the Court would strike down a Congressional statute and have the power to do so was because the Constitution is written. It is written for the purpose of establishing the rule of law by which no government official can transcend. Then he said this, “The Constitution is an instrument for the government of the Court as well as an instrument for the government of Congress.” He did not believe that the Court was above the written Constitution because he had read in Article 6 that this Constitution is the Supreme law of the land. Not a court opinion! Not your opinion or my opinion but Constitution as it is written.

I challenge you, I exhort you, I encourage you that as God calls you as citizens of this great land, that you step out in faith trusting that as you stand for the written covenant of this great nation; and as you call upon your local and state officials to interpose and defend the liberties of the people against this tyranny we face in this nation, may you do your part and meet your Maker He will say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.” God bless and thank you for inviting me.

Herbert W. TitusDr. Herbert Titus is IAI’s Distinguished Senior Fellow in Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, and Public Policy.

This speech was originally delivered at New Hampshire Center for Constitutional Studies Conference in September 2000and published by The Christian Committees of Correspondence..

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute.

Miguel Nicolelis

Reverse Labeling

/0 Comments/in , /by
Miguel Nicolelis is a neuroscience teacher at Duke University (USA), founder of the Edmond & Lilly Safra Neuroscientific Institute (Macaíba, RN) and member of the Brazilian and French Academies of Sciences. Added to that notable curriculum was his recent appointment by Pope Benedict XVI to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The Viomundo website, directed by journalist Luiz Carlos Azenha, now introduces him in a still more attractive light, claiming the scientist is a defenseless victim of a vast hate and fear mongering campaign waged by the eternally abominable “extreme right.”

Shocked and intimidated by the murderous virulence of the campaign, Prof. Nicolelis, in a tone of spurious sincerity distinguishing him as an unconditional follower of the free and democratic debate, warns against the dangers of ideological radicalization:

“Your political, ideological opponent starts to be seen as your enemy. And that enemy is subject to any kind of punishment, even death. I cannot imagine that those people spreading hate, revenge and violent messages can at the same time be Christians.”

But, after all, what did the murderous campaign consist of? It consisted of two things: Firstly, a ten-line story, published at the Rorate Coeli website on January 5 (see: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/01/pope-names-pro-abortion-and-pro-gay.html), stating that Prof. Nicolelis is a fervent defender of abortion and the gay agenda (and also, as of last year, of the candidacy of radical socialist Dilma Rousseff). His presence in an institution linked to the Catholic Church is therefore a little strange. Then, an article written by American journalist Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, published on the website Last Days Watchman (see: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/defender-of-for-abortion-and-homosexualist-police-appointed-to-vaticans-to) and later reproduced with or without additions and comments on a few Christian websites, among them the Brazilian version of Lifesitenews, Notícias Pró-Família, administered by Brazilian writer Julio Severo (I will speak about him later on). Hoffman, who is a Catholic, commented, “Pope Benedict XVI is a staunch defender of the right to life and of family values, and it is unlikely that he was aware of Nicolelis’ record when he made the appointment.”

Was there some threat, any hint of injurious plans? Prof. Nicolelis admits, “No, there was none.”

In view of these perfectly inoffensive expressions of disagreement, how did Prof. Nicolelis react? By debating with his opponents? No way. He himself describes his argumentative procedures:

“My laboratory staff contacted Duke University, warned about those websites and the university police have already begun to monitor the case. The security of my laboratory was reinforced… Nobody enters there without going through security procedures.”

And he cautions: at the first threatening sign in Brazil, he will call the Federal Police immediately.

Among the potential aggressors of Prof. Nicolelis denounced by the Viomundo website, one has already been put under control. Julio Severo, wanted by Brazilian authorities for the heinous crime of having stated and insisted that homosexuality is a sin and curable, is hidden abroad, moving from one country to another, living in extreme poverty with a wife and four small children. Journalist Luiz Carlos Azenha mentions that fact with evident contentment. The Fórum website, by columnist Luis Nassif (http://blogln.ning.com/forum/topics/homofobia-em-preto-e-branco), also celebrates it as a sign that Brazilian democracy is progressing.

The logical premises forming the basis of Prof. Nicolelis’ statements and the reports of the Viomundo and Forum websites could not be more evident:

1) Uttering a single word against homosexuality, even in a generic way and with no threat, is incitement to violence, something unworthy of people professing to be Christians.

2) An informed citizen and lover of the free and democratic debate should react to those opinions by presenting himself publicly as a victim under imminent attack, calling police and having his unfortunate critics persecuted like criminals and hunted down like animals.

The brutally exaggerated reaction is expected to prompt the distinguished public to believe piously that the violent individuals are those who expressed opinions, not those who mobilized against them the armed forces of the repressive State system.

If the reader wanted a local illustration of what I have written previously on the technique of reverse labeling, this is it.

The constant and obsessive use of that technique is one of the most trivial manifestations of the general inversion of reality, characteristic of the revolutionary mentality.

Not by coincidence, but very significantly, Prof. Nicolelis had been railing some time ago against the “hysterical right.” Hysteria, by definition, is a hyperbolic reaction to some imaginary and false provocation. Therefore, when Prof. Nicolelis reacts hysterically, it is the others who are hysterical.

Olavo de Carvalho is the President of The Inter-American Institute and Distinguished Senior Fellow in Philosophy, Political Science, and the Humanities.

The opinions published here are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by the Institute. This article was originally published in the Brazilian newspaper Diário do Comércio on January 27, 2011 and translated from the Portuguese by Julio Severo and revised by Don Hank.