The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming Movie Trailer

Why does this old movie come to mind today?

Charles Murray: "Trumpism": The Divestment of Our Historic National Identity.

Charles Murray, writing at The Wall Street Journal two days ago, laments the loss of our national identity and posits that the rise of Trumpism is nothing more than a manifestation of that loss.  Here's a clip:

For the eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington, writing in his last book, “Who Are We?” (2004), two components of that national identity stand out. One is our Anglo-Protestant heritage, which has inevitably faded in an America that is now home to many cultural and religious traditions. The other is the very idea of America, something unique to us. As the historian Richard Hofstadter once said, “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.”

What does this ideology—Huntington called it the “American creed”—consist of? Its three core values may be summarized as egalitarianism, liberty and individualism. From these flow other familiar aspects of the national creed that observers have long identified: equality before the law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and association, self-reliance, limited government, free-market economics, decentralized and devolved political authority.

As recently as 1960, the creed was our national consensus. Running that year for the Democratic nomination, candidates like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey genuinely embraced the creed, differing from Republicans only in how its elements should be realized.

Today, the creed has lost its authority and its substance. What happened? Many of the dynamics of the reversal can be found in developments across the whole of American society: in the emergence of a new upper class and a new lower class, and in the plight of the working class caught in between.

In my 2012 book “Coming Apart,” I discussed these new classes at length. The new upper class consists of the people who shape the country’s economy, politics and culture. The new lower class consists of people who have dropped out of some of the most basic institutions of American civic culture, especially work and marriage. Both of these new classes have repudiated the American creed in practice, whatever lip service they may still pay to it. Trumpism is the voice of a beleaguered working class telling us that it too is falling away...

White working-class males were the archetypal “Reagan Democrats” in the early 1980s and are often described as the core of support for Mr. Trump. But the grievances of this group are often misunderstood. It is a mistake to suggest that they are lashing out irrationally against people who don’t look like themselves. There are certainly elements of racism and xenophobia in Trumpism, as I myself have discovered on Twitter and Facebook after writing critically about Mr. Trump.

But the central truth of Trumpism as a phenomenon is that the entire American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class. During the past half-century of economic growth, virtually none of the rewards have gone to the working class. The economists can supply caveats and refinements to that statement, but the bottom line is stark: The real family income of people in the bottom half of the income distribution hasn’t increased since the late 1960s.

You can read the entire essay by clicking HERE.

Sen. Ben Sasse on How to Fix Washington | The Daily Signal

JFK : and Today's Democrats

So, how far have the Democrats come since January 20, 1961? Perhaps the better question would be: how far has the country strayed since January 20,1961?   We'll learn the answer to that one in November 2016.

Historian Forrest McDonald: The Grave Decline in Moral Standards

That's Forrest McDonald, who died in Tuscaloosa, six days ago.  He taught there at the University of Alabama from 1976 - 2002.

This is from today's Wall Street Journal: 

Notable & Quotable: Historian Forrest McDonald

‘It is leftists, not conservatives, who are Puritans, who want to make people over in accordance with their views.’

Jan. 24, 2016 4:07 p.m. ET

Historian Forrest McDonald, who died Jan. 19 at age 89, writing in a 1999 Commentary magazine symposium on the results of the 1998 midterm elections:

Still—to turn to the editors’ second question—there can hardly be room to doubt that the nation has undergone a grave decline in its moral standards. Relativism and permissiveness have won; “sensitivity” toward the behavior of others, no matter how despicable, has won; the notion that self-esteem is more important than achievement has won.

Many reasons for the decline can be adduced, not least among them being the intrusiveness into our lives of the corruption that pervades Washington. Earlier, the Grant and Harding administrations were corrupt, but the scandals had virtually no impact upon society; the federal government had nothing to do, for example, with the way parents raised their children. Now, by contrast, the government pokes its nose into everything, including standards of morality. To cite but one kind of instance, the Catholic church’s charities and the Salvation Army, which have been traditional carriers of religion and morality as well as of succor, now refrain from espousing religion and morality, lest they lose their government funding.

It is federal money that corrupts: take their money and they own you. Most people probably know this but are willing to take the money anyway. I once heard Frank Sinatra say on a talk show that it was easy enough to get along with the Mafia. “Just don’t ever let them do you a favor.” The same advice applies to the federal government.

Nevertheless, despite the general moral decline, I would insist that there is no widespread neo-Puritan impulse among conservatives. It is leftists, not conservatives, who are Puritans, who want to make people over in accordance with their views—in myriad ways, ranging from stamping out smoking to imposing correct thought; and that has been true since Rousseau. They constitute the most serious threat to our cherished freedoms.

Paul Ryan and Catholic Social Doctrine

George Weigel, writing today at Catholic World Report, compares three men who had the opportunity to make Catholic social teaching viable though out the United States.

Over forty years of teaching and writing about Catholic social doctrine, I’ve gotten to know three men who had the opportunity to embody the Church’s social teaching for a national audience. Two of them couldn’t pull it off, for different reasons.

Those three men, as pictured above are: Sargent Shriver, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and now the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.  The opportunity was missed by Shriver and Moynihan, but Weigel has high hopes for Paul Ryan.  You can read the essay by clicking HERE.

John Quincy Adams on Immigration

John Quincy Adams, when he was U.S. secretary of state, in 1819, wrote to a German citizen who was considering moving to the United States, and asked Adams for a job.  Those were the days when a politician could speak the truth without political consequences.  Such a letter today from a U.S. secretary of state would be cause for impeachment to appease the outcry from the Left.  Here are excerpts from the letter as published in today's Wall Street Journal:

Notable & Quotable: John Quincy Adams
‘This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights.’

Neither the general government of the union, nor those of the individual states, are ignorant or unobservant of the additional strength and wealth, which accrues to the nation, by the accession of a mass of healthy, industrious, and frugal laborers, nor are they in any manner insensible to the great benefits which this country has derived, and continues to derive, from the influx of such adoptive children from Germany.

But there is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights. Privileges are granted by European sovereigns to particular classes of individuals, for purposes of general policy; but the general impression here is that privileges granted to one denomination of people, can very seldom be discriminated from erosions of the rights of others.

Emigrants from Germany, therefore, or from elsewhere, coming here, are not to expect favors from the governments. They are to expect, if they choose to become citizens, equal rights with those of the natives of the country. They are to expect, if affluent, to possess the means of making their property productive, with moderation, and with safety;—if indigent, but industrious, honest and frugal, the means of obtaining easy and comfortable subsistence for themselves and their families. . . .

To one thing they must make up their minds, or, they will be disappointed in every expectation of happiness as Americans. They must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity, rather than backward to their ancestors; they must be sure that whatever their own feelings may be, those of their children will cling to the prejudices of this country, and will partake of that proud spirit.

"Every officer impeachable by the laws of the country, is as liable, twenty years after his office has expired, as he is whilst he continues in office, and if such is not the case, if an officer could thus ward off the pains of impeachment, what would be the value of the provision… ?” 

 John Quincy Adams

Matt Walsh: #ShoutYourAbortion Proves That Modern Liberalism Is A Satanic Death Cult

Matt Walsh wrote the above titled essay at TheBlaze.com two days ago just after all but three House Democrats, joined by two despicable Republicans, voted against protecting the lives of five month old babies still in their mothers' wombs.  The whole essay is HERE, and here are some excerpts that should infuriate anyone who believes in God:

September 22, 2015

Just a few hours ago, Democrats voted down a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. Only three Democrats voted for the bill to protect children from murder after five months of development, while two truly despicable Republicans, Susan Collins and Mark Kirk, voted against it. They should be out of a job when it comes time for reelection, and if I was in charge of these things, I’d put them both in prison, along with almost all of the Democrats, for facilitating the murder of thousands of innocent human lives. Remember, if you support late term abortion, you are in favor of killing babies who can survive outside the womb. This is a radical, insane, extremist position, and one that is considered by progressives to be not only mainstream, but mandatory...

Progressives love to say they aren’t “pro-abortion,” but that is a more and more self-evident lie. Nobody who possesses even the slightest hint of a moral qualm with abortion could actually oppose a bill to protect kids after five months in the womb. Similarly, nobody who isn’t an enormous fan of abortion could be anything but repulsed by the hip new fad that swept through the internet like wild fire yesterday...

It’s called #ShoutYourAbortion, and it encourages women to boast confidently of killing their children. The hashtag has been trending on Twitter for over a day, and many hundreds and thousands of women have taken the opportunity to “shout” with pride about the magical wonders of baby murder. I’m sure the aborted babies would have loved to participate in this campaign, but they’re all dead and decomposed in dumpsters or dissected in petri dishes...

Politically incorrect words and ideas, Confederate flags, jokes — these can all be viciously stigmatized, but child murder? That  must be greeted with nothing short of uproarious applause... 

Nobody, on either side, can really stake out a moderate position on abortion for very long. Either abortion is condemned with the fury of 1,000 suns, or it is celebrated and glorified with religious fervor. Everyone who tries to hang out somewhere between these two extremes will inevitably land on one end of the spectrum or the other. That’s because abortion is an extreme thing. It is the slaughter of the innocent. History proves that there are really, when it comes down to it, only two types of people: those radically opposed to the dehumanization and murder of entire groups of people, and those radically in favor of it...

Just a couple of years ago, abortion fetishists cooked up the viral “1 in 3″ campaign, encouraging women to tell their “inspiring” stories about abortion. Not long after that, a woman named Emily Letts became a progressive darling when she filmed herself having an abortion. She giggled and smiled through the procedure, talking about how happy and “lucky” she is. When it was all done she yelled “cool!” and “yay!” as she was wheeled out of the operating room and her child was, most likely, shipped off to a research facility for experimentation. She bragged about her abortion while it was happening, and the video received favorable coverage across the mainstream media, and eventually won top prize in an “abortion stigma-busting video competition” (leading some to believe it was staged). These #ShoutYourAbortion Tweets are nothing compared to all that...

Liberalism is, in the end, a death cult. I’ve long suggested that we stop calling it “liberalism” and start calling it “secular Satanism,” because that’s truly the most accurate and coherent way to describe it. Indeed, self-proclaimed Satanists are ardent abortion fans, with some reporting that they perform Satanic human sacrifices inside abortion clinics. To the Satanist/liberal, abortion is the most sacred and revered sacrament. The whole religion and ideology of Satanism/liberalism was born when Satan himself turned from God and said, “I will not serve” — and what better and more profound way for humans to reinforce that point than to ritualistically massacre His most vulnerable and precious children?...

Abortion evangelists are pro-abortion in principle, not out of some perverted sense of necessity or compassion. They believe — they have faith — that the individual is supreme. There is no power or authority above the Mighty Me, therefore nothing has the right to impose itself on Me, and nothing, not even my own child, can claim any right to my life or my body or my love or my time. My, Me, I. I am the sole point and purpose of the universe, and the highest thing I can hope to attain is my own enjoyment, convenience, and (especially sexual) pleasure. There is no Truth outside of that. There is no God beyond myself.

Find it hard to believe the part about Satanic Rituals?  Here's the LINK:

Bishop Paprocki: Ask God to Forgive America for funding Planned Parenthood

This is from CNSNews.com:

(CNSNews.com) - Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., said in a video statement yesterday that the United States needs a “Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” like the one President Abraham Lincoln called in 1863 in an era when many Americans denied the full humanity of African Americans.

“President Lincoln lived in a time when many people thought that African-Americans were not fully human,” Bishop Paprocki said. “The United States Supreme Court in fact declared as much in its infamously erroneous Dred Scott decision of 1857. But in our own time the Supreme Court continues to make wrongful decisions, as it did in 1973 in Roe v. Wade in deciding that unborn babies do not deserve the protection of the law, as well as this past June in attempting to redefine marriage contrary to the plan of God as described in the Book of Genesis.”

“Let us ask forgiveness,” said the bishop, “for our nation giving half a billion dollars every year of taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger, a proponent of eugenics who urged Americans to ‘restrict the propagation of those physically, mentally and socially inadequate’ and said that the ‘most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.’"

Chuck Schumer shows Political Courage. Who Knew?

New York Senator Chuck Schumer, in a rare move away from his party loyalty has stated he will vote to disapprove the nefarious "Iran deal."  A skeptic might be inclined to suspect that this courageous gesture on his part is not really all that courageous.  It's possible that he was given permission to placate his Jewish base by voting against the deal, which even without his vote will surely pass or at least survive an attempt to override the promised veto if it does pass.  It would be nice to think that he is truly risking his place in the hierarchy of his party - and maybe he is.

So, in today's Notable & Quotable section of the Wall Street Journal, Schumer explains his decision to vote against this ill advised "deal."

Notable & Quotable: Chuck Schumer on Iran

The risk that the regime use the nuclear agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great to vote to approve it.

If one thinks Iran will moderate, that contact with the West and a decrease in economic and political isolation will soften Iran’s hardline positions, one should approve the agreement. After all, a moderate Iran is less likely to exploit holes in the inspection and sanctions regime, is less likely to seek to become a threshold nuclear power after ten years, and is more likely to use its newfound resources for domestic growth, not international adventurism.

But if one feels that Iranian leaders will not moderate and their unstated but very real goal is to get relief from the onerous sanctions, while still retaining their nuclear ambitions and their ability to increase belligerent activities in the Middle East and elsewhere, then one should conclude that it would be better not to approve this agreement.

Admittedly, no one can tell with certainty which way Iran will go. It is true that Iran has a large number of people who want their government to decrease its isolation from the world and focus on economic advancement at home. But it is also true that this desire has been evident in Iran for thirty-five years, yet the Iranian leaders have held a tight and undiminished grip on Iran, successfully maintaining their brutal, theocratic dictatorship with little threat. Who’s to say this dictatorship will not prevail for another ten, twenty, or thirty years?

To me, the very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great.

Therefore, I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path of diplomacy. It is because I believe Iran will not change, and under this agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power. Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.

Amity Shlaes: Why is Calvin Coolidge the Forgotten President?

From YouTube:

Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President, was a man of few words. He believed in less government, balanced budgets, lower taxes and a climate friendly to business. Unemployment averaged 3.3 per cent during his administration. Yet, in the vortex of the Great Depression and the New Deal policies, which followed, his legacy has been all but forgotten. Conservative writer Amity Shlaes tells Jim Zirin what we can learn from "Silent Cal."

About Amity Shlaes:

Amity Shlaes (/ʃleɪs/; born September 10, 1960) is an American author and newspaper and magazine columnist who writes about politics and economics from a conservative free market perspective. She currently chairs the board of trustees of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation. The foundation aims to advance the ideals of President Calvin Coolidge, which the foundation describes as conservative values and devotion to public service.



Shlaes graduated from Yale University magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English in 1982. She attended the Freie Universitaet Berlin on a DAAD fellowship.



Over the years, she has written for The New Yorker, The American Spectator, Commentary, The Spectator (UK), Foreign Affairs, Forbes, National Review, The New Republic, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, among others. Her obituary of Milton Friedman appeared in The New York Sun.
 

Her biography of Calvin Coolidge is available at Amazon.com

Bill Shuey: The Disaster of Inner Cities

That's Bill Shuey, a freelance writer in North Carolina. He's an old friend of a special friend.  He posted this piece (emphasis added) about "The Inner Cities" on his blog, on May 9, 2015.

The reoccurring melodrama that is the disaster of America’s inner cities has surfaced again, and in Baltimore this time. There is nothing really new in the on-going upheaval – just another dead druggie and a community in revolt because of his demise.

Interestingly, it seems that the police rarely kill a young black man who is well dressed and on his way to work, school, or church. For some unknown reason the recipient of the bullet or the harsh treatment are always the least functional of society. Yes, I know that every human life has value, but some lives are far more valuable than others.

As in Ferguson, MO, the street thugs and chronic unemployed are out in the streets in mass attempting to fill the void between their welfare income and what others work for by stripping store shelves. The mayor of Baltimore actually encouraged this sad criminal behavior by suggesting that they should be allowed to steal and destroy as they chose. Nice policy, unless you own property that is being destroyed.

The federal government has sunk $1.8 billion into Baltimore in just the past few years. The population of the Baltimore metropolis is 2.7 million, which indicates a fund breakdown of 665 dollars per individual. But that figure is highly misleading because not a dime of the money went to the suburbs or the more affluent areas – it all went to the inner city. Unfortunately federal money is funneled through city governments, where it is diverted to things that have little, if any benefit to the folks who actually need help. And of course there is always the city council member who just happens to have a cousin or uncle who owns a business that needs some income. The milking of the white cow is after all the national pastime!

There are systemic problems in the inner cities of America, and they are neither new nor unique to Baltimore. Leading the roll of unfortunate circumstances is the fact that marriage and the presence of a father figure in the home is a rare occurrence. Also, there seems to be little motivation to attend school for the purpose of actually attaining an education – 55% of fourth graders can’t read! Fifty percent of students actually complete high school – far fewer truly receive a diploma! Thus, if there were jobs available in the inner city, there would be few individuals who could read a job application or perform the tasks associated with today’s mechanized work environment.

The desire to advance socially and economically does not seem to afflict the residents of the inner city. The insidious intentions of government to help the lower class have bred dissatisfaction by providing just enough to exist and curbing any desire to achieve. The results are people who are resentful, basically helpless, have little foresight or ambition, and more than willing to destroy what they did not build.

The mayor, police commissioner, prosecuting attorney, the president of the Baltimore city council, and most other Baltimore officials are black – what could only charitably be termed black leadership is inept and ineffectual. The self-appointed reverends who come into the inner cities are there for the face time and are little more than parasites – what have they ever done to make anything better for the citizens of Baltimore? Until the residents of the Baltimore’s of America decide to want effective representation, and something more than existence – nothing can change – and that is the sad truth.

If you are reading this article in the hopes of finding some solution to the chaos that is America’s inner cities – you came to the wrong place. From the White House to the outhouse, the resounding cry is RACISM. This is the constant convenient drumbeat that allows the politicians who have actually created this mess through their ineptness, promotion of racial divisiveness, and failed policies to hide behind the term and avoid any responsibility.

I am not a pessimist by nature, but I see no resolution for the problems that plague the ghettos. Throwing tax dollars at the problem may help cleanse the souls of politicians but does nothing to heal the problems!

 

Ann Corcoran on Refugee Resettlement

Hillary: "Deep-seated Religious Beliefs Have to be Changed"

Hillary Clinton spoke recently at the “2015 Women in the World Summit” and said something pretty shocking, even for her.  Robert Royal wrote about it today on The Catholic Thing.

Some clips:

So when Mrs. Clinton spoke the other day at the “2015 Women in the World Summit” about how “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed” in order to secure abortion, contraception, and women’s empowerment, it caught my attention. And it should catch yours at well. Because if you take seriously what you see in that performance – and the Clinton team’s MO is to focus-group and poll and triangulate positions in all sorts of ways to see how they’ll play – it poses a very dangerous threat to the daily life of Christians in America.

Royal went on: Make no mistake. What Mrs. Clinton put forward the other day, though not necessarily a majority view, is quite able to function as one all the same because some quite powerful elites want it to be so. 

And finally:

My shock is that a likely candidate for president of the United States has no hesitation in calling publicly for changing other peoples’ religious beliefs. That would once have been thought un-American, an affront to our proud religious pluralism... 

George Will, Hillary, and the First Amendment

George Will delivered the keynote address at the inaugural Disinvitational Dinner, on April 15, 2015.

The following is from today's Wall Street Journal's Notable & Quotable section:

From columnist George F. Will’s keynote address at the inaugural Disinvitation Dinner, hosted in New York City on April 15 by the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale to honor those whose invitations to speak at U.S. universities were retracted because of their views:

Free speech has never been, in the history of our republic, more comprehensively, aggressively and dangerously threatened than it is now. The Alien and Sedition Acts arose from a temporary, transitory fever and were in any case sunsetted and disappeared. The fevers after and during the First World War and in the early culture war era also were eruptions of distemper rooted in local conditions and local issues bound to disappear, which they did.

Today’s attack is different. It’s an attack on the theory of freedom of speech. It is an attack on the desirability of free speech and indeed if listened to carefully and plumbed fully, what we have today is an attack on the very possibility of free speech. The belief is that the First Amendment is a mistake. . . .

Yesterday the Democratic Party, the oldest political party in the world, the party that guided this country through two world wars and is more responsible than any other for the shape of the modern American state—the Democratic Party’s leading and prohibitively favored frontrunner candidate for the presidential nomination announced four goals for her public life going forward, one of which is to amend the Bill of Rights to make it less protective. It’s an astonishing event. She said that she wants to change the First Amendment in order to further empower the political class to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political speech about the political class—and so far as I can tell there’s not a ripple of commentary about this on the stagnant waters of the American journalistic community.

Matt Walsh: Time for a Competent Adult to be President - Not Hillary Clinton

From Matt Walsh:

Hillary Clinton announced her presidential campaign yesterday. I know some of you might not be hugely interested in politics, and I don’t blame you, but you should know a thing or two about this woman.

You should know that she is one of the most corrupt, despicable, dishonest human beings to ever ascend to a position of power by riding someone else’s coattails. Accuse me all you want of “not being a Christian about it” but I will say right now that Hillary Clinton is a dirty, rotten, thieving liar. She really is. And all you have to do is read a little bit about her exploits to see it.

Stop saying it’s “time for a woman.” There’s no time for that kind of logic. We can’t take the affirmative action approach to the presidency again. We tried that, and look what happened. It isn’t time for a woman, it’s time for a good person, regardless of gender.

And, I guarantee you, Hillary definitely isn’t that person:

To read the whole essay, click HERE.

Admiral James Lyons on Foreign Policy

We heard from Retired Admiral James Lyons back on February 6th.  Here's a link to that post.

On February 12, 2015, LiveLeak.com posted a short video of the Admiral in which one would be hard pressed to call him ambiguous or wishy-washy, labels that fit perfectly with most members of the current administration - including the pentagon spokesman.

You can watch the video by clicking on the below link.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc0_1423721020

Words of Relevance: Jonathan Swift on Lack of Reason

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), one of the most eloquent writers of his time, wrote many things that are relevant today, especially concerning politics, politicians, and the people who vote for them.  With the just concluded mid-term elections, many voters are scratching their heads trying to understand, for instance, how anybody who values life could have voted for a politician who has promised time and time again that he or she steadfastly and forever will support a mother's "right" to kill her child.

How does one convince the supporter of such a politician that there is no such "right" in our Constitution or anywhere else?  Swift saw the hopelessness of trying to sway that supporter toward righteousness, and made his feelings very clear.

Here's the quote:

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

Fouad Ajami (RIP) on Charismatic Leaders

Fouadi Ajami, who died this past week, was the subject of a well-earned panegyric written by Bret Stephens in today's Wall Street Journal.

Stephens asserts, in his piece about Ajami: "His genius lay in the breath of his scholarship and the quality of his human understanding."

That "human understanding" is especially manifest in Ajami's treatment of the charismatic leader, which comes through clearly in today's quote, which, according to Stephens, was made by Ajami in a piece he had written last November.

Here's the quote:

We need no pollsters to tell us of the loss of faith in Mr. Obama's policies - and, more significantly, in the man himself.  Charisma is like that.  Crowds come together and they project their needs onto an imagined redeemer.  The redeemer leaves the crowd to its imagination: For as long as the charismatic moment lasts - a year, an era - the redeemer is above and beyond judgment. 

Words of Relevance: Alexis de Tocqueville & Income Inequality

Alexis de Tocqueville's main piece of writing, Democracy in America,
was published in 1835.  It tells of what he found during his travels through the New World "from the perspective of a detached social scientist."  His observations on the American view of equality (which hasn't changed in almost 200 years) might come as a surprise to Barack Obama, and his acolytes, who prefer to engage in class warfare because it aids their political agenda.

Here's the quote:

Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.  

(Don't miss the quote on the above photo)