America is evil.  America doesn’t care.  America gives billions every year to help other countries in need.  Not only does our government give…so too do our citizens.  America cares.  But, in the eyes of the socialist left, America is evil.

America is now facing a catastrophe.  An entire region of America has been destroyed.  A major city may never regain life.  People are dying as we speak.  Where are the tears from Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, or Scandinavia?  Where are the dollars in foreign aid to help those Americans in need?  Where are those from the American left?

Oh, wait… they are busy condemning President Bush for the Louisiana disaster.  They are busy sucking up to the communist leader of Venezuela.  They are busy turning even more Americans into victims.  This IS serious.

Has anyone else ever wondered why the far left is so angry…so hateful?  The simple answer is that they have lost power because they cannot convince a majority of Americans to take their side.  But that is too simplistic.  The left is angry even when they have power.  There has to be a deeper answer.

To get to that answer we have to look at the target of leftist anger.  Certainly they target individuals and groups.  But the one consistent target of leftist hatred is America itself.  So now we can ask the real question:  Why does the far left hate America?

I believe that it often really does have to do with power, but in a way that is different from what we usually believe.  Evidence can be found in a place that most won’t look…the “victim” literature. 

A very large segment of the left consists of those who consider themselves to be victims.  Some have never really been victimized.  Some of them have been victimized in a variety of ways.  But, rather than viewing themselves as people who have been victimized, they view themselves as Victims…Victims with a capital V…Victims for perpetuity… perpetual victims.  This group is large.  

Much of the rest of the left is comprised of those who further victimize these people by affirming that they are Victims with a capital V and capitalizing on their perception.

Most of the experiences of perpetual victims are viewed through the screen of victimization.  When any individual or group is viewed by these perpetual victims as having more power or influence than they do, they go into an immediate defensive mode.  For many of them the best defense is a strong offense.  They attack the individual or group perceived to have this power or influence.  They do not attack ideas or beliefs but they attack the core of the person or group involved. 

In the 21^st Century, the entity that holds the most power across the globe is America.  Through their victim screen the perpetual victims view America as the greatest threat to all their sisters and brothers in victimhood.  There is no thought involved…just defensive instinct.  Their emotional experience is one of irrational hatred…a hatred that is so strong it prevents recognition of anything that refutes the feeling.  For example, they attack President Bush for his personality rather than for his ideas.  They blame him for hurricanes and for terrorism and for their own very miserable views of themselves.  They blame America for the fact that Islamic terrorists have attacked America and killed thousands before and after September 11, 2001.  When President Bush places African American’s in influential positions while President Clinton (the first black president in the eyes of the African American left) did not, the effort by President Bush is not only minimized but condemned.  The African Americans given the opportunity by the President are also condemned as somehow defective (translation:  not victims).  Anything that America does for the good of people or for the good of the world or both is seen as bad.  This is because the action doesn’t fit the cognitive frame of the victim and therefore “cannot be accurate” in the minds of those perpetual victims.

Here is the problem.  Americans are not victims.  Everyone in this nation has a chance to join in the dance.  Even those who have truly been victimized have an opportunity to move beyond that experience.  Some choose to take it.  Some choose to listen to the purveyors of victimhood instead of moving ahead.  This is what gives the leaders of the far left their power.  Those who take the opportunity are generally far happier than those who don’t.  Those who choose to be perpetual victims are unhappy, miserable in their unhappiness, and unable to figure out a way out.  Thus, their hatred of almost everything and everybody, including America.

As long as people buy into the victimization agenda, nothing will change.  America is not the victimizer.  The only ones that are victimizing anyone today are the Islamic terrorists.  America is trying to defend itself and those very people who feel victimized by America. 

I could be wrong but I think this is the problem with America today.  It is time that we all stand up and use our anger against the right victimizers.  The nation with the most power is not always the most evil.  It is time for everyone to join in to get rid of the real victimizers.  It is time to stop listening to the people on the left that are just perpetuating the victim mentality for their own gains.  We all do better when we pull together…when we are strong together!

The National Education Association stated on the first anniversary of September 11. 2001 that teachers be careful not to “suggest any group is responsible” for the terrorist hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people.”  (Ellen Sorokin, Washington Times, August 19, 2002).  Public schools still avoid the topic of September 11.  When they do bring up the topic it is done through the politically correct screen of the left. 

Clearly, the extreme left has taken over America.   The extreme left is brainwashing our children at all levels of education.  We as parents must be responsible to counter this leftist anti-American propaganda.  If those who are teaching our children do not know who was responsible for the murders of 2001, they should not be teaching our children. 

America is at war.  Educators, politicians, and “activists” are sugar-coating that reality and/or condemning those of us who are trying to fight the good fight for what is right.  The more the left prevails, the more the enemy views America as beatable and the more the enemy can envision victory.   We must stand up and fight.  America is unbeatable.

Pat Benatar said it best in her song entitled Invincible (excerpted lyrics). 

Stand up and face the enemy

It’s a do or die situation

We will be invincible

And with the power of conviction

There is no sacrifice

It’s a do or die situation

We will be invincible

We can’t afford to be innocent

Stand up and face the enemy

Stand up and face the enemy

It’s a do or die situation

We will be invincible

As the fringe left continues to gain recruits from the uninformed middle, I keep looking for American heroes.  Today, my hero is Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.  In an article written for Scripps Howard News Service (Minneapolis StarTribune, August 26, 2005), Mr. May offered to meet with Cindy Sheehan.  He also offered to answer the question that she wants to ask of President Bush:  ‘What is the noble cause that my son died for?’ 

 In order to answer this question, May agreed to bring some friends, including “Iraqi freedom fighters with whom (he has) been working for the past several years, many of them women, as well as democracy and human rights activists from Syria, Iran, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and other countries”.  May said that together they would respond to Sheehan’s question as follows:

“Your son died fighting a war against an extremist movement intent on destroying free societies and replacing them with racist dictatorships.”

May correctly states that Sheehan is “calling for the United States to get out of Iraq at a time when our enemies in that country include the most aggressive and lethal branch of Al-Qaida…(I)f we were to retreat from Iraq now, it would be a historic defeat for the United States.  And it would be a huge victory for Al-Qaida…Recruits would flock to (them).”

Mr. May correctly notes that “We will never be able to make ourselves inoffensive to the racist death cults that have declared war on us…Remember, we fled from Somalia in 1993.  We left Saddam in power…in 1991.  We did nothing much after the Hezbollah bombing of our Marine barracks in 1983.  Our response to the taking of American hostages in Tehran in 1979 was toothless.”

Sheehan is not fooling anyone.  Every America who thinks could have answered her question.  In fact, she could have answered her own question.  The truth is that the question is politically motivated.  She doesn't want an answer.  Her handlers on the far left want to keep the antiwar movement alive.  They want to see America fail.  They want to take America down just as they did during the Vietnam War.  Sheehan and her handlers know, as May states in his article, “we demonstrated to our enemies (in the past) that there would be no penalty for humiliating and even slaughtering Americans…(Al-Qaida) saw evidence that Americans are irresolute and weak.”

At a time in history when terrorists can fire rockets in Jordan at an American ship at port without returning fire, America is in trouble.  While America waits for Jordan to find the terrorists, America once again is viewed by the world as weak and irresolute.  That is what the left wants.  They despise American power and they will do anything to see our nation crumble.  It is people like Clifford May who continue to stand tall against this subversion.  All Americans should not only thank him but join with him in OUR battle. 

You can guide a horse to water but you can’t make the horse drink the water.  That is because horses really aren’t very bright. 

I had hoped that the people of Iraq were brighter than horses.  Yet, they have been given a chance to develop a democracy…to enjoy the freedoms that Americans enjoy…and they are not taking that opportunity.  Iraqis who put religion before common sense are endangering the hope for Iraqi freedom.  They are also besmirching the heroism of Americans who have given them the opportunity to thrive.  They are giving fodder to the anti-American leftists around the world who want America to fail in its effort to bring peace and honor to the Middle East.  They cannot even agree on a constitution that will give them a future that they could never have under the sword of Islam. 

I still hope that the people of Iraq are brighter than horses.  I am slowly losing that hope.

If you tell a lie long enough it becomes reality to many.  That is what is happening every day in the leftist media.  The lie is that President Bush lied about the reason for going to war in Iraq.  The fact that this statement is a lie does not deter those asserting it.  And it does not deter those who are already on the left or who don’t pay much attention from believing it.

Here is the truth.  President Bush gave many reasons for going to war in Iraq.  The belief that Iraq had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was but one of them.  In the face of the continuing onslaught of lies, I want to remind the thoughtful of the truth. Therefore, I am going to repeat a commentary that I wrote on this blog on March 30 of this year.

A few months ago I listed several reasons that were given by the Bush Administration for entering the war with Iraq.  No matter how many times these reasons are listed by writer after writer, the un-loyal opposition continues to assert the fact that the only reason given by the Bush Administration for entering the war was the “lie” that Iraq housed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Once again, the truth must be told.  Clifford D. May of the Scripps Howard news Service (Minneapolis StarTribune, March 27, 2005) has provided a short list of reasons given by President Bush and others in his administration for the need to remove Saddam Hussein. 

President Bush, October 7, 2002:  Saddam Hussein “has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States.”  He added “Some Al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.  These include one very senior Al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad….” (That was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who still beheads people in Iraq.)

President Bush, September 12, 2002 (in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly):  If we meet our responsibilities the people of Iraq can shake off their captivity.  They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world.  These nations can show by their example that honest government, and respect for women, and the great Islamic tradition of learning can triumph in the Middle East and beyond.

Paul Wolfowitz, October 16, 2002:  “Iraq is part of the global war on terrorism because Iraq represents one of the first and best opportunities to begin building what President Bush has referred to as a better world beyond the war on terrorism.”

As noted by Clifford D. May, it is “odd that such clear and compelling justifications for the war have been largely forgotten in what passes for debate these days.”

Who actually is the "liar" ?

It is incumbent on us as Americans to remind those who lie about the reasons for entering this war that they are lying, that we know they are lying, and that they can tell the lie as often as they want and we won’t believe it.

The amount of media coverage being afforded to mainstream media mascot Cindy Sheehan rivals that of the biggest stories of the past two decades.  Both print and electronic media outlets have stationed adoring reporters in Crawford to record every “f” word uttered by their heroine.  While Michael Moore, their previous mascot, proved to be too repugnant for many on the left, Cindy is perfect for them.  Cindy the victim, Cindy the angry mom, Cindy the activist …Cindy is perfect for the victim-loving and victim-creating leftist, anti-American media.

Even though Cindy has had to leave Crawford due to her mother’s stroke. (luckily, Cindy’s husband filed for divorce before he had a stroke), the newspapers and television outlets continue to devote huge amounts of space to the mother who claims to speak for all mothers of those who have died serving their country in Iraq.  For example, the August 19 Minneapolis StarTribune gave their mascot a below-the-fold front page headline and four fifths of page A6.  But the really telling news was in a separate article on the bottom right corner of the front page of the same paper.  The article was actually printed under the bold headline “War protester leaves camp after mom falls ill”.  The smaller headline under that one stated “Minnesotan says protest dishonors her dead son”.  That article is continued in the lower one fifth of page A6, just under the very large continuation of the Sheehan non-story.  While I give the paper a bit of credit for even mentioning that some mom’s disagree with Cindy, the placement of that article is disgraceful. 

While many will miss the headline and the content of the article, I want to be sure that all of those reading this blog do not.  The article was written by Eric Black, Minneapolis StarTribune, August 19, 2005.  It is re-printed here in its entirety.

“Cindy Sheehan's protest vigil outside the Bush ranch is ‘a slap in the face’ to the soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, in the opinion of Marny Fasnacht, whose son Michael died in Iraq.

“Sheehan wants to challenge President Bush to specify the "noble cause" for which her son gave his life. Fasnacht, the mother of one of 25 Minnesotans who have died in the war in Iraq, would like to answer that.

“Michael Fasnacht, 25, of Mankato (Minnesota), believed the mission was about defending freedom, spreading democracy and defeating terrorism, said Marny Fasnacht, 58, of Janesville.

“To suggest that he chose to risk his life for a cause that was neither noble nor necessary feels to Fasnacht like an insult to his intelligence. ‘He was highly intelligent, and I agree with him,’ Fasnacht said. She then took from her Bible one of her son's last letters and read this passage:

" ‘I feel very good about being here to relieve the men that have already been here a year and are ready to go home. I am also proud to be involved in such an influential conflict in history. ... I hope the Iraqis will be able to capitalize on the opportunity we are giving them. At least the seeds are planted now.’

“Fasnacht said her son believed the mission was also to fight terrorists in Iraq so they wouldn't have to be fought in the United States. If people think the terrorists won't come to U.S. shores, ‘they are kidding themselves,’ she said.

“It upsets her that ‘some Americans take their freedom for granted and enjoy it but don't think about the people that are standing in the gap, defending their freedom,’ she said.

‘For Sheehan to sit out there and scream that their lives were lost for nothing, I feel dishonors my son. It is the farthest thing from the truth, and I appreciate the opportunity to say something about it.’

“Fasnacht said she understands Bush's decision not to meet with Sheehan and ‘I don't think it would do him any good to talk to her.’  She believes that if news media coverage of the Sheehan vigil reaches the troops in Iraq, it runs the risk of undermining their morale. ‘We've got to let them know that we are backing them up,’ she said.  She said she does not support the decision of (Minnesota) State Sen. Becky Lourey and congressional candidate Coleen Rowley to join Sheehan in Texas. Lourey, like Fasnacht, lost her son in the war.

“Said Fasnacht: ‘If these people are right, like Mrs. Sheehan or Mrs. Lourey, then what are they saying about these guys who volunteered. Do they have air in their brains? Let's give them some credit for knowing what they're doing over there.’

“Michael Fasnacht was leader of a platoon that included 33 soldiers and three Bradley fighting vehicles. Their assignment was to find and capture bomb-makers, she said. He died on June 8, after being hit by a bomb while on patrol.  ‘He was a courageous hero. There's no getting around it,’ his mother said. ‘I'm not adjusted to his death.’”

Not all mothers (or fathers) who have lost a child to the war against terror agree with media mascot, Cindy Sheehan.  It is time that the press gave coverage to those who believe their sons (and daughters) died for a valiant cause.

Looking and talking more like an aging hippie than an ex-FBI attorney, Coleen Rowley “called the Iraq war ‘a quagmire’ with ‘many parallels to Vietnam’” (Greg Gordon, Minneapolis StarTribune, August 18, 2005).  Rowley, you will recall, is running as a Democrat for the United States Senate in a conservative district in Minnesota.  She also is joining Cindy Sheehan in her antiwar protest in Crawford Texas.  While this may sound like a strange campaign strategy, it tells us a great deal about Ms. Rowley.  As we have all told our children, we are judged by the company we keep.  Cindy Sheehan is very bad company.

According to the Drudge Report (August 17, 2005), on April 27, 2005, Cindy Sheehan said the following during a rally at San Francisco State University:

"We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!…We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

Casey Sheehan

You served your country with honor.  

Your commitment to America is being dishonored by Cindy Sheehan, your mother.  She is defiling your memory to promote an anti-American political agenda. 

She is either politically motivated or politically manipulated.  She is being supported by Michael Moore, MoveOn America, the American Communist Party and many other anti-American organizations.  Some of those groups are offshoots or “offspring” of those anti-American groups that contributed to the destruction of America’s resolve during the Vietnam War.  In that case, they contributed to the unnecessary deaths of thousands. 

You volunteered to serve your country.  For your service to America, we honor you, Casey Sheehan. 

For the acts of your misguided mother, we offer our most heartfelt sympathy.

The left preaches inclusion, tolerance, and acceptance.  Honesty is to be heralded.  Really?

Given events that have taken place over the past four decades, I beg to differ.  Tolerance and acceptance are offered by the left only when they agree.  It is far from acceptable to “tolerate” the views of those who have strong moral or religious convictions.  Honesty is only acceptable to the left if what one says fits with preconceived leftist ideas.  When anyone forwards an honest belief or even an honest theory that differs with the left the result is far from acceptance.  One recent example was the denigration of Larry Summers, President of Harvard University for daring to say that science might want to look at possible gender differences across professionals.  Mr. Summers has been forced to apologize over and over again.  He is still being castigated by fellow “academicians” and by the press.

A more important example has taken place within the past week.  President Bush forwarded the idea that the concept of intelligent design be taught along side the theory of evolution in our schools.  To the left this represents one of the ultimate evils.  Leftists are condemning our president as ignorant.  They are saying that he didn’t profit from his Harvard education.  They are saying he is a fundamentalist (this being the single worst crime in leftist America). 

The left castigates the religious right both for having religious thought and for endorsing its relevance to American past and to the American present and future.  They assert that the religious right holds onto their beliefs and their faith in a blind and intolerant manner.

Meanwhile, they completely and blindly cast out any possibility that the concept of intelligent design has any place in the study of science and particularly the study of the origin of humanity.  They are as much blind adherents to a faith (i.e., atheism) as many on the religious right are to their belief system. 

Blindness to fact prevents learning.  The left professes such openness to learning and yet they shun contrary views.  We all can benefit from some degree of agnostic openness.  We all can benefit from listening to the views of others without calling them names.  Such openness allows us to answer the really critical questions that we avoid if our beliefs are fixed in cement.  Dennis Prager has asked one of those core questions of the evolutionary theorists.  Prager does not presuppose an answer but does presuppose that evolutionists must be able to answer it before the concept of intelligent design is scrapped entirely.  The question to the evolutionists and to the left is: If evolutionary theory is correct, what started it?

I too do not presuppose an answer to that question.  Maybe evolution is entirely random.  It is equally possible that there was (or is) an intelligent force that underlies it.  None of us know.  To shut out discussion of such a critical debate by fiat is ridiculous.  But of course that is exactly what the left is trying to do within its pretense of inclusion, tolerance, and acceptance.

In his book, The Minds of Boys, Michael Gurian writes that our sons are falling behind in school and life.  According to Gurian, one of the problems lies in the way our boys are being educated.  I agree.

For many years, educators have acknowledged the fact that different adults learn differently.  Some learn best from lecture, some from action.  While research has indicated for many years that such differences in learning style exist among children as well as among adults, our educational system has ignored the fact.  One of those key findings?  Boys and girls, on average, learn differently.

The impact of inadequately educating any of our children is immense.  We are seeing one such impact today among our boys.  Because our elementary and secondary schools treat all students as if they were female, boys are taught to sit and be quiet when they need to be learning in an active and sometimes physical manner.  Because of this feminization of our schools, boys are not gaining the education that they need to be successful. 

In the book, Angry Young Men, Aaron Kipnis points to research that shows:

·        When boys and girls equally misbehave, boys receive more frequent and severe penalties

·        Boys receive 8 to 10 times the reprimands of girls, most likely in front of the class (while girls are more often taken aside)

·        Boys receive 71% of school suspensions

·        Boys are victims of the majority of school violence

·        Boys are referred to special education 4 to 1 over girls

·        Boys drop out of school 4 to 1 over girls

·        Boys have lower grade point averages than girls and fail to graduate more than girls

·        Girls outperform boys in reading and writing by greater degrees than boys ever outperformed girls in math and science

·        Boys are the minority of valedictorians, academic scholarship winners, new college students, and those going to graduate school

Clearly, boys are not being given the same opportunity as girls in our schools.  The impact on their academic and social success is immense.  But, it goes beyond that.  People who are required to be in a situation within which they cannot succeed will either leave (physically or emotionally) or they engage in acting-out behavior.  Both are designed to mask the sense of shame that they feel in response to their sense of inadequacy and/or incompetence.  In some cases, the result is violence.  This occurs much more frequently in boys than in girls. 

Here is one example.  In all of the incidents of targeted school violence that have been studied to date, the shooter was male.  William Pollack has noted that “I believe they are all boys because the way we bring up boys in America predisposes them to a sense of loneliness, disconnection, and sadness”.  When faced with continued torment they may feel a lack of hope.  When they are unable to gain relief from the pain from adults, they sometimes turn to revenge as what they see as their only hope. 

When this happens, it is rarely a surprise.  Boys who are feeling the shame and humiliation of failure resulting from an ineffective educational system show clear signs.  Most have engaged in some behavior that caused concern to school staff and that indicated a need for help.  Until the schools begin to address the issues causing the shame in boys they will need to be vigilant for these signs and they will have to try to manage the effects on boys after the fact.  Of course it would make more sense to prevent the damage in the first place.

As I have talked to educators about this reality, most agree with what I have written here.  Most offer no solution.  Yet the solution is clear.  Undoing the feminization of American public education would be a great start.  This would require individualized educational plan for boys and girls.  That would require acknowledging gender differences (something the left despises). 

Therein lays the problem.  The feminization of American public education has been carried out by the hand of the far left.  It has been designed to weaken America.  The best way to weaken America is to destroy the will of its men.  It is working.