Walking in the Footprints of Giants

Fire of Liberty

While Nancy Pelosi and a large sub-section of fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives are slowly driving their party closer and closer towards the edge of a great cliff on their stances on national security and foreign affairs, there are some Democrats who take principle over politics. One individual that has impressed me with this stance is US Representative Jim Marshall of Georgia. Aside from his principled stand behind our troops and our mission in Iraq, he has also gone against Pelosi by speaking out on extending the Patriot Act because as he notes in this article, "it's a useful tool in the nation's war against terrorism." As one of Rep. Marshall's constituents, I'm very proud to have a Democrat in the mold of the great Carl Vinson Rep. - D- GA(Srv. fifty years from 1914-1965) and Sen. Sam Nunn -D-GA (1972-1996) serving as my representative. You'd think the Democratic party would get the drift that maybe they're losing touch with the American people when it comes to fighting terrorism and defending this nation. I just hope more level-headed Congressmen like Jim Marshall and Steny Hoyer take a stronger stand in the Democratic party before they become lost in the "wilderness" like the GOP did from 1954-1994. I don't know about you but I prefer a government with a ruling party and it's respective opposition. So carry on and keep up the good fight Rep. Marshall.

Munich Schmunich

Fire of Liberty

I had a little conversation with a group of my friends about Stephen Spielberg's recent movie "Munich" and I expressed my disdain about Mr. Spielberg trying to create a film that tries to make the terrorists of Black September into everyday people. From what I've read and have seen about the movie, the genius of "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" has decided to make a film that shows the terrorists as folks who have been denied a home (I guess Gaza and the West Bank are figments of our imagination) or have the same hangups as you and me and that we should have sympathy for their plight. Well I can understand the argument if the folks being hunted down by the Israeli government were folks that they disagreed politically about but the pure and simple truth is that these folks were terrorists that had the blood of the Israeli athletes who they murder in Munich, Germany in 1972 on their hands. Now folks can drag out the whole "cycle-of-violence" canard if they want to but their not going to go far with their argument when you can clearly point out that a more proactive approach on the behalf of Israel, like the direct targeting of various terrorists leaders by the IDF and the building of a security fence/wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories has put a severe dent in the suicide bombers business. Max Boot made the similar point in Wednesday's LA Times when he noted:

"Munich" is a more compelling film but just as specious morally. It tells the story of a Mossad hit team sent to avenge the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics by eliminating 11 Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis become tortured by their assignment. As one team member says: "“All this blood comes back to us." The movie reinforces this cycle-of-violence theme with constant references to all the terrorist attacks carried out by the PLO after the Olympics. The implication is that if the Israelis weren'’t killing PLO operatives, they would stop killing Jews.

Director Steven Spielberg has made clear that'’s his view, telling Time magazine: "“A response to a response doesn'’t really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine... . The only thing that'’s going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you'’re blue in the gills."

Where has Spielberg been for the last 15 years? Israel tried his "“blue in the gills"” approach in the 1990s, but the Oslo process only led to greater bloodshed. Israel defeated the second intifada not by chatting with terrorists but by fighting them. "Munich"” depicts assassinations as pointless. In reality, Israel'’s policy of targeted killings has dramatically reduced the threat from Hamas and other extremist groups.

The lesson of World War II still stands: Civilized countries must use violence to defeat barbarians. Why is that so hard for Hollywood to understand?

So if you want my opinion about the movie, I say go watch it but remember that the movie is just another example of Hollywood trying to promote their silly agenda of moral equvelancy. I can assure you that the brave olympiads who died in 1972, the Mossad agents who hunted down the terrorists and Prime Minister Golda Mier are far from being equal to the terrorists who killed 11 athletes because they were born Israeli.

A Fitting Tribute to a Grand Struggle

Fire of Liberty

Lee Edwards, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has a good piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune- Review on the current fundraising and future construction of a memorial in Washington D.C. to the victims of communism during the Cold War. Edwards also notes that the statue is also dedicated to the people of Cuba, China, and North Korea who are tolling under the jackboot of communism each and every day that these regimes stay in existence. I for one am glad that someone has finally decided to erect a monument to those who have suffered or are suffering from the evil menace of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Thankfully Lee Edwards is in charge of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation so conservative folks like me know that the memorial won't be an eyesore but will truly be a dignified tribute to the 100 million who have died at their communist masters. Here's a what Edwards wrote about the memorial that will go in a small corner of Capital Hill some two blocks from Union Station:

Our memorial will feature a 10-foot-high bronze replica of the statue of Democracy, erected by pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 and then destroyed by Chinese Communist tanks.

On the front pedestal of the Democracy statue, modeled after our own Statue of Liberty, will be inscribed the words: "To the more than one hundred million victims of communism and to those who love liberty."

On the back pedestal will be the words, "To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples." These words will remind visitors that a fifth of the world's population still lives under communism, a sad fact too often forgotten, especially by Americans.

So if anybody wants to honor the memory of the 100 million victims of communism just pay a visit to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and plop down a donation to get this fitting memorial built. As Michael Ledeen says, faster please!!!

Freedom's Champions

Well it looks like our friends in Poland have decided to allow its contingent of some 1,500 soldiers to stay in Iraq until the end of 2006 to continue their vigilant stand beside their American, British and Iraqi brothers-in-arms in their fight for freedom and democracy in the heart of the Middle East. You'll be hard pressed to find a more loyal European ally on Iraq than Poland who with due diligence has sunk some $600 million on the deployment (Some 10% of their $6 billion defense budget) and seen some 17 brave soldiers killed and 45 seriously wounded fighting for freedom. I guess the folks of Poland are more willing to expend some blood and treasure to provide a helping hand to a burgeoning democracy like Iraq due to the fact they know first hand what its like to live under the jackboot of a totalitarian system. This is truly a testament that the Lord works in mysterious ways.

I'd say that our best bet is to strengthen this partnership and ensure that they get all the military upgrades and financial help that they need. As the New York Sun rightly noted in an editorial today, maybe we need to rethink our current $1.8 billion subsidy to Egypt and send it to more deserving friends like Poland who share our same goal on freedom and democracy in the Middle East. We'll kill two birds with one stone by helping out a friend and showing the Mubarak regime that the US will not continue to pay out reams and reams of money to someone who continues to abrogate the freedoms of the peace loving parties and people of Egypt. We can also show our thanks by allowing the people of Poland the right to travel in our nation without having to apply or pay for an expensive Visa. If we just start showing the same gratitude and devotion that Poland has given our nation in Iraq and the GWOT, we'll go a long way in concreting this already strong bond.

With the most recent election of a pro-American right-of-center party and the elevation of Radoslaw Sikorski (a fellow of AEI and a strong Atlaticist) to Poland's Minister of Defense, and well as this recent agreement on extending their stay in Iraq, I can foretell a bright future ahead between the US and Poland. So on behalf of America, I'd like to offer a gracious thank you to Poland for their continued stand beside us and their great sacrifices of blood and treasure in helping install freedom and democracy in Iraq.

It's Better Than You Think

Fire of Liberty

Though the MSM and various Democrats keep on running countless stories on how Sunnis in Iraq are not being marginalized and are not properly represented in parliament thus some resort to violence, they fail to point out that their are a lot of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who are totally opposed to the terrorists and are making a difference in Iraq. One individual who is of this mold (and I suspect some 98% of Iraq as well) is Iraqi Sunni politician Mithal al-Alusia who has been recently re-elected while promoting the creation of an anti-terrorists alliance between Iraq, the US, European countries, Turkey and Israel. Even after losing two adult sons at the hands of terrorists in 2003 for advocating such ideas, al-Alusi still have a positive outlook on his country and is still not afraid to point out that the terrorists must and will lose in the fight for Iraq. In fact, I think he sums up the opinion of a large majority of Iraqis when he noted to Ilene R. Prushner of the Christian Science Monitor:

"We're not working in Iraq for personal goals. We work for something because we really believe in it," he says. "It would be stupid to let the terrorists win."

You've got to feel pretty good about the future of Iraq that al-Alusi was re-elected in a Sunni dominated region while advocating such ideas. Here's hoping for more al-Alusi's in the future. Maybe Reps. Murtha and Pelosi, Sens. Kennedy, Reid, Kerry as well as Howard Dean should look at al-Alusi before they start their "the sky is falling" antics on Iraq. Here's one to al-Alusi, may here see his dreams come true

Citizen Soldiers Fighting on the Fringes of Civilization

Fire of Liberty


If you want to read a good book on how our soldiers are winning the good fight in the far reaches of the world then I highly recommend you read Robert D. Kaplan's(Atlantic Monthly) new book Imperial Grunts. Now since you might be short funds due to Christmas our some bills pending in the upcoming weeks, you can get a sneak preview of the book's subject and the author by reading this transcript of an recent interview between Kaplan and Salem Radio's Hugh Hewitt. It's rather long but you'll thank me after reading it and hopefully you might tune in the show or just rush out to buy the book. So enjoy.

Give No Quarter To Terrorists

Fire of Liberty

Here's a good reason why you can't sit down and try to reason with terrorists of any stripe. One day folks are going to learn that it's best to hit them hard and remove the whole lot of terrorists before they kill you or the people you're sworn to protect.

The New "Labour-Right"

Fire of Liberty

Well it looks like David Cameron, the UK's Conservative party leader, is slowly but surely turning the once great party of Disraeli, William Pitt the Younger, Lord Salisbury, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher into a mere shell of itself by scrubbing away any if not all traces of a conservative philosophy. Now I know that a party that has been relegated to a "political wilderness" by enduring three straight election losses at the hands of Tony Blair and Labour is extremely hungry to take back to the House of Commons but one should never cast aside a parties political heritage and philosophy to achieve victory. This is clearly evident in the way that the Cameron folks are rebranding the Tory party as what I'd call "Labour-right," which means picking up the ideas and policies of the Labour party and stamping a made by the Tories stamp on it. Take this most recent article in the Financial Times, in which David Cameron is seeking the female vote by launching a campaign to end what he calls the "morally wrong" pay inequality between men and women in the workforce. It's rather ridiculous that a country like the UK which is facing an onslaught of problems ranging from violent street crime, radical Islamic fundametalism, the threat of terrorism, a decline in the education system, immigration out of control, excessive regulations on businesses and the people, and Lord knows what else and the Tory's new man is worried about pay inequalities between men and women. I guess Cameron has forgotten to read the countless articles and work by various UK and US think tanks that reveal that it's true that men a women have a difference in what they make but it has absolutely nothing to do with sexism or discrimination but more to do with the personal choice of the female workers.

Just think about this for a moment, when you look at human nature you've got to be crazy not to realize that the female workers of child-bearing ages or one's that have children are likely than not to take time out of work for maternity leave or spend time with their children thus they're not going to be able to break their backs like the male workers who are single or the fathers trying to support their family. (I'm aware of the single mothers supporting their families and I give them a hand but they are the rare exception). Another thing is that most soon to be mothers or current mothers are generally more willing to give up greater pay or large salaries for jobs that offer greater flexibility in their works hours which allows them to work their schedule around their children's activities, schooling, or illnesses. Even if you go beyond my layman argument on why women make less than men and focus on the academic arguments in books like Wayne State University's law professor Kingsley Browne's Biology at Work or Warren Farrell's Why Men Earn More you'll discover that they're making the same argument that I've been making, which is women earn less than men because they chose to take the jobs that were less labor intensive, were out of the elements, had flexible hours or because they wanted to spend more time with their family rather than due to some infringement or discrimination on behalf of the government or some business.

You know it's a sad day in the UK when the Tory PM is deciding the fate of the party on what the polls say is an attractive issue for a particular interest group. You'd think this up and coming star of the Tories would be more interested in strengthening the base of the party by promoting a conservative agenda that would tackle issues of increasing lawlessness in the streets, poor conditions of the NHS, out of control immigration, decline of the education system that Blair and the Labour government has failed to prevent or reduce than focusing on a small group of people who will never vote on them in the first place. From looking at the path Cameron is taking the Tory party down, one can understand why Lady Thatcher preferred Liam Fox and David Davis. I can assure you if he keeps it the current quest for new voters by deleting all traces of conservatism from the Tory banner and he'll see more folks rejecting him come poll time. So my best advice is that the Tories should be true to the party and reject this rebranding or they'll enjoy eight more years in the "wilderness."

Opening The Great Pyramid

Fire of Liberty

Well, it looks like all Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has once again irked the US with its most recent conviction of Ayman Nour to five years hard labour for supposedly forging documents in registering his political party el Ghad. In yesterday's edition of the Financial Times, William Wallis notes that the imprisonment of Egypt's most widely known liberal (in the classical liberalism model not the Liberalism of the modern day left.) party leader not only removes one more roadblock to Mubarak's complete control on Egypt (Even though the country has been in a state of emergency since the assassination of Sadat) but this silencing of Nour has also placed a strain on the future relationship between the US and Egypt. While past Presidents would have looked the other way and allowed Mubarak to continue his same games of silencing his opponents because he keeps the Muslim Brotherhood at bay, the Bush administration has decided that times have changed and before the US rewards Egypt for more bad behavior it should at least get some greater political freedoms, democratic reforms and the rule of law in return. According to John Alterman, director of the Middle East Studies at the Center for Strategic and Iternational Studies (CSIS), this failure to do so on Egypt's part will probably result in the US putting a hold on free trade negotiations with Egypt. One could also imagine that the removal of Nour from Egyptian politics will also cause a lot of folks in the White House and Congress to reassess the whole $1.8 billion subsidy in foreign and military aid that we've been sending the land of the Pharaohs since the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978. All of these talks about looking at changing policies or current arrangements with Egypt is just another example of how the White House is totally committed to the continued spread of democractic values throughout the region much like Sens. Jackson, Vanick and President Reagan did when they tied the spread of democratic freedoms in the Soviet Union to the easing of economic restrictions by the West during the Cold War.

If we want to continue to get a lot of the various countries in the world to start granting their people greater freedoms and the continued embrace of democratic reforms then we've got to hold firm and continue to deny them certain economic/political/military inducements until they show that they are ready to march down the road towards change. Now that might sound like "pie in the sky" to some folks out there but if we don't start holding regimes like that of Mubarak (and most likely his presumed heir to the throne Gamal Mubarak) responsible for their actions and refusing to reward them for bad behavior then we'll start having a real problem in demonstrating to the folks in this part of the world that we are truly serious about our push for democratic reform. From the looks of it, it seems that at least President Bush and a few others in the administration seems to be getting the point and are calling for such reforms and the release of Nour before we move forward on anything political or economic. I'd say that the Wall Street Journal's recent editorial titled "Tell ol' Pharaoh," pretty much summed up the whole argument for the release of Nour and the possible cutting off of funds to Egypt by noting:

Mr. Nour and his party also serve as a reminder that Egypt's political choices are not limited to Mr. Mubarak's brand of authoritarian nationalism and the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidates (running as independents) took 40% of last month's parliamentary vote and 20% of the seats. Mr. Mubarak has at times ruthlessly suppressed the Brotherhood, but their political strength allows him to pose as the man the West can rely on to hold the Islamists at bay.

It is precisely because some administration officials think we're "one-man deep" in Egypt that $1.8 billion in annual American aid continues to flow into its coffers. But just as the existence of the Ghad Party indicates there is a genuine third way for Egypt's future, Mr. Nour's imprisonment tells us that the Mubarak regime deserves no comfort from this administration.

Here's hoping for the immediate release of Ayman Nour so Egypt can begin to gain greater freedoms and enjoy the movement towards a more democratic government and away from a nearly 30 year one man rule by Mubarak. If not, I can think of some more deserving countries or programs that $1.8 billion a year can go towards.

Turn out the Lights, The Party's Over!!!

Fire of Liberty

Thank you MNF for gracing our TVs with 36 wonderful years of football on ABC. ESPN's production of MNF will pale in comparison to the ratings powerhouse that Roone Alredge, Pete Rozelle, Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, Frank Gifford, Keith Jackson, Al Michaels, and the many other announcers, crew and athletes built through the years. Ya'll be missed by millions in the US, who fought sleep on a many of a school night just to say to their friends the next day that they watched all of MNF.

Merry Christmas

Fire of Liberty


I want everybody to have a save and wonderful Merry Christmas. I'll see ya'll Monday because I'm taking a short break for Christmas as well, so see ya then.

The Christmas illustration is by my dear friend Jason Crosby who is a freelance artist living in Kansas City, KS. Check out his blog Ink Doodles.

The Gift of Giving

Fire of Liberty

With the one year anniversary of the horrific tsunami that struck Asia, one is reminded of all the folks in the UN and other world capitals calling the US government "stingy" because it didn't donate enough of its GDP to disaster aid. I guess the folks in the UN and other world governments forgot that while they sat still condemning the US and arguing over how to respond to, the US was the first government to respond to the disaster by dispatching the USS Abraham Lincoln, various support ships as well as the launching of 20 to 30 helicopters and aircraft into the zone to offer rescue support and the much needed airlift of food and medicine. Even better, the US government decided that the relief offered by the US Navy, Air Force, and Marines was much more effective than the mere donating of gobs and gobs of money into a large UN fund which would be literally wasted or pilfered away by the thugs and kleptocrats that seem to get their mits on such funds. In fact the American people tend to voice their outright opposition towards its government sending money to the UN and other world bodies by donating their money towards private charities that publicly account for their spending. The drift towards these charities and away from the opinion of anti-American elites like Jan England, UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, is clearly evident in this editorial in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal. Just take a look:

Even by U.N. standards, it was a particularly absurd anti-American slur -- although it no doubt expresses the view of many foreign elites, who have come to believe that government is the only true source of goodness and charity. In the weeks and months that followed the tsunami, American citizens dug deep into their wallets, donating some $1.78 billion to the relief effort in Asia -- dwarfing the contributions of other developed nations. Since October Americans have also contributed $78 million to assist the casualties of the Pakistan earthquake.

And lest there be any doubt that the Good Samaritan ethic is alive and well in America, consider the latest totals of charitable giving to help the New Orleans victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University announced last week that the total value of private donations in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has reached $3.12 billion, thus "setting what is believed to be a record for a single disaster and recovery effort." This tsunami of aid dollars was donated in just three and a half months.

More astounding still is that this Gulf Coast aid is only a little more than 1/100th of what Americans donate to charities and churches every year. The quarter trillion dollars a year that Americans provide to sustain the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, the American Cancer Society, their local churches, universities and such is greater than the entire GDP of most countries. Bill and Melinda Gates have given more dollars to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa than have many nations. And all of this comes on top of the $1 trillion in taxes that Americans pay each year to support government income-transfer and benefit programs.

This generosity in money and volunteerism has been a hallmark of American society since its earliest days. Some 150 years ago Alexis de Tocqueville lauded the impulse of Americans (in contrast to Europeans) to set up churches, schools, orphanages, hospitals, homeless shelters and other civic aid organizations throughout the land.

What impels Americans to engage in such kindness to strangers? We suspect that Americans give to private charities because they recognize that these initiatives work best. Bobby Jindal, the Congressman from New Orleans whose own home was badly damaged by flood waters, tells us that "by far the most effective relief efforts have come from private charitable aid organizations. FEMA and other state/local government agencies set up bureaucracies and red tape, while private businesses and charities moved in swiftly to alleviate the human suffering on the ground."

I'm cool with the US government and its people making decisions and taking actions that get the folks in the UN upset and makes them say disparaging things about the US because it shows us that we're doing something that is probably working much better than the UN could ever think about doing. So America, keep getting under Mr. England's skin, its rather fun to watch.

A Shameful Display

Fire of Liberty

The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial in Friday's paper which points out that the German government has disappointed the US once again on the War on Terror front by granting the release of terrorist Mohammed Ali Hamdia some 19 years after he was convicted to a life sentence for the 1986 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the subsequent murder of US Naval Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem. Even while our soldiers are diligently fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan and throughout the streets of Iraq, we have the courts and parole system in Germany releasing some of the most horrific murderers of the planet thus sending a message to the terrorists that Germany is indeed a week wing of the coalition when it comes to holding terrorists responsible for their heinous deeds. I'd say that the WSJ summed up the horrific state of affairs in Germany when it comes to terrorism when they noted:

But the word "murder" doesn't adequately describe what Hamadi and his crew did to Stethem. "They singled him out because he was American and a soldier," said one eyewitness. "They dragged him out of his seat, tied his hands and then beat him up. . . . They kicked him in the face and knee caps and kept kicking him until they had broken all his ribs. Then they tried to knock him out with the butt of a pistol -- they kept hitting him over the head but he was very strong and they couldn't knock him out. . . . Later, they dragged him away and I believe shot him."

In 1987, Hamadi was detained at Frankfurt airport when customs officials found liquid explosives in his luggage. A U.S. extradition request was denied on grounds that he was liable for the death penalty. Instead, Germany meted out its toughest sentence: Life in prison. But as one German official acknowledged to us, there is no such thing as life imprisonment in Germany. The country's Constitutional Court requires prison officers to review life cases after 15 years and seek reasons for early release, including good behavior and expressions of remorse. Whether Hamadi has expressed remorse the official could not say.

Today there is a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer named for Robbie Stethem. We salute the sailors who put their lives at risk for our liberties. As for our ally Germany, we trust that in the war on terror it has kept a clean conscience.

I just hope this is not a preview of what is to come out of Germany when it comes to fighting terrorism. When you start demonstrating time after time your softness towards terrorism, the terrorists will start taking you serious and won't be afraid to take you on in a more forceful manner like that of September 11.

Foreign Aid Reform: US Style

Fire of Liberty

Though USAID has been a good organization in providing many nations in need with foreign aid, the White House has decided to put some greater umph into the organization by introducing some much needed reforms. As a former business man and as a chief admirer of the small faith-based charities and other privately run charities, President Bush knows full well that if you allow the folks who run the show and provide the much needed aid or help you'll get things done in a much quicker and efficient way than by having too many cooks in the kitchen at one time like USAID seems to be experiencing at the moment. According to a recent interview in the Financial Times, Adrew Natsios, the outgoing USAID administrator, notes that the reforms being drawn up in the White House range from structural reforms like collecting up the varying foreign aid programs that are scattered throughout the US government and placing them under USAID's roof thus creating a more streamlined organization, allowing greater discretion in their budget, as well as allowing USAID to play a greater role in the promotion of democracy thus allowing them to get more involved in the various nation building areas like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon as well as places like Pakistan who have been devastated by devastating earthquakes. If we can improve USAID by pushing through such reforms, we'll see a vast improvement in our image throughout the world. You only have to look at the happy faces of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq who are able to drink clean water and receive electricity due to the hard work of USAID and its platoon of foreign aid workers who braved these rough and tumbled lands to discover that USAID could be an even greater tool in delivering foreign aid if the much needed reforms being drawn up by the White House go into effect. Let's just hope that President Bush gets his wish and can add yet another sharpened sword to his armory to fight back the forces of evil in the world.

Simple Works of Charity

Fire of Liberty

Karen Woods, who is the director of the Acton Center for Effective Compassion, has a good piece over at National Review Online that notes that if you decide to give a gift of compassion to a local or national charity this Christmas, then you should make it your duty to find a charity that actually helps people who are starving, homeless or underclothed rather than one which wastes its money on paying its staff. If your a regular reader, you know that I've written extensively about how various groups like the federal government and world renowned charities actually seem to think that if they have bundles and bundles of cash in their hands they can spend the way out of the problem but when they start shelling the cash out, (after paying their staff, paying a high overhead) they discover that they end up creating larger problems within the community either by wasting their money in areas that are not germane to the problem at hand or merely creating greater sense of dependency in the minds of the folks needing help. Now when you compare them to the physically and economically smaller and more local charities, you discover that the smaller ones are providing the needed services to the real people in need. Woods clearly points this out in her piece when she points out that:

Good intentions are not enough. The most significant giving season of the year is no time to relent in our vigilance to avoid the unintended consequences of hurricane recovery (or in any other social need area either). From the smallest, personal kindness extended to an individual hurricane victim, to the most generous in-kind and cash donations of corporate America, due diligence remains important. Donors should do as much homework as they can, and use publicly available evaluation services like Charity Navigator. These services can tell you how to avoid a donation scam, or flag a charity that is less interested in helping the needy than helping themselves. Beyond balance sheets and metrics, individual donors will also want to make sure that the moral aims of a charity are in line with their own.

Look for groups that run lean. The Association of Gospel Rescue Missions has national coordinating offices in Kansas City. And when a member missions in New Orleans was wiped out and evacuees headed to Dallas and Houston and points west and north, AGRM coordinated the tremendous relief effort for the intact missions. And AGRM is taking absolutely no percentage, no cut whatsoever, for administrative costs. Every dollar donated goes to programming. Such is true for many small charities across the country.

So maybe when we think about making a contribution to charity, make sure we're very discerning in who we pick when choosing a charity. Now there's nothing wrong with giving your change or some paper money in the Salvation Army kettles whenever you can but you can do much better if you take the time to research these charities and pick out the one's that place more of their efforts and money towards delivering works to the folks in need. If we can do this, we can see a vast improvement on our ability to deliver charity in an effective and expedient manner rather. I suspect that the private, religious, small, and local charities have provided greater day to day help like food, clothing, shelter and education that what the vast bureaucracies of FEMA and the Red Cross can deliver. (The big groups do the heavy lifting but generally have too many obstacles and red tape in their way to be effective and on the spot.) So I guess that saying that all charity begins at home and in your community rings true even in the 21st Century. So donate wisely this Christmas and during the rest of the year, and have yourself a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Iron Mullahs Eliminate Songs of Freedom

Fire of Liberty

The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial today(Its locked behind a subscription firewall) on how President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his fellow mullahs are strengthening their iron noose around the necks of the Iranian people with their most recent banning of all forms of Western music. So not only does the Iranian people face persecution and violent crackdowns by the Iranian government because they have called on their government to grant them the right to G-d's given rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as well as an ability to democratically choose their own leaders and not out of a group pre-selected by the Council of Guardians, they also face the strong arm of the government because they choose to listen to The Rolling Stones, Mozart or the ever so entertaining melodies of Outkast rather than what the mullahs want them to listen to. I believe the folks over at the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board pretty much sums how this move is yet another example of how Iran is steadily returning to the virulent Islamic radicalism that emerged during the fall of the Shah in 1979. Take a look what they had to say about the current actions in Iran:

Iranians have been here before, as have other victims of dictatorship. Ayatollah Khomeini banned all forms of music after the 1979 revolution, but the rules were gradually relaxed after his death. In the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge, music was banned along with all other expressions of art and culture, and hundreds of musicians were murdered. The Nazis extolled the music of Wagner, yet they famously tore down the statue of the Jewish-born Felix Mendelssohn in front of the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The Communist regimes also had their songs, including such memorable hits as "The East Is Red."

There is a philosophical pedigree to this madness. In Plato's "Republic," Socrates notes that music holds a key to fashioning the souls of men, and therefore is a tool in the education -- and subjugation -- of citizens. There is probably something to this.

But as Vaclav Havel reminds us, music can also be a tool of liberation. Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution took much of its inspiration from the Velvet Underground. Iranians, too, may eventually find themselves taking a Walk on the Wild Side.

I can assure you that this regime has created a situation with the under 30 crowd, who make up 60% percent of the population and support real democratic reform, that will probably be the straw that will finally break the camels back. Hopefully in the near future we'll hear them singing songs of joy in the streets of Tehran as they chase the mullahs out of Iran once and for all. I look forward to that day and hope the White House is facilitating such a movement.

Merry Christmas

Fire of Liberty

If you have been watching the news, listening to the radio or living your everyday life, you've probably noticed there seems to be an onslaught on Christianity most notably on the celebration of Christmas by folks in the ACLU and popular culture in general. I can't recall all of the countless news stories on how this or that group is protesting the display of the Cross, the Ten Commandments in the public square or on our highways, like in Utah, or people going to court to erase all traces of references to G-d from our money, monuments, pledges. Even during the Christmas Holidays we see these activists rev up their motors and make it their life's work to prevent a nation that is 84% Christian from displaying a creche with baby Jesus on the city square or urging various college and public school systems to change their the name "Christmas Break" to something like "Winter Break," "Holiday Weeks," to keep from offending others (In most cases it's to assuage the sensibilities of the ACLU rather than other religions) but in reality they are establishing an enormous rot in our society that will eventually cause this great nation to fall much like past civilizations have done when they lost their way. It all good to have disagreements about religion in this country but the anti-G-d coalition need to realize that the 1st Amendment didn't say that our government or our people should be cut off from religion but said the US shouldn't establish a state religion because our founding fathers knew that if we ever established a state religion then we would see a lot of people being prevented from doing what their heart desired because they weren't a member of the state religion.

Now the ACLU/Separation of Church types will argue that their reading of the 1st Amendment is enough for them to keep religion out of the public square but our founding fathers and subsequent leaders have thrown this to the wayside with their various references to G-d throughout the years. Just take a look at the Declaration of Independence, Washington's many Thanksgiving Declarations and his farewell address, Lincoln's many writings and speeches, FDR's addresses as well as President Reagan's not to mention the 42 (Grover Cleveland re-elected in non-consecutive terms) times our leaders have said "So help me G-d" when they're sworn in.

Now getting to my point about the tearing down of these symbols of religion basically destroying our society from the inside, I think Thomas Sowell pretty much sums the whole argument up it with his most recent column "Merry You--Know-What." To fully understand this argument, just read these following paragraphs from Sowell's great column:

Those who banish the symbols of a civilization often undermine that civilization in other ways as well. People who warn us against being "Eurocentric" are often totally Eurocentric when it comes to condemning the sins of the human race as if they were peculiarities of "our society."

These are not just isolated foibles that we can laugh at. No society can survive in the long run without the allegiance of its people. Undermining a sense of the worthiness of a society undermines that allegiance -- and, without allegiance, there is no defense.

In the international jungle, made more dangerous by terrorist networks that circle the globe, anything that it is not defended is in jeopardy -- which means we are all in jeopardy, and so are our children and our children's children.

Those who wage war against the symbols of American society and Western civilization may do so for no wider purpose than moral exhibitionism or just a desire to be in step with fashionable trends. But silliness can be a prelude to tragedy.

So maybe these folks need to rethink their position before they turn our society into another Greece, Rome or other great civilizations that have been lost because folks hollowed out the granite walls that protected their society from invading hordes. I pray that people in America stand against this tide and keep the granite walls of our civilization as strong as possible.

Simple Logic

Fire of Liberty

Here's a great piece by William F. Buckley Jr. that pretty much explains the whole NSA controversial that has the feathers of the MSM all ruffled up. It's particularly loved how Mr. Buckley summed up the whole situation with the following:

What is a reasonable verdict from a conservative/libertarian on what happened?

1) The president did his job of attempting to out-maneuver the enemy.

2) The press may have overdone its interceptive curiosity, but it performed the function of a free press.

3) The legislative arm yielded to the demands of national security.

4) The courts, acknowledging a natural division of responsibilities, stayed away.

You'd think all those smart reporters in the MSM would come to the same conclusion but then again they are the MSM.

Afghanistan is Improving

Fire of Liberty

Well, things must be going pretty well in Afghanistan for the US to reduce its troop strength by some 2,500 by next year. While we will be supplementing these troops with a contingent of NATO troops, it demonstrates that the things on the ground has evolved from a war-fighting mission to one that simply requires a peace keeping force structure that our friends in NATO seem to excel in. I guess this is what can happen when you let the military do what it needs to do and remove all the silliness of timelines and withdrawals that the folks in Washington keep on screaming about in the case of Iraq. You've got to hand it to the US soldiers, our NATO and Afghan allies as well as the Afghan people who have made it possible for this once prevelant hotbed of terrorism to transform into an emerging democracy. Let's hope that our efforts in Iraq have the same result.

Planet of the Apes: Soviet Style

Fire of Liberty

Aside from starving his people, murdering millions, and simply destroying his nation in general, it seems that Stalin was also playing with the forces of G-d and Nature by advocating the creation of a half-ape/half man super warrior. According to this recent article in the Scotsman, researchers have come across recently released Soviet files which show Stalin instructing Ilya Ivanov to develop "a new invinciple human human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat." I'm sure glad that this failed as well.