Archive for the ‘World Issues’ Category
Their choice, not ours
“I’m no longer willing to let them oppress people as they please for fear of war.” – Harry Truman, 1948 Are we dealing with threats to our national security appropriately? Have invasions and occupations of threatening nations yielded the needed results? Or, might there be another approach, a safer, less costly approach? And, if so, […]
Mediocre and entitled
“There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.” Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924), American writer November 2007, KMGH television Denver Colorado – “To end complaints about the sometimes fierce competition among overachieving high school students, the Boulder (Colorado) Valley School District […]
Rape-rape?
Whoopi Goldberg said of producer Roman Polanski and his rape conviction of the 13-year-old girl he drugged and sodomized, “It wasn’t rape-rape. It was something else but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.” Have our values so deteriorated that we no longer recognize rape? Polanski is a free man, living in Europe where the cultures […]
Sanctuary cities and Arizona
Among the limited powers of the federal government are matters of immigration and border security. However, the government seems unable to carry out these constitutional responsibilities, seemingly incapable of doing what the Constitution mandates. The federal government has ignored illegal aliens for decades, President’s Hoover, Truman and Eisenhower the only presidents who seriously tried to […]
Impenetrable borders
Is border security a priority for the government? The president proposes adding $500 million to the Border Patrol budget, which seems significant until you remember he spent over $3 billion on the “cash for clunkers” program. Further, his solution for the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens already here is to create a way for […]
Another price of ignoring our borders
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said Arizona’s treatment of illegal aliens “violates inalienable human rights.” And Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon, recently rebuked the United States Congress, saying Arizona’s illegal alien law is a “threat to civil rights and democracy.” When did living in a country illegally become an inalienable human right, a civil right? Further, while chastising […]
Forgetting the evil
“I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear.” – Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland Last week I apologized to a Jewish friend for again forgetting the evil, the third year in a row I promised myself I would not forget. I am exactly what evil wants, what evil needs to succeed; […]
No more apologies – Part II
We grovel before Gadhafi and hide our flag. Critics claim we are a self-centered and selfish country, providing less foreign aid than twenty-one other countries when comparing the aid as a percentage of gross national income. Are our critics right? Are we not what we believe? Well, how might we fare if we looked at […]
No more apologies – Part I
Once again, the United States drops to its knees, this time apologizing to the terrorist leader of Libya, Moammar Gadhafi. Remember him? He was behind the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub and was responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. This latest apology arose from a July 2008 […]
The ‘ism’ elixir?
“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” George Jean Nathan American drama critic and newspaper editor I watched a 1948 cartoon produced by Harding College, “Make Mine Freedom,” which tells the story of Ism elixir. If you have already viewed this, my apologies. If not, let me share the tale of […]
Well-intentioned missionaries or criminals?
This is the question Haitian courts will answer to determine the fate of the jailed Idaho missionaries who tried to take children out of Haiti illegally. When arrested, the missionaries initially claimed they were trying to “rescue” orphaned children from the disaster caused by the earthquakes. But, the changing story makes it difficult to decide […]
“Humans are more important than hardware”
On Christmas day, a Nigerian man boarded Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit with a bomb he planned to detonate over the United States, his success prevented more by luck than skill. The President responded saying there were “human and system failures” and the United States will do “whatever it takes” to defeat the […]
Guns, the Constitution and Switzerland
A fact regularly ignored in much of the gun debate – the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. In 2008, the Supreme Court revisited the constitutional meaning of the right of the individual to “keep and bear arms,” and unequivocally affirmed our constitutional right of individual gun ownership. That should end the debate because […]
Politically correct bad science
The accuracy of environmental science research is critical because decrees by the United States impact the world, along with the consequences of that science. So, shouldn’t we question environmental science? And, if that science is solid, shouldn’t questioning be welcomed, rather than feared? One of the problems with environmental science is that it can become […]
The czars of the U.S.S.A.
In his inaugural address of 1801, Thomas Jefferson near-prophetically described our current government saying, “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this […]
Israel or Palestine?
President Harry Truman said, “No two historians ever agree on what happened, and the damn thing is they both think they’re telling the truth.” Imagine tracing your ancestry back thousands of years to the land they were driven from, the land you are now asking to have returned to you. Imagine living on the land […]
The United States – the world’s provider and protector
We consider ourselves a giving, caring country. But how do we compare to other “rich” nations in our willingness to provide foreign aid? The Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a thirty-nation organization that works with countries to develop “open market economies, democratic pluralism, and respect for human rights.” In 2003, OECD […]
Should America boycott Beijing?
August 8th is the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. This Olympics will open with controversy, just as have some earlier Olympics. The controversy surrounding this Olympics is the ongoing human rights violations attributed to China. Political dissidents in China often face imprisonment, torture, or even death. There is escalating violence […]