The Stafford Voice

Our little place to talk about and share about life.

Daniel

Fools Money – Part 2

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by Thomas Sowell

Words are supposed to convey thoughts, but they can also obliterate thoughts and shut down thinking. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, a catchword can “delay further analysis for fifty years.” Holmes also said, “think things, not words.”

When you are satisfied to accept words, without thinking beyond those words to the things– the tangible realities of the world– you are confirming what philosopher Thomas Hobbes said in the 17th century, that words are wise men’s counters but they are the money of fools.

Even in matters of life and death, too many people accept words instead of thinking, leaving themselves wide open to people who are clever at spinning words. The whole controversy about “health care reform” is a classic example.

“Health care” and medical care are not the same thing. The confusion between the two spreads more confusion, when advocates of government-run medical care point to longer life expectancies in some other countries where government runs the medical system.

Health care affects longevity, but health care includes far more than medical care. Health care includes such things as diet, exercise and avoiding things that can shorten your life, such as drug addiction, reckless driving and homicide.

If you stop and think– which catchwords can deflect us from doing– it is clear that homicide and car crashes are not things that doctors can prevent. Moreover, if you compare longevity among countries, leaving out homicide and car crashes, Americans have the longest lifespan in the western world.

Why then are people talking about gross statistics on longevity, as a reason to change our medical care system? Since this is a life and death issue, we need to think about the realities of the world, not the clever words of spinmeisters trying to justify a government takeover of medical care.

American medical care leads the world in things like cancer survival rates, which medical care affects far more than it affects people’s behavior that leads to obesity and narcotics addiction, as well as such other things as homicide and reckless driving.

But none of this is even thought about, when people simply go with the flow of catchwords, accepting those words as the money of fools.

Continue reading . . .

Preserve, Protect and Defend

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by Ed Feulner

Even America’s bitterest enemies understand why we mark July 4th with parades, speeches and fireworks: to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We’re proud of our nation, and justifiably so.

So why do we virtually ignore September 17th? That’s the date, in 1787, when our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution. And if any one factor can explain why our republic has endured — indeed, thrived — for 223 years, it is this unique charter, which outlines the form of government best designed to safeguard “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” as the Declaration puts it.

Yet today, on many issues, this vital document is frequently ignored, even undermined, by some of the very people who have taken a public oath to uphold it.

Consider the debate over Arizona’s immigration law. Here we have a state understandably frustrated by the federal government’s failure to control the flow of illegal immigrants. So it passed a law to enforce immigration laws already on the books. Hysteria ensues. The Justice Department demands that the law be struck down.

Susan Bolton, the federal judge who subsequently ruled on the law, didn’t go that far, fortunately. But she did suspend certain parts of it, such as a provision authorizing the arrest of an individual “where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.”

Why? Because that might go against the Obama administration’s practice of not enforcing immigration law in many of these cases. But what she could not say is that the Arizona law was somehow inconsistent with the actual federal immigration law. She simply relied on judicial fiat to produce a conclusion that flouts precedent and tradition. Is she unaware that it’s her job to interpret the law, not rewrite it?

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Sharia vs. U.S. Law

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Monday in a conference with Council on Foreign Relations, Imam Feisal Abdual Rauf said that Islamic Sharia law complies with the United States Constitution. What? Is there something wrong with this guy? Has he even read the Constitution?

Certainly Imam Rauf – the self-professed Islamic moderate – is trying to promote his agenda and trying anything to smooth over the idea of continuing the building of the Ground Zero Mosque. The only problem with his momentum is that it is rooted in hatred and that it is completely false in saying Sharia is compliant with U.S. law.

So, his sole purpose for having this organized question and answer conference was, in his words, to explain how “Islam and America are organically bound together.” And, as hard as he tried he wasn’t able to skirt every planned question. While the easy questions were just that, they give an inclination into the ultimate agenda, and that is total integration with American society and to shape the landscape to their liking.

When asked about how Rauf would build a team “to create a coalition of moderates” and what the team would look like, Rauf’s response was:

“We need opinion leaders. We need journalists. We need educators. We need politicians. We need religious leaders and faith leaders. We need academics and universities and schools and institutions, think tanks to create plays.”

Plays that would reshape and redefine other peoples agendas in order to help their own agenda. An agenda that – under the disguise of moderate Muslims who know how to pick and choose ‘which verses to quote from the Quran’ – would ultimately bring acceptance of sharia law to America. Which fundamentally undermines the history and founding of America. A way of law that would leave the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves many times over.

A topic full of controversy itself, sharia law found its way into the line of questioning as the last and most difficult question of the discussion.

Peter Fedynsky, Voice of America. At a recent demonstration near Ground Zero opposing the Islamic center, there was a banner behind the (the state ?) that said “stop shari’a law before it stops you.” And I would venture to say that many of the concerns of those present were not only the planes slamming into the Twin Towers, but minor things like women refusing to unveil themselves for a driver’s license and then major things like news of stonings, of honor killings. And — or — and then some people would say that the Cordoba — Cordoba in history was a place of Muslim conquest. So this — the question is, what is the compatibility of shari’a law with American constitutional law?

The response?

The fundamental rights of — the opening lines of Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” — the equality of human creationis a fundamental principle of the Abrahamic faiths — “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” — the fact the creator gave these rights to us, not any government or man-made agency, is a religious concept among which our life, life and property, then changed to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

Seven centuries before these words were penned by Thomas Jefferson, Muslim jurists said all of shari’a law, all of Islamic law is intended to uphold six fundamental objectives: the protection of life, of human dignity, which (can ?) relate to liberty, to religion, to family, to property and the intellect. And what do we do (after ?) life to pursue our happiness? We get married to our loved ones, we seek material well being, we seek our intellectual pursuits and we seek to practice our faith religions.

90 percent of shari’a law is fully compatible, and not only — not only compatible, is consistent or compatible with American constitutional law and American laws. The areas of difference are small and minor.

Now, in commenting about ‘the equality of human creation’, it still leaves open the fact that in Islam women are not equal to men. And, ‘protection of life?’ What is ‘human dignity’ when it is Islam that produces acts like this:

Nick Berg beheading
The beheading of American Nick Berg.

There is nothing dignifying about acts of pure brutality like that, and any religion that supports and teaches followers to perform in that manner do not belong in America and do not comply with the Constitution or American law.

Daily Dose

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“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” – Samuel Adams

Proverbs 16:32 – He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty.

Who is the Enemy?

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by Patrick Buchanan

The Rev. Terry Jones may just have exposed the ultimate futility of America’s war in Afghanistan. Consider the portrait of frustrated impotence America presented to the world last week.

Our president and the secretaries of state and defense deplored Pastor Jones’ plan to burn 100 Qurans but could do nothing to stop him, other than to plead with him. Jones decided to call it off himself.

What was the message received by a billion Muslims?

“Muslims must understand that our Constitution protects the desecration of your holiest book. America is a place where people have a right to denounce Islam as a religion ‘of the Devil’ and burn the Quran in public.”

Continue reading . . .

Purge the Evil

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by Cal Thomas

Terry Jones, the Florida “minister” who threatened to burn the Koran on the anniversary of Sept. 11, is as much a distraction from the real challenge facing America as was Sen. Joseph McCarthy when it came to communism. Communism was (and remains in its Chinese incarnation) a real threat. But radical Islam — rabid, advancing, intolerant, subjugating — is potentially a bigger one and must be conquered.

Various apologists for the Nazis and communists in the media, academia and religion are now mostly forgotten and that’s the problem. Forgetting what happens when evil is accommodated leads to terrible consequences and more evil.

Some ancient wisdom about what must be done with evil is helpful for those who would pay attention: “You must purge the evil from among you” (Deuteronomy 22:21). Instead, we are tolerating, even welcoming evil, under the false assumption that evil can be neutered when it is in the midst of good. If that were so, the good works performed by various cultures would have long ago eradicated evil. Evil must not only be purged, it must be defeated.

The former co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Democrat Lee Hamilton and Republican Thomas Kean, write of the “Americanization” of al Qaeda leadership, reports the Washington Post. In a 43-page study by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, Hamilton and Kean warn of the radicalization of Muslims inside the United States and how al Qaeda’s strategy is changing from big events, like airplane hijackings and attacks of mass destruction, to plotting for smaller actions designed to spread fear and instability across the country.

Continue reading . . .

Fools Money

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by Thomas Sowell

Seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that words are wise men’s counters, but they are the money of fools.

That is as painfully true today as it was four centuries ago. Using words as vehicles to try to convey your meaning is very different from taking words so literally that the words use you and confuse you.

Take the simple phrase “rent control.” If you take these words literally– as if they were money in the bank– you get a complete distortion of reality.

New York is the city with the oldest and strongest rent control laws in the nation. San Francisco is second. But if you look at cities with the highest average rents, New York is first and San Francisco is second. Obviously, “rent control” laws do not control rent.

If you check out the facts, instead of relying on words, you will discover that “gun control” laws do not control guns, the government’s “stimulus” spending does not stimulate the economy and that many “compassionate” policies inflict cruel results, such as the destruction of the black family.

Do you know how many millions of people died in the war “to make the world safe for democracy”– a war that led to autocratic dynasties being replaced by totalitarian dictatorships that slaughtered far more of their own people than the dynasties had?

Warm, fuzzy words and phrases have an enormous advantage in politics. None has had such a long run of political success as “social justice.”

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2012 Groundwork of Hillary Clinton

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by Dick Morris

Has the Democratic presidential primary of 2012 started already? Is Hillary Clinton beginning to position herself for a challenge to her boss? Yesterday, Hillary fired what may have been the first shot:

She said:

“I think that our rising debt level poses a national security threat, and it poses a national security threat in two ways: It undermines our capacity to act in our own interests, and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable. And it also sends a message of weakness, internationally.”

The contrast with her husband’s presidency is implicit: He balanced the budget and reduced the debt to the point where Wall Street fretted that there would be no more federal debt instruments to buy, leaving them without a safe place to park their money.

Hillary does nothing — nothing — without forethought. She plans every word, particularly when the words are critical of her president. By framing the “debt level” as a “national security threat,” she gives herself jurisdiction over budget policy and makes her comments about it appropriate for a secretary of state. And by criticizing the debt level that her president has amassed, she sets up the basis for a fiscal/economic critique of his presidency.

Continue reading . . .

Daily Dose

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“Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.” – Thomas Jefferson

John 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

Soldier Spotlight

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The official statement from the White House:

ACTION FROM WHICH THE MEDAL OF HONOR WAS EARNED:

Then-Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself by acts of gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a rifle team leader with Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment during combat operations against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan on October 25, 2007. 

When an insurgent force ambush split Specialist Giunta’s squad into two groups, he exposed himself to enemy fire to pull a comrade back to cover. Later, while engaging the enemy and attempting to link up with the rest of his squad, Specialist Giunta noticed two insurgents carrying away a fellow soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other, and provided medical aid to his wounded comrade while the rest of his squad caught up and provided security.  His courage and leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon’s ability defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American paratrooper from enemy hands.