William LaJeunesse of Fox News has written the following on a recent operation by America's Department of Justice:
"...Officials at the Department of Justice are in "panic mode," according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C.
The operation was supposed to stem the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico by allowing so-called straw buyers to purchase guns legally in the U.S. and later sell them in Mexico, usually to drug cartels.
Instead, ATF documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms knowingly and deliberately flooded Mexico with assault rifles. Their intent was to expose the entire smuggling organization, from top to bottom, but the operation spun out of control and supervisors refused pleas from field agents to stop it. "
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/09/justice-officials-in-panic-mode-as-new-testimony-is-expected-to-reveal-depth/#ixzz1P1S4vMYc
Granted, Fox News is supposed to be biased and unreliable, but the same issue has been reported by the Wall Street Journal as well.
The new Justice Department of Eric Holder will not look into possible voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia during the 2008 elections, and now has made things dangerous for a neighboring country without a declaration of war. But perhaps, rather than catching real gun and drug smugglers, the real purpose of this operation is to encourage a hue and cry against law-abiding Americans and foreign visitors purchasing firearms in the USA, and to drive one more nail in the coffin of the Second Amendment, and move to the situation in which only outlaws have guns, and the citizenry must submit to more and more policing by the government in order to protect itself. Given the history of this sort of thing, the "protection" the citizens will receive probably won't be against criminal activity, but against political dissenters.
The Alchohol, Tobacco, and Firearms division (ATF) is now running a rather dismal track record. Under the Clinton administration, it made a name for itself by killing women and children belonging to a deluded sect in Waco, Texas, and provoking a shootout with Randy Weaver, a cranky racist survivalist in Idaho, which ended in the deaths of innocents as well. Perhaps it is a good time to abolish the ATF, which is acting more like a rogue agency than like a responsible law enforcement agency.
Uncle Cephas is neither a Branch Davidian nor a member of Covenant, Arm, and Sword of the Lord or any other sect that believes in a present-day Messiah or in the nonsensical doctrine that non-whites are subhuman. However, if Muslim imams are regularly allowed to preach that Jews are relatives of apes and pigs, or the President's former pastor may piously and gleefully call on the Almighty to damn the United States (the man's namesake did no more than announce the coming exile of Judah, after all, and wept rather than chortled over it), and the President's press secretary Anita Dunn may admire the mass-murdering Mao Zedong, then a few anxious souls may indulge in racist theologizing, too. And, given that the racist cults and modern Messiah followers are not at the levers of power, but hidden in remote corners of the land, maybe they deserve less scrutiny than they get.
Further, when men like Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Witherspoon, Samuel Adams, and other American founders spoke of liberty, they meant liberty from an overbearing state. At present, Americans are delivering themselves and their posterity to an increasingly intrusive and potentially destructive state, as the actions of ATF are showing. It's time to reverse this trend, and abolition of a few federal agencies may be a step in the right direction.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Scots-Irish and Swing Voters
Salena Zito has published a column at TownHall in which she notes some learned wonk's discovery that areas of "swing voters" correspond roughly to the parts of the USA settled by the Scots-Irish.
Having a drab of "Scots-Irish" heritage on my mother's father's mother's side of the family or something like that (with Jewish and Scandinavian elsewhere, and married into the Chinese), I was rather amused to see so much attention paid to a population that supposedly melted into the great WASP middle long ago. But, after doing a bit of reading and noticing a few things during my long sojourn as a Presbyterian (still going on, basically), I've come to a few conclusions.
Before the potato famine made the name "Irish" mean "Roman Catholic Irish", the so-called Scots-Irish were simply Irish Protestants from Ulster. Indeed, the early American "Ancient Order of Hibernians" and the first St. Patrick's Day parades in New York were mostly Protestant affairs.
I'm not denying that many Protestant Irish came from Scots (with a number of English and Welsh) planted in Ulster from the days of James VI and I on, but I strongly suspect that there was a considerable native Irish element among people who would become "Scots-Irish" during the 1800's.
I visited old Presbyterian cemeteries in western Pennsylvania and saw names ending in -ehan and others that looked suspiciously native Irish rather than Scots-Irish suffixes. I've read 18th century records of presbyteries that received Irish immigrant ministers and elders whose names began with "Mc-" (admittedly, something found among Scottish Gaels, too)--and don't forget the family of Jane McCrea, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, whose murder by British-allied Mohawks turned the "Scots-Irish" (Irish Protestant?) settlers of western NY to the patriot cause. I've even read an Irish nationalist study of the history of Gaelic use that claimed that in 18th century Ulster, literacy in Irish Gaelic (as opposed to simply a spoken knowledge of the language) tended to be associated with Protestants, who were supposedly "settlers".
I propose that some of the identification of Irish Protestants as all Scots settlers and Roman Catholicism as an inseparable part of "Irish" identity may owe less to who these people actually were and who their descendants are than to the following:
1. the end of penalties against Protestant dissenters in the UK
2. Drift away from Irish separatism among Protestant Irish Presbyterians during the 19th century
3. Identification of "Irish" as poorer, less-acculturated Roman Catholic immigrants after ca. 1840 in America.
4. The search for "racial" explanations of political alignment in Europe, and the export of such ideas to the USA during the 19th century.
5. Late 19th and early 20th century exaltation of the "Anglo-Saxon" in British and American discourse.
This is neither a plea for Irish Protestants to embrace the IRA (filthy friends of Andropov and Qaddafi) nor a disparaging of historical Irish grievances against British rule, nor a call for either a cession of the Six Counties to Eire or the re-incoporation of Eire into the UK. It's just voicing a suspicion I have about how things were before that great roaring engine of 19th century social theorizing got cranked up.
Having a drab of "Scots-Irish" heritage on my mother's father's mother's side of the family or something like that (with Jewish and Scandinavian elsewhere, and married into the Chinese), I was rather amused to see so much attention paid to a population that supposedly melted into the great WASP middle long ago. But, after doing a bit of reading and noticing a few things during my long sojourn as a Presbyterian (still going on, basically), I've come to a few conclusions.
Before the potato famine made the name "Irish" mean "Roman Catholic Irish", the so-called Scots-Irish were simply Irish Protestants from Ulster. Indeed, the early American "Ancient Order of Hibernians" and the first St. Patrick's Day parades in New York were mostly Protestant affairs.
I'm not denying that many Protestant Irish came from Scots (with a number of English and Welsh) planted in Ulster from the days of James VI and I on, but I strongly suspect that there was a considerable native Irish element among people who would become "Scots-Irish" during the 1800's.
I visited old Presbyterian cemeteries in western Pennsylvania and saw names ending in -ehan and others that looked suspiciously native Irish rather than Scots-Irish suffixes. I've read 18th century records of presbyteries that received Irish immigrant ministers and elders whose names began with "Mc-" (admittedly, something found among Scottish Gaels, too)--and don't forget the family of Jane McCrea, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, whose murder by British-allied Mohawks turned the "Scots-Irish" (Irish Protestant?) settlers of western NY to the patriot cause. I've even read an Irish nationalist study of the history of Gaelic use that claimed that in 18th century Ulster, literacy in Irish Gaelic (as opposed to simply a spoken knowledge of the language) tended to be associated with Protestants, who were supposedly "settlers".
I propose that some of the identification of Irish Protestants as all Scots settlers and Roman Catholicism as an inseparable part of "Irish" identity may owe less to who these people actually were and who their descendants are than to the following:
1. the end of penalties against Protestant dissenters in the UK
2. Drift away from Irish separatism among Protestant Irish Presbyterians during the 19th century
3. Identification of "Irish" as poorer, less-acculturated Roman Catholic immigrants after ca. 1840 in America.
4. The search for "racial" explanations of political alignment in Europe, and the export of such ideas to the USA during the 19th century.
5. Late 19th and early 20th century exaltation of the "Anglo-Saxon" in British and American discourse.
This is neither a plea for Irish Protestants to embrace the IRA (filthy friends of Andropov and Qaddafi) nor a disparaging of historical Irish grievances against British rule, nor a call for either a cession of the Six Counties to Eire or the re-incoporation of Eire into the UK. It's just voicing a suspicion I have about how things were before that great roaring engine of 19th century social theorizing got cranked up.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
RUptured Rapture III
Due to the mysterious disappearance of Uncle Cephas, this blog is now in new hands.---not
...All kidding aside, there probably are people who might have taken my last two posts seriously.
Then again, when my brethren of the Dispensationalist persuasion get all excited about the imminent return of Christ every time a bomb goes off in the Middle East, other good friends of mine foul their breeches every time there are a few more tornadoes touching down this season. They believe we're all going to roast to death next year due to human-induced global warming, even though we're still a long way from being able to raise veggies and milk cattle even in the southernmost parts of Greenland (as the Norse settlers did a scant millennium ago). Other people whom I love believe that dungeons and thumbscrews in the basement of the US Capitol are just another bill away the minute the Jumboes displace the Jackasses as the slightly majority party in either house of Congress. Heck. When I waxed sarcastic and said that as a good Evangelical I was going to enjoyed live liberated lesbian stew instead of roast turkey for Thanksgiving, a learned colleague of mine actually believed me! Well, that's one I'll never try again.
The point of the matter is that apocalypticism is a good way to rally the troops and get them fired up for the next campaign, be it evangelistic or political. It's also a good way to get attention, or skew perceptions of the truth in a way you'd like.
Good job, Harold Camping! You had people talking about you from coast to coast! Now, why not study up on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and give them a little more prominence in your ministry?
After all,
That's what Paul
Would have said to steady
Us and get us ready
One the way
To that great day.
...All kidding aside, there probably are people who might have taken my last two posts seriously.
Then again, when my brethren of the Dispensationalist persuasion get all excited about the imminent return of Christ every time a bomb goes off in the Middle East, other good friends of mine foul their breeches every time there are a few more tornadoes touching down this season. They believe we're all going to roast to death next year due to human-induced global warming, even though we're still a long way from being able to raise veggies and milk cattle even in the southernmost parts of Greenland (as the Norse settlers did a scant millennium ago). Other people whom I love believe that dungeons and thumbscrews in the basement of the US Capitol are just another bill away the minute the Jumboes displace the Jackasses as the slightly majority party in either house of Congress. Heck. When I waxed sarcastic and said that as a good Evangelical I was going to enjoyed live liberated lesbian stew instead of roast turkey for Thanksgiving, a learned colleague of mine actually believed me! Well, that's one I'll never try again.
The point of the matter is that apocalypticism is a good way to rally the troops and get them fired up for the next campaign, be it evangelistic or political. It's also a good way to get attention, or skew perceptions of the truth in a way you'd like.
Good job, Harold Camping! You had people talking about you from coast to coast! Now, why not study up on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and give them a little more prominence in your ministry?
After all,
That's what Paul
Would have said to steady
Us and get us ready
One the way
To that great day.
Ruptured Rapture II
Well, Harold Camping's predicted date for the rapture has come and gone, proving once more that the time for the end of the world is known only to God.
Yes, there is a large group of Christians who believe that one preliminary event to the Last Judgment is God's removal of Christians just prior to the Great Tribulation. I admit to be one who believes that God puts us here to face the various tribulations that hit, and overcome them, otherwise the Book of Revelation makes no sense.
Going on to explain the idea of the "rapture" to people without a grounding in Evangelical theology or lore, let me say...
Hey! My roof and ceiling are gone! I'm leaving my chair! I'm floating in the air! My bad sense of balance is throwing my heels over my head as I am floating upwards! I'm head down as I type! What the dickens is happening? Uh-oh! It's time for the Halleluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Yes, there is a large group of Christians who believe that one preliminary event to the Last Judgment is God's removal of Christians just prior to the Great Tribulation. I admit to be one who believes that God puts us here to face the various tribulations that hit, and overcome them, otherwise the Book of Revelation makes no sense.
Going on to explain the idea of the "rapture" to people without a grounding in Evangelical theology or lore, let me say...
Hey! My roof and ceiling are gone! I'm leaving my chair! I'm floating in the air! My bad sense of balance is throwing my heels over my head as I am floating upwards! I'm head down as I type! What the dickens is happening? Uh-oh! It's time for the Halleluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Ruptured Rapture?
Atheists--otherwise known as idolators too dishonest or disingenuous to name their gods--are planning to celebrate on Saturday, when, according to a certain Mr. Camping, Jesus Christ will return and rapture his church. Fundamentalist Christian though he be, Uncle Cephas is not about to don ascension robes and wait for the trumpet to sound, but will go about his ordinary business.
For those who do not know what it is, the "raputre" is when Christ removes his church from the world at his second coming. The doctrine is derived from I Thessalonians 4:16-18:
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven witha shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
Many today believe that this "rapture of the saints" will be a secret affair, to remove the church from earth just before the great tribulation just prior to the end of the world. With this point of view, Uncle Cephas demurs. Paul's passage is one of the loudest in the whole Bible, with shouts and trumpets. It seems to be simply God's way of handling those saints alive on the day of resurrection.
But as for Camping's prediction that Christ will rapture his church this Saturday, Jesus himself says "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Hence, Uncle Cephas is fairly certain that the world will not come to its consummation this Saturday, nor, for that matter, any time during 2012.
One would think that we should have learned our lesson back in 1844 and 1845, when, ignoring Brother William Miller's predictions, Christ refrained from returning, despite the elaborate calculations and earnest searching of the Scriptures that preceeded that expectation. But somehow, every age seems to have its Campings, who are more than ready to earnestly and soberly give grist to the mills of those who sit in the seat of the scornful and counsel of the ungodly (Psalm 1:1)
Still, let all Christians watch and pray, and continue witnessing and doing good. After all, we will still be a day closer to the Day of Judgment, no matter what. And let all seekers be aware that the blood of Christ continues to speak better things than the blood of Abel, the latter condemning the sinner; the former being the atonement for the same (Isaiah 53, Hebrews 2), and the bride of Christ (the church) still says with the Holy Spirit "come" (Rev. 22:17).
For those who do not know what it is, the "raputre" is when Christ removes his church from the world at his second coming. The doctrine is derived from I Thessalonians 4:16-18:
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven witha shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.
Many today believe that this "rapture of the saints" will be a secret affair, to remove the church from earth just before the great tribulation just prior to the end of the world. With this point of view, Uncle Cephas demurs. Paul's passage is one of the loudest in the whole Bible, with shouts and trumpets. It seems to be simply God's way of handling those saints alive on the day of resurrection.
But as for Camping's prediction that Christ will rapture his church this Saturday, Jesus himself says "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Hence, Uncle Cephas is fairly certain that the world will not come to its consummation this Saturday, nor, for that matter, any time during 2012.
One would think that we should have learned our lesson back in 1844 and 1845, when, ignoring Brother William Miller's predictions, Christ refrained from returning, despite the elaborate calculations and earnest searching of the Scriptures that preceeded that expectation. But somehow, every age seems to have its Campings, who are more than ready to earnestly and soberly give grist to the mills of those who sit in the seat of the scornful and counsel of the ungodly (Psalm 1:1)
Still, let all Christians watch and pray, and continue witnessing and doing good. After all, we will still be a day closer to the Day of Judgment, no matter what. And let all seekers be aware that the blood of Christ continues to speak better things than the blood of Abel, the latter condemning the sinner; the former being the atonement for the same (Isaiah 53, Hebrews 2), and the bride of Christ (the church) still says with the Holy Spirit "come" (Rev. 22:17).
Unrealistic Obama
President Obama has come out in favor of a return to pre-1967 broders for Israel and an independent Palestinian Arab state on the West bank, as if the indefensibility of the pre-1967 borders had nothing to do with Israel's pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the Six-Day War. Snippets heard on WTOP suggest a wide range of misconceptions, including the belief that the upsurges in the Arab world are really democratic, and that the Hamas-PLO alliance is truly willing to recognize Israel's right to exist.
Again, the onus is placed mostly on Israel, demanding a return to indefensible borders, and criticizing its "permanent occupation" of "Palestinian" lands. But the president ignores the persistent insistence by several Arab and other Muslim states that Israel be dismantled, and the cynical use of demonstrators on the border earlier this month by both Syria and the PA. The alliance between Hamas, Hizbollah, and hard-line Iran is also ignored.
The Peace Process has been dead for quite some time. The frequent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, Hamas' persistent rejection of Israel's right to exist, and the alliance with Hizbollah to put simultaneous pressure on Israel's northern and southwestern borders suggests that Palestinian Arab noises about peace are less than sincere.
Certainly, the plight of the Palestinian "refugees"--resident in various Arab states without citizenship for four generations now--will also be raised. Again, a US administration absolutely refuses to ask the Arab states to naturalize their refugee populationsl when America itself has given passport-holding, voting rights citizenship to more Palesintian Arab refugees and their descendants than any ten Arabic-speaking states together, excluding Jordan, the PA, and Israel itself. At this point, where all other refugees of 1947-48 vintage have been absorbed into host societies, there is simply no excuse for the Palestinian refugee problem to exist.
All and sundry ignore that Israel itself has a slight majority descended from Jews from Muslim lands, especially the Arabic-speaking countries; and that ancient Jewish communities that pre-dated Arab settlement in Mesopotamia and North Africa were uprooted in the aftermath of an-Nakba. Yet these victims and their offspring are now no-questions-asked Israelis, when Palestinian Arabs--again, four generations removed from Yafo, Haifa, and the Judaean corridor--remain stateless.
Finally, our president ignores the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in the supposed "Arab Spring". These not only struggle against the relative liberalism of the Ba'ath regime in Syria and the former Mubarak regime in Egypt, but have unleashed further assaults against minorities and women in the lands where they have or are coming to power. In Tunisia, the last functioning synagogues in that country have been attacked. In Egypt, attacks on the Christian minority, 10% of the population, have grown in number and intensity since Mubarak stepped down (admittedly, the role of Mubarak's own security organs in creating an anti-Christian climate in Egypt was also great). Tomorrow, as the Sunnite, Muslim Brotherhood-inspired revolt grows, further pressures will certainly be exerted on Syria's dwindling Christian minority, too.
The US has few stakes in an "Arab Spring" in which anti-democratic forces masquerade as the voice of democracy. Indeed, the US will probably face a multiplication of Iranian debacles rather than see the democratization of the region. We would have been better advised to have taken a wait and see approach.
Again, the onus is placed mostly on Israel, demanding a return to indefensible borders, and criticizing its "permanent occupation" of "Palestinian" lands. But the president ignores the persistent insistence by several Arab and other Muslim states that Israel be dismantled, and the cynical use of demonstrators on the border earlier this month by both Syria and the PA. The alliance between Hamas, Hizbollah, and hard-line Iran is also ignored.
The Peace Process has been dead for quite some time. The frequent rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, Hamas' persistent rejection of Israel's right to exist, and the alliance with Hizbollah to put simultaneous pressure on Israel's northern and southwestern borders suggests that Palestinian Arab noises about peace are less than sincere.
Certainly, the plight of the Palestinian "refugees"--resident in various Arab states without citizenship for four generations now--will also be raised. Again, a US administration absolutely refuses to ask the Arab states to naturalize their refugee populationsl when America itself has given passport-holding, voting rights citizenship to more Palesintian Arab refugees and their descendants than any ten Arabic-speaking states together, excluding Jordan, the PA, and Israel itself. At this point, where all other refugees of 1947-48 vintage have been absorbed into host societies, there is simply no excuse for the Palestinian refugee problem to exist.
All and sundry ignore that Israel itself has a slight majority descended from Jews from Muslim lands, especially the Arabic-speaking countries; and that ancient Jewish communities that pre-dated Arab settlement in Mesopotamia and North Africa were uprooted in the aftermath of an-Nakba. Yet these victims and their offspring are now no-questions-asked Israelis, when Palestinian Arabs--again, four generations removed from Yafo, Haifa, and the Judaean corridor--remain stateless.
Finally, our president ignores the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in the supposed "Arab Spring". These not only struggle against the relative liberalism of the Ba'ath regime in Syria and the former Mubarak regime in Egypt, but have unleashed further assaults against minorities and women in the lands where they have or are coming to power. In Tunisia, the last functioning synagogues in that country have been attacked. In Egypt, attacks on the Christian minority, 10% of the population, have grown in number and intensity since Mubarak stepped down (admittedly, the role of Mubarak's own security organs in creating an anti-Christian climate in Egypt was also great). Tomorrow, as the Sunnite, Muslim Brotherhood-inspired revolt grows, further pressures will certainly be exerted on Syria's dwindling Christian minority, too.
The US has few stakes in an "Arab Spring" in which anti-democratic forces masquerade as the voice of democracy. Indeed, the US will probably face a multiplication of Iranian debacles rather than see the democratization of the region. We would have been better advised to have taken a wait and see approach.
China takes Uyghurs seriously
Communications from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization indicate that China has demonstrated the capacities of its Snow Leopard SWAT team in maneuvers near Kashgar earlier this month. Visitors from Central Asian states were in attendance. The scenario involved the setting up of a terrorist base near Kashgar and a bus taken hostage.
Perhaps showing this exercise to China's partners in the SCO underscores that they'd better not get any ideas about growing sympathy for another Muslim Central Asian people getting restive under a "Big Brother" who takes seriously his role as the last, best hope for 20th century totalitarianism.
Perhaps showing this exercise to China's partners in the SCO underscores that they'd better not get any ideas about growing sympathy for another Muslim Central Asian people getting restive under a "Big Brother" who takes seriously his role as the last, best hope for 20th century totalitarianism.
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