“Surely there is no more wretched sight than a human unloved and uncared for.”
―
Corrie ten Boom
When I was a teenager, oh so many years ago, there was an old-fashioned dry cleaning/tailor shop in the neighborhood in which I grew up. I came to know the proprietor, first as a customer, then as a friend. He was a quiet, diminutive old man. The sort of man you’d expect to find in a dimly lit little shop, a shop that somehow felt haunted.
On one of my frequent visits, I noticed two gaunt faces peeking out at me from behind a curtain which separated the shop area from whatever was in the back. The tailor called out two children, introducing them as his son and daughter. They looked to be no more than nine or ten. Though I was just fifteen, I could sense these kids were troubled. They didn’t speak much. They looked like happiness was not a part of their lives, and their expressions and complexions suggested they didn’t do much playing out in the sunlight.
One day, I asked the tailor where their mother was. He looked me square in the eye, sizing me up – was I old enough or bright enough to hear his story. He decided I was.
“She’s dead,” he said. Just like that.
With measuring tape hanging about his neck, and straight pins held between his lips, he described how he and his wife were Polish Jews who were picked up and put on a train straight to one of Hitler’s death camps. When, after interrogation, the camp staff learned he was a tailor, they decided to let him live. They needed tailors to maintain Nazi uniforms. Unfortunately they had no use for his wife. So, he said, they murdered her right in front of him. His eyes weren’t exactly wet, but the look on his face... that story... aged me ten years right on the spot. I don’t think I spoke or even swallowed for a long while after he stopped talking.
I’m not Jewish. But I felt his pain. Their pain. It was the 1950’s. I had only heard about things like this in the grainy, black-and-white movie newsreels of the time. A sense of the individual human toll had never touched me so deeply before.
I asked about the children, but too many years have gone by, I don’t recall what he said. I think they were too young to have been born before their mother was murdered. Perhaps they were adopted children. I do not know. But I do know this: the Holocaust happened, and you better believe it and keep believing it because there are always those who want to convince you it didn’t. And if you think there aren’t people in this world who are crazy enough to try again, you are lying to yourself.
There were almost 50 million people killed in that terrible war – WWII. Can you comprehend that number? 50 million! More than 17 million young men in the military. 18 million civilians. More than 12 million people were killed by the Nazis. The dead were Germans, Poles, Russians, Jews of many nations, Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Brits, Italians, Northern Africans, Arabs and just about every other nationality on the planet. The Nazis attempted to eradicate the Jews – and Christians as well. Oh yes, Christians. When the Russian Army overtook Nazi camps in Poland, they discovered enough Zyklon B crystals to kill 20 million more people. But there were fewer than three million Jews remaining in Europe. Hitler and his crew had already murdered more than 5 million Jews and 7 million Christians, but the devil contemplated killing 20 million more. This is what happens when nations appease psychopathic leaders who have delusions of world domination and the means to that end.
Islamic fundamentalists have delusions of a new world-wide caliphate. Or maybe they just have plain ol’ revenge deeply woven into their subconscious. Revenge for how the Old Testament describes Abraham and Sarah treated Ishmael, half-brother of the younger Isaac. If you have not read this part of The Old Testament, I urge you to, as Ishmael is considered by many to be a seminal figure in their tribes. And as an ancient proverb suggests; “Revenge is a dish best served... cold.”
I can think of another biblical admonishment which applies here. It is sage advice for our next president. “If you learn that a man is planning to sneak into your tent to kill your family, sneak into his and kill him first.”
If you have small-government,
traditional values,
you may be considered
by your own leadership
to be an enemy of the state.
~Monica Crowley
These days, we hear a lot from the Left defending “American values,” and how certain ideas are “un-American.” Imagine, an international criminal like George Soros lectures us about American values.
Listening to their supercilious pontification, one suspects they believe there is some list, chiseled in stone, enumerating these values. Maybe on the Lincoln Memorial, or in The Constitution, or maybe a plaque bearing a poem adhered to the base of the Statue of Liberty. As if, even if there were such a list, it would be immutable, never varying with time or situation, over the history of a nation.
What are these so-called American values imagined by these pretend patriots?
Millions of needy American citizens – families, individuals, children – who have been American citizens all their lives, can eat dog food. But the Left cries crocodile tears to help anyone from any foreign nation who claims to need help – as long as they are seen to be bringers of chaos (or future liberal votes) to our shores. While America’s poor gets lip service, in many communities such as those in California, immigrants are provided with new homes, fully furnished, with creature comforts many poorer, or even hard working Americans, cannot afford. The social contract rationalizes this by suggesting they will find a job within six months, then return the “loans” by paying taxes.
But they don’t want jobs. They may be unfamiliar with our traditions, but they are not without guile; they know that after six months of (not) searching for work, they become eligible for dozens of government programs wherein they may receive unconditional benefits, seemingly forever! But needy traditional Americans don’t even get to suck hind teat; they get zip. That’s “American values” according to the Left.
What about Democratic Congress passing the sweeping health insurance law we call ObamaCare, with thousands of unread pages, paying not the slightest attention to the opposition’s warnings, never asking “traditional” Americans if they even wanted it; passing it by some arcane Congressional rules maneuver in the dead of night? Democratic deceit. Another American value.
Or maybe it’s the Left’s passionate support and defense of those who profit from the mutilation and killing of almost-born babies. There’s a real American value for you.
How about one of their favorite Presidents and one of his recently dearly departed minions selling our technology secrets to China and other adversarial nations? Another one of their “American Value$$$.”
The current leader of the Democrat Party rushes to judgment on criminal cases based on the race of the victim and alleged perpetrator, influencing the authorities, judges and juries. I do not recall anyone asking for the President’s opinion before the facts are in. “Rushing to judgment.” Another American value according to the President.
While using the full force of the Democrat’s media arm – i.e. virtually all major media in America! – to drown all of America in a waterfall of guilt and street retribution for any incident where a non-white is killed or harmed by a white person, they continue to ignore the horrible slaughter of blacks killed by other blacks in gangland’s drug and turf wars. Looking the other way while thousands of American children – some as young as four years old! – are lost to street violence; Liberals’ idea American values.
One of my personal favorite American values is sending our brave leader overseas to apologize for things with which you and I and most Americans had nothing whatsoever to do. That really swells my pride in American values.
Or using the IRS and other government agencies to “legally” punish the Left’s opponents? Then, when caught red-handed, to not prosecute the perps on the pretense that they themselves performed the investigation and found no evidence. There’s real American value.
Or droning on about taking away the ability of American citizens to protect themselves and their families by voiding the Second Amendment, while inviting thousands of unvettable potential terrorists (not to mention rapists and drug gangs) into the nation’s cities... good ol’ fashioned American values, eh?
How about the quadri-annual pounding of Wall Street by the Left’s presidential candidates... the very same ones who receive major contributions from the same Wall Street and K Street lobbyists? Hypocracy? Even Bernie Sanders didn’t think that was an American value.
Then there’s the old Washington DC tradition of elected officials putting the interests of any crony with influence or cash ahead of those who pay their salary – something which is generally punished in the private sector but taken for granted by government officials. American value.
The aforementioned are just a few of the more controversial expressions of the Left’s idea of American values. The list is much longer.
There are minor American values, such as threatening arrest, punishment and infamy for a little white boy who bit his Pop-Tart snack into the shape of a gun while at school. One of those terribly dangerous Pop-Tarts capable of squirting a drop of filling almost 3 inches! But when a boy of another complexion brings what looks to his teachers like some kind of improvised explosive device, he is celebrated as a science genius rivaling the likes of Isaac Newton, brought to the White House by President Obama, given awards, offered scholarships, flown around the world to meet with Muslim royalty. The Left celebrates because he is associated, in their minds at least, with those who bring chaos to America. Then to cap it all off, his parents bring a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the school. Meanwhile, the little white boy and his family are humiliated for bringing an unlicnsed, dangerous, loaded Pop-Tart to school. That seems fair, doesn’t it? Like an American value.
Political correctness which shuts down access of even the most moderate Republican spokespersons to speak at many publicly funded universities – funded incidentally in a good part by these very same Republicans. Or to even set up military recruitment kiosks within university bounds. The very same military which insures the university faculty’s ability to flaunt The Constitution. As red-blooded an American value as Old Glory.
And what about that awful, horrible tradition of Christian Americans to display symbols of their faith at Christmas and Easter? Obviously any expression of faith by Christians in America goes against the Left’s most treasured American values.
Wealthy and powerful Americans like Al Gore and President Obama travel around the globe, spewing untold tons of pollutants into the atmosphere on their way to preach about how you and I are flouting American values by polluting the atmosphere with our little 60-watt incandescent light bulbs, and destroying the planet’s balance by eating too many bacon cheeseburgers. These Amerikan values – the belief in global warming and climate change, more as a religion than a fact, have become as big a business as any major religion.
But what exactly is the Left’s absurd belief in global warming or climate change as a miraculous cause of anger within some Middle East nations – anger of such magnitude that they want to destroy America and her little brother Israel? Nothing other than simple belief. Belief!
There is no more reliable, reputable scientific proof of global warming as cause of terrorist activity (or anything else) as there is proof that Jesus is the son of God. These things are beliefs. And belief in unprovable things is just faith. And faith in the unprovable is really another way of describing religion. The religious cult of the Left conducts its unholy agenda according to the canon of Marxism, all the while pretending its opposition, not itself, is against American values.
The Left claims it is against American values to suggest – as Donald Trump and others have – that the American people – including the Left! – must be protected from enemies sworn to kill us. Mr. Trump might have modified his declaration a bit, which might have made it sound more reasonable. He might have said we should temporarily stop the immigration of any “unknown” or “unvetted” foreigner. That is, any foreigner who we do not already know... so that the many Muslims who we regularly do business with, or educators, scientists, ambassadors, leaders and so forth would not be subject to the pause.
It’s obvious that had yesteryear’s leaders been infected with the same Leftist religious orthodoxy; coddling the enemy, denying they even are the enemy, inviting them into our land, allowing them to capture our weaponry, punishing any military leader on our side who dares speak out or tries to take the fight to the enemy, we would never have vanquished our enemies in WWII, and bad as it is today, the world would be in a much worse fix .
If the idea of pausing immigration until our leaders can figure out “what the hell is going on” is called unAmerican by Hillary Clinton and the Left, I suggest that their “religion” has converted large segments of our government and populace. So why shouldn’t government employees who believe in this religious claptrap be subject to the separation of church and State rule they are so fond of siting? They, including President Obama, should stop foisting their religion on America, or declare we no longer are governed by a secular government.
It appears to this writer that to our President and his Leftist minions, anything – from Pop-Tarts to unvetted and illegal immigrants to the unwillingness to clamp down on street gangs – anything that brings chaos to our streets brings them closer to their goal of transforming our nation into another Marxist failure.
As a political tool, chaos is the Left’s traditional international value.
