If You Haven't Read This, You Need to...

We try to be ever more choosy in what we link to, but this passes any filtering test: a letter from a 53 year old American woman to the nation's political leadership, read recently on Glenn Beck's show. You'll be figuratively, if not literally, giving her a standing O by the time you finish. If only there were a way to make this a 'must read' by all 535 Congressmen and Senators. If you've got a way to get it to even one of these people, DO IT!!!

The question of whether America is or isn’t a Christian nation (a subject we addressed here) here) isn’t really a close question. Any objective and thorough study of the writings and speeches of the founding fathers makes it obvious that their philosophy and worldview and confidence in the rightness of their cause were impelled and shaped by their Christian faith. If you don’t have the time for a thorough study, Mark Alexander of the PatriotPost has assembled some helpful anecdotes in his May 14 essay “Religion and Politics Don’t Mix?”, here.

Americans—including American atheists—should be proud of their Judeo-Christian heritage, and should work to see it sustained and honored. It’s been the source of unparalleled freedom and opportunity and guidance for humanity’s highest and best system of ordered liberty. It has blessed all who live in America.

Why would anyone deny this? Why would anyone want to deny it?

Posted May 14, 2009

Good News for the American Recovery Plan...

Brushfires' recent essay, "American Recovery Plan" included these words:

"The Obama house of cards is going to collapse. The lies are already apparent to a huge segment of the population, and the tea parties have shown that the intimidation factor associated with lies and liars is being overcome. The only thing missing to the start of a real American recovery are the new faces of articulate, traditional American leadership, ready and willing to take on the lies, with the full confidence that a return to American ideals and a trust in free men and women will lead to the answers.

POINT ONE: We mentioned that the tea parties have shown that the intimidation factor of lies and liars is being overcome. We also wrote of our confidence in the future based on the power of the internet, here. Now, before you check out the next link, ask yourself--based on what you've read or heard from the Pravda media, what do you think was the total US attendance at tea parties across the country? About 200,000? Or maybe 300,000 on the high side?

Exact attendance is of course not knowable, as this was a grassroots movement without a central ticketing function. But web-only Pajamas TV (a part of pajamasmedia.com) has compiled estimates from people actually in attendance at locations the Pravda media did not cover (and has probably never heard of). Their final estimate for nationwide attendance: 823,706!!

This movement is bigger than Pravda or the White House knows or wants to admit. It is unprecedented in the experience of Americans living today. And there are more awake Americans every day. They're not going away, and they will provide backbone to politicians who know damn well that Obama's socialist economic policies are not new, have in fact been tried many times in many countries, and are universally failures. But they've been cowed by a media that structures approval polls to buttress this nonsense. The politicans don't yet fully grasp what the people know about the Pravda media: they are morally bankrupt, and financial bankruptcy is not far behind. They are not the power they seem to be. Which brings us to...

POINT TWO: We said "the only thing missing to the start of a real American recovery are the new faces of articulate, traditional American leadership, ready and willing to take on the lies...". Well, just as we had posted these words, Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, had apparently just completed an on-air demolition of some hysterical Pravda apparatchik on the subject of the torture memos. Liz Cheney is one articulate, unflappable, unintimidated, smart American (the acorn does not fall far from the tree). We still need more leaders than just Liz, but she showed more toughness and strength in one short interview than any ten Republicans in Congress show in a day. Hats off to Liz...about 536 more like her, and America will be rolling again.

George Soros, again and again and again....

We've posted on this sick man before, here. Now he's showing up as the money man behind the hard left push for prosecution of Bush administration officials for fighting the war on terror.

This is evil incarnate, and it has bought, paid for and is driving the agenda of the Democrat Party and the Obama administration. Wake up, America!

UPDATE: Now, Rosa Brooks, a Soros mole and socialist radical, is an adviser to an Under Secretary of Defense. Investor's Business Daily has the story, here. here. Soros and his people are on a mission that, sadly, they do not see as self-destructive of their own freedom and happiness. But shame on us if we can't or won't see their mission for what it is, and refuse to rise up and stop this deliberate tearing down of America. Again, wake up, America!

Update posted April 28, 2009

We’ll stand by our original suggestion of ‘next steps’ following the tea parties, here. But to keep things simpler, and maybe even more powerful, we’d also be happy with a July 4 set of nationwide gatherings around the rallying cry: “Throw Out Every Incumbent!” (Surely with all the online brilliance available for this, a better formulation with a catchy acronym could be designed. But you get the idea.)

This rallying cry need not be accompanied by policy proposals; it communicates a message that trumps policy-level discussion and might even be understandable to a CNN reporter. The people’s anger is not about the specifics of this or that tax proposal; it is not solely about spending; it is about a government that is radically different from what had been promised by either party in the 2008 election campaign, and is now seen and felt to be completely out of control. There may be a radical fringe left element who delights in the agenda and direction of Obama’s administration, but even they could not make the case that this is what was discussed in the 2008 campaign. The vast majority of Democrats, and essentially all Republicans make up the rest of the body politic. They may be raddled in varying degrees, but they are all raddled.

And so why not a nationwide grassroots movement to throw out every incumbent in the House—yes, all 435 members—and every Senator up for re-election. Doesn’t mean the Democrat seats will become Republican seats or vice versa; just means that the people have decided the incumbents’ time is up. We the people will in the future decide who takes their places; we are deciding NOW that their places will be taken by others.

Among the many lies that are paraded in front of the people every day is the lie that America is a 50/50 country. Americans love their country, and they may disagree over the role of the government, but they don’t disagree about the love of freedom and the value of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. That’s an 80/20 proposition; it’s only the Pravda media that props up and believes the 50/50 lie.

If you think the tea party crowds were large, just wait for the July 4 “Throw Out Every Incumbent” crowds. And just watch how the behavior in Congress changes between now and then (and thereafter).

Teddy Roosevelt Speaks of Barack Obama

We've previously recommended Bill Bennett's book, "The American Patriot's Almanac". It's great on-the-bedstand reading--a story of American history for every day of the year.

Couldn't help noticing this entry for April 15--words from Theodore Roosevelt in a speech delivered in Paris almost 100 years ago:

Experience teaches us that the average man who protests that his international feeling swamps his national feeling, that he does not care for his country because he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proves himself the foe of mankind ... [I]f a man can view his own country and all other countries from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrust him...I think that the most useful member of the family of nations is normally a strongly patriotic nation."

Spare us the Obama apologists who would claim he does not feel 'tepid indifference' toward America. His world apology tour spoke volumes to the contrary. Teddy Roosevelt had him pegged 100 years ago.

The spirit of America is going to be visible at the April 15 tea parties, and Brushfires believes it’s stronger and healthier than even the tea partiers realize. If water needs to be brought to a boil to brew a good cup of tea, we’re set for some well-brewed tea across the country on April 15. The water is already boiling.

The Pravda media is just amazing in its effort to mesmerize, stultify and generally deny that there’s anything afoot with the upcoming nationwide protests. We are fed scripted stories of Obama’s great style and brilliance with the G-20; we are told how every European melts in the presence of Michelle Obama; we are ordered to move along from these irritating questions about Obama’s persistent bowing to Muslims —and the overwhelmingly clear purpose is to anesthetize the America public into believing all is well under the wise touch and hand of the great Obama. The threats to the country from economic turmoil and radical Islam are surely just days away from yielding to the Great Leader. Tea parties can then be positioned as a fringe movement of non-believing outliers. What a crock.

A very sizable portion of the American population—we think it’s a majority—are now awake to the fraud that is Obama. (See Brushfires’ earlier essays "There's Something Happening Here..." and "Let Them See Tea Parties" .) The harm being done to individual freedom is being recognized more and more every day. And the people you will see at the tea parties, if you care to look for yourself and not through Pravda coverage (or non-coverage), are the heart and soul of America. They are the people who play by the rules, pay their taxes, work to improve their churches, neighborhoods and communities, and are generous and unselfish in extending a helping hand to those in need. They are NOT defined by their skin color, by gender, or by tax bracket; they ARE defined by their love for America, and united around a common commitment to the work ethic, and to Judeo-Christian moral teachings. They do not buy into class envy and class warfare; they do embrace individual freedom and responsibility under God.

So here’s our open message to ‘moderate’ Democrats—from the average voter to the elected office-holder: why on earth do you bow before George Soros’ money and the radical left agenda? What are you thinking? Look out at the mass of Americans protesting on April 15—do you really believe a safer, saner future for America is found in following an agenda that turns its back on these kinds of people? Wake up! Find some backbone! Truth will be staring you in the face on April 15. Which is your master—approval polls, or Truth?

You Need to Understand George Soros

When historians try to reconstruct the catastrophic Obama era (which should end with his resignation), we predict the influence of George Soros will be seen as pervasive. So if you want to understand what’s happening before the historians do, understand who this guy is and how he thinks of the America of the founding. Kyle-Anne Shiver at American Thinker has been a leader in the effort to bring some light to this critical figure, primarily here, and now here.

Just a nugget to give you the picture--here's an element of Soros' worldview as extrapolated by Shiver from a Soros' book:

The desire to spread American democracy to other regions is based on a false set of documents, namely the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Soros' belief that there is no such thing as a universal truth, that all things are relative and all moral systems are essentially equivalent leads him to conclude that our founding documents are fundamentally flawed in that they claim to rest upon "self-evident truths."

Soros is a sick, sick man; a virulent anti-American--and he is the principal money man behind today's Democrat Party. That's about all you need to know....

New York 20 Election Results...Don't Buy the Spin

The much–watched special election in New York to fill the vacancy arising from the appointment of the incumbent to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat has come down to a virtual tie (each candidate has over 77,000 votes, with the Democrat holding an advantage of around 65 votes), with some 6000 absentee ballots yet to be counted, and Republicans holding about an 800 ballot advantage among the absentees (at least in terms of party affiliation identified on the ballots). Recount procedures and the usual litigation fight will likely defer certification of the results until mid-April at the earliest.

It is absolutely stunning to watch the liberal media go into spin overdrive to sell this result as a defeat for the GOP and a victory for Obama. This is a district that went 61% for the Democrat just five months ago. Let’s repeat that: This is a district that went 61% for the Democrat candidate just five months ago.

Further, this is a special election where the Democrats outspent the Republicans; where visible support for the Democrat came from Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden; where the Democrat strategy was to run on an anti-Limbaugh, anti-Palin theme; where Obama himself sent out some 50,000 emails to supporters in the district. The Republican candidate is a New York state Assemblyman whose district for state purposes did not coincide with the Congressional district, so many of his supporters could not vote for him. Most important of all, he wasn't really running as a conservative, waffling throughout the campaign about the wisdeom of the outrageous stimulus bill.

With all that, the best the Democrats get is the slimmest possible victory; more likely, absent more cheating, they actually lose the seat. There was even one hopeful liberal spinner claiming that since the Republican’s victory, if at all, won’t be known for a few weeks, there won’t be any momentum derived from it. Talk about a ridiculous, transparent “nothing to see here, nothing to see here, please move along” spin!

The New York 20 result is evidence of the tide turning; that the Democrat managed 50% is due to lingering confusion which we've addressed in a new essay, here. Take heart, Americans!

We've said the only thing holding the Obama administration together is approval ratings. We doubt the legitimacy of these polls, but even if we accept their surface-level findings, we think at most they reflect the goodness and decency of the American people in wanting any President recently chosen by their fellow Americans to succeed.

Inside the Beltway, there has so far been enough liberal media juice to cow enough politicians to go along with Obama for fear of being opposed to what America views as ‘popular’. We think that juice is running dry, faster than the media knows. Exhibit A was an online poll at MSNBC (the link has since been de-activated)—which is nothing if not a bastion of mainstream liberal thought—that offered the opportunity to give Obama a grade for his performance so far. About 10 days into it, over a hundred ten thousand respondents had voted—and over 60% give him an “F”.

Never mind the mechanical sniping over the limits of online polls—how does one reconcile a 60% “F” on Presidential performance with a 56% approval rating? The answer is they can’t be reconciled, and soon the truth of the “F” grade is going to be reflected in “F”-level approval ratings.

F students at some point need to be expelled. Or drop out.

Postscript: As news of the MSNBC poll spread around the net, the responses skyrocketed, and as of a couple of weeks later, the numbers turned, so that a mere 30% give Obama an "F" and over 50% give him an "A". No doubt the left-wing media, of which MSNBC is plainly a charter member, would now discuss the poll as further evidence of the consistency of the American electorate's view of Obama. This is laughably bogus. Our take: MSNBC put up the online poll, freaked out when the results were pouring in so negatively--after all, MSNBC's audience is hardly conservative--and either sent out a panicked call to a reliable email list so as to get the results overturned, or just flat out fixed them so they would say what the Potemkin Village keepers want them to say. Sorry, but here's the credibility grade of the left-wing media today: a 100% "F".

More Brushfires Kindling from Ronald Reagan

“Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp. Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.” –Ronald Reagan

We’ll repeat ourselves – we are astounded when we hear so-called Republicans saying the era of Reagan is over. Reaganism is not an era, but a way of thinking; it is the way of thinking bought and paid for the founding fathers and countless American patriots since then. It is to deeply and uncompromisingly value individual freedom and responsibility under God as the foundation for a society that serves as the ‘shining city on a hill’ for all humanity. It is a way of thinking grounded in truth itself—the truth of one God, and man as the image and likeness, or child, of God. As such, it will never go out of style; it will never be ‘buried’ by some new philosophy. Our grasp of it may rise and wane, but the truth of it doesn’t waver at all.

The Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno said it well: “Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”

Remember this next time someone tells you Obama’s popularity polls ‘prove’ the socialist way is now the desired way or the true way. It isn’t, and it never will be. The wake up process is ongoing across America, and it isn’t going to stop.

Brushfires of freedom are burning everywhere.

THE WARNING WE MUST REMEMBER

Though it's not entirely clear who first penned these ideas (they are often attributed to a Scotsman named Alexander Tytler), the source is much less important that the substance of the warning:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

Obama is counting on complacency among American patriots in order to move this country to dependency, which is on the doorstep of bondage and tyranny. We CANNOT allow this to happen. Get engaged and fight!

We decided to file this one under “American Heritage” because freedom of the press, when the press is populated by serious people, is a strength of America.

We’ve linked to Michelle Malkin’s website from the beginning, but it’s time to pay a more specific compliment. Michelle does what journalists used to do, which is dig into facts and report them, and not merely accept a PC/approved spin, look for anecdotes to support it, and shut your eyes and ears to anything that refutes it.

She’s done another great job here, exposing the flakes and freeloaders and lowlifes that comprise ACORN and the real behavior that underlies many home foreclosure situations.

People read Michelle’s columns, and they come back for more. That’s because they sense honesty and truth. This is part of the hope and optimism we articulated yesterday, here. The Orwellians can’t control everything.

Spread the word and the link; she deserves the visitors she gets—and the whole nation needs to become her visitors….

And by the way, are there some legitimately sad stories of misled borrowers, hard-nosed lenders, and untimely foreclosures? Sure, but our strong intuition is that those are not the core of the mortgage problem. The core is comprised of irresponsible borrowers, flippers and other speculators who were trying to cash in before the bubble burst. And they lost, and should have to deal with the consequences. It’s called being responsible.

A Powerful and Deserved Rebuke of Eric Holder

We’ve been on record with our view that America society as a whole long ago ceased to be racist; the election of Barack Obama could not have happened if it were otherwise. Yet Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder still lives in the past, and his labeling of any part of America as a ‘nation of cowards’ when it comes to discussing matters of race was embarrassingly out of touch. A perfect rebuke comes from our friends at American Thinker, where submissions editor Larrey Anderson has penned this piece. this piece.

Now making the rounds of the internet is this 2000+ year old comment attributed to Cicero:

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. -- Cicero , 55 BC"

Think of Cicero’s comment in the light of another quote from a more contemporary distinguished thinker—American poet Robert Frost:

"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor."

The truth of what constitutes honest, responsible behavior may be out of favor, and it may be producing what some may call ‘change’. But here’s the fact: truth has NOT changed—it was the same in Cicero’s time as it is now. We’re relearning that lesson now, and a lot of what is now being called change is going to be undone because it is not based on truth. Just watch…

The editorials of Investor's Business Daily are among the most insightful you'll read. In this one, you'll learn more about Saul Alinsky, the radical left-wing revolutionary whose "Rules for Radicals" is probably the most important and influential book on leadership, power and purpose--in the minds of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. His book is dedicated to Lucifer, which should give you some idea of where his thinking fits in relation to the Bible-based, Christian worldview of America's founding fathers. To be blunt, it is antithetical to America's heritage.

Be informed. Recognize the insidious and truly evil ideas espoused by Alinsky. Don't be fooled as they are practiced by Obama. Resist. Oppose. Make your voice heard by your elected representatives. Stop this assault on America. NOW.

Andrew Klavan is a Brushfires Kind of Guy

We were originally going to file this one only under our Cultural Decay button, but the words are too good. Andrew Klavan, welcoming the new voice of conservatism in the entertainment world, Big Hollywood, captured the spirit of Brushfires of Freedom in terms that deserve to be repeated, not just within this website, but through email distribution lists around the country:

"The right to individual liberty is the greatest gift with which our Creator endowed us. It is immeasurably more important than some so-called Common Good as defined by intellectuals or politicians; more important than political correctness; more important than being loved by the rest of the world. A small band of brilliant dead white men bequeathed to all of us a machine for preserving this right: America and its Constitution. It’s a wonderful machine and it has to be defended in every generation. Sometimes, sadly, it has to be defended with the guns of our military. One day, it may have to be defended with the gun you have in your house. But always—every day—each of us has to stand up for it in our thoughts and with our words."