Cadet Regimental Commander Adnan Barqawi at the 2009 Virginia Republican State Convention

This young man was an inspiration to all at the convention and brought the delegates to their feet cheering on three separate occasions. His address was inspirational and motivational. He is a new citizen of the United States and proud to be called an American. CLICK ON THE PICTURE OR HERE TO SEE A BRIEF EXCERPT FROM HIS SPEECH.

More About Adnan Barqawi: What You Make Out of Yourself!

North Korea's Achievement

The World Is A More Dangerous Place

Seismic event registering 4.7 believed to be the result of North Korea's first successful nuclear weapon test. LINK

The Last Full Measure of Devotion

Another Memorial Day No Thanks to the Liberals

The Best Hope for Freedom is a strong defense. President Washington said presciently, "In time of peace prepare for war." Teddy Roosevelt said,"Speak softly and carry a big stick."

President Obama says that America has “...shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” towards its allies.

Leon Kass and The Abolition of Man

Leon Kass gave the Jefferson Lecture on May 22nd on the topic of Diogenes' search for an honest man. Pretty sparse pickings these days. In the course of the address SEE HERE Dr. Kass invoked one of my favorite "honest men", C.S. Lewis who influenced Kass's decision to abandon his medical practice and set forth on Diogenes the Cynic's search through "... the sunlit streets of Athens, lantern in hand, looking for an honest man." He straightens us out first, for Diogenes was not searching for the "honest man" but for anthrôpon zeto, the true man, the exemplar, the goal which we should all be seeking since it is what we should become.
Reading Rousseau Kass said, "... I acquired some real questions, pressing questions, more challenging than those one can answer in the laboratory." The kind of questions were "Is it really true that, as the arts and sciences climb upward, so morals, taste, and citizenship slide downward, and, what’s worse, that the rise of the former causes the fall of the latter?"

Dr. Kass read C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man. But let me give it in his own words:
" According to C. S. Lewis, the dehumanization threatened by the mastery of nature has, at its deepest cause, less the emerging biotechnologies that might directly denature bodies and flatten souls, more the underlying value-neutral, soulless and heartless accounts that science proffers of living nature and of man. By expunging from its account of life any notion of soul, aspiration, and purpose, and by setting itself against the evidence of our lived experience, modern biology ultimately undermines our self-understanding as creatures of freedom and dignity, as well as our inherited teachings regarding how to live, teachings linked to philosophical anthropologies that science has now seemingly dethroned."
Kass turned to Aristotle and found there some surprises, but especially that notions we have today of soul are no part of Aristotle's meaning, instead, “Soul names the unified powers of aliveness, awareness, action, and appetite that living things all manifest." It is evidenced in the whole reality. I was reminded of C.S. Lewis' essay Meditation in a Toolshed.
Kass concludes his address by admitting he has not found all that he sought, nor have his students of whom he says:"Most young people in my experience still want to be taken seriously. Despite their facile sophistication and easy-going cynicism—more often than not, largely a defense against disappointment—most of them are in fact looking for a meaningful life or listening for a summons." We should remember that unless we search we shall not find. And the search is the search for the whole person, not the dismembered person Kass finds on the autopsy table and in the test tubes of science.

Always Remember

My generation sacrificed their treasure and their blood for the freedom of the people of South Vietnam. We were betrayed by our government and the very people who now sit so smug in Washington. The media betrayed us. The government betrayed us. The politicians betrayed us. We were forced to lose a war we had won and the Vietnamese people were abandoned and thrown away in a false peace and a disgraceful Nobel prize for a treaty that was a betrayal.

Another generation is now about to be betrayed. When are we going to learn the lesson and take back the government on the basis of principles instead of personalities? When will honor again mean something in the land? I have grown old and cynical watching the people constantly lied to and constantly betrayed and Moloch raised once more to rule the land. The smoke and stench of corruption reeks out of Washington as they wring their hands crying compassion and wring our necks with growing taxes and shrinking values. They point fingers at others, but they are the ones who are guilty. We need a lot more of these valiant men and women and a whole lot fewer of those who send them off to die.

Semper Fi!

Notre Dame Sells Its Birthright for a Bowl of Pottage

Notre Dame is the premier Catholic University in the United States charged not only with the education but with the spiritual formation of the Catholic students that go there.

Luke 17:2 It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.



Matthew 2:18
18"A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."

The Ontological Reality and the Primacy of Truth

I have to come back to this time and time again because it is at the core of living a life of integrity. There are two kinds of people, those who don't care about the truth, only something else, their ease, their power, whatever it is, and the other kind of people that do care about the truth.

"What is truth?" was Pilate's question delivered as he examined Jesus (John 18:38). It is a question that does not much trouble the worldlings who care only for their own ease and little for others. We live in a world dominated by this view. Humpty Dumpty knew this well, "The question is which is to be master, that's all."
But that is the worldling view, the view of those for whom the world is simply a material realm of atoms and they are nothing more than atoms with sentience. But is that the truth?
Truth is the reality of what actually is the case and not what is not the case. Those who create their own truth, ignoring that which actually is for that while they would like to be will come to the crushing reality that they don't really have a say in the matter.
Truth matters because to act in accordance to anything else works only in the short run and whatever we are doing, whatever we hope to be, the short run ends all too quickly. My dad used to joke when he was driving and saw a jogger struggling to get one more mile in, "There's someone ...", he would say, "... who thinks he's going to get out of this alive." That may not have been entirely fair to the jogger but it made the point for me that the short run ends all too quickly and then we are ... well in some other state. Now maybe we're just gone, pushing up daiseys with the disassociated chemicals that joined together formed us in life. But you know and I know that none of us really feel that way. There was the line in "Fame" I always remember because it was a thrilling line, "I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly."
C.S. Lewis put it this way, "We're either going to be an everlasting glory or an everlasting horror" and the choice is ours. And that choice is all tied up with the question of truth.
If you're read this far you're a glutton for punishment. What's my punch line? Well I guess my punch line is that when we hear someone talking about a woman's right to choose there ought to be a larger context. When she chooses death for her little one, she is acting in the short run like a worldling and that's not a choice that leads to everlasting glory. God has already infused a soul, a human soul, an immortal soul, into the material tissue of these little ones. I'm not so smart as to know where they are or how they are getting on. I am betting that they are in the loving arms of God. The one who chose for them, who made the choice to deny them life and love, is on her way along with those who enabled and encouraged her decision to becoming that everlasting horror. Truth matters.

A Badge of Honor

Some of us have made the Obama Administration's Enemies list even as they have withdrawn the report which revealed their biases. I wear it as a badge of honor. Yes, I am:

• pro-life
• conservative
• and former military
  

Talk about a Trainwreak — Oops ... Did I mention bankruptcy ...

Yup that's right "bankruptcy" ... but I guess they don't call it that when you can print money. If you or I did it, it would be called counterfeiting. But when the government does it, it's called currency. But it's also called fiat money ... that is money that is issued with no backing and no tangible goods associated with it besides the good will of the government and the willingness of people to take it. But for how long?
CHECK IT OUT
The Social Security Board of Trustees reported Tuesday that costs will exceed revenues in 2016 — a full year sooner than expected just last year. And total assets — including more than 70 years of "surpluses" built up in the "trust fund" — will be completely gone by 2037 — four years earlier than in last year's report.

Telling It Like It Is! TAX TAX TAX TAX TAX

The growth of government is threatening to sink us all in a spiraling tower of increasing debt and a crippling burden of taxes and entitlements. Where does it all end except in the collapse of our free institutions?

Welcome to the USA Gestapo

The Brown Shirts have arrived. You can be arrested for exercising your rights.

Flushing the Constitution Down the Drain

Thomas Sowell is one of the brightest folks that I read on a regular basis. One of the things I like about him is that he doesn't mince words. He calls'em the way he sees'em and he has Barack Obama in his sights. CHECK IT OUT
The theme: (as Sowell points it out, has been with us a long time. But it's accelerating. You can kiss your freedom behind if this goes on.)
They called this "a living Constitution." It has in fact been a dying Constitution, as its restraining provisions have been "interpreted" to mean less and less so that the federal government can do more and more.
The biggest problem is we're like those proverbial frogs that just sit fat and happy in the frying pan as the water gets hotter until we're cooked. I'm sure you'll be happy to learn, by the way, that that's another urban legend. Frogs are not that stupid. They do hop out of the frying pan. I wish I thought we were that smart.

Lost Opportunities ... A Great Man

Go into the eternal quiet in peace. I probably liked Jack Kemp more than almost any other politician I can remember. I liked him because he was a good man who followed both his mind and his heart.

I liked Ronald Reagan well enough, but I was passionate about liking Jack Kemp. I saw a mean minded obit-commentary about Jack that I think was exactly wrong. It took him to task on the Laffer curve and supply side economics and praised him for his support for inner city enterprise zones. I think that was wrong. I think he was right on both issues.

Jack Kemp died of cancer and now Arlen Spector is making political hay about it. LOOK HERE Now that is both ridiculous and shameful. Cancer has defeated most of the attempts to cure it. Spector's speculations are just that. Spector didn't agree with Kemp all that much to begin with so he ought to keep his trap shut.

The nation lost a great man and when he wasn't nominated to run for president they lost a great opportunity. Now Jack is with one of my other heros who was also named Jack (C.S. Lewis). I expect they'll get along quite well.

A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste

I'm getting a little tired of the crisis mongering that is going on. CHECK IT OUT The government should not be in the professional agitation business. C.S. Lewis had it exactly right when he gave his inaugural address de descriptione temporum in 1954 at Cambridge.
He said:"...The change is this. In all previous ages that I can think of the principal aim of rulers, except at rare and short intervals, was to keep their subjects quiet, to forestall or extinguish widespread excitement and persuade people to attend quietly to their several occupations. And on the whole their subjects agreed with them. They even prayed (in words that sound curiously old-fashioned) to be able to live "a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" and "pass their time in rest and quietness". But now the organisation of mass excitement seems to be almost the normal organ of political power. We live in an age of "appeal if drives", and "campaigns". Our rulers have become like schoolmasters and are always demanding "keenness". And you notice that I am guilty of a slight archaism in calling them "rulers". "Leaders" is the modem word. I have suggested elsewhere that this is a deeply significant change of vocabulary. Our demand upon them has changed no less than theirs on us. For of a ruler one asks justice, incorruption, diligence, perhaps clemency; of a leader, dash, initiative, and (I suppose) what people call "magnetism" or "personality". ..."
The bottom line is that Swine Flu that is getting everyone up in arms is pretty much a flu like any other. It's no more or less virulent than any other flu. So get over it everyone. If you catch it stay home. But don't get in a big snit.
This is the government stirring the pot and it gets damned annoying.