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Sunday, December 19 2010

'Tis the season for the atheist/humanist crowd to make fools of themselves.  As millions of Americans celebrate Christmas, the American Humanist Association is in the midst of their annual membership drive punctuated by smart-aleck billboards and city bus placards that mock the existence of moral authority and belittle faith in Christ.

 

Two years ago, their motto was "Why believe in a god?  Just be good for goodness sake!"  Last year, they were more direct: "No god?  No problem!"  But this year, as they feebly attempt to detract from the celebration of Christ's incarnation once again, perhaps it's a fruitful exercise for our civilization to consider their overtures and weigh the merit of their message.

 

As far as I can tell, the mantra "No god?  No problem!" has but one minor flaw: the entire record of human history.  It is no coincidence that as German atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche boasted, "God is dead...we have killed him...must we not ourselves become gods" (which, by the way, is the entire basis of humanism dating back to the Garden of Eden), he simultaneously predicted that the 20th century would be the most murderous in human history.

 

That he was right is actually of secondary importance.  Most significant is the apparent recognition Nietzsche had that man, left with no moral authority beyond his own impulses and passions, would devolve into self-destruction.

 

Indeed the banner slogan of "No god?  No problem!" hangs poignantly over the ovens of Auschwitz, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the trash bins of Planned Parenthood.

 

Though it might be more difficult to squeeze onto a billboard, the American Humanist Association needs to correct their jingle to convey the more accurate message: "No God?  No problem...except the one that even the greatest atheist thinkers have recognized: when a belief in God dies, man dies."

 

Moreover, the phrase "be good for goodness sake" is meaningless unless we can define what "goodness" is.  For the believer, that is a relatively easy question to answer.  Goodness is measured by the extent to which man's behavior conforms to the character and the will of his Creator.  That is why the Christian believes the Bible is an irreplaceable component of human existence - its revelation serves to guide us towards that divine will.

 

But the atheist/humanist has no such moral center...no fixed point of reference.  They may talk at length about the need to be "good," but in the final analysis, their presuppositions fundamentally reject any concrete basis for morality. 

 

That is not to say that anyone who is atheist or humanist is a murderous butcher ready to pounce.  Certainly there are a great number of nonbelievers who are benevolent, caring and kind.  But while the atheist points to these upstanding godless citizens as proof of their theory that you can be good simply for goodness sake, they conveniently ignore the cultural foundations that taught those individuals good from bad.

 

As columnist Jeff Jacoby observed, "In our culture, even the most passionate atheist cannot help having been influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview that shaped Western civilization."  Put another way, the American atheist who boldly touts his morality and decency is humorously doing so only by appealing to the very Christian ethic they seek to denounce.

 

Though this conclusion is inescapable, the pride inherent in humanist thought forbids them from admitting it.  Consequently, we are persistently treated to their vapid musings that one must choose between religion and reason.

 

But suggesting that reason alone is sufficient to direct behavior is intellectually dishonest.  Human reason will always be guided by presuppositions.  That is why civilizations like ancient Rome found it reasonable to murder handicapped children while we in the Western world find that to be abominable.

 

Jacoby noted that Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger wrote, "'We drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal,'...stressing that 'it is not anger but reason'" that provides justification for such an act.  This horrific practice is the result of reason built upon a Godless foundation.  In contrast, American civilization bears the fruits of reason based on a Christian ethic that teaches submission and obedience to a transcendent Moral Authority.

 

That fact alone should cause the atheist to pause as he jeeringly taunts believers with signs proclaiming, "Merry X-mas."  Creating a Christ-less holiday season may seem like a worthy cause until you realize where it leads.  Civilizations torn free from the moorings of Moral Authority are not the kind anyone would want to live in...even a fervent atheist.

 

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

Posted by: Peter Heck AT 02:53 pm   |  Permalink   |  3 Comments  |  Email
Sunday, December 12 2010

When your cockamamie theory is literally collapsing around you, it's probably best to take your plight to a higher power.  But if that isn't possible, a fake jaguar goddess could work.

 

According to the Washington Post, "Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was... 'the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving.'"

 

I'll give this conglomeration of exploiting profiteers five stars when it comes to creativity.  You can't manipulate data to produce fatalistic scenes of New York City being overwhelmed by tidal waves and Yellowstone erupting into volcanic ash without having a robust imagination.  But reason?  I think that went out the window long before they started praying to a jaguar.

 

The disintegration of this political juggernaut known as global warming is as imminent now as it is remarkable.  The heights from which these scientists' credibility has plunged is equaled only by the speed at which it has done so.

 

Consider that it was only last year when the scientific and political world was held spellbound by the deliberations of the UN Climate Change summit held in Copenhagen.  Nearly 45,000 attendees anxiously anticipated a global climate agreement that could spare us all from the imminent planetary incineration that was about to befall us thanks to the unholy alliance of SUVs, deforestation, and belching cows.  American taxpayers alone shelled out nearly $400,000 for Nancy Pelosi to lead a cadre of liberal Congressmen and staffers to attend the Warmer deliberations.

 

Yet now, just one year later, political leaders are staying as far away from the annual climate summit (this year held in Cancun) as possible.  Even the Congressional Warmer triumvirate of Henry Waxman, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer skipped the festivities.  Remember it was Boxer who proclaimed not so long ago that global warming was her "signature issue."  Yet when it came time for this year's convention, Boxer merely murmured, "I'm sending a statement to Cancun."

 

Meanwhile, across the pond, things aren't much better for the global warming hysterics in the British Meteorological Office.  As the Met geared up for Copenhagen in 2009, they were warning of the "warmest year on record."  Fast-forward to this year, and as Britain is in the grip of yet another extraordinarily frigid winter, their admonitions are much more subdued.  Even the Daily Mail noted why: "Buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole...for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped."

 

This most inconvenient truth is why, despite millions of dollars of propaganda and free marketing offered by a totally duped American media, Al Gore's climate heist machinery is dismantling before our eyes.  The defeat of climate legislation in Congress has prompted Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection to whittle its resources from 25 states down to 7 states, acknowledging, "the situation in Congress has changed."

 

Indeed it has.  As the Democratic Party's death grip on Congress dies in January, Nancy Pelosi's House Select Committee on Global Warming will be dying with it.  Republicans have announced that they have no desire to continue wasting taxpayer dollars on a committee whose only contribution was a proposed energy tax that would have destroyed millions of jobs in an already stagnant economy.

 

For its swan song, the committee held a final hearing - one so boring that according to the Washington Times, the Chairman never returned from lunch break.

 

So how has this environmental Goliath collapsed so quickly and so painfully?  Certainly the ClimateGate scandal that revealed the epic fraud and deceit upon which the movement was built didn't help.  Al Gore admitting his willingness to fabricate dire consequences for the sake of getting people's attention didn't help.

 

But ultimately it comes down to this: given time, truth wins out.  Eventually rational people realize that groupthink and demonizing your opponents as "deniers" doesn't count for evidence.  They realize that a movement so freely changing names - from Global Cooling to Global Warming to Climate Change to Global Climate Disruption - might be more about a neo-Marxist pursuit of global governance than about saving polar bears.

 

In the end, that is what has hastened the demise of Warmerism.  This makes the climate changers' prayer to Ixchel the jaguar goddess so very appropriate...one myth perpetuated on humanity deserves another.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

Posted by: Peter Heck AT 04:19 pm   |  Permalink   |  9 Comments  |  Email
Sunday, December 05 2010

In fifty years I have little doubt that we will regard the administration of Barack Obama as the presidency that saved America.  No, not in the sense that Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and all the other media John the Baptists foretold as they proclaimed the coming of our political messiah just over two years ago.  Rather, the history of our time will show that it was the radical nature of Obama's dogged devotion to a liberal progressive philosophy far out of the American mainstream that jolted awake a generation of apathetic and passive citizens just in time to save the republic.

 

Though that apathy has always been inexcusable, it was at least understandable.  Our politics had become more theater than substance.  In fact, voters reasonably began to view their choices at the ballot box as something akin to picking between airline food and hospital food: bland, insipid, uninspiring. 

 

For all their posturing and crowing, the two parties had largely become mere reflections of one another.  Seriously, how different was Bill Clinton's "triangulation" and George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism?"  Candidates of either party who showed convictions contrary to the Washington establishment and challenged that establishment's control were labeled radical, and every attempt was made to marginalize them.

 

But Barack Obama changed all of that.  For the last two years, the president has unleashed the most aggressively left-wing agenda he could muster.  When the electorate began a backlash against his revolutionary designs at town halls and tea parties, he ignored them.  And when they rejected his ideology by throwing his party out of power by historic proportions in the midterm elections, he pretended not to notice. 

 

All this makes little sense to those attempting to view Obama's presidency through the conventional prism of political leadership.  But Obama is not a conventional politician.  He is a radical ideologue.  Obama is not a leader.  He is a bitter partisan.  And as odd as it sounds, that is exactly what this country needed.

 

It has been generations since Americans have been exposed to a more vivid depiction of the significant differences between the left's and the right's views of this country and its future.  The delineation between conservative and liberal had grown hopelessly blurred to a majority of citizens.  But Obama and his leftist cabal have been successful not only in demonstrating the frightening vision progressive liberals have of making America into a European-style socialist state, but they have also managed to animate a vast conservative majority that has laid painfully dormant since the mid 1980s.

 

The distinction is glaring, and even for those who normally avoid politics, impossible to miss.

 

While Americans watch conservative Republicans like Eric Cantor explain that raising taxes on any citizens in the midst of a recession (particularly those who are being relied upon to invest and expand businesses to create jobs) is foolish, they see President Obama proclaim that "we can't afford" not to raise taxes on a group of citizens he determines are too wealthy. 

 

Besides the glaring proof this offers of the left's obsession with using divisive class warfare to gain power, it also reveals a notable difference in philosophy.  While conservatives like Cantor believe money belongs first to the citizen and is confiscated by government, leftists like Obama believe money belongs first to the government.  That government then lets select citizens keep some of it.if and only if government "can afford" to be so generous.

 

Further, when Americans open their newspapers, they are greeted with the wise counsel of Obamabots like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman.  Friedman's recent piece in the New York Times called the Tea Party movement "narrow and uninspired" while touting that, "We need to raise gasoline and carbon taxes to discourage their use and drive the creation of a new clean energy industry."  Krugman, meanwhile, laments that the waste of nearly one trillion taxpayer dollars on a government spending bill meant to stimulate a still stagnant economy wasn't enough, and should be followed up with an even bigger second stimulus.

 

Everywhere they turn, Americans see that the left is offering higher taxes, less freedom, more debt and regulation.  They simultaneously see the right offering lower taxes, freer markets and fiscal sanity.

 

Voters' first opportunity to choose between those two visions occurred in the 2010 midterms.  Their preference was unmistakable - to everyone, that is, except Barack Obama.  His recent pronouncement that, "It would be unwise to assume (the voters) prefer one way of thinking over another," reconfirmed that the president and his cohorts have no desire whatsoever to alter course, and instead will spend the next two years butting heads with the newly elected conservative majority.  This conflict is sure to make the distinction between the left and the right all the more clear to an engaged American public.

 

And with a 2012 election cycle that already sees Democrats poised to face even more devastating Congressional losses (they are defending far more Senate seats than Republicans, and could lose upward of 30 House seats due to redistricting), Obama's persistent, unapologetic left-wing crusade is shaping up to be the political equivalent to Pickett's Charge.

 

In the end, the era of Obama will do more damage to the progressive left than any Republican presidency could have ever done.  For that, posterity will owe him a debt of gratitude.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

Posted by: Peter Heck AT 04:36 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
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