The uniqueness of Jesus

In the middle of April I will be giving a presentation to the post-college group at our church on the topic of the uniqueness of Jesus. I’ve been doing some research on the topic--it's amazing how many different ways Jesus stands out from other religious leaders.

First, the sources of information about him are unique. They are much closer to his time than any source for other religious leaders. Plus, there are so many of them – roughly 5000 Greek manuscripts survive. In addition, these sources are written by eyewitnesses or by those who talked to eyewitnesses, so there's a great authenticity to what is reported.

Jesus is also unique in the prophecies made about him and the fulfillment of these prophecies. I won't take the time here to list all the Bible references, but throughout the Old Testament there are passages that relate to the coming of the Messiah – his lineage, the tribe he will belong to, when he will be born, where he will be born, the type of birth he will have, his childhood in Egypt, the purpose of his death, the method of his death, and, finally, a resurrection.

Events surrounding the life of Jesus were unique as well. His birth, his miracles, and his exorcisms all were unique when compared to other religious leaders. Something that is particularly special for a Jewish man was his acceptance of worship from his followers. No Jew was supposed to be worshiped; this was reserved for God.

What Jesus said was unique. Instead of being a typical rabbi who tried to explain the law, Jesus reinterpreted it, taking the role of God himself (“. . . but I tell you”). He made startling claims about his divinity, his existence, his ability to forgive sins, his future role as judge of all. Besides this, he made promises for his followers then and now – if they believed in him, he would grant them eternal life. Can you imagine someone at work telling you, “I am the way . . . I am the resurrection and the life”?

What friends said about him was unique. Peter called him Messiah, Thomas exclaimed “My Lord and my God,” and John said Jesus existed with God before the world began and was responsible for creating everything. No other religious leader had his/her followers saying anything like this.

What his enemies said about him was also unique. Jewish leaders of the time accused him of blasphemy because they knew he claimed to be God. In the Jewish Talmud, written after Jesus ascended to heaven, references are made to his supernatural powers, which are credited to satanic influence. But note that this Jewish source does admit Jesus performed miracles. Plus, there are Roman historians, no friends of Jesus, who talk of him receiving worship reserved for the gods.

Jesus is also unique because of his positive impact on the world. No other religious authority has done so much to improve the human race. Women were esteemed more highly, hospitals were founded, universities were set up, capitalism and free enterprise came about, civil liberties were proclaimed, modern science got its start, the common individual was elevated, life was considered more precious – all in the name of Jesus.

Finally, his relationship to the religion he founded was unique. All other religious leaders can be taken out of their religions. For example, Islam functions perfectly well with or without Mohammed. So does Buddhism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Scientology, and all the others. But this is not the case with Christianity. Take Jesus out of Christianity, and the entire structure collapses. The old cliché is true: "Christianity is a relationship, not a religion."

When we look at all of these points, we have to make a decision. Jesus has to be one of four things – liar, lunatic, legend, or Lord. But Jesus doesn't exhibit characteristic traits of a liar. In addition, his teaching does not suggest a disturbed mind. But what about Jesus as legend? That's not a good option either because very little time elapsed between the events of his life and the writings of the Gospels. Much more time is required if legend is to creep in. So, were left with one choice – Jesus is Lord.

A last look at people screwing up America

The last few blogs have been a depressing tour through a list of American individuals who have damaged the country, according to Bernard Goldberg. I'm going to speed the process up and spend less time on several more people so I can wrap up this series. I’d like to get onto something a little more uplifting.

Susan Beresford, who headed up the Ford Foundation, comes under attack for the way she pushed this organization to embrace left-wing agendas. Thanks especially to her, Ford has made the nation's colleges and universities a particular target, pushing radical feminism and multiculturalism as well as other left-wing political forms on campus. It also gives a lot of money to antiwar groups. In addition, it filed suits against the detention of captured terrorists at Guantanamo. It also has bankrolled anti-Semitic hate groups. Plus, the Ford Foundation has donated millions of dollars to radical groups attempting to push for more rights for illegal aliens and the massive expansion of bilingualism in United States public schools.

Peter Singer, Princeton University's professor of bioethics, has been called the godfather of animal rights. He believes we should recognize no distinctions between humans and animals and rejects the basic tenet of Judeo-Christian thought that human life is special. According to him, fetuses and impaired human beings are really not people and have lesser moral status than adult gorillas and chimpanzees.

Julian Bond, recent chairman of the NAACP, hijacked the supposedly nonpartisan group and set it down firmly inside the left wing of the Democratic Party. In 2001, when George Bush had become president, Bond noted, "They selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics." During the presidential campaign of 2004, he said, "Republicans want to write bigotry back into the Constitution."

Al Sharpton, the ever-present, self-appointed leader of minorities, naturally is on Goldberg's list. We need to be reminded of Sharpton's background. He was the one who ran to defend Tawana Brawley, a black girl who famously claimed that a gang of white men raped her. Even after it became apparent that she had not been raped, Sharpton went ahead and slandered and defamed one of the innocent men supposedly involved. In addition, he headed up a protest in a tenant/landlord dispute, which ended up with a shootout and a fire in which eight people died. He had urged action and he got it.

Noam Chomsky is a college intellectual known for outrageous statements about the United States. He called America "a leading terrorist state." One time he said, "When you come back from the Third World to the West, the US in particular, you're struck by the narrowing of thought and understanding, the limited nature of legitimate discussion, the separation of people from each other." The Cold War, according to him, was entirely the fault of the United States. He justified Fidel Castro's executions and prisons being filled with dissenters by saying that Cuba was the target of international terrorism. When stories about the Khmer Rouge and its Cambodian genocide came out, Chomsky dismissed accounts of atrocities, claiming they were based on unreliable sources. Even after 9/11, he was quick to point the blame at the "far more extreme terrorism" of United States foreign policy.

Jonathan Kozol is the patron saint of today's powerful liberal educational establishment, having written several books focusing on poor and minority kids. He believes education should not be politically neutral. He's the one who suggested that teachers should use their classrooms to espouse liberal/radical political views. How has that worked out?

Jimmy Carter also makes Goldberg's list. Do I need any explanation here? Let's just say he's very selective about which human rights he champions. He goes after problems in the Philippines, Chile, or South Africa. But for those who live in Communist China, Communist Cuba, Communist Ethiopia, Communist Nicaragua, Communist North Korea, he does not have much interest. In the past he has praised Romania's brutal communist dictator Nicholae Ceausescu, Syria’s dictator al-Assad, and even North Korea's Kim Il Sung. I didn't realize that before the first Gulf War, he actually wrote to members of the UN Security Council, trying to undermine the Bush administration’s policy. Incredible.

I would encourage people to pick up a copy of Goldberg's book, 100 People Who Are Screwing up America. It may be depressing to read, but it's important to realize some of the extreme positions taken by people in our society. We need good answers to some of their charges. To do this, you might consider taking a look at my blogs covering Michael Medved's book The 10 Big Lies about America.

Still others ruining our country

And once again we turn to those among us who are messing up our country, as indicated by Bernard Goldberg in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing up America. In some cases they are still active while in other cases they may have left the scene but what they started is still in place, continuing the destruction.

Oliver Stone is a successful director in Hollywood, who, according to Goldberg, is a "leftist with paranoid fantasies about sinister forces running America." He distorts history and pretends that he's setting it straight. In 1991 he had a movie called JFK in which everybody was involved with the assassination of the President -- high officials in the CIA, the FBI, the Dallas police force, all three armed services, big business, and the White House. Stephen Ambrose, the famous historian, says Stone has a basic contempt for real scholarship. "He feels free not merely to conjecture but also to invent scenes that never happened, to give one man's words to another." I am very uncomfortable with all the "docudramas" on TV and at the movies since it's often very difficult to determine where the truth lies.

John Vasconcellos was a California state senator. He was a big fan for the self-esteem movement. Because of his work, legislation was produced which promoted self-esteem throughout the California school system. Guess what the consequences were. Yep, Goldberg says no fewer than 10,000 research studies have now shown that, in academic terms, self-esteem curricula are worse than useless. Test scores fell, and the movement had no effect on drug use or crime. Here's the good news -- while American students are lagging behind Asian counterparts in math, they outrank them in self-confidence. Even the Los Angeles Times figured this out in an article summing up this experiment with American kids -- "Encouraging students to love themselves is not paying off in the classroom, educators and researchers say. The time is better spent, they say, on teaching the basics." Wow, who would've thought!

Ingrid Newkirk is cofounder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal rights group. She's had some lovely things to say: "6 million Jews died in concentration camps, but 6 billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses." "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." "There is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals." Once when she heard of a horrific suicide bombing in Israel, she wrote a letter to Yasser Arafat, complaining that a donkey was used in the bombing. When a newspaper columnist asked her if she would try to persuade Arafat not to blow up people too, she replied, "It's not my business to inject myself into human wars." A lovely person, don't you think?

Maxine Waters is a well-known representative to Congress from California. When her Los Angeles district was laid waste by devastating riots in 1992, her first instinct was to defend the criminals. The riots, according to her, were not really riots at all, but a "rebellion... a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration." Here's how she handled the drug epidemic in urban America -- she said the CIA created the problem by promoting drug use in the inner cities. "I'm going to make somebody pay for what they've done to my community and to my people." Waters has even defended an escaped murderer, Joanne Chesimard, former leader of the Black Panthers, who was sentenced to life in prison for gunning down a New Jersey State Highway Patrol officer she had already shot and wounded. After her escape Chesimard ended up in Cuba where she was granted political asylum by Fidel Castro. Waters wrote Castro asking him to let her stay and even compared this woman to Martin Luther King. According to Waters, "She was persecuted as a result of her political beliefs and affiliations." I like what one columnist said about Waters: "She is one of the most self-serving, hate-filled, race-obsessed politicians in America, and the Democratic Party doesn't just embrace her. It kneels at her feet." Unfortunately, she's not the only one who stakes out these positions.

OK, time to relax after reading about these folks. Take a deep breath . . . ah, that's better. Maybe one more blog on still others next time.

More people messing up our country

Okay, it's time again to look at people who are screwing up America, according to Bernard Goldberg. Here are a few more who deserve to be on the list.

Barbara Kingsolver is a writer and left-wing social critic. Right after September 11, 2001, she wrote an op-ed piece about her daughter, who came home from kindergarten and announced that the entire class would have to wear red, white, and blue to honor the country. But Barbara was concerned, saying that she feared the sound of saber-rattling. She asked her daughter why she couldn't wear black. But Kingsolver relented when her husband said to her, "You can't let hateful people steal the flag from us." Of course, most of us would assume that the hateful people must refer to the terrorists. But Kingsolver says he meant Americans. What Americans? She said there was a man in a city near their family who went on a rampage and shot at foreign-born neighbors. So that was proof for her that the real enemy of this country, the one we need to fear, is patriotism. Here's what she said: "Patriotism threatens free speech with death... it despises people of foreign birth... in other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder." Wow, I had no idea.

Ward Churchill, a college professor, had bizarre things to say about the United States shortly after the World Trade Center was attacked. He compared the people killed in that building to Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust who masterminded the slaughter of 6 million Jews. Here are his comments: "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it." When this came to light, he refused to apologize, and besides, the politicians and other yahoos calling for his dismissal ought to mind their business and let him teach -- at the taxpayers' expense, of course. But Ward Churchill is just the tip of the iceberg. Goldberg ends this section with a comment from another scholar who said, "What will remain as a problem for our society is the political atmosphere on many American campuses, where zealots like Mr. Churchill are hired and tenured, ever after free to inflict their one-sided rants on their hapless students." Amen to that. I've read enough other stories to say that this is unfortunately the case on so many American campuses today.

Katherine Hanson wrote a book called Gender and Violence, in which she peddled a lot of politically motivated misinformation. She believes that in this country we "socialize males to be aggressive, powerful, unemotional and controlling," and that such activities as Little League baseball "encourage aggressive, violent behavior." She claimed that every year nearly 4,000,000 women are beaten to death in the United States and that violence is the leading cause of death among women. Of course, the statistics are untrue. The total number of female deaths annually in the United States from all causes is approximately 1,000,000 with the total number murdered around 4000. The real leading cause of death for women as heart disease, followed by cancer. What's really discouraging is that Katherine Hanson headed up a group called the Women's Educational Equity Act Publishing Center, which became the national clearinghouse for so-called "gender-fair" educational material bound for American teachers and school children. Her organization produced more than 350 publications and distributed material to hundreds of educational conferences. This group had received by the year 2000 more than $75 million in federal funds (our tax dollars). In one of the publications, the group instructed teachers on how to socialize little boys away from typical little-boy behavior: "Before going outside to play, talk about how students feel about playing a game of tag. Do they like to be chased? Do they like to do the chasing? How does it feel to be tagged out? Get their ideas about other ways the game might be played." Hanson has now started something called the Gender and Diversities Institute. Can you imagine what damage she is inflicting from this new post?

Randall Robinson is a Harvard Law grad as well as founder and former president of a group called TransAfrica, which attempts to influence American policy toward African and Caribbean countries. He wants the United States to offer reparations to all African-Americans. After all, he says Germany paid billions to survivors of the Holocaust and the United States compensated Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. But the problem is, slavery ended more than 140 years ago. Slavery's actual victims are long gone, as are the people who kept the whole nasty system going. Does anyone really think that reparations would end the matter? Would reparations fix what ails African-Americans? Would it get rid of the terrible out-of-wedlock birth rate? Would it help African-American kids do better in school? Goldberg says his case for reparations cast black Americans as perpetual victims, unable to make it in this country on their own merits. Robinson says white people are the problem because they "once well inside the place of another's different, less pugnacious, more welcoming culture, destroy it, root and branch. For inexplicable reasons, they are seemingly constrained by some aberrant force of nature to disparage all culture, all history, all religion, all memory, all faces, all life not theirs." He says only white countries are capable of killing so many people at one time. He seems to have forgotten African racial wars that have killed millions.

Unfortunately, there are many more people in Goldberg's book, but I will save them for a future blog.

A few of those screwing up America

In my last blog I referred to a book by Bernard Goldberg called 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. I mentioned various groups of people that he attacked, but the majority of the book deals with particular individuals he feels are bad for the country. I'd like to look at several of these in the next few blogs.

Eve Ensler is the author of a play called The Vagina Monologues. The New York Times says the show is her "crusade to wipe out the shame and embarrassment that many women still associate with their bodies or their sexuality." Goldberg points out one scene that's gotten particular attention: a twenty-four-year-old woman gets a thirteen-year-old girl (later changed to sixteen) drunk and has sex with her. But for the author, this is not a bad thing. To the contrary, afterward, the girl says, "If it was rape, it was a good rape. I'll never need to rely on a man." What's been the result of bizarre lines like that? Ensler now has international recognition and a boatload of awards.

Jane Smiley is an author of many novels and essays. She's proud to say she's a liberal, but she's only liberal in certain areas. Right after election day 2004, she wrote a piece for Slate titled "The Unteachable Ignorance of the Red States." Her theme? It's about how everyone who voted for George W. Bush is a moron and a bigot, not to mention dishonest, arrogant, and filled with hate. Here are a couple of her comments: "Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states." "The error that progressive have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America." I guess that refers to many of us, huh? Gosh, I feel so humiliated--please send me to a re-education camp soon.

Chris Ofili is an artist famous for his picture of the Virgin Mary which was sprinkled with elephant dung. He represents so many today who use art to shock and offend. As a way to summarize this trend, Goldberg quotes a sculptor who did the moving statue of the three soldiers at the Vietnam Memorial: "Deliberate distraction of the ideals of grace and beauty characterize much of the art of the 20th century… The current philosophy and practice of art thrives on deliberate contempt for the public. An offended public is a critical necessity for the attainment of credentials… Once, under the banner of beauty and order, art was a rich and meaningful embellishment of life, embracing – not desecrating – its ideals, its aspirations, and its values. Not so today."

Janeane Garofalo, a comedian and actress, illustrates the virtues of leftist philosophy in this rant: Our country is founded on a sham: our forefathers were slave-owning rich white guys who wanted it their way. So when I see the American flag, I go, “Oh my God, you're insulting me." That you can have a gay parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering, "We're here, we're queer!" – that's what makes my heart swell. Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag. I get choked up with pride.

Well, that's enough to digest now. Or maybe I should say, that's enough to cause you indigestion right now. I have more to say in the next block, so brace yourselves.

People ruining America

A few years ago Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias, wrote a book provocatively titled 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. I came across this book the other day at a library sale and just had to read it because I like what the author had to say in his previous book. This one is full of amazing stories and quotations coming from well-known Americans who are messing up our country, according to the author. I want to highlight some of these for you so that you can be as depressed as I was at some of the nonsense that is alive and well today in America.

Goldberg has some general targets near the beginning of his book. For one thing, he takes on gangsta rap. Of course, that's an easy target, but it's still worth bringing up. One critic of this music, William Bennett, brushes aside those who say rap music is like all other rock 'n roll in the past – edgy and rebellious. He says there's a huge difference between “I want you,” “I need you,” “I love you,” to “I'll slash you,” “I'll mutilate you,” “I'll kill you.” He says record producers and entertainers claim they have a right to put out this kind of music. Bennett responded, "We know. We know about your right to do it. Now we’re trying to run a society here. We're trying to raise children here." Goldberg tells of gun-toting men in these lyrics who boast of shooting their rivals in cold blood and young women who brag about acting like money-crazed whores. Life is portrayed as horrifyingly violent and unendingly bleak. Another scholar says, "If this idiom had been created by whites, it would have been gone a long time ago, because we [blacks] wouldn't have stood for it." Goldberg ends this section by quoting a journalist:" In a society where anything goes, everything, eventually, will. A society that stands for nothing will fall for anything – and then, of course, will just simply fall."

Then Goldberg goes after those who push victimhood. He says there are far too many Americans today who say, "I'm offended, therefore I am." He sees this attitude as paralyzing – if you believe the deck is stacked from birth, why should you bother struggling? He gives an example of the National Museum of American History in Washington, which has become a museum of multicultural grievances. Far more space is devoted to the internment of and prejudice against Japanese-Americans than to the entire rest of World War II. He dislikes the idea that in multicultural America, everything is relative, especially in matters of right and wrong. Here's one example: right after September 11, 2001, the NEA came up with some tips for parents and teachers, one of which said that due to the terrorist attack against the United States we should focus on "appreciating and getting along with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures, the importance of anger management and global awareness." Really? We need to work on our anger management? Goldberg has a powerful quotation by Dennis Prager: "If we continue to teach about tolerance and intolerance instead of good and evil, we will end up with tolerance of evil." That’s worth thinking about.

Another general target of Goldberg's verbal attack is the strident feminist. He worries that too much of the time the hard-core feminists focus on women as victims and men as oppressors. He has some chilling quotations to back this up. For example, Catherine Commins, an assistant dean of students at Vassar College, told Time magazine that "men who are unjustly accused of rape can gain from the experience." Mary Daly, an important feminist academic, was asked one time what she thought of the idea that the male population should be reduced to cut down on violence. She responded by saying, "I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the earth." Goldberg points out that women are finally getting a better deal in society today – they earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees, girls are not silenced or ignored in the classroom, medicine has not neglected women's health, abuse by men is not the leading cause of injury to American women, and when allowances are made for experience and voluntary absences to have and raise children, there is no wage gap. That's good news that the fanatic feminists ignore.

Then there are the colleges run by leftists. According to the New York Times, one study showed that, nationwide, Democratic professors outnumbered Republicans by at least 7 to 1 in the humanities and social sciences. He says the results of this have been sad. For example, the University of Connecticut once put into effect a policy that banned "inappropriately directed laughter" and the "conspicuous exclusion of students from conversations" to make sure nobody's feelings got hurt. Brown has had rules against "verbal behavior" that produces "feelings of impotence or anger" whether "intentional or unintentional." Then there's Colby College in Maine, which has restricted speech that causes loss of "self-esteem or a vague sense of danger." Today the problem, according to Goldberg, is that professors are hired and promoted as long as they embrace the entire range of liberal ideas, such as radical feminism, multiculturalism, postmodernism, identity politics, and gender politics. What's ironic is that the real liberals today are conservatives since they are the ones who are taking on the speech codes.

At this point, the author singles out specific people he says are ruining our country. I’ll save them for a future blog. Meanwhile, you can probably find this book on sale somewhere. It’s a fast read and a good reminder of the constant battle we must engage in to prevent such thinking in taking over the entire country.

Violent language

For your consideration, here are some quotations from leftists, who now decry the use of violent language that they have recently discovered coming from right-wing people.

James Cameron: "I believe in ecoterrorism."

"I want to go up to the closest white person and say: "‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health." --New York city councilman Charles Barron.

Picture of Palin w/sign “domestic terrorist”

Al Sharpton: "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house."

"Intellectual" Peter Singer: After Tucson, “the NRA has blood on its hands, clearly.” On killing children: "Parents may, with good reason, regret that a disabled child was ever born. In that event the effect that the death of the child will have on its parents can be a reason for, rather than against, killing it.”

Richard Cohen, Washington Post: "For hypocrisy, for sheer gall, Gingrich should be hanged."

James Carville on Ken Starr: "He’s one more mistake away from not having any kneecaps."

Howard Dean: "“I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for."

"Shoot him [Charlton Heston] with a .44 caliber Bulldog." --Spike Lee.

Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, "You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone." (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, "Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone."

“If we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! [crowd cheers] Wait! Shut up! Shut up! No shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.” --Alec Baldwin

Former Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D., Pa.) said about Gov. Rick Scott (R., Florida), “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.”

"You guys see 'Live and Let Die,' the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet, but we’ll be there to watch.” -- Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, Oct. 13, 2009.

“So, Michele, slit your wrist! Go ahead! I mean, you know, why not? I mean, if you want to -- or, you know, do us all a better thing. Move that knife up about two feet. I mean, start right at the collarbone.” -- Montel Williams talking about Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Air America’s Montel Across America, Sept. 2, 2009.

"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." (William Ayers, friend of President Obama)

"I know how the Tea Party people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their "Obama Plan White Slavery" signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads." —The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy

"Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm." --The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold

The anniversary we don't want to celebrate

Well, it’s time for a very special anniversary, honoring a time we all remember with great pride. Yes, it was a year ago that President Obama gave Congress an arbitrary deadline to pass his health-care takeover legislation before the Easter recess at the end of March. This forced lawmakers to hurry their votes on a deeply flawed bill that very few of them had read. Remember Nancy Pelosi telling legislators they could read it after they had signed it? We saw lots of false promises made during desperate attempts to secure final passage.

A recent essay in The Wall Street Journal highlighted what’s happened in the past year to ObamaCare. This is not pleasant reading to those who promised so much if only the bill would be passed. For the rest of us, this update will further harden our resolve to dump the entire mess and replace it with more sensible reforms. Here are a few examples of the chaos that has resulted from passage of ObamaCare.

• More than half the states—28 and counting—are challenging the law in court, saying that it violates the constitutional rights of their citizens and the sovereignty of the states. How can you force people to buy something they have determined they don’t need or want? The Journal reports that a new study from the Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce Committees found that as a result of ObamaCare, budget-strapped states face at least $118 billion in unfunded mandates during the first 10 years after the law takes effect. This is horrifying to states already in trouble financially.

• Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has handed out nearly 1,000 waivers to allow select companies, unions and states to escape, at least temporarily, some of the burdensome new insurance rules she has created. This is a continuation of the trend of the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase" that Senate Democrats used to get the law passed in the first place, and that so disgusted the American people. I thought we were part of a system where all were treated the same under the law.

• The Journal also states that independent experts have shown that the cost of health insurance will rise faster than it would have without the law. The Congressional Budget Office expects the price of a family policy in the individual market to be $2,100 higher by 2016 than it would have been had the law not passed. As an example of further financial burdens, in at least 20 states, it's now impossible to buy child-only health insurance because of Ms. Sebelius's bizarre new rules.

• For those of us aging (sigh), the Journal notes that seniors are at risk of losing access to physicians and medical care. Medicare actuaries say that the cuts built into the law will force as many as 40% of providers to eventually stop seeing Medicare patients or go bankrupt. No doubt new laws will be passed to prevent this—I wonder what they will look like.

• Many thousands of people are already losing the health insurance they have now as companies are exiting markets for individual, small group and Medicare Advantage coverage. Who can blame the companies? It was predicted this would happen.

• Probably the most horrific part of this disaster, according to the Journal, is an update from the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. He says that the costs of ObamaCare are set to explode when employers opt to drop coverage and send their workers to the new, federally subsidized health exchanges for coverage. He estimates that this will drive up the cost of the law by $1 trillion or more in the first 10 years. Again, this was predicted by opponents to this health-care scheme.

This is just part of the grim picture. We are facing a huge mess unless we force the current Congress to defund ObamaCare. Then, we must elect a President and Congress in the future that honors our love of choice and freedom in all aspects of our lives, including health care.

Libya and the United Nations

The latest news from the United Nations reinforces the cynicism of many in the United States towards this world organization. It was set up in the aftermath of World War 2, much like the old League of Nations was established after the first world war. The utopian dreams were the same—if we could only get together and control any bad impulses of nations . . . Of course, we know how well the League functioned. The world ended up with Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito. Not exactly what naïve world leaders like Woodrow Wilson were hoping for.

Now we have the United Nations dealing with Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. Just last January this august body looked into the regime’s moral progress through one of its agencies, The U.N. Human Rights Council.
It released its quadrennial report on human rights in Libya as part of its "universal periodic review." The UPR—advertised as one of the improvements of the Council when it replaced the U.N.'s old Human Rights Commission in 2006—is supposed to provide "objective and reliable information" on human rights in U.N. member states. Sure . . .

So how did Libya fare? According to The Wall Street Journal, the report notes that "a number of delegations commended Libya for the preparation and presentation of its national report, noting the broad consultation process with stake holders in the preparation phase. Several delegations also noted with appreciation the country's commitment to upholding human rights on the ground."

Now how did the council come to that conclusion? Well, to start with, Libya itself offered a generous assessment of its own rights record. Then other truly noble and humane countries lavished praise on Gadhafi’s government. Cuba commended Gadhafi for "the progress it made in . . . primary education," and North Korea lauded Libya's "achievements in the protection of human rights." I don’t know about you, but I feel relieved that such democratic, liberal, and sophisticated countries lined up behind Libya.

The sad part is seen in comments by countries that ought to know better but have been blinded by multicultural, relativistic, non-judgmental nonsense. For example, Australia, "welcomed Libya's progress in human rights." Canada praised "the recent legislation that granted women married to foreigners the right to pass on their Libyan nationality to their children." Then there was Poland, which highlighted Libya's "achievements in recent years, including its efforts to combat corruption and trafficking."

How about our country? Can you guess how it reacted, thanks to the leadership of President Obama, who has made a point of ignoring our friends and elevating our enemies? The U.S., which joined the Council as a sign of the Obama Administration's good global citizenship, "supported Libya's increased engagement with the international community." At least the U.S. also "expressed concern about reports of the torture of prisoners" along with other rights violations. Similarly limp statements of concern were offered by the Australians, Canadians and Poles.

Did any country report the real picture? Yes, little Switzerland noted that Libyan "courts continued to pronounce death sentences and inflict corporal punishment, including whipping and amputation." Gee, in my view that calls into question the praise heaped on Libya, or am I wrong?

So the U.N. continues to exist, thanks in large part to our donations. It’s hard to take this organization seriously when its human rights body has members like Libya and Cuba. What next—North Korea’s “Dear Leader” for the Nobel Peace Prize?