This piece was originally written as a series of email messages to Ziba, a non-Moslem Iranian colleague in Graduate School who was then living in Houston but has now moved back to Iran.(Farid who is referred to in the text was her husband and my classmate and closest friend and collaborator in most ventures, during the Japan phase of my career.) It was initially triggered by my rejoinder to a Thomas Friedman Op-Ed piece in The New York Times on Moslem Moderates in Iran. Cf,   http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/opinion/16FRIE.html

I have endeavored in vain to reformat it as an essay for general publication. I now realize that the difficulty stems from my inability to recapture my intensely passionate emotional makeup when the piece was originally written.

With Iran being in the crosshairs of international concerns and the preponderance of what I dub the Repugnant Obama Paradigm, which includes, inter alia, the recent groveling and pandering of this White House towards the Moslem world, I deem it essential to share the sentiments herein with as wide a public as I can possibly reach.  

I therefore solicit your indulgence and present the original piece in its entirety, neurotic trappings included.

{*******}

By now I gathered from your messages that you are pretty much disappointed with the websites I routinely visit and the tendencies I’m inclined to read and indulge my fancy at. I know that you know that you are not alone in that regard. Since quite a few of my messages were left unanswered, I don’t know where to begin. 

Let’s start with the question of moderate Moslems: where are they, what are they doing a propos of the Jihad that is unleashed at the West, what is the most likely influence they will have in the direction and outcome of conflict resolution.

Let us stipulate, for the sake of argument that they exist. I submit to you that to the extent that they are silent on the issues, they render themselves irrelevant to the process, let alone to its outcome. The silent majority become de facto collaborators to the factions that drive the events that set the agenda.

I have to concede: my over all knowledge of Islam is limited to a one-semester course on the Cultural History of Islam in the Philippines. This is supplemented, perhaps by three semesters of working as a Research Assistant to a professor doing her doctoral desertion on the subject. I therefore would not presume to give an analysis of the various sects of and tendencies in Islam to probe into and prove or disprove were moderation lies.

Rather, I’d propose to speak from real life experience with our version of Islam in the Philippines. Admittedly, this experience is not as extensive as yours. Garnered between the ages of 18 and 29, I submit to you however, that it is equally instructive and diverse: as a student, an office worker, a manual laborer, and a faculty member in a prestigious university. I had classmates, professors and students who were Moslems.

I have shared working and lodging quarters with both the politically active and the completely apolitical. I had argued with them, fought with them, played with them, joked with them, negotiated with them, lobbied with them. At one point I even fancied romantically courting one of them. I had my life and limb threatened on more than one occasion resulting from differences in opinion on rules of procedures in Student Government elections.

The conclusion gleaned from this experience, as obtains in the Philippines, at least: there are no radical and moderate doctrines of Islam.  There are only varying degrees of adherence to the same doctrine. This distinction is by no means academic.

It is one thing to have an institutionalized deliberation of what the doctrine entails, teaches and promotes or prohibits, i.e., an institutionally conscious architecting of a belief structure and its societal and sociological implications. It is quite a different story to have individuals decide to adopt or discard certain parts of the doctrine as a matter of practical convenience.

The former is wont to produce religious/ideological enlightenment. The latter, more often than not, results in political and/or commercial opportunism and cultural relativism of the worst kind. In effect, the typical Moslem intellectual assumes a split identity: one when he is conscious of his adherence to Islam, (his “Islamhood” so to speak), and the other when he discards, wittingly or unwittingly, the religious affiliation and constraints.

To state it mildly and kindly, it is extremely difficult and problematic to make long-term programmatic political allies out of people with lukewarm convictions. They can reach out and deal with the outside world in a less than antagonistic manner only to the extent that they are able to transcend their identities as Moslems.

This translates into always having an ulterior motive in their dealings with the outside world, i.e., with the infidels such as you and me. Whatever alliance you made with them should be understood to be in the context of a specific set of circumstances. Any bonding that ensues from such alliance is non-transferable to the next set of conditions.  In other words, you cannot expect any form of loyalty from them because you cannot expect that they will shed off, even temporarily, their Islamic identities for your sake.

When you are in conflict with any one of them the notion of who is at fault is decided by the fact that you are not one of them. You should not expect that any one of them would voluntarily look after your interest and intercede on behalf of objective facts of the conflict. When an atrocity is committed on someone who is not one of them, nobody protests, and nobody bears witness for the victim so the perpetrator is tolerated.

Incidentally, I should mention that the university where I studied and later worked in was established for the express purpose of promoting integration between the Moslems and the rest of the nation. When five Iranian students were robbed, murdered and mutilated in a nearby town, it was the non-Moslem constituents of the university who demanded that the local and provincial (roughly comparable to State here in the U.S.) authorities at the very least condemned the atrocious deed. The rest remained silent. Presumably those Iranians were not Moslems. Or if they were, not the version of Islam preached and practiced in the locality. Of course nobody got arrested or answered for what happened.

 It is entirely possible, indeed, I think it is most likely that the Islam practiced amongst the Iranians and the one practiced in the Philippines are different. I am not going to venture into the difference between the Suni and the Shiite sects. That is completely beyond my domain.

I can say this for certain: of the different nationalities of Islamic cultural backgrounds I have been exposed to in Japan and here in the U.S., Filipinos (in general, and I in particular) seemed to have gotten along rather more easily with people from Iran and/or Turkey.  The fact that, by a confluence of circumstances, I got along well with Farid has very little influence in this observation. If anything, it probably is an indirect result, or at least an illustration of its verity.

Conversely, we seemed to experience more difficulty with people from Pakistan. In fact at the Chiba Foreign Students College, there was open enmity between the Pakistanis and the Filipinos. Granted, this might have been caused by specific incidents. So let us put this aspect of the issue aside and refocus on the treatise of the article, which triggered all this.

Maybe it is true that Iran has all the socio-political institutions conducive to the emergence of an Islamic moderate as a political force. Indeed, there were reports of Candle Light vigils on the streets of Tehran in reaction to 9/11 as compared with celebratory dancing on the streets in the rest of the Middle East. More recent reports of anti-Taliban demonstrations in Tehran also reinforce this encouraging tendency.

Unfortunately, however, political ferment of the sort that can reverse the tide of ideology takes at least a generation to take hold. The terrorist network is actively waging a war on Western civilization now, ironically using some of the tools only Western civilization could conceivably produce.

Are we then to wait around for another generation of enlightened intellectuals to decide whether or not it is a war worth fighting and another generation to actually fight this war? Or shall we deny that there is a war being fought!   The events of 9/11 changed a lot of things. The principle of self-preservation was not one of them.

When somebody comes to my house to cut my throat, my first order of business is to prevent it from happening.  I’m not going to debate on the merits and causes and motives of the mission.  I can take care of that after the mission has been successfully foiled.  It is too late to prevent 9/11 from happening.  It is imperative that we deter the perpetrators from making a habit of it.

And here lies my quarrel with Islam. A crime has been committed in its name. Where is the rest of Islam to at least condemn the deed? Where is the outrage? It is not forthcoming. The rest of Islam, as a doctrine, is simply incapable of condemning it because it does not see it as a crime. It sees it as an achievement in the name of Islam, something worthy of a jubilant celebration.   I definitely am not one of those who would argue that there is the slightest possibility to justify or explain away 9/11.

The role of American Moslems needs to be looked into in this connection. The only protest I have come across from that community is about its being victimized, resultant to, or as a “fallout” of 9/11.  In a way this is understandable if pathetically pathological in its absurdity.  It stresses the fact that this would be the last place to look for Islamic moderates.

At this juncture, I contend, assert and maintain that to convert into Islam from religions associated with the Judeo-Christian cultural traditions is a definite act of intellectual regression. The fact that geographically and historically Islamic cultures have been associated with repressive governments is no accident of history. It is rooted on the proscription of the notion of Free Will from the tenets of Islam that makes its adherents exceptionally vulnerable and susceptible to fear and repression.

Conversely, the assimilation of the concept of Free Will into the doctrines of Judaism and Christianity has undeniably made these religions hospitable and conducive to the flourishing of liberty and kindred values associated with democratic cultures and institutions. This in and of itself makes the latter religions decisively superior to Islam.

It was the liberation of the power of the mind from the clutches of ignorance and religious dogma that propelled Western Civilization, as we know it. Converting into Islam is tantamount to renouncing the benefits accrued by default from the moral and intellectual legacy of the ages of reformation, renaissance and enlightenment.  It is, ipso facto, a pathetic intellectual suicide of the grossest order.  One must have been utterly and completely disenfranchised from such traditions to be an Islamic convert.

I think I have spoken my peace or have beaten this horse dead many times over.

"All politics is local," is a truism attributed to the late Tip O’Niell. He was Speaker of the House when Ronald Reagan was President. I believe Chris Matthews of "tingling legs" fame may have worked for him, in some important capacity.

I hasten to add, however, that in a land like America, where individualism is supposed to flourish and reign supreme, "All Politics is Personal." (It sounds so delicious I should get this trademarked.)

The essence of what the Obama administration is doing respecting health care is an assault on individual liberty. All the machinations and lawyerly schemes buried in thousands of pages and a mesh of cross references impact every citizen in the most personal way.

I Got Lucky Once

On August 30, 2007, less than one year after I started collecting Social Security, I underwent an open heart surgery with aortic valve implant and a quadruple coronary bypass. This was the byproduct of an attempt to get an inguinal hernia fixed surgically.

The cruel dollars-and-cents scorecard was rather staggering. Upwards of $149k paid for by my insurance provider and our co-pay in the neighborhood of $15k, an obligation we are still struggling to meet.  All this cost for another lease on life, now as a card-carrying member of that exclusive club of people with artificial implants bearing the manufacturer’s serial number.

Beyond the cost, even more staggering was the realization that this was the result of discrete individual decisions made by professionals practicing their professions under the free market system. Mainly the patient’s best interest and the highest integrity of their respective professions were the deciding factors.

As the debate on ObamaCare unfolds or heats up, what haunts the inner chambers of my reverie is this: The outcome could have been drastically different had the decision been made by a Health Care Czar or any low-level bureaucrat concerned only with cutting costs from wherever it can be done in the domain.

With triage driven strictly by a cost-benefit analysis, denying me the heart surgery would have represented multiple savings: the cost of the surgery itself and the monthly social security check due me if I continued living. 

It would have been a sort of accomplishment to eliminate what can be construed as a potential useless eater. It’s a gruesome thought that betimes besets me even while playing an occasional round of golf with my nine-year old granddaughter (which she seems to immensely enjoy).

The Tedious Narrative

It all started with the need to have my hernia fixed, before the health insurance coverage lapses as a result of my wife, Krystyna changing jobs. Not that she had another job to go to but she was very unhappy with the working conditions at the job she held for the time being. She was seriously thinking of going for a change.

I had scheduled a surgery for Tuesday, 21-Aug-07. I reported for the pre-op procedure on Friday, 17-Aug-07. The anesthesiologist said he did not like the looks of my ekg., and wanted a cardiology clearance for the surgery. So, instead of going for the hernia surgery on Tuesday, 21-Aug-07, I went for a cardiac stress test. At which point, the cardiologist said he did not like the looks of the frontal area of my heart and wanted a closer look.

There really was not much of a choice but to abide by the cardiologist’s prescriptions. After all, I consulted him for his professional expertise. The cardiologist secured a 28-Aug-07 appointment for a Cardiac Catheterization for the coveted ‘closer look.’

Meanwhile, while taking a shower in the early evening/late afternoon of Saturday, 25-Aug-07, I experienced all the telltale symptoms of a stroke reminiscent of the one I suffered on 1-Feb-93 which had me out of commission for a month. (Then I was paralyzed for two weeks, I spent the third week doing in-patient rehab at Beekman Downtown Hospital, the fourth week outpatient rehab at home.) I was admitted to the Emergency Room at SBUH (Stony Brook University Hospital). I underwent a battery of tests which turned out negative for stroke but was kept in the hospital for observation in light of my appointment for cardiac catheterization.

Whether inadvertently or by design, during cardiac catheterization I was only half-way sedated. I could hear the conversation of the people conducting the procedure as if it was taking place in the adjacent room. But my recollection of what I heard is as vivid as my mother’s words when I bid her my final goodbye back in April 1974. I can see it engraved in marble in the inner chambers of my mind:

Voice A: “I cannot do this anymore. It’s too far gone. I want the surgery team to take a closer look at this. Can you do this?”

Voice B: “We are looking. Yes, that’s doable.”

Voice of my mind’s I: “Hey, guys, are you talking about me? I’m still here. Can somebody please fill me in on what it’s all about?”

I got my wish. I was wheeled into the waiting/staging room to wake up from my sedation. Some thirty minutes later the surgeon (Voice B above) informed me that I need an aortic valve replacement and a triple, possibly, quadruple coronary artery bypass. If I had any questions, this was the time to ask:

Me: “So doc, what are my options?”

Surgeon: “Not too many. You can take either a metal or a tissue implant.”

Without losing a breath, I picked tissue. Somehow the idea of inorganic object implanted in my body, other than dental, did not sound too appealing.

Surgeon: “Good choice. That way you don’t have to be on blood thinner all your life.”

He proceeded to inform me that he can do the procedure the following Thursday as his second patient for the day. Under the inertia of hospitalization, I accepted the schedule but deep down in my soul I was struggling for a moral justification for the attempt to extend my physical life with an artificial implant.

Although I am no longer a church-going Christian, somehow, I had apprehension that the impending procedure violated my perception of Divine Providence. I have to come up with a reason to justify what I then considered as making a mortgage of my soul with the Devil. Then came the epiphany. I need to sing at Nikki’s wedding. Nikki is my granddaughter who was seven years old (and four months) at the time.

The aortic valve (affectionately referred to as a “pig’s heart”) has a statistical longevity of fifteen years, give or take a couple. Fifteen plus seven makes twenty-two, and that is about a marriageable age, depending on circumstances. Nikki does not know this but she has been the main reason for my still being around. As far as she is concerned she is just happy that Pa (as she calls me) is here as opposed to being a distant memory.

It was under these circumstances that I submitted myself under the knife which in its essential components consisted of: nine hours of surgery, seventeen hours sustained by the respirator machine, eighteen units of blood transfusion, and my daughter getting hysterical that I might have been dead when the hospital staff finally allowed her to look at my seemingly lifeless carcass.

“We've become a very tolerant society, in which we don't judge people by their names any more than by the color of their skin. Assimilation still requires some accommodation by the newcomers  . . .  But it doesn't mean entirely giving up some attachment and affection for one's origins, even distant ones.”

--Linda Chavez, at, http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=whats_in_a_name&ns=LindaChavez&dt=10/30/2009&submitted=true&comments=true&sort=desc#comments

Roughly a quarter of a century ago, when the manager hired me to a much coveted job in the lowest echelons of management in a reputable corporation, I believed it was on the merits of my resume and real time presentation. It was the easiest conclusion to make, having been endowed with a healthy dose of self-esteem by my farm boy upbringing, reinforced by a series of academic scholarships through college and graduate school.

Then picking an “Americanized” name was one of the top three issues he addressed in the job orientation. He opined that most people would find pronouncing all three syllables of my first name, Constancio, as a project by itself, or in his words, “more than a mouthful.”

I was utterly flabbergasted. Only the fact that I already resigned from my previous job, where I was affectionately called “Mr. C” by my manager, constrained me from kissing the new job goodbye.

Again my farm boy instinct for adaptation kicked in and I settled for a compromise. During the first few years on the job I adopted the moniker “C.S.” This was conveniently consistent with the name on my driver’s license and the American Express card I carried at the time.

Moreover, the compromise did not involve any emotional stress. I am the fifth of eight siblings and the fourth of six sons. I have known for a fact that I was named after my father not because he had any special affection for me over his other sons. Rather it was because the Catholic Almanac of Names was not available the year I was born, thanks to World War II. So getting “CS” over “Constancio” did not bruise my ego in any way, shape or form.

I did not bring this up to suggest that the manager was a bigot by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he was one of the finest human beings I was privileged to have encountered in my career meanderings. To date I hold him in high esteem. That I am no longer in contact with him may be blamed on what Spenser calls “The Ruins of Time.” I have that strong tendency to be overwhelmed by the inertia of the banalities of day-to-day existence, to keep abreast with the demands of social networking.

The manager who succeeded him promptly sent me to an accent correction tutor to get rid of my ‘thick’ Filipino accent. The premise being that speaking with a vernacular accent hindered my ability to communicate effectively. It allegedly jeopardized my chances for advancement in the corporate bureaucracy, or so he noted in a subsequent job performance evaluation report.

I must confess that he was proved correct. I subsequently resigned from the job shortly thereafter. I simply could not muster enough patience and forbearance to endlessly indulge in what I deemed the celebration of irrelevance just to stoke some peoples’ ego.

The point that can never be overemphasized is that an obsession with form over substance, as seems to be the norm of late, especially in the age of Obama, produces unintended consequences. One of them is a de facto appearance of bigotry, and its practice by default. It is a fine line that divides the much needed effort at cultural assimilation and the despicable sacrifice of your soul in the altar of multi-culturalism.

The former demands you galvanize all the useful aspects of your background to become viable tools to establish your role in the new cultural setting, thereby enhancing your chances at success. The latter is wont to embellish some of the primitive and provincial reflexes of your background to mystify and mythologize so that they become worthy of worship and adoration.

This is an unmistakable prelude to an historical revisionism which can create an alternate universe or pseudo reality in the lives of the practitioners.  As a first generation American, I am always, and will ever be categorically against the mindset that promotes hyphenated-Americanism.  It is the ultimate promise of meritocracy, inter alia, which makes me unapologetically, uniquely, and unequivocally proud to be an American.

It is this sentiment that makes the POTUS’ practice and inclination to apologize for America unpardonably offensive, and un-American. It is a practice definitely not worthy of his office. America deserves better.

Like fallen leaves scattered on the grass of autumn, the following are bits of comments and rejoinders I posted on some of the columns variously indicated by the associated url’s.  I gleaned them into a separate post as I occasionally found sparks of inspiration sparsely intermingled in the ubiquitous morass of tedious verbosity.

Contrary to popular myth, Al Gore did not invent the internet. I submit that his main contribution is in the field of scientific charlatanism, most typically illustrated by the currency and popularity of what is most conveniently known as the established (by consensus) science of “Global Warming.”

The Tragedy of Hyphenated Americans  

It is regrettable but not surprising that Judge Chen sees himself as an Asian-Pacific person who happens to be an American by a confluence of circumstances probably beyond his control as an individual person.
cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2009/10/16/aclu_pipeline_for_obama_judges?comments=true#comments

It would have been much more wholesome if he saw himself as an American who happened to have Asian-Pacific ethnicity in his biological hereditary DNA.

That he is an Obama appointment to the Bench is no surprise. After all the POTUS' highest profile nominee to the Judiciary is Justice Sotomayor who saw herself as a Puerto Rican first and an American, only attendant to circumstances beyond her control as an individual. This seems to be the pattern in Obama world. He nurtures the most provincial impulses and grooms the baser evils of our nature.

The most worrisome aspect of all these is how long can this American Republic endure this vicious attacks on all the moral fabrics that make us Americans and proud of being so?

It is noteworthy, that the POTUS as he repeatedly pointed out during, before and after the campaign, is the quintessential hyphenated American: the Audacity of his Hope is the Dream from his Father. His face is different from the other presidents you find on the US dollar bills. But don’t point it out else you are definitely race-baiting.

In essence, he is a Kenyan-American, and Alinskyan-American, a post-partisan-American, a communist-American, a trans-racial-American, a transformational, transformative-American, etc., etc.

A Compromise with Iran

Is like a coin toss where heads they win, tails we lose. It's pretty much akin to the Democrats' notion of "bipartisanship," that is what attends when the Republicans embrace the Democrats' position on any issue.

cf,http://townhall.com/columnists/Column2.aspx?UrlTitle=give_war_a_chance&ns=BillOReilly&dt=10/17/2009&page=full&comments=true&submitted=true

NATO has always been an American defense umbrella from the get go. With a toothless America, NATO is as benign as a Sunday Bridge Club of retired housewives.

With a POTUS who is obsessed with unilateral disarmament, you get a world without arms which results in a world without laws.

The fault, my dear Casius, lies not in our stars but in ourselves: we put a communist pacifist in the White House. That was oh, so nice of us:)

Desperately Trying to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? The operative word is desperate. You are trying to recruit an ally in Russia who is obsessed with her grandeur of yore. For Russia, this is understandably tolerable. After all you can only aspire for things or a state that you don’t have or are not already. That we consider the Russians as potential allies on any venture, indeed, is desperation of the first order.

Hamlet in the Oval Office

Cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/SandyRios/2009/10/16/obama_is_sure_about_something

To send or not to send (troops to Afghanistan)?
To tell or not to tell (sexual preferences or orientation in the military)?

Will the winter of our discontent shortly follow this, our autumn of vacillation?

An anecdote popularly circulated in my college days tells of a politician who in the heat of a campaign speech passionately promised the audience that he would make sure to build a bridge when elected.

A heckler in the audience pointed out that there is no river needing a bridge in their locality. So the speaker vehemently insisted that he will also guarantee building a river once he is elected, no thanks for the impertinent interruption by the heckler.

The moral of the story is that Obama is the type of politician who promises anyone anything to get applause. That feeds the baser evils of his nature.

Hope and Hype

Cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/SuzanneFields/2009/10/16/the_nobler_nobels

If the Nobel Peace Prize to the POTUS were only for Hope and Hype, then we can breathe easier and dismiss it as one misguided Norwegian joke on America.

I submit to you that it is less benign than a joke and more sinister and malicious in intent: that is to declaw America, at least for the duration of the Obama Administration. What with the POTUS’ continuing buzz about unilateral disarmament, ad nauseam, the Prize is an attempt to leverage the rules of engagements that America adheres to in both international relations and domestic policy.

The message is: a pacifist you aspire to be, a pacifist you shall remain, and we even bribe you for it.

That the Nobel Committee awards a prize for bluster is consistent with the historical fact that the wealth which gave birth to the Nobel Prizes was largely derived from the manufacture and sales of TNT, dynamite and other explosives.

In Full Brutal Context

"There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
cf, http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/10/16/the_democrats%e2%80%99_coming_defeat?page=full&comments=true

If the flood is the 2010 election, don't count the chicks before the eggs are hatched, or even laid. The Clintons also promised the most ethical administration in history. We got, among others, DNA on a blue dress and it was not even deemed an impeachable behavior, just rascally banal and worthy of late night comedy fare.

To prevail in the 2010 off peak elections, we need viable and practicable alternatives, comparable to the "Contract on America." Also, we need bone marrow transplants on the Republicans so that they can exhibit some political spine. Short of that, we get on the "Omitted" side of the Brutal quote.

The POTUS 44 has brilliantly succeeded on what he promised on inauguration day: to remake America in the image of Europe, to be acceptable to the rest of the world, to project the image that is acceptable to the United Nations. With his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, this inaugural promise has been signed, sealed and delivered with a flourish. Now we Americans can be oh, so proud that we have become as sophisticated and civilized as Belgium.

The last U.S. President to receive a Nobel Peace Prize was James Earl Carter who shared the award with one of the greatest ambassadors for peace of them all, the late Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, popularly known as Yasser Arafat. Maybe from here onwards, for the sake of civility and sophisticated decorum, it behooves to formally call the POTUS 44 as Barack Hussein Obama al-Indonesia al-Columbia al-Chicago Abu-Malia Abu-Sasha.

The AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven was impertinent enough to ask wherefore the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, let us venture to count the ways:

1.    For apologizing at every opportunity for all that America traditionally stood for, the bastion of freedom and liberty and the successful champion in defense against Nazi fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism.

2.   For groveling to the King of Saudi Arabia, for palling around with Hugo Chavez, for being deferential to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung Il,  Moammar Gadhafi, and the Castro brothers Fidel and Raol while dumping on Israel.

3.   For buying up toxic assets with taxpayer dollars and for successfully mortgaging the future of generations of Americans (our grandchildren) in the name of ‘spreading the wealth around.’

4.   For institutionalizing within the Federal government the reign of all sorts of czars, more numerous in a mere nine months than Russia had established through centuries of history.

5.   For worshiping in the altar of environmentalism and adopting global warming prevention as a matter of national policy, with the ‘cap and trade (read, cap and tax)’ legislation, lending legitimacy to the notion of “carbon footprint,” no matter that it can bankrupt the domestic energy industry.

6.   For attempting to nationalize the health care industry thereby assuming life and death decisions over each individual American.

The litany can go on but it requires more intestinal fortitude than I can muster. For the fawning millions swift in the vainglorious tide of the cult of personality engulfing the Oval Office, the award might represent an endorsement of their adulation. It might cause the tingling in Chris Matthews’ legs to evolve into an epileptic spasm worthy of a commercial segment in CNN.

The deeper and more sober question is: can this Republic muster enough resilience so as to not allow the tide of vainglory induce an enduring institutional paralysis that would jeopardize our historical claim to be the last best hope of man on earth?

   XXII    Beneath the azure skies you slumber deep,

          Above the azure seas subdued you lie,

          In subjugation hear your meek ones weep,

          In indignation bear your bold ones die,

          How much your unborns' remonstrance you fear,

          How much of fallen heroes' wrath sustain,

          If you to villains your birthright forswear,

          If to your woes you nonchalant remain?

          Traditions prejudice in vain invoke,

          Nor lessons falsify from history

          To justify the poignance of your yoke,

          Or improvise some reasons that you stay . . .

                   A wretched penitent of one man's whims

                   Oblivious of your children's noble dreams!!

   XXIII   Should lessons gleaned from History provide

          Due faith and courage for your future course,

          Be best prepared to emulate with pride

          The brave defenders of your sacred shores.

          Allow not blunt your own awakening

          By rhetoric that politicians use

          To thwart your conscience into weakening

          The selfsame vehemence of vengeance's cause,

          The which would break the fetters of your soul

          And tear the mask of shameless tyranny.

          Default's the cross of falsehood bearing all

          Unreason for your seeming destiny

                   To drown, in surfeit, bliss of ignorance,

                   To crown, in glory, sweet irrelevance!!

   XXIV

Of friends and foes you earned the poets' praise,

          Your legend beauty fared romantic fame,

          Your languor proves the vanquish of your race,

          Your wants and woes, their very sins proclaim.

          The insolence of your perdition made

          An otherwise noble inheritance

          A mockery of aspiration's need

          To cross the threshold vagaries of chance

          That though subdued, undaunted yet in quest

          To brave the tide, sans fears of the unknown.

          Conquered yet undefeated, unredressed,

          Let grievance architect your own renown:

                   Or tears, or sweat, or blood, such price defray

                   For priceless proves the prize of liberty!

   XXV     So often did you pay the price before,

          What cause have you to now so hesitate?

          With cross and sword Magellan [1] reached your shore,

          With spears and sword, his death, Magellan met --

          Who came to make you vow to Philip’s [2] fame,

          Your sons, unbowed, preferred Magellan slain,

          For which you got the mark of Philip's name,

          Imposed by legions of the realm of Spain.

          The name you took, you fought the insolence

          With del Pillar [3] and Rizal’s [4] arguments,

          And Bonifacio [5] with more forceful means

          Imposed on Spain defeat's predicaments:

             Retreat, did Spain, in came th'Americans

             With Monroe's Doctrine [6] and George Dewey’s [7] guns!

   XXVI    Weakened, outgunned, you fought George Dewey's force,

          With precious lives defended Tirad Pass, [8]

          Your weak ones did provide the dismal course

          Of your demise, and Aguinaldo [9] was

          To self-exile consigned to negotiate

          Your sole surrender to an enemy

          Who promise of reforms did elicit

          In lieu of much coveted liberty.

          Reforms enshrined your glory as Rizal,

          And martyrdom enthroned, you idolize

          Inaction's cause and lose the wherewithal

          To build a nation strong, and free, and wise:

                   Martyrs are but a nation's mournful loss,

                   The nation must survive a martyr's cause!

   XXVII   Reform and martyrdom are curious twins,

          The both are consummate with serious sins:

          'Twas for reforms Ninoy Aquino [10] spoke,

          By martyrdom, Aquino's life you took.

          'Twas for reforms Rizal did set his pen,

          Without reforms, Rizal, a martyr slain.

          And through reforms, Rizal you sanctified,

          While Bonifacio's deeds you saw defiled.

          The Lava [11] brothers fought, all martyrs died,

          Reformed, Luis Taruc [12] you glorified.

          And for reforms the selfsame Ferdinand, [13]

          Invoked the law of force at his command:

                   Such are reforms made worth of Martial Law --

                   Long years of martyrdom to suffer through!!!

   XXVIII

          Reforms, the IMF demands austere

          As creditor's conditionalities,

          Reforms, the World Bank made you swear

          To make your credit seems as limitless

          As your endurance for the martyrdom

          Of unemployment and wasted resource;

          Such ills are seemingly beyond reform,

          Austerity cannot but make them worse!

          Who is to blame for gross mismanagement?

          Or mortgage of your whole patrimony?

          Your credit-worthiness long overspent,

          You beg to negotiate for charity!

                   With credits not applied to harness wealth,

                   You wreck a million times the nation's health!!!

   XXIX    Beyond reform is your predicament,

          It's time you venture forth a better way!

          Nor tears of bitterness, nor mute lament

          Can free you from your own captivity!

          That captors are your very native sons

          Is but insult added to injury

          And no excuse for patient tolerance

          Nor cause to languish in your misery.

          With debtors' need false leaders agonize,

          For credits, they may make your people bleed;

          Bleeding, you may yet seek to galvanize

          To life true leaders of a bolder breed:

                   By visionary men are nations built

   XXX     Such leaders of the "Opposition" kind

          Who only ridicule the Parliament?

          For opposition every reason find,

          Except a plan for your development,{0}

                  Comments &Notes on Proper Names in the Text

[1]        Ferdinand Magellan was the commander of the Spanish Armada, which first landed on Filipino soil in 1521; was killed in the ensuing battle when the natives refused to pay homage to the king of Spain.

[2]        King Philip II of Spain's name is the origin of the name Philippines; the term Filipino originally meant Spaniards born in the Philippines, as opposed to ones born in Spain.

[3,4] Marcelo H. del Pilar and Jose Rizal were the main leaders of the Reformists, who argued for Philippine representation in the Spanish Royal Courts. Rizal was subsequently consecrated under American occupation as the National Hero.

[5]        Andres Bonifacio was the founder of the first organized revolution against Spain; later slain in an internal power struggle with factions supporting Emilio Aguinaldo.

[6]        By the principles of Monroe's Doctrine the United States declared war on Spain; the American colonization of the Philippines was a spin off of the Spanish-American War.

[7]        Admiral George Dewey was the commander of the Asiatic Fleet which sank the Spanish Armada in Manila Bay in 1898; most Filipino historians consider the encounter a "mock battle" since Spanish forces were already under siege by the revolutionary forces, and confined to a few blocks of Manila.

[8]        Tirad Pass was the only access to the Headquarters of the Philippine revolutionary forces in the Filipino-American war; the fall of Tirad Pass directly resulted in the surrender of the Filipino forces.

[9]        Emilio Aguinaldo, founder and only president of the First Philippine Republic, obtained exclusive command of the Filipino forces against Spain when Bonifacio was ambushed and killed by his men at a rendezvous where Aguinaldo and Bonifacio were supposed to meet to discuss strategy.

[10]      Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino was the leading political rival to president Marcos before and during Martial Law until he was murdered disembarking in Manila from self-exile in the U.S.

[11]      The Lava brothers were the brains of the uprising in the 1950’s, which sought to overthrow the then four-year-old Second Philippine Republic.

[12]      Luis Taruc was contemporary of the Lavas', commander in chief of the rebel forces; surrendered and subsequently toured the U.S. as spokesman for the virtues of Marcos's Martial Law.

[13]      Ferdinand Marcos, declared Martial Law on September 22, 1972; was finally deposed during the "People's Revolution" inspired by Corazon Aquino (wife of Benigno) who was defrauded by the Marcos Administration of her victory over Marcos in a general presidential election in which both sides claimed victory.

“…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change.”

Michelle Malkin at http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2009/09/02/obamas_classroom_campaign_no_junior_lobbyist_left_behind?page=2

There have been numerous historical precedents of this phenomenon: The Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany, Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom and the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China, The Juche Brigade of King Il Sung in North Korea, the Che Guevarra Brigade in Cuba.

Why should the U.S. of A be an exception? It was a well-documented fact that the POTUS was a neighborhood agitator (a.k.a. "Community Organizer") before he came on national stage. His associations with people who hate America as we love it, the bastion of opportunity, is a matter of national record.

It would be too much of a lunacy for the nation to expect that the "transformational" rhetoric that was spewed off in the campaign trail would end up only transforming the messiah himself into a patriot.  Is that not asking too much of a miracle, especially in the age of secularist liberalism?

Yes, I admit to accusing the POTUS of being counter-patriotic. His apologize for America tour, selective bailout of financial companies, the conversion of General Motors into Government Motors, quadrupling of the national debt, etc. are unmistakable signs of the concerted effort to destroy the free-market infrastructure which was the engine of wealth creation unparalleled in the twentieth century.

You elect as President a College Communist, you get government takeover of the means of wealth creation as a national policy. That is about as natural as day follows night and night follows day.

I do not suggest that the POTUS should be deprived of the chance to inspire the nation, citizens of all ages and ideological persuasions. But it is a thin line that separates providing inspiration to ignite the sparks of patriotism on the one hand and giving out subtle marching orders, on the other. Moreover, if the POTUS is reduced to asking grade school children to search their souls and find what they can do for the President (as opposed to what they can do for the country), is that not a perversion of what the presidency is all about?

Rather than an echo of the famous JFK call to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” this is more reminiscent of James Earl Carter’s public confession that he solicited the advice of young Amy Carter on nuclear disarmament.

What else can we see next?

I woke up to a WLIW rerun of a Peggy Noonan interview with a TV host I didn’t know, who looked like James Stewart, the actor. The interview was centered on her book “Patriotic Grace.” I like Peggy Noonan a lot and her weekly column is in my must read list, even after she started dumping on Sarah Palin in the 2008 campaign. But I must admit this is the first time I’ve heard of this particular book of hers.

The title of her book hastened to clear the cobwebs in my head and brought into focus what the critical mission for my day was.  The most important item in my agenda was to follow the singles matches of the Solheim Cup which was at a dead even 8-8 after the second day of play.   

The golf bug got me more than two decades ago. I find golf the perfect metaphor for life itself. This is because the overall outcome of a round crucially depends on how well you can recover from any disaster along the way. But when I saw the LPGA’s Team America sporting on their cheeks patriotic patches like the flag and the Liberty Bell, golf assumed a different dimension in my mind.

It was such a breath of fresh air to see a group of Americans so eager and so determined to win for their country. The euphoria soaking the event was awesome especially at a time when President Barack Hussein Obama is so eager and so determined to make a ritual of apologizing for this country every occasion he gets.

As this was written Team America won and retained the Solheim Cup. Congratulations, golfers. You make America proudJ

On August 30, 2007, less than one year after I started collecting Social Security, I underwent an open heart surgery with aortic valve implant and a quadruple coronary bypass. This was the byproduct of an attempt to get an inguinal hernia fixed surgically.

The cruel dollars-and-cents scorecard was rather staggering. Upwards of $149k paid for by my insurance provider and our co-pay in the neighborhood of $15k, an obligation we are still struggling to meet.  All this cost for another lease on life, now as a card-carrying member of that exclusive club of people with artificial implants bearing the manufacturer’s serial number.

Beyond the cost, even more staggering was the realization that this was the result of discrete individual decisions made by professionals practicing their professions under the free market system. Mainly the patient’s best interest and the highest integrity of their respective professions were the deciding factors.

As the debate on ObamaCare unfolds or heats up, what haunts the inner chambers of my reverie is this: The outcome could have been drastically different had the decision been made by a Health Care Czar or any low-level bureaucrat concerned only with cutting costs from wherever it can be done in the domain.

"Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."—Barack Hussein Obama Inaugural Address, 20-Jan-09.

“He is subtle and likes to kill softly. As such, he is something new on the political scene, which means he will require something new from his opponents, including, first, patience.”

--Peggy Noonan at http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

Based on what has been exhibited so far: the parade of tax cheats proposed into the upper echelons of the administrative functionaries, an attempt to nationalize the economy by taking over bad debts, appointing czars of various shades from car manufacturing to government efficiency and resizing of the ‘middle class’, every American of all shades and sorts of persuasion should be apprehensive respecting what America is being remade into.

It appears that the celebrated architect of Brooklyn aphorisms, Yogi Berra, was correct when he opined that the more things change the more they seem to remain the same. For one thing, the prevalence of Clinton era rethreads amongst the Obama appointments does invoke the feeling of “déjà vu all over again.” It just seems so proper and fitting that tax cheats become the characteristic attributes of Obama appointments.

What does not seem proper is that Republicans in Capitol Hill do not find it incumbent on themselves to make an issue of it. It was supposed to be the function of the minority party to be scandalized by lapses of judgment committed by the ruling party. When there is hardly any sign of protest, the American public ought to be scandalized. As Bob Dole once asked, “where is the outrage”?

We should all be outraged that the Obama Administration is implementing the Europeanization of America. We once took pride in being known as the New World. There is no pride to take in becoming the New Europe.

There is nothing subtle about how the government is buying up the private sector. There is no denying that billions of TARP dollars have gone down the drain and there is nobody to account for in an administration that does not exhibit any need to account for anything. With a filibuster proof Senate and Republicans seemingly devoid of any ideas on what the country is all about, who is going to make the Obama administration account for anything?

When journalism had succumb to the Bush Derangment Syndrome, the nation lost a very valuable asset, namely a press corps whose reason for being is to be the fiscalizer of public policy. Now we have a press corps which acts as the propaganda arm of the Obama Administration. Instead of uncovering hidden agenda in whatever the government is doing, it strives to cover up and gloss over any unpleasant implications of administration policy.

What with the Republican brainstorm taking the Hillary Clinton playbook of a listening tour in order to get ideas on how to lead? They are not even embarrassed about it. Republicans seem to have forgotten that there are such things as first principles of governance. The Republic was founded on the principle that unleashing the creative powers of the individual is what opens the floodgates of productivity to bring about the unbridled creation of wealth.

It has been accepted wisdom that elections have consequences. Liberal presidents appoint liberal judges. A liberal congress rubber stamps a liberal president. But where did Obama get his mandate for Remaking America? An electoral victory cannot be construed as a constitutional amendment.

At which point does Remaking America come into conflict with the oath to “preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God”?

Asumen Acumen at http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/

“Besides, the fact that these words have been so aggressively foisted upon us by Hollywood does not mean that they have lost their power to offend . . . hearing profanity produces in the brain . . . all sorts of hormones and chemicals . . . whether we say we're offended or not.”

--Mona Charen at http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/05/01/expletive_deleted__for_now

There is no doubt the prevalence of “colorful metaphors” [cf. Spock, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home] in the language represents an overall coarsening of the culture. For one thing, they do not augment the quality of discourse. To the contrary, lacing a sentence with colorful metaphors diminishes its power to communicate meaning.

Almost two generations ago, Herbert Marcuse in his One Dimensional Man decried as obscene the analgesic effect on the national culture, the practice of juxtaposing on national TV’s evening news, images of the ravages of battle in Vietnam with the seemingly balmy Ivory Soap Commercials. That we are talking whether or not profanity offends proves Marcuse’s point beyond doubt.

Eight years of the Clinton presidency officially ushered in the coarsening of the culture.  It hardly needs counting the ways: Oral sex in the Oval Office, Presidential DNA on Monica’s blue dress, erectile dysfunction commercials accepted as normal on primetime TV, wardrobe malfunction at super bowl halftime entertainment. These are minor trivialities compared to what really should be construed as offensive: the practice of abortion on demand as acceptable form of birth control.

Deploying the Supreme Court to adjudicate on the dichotomy of meaning of profanities is a colossal waste of taxpayer money. The issue should be whether or not the FCC has the mandate to prohibit use of certain words and/or phrases from the airwaves. Attempting to legislate or adjudicate a question of taste is an exercise in futility. Taste is necessarily subjective. For this very reason alone the FCC’s list of prohibited words should be beyond question by anybody, the Supreme Court justices, included.

What the Supreme Court needs adjudicate on is whether or not Standards of Decency can be promulgated by law. My take is any attempt at doing so would only give the trial lawyers more opportunity to practice their profession, lucratively.

Asumen Acumen at http://parallaxadhoc.blogtownhall.com/

“Mother may have thought her most notable characteristic was her Republican activism, but, for the rest of us, it was her constant, unconditional love. She was a little love machine, spreading warmth and joy wherever she went.”

--- Anne Coulter at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31569&page=22#c1

Ann:

“A common denominator with Obama's easy emphasis on racial divides  . . .  form[s] a disturbing pattern seen earlier with the off-handed remarks about "typical white person," the stereotyping of rural Pennsylvanians along lines of class and race, and the 20-year long patronage of a clearly racist preacher.”

---Victor Davis Hanson at http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson042209.html

“Arabs are told to be comfortable because of Barack’s names, first and second and third, his Muslim father, his non-traditional background. In other words, anytime anyone in the US is told that racism is lurking its ugly head around every corner, be assured that Obama will broadcast his race and heritage to Europeans, Turks, Arabs, and Latin Americans.”

---Victor Davis Hanson at http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/

Speaking of racial divides, Barrack Hussein Obama did consciously select his racial identity. Despite his white mother and his white grandparents who raised him, he went off as a teenager to seek out his black identity. Contrast this with Tiger Woods who publicly objected to being identified as an African American on the grounds that it is disrespectful of his mother’s Asian heritage to be so labeled.

For the record, I am a first-generation American. I am a non-white, married into three generations of a white family.  I am a registered Independent who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 as my first exercise in citizenship.  I voted for John McCain in 2008. I am outraged that President Obama takes pride in reminding the world at every opportunity that he is not one of us because of his pigmentation and his non-white heritage.

It is so unbecoming of a President to disown history for the trivial reason that he was not yet born when the event took place (i.e., Bay of Pigs). When he went to Turkey to renounce the Judeo-Christian moral foundation of this country as no longer operative because it had given way to shared secular values, he disinherited the country from the ages of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, from Western civilization, not to mention the religious mores of the Founding Fathers. It is precisely because of its Judeo-Christian heritage that the United States has turned out to be the most charitable nation on earth.

A president is supposed to be the president of all the people: those who voted for him and those who voted for the other guy, or just plain did not vote for anybody. He is sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” That appears to be a very tall order when you are an American president who is not even proud to be an American, if not downright ashamed of being an American!