Candlelight Vigil

9-11 NEARLY WORDLESS SPECIAL

It rained last night as we drove through the canyon and across Albuquerque to Rio Rancho for the ABQ Teaparty Candlelight Vigil. By the time I arrived to help set up, nearly 40 minutes late due to rain and traffic, the rain had stopped and although it may have kept people away, we had a very beautiful ceremony.

I was helping at the candle table, but stopped to take a picture of the dedicated volunteers putting the little paper sconces on the candles.

After dark, people stood at the memorial wall, where we had placed sheets of paper with the names of everyone who was murdered on 9/11. The names were divided by where they had died: the four planes, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center.

After the posting of the colors by a unit from Rio Rancho Fire Department, first responders prepare to light their candles. After lighting them, they walked down the hill to the assembly and lit our candles. We, in turn, lit the candles of those behind us, until a wave of light transformed Roscoe Field. Bagpipes played "Amazing Grace", and at the end of the moment of silence, "Taps" as we stood in silence.

A close up on one of the pages of names from the World Trade Center. Here I found the name of a friend who died there that day. He left behind a family with small children.

As I stood at the wall of names, I was reminded of standing at the Wall in Jerusalem. People brought their candles close, they touched the names. One father whispered to a small child the story of the firemen. I felt the strong presence of grief, of rememberance, of prayer.

The Tea Party committee made this the Day of Rememberance that Patriots Day should indeed be.





During and after the ceremony, two searchlights sent their light aloft, our reminder of the lost twin towers.

Yesterday was a day for Rememberance. Today, 9-12, is a day for action.

Yesterday we mourned the loss of the Twin Towers from the New York Skyline, and the loss of the lives of fellow citizens, taken too soon from time, from family, from their work.

Today is a day for action. It is a day to insist that our servant government hear our voices. It is a day to lift up our voices for liberty, and for the restoration of the Constitution that secures our rights to life, liberty and property. It is a day to continue to insist on the conditions needed to build the Freedom Tower, in a space so long empty on the New York Skyline.

A Patriot's Dream That Sees Beyond the Years

Eight years ago, we awoke to a vision of a great city that we never wanted to see.

Smoke rising from twin towers.

People falling from the sky.

The noise of life becoming the stillness of death and destruction.

Last year, on this anniversary I wrote:

"I remember looking into the young eyes of . . . those who will not directly remember 9-11, hoping that out of this terrible attack we could bring to them a world of greater prudence and liberty."

I said that no sleeping giant had been awakened, that the Freedom Towers had not been built, and I feared for my country.

And this year I could stop there, having written the same, or even worse, for I fear that the strength of the United States, derived from individual rights and Liberty, is being even more rapidly being taken from before our very eyes than before.

And I still fear for the Republic.

And yet, I have seen evidence that the spirit of our founders, is being awakened anew as the peril to our liberties has accelerated.

Nine. Eleven. It always brings to my mind America the Beautiful. We sang the song together in the gym of the school where I taught that day. And this year, I hold stubbornly to this verse:

"O Beautiful, for patriot's dream that sees beyond the years,

Whose alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears . . ."

But those cities will be built by the hands of those who know the rest of the verse:

"America, America, G-d mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

The flaw that we must mend is the idea that this great city was built by the lotus-eaters, living in a perpetual state of dependence, and that the night of this great city was lit by those who dwell in land that is "ever afternoon."

It was human liberty that built that great city. The self-control necessary for individuals to forgo immediate gratification in order to save, to plan, to dream the future. Those lights show us where the alabaster buildings will grow, that are now a spark in the minds of the builders. That liberty is expressed in law that protects the rights of the individual, making room for the creative expression of those ideas--those light-bulbs of the mind--that require years to bring to fruition.

This is an image of the great city rebuilt.

The tower built by the work of free human beings, undimmed by the salt-water tears of slavery.

This is the patriot's dream of those who are now waking to the true peril of the Republic. A peril that comes from within, from the loss of the American spirit of freedom and ingenuity.

In the history of the world, the United States Constitution is an uncommon document for an uncommon individual: one who is free to dream big and whose right to a future of his own building is secured by a government limited to protecting his right to life, liberty and property.

This is the patriot's dream that sees beyond these years in which we must once again struggle to call our government to account.

I have placed this picture ever before me, an inspiration of what we will achieve when we restore the Constitution. May it be so in our own day and life.

O, Beautiful for Patriot's dream that sees beyond the years!

9/11 & 9/12: Standing Up in New Mexico

This weekend is an important one for patriots.
Here in New Mexico, Ragamuffin house will be joining in two days during which we will stand up.

Tomorrow is Patriots Day, the day upon which Patriots will gather to REMEMBER the terribly attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

A day upon which we began to wake up. The day upon which the unraveling mood began to change forever.

For Ragamuffin House, this is a day of REMEMBERANCE. And we will be lighting our Shabbat Candles at Haynes Park in Rio Rancho, where the Albuquerque Tea Party will be putting on a Candlelight Vigil as a memorial to those who fell and those who helped. The Vigil is at 7:30 on 9/11.

Picture Credit: New York Post, 2007.

On Saturday, 9/12, we will be joining with Tea Party groups and 9/12ers across the state in Santa Fe, as we March on the Capitol.

This will be the fourth such Tea Party Rally that we have attended. In the picture to the right you see the Chem Geek Princess at the first Tea Party.

For this Rally, I am planning a new sign. It will have a picture of Barack Obama and say "L'Etat es Vous? NO! Where is the Fourth Estate?" On the back it will say, Where are Woodward and Bernstein when we need them?

It is time we called the press on their inaction. Why 30 years ago they would have been all over some of the scandles we have been treated to in Washington in the past few years.

Americans, it is time to stand up!

Don't underestimate us, O ye who claim to represent us!

May the memories of the fallen on 9/11 spur us to action.
May G-d save the Republic of the United States.

Crimethink: The Collectivist War on Ideas

"To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime. "Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death. The essential crime that contains all others in itself."

-- Newspeak Dictionary: Definitions from Orwell's 1984

"Threat reports that focus on ideology instead of

criminal activity are threatening to civil liberties . . ."

-Michael German, ACLU Analyst, writing about the MIAC Report

I have been thinking quite a bit about politically correct language and the style of argumentation that is coming from the statists lately. In fact, I have been thinking about it since last fall, when I first ventured an unpopular opinion at that rumored bastion of free throught, the university. However, in the past several months, my thoughts have become focused on two issues, the redefinition of certain ideas as extremist and therefore outside ordinary discourse, and the inability of collectivists to construct or recognize an argument from principle. I think these two issues are likely related.

The redefinition of ideas (rather than actions) as extremist is really an extension of the redefinition of certain words and ideas as politically incorrect. Labelling some speech as politically incorrect narrows the terms of discourse and limits the ability of individuals to discuss any and all ideas. When judicial sanctions and legal punishments are imposed upon individuals who persist in discussing such ideas then the Western concepts of free thought and free expression are violated. However, social sanctions are also limiting, and it is through this nudge effect that certain ideas are expunged from discourse.

The imposition of politically correct discourse upon Western culture in modern times came from the Frankfort School, a Marxist think tank founded in Europe for the purpose of spreading a social correlate of Marxist economics. The Frankfort School thus established what they called "critical theory" which is critical, but it is not a theory. It is simply a method to bring down Western culture by criticizing it in all its aspects, without suggesting an alternative to any of its institutions and/or ideas. The Frankfort School moved to Columbia University in New York during WWII, and brought the concept of political correctness with it. This Social Marxism was spread first in academia and then throughout the culture courtesy the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960's.

What is so insidious about political correctness is that it supresses the free expression of ideas that do not conform to those approved by a self-appointed cultural elite. These people have placed themselves into the position of deciding what ideas may be discussed and which ones may not. For the past decades, they have relied on self-censorship and social nudging to enforce their particular ideological orthodoxy. More recently, through the use of academic judicial processes and by laws against hate speech and hate crimes, they have sought to impose such censorship from above. As Willian Lind put in an AIA address in 2000:

"America today is in the throws of the greatest and direst transformation in its history. We are becoming an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology enforced by the power of the state. In "hate crimes" we now have people serving jail sentences for political thoughts. And the Congress is now moving to expand that category ever further. Affirmative action is part of it. The terror against anyone who dissents from Political Correctness on campus is part of it." (The Origins of Political Correctness: An Accuracy in Academia Address).

There are two particularly troubling aspects of this supression of ideas.

One is that, as free Americans find their voices and try to use reason to support our founding ideas, they find that more and more concepts are being subsumed under politically correct labels. Thus recently, a popular talk-show host was accused of a "smear campaign" for correctly labeling former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones as a Marxist, even though Jones used that label for himself. Apparently, labels for ideas such as socialism, fascism, and Marxism, are now themselves politically incorrect and may not be spoken. At least, not by us.

If an idea may not be spoken, it first becomes unspeakable and then becomes unthinkable.

Having no way to name the concept, opponents to an idea become inarticulate. The battle is lost to the politically correct mavens before it is begun; It is lost, not to superior arguments, but to the refusal to name the insidious nature of political correctness. This is why it is so important for those of us who oppose such censorship to define our terms and argue our position from principle, and to do so as consistently, rationally and firmly as possible. We must refuse to self-censor. We must name the ideological origins of politically correct censorship and name the motives of those who wish to silence us.

The second problematic aspect of political correctness is that its proponents group together a set of positions that do not logically rely on one another, thus linking them into a series by which they can shift the discussion. For example, if I were to argue that parents have the right to educational choices for their children, (as I have) a proponent of PC would (and has) immediately launched into a diatribe of name-calling, accusing me of being a creationist (which I am not). If I defend myself against such an objection, I have conceded to political correctness, and if I do not defend myself, I am conceding to an untruth. Instead of being caught in this false dilemna, I must recognize that in shifting the discussion, the PC czar has conceded that he has no argument; the whole thing has devolved into name-calling. At that point, the discussion is essentially over. All that remains is for me to name what has happened. Calmly and clearly. There is no way to "win" such a dilemna, but by bringing the reality into the light of day, I can inform reasonable listeners about what is really going on.

As for the opponent, usually when he finds he has no argument, he gets mad:

For example, consider the following diatribe by a supporter of statism from a Facebook page. This person had been challenged several times to answer a direct question after calling a Native American from Utah who opposes certain Obama policies a racist, even though the policies he oppose have nothing to do with race. Backed into a corner, he responded:

"Apparently you psycho GOP sheep would be more comfortable if obama told our kids, "Ignore evolution, intelligent design (RELIGION) is the only truth. Join the army someday, hopefully you won't be sent to a foreign land to die based on bad intelligence (LIES). And don't forget to abstain from sex, but if you can't, whatever you do, don't wear a condom."There was no partisanship in the speech. Eat your (expletive deleted) words and admit that you made up your minds about the speech before the speech even happened. Why? Because you don't want to share this country anyone who isn't like you. What other reason is there to still be a republican? GW Bush was the worst president in the history of the united states. Where was your outrage then? Small thinking out of small towns, people living in small bubbles. When election time rolls around the GOP will pander to your beliefs, to get your vote and rob you (expletive deleted) blind when they are in power. And with a black president, the GOP are starting to lose their (expletive deleted) minds. Back to the good ole days, right? When bush and his corrupt scum of a white house spent every day trying to (explitive deleted) the middle class out of every dime and commit war crimes. (Expletive deleted) who created this bullshit nutjob KKK group and (expletive deleted) all you parents who are actually scared of this president. Most of you wouldn't even know how to identify socialism even if it was anywhere near what the president said. Which it wasn't. Psychos." (Name expunged to protect the guilty).

Notice that there are no arguments in this piece of very poor writing. It is a string of undemonstrated assertions, repetitive lies, and name calling, originally complete with the repeated use of a certain strong Anglo-Saxon word beginning with F. (Although this is the worst I've seen, almost every non-argument I've encountered is there). What this writer wants is for his interlocutors to argue each claim.

But there are no arguments here at all, and nothing worthy of response.

He is not even wrong.*

*A friend showed . . . [physicist Wolfgang Pauli]the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'That's not right. It's not even wrong.' " Peierls, 1960).

This is the reality of it: those who impose PC have no arguments. If they did, they would not have to attempt politically correct censorship. This is why they use propaganda techniques, such as subject-shifting, name-calling and the big lie, rather than engaging in principled discussion. Ultimately, they believe they are right, not from rational thought, but by some magical superiority. This is why they cannot construct an argument. Their sense of rightness comes not from reason, but from emotion. They feel it, so therefore it must be true. This is, as I have pointed out many times in this blog, the vision of the annointed. Until such a person chooses to think rationally about his claims, there is no point in continuing the discussion.

Flu Pandemic: Panic and Reality

Did you ever wonder what purpose is being served by fomenting panic over a mild and far from novel flu virus? Why do government agencies and WHO want to force unproven vaccinations on whole populations? Why are they spreading panic by issue general, fill in the blank internment and quarantine orders, such as the ones before the Iowa Board of Health? Why is the World Health Organization so quickly putting out a mass vaccination order? And why in the world would the govenor of Maryland call getting a flu vaccination a 'patriotic duty"?

These are questions that I have been asking myself in the past few days, as the first day of school on the East Coast has caused the media to go into hyperpanic mode about a flu for which the deathrate in the US is far lower than for the seasonal flu.

Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, CCP has a very cogent and calm discussion of the actual facts about this flu over at Junkfood Science. She says:

"The flu season has barely begun and yet the panic is already in full swing with 186,933 media stories about H1N1 and 47,159 news stories about the swine flu currently at Google News.* Do you know what is missing among the widespread pandemic alarm in the media and coming from government agencies, pharmaceutical and other stakeholders?
The scientific evidence being reported by medical professionals and in the medical literature."

She goes on to discuss that scientific literature in detail, including an analysis out of MIT published in the British Medical Journal, and the efforts of physicians in the US and abroad to spread Common Sense about Type A Influenza Viruses. In summing up the MIT analysis, Sandy writes:

"A single, one-size-fits-all public health strategy that assumes every epidemic results in widespread catastrophic and deadly disease (type 1) is not appropriate. Some epidemics affect very few people but the infection is serious, while type 3 affects many people but with mostly mild infections. But most new viruses, he stressed, are not type 1 threats. The 1957 and 1968 pandemics, for instance, went largely unnoticed by most people and the recorded deaths during both pandemics were similar to those seen an ordinary flu season today. So, we have pandemic preparedness strategies that are based on a catastrophic (type 1) epidemic and which result in public health responses that are improperly calibrated to the threat and risk doing more harm than good. They are also seen as alarmist and erode the public trust. "

And in her discussion of Spanish physicians who blogged for flu common sense under the rubric: Gripe A: Ante Todo, Mucho Calma, she says:

"Just because the virus is infectious and spreads easily, however, does not mean that it is more serious. This virus has proven to cause mild or moderate flu and to be less severe than the ordinary seasonal flu. Most people have mild symptoms and will get no benefit from going to the doctor, the physicians stress. Most importantly, the advice for taking care of the swine flu is the same as in all types of colds and flu. Most people can care for themselves at home, just as they would any cold or flu, with keeping themselves hydrated and nourished."

In an interesting twist on this story, Sandy also provides evidence that the Google Search engines actually censor what is is out there, providing additional bias towards the big build up to this mild flu. About this, she writes:

"There was no mention of these medical articles in the Google News, even specifically searching using pertinent search terms. And any mention of the blog project was only found by searching for the participating Spanish medical blogs by name.
Google’s Health Advisory Council appears to have determined that mention of these medical articles is not “relevant for you.” Google has become such a transparent social media marketing venue, it’s impossible for those who follow science and research to miss how Google’s search results prioritize what government-private stakeholders want the public to believe, not what people may want or need to know. Consumers searching Google for information, however, are largely oblivious to the degree that Google’s firewall filters their news."

I concur with Sandy here, based on my own searches for information relevant to my study of neuroscience and neuropsychology.

Sandy ends with these words of wisdom:

"Given that it’s unlikely the enormous political and financial interests behind flu pandemics will come to a screeching halt, that leaves medical professionals and consumers to be the responsible ones and get the facts, keep calm and practice common sense."

Read the whole article. Follow the links to actual, peer-reviewed scientific literature and analysis. Because Sandy is absolutely right.
As per usual these days, common sense will have to begin at the grassroots.

R3volution: Don't Mess with ABQ Patriots

Yesterday I posted an entry about the continuing bad reporting and derogatory names directed at the ABQ Tea Party. Thanks to my friend Corky, and another blogger named Joe, screen shots and pdf files of the original story at KRQE News went out to patriot groups all across the country. The original headline was subsequently changed.

This morning, an anonymous commentor reported that KRQE had removed all of the comments from the webpage that housed the story. When I went to that page to verify this information, I found that the entire story had been removed. This was KRQE's second mistake.

The arrogance of the media is without bounds. When confronted with their first mistake by numerous commentors, KRQE management should have publically apologized to the Albuquerque Tea Party, the Tea Party Express and to the citizens who attended the rally for calling them all a sexually charged derogatory name. But instead of doing so, and instread of firing or at least disciplining the reporter who thought that using that kind of language was cute, KRQE opted to try to pretend that such an insult never happened. That's like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. Oops!

Given this further arrogance, it is likely that the local patriots will continue to turn the dial away from channel 13 and inform the station's sponsors about why they are doing so. This is not some boycott engineered from some national organization. Local, hard-working individuals in what is derisively called "flyover country" by the national media are simply tired of having their intelligence and hard-work continually insulted. Personally, I see my boycott of KRQE as similar to my boycott of the Olympics last summer. I am not organizing a boycott. I am simply tired of being put down by arrogant reporters who have far less education and life experience than I. I refuse to support such businesses further.

KRQE ought to put these so-called reporters through a refresher course on the difference between reporting a story and editorializing. Further, some business education might benefit both the employees and adminstrators of the station. Normally, businesses do not go out their way to bite the hand that feeds them!
Twice.

Finally, KRQE's craven removal of the story has told us one thing. They know that we know what they are about.

It's a start.

KRQE: We are paying attention and we will act.

Don't mess with Albuquerque Patriots!

R3volution: We're Caring Americans, Thank You Very Much!

As I said yesterday, on Tuesday I was at the Albuquerque stop for the Tea Party Express.

The event was actually held at Rio Rancho's Haynes Park, just to the northwest of ABQ.

As has been their habit, both the Albuquerque Journal and KRQE News 13 got it wrong.

KRQE News 13 showed up at about 11 AM, two hours before the event, and reported that the Rio Rancho DPS stated that 300 people were there. The Journal must have got their news from the TV station. Such great reporting!

When the Tea Party Express Caravan arrived shortly after 1 PM, I estimated many more people than that. Using grid method of estimation common to field biologists (I am a trained field biologist), I estimated at least 900 people. Pretty good for a Tuesday, work-day afternoon.

But we do not have to rely on my crude count. Organizers of the Tea Party were placing sticky dots on people's shirts, so that they would have a pretty good estimate of the crowd.

They began this practice after the local media woefully underestimated the number that attended the Tax Day Tea Party on April 15, for which the Albuquerque Journal originally said there were a few hundred--such great precision, that!--at least a half-hour prior to the beginning of the event. Do I detect a pattern of misrepresentation here?

In any case, the Albuquerque Tea Party organizers, prepared for about 1200 people, had purchased 1350 sticky dots. They ran out of dots prior to the end of the event, and people continued to arrive. So total attendance was more 1350 people.

The misrepresentation of the numbers was unprofessional, but what KRQE News did on their blog was positively juvenile. Here is the original headline (which was changed today--though so far they have not changed the numbers) screen-captured by my friend and fellow NMPA member, who was also an organizer for this event:

Tea Bag Express rallies protestors

This headline gives implicit insult to the people who were there, using a now well-known sexual innuendo to describe what is actually called The Tea Party Express. After a great deal of protest in the comments to their blog, found here, during the first 24 hours, KRQE changed the headline. However, the link continues to bear the derogatory term seen above.

As commentor and Tea Party organizer Gayle Bacon wrote yesterday:

"Tea baggers is an obscene and derogatory expression used by a biased media with a liberal agenda. You may yank this, because you ARE biased, but I must try. Your reporter showed up very early, before the Tea Party Express even showed up! We put stickers on everyone and counted the stickers beforehand, so we know we had well over 1,000 because they ran out of the stickers! People also signed their names. Too bad KRQE is missing out. That's the way to lose viewers."

And Pat, who was in charge of estimating the numbers wrote this yesterday:

"KRQUE [sic] showed up at around 11:00 when the event was just being set up. So if as you say we had 200 people there at 11:00 by1:00 we had count of over 1350 . We had purchased 1350 stickers to help with our head count and all were passed out. That is how we can say we had over 1350 people. If your news crew had come to report the news they would have showed up around the time the event started instead of before the event started. I am glad you removed the derogatory term, but it should never have been used in the first place."

Others who were there wrote to express their disgust about the derogatory language and about their frustration with the so-called professional media. My friend, Corky wrote:

"Lovely, just lovely. I am truly impressed with your reporting. Who's your editor? Bozo the clown? I loved the earlier wisecrack about the editor making poot sounds with his hands. LOL! I was there. There were well more than 1000 and you can bank on it. Well behaved, caring Americans, not Tea Baggers, thank you very much. I have a screen shot of the original headline which I'm sending to many patriots across the country, along with the station's contact info. You'll be famous."

Hey, Corky, I am doing my part to pass this on! Another attendee has captured a PDF of the original story and has passed it on to Glenn Beck. I wrote the following comment:

KRQE: Ours is another household that will boycott both your television station and your sponsors. The original article has been saved as a screenshot and a pdf, and patriots like Corky and Joe have seen to it that patriots all over the United States will see it. The derogatory title was inexcusable and the juvenile reporting is unprofessional. This may have passed in Pleasantville, but it certainly will not in the age of the internet. If this article is an example of professional media, no wonder newspapers and TV stations are failing by the thousands. Patriots Unite! If our opponent is this stupid, we should win handily.

Of course, those who wish to destroy the Republic and replace it with some version of collectivist statism are not that stupid.

But the media is. They have to use a neologism, "misunderestimated" us.

This story will be told no matter how hard they try to insult it and suppress it.

Nevertheless, we must out the media bias and bad reporting wherever we see it.

And one final word to the media: Don't forget, we older folks are the ones that buy the things your advertisers are selling. And we're the generation from the draft-card burners of the 1960's.

Don't mess with the Gray Champions!