Jeffery Lord, Gladwell and the American Tipping Point

Last week, on Hannity’s radio show he discussed a recent column by Jeffery Lord/The American Spectator, called  American Tipping Point. In it, Lord discusses Malcolm Gladwell’s book Tipping Point and makes comparisons to America’s tipping points at different times in our history and the rise of conservatism and the Tea Party.

Lord says that:  Thanks to the Tea Party movement, Conservatism is on the verge of a major victory that dwarfs the technical and actual realities of whatever the details of the resulting deficit deal passed last night. Yes, there is a long, long way to go. But the idea that America doesn’t, in fact, have to be governed for eternity as a debtor nation with a mammoth, out-of-control, ever-expanding government is winning the day. It is tipping the balance with increasing decisiveness against an idea that has become so much a part of conventional wisdom that even some conservatives, startlingly including, inexplicably, the Wall Street Journal, have displayed the wobblies at the thought of confronting the Leviathan. The WSJ’s attacks yesterday against Jim DeMint, Michele Bachmann and Sean Hannity, saying “sooner or later the GOP had to give up the hostage” — follows another editorial in which the paper railed against Tea Party members as “hobbits.” The paper, sounding like cranky British Tories in 1775 Boston rather than the bold, forward-looking paper that championed the much-derided ideas of Ronald Reagan​, wildly bought into the liberal notion that the Tea Party from Hobbitville is somehow holding the government hostage, instead of the other way around. In fact Big Government liberalism has spent decades holding and trying to hold the average American hostage to all manner of outrageous tax rates, taxes and regulations on everything from capital gains to sex (in Harry Reid’s Nevada) to soda, SUVs and poker.

Lord chronicles the rise of conservatism from Senator Robert Taft’s strident opposition to FDR’s mega New Deal in the 30’s, through William F. Buckley to the great Ronald Reagan to Mark Levin’s landmark best seller and Tea Party bible, Liberty and Tyranny and how all these little, or sometimes large events, are causing a tipping point in American history. He says that conservatism is spreading almost like a virus: in Gladwell’s vocabulary, “connectors” — “people with a particular and rare set of social gifts” who have the ability to “spread” an idea like an epidemic, a Tipping Point is in the works. Henry Regnery, for example, published and made a star of Buckley, who befriended Reagan who inspired Limbaugh, who was befriended by Buckley and placed on the cover of National Review, with Limbaugh in turn aiding Hannity and Levin and Levin’s book inspiring the Tea Party etc., etc.

Reading Lord, once again gave me hope. And reminded me that in Beck’s words, we are not alone. Most of America is conservative to some degree. Most of Americans want to be or remain at least, middle class and we see that vanishing under Obama’s ideology. Most of America finds communism (call it socialism or European socialism but it’s still a form of communism) to be antithetical to the fundamentals of our beliefs and our founding. And most of America will fight it.

I hope they don’t think for a minute that we will forget being called racists, nazis, homophobes, Hobbits and terrorists. We will not. The real revolution will occur on November 6th, 2012 – bloodless, gunless and in a voting booth. They are being fore warned and to disregard the tipping point signs will be at their own peril.

It’s a must-read by Lord and I hope you will take the time to read it.

The Auschwitz Convent controversy – Just because you can do it, doesn’t make it right

In 1984 Cardinal Macharski, archbishop of Cracow, announced the establishment of a Carmelite convent in Auschwitz in a building on the camp periphery which had originally been a theater but was utilized during World War II to store the poison gas used in the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria.

Outrage by a worldwide Jewish population ensued. Their claim, and rightfully so, was that Auschwitz was a sacred place to Jews. 90% of those killed there were Jewish. And the Catholic Church was wrong to even consider this. It took several years of wrangling and it appears that the Church stalled several times in those years.

As the new deadline of July 22, 1989, approached, tensions rose still higher. … The situation reached a flashpoint when an American rabbi, Avraham “Avi” Weiss, and six colleagues dressed in concentration camp garb scaled the walls of the convent blew a shofar, and screamed “Nazi antisemites.” Polish workmen at the site demanded that they leave and then poured paint and water on the protesters and physically removed them from the site. Reactions were divided in the Jewish world to the demonstration, but Polish sources portrayed it as an attempted attack on the nuns. The deadline passed with a march around the convent by 300 European Jewish students, to the sound of the shofar. In August Cardinal Macharski announced that in reaction to the Jewish campaign, the agreement was to be canceled and the nuns would remain where they were.

In August 1989 and in reaction to the Jewish demonstrations, the archbishop of Warsaw, Cardinal Glemp, delivered a sermon in Czestochowa to a congregation of 100,000 including the Polish premier, which was seen as antisemitic when he called on the Jews “not to talk to us from the position of a superior nation and do not dictate terms that cannot be fulfilled…. Your strength is in the mass media, at your disposal in many countries. Do not use it to spread anti-Polonism.”

Cardinal Glemp’s remarks were condemned by many Catholics, including Lech Walesa and 4 other Cardinals who had signed the original agreement with a Jewish delegation in Geneva to move the convent. His sermon was inexcusable.

Shortly thereafter the Vatican [Pope John Paul II] spoke out for the first time, supporting the relocation of the convent in order to restore good relations with the Jews.

Although the original deadline for the new complex, set in 1990, proved overly optimistic, work progressed on the interfaith center and the convent, which was ready in 1993. Nevertheless the nuns continued to be reluctant to leave the old building, and this was only accomplished in the summer of 1993 following a letter from the pope and pressure from the Polish Bishops’ Conference. Seven of the 14 nuns agreed to move to the new convent, the others going elsewhere. Jewish-Catholic relations returned to normal and the dialogue was resumed. In particular Jews were encouraged by the understanding that had been evinced towards Jewish sensibilities by many Catholic quarters.

Source.

Two Catholic prisoners of Auschwitz have been sainted: Father Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein, a converted Jew and Carmelite nun.)

Maximilian was born in 1894 in Poland and became a Franciscan. He contracted tuberculosis and, though he recovered, he remained frail all his life. Before his ordination as a priest, Maximilian founded the Immaculata Movement devoted to Our Lady. After receiving a doctorate in theology, he spread the Movement through a magazine entitled “The Knight of the Immaculata” and helped form a community of 800 men, the largest in the world.

Maximilian went to Japan where he built a comparable monastery and then on to India where he furthered the Movement. In 1936 he returned home because of ill health. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he was imprisoned and released for a time. But in 1941 he was arrested again and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

On July 31, 1941, in reprisal for one prisoner’s escape, ten men were chosen to die. Father Kolbe offered himself in place of a young husband and father. And he was the last to die, enduring two weeks of starvation, thirst, and neglect. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His feast day is August 14th.

~~~

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)Virgin and Martyr Edith Stein, born in 1891 in Breslau, Poland, was the youngest child of a large Jewish family. She was an outstanding student and was well versed in philosophy with a particular interest in phenomenology. Eventually she became interested in the Catholic Faith, and in 1922, she was baptized at the Cathedral Church in Cologne, Germany. Eleven years later Edith entered the Cologne Carmel. Because of the ramifications of politics in Germany, Edith, whose name in religion was Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was sent to the Carmel at Echt, Holland. When the Nazis conquered Holland, Teresa was arrested, and, with her sister Rose, was sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Teresa died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of fifty-one. In 1987, she was beatified in the Cologne Cathedral by Pope John Paul II. Out of the unspeakable human suffering caused by the Nazis in western Europe in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there blossomed the beautiful life of dedication, consecration, prayer, fasting, and penance of Saint Teresa. Even though her life  was snuffed out by the satanic evil of genocide, her memory stands as a light undimmed in the midst of evil, darkness, and suffering. She was canonized on October 11, 1998.

Source.

Great column from the WSJ and some little known TEA party facts

William McGurn

. . . [M]oralizing about the ugly motives of the American people has become common. Whether it’s a federal judge declaring there exists no rational opposition to same-sex marriage, a mayor railing against those who would like a mosque moved a few blocks from Ground Zero, a Speaker of the House effectively likening the majority of her countrymen who did not want her health-care bill to Nazis, or a State Department official who brings up the Arizona law on immigration in a human-rights discussion with a Chinese delegation, the chorus is the same: You can’t trust ordinary Americans.

We’ve been called Nazis, racists, evil mongers and haters. We’ve been compared to the klan. Our attorney general has called us “a nation of cowards.” We are labeled homophobes and xenophobes. We’ve been accused of not only inciting violence but wanting it, as well.

And none of these epithets or accusations have anything to do with what ordinary Americans are really concerned about. We want to return to constitutional government, less taxes, smaller government, more fiscal and moral responsibility. So, again, what do any of these issues have to do with homosexuals or with race?

Absolutely nothing but the narrative has been written for us by the Obama loving liberal media and it’s a real uphill climb to overcome it.

Does it matter that there have been no arrests of any TEA party members at any of their events? Or that no one has been able to come forward and claim a $100,000 reward with proof that anyone called a black politician the N-word? Of course it doesn’t matter because those little facts don’t fit the liberal narrative.

March 2010 TEA party in Searchlight, NV

It’s a little known fact but over 70% of TEA party members have some college or are college graduates. You won’t read that in the liberal media because they prefer to paint us as stupid white rednecks who “cling to our God and our guns.” An educated grassroots movement doesn’t fit in the tapestry that the MSM is weaving about us.

The TEA party is composed of 75-80% white Americans. The general population of white America is 75%. The total population of Black and Hispanic Americans is 27%. There are 24% of TEA party members who are minorities.  How far off, really is the demographics of the TEA party from the general population of America? (24% is a surprisingly high number when you consider that we have been labeled as racists from the get go.) But do we see these numbers anywhere in the media? All I had to do was a google search to find them.

The media will not report these numbers. They will continue to spread the narrative of older white male, gun-toting, angry TEA party members and that is what a great many Americans are still believing about us. It’s going to be a real climb for us to prove them wrong but we have to persevere, hold fast to our ideals and agenda and come November, make them eat their words.

The pseudo-intellectuals in the media

from HotAir.com:

“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”

The Brownshirts were the SA, armed thugs organized into a paramilitary structure by the Nazis (who later were deemed expendable, with most of their leadership murdered by the SS after the Nazis took power).  The term “Brownshirts” came from the uniform they wore in public.  They conducted massive levels of violence against their political opponents, especially the Communists, but hardly limited to them.  They took their direction from the very hierarchical Nazi Party leadership.  In short, they’re nothing like anything on the American scene on either side of the political divide, not even the anarchists who conducted real violence in St. Paul during the Republican convention.  Donmoyer’s education on this period seems to have been gleaned from comic books and paranoid fantasies in progressive blogs.

from Ann Coulter/Human Events:

[Spencer Ackerman on Journolist said] “What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.”

Who are the brownshirts again? Who are the fascists and the Nazis?

You know, it’s time that we stop thinking these guys are so much smarter than we are. They obviously are not. These guys don’t even have a grasp of 20th century history.

They sure aren’t smarter and they are definitely more inclined to violent thinking.  And remember, these are the guys who have been providing us with news and information – as incorrect and stilted as it has been.  The problem is that those of us who knew better than to rely on them to become informed are a minority. And those who still get their information from them, don’t even know about all that the Daily Caller has uncovered. I”m sure (although I could be wrong because I never watch it) that MSNBC has done nothing on this for its viewers. After all, Spencer Ackerman is a regular on Rachel Maddow’s show (according to Ann Coulter.)

I think the table’s have turned now and the so-called media smart guys are going to be living “in a constant state of fear” because their are enough of us who have been informed and thanks to the new media, they are being watched.

As an aside: please click on Godwin’s law and read what it means, in case you don’t know.

Coakley’s campaigners call news crew Nazi’s

H/T FoxNation.com

A page from the left’s playbook –

Kerry/Edwards ’04 campaign in

Colorado.

Left-Wing Demons Viciously Attack HillBuzz Blog for Its Scott Brown Support… HillBuzz Is Fighting the Good Fight for America, So Needs Your Help

Massachusetts, Voter Fraud Alert: Why Is This Woman Handing Out Absentee Ballots Today? (video) – Update: Malkin Investigates