News Intelligence Analysis
Political Philosophy and Analysis Directory
Merrill Lynch Bullish on America by K. Yurica
Defending God in the Public Square
Challenge Number Two
Newt Gingrich
There is no attack on American culture more
deadly and more historically dishonest than
the secular Left’s unending war against God
in
America’s public life.
Gingrich v The Separation of
Church and State
Newt Gingrich is launching a
new and ambitious
committee aimed at re-making American society
in the neoconservative image. But just below the
surface lurks an assault on the doctrine of separation
of church and state that has been dear to his
heart
for decades.
Putting Faith Before Politics
By DAVID KUO
November 16, 2006
SINCE 1992, every national Republican
electoral defeat has been accompanied
by an obituary for the religious right. Every
one of these obituaries has been premature —
after these losses, the religious right only
grew
stronger.
Waging Battle, Building
Peace:
The Paradox Confronting the
Democrats
By Andrew Bard Schmookler
The goal is no less than to defeat
the evil
that, in recent years, has risen to ascendancy
in America. Finding the optimal strategy for
achieving this
is no small challenge.
The Growing Threat of
Right-Wing Christians
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri,
AlterNet.
Posted July 19, 2006.
"I don't want to be alarmist,
but this is actually
quite alarming," Michelle Goldberg said. She was
referring to the subject of her new book, "Kingdom
Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism," which
chronicles the steady rise of the neocons of
Christianity. Whether she's attending a Ten
Commandments conference or joining Tony Perkins'
conference calls to listen in on what D.C. agenda
will be passed on to congregations, Goldberg's
reporting offers insight into a movement that has
reshaped the nation's political and cultural landscape.
Goldberg did not go undercover, nor wear any
disguise. Rather, she simply showed up, listened
and learned. And what she has learned is
definitely
alarming.
In
the Beginning God Created
an Open Society
(Guess Who’s Trying
to Close It)
By Katherine Yurica
July 21, 2006
In Genesis, the God of the Bible
created
an open society. We know this because
God had the power to exclude the Serpent
from the Garden of Eden, but God chose to
allow the Serpent to stay along with his
contrary voice and vision. It was a gamble
God was willing to make. He simply rejected
coercive power over his creation. In the end,
it cost God everything he loved—including his
only begotten
son.
Areopagitica (1644)
John Milton
A speech for the liberty
of unlicensed printing
to the parliament of Englan
John Milton argued in his Areopagitica,
(one of the
great documents in the history of free speech) that
censorship is an anathema to enlightenment. In 1644,
Parliament had passed an act requiring all books to
be licensed by an official censor. The Presbyterian party,
which was then in control, was determined to bring
Englishmen into conformity with its particular variety
of Protestantism by ending political
opposition.
Triumph of the Authoritarians
By John W. Dean | July
14, 2006
CONTEMPORARY CONSERVATISM and
its
influence on the Republican Party was, until
recently, a mystery to me. The practitioners'
bludgeoning style of politics, their self-serving
manipulation of the political processes, and their
policies that focus narrowly on perceived self-interest
-- none of this struck me as based on anything
related to traditional conservatism. Rather, truth
be told, today's so-called conservatives are
quite
radical.
America the Dangerous?
Activist and financier George
Soros on the
global energy crisis and why he thinks the
United States has become an obstacle to
a stable and just world.
By Susanna Schrobsdorff
George Soros has assigned himself a daunting
mission. "Changing the attitude and policies of
the United States remains my top priority," he
writes in the introduction to his latest book, "The
Age of Fallibility" (PublicAffairs). The billionaire
investor is set on convincing Americans to
renounce the idea of a "war on terror" because
he believes that an "endless" war against an
invisible enemy is counterproductive and
dangerous.
Click here for a free download
of George
Soros' Introduction to
The
Age of Fallibility
The Capitalist Threat
by George Soros
What kind of society do we want?
"Let the free
market decide!" is the often-heard response. That
response, a prominent capitalist argues, undermines
the very values on which open and democratic
societies depend.
George
Soros
By
Alan Deutschman
He
went from apple harvester to capitalist
kingpin to progressive savior. The countercultural
investor has more money than you've ever
heard of, and he just loves to give
it away.
Early Intensity Underlines
Ohio Races
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and
IAN URBINA
In many ways, the political environment
here
mirrors the national one, with its brew of
economic anxiety, corruption and voter
weariness with one-party dominance. Beyond
corruption and worry about Iraq, the contests
in Ohio are shaping up as a face-off between
two powerful forces in American politics:
economic issues, led by job loss, trade and
health care worries; and social issues, notably
abortion, same-sex marriage
and gun control.
Is U.S. Being Transformed
Into a Radical Republic?
By Lawrence Wilkerson
April 23, 2006
In January 2001, with the inauguration
of George
W. Bush as president, America set on a path to
cease being good; America became a revolutionary
nation, a radical republic. If our country continues
on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened
to all great powers before it, without
exception.
Iran: The Next Neocon Target
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
Since 2001 we have spent over
$300 billion,
and occupied two Muslim nations--Afghanistan
and Iraq. We’re poorer but certainly not safer
for it. We invaded Afghanistan to get Osama bin
Laden, the ring leader behind 9/11. This effort has
been
virtually abandoned.
Neocon Architect Says:
'Pull it Down'
ALEX MASSIE
NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United
States and needs to be replaced by a more
realistic foreign policy agenda, according to
one of its prime architects. Francis Fukuyam
who wrote the best-selling book The End of
History and was a member of the neoconservative
project, now says that, both as a political symbol
and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something
I can no longer support". He says it should be
discarded on to history's pile
of discredited ideologies.
Restoring the Public
Trust
By Bill Moyers
TomPaine.com
Friday 24 February 2006
Two years ago, in a report entitled Democracy
in an Age of Rising Inequality, the American Political
Science Association concluded that progress toward
realizing American ideals of democracy "may have
stalled, and even, in some areas, reversed." Privileged
Americans "roar with a clarity and consistency that public
officials readily hear and routinely follow" while citizens
"with lower or moderate incomes are speaking with
a whisper." The following year, on the eve of President
George W. Bush's second inauguration, the editors of
The Economist, reporting on inequality in America,
concluded that the United States "risks calcifying into
a European-style, class-based
society."
Can Democracy Be Christian?
An
Interview With Katherine Yurica
It depends on how we
define “democracy.” If we
limit it to mean: rule of the majority, then I see an
inherent conflict between democracy and the great
principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition, because
there is such a thing as the “tyranny of the majority.”
Original Intent
Revisionist rhetoric notwithstanding,
the founders left God out of the
Constitution–and it wasn't an oversight.
Susan Jacoby
November/December 2005 Issue of Mother Jones.com
When the Supreme
Court, in one of its most important
decisions of 2005, ordered two Kentucky counties to
dismantle courthouse displays of the Ten Commandments,
Justice Antonin Scalia declared that the Court majority
was wrong because the nation's historical practices clearly
indicate that the Constitution permits "disregard of polytheists
and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits
the disregard
of devout atheists."
The Corporations
Will Eat Your Soul
By Davidson Loehr
You may know the story of the frog
and the scorpion. A scorpion wanted
to cross a swift river, and asked a frog
to carry him on his back. The frog asked
"How do I know that you won't sting and
kill me as soon as you
get on my back?"
We Have Been Warned
By U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX)
We have been warned. Prepare
for a
broader war in the Middle East, as plans
are being laid for the next U.S.-led regime
change – in Syria. A UN report on the
death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafig Hariri
elicited this comment from a senior U.S.
policy maker: “Out of tragedy comes an
extraordinary strategic opportunity.” This
statement reflects the continued neo-
conservative, Machiavellian influence on
our foreign policy. The “opportunity” refers
to the long-held neo-conservative plan for
regime change in Syria, similar to what
was carried out in Iraq.
Living Under Fascism
by Davidson Loehr, You may wonder
why anyone would try to use the word
"fascism" in a serious discussion of
where America is today. It sounds like
cheap name-calling, or melodramatic
allusion to a slew of old war movies.
But
I am serious.
Defying Hitler by
Sebastian
Haffner is
reviewed through a mirror by
Bernard Weiner. Is
America
next? Warning: must be read
while sitting on a rubber mat only:
The Easy Slide Into Fascism
"It Can Happen
Here"
By Thom Hartmann
In early 1944, the New
York Times asked Vice
President Henry Wallace to "write a piece answering
the following questions: What is a fascist? How
many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"
Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions
was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944,
at the height of the war against the Axis powers of
Germany and Japan.
The Rise of
Pseudo Fascism
by David Neiwert. We
are not
yet there. We are marching in
the direction and copying the
tactics of earlier marchers toward
fascism. This is a serious
discussion on the nature of
the religious right's political
adventurism. Don't miss this:
In a PDF file.
Feudalism
by Paul Vinogradoff
It may be said in a general way
that the epoch when feudalism formed
most characteristically the centre of
political and social arrangements
comprised the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. In one sense it may be
defined as an arrangement of society
on the basis
of contract.
Bill Moyers
We are pleased to refer our
readers to a
Bill Moyers essay published by The New
York Review of Books for the March 24,
2005 issue. Mr. Moyers discusses the
significance of “political
religion--religion
as an instrument of political combat.” He
turns his attention to the impact of the
new political religion on environmental policy.
This is a must read essay. Click on this
image to read the article:
9/11 And The
Sport of God
By Bill Moyers
In l651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes
was
given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip
after he violated the law and took forbidden
communion with another Baptist in Lynn,
Mass. His friends offered to pay his fine for
his release but he refused. They offered him
strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the
flogging. Again he refused. It is the love of
liberty, he said, “that must free the soul.”
Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation
with its Constitution and Bill of Rights “a haven
for the cause of conscience.” No longer could
magistrates order citizens to support churches
they did not attend and recite creeds that they
did not believe.
"Neo-Conned"
Rep. Ron Paul shows the
destructive
Machiavellian basis of the neoconservative
movement. This is a world where Lies are
necessary to preserve the state and where good
men do evil so that good will be achieved.
Nothing we
have read has driven home the
urgency and danger America is facing
as this article has done.
It
is must reading
for everyone.
Who Provoked the Conservative
revolution? James Zogby tells the story
of the Machiavellian ideology behind the
Neo-Cons and the religious right political
operatives. It is the ideology of an Evil
Empire far from "family values". (A shorter
read than Dr. Paul's essay.)
When We Are the Evildoers
A dirty stain on the
reputation of this
nation reveals our moral degeneracy
Robert
Scheer calls for the truth,
confession and repentance.
BuzzFlash Interview With Arlie
Hochschild
on Blue Collar White
Males
We Can’t Let It Happen Here
By Jason Miller
Yurica Report Columnist
October 11, 2005
The United States of America
is governed by an
aristocracy with globally imperialistic ambitions
that is preparing to sweep away the remaining
vestiges of our Constitutional republic.
A Fundamental History
Lesson: The rise of
National Socialism
proved politics and religion
don't mix
By Fritz Stern
October 10, 2005
To have witnessed even as a child
the
descent in Germany from decency to
barbarism gave the question "how was
it possible" an existential immediacy. So I
have wrestled with that question, tried to
reconstruct some parts of the past and
perhaps intuit some lessons.
Coulterism, the New
Face of the Republican
Party?
Not only is McCarthyism
back, it's
back with a vengence: libel and
slander are liberally applied to help
create a one party nation. Mark
Zaid's
review reveals the ugly side
of the GOP.
Dangerous Right Wing.
'Some Crazy Guy'
by Paul Krugman
Ira Chernus The Fate
Wow. The government knew all along
there were no weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq. And they used that as an excuse
to take us to war anyway. My generation,
raised on the film Casablanca, would say
“I’m shocked!—shocked!—George W., to discover
lying going on in your administration.” A younger
generation would say, “Well, duh!!!” I mean,
what did anyone expect? A government that
would tell us only the truth?.
Zogby On How Neo-Cons
Operaerate
"By now the names of the
key players in this
movement and their inter-relationships have
become well known. Whether connected by
marriage or because they went to
school together .."
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