Today, we are governed by another ruling class who, at best, gives lip service to the Creator and, at worst, wants Him banned from public discourse, lest their humanistic lies be exposed. They are the ones who determine who is favored and who is shunned. They decide who deserves the good will of the state and who requires observation.

Here is where we run into the idea of the “protected class” of citizens. These are people who don’t always have an easy time of life. It could be that they have some physical situation, or some lifestyle choice situation that is different than most. However, the common denominator is that the Democrat Party has managed to create a dependency on government in these citizens and, pretty well, takes them for granted at the polling place… sometimes multiple times in a cycle. Foolishly, the other party bought into the compassionate sounding names they gave the laws and embraced them as well.

This is not to say we should ignore our neighbors with physical disabilities. On the contrary, we need to look out for the welfare of our neighbors as we do our own families. However, to make such consideration a mandate from the government opens the door to all sorts of graft, corruption and cronyism.

Consider for a moment the outrageously priced child safety seat for cars. They are a great product and my grandchildren all had them. My kids had this flimsy little thing that hung on the back of the front seat. It would have been useless in a crash. However the mandate did not come until someone had a product they want to sell and the connections to have a law passed. Viola! An instant market of millions of new parents. I want to make clear that just because something is a law does not mean it’s a bad idea – just that we need to be aware of the whole story.

Now consider the whole new industry centered around “compliance”. It encompasses the fastest growing segment of the software industry all the way down to companies that pedal properly worded posters instructing employees how to behave so as not to offend one or more of the ruling party’s constituencies. Those with connections are making multiple millions because of these government regulations, while the rest of us are boxed in more tightly every day by people with no natural authority telling us “you must say this” or “you can’t say that”.

Some of the problems addressed actually had some basis in reality. Sometimes we Americans can behave boorishly, not thinking about the people around us. Yes, even Christians do the same thing. It may not be as overt at times, but we, too, can get caught up in our own concerns and forget the people around us. We are told that true religion is to look out for the least among us, so we are, in deed, our brothers keeper.

It is because we, as a group, have failed to be the salt and light in society, taking care of those in need that we opened the door for opportunists to come in and replace true compassion with the mercantile approach of trading favor for votes. Some of our own number, who claim the name of Christ, have fallen into the trap of attempting to meet their neighbors needs through a political organization that is essentially godless and corrupt.

We cannot escape the blame for allowing this to happen. We have been too wrapped up in our own concerns. These concerns could even include our own church activities. We have not been seeing the needs around us. Not seeing, we have not been responding… and the enemy has moved in with a false solution that takes away freedom and destroys souls.

As I was growing up, hearing about the speeches and marches of Martin Luther King, much of what I heard was that he was stirring up trouble where he had no business. In the rural northeast there was little knowledge or understanding of the situations he was fighting against. There was only one black student in my high school graduating class and she was kind of cute and fit in with everyone, so I could not comprehend what the fuss was all about.

It was only later, after Dr. King was gone, and I saw grown men with dark skin addressed as “Boy” and saw pictures of segregated facilities that I began to grasp the struggles of freedom fighters like Martin Luther King Jr and others like Medgar Evers.

Our Declaration of Independence enshrined the words “all men are created equal”. Correctly it does not specify all men of a certain color, a particular economic class or those connected to the “ruling class”. It says all men are created equal. It does not say that some are only three fifths equal as some in congress specified so as to obtain congressional representation, yet not recognize the humanity of some citizens.

In so many ways, the projected rights some feel they have to lead, based on their skin color is just as repulsive, perhaps even more so, than the projected right to lead of the English royalty that our founding fathers threw off. It has been my personal observation that those who look down on others because of some external characteristic like skin color have the least reason to look down on anyone.

It may be for this reason that they are the most defensive and most violent in keeping what they consider to be their God-given dominance. History tells us that the Democrat Party rose to power in the Reconstruction south, partly through the efforts of its terrorist wing, the Ku Klux Klan that intimidated black voters and often left them hanging high in trees as a warning to others.

It is against this backdrop that Dr. King took his struggle to the streets in the 50’s and 60’s. The old racist thinking hadn’t changed much, but it had developed a veneer of sophistication and pleasantry. The north was little better as many, lured by the promise of jobs, migrated north to less hospitable climates. Most making the move “knew their place” and created an underclass of cheap laborers who basically did what they were told.

Our country is not what it should be, but great strides have been made in the direction Dr. King was working. Our black friends owe him a great debt of gratitude for his inspired leadership. The rest of us do also. He opened the eyes of many of us to situations we did not see or chose not to see.

What can we learn from this man of God who stood against established social norms? First thing we see was his commitment to non-violent protest. I believe it was part of his spiritual DNA. It also was a matter of practicality as he represented a minority group surrounded by many who would be only too happy to return violence with greater violence. Today many are questioning whether we can right the wrongs of the current administration peacefully. Dr. King, following in the footsteps of Ghandi, showed what can be accomplished by single-minded dedication to one’s goal. Unfortunately, his life ended when someone, seeing white dominance threatened, chose the violent route to a temporary victory.

Our government was not so powerful and pervasive at the time. It was not as immune to citizen concerns. King’s phones were tapped, but he did not have an empowered Department of Homeland Security breathing down his neck. We need to hope and pray that such an approach can work in our situation. If it does not, we need to decide, like our founding fathers, how much we value our freedom and what price we are willing to pay to keep it for ourselves and our children.

The non-violent approach he used was not a non-confrontational approach. Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers sat down in lunch counters that refused to serve them. The closed down streets. Together they raised their voice, letting the world know they would not be denied. The non-violent approach was not an easy road as King told the people they had to stick together. They had to work together, they had to pray together, they had to march together. They at to get arrested together. Whoa! Did he say get arrested together?

Sit ins at lunch counters, while conceived as peaceable, did not always end peacefully. Protesters were hauled off to jail for trespassing. Sometimes overzealous police, protecting the old value system, cracked some heads or crosses were burned in the night. Some working for freedom suffered the same fate as King and Evers… some simply disappeared forever.

We may be up against a more pleasant speaking opponent, but Chicago style thuggery can be just a vicious. The question for us is how far is each of us willing to go in pursuit of the freedom and justice that used to be the United States of America. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is rightly a heroic figure in the black community – and the rest of our country. But, we can all learn from his life, his mission and his dedication. Thank you, Dr. King.

In her world, there is no guile in the Democrat voter base that continuously votes itself more and more benefits from the public treasury. She complains that her constituency has a higher proportion of members with no government supplied ID. She says it is difficult for them to get such an ID. This is interesting as so many have found a way to fill out the forms necessary to receive benefits at major expense to the taxpayers.

The point is that if is important enough to sign up for benefits, shouldn’t voting be at least equally important? It seems to be one more case of the progressives looking to do things for the people that really should be doing for themselves. By doing this, they are really diminishing the people they are attempting to help.

Because the Democrat Party benefits so much from loose voting standards, it is understandable that they would be reluctant to accept anything thing that might add to the integrity of the election process. Even so, requiring ID is not a sure way to prevent voter fraud.

I was a poll watcher a few years back when a prospective voter entered and presented a photo drivers license to the clerk. The picture looked kind of like the man and all he had to do was respond to a simple request asked of all Virginia voters, “Please state your full name and address”. By the time the poll worker asked the question the third time, about half a dozen people had gathered around the table. If he had taken a moment to read the card before trying to vote, he could have gotten away with it. Instead, he snatched the license back and hustled himself out the door.

I’m sure Ms. Wasserman Schultz would see this as a man so down trodden by the cruel world to the point where he had forgotten his name and where he lived. I would hope most of us are a little more perceptive than that… and that we think our fellow citizens are more capable than this.

To add to the foolishness, now the NAACP is now screaming “voter suppression” and running to the UN an organization that is run by some of the most notorious human rights violators in the world today. Other than looking for a bully to help enforce their desire for unsubstantiated votes, there would be no reason to think that any justice could be found in this international body.

One has to wonder if it is justice, real justice, or merely power that they are seeking. Is it appropriate to follow the devil to accomplish good ends… assuming that they really are good and worthy ends? What then, are the worthy ends? Do they involve opening door to voting by people so uninvolved they cannot be troubled with meeting the requirements of good citizenship? Do they involve opening the door to dishonesty that overrides the wishes of those who actually take the time and effort to follow the law. This is the same law they depend on all of us to follow so money can be collected to pay for the benefits these legislators sorely need to maintain their positions of power and influence.

While the opponents of election integrity present the usual sad tales of downtrodden victims of an overpowering society, we need to be careful that we don’t let the emotional pull of their arguments outweigh the logic and and common sense of the laws formulated to insure honesty in our elections.

When our country was founded well over two hundred years ago, the citizens were neither perfect or marching in lock step, yet there was a form of Christian consensus. There was a general agreement on what constituted right and wrong. There was an agreement on the rights and duties of citizenship in this great land. Because of this the people were happy and productive – creating the most prosperous nation on earth.

Sure there were conflicts. There were those who desired to take advantage of the good people… both inside and outside the government. In spite of this the sense of common values and common destiny held us together even through our darkest hours. This sense of common values kept us from fragmenting ourselves into ineffective and hostile tribes that could only succeed at the expense of others.

This is exactly what scripture above tells us. It comes from the story of the Tower of Babel, where a disobedient people thought they could build their own society on their own terms. To a point, they could… but there came a time when God intervened and put a stop to their humanistic schemes. We humans are created in the image of God with considerable physical and intellectual capabilities. We can do a great many things, even though we cannot save ourselves.

When we work together, we can do amazing things. We can find energy under thousands of feet of rock. We can turn a barren desert into an abundant garden. We can put a man on the moon. We can develop businesses that employ thousands, giving them a way to support their families and enjoy a good life in our land.

However, in recent years, we have not been so together as we once were. Many in our land still have a love and respect for the “American Dream”. They believe in the work ethic that made this country great. They believe in working hard and reaping the rewards of that work.

Unfortunately, this belief is not as common as it once was. There are those who cannot make it in our performance oriented society, or do not think they can make it… or do not wish to put forth the effort that seek to receive the benefits of the work of others and are willing to take what they want. They have no regard for the people or the system that is so effective that there is enough left over to allow even those at the bottom of our economic ladder to live better than most of the rest of the world.

We will always have those among us who, legitimately, have disabilities that prevent them from productively working in our society. They are not that many that we cannot care for them. However the systems to do so that are in place, make it far to easy for those who are capable, but simple do not wish to put forth the effort.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that the most influential people in our government are among their number. Just recently the New York Times ran an article, publicized by Rush Limbaugh, that confirms the President is building his support among those looking to benefit from the federal “safety net”. He is expanding programs at a pace and in areas the even FDR never considered. The only thing is that, while he is succeeding in giving away more and more, he is also succeeding in pseudo job creation programs that give the appearance of concern, but have absolutely no possibility or intention of creating jobs… which would be the only way of paying for his redistribution schemes.

This president is not only taking from the productive members of society, he is reducing their numbers. Beyond that, worse even, is the fact that he is generating hostility between the working and the non-working segments of society. He is building his whole administration by driving wedges between classes of people. This is his worst crime of all. The animosity Barack Obama has created over recent years by telling people at the lower end of the economic scale that their problems are the result of intentional actions by those who have worked for their lifestyles is poisoning our society, making a return to united prosperity possibly generations away.

Apparently he never heard that Benjamin Franklin told us, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Neither has Obama considered Dante’s interpretation of hell where he looked on the “sowers of discord” as worthy of only slightly less torment then the Devil himself. This time though, I would suggest that it is not the Creator fragmenting us – we are doing it to ourselves.

However one wants to look at it, a united society overcomes adversity, while a fragmented society fails and reduces everyone to the lowest common denominator. We cannot permit the political class, particularly the progressive political class, to destroy our country for their own nefarious gains and ends.

It was long understood that boys growing up without a strong male presence, particularly those with a dominating female presence, would be more inclined toward homosexual behavior Much of the behavior was attributed to environmental factors, which led to the belief that it could be corrected.

Then came the politically correctness revolution. Springing to life in academia, this political correctness sought to minimize social and institutional offense in gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts by declaring certain ideas, language, ideas and behavior to be inappropriate and off limits in the supposedly open and tolerant world then envisioned.

With the leftist, anti-Christian inclination – outright hostility even – of these self appointed opinion makers who considered followers of Christ to be the primary offenders and obstacles to their desired secular society, we see how they reflexively support most anything Bible believing citizens stand against. It can be the killing of innocent babies, the expectation that those who can, must work for what they get… or it can be the homosexuality.

It is in this context that so many supposedly free thinkers embrace the normalcy of behavior that the Creator calls an abomination. The King James Version of Leviticus 18:12 puts it this way, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” The NIV uses these words, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” What better way to express one’s independence and rejection of the prevailing religious orthodoxy than to stand up and defend such behavior.

The sad thing is that the defenders of this perversion do so with much more enthusiasm and confidence than most followers of Christ display with the gospel itself. Most stand quietly by, afraid of making waves or being called intolerant. It’s as if most of have accepted the message of our time that tolerance is the primary virtue required to get along in this life. While being unnecessarily argumentative is no virtue either, permitting godlessness to go unchallenged is a far worse thing for those of us charged with representing the Creator on earth… and that is everyone who claims the name of Christ, not just the professional clergy.

So it is this decision to take the side of the secular society that has caused contemporary psychology to abandon the honest search for the relative impacts of nature and nurture in setting the course of the individual’s life. They had to come down on the side of nature, because, if the learned academic practitioners would have even considered the impact of family and environment, it would indicate that there was some sort choice or reactive behavior involved in the creation of a homosexual. This would never do as they attempted to desinify the behavior by calling it natural and the way people were created, if indeed there was a creator. Following their logic, if someone was created that way, and the creator is always right, so is the behavior.

To keep in step with the secular humanist elites, the APA had to change it’s long standing evaluation of this condition. If it was natural, it did not need to be cured, in fact it would be wrong to even attempt such a thing. Yet, even to the casual, but honest observer, it is obvious not all choices made in this area are rational and produce good results. At a recent anti-Semitic demonstration, a young woman was observed holding a sign that read, “Queers for Palestine”. Sure it was an attempted poke in the eye of our Judeo-Christian heritage, but more than that, it showed a complete lack of understanding of what the people she was supporting did to those of her persuasion. She apparently did not know why the Iranian president told the world that they do not have homosexuals in his country. It seems that throwing them off high buildings or lopping off their heads has the effect of diminishing their numbers – and here is the key – it discourages others from joining in the practice. Apparently some choice is involved, at least in the Muslim world.

We see then, that the broad support this very small minority of our population is enjoying is more than an admiration for the things two people of the same gender do to each other. It is, in reality, one more front in an attempt to purge the values that made our country great from the public consciousness.

Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. Luke 11:17b (NIV)

In Federalist Number 2, John Jay makes the point that this country came together as one to defeat the most awesome power in the world to win its independence. He, like other founders, believed that divine providence brought together this unique group of people with a common world view and a common love for liberty. His point point was that most people at the time had a common set of values and this allowed them to pull together in a common direction. This also led them to see everyone as their neighbor… and they looked out for their neighbors.

This is true today, unity is the key to success in an organization as well as a nation. As flawed as they are, most Republicans try to see people as individuals and as Americans. Sometimes they find themselves in a position of telling us that what is good for corporations is good for Americans – whether it is true in the particular situation or not.

On the other hand, we have another party that seeks to maintain its prosperity by keeping segments of the American people constantly up in arms about some real or imagined sleight at the hands of society in general, or some other group of people in particular. These dividers have the erroneous view of our world with prosperity being a fixed value… that one persons good fortune is the result of another persons misfortune. This thinking is epitomized by former congressman Dick Gephart’s reference to those who are well off as “winners in the lottery of life” – the implication being that the less fortunate have nothing to do with their lot in life and they just are the losers in the “lottery of life”.

To those that really believe this, it is easy to see how the next logical step is to try to even things out as no one really deserves anything they have if what they have is better than someone elses. These false prophets of our economy try, and often succeed, in splitting off the lower income people from the rest of Americans by sewing seeds of discontent, envy and class warfare. The political opportunists tell their gullible constituents that they are poor through no fault of their own, and if only they will put these pseudo populists in power, all will be made right, the rich will be made to pay and their prosperity will be assured.

So what is the problem with this thinking? Among other issues, the victims of this scam are discouraged from making the most of their talents and abilities. Because of attempts to meet the needs of the less fortunate, we find many of the less fortunate have learned that they can live a “comfortable” life by lowering their expectations and leaning on the government checkbook rather than taking a chance on improving their lot in life through their own effort. Through several generations, some have learned just how much than can earn and still keep the various checks coming… often somewhere around twenty thousand dollars a year. Many have been known to quit jobs when they approach that level to retain eligibility for their earned income credit, and others.

Not content to just maintain tension between economic classes, the dividers overlay the concept of racial inequality. This may be the most despicable of all as the constant drum beat of racial division is just the opposite of the life Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted for his descendents: being judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. These shyster politicians can hardly see anything but the color of a persons skin, if it benefits them. And it benefits many of them handsomely.

Recently we have seen another subject of division – the manufactured “gay rights” agenda. I say manufactured because, other than running into an occasional insecure individual who had to make a point of harassing or intimidating these poor souls, they were pretty much left alone. I have no great sympathy for their form of perversion, yet, like most Americans, I am content to leave them alone. Lately, however, they have changed from being content with tolerance to wanting public acceptance, even admiration, of their lifestyle. If the public doesn’t honor their desires, they have been more than happy to take the “in your face” approach to many people who could not care less what they do to each other.

Secular humanists – who practice what they believe, is our state religion – are pleased to join their cause as honest Christians proclaim the Biblical admonition that such behavior is an abomination to our creator. This is the same tactic they use in pushing the killing of innocent babies to the anguish of those who have reverence for the value of human life.

This is just one more attempt to create a split between the secular Americans and those of faith or at least silence those of faith. We are a fragmented country. Those who would tear us apart care nothing for compromise when they have the power to do their evil deeds with no help, but when they loose this, they are all in favor compromise, wanting to hear nothing of the idea that elections have consequences, and their ideas have been rejected.

Unfortunately, our gullible Republicans routinely fall for their calls for “fairness” and live in fear of being called nasty names, like greedy or racist, by their unprincipled opponents. They, for some unexplained reason, fail to see each point of contention as part of an overall plan to radically change American society. They want to be liked. They want good press. Better they should want to be seen by posterity as saviors of the republic! Instead we see so many buying in to the big government solutions to the lefts’ imaginary problems or they are just afraid to be seen as hard-hearted by denying poor American some “benefit” the other side says they need, even though such benefits are destroying the very people that receive them and the country that supplies them.

We will never get back together as a unified country if we keep feeding the progressive fantasy world. It is a cancer that lives on the principle of identity politics, keeping people thinking of themselves as part of a group rather than an individual created by a loving God. The only legitimate group we should aspire to is the group called “American”. We need to reach out with the love and courage of Dr. King to pull our country back together.

There was a poem by Edward Markham many of us memorized back in elementary that seems to fit our situation quite well:

He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in.

If we love our country, we need to love our neighbors as well.

Deterministic systems, ideological symbols of abdication by man from his natural role as earth’s Choicemaker, inevitably degenerate into collectivism; the negation of singularity, they become a conglomerate plural-based system of measuring human value. Blunting an awareness of diversity, blurring alternatives, and limiting the selective creative process, they are self-relegated to a passive and circular regression.

Tampering with man’s selective nature endangers his survival for it would render him impotent and obsolete by denying the tools of variety, individuality, perception, criteria, selectivity, and progress. Coercive attempts produce revulsion, for such acts are contrary to an indeterminate nature and nature’s indeterminate off-spring, man the Choicemaker.

Until the oppressors discover that wisdom only just begins with a respectful acknowledgment of The Creator, The Creation, and The Choicemaker, they will be ever learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. The rejection of Creator-initiated standards relegates the mind of man to its own primitive, empirical, and delimited devices. It is thus that the human intellect cannot ascend and function at any level higher than the criteria by which it perceives and measures values.

Additionally, such rejection of transcendent criteria self-denies man the vision and foresight essential to decision-making for survival and progression. He is left, instead, with the redundant wreckage of expensive hindsight, including human institutions characterized by averages, mediocrity, and regression.

Humanism, mired in the circular and mundane egocentric predicament, is ill-equipped to produce transcendent criteria. Evidenced by those who do not perceive superiority and thus find themselves beset by the shifting winds of the carnal-ego; i.e., moods, feelings, desires, appetites, etc., the mind becomes subordinate: a mere device for excuse-making and rationalizing self-justification.

The carnal-ego rejects criteria and self-discipline for such instruments are tools of the mind and the attitude. The appetites of the flesh have no need of standards for at the point of contention standards are perceived as alien, restrictive, and inhibiting. Yet, the very survival of our physical nature itself depends upon a maintained sovereignty of the mind and of the spirit.

It remained, therefore, to the initiative of a personal and living Creator to traverse the human horizon and fill the vast void of human ignorance with an intelligent and definitive faith. Man is thus afforded the prime tool of the intellect – a Transcendent Standard by which he may measure values in experience, anticipate results, and make enlightened and visionary choices.

Only the unique and superior God-man Person can deservedly displace the ego-person from his predicament and free the individual to measure values and choose in a more excellent way. That sublime Person was indicated in the words of the prophet Amos, “…said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel.” Y’shua Mashiyach Jesus said, “If I be lifted up I will draw all men unto myself.”

As long as some choose to abdicate their personal reality and submit to the delusions of humanism, determinism, and collectivism, just so long will they be subject and reacting only, to be tossed by every impulse emanating from others. Those who abdicate such reality may, in perfect justice, find themselves weighed in the balances of their own choosing.

“No one is smarter than their criteria.”

Jim Baxter

semper fidelis

– from “2010 AD: The Season of Generation-Choicemaker”

http://www.choicemaker.net/

The infobabes – in this case it was more like infohags – were doing their best to downplay the fact they the victims were US military. They spoke hopefully that the airmen were dressed in civilian garb with no evidence to support their reporting fantasies. The word “attack” never crossed their lips, but I’m not sure what other word would be more appropriate to describe someone approaching a group of people and shooting at them.

I guess to a Ted Turner news organization, the idea, as frightening as it may be, of someone killing random targets is more acceptable than a premeditated attack on our country. The one even rarely happens, and fortunately for them, it happened to someone else and makes great copy. The other event demands a response unless, of course, we were to follow the past Obama approach of apology and surrender.

If it were conscious attack on people wearing the US uniform, what does it mean? Who did it? Why did they do it? This would put them in the uncomfortable position of reporting that a peaceful religionist who only wants foreign invaders out of Muslim lands actually took part in this violent act of killing Americans – then telling us that it was just the work of a violent extremist who did not represent his Islamic brethren… all the while attempting to perpetuate the myth that every tea partier is a closet Timothy McVeigh.

Someday the cognitive dissonance will be just too much for the formerly main stream media and they will become totally mad or they will have to recognize the reality that some people irrationally hate us and want to do us harm. However, their PC addled minds cannot handle the thought right now, so their fear and loathing is directed at their own countrymen.

It must be difficult to live in a world where every where you turn, there is evidence proving that the basic principles that define your life have no relationship to reality. It must be difficult to believe that the crime ridden urban centers of both coasts represent the real America and normal people who populate “flyover” country are the deviants.

Later reports tell us that the shooter was a Kosovan Muslim who shouted “Allah Akbar” before opening fire. I guess that kind of puts to rest the deranged shooter picking off random targets. The question is, will the regimes lapdog media get the picture and report it? And the even bigger question is, will the regime get the picture and take appropriate action… other than to make our once great nation less offensive to a culture completely opposed to just about everything normal Americans hold dear.

The newly influential presence of the group that bills itself as “homosexual conservative” was a stumbling block to many. A great many well known political figures skipped this year’s event because of the highly visible involvement of GOProud.

Objections came on two levels. The first, and the one most expected, was based on the concept that homosexuality is wrong, as described in various scriptures, such as Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” (NIV)

The second objection stemmed from actions like the support for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and other actions and policies of the national government to impose acceptance of their lifestyle on and unsuspecting and unexpecting pubic. Even the most hard core of libertarians among us should find this unacceptable.

Then there was the presence of Suhail Kahn the devout Muslim telling everyone there is no danger the Muslim Brotherhood, even denying their presence in the US. A contention that Glenn Beck says is absolutely untrue. Conservative blogger Pamela Geller makes the case about CPAC, “It’s corrupted and it’s been compromised by Muslim Brotherhood,… they’re either clueless or complicit, okay? And I believe it’s the latter.”

It seems that the folks at CPAC are making the same mistake as big tent Republicans who don’t believe conservative principles have broad enough appeal to be victorious, or who don’t really believe them in the first place. While it is good to be open to all, we need to be careful that we are not influenced by all and have our message and our focus diluted.

I am not sure which of Ms. Geller’s alternatives is correct, but it could be applied to radical Islam’s war on our way of life as well as the implementation of the gay agenda of, not just acceptance, but approval through out our country.

One has to wonder the order of priorities for homosexual conservatives. Are they looking at their chosen lifestyle first, or are they really conservatives first? We can join with them as conservatives working for a smaller, less intrusive government, if that is their focus. However, if their focus is acceptance of their deviant lifestyle before we can work together, are they really interested in a smaller, less intrusive government that is incapable of imposing their desires on the good people of our country?

By defining themselves by activities they say belong in the privacy of their own bedroom and are none of our business anyway, they are setting an different path than mainstream conservatism. By attaching themselves to the conservative movement, these homosexuals are gaining a certain amount of reciprocity and credibility among those not particularly set in their understanding of the deviancy of their practices. They are seen as not completely reprobate… which they are not, and they take steps toward acceptance of their behavior.

With the recent electoral victories, and the multitude of crises facing our country, it is unfortunate that the organizers of CPAC chose to give prominence to some who divide rather than unite the American freedom fighters. As with the Republican Party, they have left their base and pursued others whose purposes are not in sync with the thinking that has made CPAC a must attend event in the past.

The relevance and influence of the event could well depend on the ability of the organizers to follow the principles that brought it to national prominence in the first place. They need to resist the temptation to engineer the attendees into different lines of thinking. Stories are circulating that GOProud will not be invited back next year. We shall see. Time will tell and we can hope that CPAC will regain its focus on making ours a better country for everyone.

Pursuing identity politics, that is, looking at each person as a member of some small, but downtrodden group rather than as an individual, serves to promote isolation from the rest of society and focus our attention on our differences rather than our similarities. It keeps us fragmented and distracted. We face many challenges in our country today. We need to pull together, but all we hear from our government is divisive rhetoric that keeps us at each others throats. The poor are told their plight is the fault of the rich. Union members are told corporate greed keeps them from getting what they want. One racial group thinks they are being held down by another. While the other group sees their opportunities given to less qualified workers based strictly on skin color.

The left, through the Democratic party, has successfully balkanized America so many people see themselves first as members of some sort of aggrieved group that needs help in redressing some real or imagined wrong. One must give them credit for forging this disparate group, with often opposing interests into a coalition that keeps many of them in office… even though few of the grievances are ever resolved.

What does this do for the country? It keeps our focus on our own parochial issues and off the greater challenges facing our country. It keeps many just voting their own financial interests, often to the detriment of the country. It keeps us from really considering the implications of the fluff coming out of Washington and our state capitols. We are kept dumb and angry with the wrong people. Many are kept so stirred up by organizations like ACORN with straw man arguments that they never realize that the very people they look to for their salvation are the ones who are creating the situations that hold them in bondage.

This distraction is costly. American citizens see their jobs and their country slipping away as illegal immigrants sneak across the border and companies outsource American jobs to overseas workers who work for lower wages… all with the approval of a government that is supposed to be serving it’s citizens. Yet, we are kept sufficiently fragmented that those in power from both parties proceed with their destructive policies, more concerned about offending their lobbyist supporters and contributors than the voters.

It’s time to take a hard look at the concept of identity politics and recognize it for the scam that it is. It’s time to reject the idea of the hyphenated American. There are no Irish-Americans, Asian-Americans or even African-Americans. We are Americans, no matter what our skin color or the source of our last name! We are all in this mess together and as Ben Franklin put it, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Sure there are many things going on that are not right, but if we only look at our narrow interests we will be like crabs in bucket. When one gets close to crawling out, the others just pull him back down and they all end up as someone’s dinner.

Does this mean we all give up our identities? Absolutely not! It means that we face life as the individuals we were created to be, freed from confinement to group identities, freed to be the person we were designed to be from the time we were formed in our mother’s womb… freed to fulfill the purpose that each of us has for the time we have been given here on earth. And freed to set aside our own narrow interests to spend ourselves on something bigger than ourselves. This is the path to greatness, both as individuals and as a nation.